I made a Fighter and Dual Classed with Druid as an experiment, to see how it would fare out and so far I think he is probably my favourite character now. I tried a quick run with Fighter/Druid, Fighter/Thief and Fighter/Mage and they were really good.

How does a straight up Druid fare in IWD1, The strategy I use a lot is to :

Plonk F/D in doorway, cast Entangle or some other AoE depending on the circumstances, then use the F/M to nuke the held targets.

Dunno if a straight Druid would be able to hold the doorway due to weak armour.

Are the druid shape-shift forms of any use really?

Cool, thanks for the reply Szablev. :)

Some of the forms have good bonuses such as damage resistance (beetle form, if memory serves), which can be useful in certain circumstances. I love dual classed Druids as well and have one in the party pretty much every time I play IWD1. I love the 'spell salad' you can cast with a Druid and mage working together: Entangle, Spike Growth, and Web. Makes it damned near impossible for many mobs to even survive, much less get near your party.

This reminds me of a cheestastic glitch I used in IWD with a druid and a summon. Basically you position your druid outside a room with a bunch of mobs. Send in the summon into the room as far as you can without the mobs seeing your druid, then move your druid into view of the mobs. They will then all target the summon, who is closer than your druid. Have your druid drop a Spike Growth spell centered on your summon and then run away. The mobs will most likely make short work of the summon, and then having nothing to target will just hang out where they are and continually take damage from Spike Growth. The usually wipes out weaker creatures and softens up the tough ones for you. Like I said though it is pretty cheesy and could almost be considered cheating, or at least extremely exploitive.

Back to the topic though, I agree that druids in general are awesome in IWD. I usually end up playing a druid in just about any RPG where they are available. Nothing like using the power of nature to kill baddies.

Thanks for the replies guys, have some rep :)

I use a similar tactic now, my Fighter Rogue got some speed boots in the place just before you meet the trolls, so he stealths in to unfog the mobs, druid entangles and the mage nukes while the FR high tails it out of the room at +40 speed, I'll give the summon mobs a shot, been keeping them to hassle priests/shamans/mages mostly so far :)

Thanks :)

Spell salad, that's an excellent way to put it ;)

Now, if IWD1 had sequencers like BG2, that can be one big mean salad >:)

I used this same tactic MANY times in IWD. I'd then blast off a mage Fireball and that one Druid spell that sprays frost/cold in a ~70-90 degree area in front of him/her (can't think of the name of that spell). With the large mobs of enemies you have to face, it's not even that cheesy IMO. Fight cheese with cheese, I always say!