The druid class within Wizard of the Coast’s Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms details sentinel druids of spring and summer. If you want to expand your seasonal versatility, take a look at the sentinel druid of autumn.
As a sentinel druid of autumn, you draw your strength from the time of high harvest, when life that has flourished is reaped to sustain the rest of the natural cycle. By words and actions, you remind your allies that they are strengthened by anything that does not destroy them.
Your chosen weapons are the tools of the harvest: the scythe, the flail, and the heavy flail. Like a winnower who separates the grain from the chaff, you use these tools to reap from your foes and separate them from your allies.
You gain the following benefits:
- Your animal companion is a fox.
- You gain proficiency with the flail and the heavy flail.
- You gain a +2 bonus to Stealth checks.
- You gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls with the scythe and with weapons in the flail group.
Fox (Beast Companion)
Medium natural beast
HP your bloodied value; Initiative equal to yours
AC 14, Fortitude 13, Reflex 15, Will 14; Perception equal to yours + 2
(Add your level to each defense)
Speed 6 (ignores difficult terrain when shifting); Low-light vision
TRAITS
Fox’s Cunning • Aura 1
Allies gain a +1 power bonus to saving throws while in the aura.
STANDARD ACTIONS
[M] Bite • At-Will
Effect: Before or after the attack, your animal companion can shift 1 square.
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature); your level +5 vs. AC
Hit: 1d8 + your Wisdom modifier + your Constitution modifier damage.
Level 13: 1d8 + 2 + your Wisdom modifier + your Constitution modifier damage.
Level 23: 2d8 + 4 + your Wisdom modifier + your Constitution modifier damage.
Str 14Â Â Â Â Dex 18Â Â Â Â Wis 16
Con 14Â Â Â Â Int 2Â Â Â Â Cha 6
Level 13: Paragon of the Natural Cycle
Druid of Autumn: Just as your chosen weapons lay low the crops in the field, your attacks cause your opponents to fall like grain.
Benefit: When you hit an enemy with a weapon attack power using a scythe or a weapon from the flail group, the target falls prone and cannot stand up until the end of your next turn.
Level 17: Animal Companion Power
Druid of Autumn: Fox’s Harrying
Quick and elusive, a fox is rarely where you thought it was, and it always turns up to strike where you least expect it.
Fox’s Harrying
Encounter • Primal
Standard Action
Close burst 10
Target: Your fox animal companion in the burst
Effect: The target shifts a number of squares up to its speed. It can use its bite up to 2 times at any point during the shift, targeting a different creature each time, and it gains a +4 power bonus to damage rolls made while using this power.
Level 27: Nature’s Bounty
Autumn: When you use your second wind, choose one ally within 10 squares of you. That ally can spend a healing surge as a free action.
About the Author
Jeff Dougan is a science educator and father to the Grasshopper, 6, and the Munchkin, 19 months. A lifelong gamer, he writes about playing games with kids for Chambanamoms.com and is the author of the Dark Pact Hexblade material previously published by Kobold Quarterly and the the Snow Queen during the Winter is Coming blog carnival.
Should this count as product identity? There’s no connection that I see to any current Open Design project….
Good stuff – I play a sentinel so nice to see some extra options. Winter next?
Winter would be good to have. Jeff, you planning another season?
Is it possible to get a Pathfinder version?
Wolfgang & Richgreen01 — Miranda should have it in hand already. I sent autumn & winter simultaneously to Scott in late May or early June.
I actually like winter better than autumn (or, at least, I think it’s got a stronger thematic connection), but you guys will have to tell me after it runs.
Rizzen9 – I don’t happen to play PF, because I’ve got shelf and brain space for 1.5 systems at a time, which right now are 4E and Unisystem. I’m happy to let somebody who knows the system do the converting, but they’d need to go back to the base class (material from Fallen Kingdoms).
The animal companion strikes me as being very underpowered compared to either of the other Sentinel companions. The wolf and the bear are useful -all the time-, to the point where entire combat strategies revolve around the druid’s companion.
Comparatively, this is a very minor boost to saves, which frequently don’t even come up in combat. Something about ‘cunning’ and opportunity attacks would be nice for the bite attack, but otherwise I can’t see why anyone would choose this build over Spring or Summer in mechanical terms.
@Matthew; the level 13 feature of the Druid of Autumn is very good control. So good I would build a fighter|druid just so my grab attacks could perma-prone a creature.
@Matthew, I’ve gotten feedback to similar effect from elsewhere regarding the fox. I know changes I’d make to both this and winter if I were doing them now, but that’s stuff I’ve learned in the last 6-8 months (by which time this was out of my hands).
Do you find Winter to be at least competitive w/ Summer? (even before these were published, I’d have described winter as the mechanically stronger of my two)