Has anyone completed improved anvil without an auramaster Options

[Patrick_hindman]

This is just an opinionated post on why i love the auramaster
From my experience so far the auramaster seems to me an essential asset to any party going through improved anvil, his improved caster speed makes him a lifesaver in any battle situation and the extra spells he gets makes him an excellent damage dealer and great defender. Right now with cernd's upgraded cload, ring of protection and helm of defense he basically saves every time combined with his defense spells make him a great tank against mages and his faster casting time makes heal a incredibly useful spell in battle (saved my fighters so many times from those damn skeleton lords).

This in my opinion though makes all the other druid classes underated... because really having low health, low strength(sif he needs any) and the ability of not wearing armour, natural resistance(he has all the resistance spells anyway) and immunity poison and shapeshift(which is useless anyway) is a small price to pay for the bonuses you get in return.

So i would like to know other opinions on this.... is the auramaster too weak(i doubt it), overpowered, or do the druid classes need a makeover to match it.

[Kerkes]

Depends. If you've got a dual-class or single class cleric, and no pure mage/sorc, I would. But hey, I would drop both Valygar and Cernd for Imoen, she's way more useful (for me) than either one of them.
The thing is, from my experience reading forums here, most people play something like this:
1)Vagrant
2)fighter type who also uses 2 wpns - pure class, multi f/t or f/m
3)fighter type for 2-h wpns - usually berserker, or inquisitor
4)some kind of dual-class cleric
5)mage or sorc
6)? - either Auramaster (Cernd) or thief-mage or another mage pure-class, or some multi class with mage in it, bard etc.

Cernd is more useful than sorceror during spellhold, he can heal a lot and you'll need that. In ToB, his usefulness is not that great. But even in final battle, he is still useful for his summons (crap, but buy you a round or two to recuperate) and castings of "Regeneration".
I believe you should should check out for yourself, you can always drop him in ToB and pick Imoen up there. There are battles where Cernd is actually more useful then Imoen.