I read/heard a great suggestion elsewhere to grant control of a summon to each other PC and maybe the DM as well so everyone can get in on the summoning fun and you don't hog the action economy
Yea this is what I do as a DM and our other DM adopted this practice for summons that bring a lot of bodies to the field, dropping 8 velocirators and giving control to the other players and then turning into a velociraptor yourself or something else and getting in on the pack is super fun. I used this tactic with my moon druid sometimes where she would summon a pair of direwolves and turn into a direwolf herself but the two casters in the group got control of the direwolves.
We actually used this on our last encounter and it worked out very well. Kept everyone engaged and let each player control a creature or two at the end of their turn in initiative.
A tip to help with the turn economy is to use horde mechanics. Say you have a horde of 13 scorpions, then you could make the horde have 26 HP, (2 HP per creature) and deal 13d4 damage if the attack hits. For every 2 HP the horde loses, they lose 1 damage dice on their attack. This is also more realistic as no-one could command 13 individual creatures in like, 6 seconds. We also have a rule that the more hordes you want, the more efficient (or less detailed) your commands can be)
My understanding is that the HP bonus from the Life Cleric feature is only working when you use a spell to heal people. As the unicorn spirit is not a spell, for me it shouldn't gain any extra HP when dipping 1 lvl into Life Cleric, no ?
I play and truly love this subclass. I have Multi Classed 2 lvl dip as a Peace Cleric. This character was THE MOST prolific healer I have ever had.... I could out(rogue) rogues, and summon to soak damage. I never take more than 5 minutes on my turn no matter how many animals I summon... If I do because I tend to be healing more and battlefield control more because of need.... That being said, It is the most versatile class / classes in and out of battle than any other class I have ever played. POUND FOR POUND, as a player, I would rather have a Shephard Druid as a healer than any other class in the game. Regardless of your feelings of time management, It is a tremendous class and I love it better than the moon circle too.
Hey this is great to hear! I'm starting up a new campaign with a Shepherd Druid 4 / Peace Cleric 1 who has Eldath as his faith! My party members are playing as a Barbarian and a Blood Hunter so I've taken on the role of the healer since we'll desperately need one XD
With Roll20 macros (and working with the DM who most generally let you choose), I can get my turn done in less than 30 seconds. With the Mighty Summoner, you can give something like giant owls like 25 plus 11 from Bear Spirit Totem, so they're pretty beefy. Upcasting Conjure Animals is really powerful, so not really nerfed. 16 of any 1/4 CR beast is pretty tough! Faithful Summons impacts the action economy from an attack perspective.
Before anything else, know that this is just my view on summoning in 5e. You probably have a different view. But my rating of Circle of the Shepherd is based on my own experiences, opinions, and biases. Please at least watch the TLDR at the end of the video before you get your torches and pitchforks
Hey, just wanted to say, love your druid videos. At the moment I'm playing a shepherd druid in a friend's campaign and most of what you're describing is true. we're level 9 and have been playing for well over a year and I have to say that I'm really using the summons more for flavor at this point. I'm in love with my character tho, love my backstory of somebody meant to shepherd other people, just take a leading and or an advisory position and make sure that society respects the natural order. Anyway, can't wait fore more releases like these
I find this a bit weird as I find my summons to be doing very well at lvl 10. I do competitive damage, tank a lot of hits and add a fair amount of control. We even nerfed it earlier in the campaign, so I would only summon one or two creatures, as eight was a bit much. Sure, it's not as wild as at lvl 5 when I was the support caster, the main tank and top dps rolled into one, but still very competitive.
@@Bam31415 Idk. I don't feel like it's that useful anymore. Now most of the time I just run damage control. Like a poisonous gas comes rolling in, I get rid of it. The only other spellcaster in the party is a warlock and a new player so yeah. Most of the time I feel like I can't concentrate on anything else
I found a fair bit of use in using the animals for battle field control with some damage added. It just has a lot of extra utility. Though it depends somewhat on if you can pick or what you get if not. Some creatures have knockdowns that can slow down enemies and give melee allies advantage. Some have attacks that grapple and restrain on hit, which needless to say can be a real pain for opponents. And some can just be used as a moving wall to block the paths enemies would like to take. That way they can just keep forcing/tricking enemies to waste their actions dealing with summons while your party get free reign.
I really like the naming of your summons idea. I will, being a hardcore otaku, giving them Japanese names. Like the weapons in Failed Knight or the animals in Naruto. Giving them names implies a bond between you and prevents callous treatment (like springing traps). You could even flavor it as a contract between you and your spirit creatures. Like a tamer in Black Summoner or Beast Tamer (Harem not included!)
When it comes to the circle of the shepherd, one thing that really works for me as a blind dungeon master is to limit the summons of conjured animals to two CR one animals. This allows you to summon some really cool beast and it gives you a lot less things to keep track of.
Shepherd druid isn't good for certain players, but it's VERY possible for a player to take their turns quickly while summoning creatures. Especially on a VTT.
Personally, if I do summonings I'm only summoning 2 creatures (usually brown bears or dire wolves). Mostly, my Shepherd Druid is concentrating on Aura of Vitality, Healing Spirit or Spike Growth.
I play a homebrew Dinoborn Race, circle of the Shepard druid. Sharptooth, he is the Shepard of his islands population of Trexes being Rexborn himself. He is the parties tank and healer/buffer who protects all who fall in his "Flock" He is currently searching out the eldritch abomination who came to his home island stole a corrupted aincent artifact and killed many of his people. The animal he summons often is Thicktail a juvenile Trex he helped raise from egg.
Of course do whatever you wish, but no, I do not recommend it. Shepherd and Swarmkeeper have little to zero overlap despite having similar core fantasies. Honestly, after Tasha's, going Beast Master as a ranger would probably be better. The new *primal companion* will be aided by your Shepherd features. If your DM is ok with a bit of homebrew, going Drakewarden could also be fun. You'd have to homebrew the Shepherd to work with dragons too but I think it'd be a lot of fun. If you want to multiclass Swarmkeeper and Druid, I recommend going Spores or Wildfire.
As a potential solution to this subclass slowing the game down, may I suggest the Mob Attack rules. It is usually used by the DM but can easily be used by players who have a swarm of things attacking the enemy. One of my campaigns uses it whenever one of the players casts Animate Object on a bunch of coins and has them just blender the enemy to death.
I've built a Circle of the Shepherd druid that I'm going to play in an urban campaign as like a Ratking, rat speaker kind of character that uses rats, roaches, pigeons etc. I think it will be fun.
Kind of considering this subclass since Faerie Dragon were stated to be more inclined to call for help rather than deal with a threat on their own, but yeah, I can see how playing a Shepherd Druid can be stressful for both the Player and the DM. I'll talk to my DM and also look at some other options. Thank for the advice!! 🐲
Eventually. I don’t want to get stuck just making class guides like I’ve seen other DnD TH-cam channels do. After they finish the audience just kind of…leaves? I want the channel to stay diverse but eventually I hope to make my way through other classes. Maybe in less detail. I know Druid the most and obviously have a lot to say
@@enterthedungeon Ok I get it. Yeah I also really enjoyed the tier lists you made, it would be cool to see more of those maybe of Subclasses or races or really anything just to hear your perspective of things
The video is recorded and is being uploaded to TH-cam as we speak! It'll be a few days before it is released (Spores is coming first) but I think it'll be worth the wait
My personal rule if I'm ever playing Shepherd Druid: never mass summon, only summon one creature at once. Using Conjure Animals, don't summon a bunch of small creatures, summon one big animal. Less optimized? Yes. Way easier to keep track of and in my opinion more fun? Also yes.
the whole summoning thing and how it slows combat is a little off i just roll 8 attacks at once and by the second or 3 round know it's ac and can tell when it hits or miss with most of the rolls and it usually does not last more than 2 minutes and that most of my turn because of focus so i don't see how it can slow combat down
I'm A tabaxi circle Shepard druid and my character wears a tattoo that gives her an AC16. She doesn't use A staff and is a level 5. Im scared to use aoe spells becuz she effects everyone who hits the enemy before hand.
I'm about to play a 4 rogue thief, mobile feat, 2 druid shepherd in a heist campaign my character is a Yuan Ti, and she is going to be constantly covered in snakes at all times, because she can cast animal friendship on snakes at will without burning a spell slot I'll try and find ways to use these snakes in this campaign to do favours for me, spy be useful I wanted shepherd druid so I can always talk to my snakes if I want to the eagle totem is really good because we do a lot of perception rolls in our game, and advantage with perception would be pretty useful druid is also greats for wildshaping into a tiny spider and climbing all through an area without guards noticing, a tiny spider creeping under a door gap (we sneak a lot in our campaign) as well as dashing through the battlefield with goodberries to bring back any party members who are making death saving throws and shoving a berry in their mouth to bring them back up with 1 hp
I have a whole homebrew summoner class that I offer for those who want to do summoning stuff. It doesn’t slow down the game but is still good in power level as everything is done through ‘commands’. Nice video otherwise
I read/heard a great suggestion elsewhere to grant control of a summon to each other PC and maybe the DM as well so everyone can get in on the summoning fun and you don't hog the action economy
I love this idea. I'll have to try it out!
Personally, I already do this with NPC followers so idk why I never applied the same idea to summons.
Yea this is what I do as a DM and our other DM adopted this practice for summons that bring a lot of bodies to the field, dropping 8 velocirators and giving control to the other players and then turning into a velociraptor yourself or something else and getting in on the pack is super fun. I used this tactic with my moon druid sometimes where she would summon a pair of direwolves and turn into a direwolf herself but the two casters in the group got control of the direwolves.
We actually used this on our last encounter and it worked out very well. Kept everyone engaged and let each player control a creature or two at the end of their turn in initiative.
A tip to help with the turn economy is to use horde mechanics. Say you have a horde of 13 scorpions, then you could make the horde have 26 HP, (2 HP per creature) and deal 13d4 damage if the attack hits. For every 2 HP the horde loses, they lose 1 damage dice on their attack.
This is also more realistic as no-one could command 13 individual creatures in like, 6 seconds. We also have a rule that the more hordes you want, the more efficient (or less detailed) your commands can be)
This is a great idea
Circle of the Shepherd with a 1 level dip into Life Cleric is the ultimate healer. Every healing spell becomes a 30ft healing nuke.
Agreed, then at Lv 4 take Metamagic Adept so you can twin-spell. Unicorn Spirt will go off twice as a bonus action
My understanding is that the HP bonus from the Life Cleric feature is only working when you use a spell to heal people. As the unicorn spirit is not a spell, for me it shouldn't gain any extra HP when dipping 1 lvl into Life Cleric, no ?
What I love about druids is the amount of diversity. No two druids will be the same and you can create so many builds off of it
I play and truly love this subclass. I have Multi Classed 2 lvl dip as a Peace Cleric. This character was THE MOST prolific healer I have ever had.... I could out(rogue) rogues, and summon to soak damage. I never take more than 5 minutes on my turn no matter how many animals I summon... If I do because I tend to be healing more and battlefield control more because of need.... That being said, It is the most versatile class / classes in and out of battle than any other class I have ever played. POUND FOR POUND, as a player, I would rather have a Shephard Druid as a healer than any other class in the game. Regardless of your feelings of time management, It is a tremendous class and I love it better than the moon circle too.
Hey this is great to hear! I'm starting up a new campaign with a Shepherd Druid 4 / Peace Cleric 1 who has Eldath as his faith! My party members are playing as a Barbarian and a Blood Hunter so I've taken on the role of the healer since we'll desperately need one XD
With Roll20 macros (and working with the DM who most generally let you choose), I can get my turn done in less than 30 seconds. With the Mighty Summoner, you can give something like giant owls like 25 plus 11 from Bear Spirit Totem, so they're pretty beefy. Upcasting Conjure Animals is really powerful, so not really nerfed. 16 of any 1/4 CR beast is pretty tough! Faithful Summons impacts the action economy from an attack perspective.
Before anything else, know that this is just my view on summoning in 5e. You probably have a different view. But my rating of Circle of the Shepherd is based on my own experiences, opinions, and biases. Please at least watch the TLDR at the end of the video before you get your torches and pitchforks
Hey, just wanted to say, love your druid videos. At the moment I'm playing a shepherd druid in a friend's campaign and most of what you're describing is true. we're level 9 and have been playing for well over a year and I have to say that I'm really using the summons more for flavor at this point. I'm in love with my character tho, love my backstory of somebody meant to shepherd other people, just take a leading and or an advisory position and make sure that society respects the natural order. Anyway, can't wait fore more releases like these
I think as long as you love your character then that's all that truly matters. Thank you for commenting and I hope you stick around the channel!
I find this a bit weird as I find my summons to be doing very well at lvl 10. I do competitive damage, tank a lot of hits and add a fair amount of control.
We even nerfed it earlier in the campaign, so I would only summon one or two creatures, as eight was a bit much.
Sure, it's not as wild as at lvl 5 when I was the support caster, the main tank and top dps rolled into one, but still very competitive.
@@Bam31415 Idk. I don't feel like it's that useful anymore. Now most of the time I just run damage control. Like a poisonous gas comes rolling in, I get rid of it. The only other spellcaster in the party is a warlock and a new player so yeah. Most of the time I feel like I can't concentrate on anything else
I found a fair bit of use in using the animals for battle field control with some damage added. It just has a lot of extra utility. Though it depends somewhat on if you can pick or what you get if not.
Some creatures have knockdowns that can slow down enemies and give melee allies advantage. Some have attacks that grapple and restrain on hit, which needless to say can be a real pain for opponents. And some can just be used as a moving wall to block the paths enemies would like to take.
That way they can just keep forcing/tricking enemies to waste their actions dealing with summons while your party get free reign.
I really like the naming of your summons idea. I will, being a hardcore otaku, giving them Japanese names. Like the weapons in Failed Knight or the animals in Naruto. Giving them names implies a bond between you and prevents callous treatment (like springing traps). You could even flavor it as a contract between you and your spirit creatures. Like a tamer in Black Summoner or Beast Tamer (Harem not included!)
Playing a Druid for the first time in a strixhaven campaign and just chose moon Druid bc of this video. So excited to rock this!
When it comes to the circle of the shepherd, one thing that really works for me as a blind dungeon master is to limit the summons of conjured animals to two CR one animals. This allows you to summon some really cool beast and it gives you a lot less things to keep track of.
4:34 What I'm hearing here is "Druid Cowboy."
I wanna do a circle of the shepherd druid mixed with fey wanderer ranger and she fights displacer beasts bc they are an invasive species
Shepherd druid isn't good for certain players, but it's VERY possible for a player to take their turns quickly while summoning creatures. Especially on a VTT.
Personally, if I do summonings I'm only summoning 2 creatures (usually brown bears or dire wolves). Mostly, my Shepherd Druid is concentrating on Aura of Vitality, Healing Spirit or Spike Growth.
I play a homebrew Dinoborn Race, circle of the Shepard druid. Sharptooth, he is the Shepard of his islands population of Trexes being Rexborn himself. He is the parties tank and healer/buffer who protects all who fall in his "Flock" He is currently searching out the eldritch abomination who came to his home island stole a corrupted aincent artifact and killed many of his people. The animal he summons often is Thicktail a juvenile Trex he helped raise from egg.
What would you recommend multiclassing shepherd into? (A Swarmkeeper ranger might be interesting)
Of course do whatever you wish, but no, I do not recommend it. Shepherd and Swarmkeeper have little to zero overlap despite having similar core fantasies. Honestly, after Tasha's, going Beast Master as a ranger would probably be better. The new *primal companion* will be aided by your Shepherd features. If your DM is ok with a bit of homebrew, going Drakewarden could also be fun. You'd have to homebrew the Shepherd to work with dragons too but I think it'd be a lot of fun.
If you want to multiclass Swarmkeeper and Druid, I recommend going Spores or Wildfire.
@@enterthedungeon In that case, what would you recommend multiclassing Shepherd into? (They have little use for wild shape)
@@Randomdudefromtheinternet beast master ranger with primal companion or a 1 level dip into cleric going either life or death domain
@@enterthedungeon migth go twillight for more hp to your summons
A one level dip of Life Cleric is going to make your heals godlike.
As a potential solution to this subclass slowing the game down, may I suggest the Mob Attack rules. It is usually used by the DM but can easily be used by players who have a swarm of things attacking the enemy. One of my campaigns uses it whenever one of the players casts Animate Object on a bunch of coins and has them just blender the enemy to death.
I've built a Circle of the Shepherd druid that I'm going to play in an urban campaign as like a Ratking, rat speaker kind of character that uses rats, roaches, pigeons etc. I think it will be fun.
Damn that is an AWESOME idea. How did it go?
Kind of considering this subclass since Faerie Dragon were stated to be more inclined to call for help rather than deal with a threat on their own, but yeah, I can see how playing a Shepherd Druid can be stressful for both the Player and the DM.
I'll talk to my DM and also look at some other options. Thank for the advice!! 🐲
Just curious, will you be making other class guides such as bards, fighters, etc?
Eventually. I don’t want to get stuck just making class guides like I’ve seen other DnD TH-cam channels do. After they finish the audience just kind of…leaves?
I want the channel to stay diverse but eventually I hope to make my way through other classes. Maybe in less detail. I know Druid the most and obviously have a lot to say
@@enterthedungeon Ok I get it. Yeah I also really enjoyed the tier lists you made, it would be cool to see more of those maybe of Subclasses or races or really anything just to hear your perspective of things
I mainly play a druid. Conjure animal is just too strong. I cut my animals in half ( 4 wolf's, or one polar bear). the spell is still worth casting.
I can't wait for the stars druid analysis!
The video is recorded and is being uploaded to TH-cam as we speak! It'll be a few days before it is released (Spores is coming first) but I think it'll be worth the wait
@@enterthedungeon I'm glad to hear that! These videos are very informative and helpful cause I'm making a druid as my back up character.
My personal rule if I'm ever playing Shepherd Druid: never mass summon, only summon one creature at once. Using Conjure Animals, don't summon a bunch of small creatures, summon one big animal.
Less optimized? Yes. Way easier to keep track of and in my opinion more fun? Also yes.
the whole summoning thing and how it slows combat is a little off i just roll 8 attacks at once and by the second or 3 round know it's ac and can tell when it hits or miss with most of the rolls and it usually does not last more than 2 minutes and that most of my turn because of focus so i don't see how it can slow combat down
I'm A tabaxi circle Shepard druid and my character wears a tattoo that gives her an AC16. She doesn't use A staff and is a level 5. Im scared to use aoe spells becuz she effects everyone who hits the enemy before hand.
I'm about to play a 4 rogue thief, mobile feat, 2 druid shepherd in a heist campaign
my character is a Yuan Ti, and she is going to be constantly covered in snakes at all times, because she can cast animal friendship on snakes at will without burning a spell slot
I'll try and find ways to use these snakes in this campaign to do favours for me, spy
be useful
I wanted shepherd druid so I can always talk to my snakes if I want to
the eagle totem is really good because we do a lot of perception rolls in our game, and advantage with perception would be pretty useful
druid is also greats for wildshaping into a tiny spider and climbing all through an area without guards noticing, a tiny spider creeping under a door gap (we sneak a lot in our campaign)
as well as dashing through the battlefield with goodberries to bring back any party members who are making death saving throws and shoving a berry in their mouth to bring them back up with 1 hp
Yuan-ti should be amazing with this.
Sounds like you are complaining false advertising!
I have a whole homebrew summoner class that I offer for those who want to do summoning stuff. It doesn’t slow down the game but is still good in power level as everything is done through ‘commands’. Nice video otherwise
Link?
I don't think this could have been any more biased. 🤔 Almost wholly disagree.
Idunno my summon turns are like 3-5 minutes with my and my summon actions🤷♂️
Don't play a summoner as your first class
Warning taken.