Seeking fun feats for a melee Goliath Druid / Hellknight Signifier

[Abraham Z]

Please give me some suggestions for feats that would be appropriate for this build.

Oread LN
STR 18
DEX 12
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 17
CHA 5

Traits:
Earthsense (Oread racial, gives tremorsense 1/day)
Reactionary (+2 init)

1. Goliath Druid 1
Feat: Warrior Priest (prereq for Hellknight Signifier)
Domain: Animal
2. Goliath Druid 2
3. Goliath Druid 3
Feat: ???
4. Goliath Druid 4
- gain Animal Companion (Elasmotherium)
- gain wild shape
5. Goliath Druid 5
Feat: Boon Companion (Elasmotherium is now fully leveled)
6. Goliath Druid 6
- gain wild shape into Large humanoid (giant)
7. Hellknight Signifier 1
Feat: ???
8. Hellknight Signifier 2
9. Hellknight Signifier 3
Feat: ???
10. Hellknight Signifier 4
11.  Goliath Druid 7
Feat: ???

Basic (rp) idea of the character: He's a druid in order to "tame" the wildness of nature and bring some order to it. Wants to get the plants to grow in neat orderly rows. He's also hunting for his family dog, who has run away - he joined the pathfinder society because it provides the best chance to go all over the place and look for the dog.

Basic (mechanics) idea of the character: I expect he'll be mainly a melee druid, relying on the ability to keep your weapons and armor when you wildshape into humanoid form to have fairly potent offense/defense while wildshaped and to team up with his AnC (Elasmotherium) to do some damage as melee frontliners, both with reach. Of course he'll also have some casting as needed, but I expect a lot of this will be for buffs or utility. I don't plan to wildshape into non-humanoid forms except when really needed, so I'm not planning to take Natural Spell. I also don't expect to do a lot of summoning, so I'm not planning to take Augment Summoning.

Being a Hellknight Signifier is mainly for fun rp (I like the combo with druid for hilarity), but it does keep my spellcasting fully leveled and because my AnC comes from my Domain, the Hellknight Signifier's catechesis ability will keep my AnC fully leveled (as long as I take Boon Companion to make up for the fact that the Domain AnC starts out 3 levels behind). I also gain heavy armor proficiency, proficiency in my order's weapon (not sure which this will be - I'm tempted by the lance and the idea of riding an Enlarged Elasmotherium, so my Large giant form riding on the Huge AnC, but I suspect this will be impractical most of the time in PFS).

So, two of my feats are spoken for: Warrior Priest (needed for the Hellknight Signifier prereq) and Boon Companion (to get my AnC up to full level). But otherwise I have no idea what the rest should be (i.e. levels 3, 7, 9, and 11). I know I could take some of the old stand-bys like Power Attack and Improved Initiative and Toughness, etc. but I'm more intrigued by building towards something more "fun", but I'm not sure what that might be. Any ideas? Maybe some Teamwork feats to work with the AnC? I'm considering Totem Beast at level 7 to boost the AnC's STR.

By the way, I've already played this character at level 2, so my basic stats etc are fixed.

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions you may have.

[Abraham Z]

Any ideas?

[Edward McGee]

Well I can tell you from experience that one large party member is a pain. Two moreso. There will be a lot of times where you either can't get to an enemy or are blocking other melee types in the party.

Paying for your armor, at least one weapon, barding, and maybe even a second cloak for your AnC will get expensive.
And with 12 Dex plus medium armor you will get hit a lot. Barkskin only helps so much.
As a large humanoid you'll have reach. Why not take Combat Reflexes?
If you don't mind switching out AnCs at breakpoints an Elasmosaurus grows large and gets +8 Str a 4th level.

[Abraham Z]

Hmm, good points. I'll get Heavy armor proficiency from the prestige class so at level 7 I'll wear dragon hide hell knight full plate.

I hadn't thought about swapping the AnC, I guess Druids can do that without penalty? Won't I have to retrain all its tricks?

Combat Reflexes seems like a good option. Right now I'm thinking:
1 Warrior Priest
3 Combat Reflexes
5 Boon Companion
7 Totem Beast
9 Lunge?
11 Divine Interference

[Edward McGee]

There is no cost but yes you'll have to train it. The DC for most tricks are 15 or 20 and you can take 10.
A Magenta Prism (Cracked) Ioun Stone 800gp will add a +2 competence bonus to a skill of your choice and can be changed once a day. So the bonus can be used for training, Day Jobs, and of course a skill of your choice while adventuring.
A Training harness adds a +2 unnamed bonus to Handle Animal checks though you will have to buy a different one for each type of AnC. It is 10gp.
You can train the AnC in a number of tricks = to your ranks in Handle Animal between adventures and then add bonus tricks. Since Attack x2 and Heel are about all you really need it shouldn't be an issue.

Which reminds me. It will die. Possibly often. You can give it armor, You can give it feats, You can give it buffs. It will still die at some point.

[dhaller99]

Which reminds me. It will die. Possibly often. You can give it armor, You can give it feats, You can give it buffs. It will still die at some point.

What I did with my ranger's AnC (large wolf), once he got into the levels where the AnC was simply going to die a lot, was turn the wolf into an intimidation engine: intelligence 3, max ranks of intimidate, Intimidating Prowess feat, Dazzling Display feat, and skill focus (intimidate).

I don't have the character at hand but versus medium-sized opponents it was rolling something like +25 intimidate.

So it would use a full round action (Dazzling Display), roaring and leaping ferociously, and pretty much demoralize all enemies within a 30ft. radius (-2 to d20 rolls, essentially). This debuffed them, helped our casters, and so on.

I pumped up its AC (to 34 with barkskin) so it could stand amidst enemies in relative safety to do its thing, and of course it still took the occasional bite/trip attack versus softer, low-CMD targets.

And I had a cool mini to boot. A nice AnC!

[Doonamis]

Wow, that sounds like a really smart way to use an animal companion at higher levels.