Druid Tank

[bionicgeek]

My girlfriend is wanting to play a tank druid as her first character.  I normally play arcane casters so I'm a bit lost.  Any help?

[sirpercival]

At level 6, take natural spell.  Spend your spell slots on long-duration buffs and go to town.

[linklord231]

Druid Handbook. 
Also, what SirP said. 

It's hard to give specific advice without knowing what kind of campaign you're in, what books are available, how comfortable she is with complicated classes, the general power level of the party, et cetera. 
But at the same time, it's hard to screw up a Druid.  If she understands how her character works, she'll be pretty powerful no matter what choices she makes. 

[Halinn]

If you can find pre-statted SNA sheets including augment summoning, that helps make playing a druid easier as well.

[phaedrusxy]

At level 6, take natural spell.  Spend your spell slots on long-duration buffs and go to town.

Make sure you have a decent Con score, also.

[bionicgeek]

Druid Handbook. 
Also, what SirP said. 

It's hard to give specific advice without knowing what kind of campaign you're in, what books are available, how comfortable she is with complicated classes, the general power level of the party, et cetera. 
But at the same time, it's hard to screw up a Druid.  If she understands how her character works, she'll be pretty powerful no matter what choices she makes.

This is her first D&D game, she's more familiar with World of Darkness, so I'm trying for straightforward build.  The module is Granny's House from Heroes of Horror and I'm locating it in Faerun since that's the setting I'm most familiar with.  All books allowed with review, one free LA and 70,000 starting gold at lvl 10 since we are aiming for a fun one off. My apologies for coming to you with such initial vagueness.

Thank you all. 

[Jackinthegreen]

What exactly do you and your girlfriend mean by "tank?"  Are you talking about the MMO type of tank that draws aggro and tries to be the primary target?  Within D&D that's rather difficult because there are very few taunt mechanics and they all pretty much suck at doing that.

There are roundabout ways to get the targets to notice the character though.  One is battlefield control such that you're making the enemies easy pickings for your party.  Another is making things go splat so hard that you become the primary target by virtue of being a really big threat.  Some builds make other party members worse targets, thus the enemy goes after the "easier" target.

What tanking in D&D tends to come down to is offensive might rather than defensive qualities.  Without a threat mechanic a defensive character is pretty much just a turtle that no one will bother with because there are easier, more threatening targets to go after.

A druid has a variety of ways to tank thankfully.  Their spell list is decent both with standard spells and summons, their animal companion can take a wallop if properly chosen, and of course wild shape has some rather nice gems for all sorts of things if you're willing to look into them.  Does your girlfriend have a preference to any of those?

[Braininthejar]

Or tank with summons. As a druid, you can usually summon something an enemy won't be able to just ignore. (or something that will grab him or thow him to the ground if he tried to go around it) With augment summoning they get decent hitpoints. At level six take natural spell and swarm the enemy with wolverines (once wounded it gets barbarian rage, bringing it to about 40 HP. nice for a summon II spell.) while staying in the air.

[Unbeliever]

I say focus on Wildshaping, or arguably Shapeshift variant.  Have her turn into something big and touch (treants are popular, and I think there are PrCs that make that happen faster), be willing to sacrifice a little bit of casting for some combat boosts (e.g., wildshaping buffing PrCs, Fist of the Forest, maybe), and go to town.

The other thing you might consider is something like Combat Reflexes + Stand Still to help her "draw aggro."  Overall, though, being a giant bear/tree/whatever might do a good job of that. 

One other possibility might be to do a different take on the whole angle.  Druids are the most complicated class in the game.  They have all the headaches of being a spellcaster, plus all the headaches of polymorph, plus all the headaches of a minion and potentially of a summoner.  You might want to go more the Bear Warrior or Wildshape Ranger route.  They both feel druidy, but don't have quite the mechanical burden (and can be QUITE tough), which feels prohibitive for me, especially for a 1-shot.  I'm a daft hand at 3.5 D&D, but I'd usually shy away from playing a 10th level Druid for only a couple of sessions.

If you want, I could post a build later on, or a sketch of one.

[ksbsnowowl]

Prepping for a one-shot is time consuming, but doable.

Ask her what her top 5 wildshape forms would be.

Then download the initiative card from www.thegamemechanics.com/

Fill them out for her, so she's got "pregenerated" wildshape forms.  Do her 5, and also do a few utility forms that she might not have picked (Eagle, Shark, etc).  You won't ever have to worry about leveling these up, so just fill them in and print them out.

I'm pretty sure you can find pre-made summon stats for all the core summon spells.
Summon Monster: http://www.garlic.com/~wedgingt/LG/Summon_Monster_35_rev1.pdf
or http://www.greyhawkonline.com/smetzger/summon/index.html
Both SM and SNA: http://www.superdan.net/dnd3.html

Is she wanting to "tank," or is she wanting to be a striker?  If she's wanting to be a striker, make sure she takes Tiger/Dire Lion as one of her forms.  Power Attack and Leap Attack wouldn't be amiss on something like that.

[phaedrusxy]

One other possibility might be to do a different take on the whole angle.  Druids are the most complicated class in the game.  They have all the headaches of being a spellcaster, plus all the headaches of polymorph, plus all the headaches of a minion and potentially of a summoner.  You might want to go more the Bear Warrior or Wildshape Ranger route.  They both feel druidy, but don't have quite the mechanical burden (and can be QUITE tough), which feels prohibitive for me, especially for a 1-shot.  I'm a daft hand at 3.5 D&D, but I'd usually shy away from playing a 10th level Druid for only a couple of sessions.

If you want, I could post a build later on, or a sketch of one.

I think this is actually really good advice. Of course, it is possible to just pick a very small number of things the druid plans to do (Wildshape forms, specific summoned creatures, etc), and fill out stat blocks with the details of those before hand. But it will still be quite time consuming for a 1 shot. She's almost certainly going to spend a lot more time prepping her character than playing it.

[bionicgeek]

I should add that when I said "tank" that was my interpretation of what she said and thus I was using it in the D&D sense of character types alongside Glass Cannon and Battlefield Controller God, etc.

[zugschef]

One other possibility might be to do a different take on the whole angle.  Druids are the most complicated class in the game.  They have all the headaches of being a spellcaster, plus all the headaches of polymorph, plus all the headaches of a minion and potentially of a summoner.  You might want to go more the Bear Warrior or Wildshape Ranger route.  They both feel druidy, but don't have quite the mechanical burden (and can be QUITE tough), which feels prohibitive for me, especially for a 1-shot.  I'm a daft hand at 3.5 D&D, but I'd usually shy away from playing a 10th level Druid for only a couple of sessions.

If you want, I could post a build later on, or a sketch of one.

I think this is actually really good advice. Of course, it is possible to just pick a very small number of things the druid plans to do (Wildshape forms, specific summoned creatures, etc), and fill out stat blocks with the details of those before hand. But it will still be quite time consuming for a 1 shot. She's almost certainly going to spend a lot more time prepping her character than playing it.

on the other hand: you can't mess up with a druid.

[Rebel7284]

Monk's Belt + Wielding Clasp for Wis to AC.

Greenbound Summoning + Ring of the Beast if she wants to go the summoner route.

Find a way to get turning and DMM persist if she wants all day buffs.

[ksbsnowowl]

Too bad this isn't 12th level.  Then I'd say get Dragon Wild Shape, turn into a shadow dragon, wear a monk's belt, and have an AC of ~40.

[phaedrusxy]

Too bad this isn't 12th level.  Then I'd say get Dragon Wild Shape, turn into a shadow dragon, wear a monk's belt, and have an AC of ~40.

The Wild Reaper variant also gets Turn Undead at that level...

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Wildshape Ranger is perhaps less complicated.

[JohnnyMayHymn]

For the one free LA, I nominate Divine Minion.  It provides a handy way to wildshape as a free action (at will), to refill hit points.

EDIT: Divine Minion1, Wildshape Ranger 5, Master of Many Forms 5

[zugschef]

dafuq?!
druid CAN be made complicated, but only for teh pros... everybody else? pick a few spells, pick a few forms, keep them handy or write them down/copy them on a sheet, and you're good to go. druid is as easy as it gets. you just can't fuck up...

[Unbeliever]

^ you're conflating how easy it is to set up a build with how easy it is to play. 

As a Druid you need to keep track of 2 characters (you and your animal companion) and usually deal with two of the most confusing and involved subsystems in D&D -- summoning and changing forms (wildshape) are 2 of the Druid's class features. 

Picking a full spell list, statting up an animal companion (though this can be made easier by just picking one from the book), and prepping a series of forms and potentially creatures to summon is a lot more prep work than many other characters/classes are.