Druid Feats [3.5/Pathfinder]

[Runeclaw]

I usually play warriors and have a pretty good feel for how to build them, but I'm going to try a straight-up Druid.

What are good feats? Natural Spell, obviously, but other than that? Meta Magic and Item Creation, potentially?

[Fax Celestis]

Depends. Are you trying to be a smashy druid? If so, go with what you'd normally go with as a fighter. If you prefer being more casty, then metamagic's a decent choice, as is Augment/Imbue Summoning.

[Eldariel]

You can focus on boosting any of your special areas of expertise. For spellcasting:

Metamagic (obviously):
Extend Spell
Quicken Spell
Sculpt Spell or such, mayhap

Specifically for your summons:
Greenbound Summoning
Rashemi Elemental Summoning
Ashbound Summoning
Augment Summoning
Imbued Summoning

For Wildshaping:
Multiattack
Power Attack
Wildshape-fueled feats like Lion's Charge (Complete Champ or Divine, can't remember)
Flyby Attack - depends on your forms
Frozen Wildshape/Dragon Wildshape/Aberration Wildshape/similars

For Animal Companion:
Natural Bond (allows you to make up for 3 levels of adjustment in the AC stats)

General:
Track (if you wanna pretend being a Ranger)
Able Learner
Nymph's Kiss (y'know, if you wanna skillmonkey - 1-level dip in something granting a bunch of skills and some benefits you like, such as Ninja, Monk, Rogue, Factotum or similar, and Nymph's Kiss+Able Learner makes you a fine monkey)
Touch of Healing (infinite downtime healing, even in animal form where you can't usually use Wands)
Craft-line


Bottomline, Druids have a lot of feats they'd want, so you usually want to either pick the best off the top of all types, or specialize heavily in one, using the others as a backup. I can't overstate the efficiency of Extend Spell for Druids though - in addition to having many great buffs you'd want to Extend, there's also a number of offensive spells (Creeping Cold, for example) that can be devastating Extended. I'd get the feat and a Lesser Metamagic Rod.

[imperialspectre]

Remember, if you're playing Pathfinder, wildshape isn't nearly as good as specializing in summoning and casting. Power Attack is probably good, but if you have access to Spell Compendium, you could just use Bite of the Weremonster to get better bonuses than you would with Pathfinder wildshape.

Also, find ways to spend wildshape uses on something that is actually good.

ETA: Wildshape is still great if you're playing a caster druid and want to hover hundreds of feet above the battlefield for free. After buffing your animal companion, of course.

[Eldariel]

Wildshape's primary function nowadays is to give you alternative forms of movement. However, with good base stats, you can still use it in combat; the primary difference is that you can't dump your physicals like before if you intend on doing fighting (which indeed hurts quite a bit). Your animal companion still kicks ass though. All the awesome options are still there (huzzah for Riding Dog!) and the system is still the same so Fleshraker is a legal option (of course, Fleshraker is just a mistake on the creators' part).

You still gain all the natural weapons of a form, which is really the key thing in making a melee Druid work. Nowadays, you'll really want a 32pb for melee Druids though.