@@jaredcarlyle4398 why would you?chill touch for instance does 1d8 damage, thats an average of 4,5. Wacking the enemy with a stick does 1d6+1d6, thats 7 average damage. on top of that your spores, wich only works within 10 feet, does 2d4= 5 average damage. Why would you ever do 4,5 instead of 12 damage?
@@tobak952 well it's from range which means better chance to maintain concentration on leveled spells which is big for a spellcaster and better then dealing extra damage, also avoids taking damage in most cases. also lvl 5 your cantrips scale and start to compete with that damage.
I just finished a one shot with this class and can I just say in a low level campaign setting this class is terrifying. It also was just so much fun to play, the flavour of this class just gave so much in the way of funny dialogue with our DM and actually led a lot of my party to question their opinion of the druid class. I recommend it BIG TIME. Thanks for making this video btw
I enjoyed how you explained how to make this subclass viable, because on first glance, it seems very limiting and weak, but with smart tactics, it can be a good subclass.
Thanks for the comment. I do think that some of the most underpowered subclasses on paper can be really fun to play if you put some forethought in ahead of time. Don’t worry too much about dealing maximum damage as long as your having fun.
I believe most interested people know this by now, but tasha's new book changed the symbiotic entity damage type from poison to necrotic. It's the only change I saw from the ravnica one to the new printed tasha's cauldron version.
You're wrong about raising a friendly zombie that has just gone down. Zombies are not humanoids nor are they beasts - they are undead. The text says beast or humanoid that is medium or smaller. Also, zomboys and skelegirls don't need to be any particular shape; You can have your pet zombie look like a shambling mushroom, a boar with no mouth, 9 arms doing a continuous cartwheel, and other unimaginable body-horrors. You can charm a pack of wolves to fight for you using level one slots, and then animate them into unlife - until the pack no longer needs them. Then finally let them rot away and grow new life. TLDR: You can't use your Fungal Infestation reaction to bring back already animated zombies from their recent demise.
Thanks for the correction, it’s good to know there are some rules lawyers watching the channel. You guys keep me checking my facts before videos come out.
I'm currently designing my own Dungeons & Dragons compatible subclass book, check out the behind the scenes video: th-cam.com/video/AMvQNtJZM9w/w-d-xo.html Check out some of my other subclass reviews in this playlist th-cam.com/play/PLcJxbxz7P6i3sM5I2igJJTH1D7RivAto4.html Addendum: the symbiotic entity damage is now necrotic instead of poison, giving the Spore Druid a better match up against a lot of the creatures resistant to poison at later levels.
One issue no one mentions is that the halo of spores and fungal infestation both use a reaction. Since you get one reaction per round it really limits them
Beast attacks in wildshape are considered melee weapon attacks so the damage from symbiotic entity increases your giant eagle damage, also, yes you can use symbiotic entity while wildshaped and give your 1hp rat a boatload of temp hp, unfortunately it’s a bit resource heavy (short rest recharge though, so that’s nice), only lasts 10 minutes, and takes some time to set up, so activate your abilities before starting up combat it you can.
From my experience any boss mooks are your mooks. Assuming prep time after level 6 go in to a den with 4 zombies from animate dead to gang up on a guy and drag him to to wake him a s send him back out and repeat useing you first 4 to drag the goons and your spore zombies to go out and beat the hell out of them. At that level you could also meat shield with conjure animals lol still works with no prep just slower
I love how you incorporate strategy into these guides. Unfortunately your idea of giving zombies 'orcish resilience' doesn't work, the feature requires the target to be a beast or humanoid, it can't be undead. The thing I love about this class is that most of its features don't have a hard limit. Besides Symbiotic Entity (and by extension Spreading spores) being tied to wildshape, all of it's features only require a reaction or bonus action, no 'until next long rest' in it
Circle of Spores sounds like fun. I hadn't really thought of crossing the natural order of things with undeath, but it works for this class. By the way, where is your accent from?
I found that Guardian of Nature is a fantastic spell to pair with this class. YOu can turn into either the Primal beast (primal fungus?) form to gain +10 ft movement, stack Longstrider with that and you get =20 ft movement to keep creatures within your halo of spores. You can also change itno the Great tree (Great mushroom) form and it turns 15 ft around you into difficult terrain, and you can still have the extra 10ft move with longstrider, so you can control a nice area and slow down enemies, and you gain bonuses on concentration and other saving throws. Then there are the zombies. :) they only have 1 HP, but it can force a fighter who doesn't have area of effect to be harrassed by 4 to 5 zombies, who culd grapple and bit him. The Temp HP are Temp, but are nice. Mechanically is one of the weaker druid classes, BUT, druids are strong, the extra spells are nice, and at the table, if you deep dive into the RP aspect of this, change spells names like Faerie Fire to Fungal Fire or maybe explain that Longstrider are the spores enabling you to move 10 ft. faster, or healing, etc, its very, VERY fun at the table !!!
@@RichMerry Not in beggining. I am considering take a FEAT (My GM allows chage a 2 lvl feature for a FEAT, than take that featurae at lvl 4). The feat probably will be Magic ininiate (Wizard) to take a familiar frog to have a permanent source of poison The idea is a poisoner Spear with symbiotic extra damage toghether. I change Herbalism to Poisoners kit
Running point buy with a Hill Dwarf I end up at 8/14/20/10/20/10 with 263 Hit Points (+4 Con, +4 Wis, Tough feat & average HP) or a Tortle with 16/8/20/8/18/10 & 243 Hit Points (+4 Con, +2 Wis, Durable & Tough feats & once again average HP). In either case I play the character as a perpetually high AF hippie with a strong Canadian accent (including excessive use of the word "Hozer") who's very kind, supportive & encouraging but makes Grog from Critical Role look like Einstein (even though Grog has, like, 6 Int). The figurine I use is a druid with mushrooms growing all over him (Tortle & Dwarf each) with the entire thing painted black (no special color detail) as he channels a black, magical "fungus" or "mold" through his entire body. Whenever I turn a humanoid into a zombie I use a solid black Myconid figurine, as I'm flooding the entire body with mold & animating their remains. Once the zombies die, they "melt" into a puddle of black goo that immediately grows various plants & fungus. I even have names for all 3 of them: Dave, Davin, Dylan & Dale. Party leader gives a speech on what to do next, why it's so important & then asks for team input--but I just slowly look at him and go "Uh... huh?"
I'ma be honest with you, I've been looking at circle of spores druid since it came out during guildmaster's guide to ravnica. It's sad to see that they haven't changed anything about the class, additionally, I believe the class is underpowered, the poison damage bonus you get is resisted or does nothing against most creatures. The necrotic damage is followed by a con save (an ability modifier that most creatures have a higher stat in), and none of the abilties really spike up the power at all. The biggest bonus to circle of spores, is the temp hp you get from using symbiotic entity, the issue with that however, is you can achieve that, in a better way, by utilizing moon druid. I would rate circle of spores as one of the worst druid subclasses because of that.
On a meta level it’s not the best tank subclass for the Druid but the fact you can raise dead at 5th level means you can use the action economy to tie a lot of creatures to one area, adding value to your area of effect abilities.
I think it gets overlooked that you wildshape and maintain your full caster body. You can do a lot better job of hovering near the front lines with the melee and supporting them while using your reaction to shoot out necrotic damage against priority targets in range. I do wish you got to Wildshape as a bonus action though. I’ve got one at 7th level, and he does a really nice job of keeping the melee moving and being really annoying to enemies while just being quite tanky. Getting to run up behind the big boys and give them a touch cure wounds can be really clutch and you don’t put yourself at too high a risk. Symbiotic Entity + Great Tree does combo nicely, though you lose out on the 10 temp hit points... but you are making a bunch of saves with adv, making terrain tough for your opponents and keeping the heals flowing.
@@benjnorris57 Except the spores wild shape drops the moment you lose your temp hp. Which means the moment something decides to breath on you or look at your direction, the core part of your kit gets dropped and you effectively waste another turn and wild shape just to get it back up. you're basically peer pressuring your DM to not target you ever, else deny you from playing the subclass.
@@dragonhearthx8369 it just seems the flying isn’t worth the movement being reduced to only ten feet. I would still use it for the resistances and getting past doors but not movement
There’s too little synergy with this subclass. The level 6 feature is a waste of a reaction that is not only trash, but stops you from using your other reaction feature. The level 6 feature should have been extra attack like the bladesinger, swordbard, or valor bard. Maybe a defensive reaction ability like defensive duelist too. Shouldn’t have to work so hard to figure out how to use a subclass.
I don’t think it’s supposed to be a melee fighter as such, there are better Druid subclasses for that if your committed to getting into the thick of combat.
@@RichMerry well that was kind of my point. The melee weapon damage is too limiting. It should work with any attacks since that’s not the focus. Since that single feature is limited to melee weapon attacks specifically, there’s really no other features in the subclass that directly support this limitation.
I wont effect your spells for verbal components, but check with your DM for a ruling on spells like Tole the Dead. It might go either way if the target is deaf. Again with blindness it will effect your aim but its really something that would have a ruling on a spell by spell basis. "A blinded creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight. Attack Rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack Rolls have disadvantage."
One thing I never liked was that the symbiotic entity is tied to the temporary hit points. Say you activate this feature and then take a massive hit. Your temp hit points are now gone and you wasted that turn.
@@rameking1 at 20th level, you would have 80 temporary hit points. Also you can maintain your wild shape longer through healing. You cannot regain temporary hit points through healing. You also take the remaining damage once your temporary hit points are gone
@@rameking1 also you can stay in wild shape for hours where symbiotic entity is only 10 minutes max. And to clarify if you accept temporary hit points given by a different source than from symbiotic entity, you still lose all the benefits.
@@dragonhearthx8369 I've been playing spore druid for awhile now and the easily accessible temp HP has saved my character several times. Wild shape also gives you more HP but unless you are high enough level to cast spells while wild shaped or are a moon druid, that wild shape form is not going to be too useful in combat.
This subclass doesn't seem to know what it wants to do. Most of the features encourages you do go into melee, with Halo of spores and Fungal Infestation only having 10 range and Symbiotic entity increasing melee damage.. Doesn't help that Halo of spores deals incredibly small amounts of damage AND competes with the Fungal Infestation feature.. Ontop of that the Symbiotic entity takes an action to activate.. It's very poorly thought out and seems very underpowered. I You lose the entity by taking damage, and the subclass doesn't get extra attack.. It's very much telling me that it wants to be a melee druid, but the lacks the fundamental support features for that kinda playstyle.. The concept is amazing but the executing is a huge let down.
I think it allows you to be melee in the early levels. And then ranged at later levels when melee is no longer viable as a druid. That's not a bad thing since the melee option is still there at later levels if needed and with the optional caster feature you can swap your cantrips to be less melee oriented every A.S.I.
The reprint makes the extra damage on melee hits necrotic now instead of poison. Much more useful and less likely to be resisted.
Which book is that reprinted in
Probably still just gonna throw cantrips though
@@shottygod13 Tashas Cauldron
@@jaredcarlyle4398 why would you?chill touch for instance does 1d8 damage, thats an average of 4,5. Wacking the enemy with a stick does 1d6+1d6, thats 7 average damage. on top of that your spores, wich only works within 10 feet, does 2d4= 5 average damage. Why would you ever do 4,5 instead of 12 damage?
@@tobak952 well it's from range which means better chance to maintain concentration on leveled spells which is big for a spellcaster and better then dealing extra damage, also avoids taking damage in most cases. also lvl 5 your cantrips scale and start to compete with that damage.
I just finished a one shot with this class and can I just say in a low level campaign setting this class is terrifying.
It also was just so much fun to play, the flavour of this class just gave so much in the way of funny dialogue with our DM and actually led a lot of my party to question their opinion of the druid class.
I recommend it BIG TIME.
Thanks for making this video btw
How low are we talking? :')
I enjoyed how you explained how to make this subclass viable, because on first glance, it seems very limiting and weak, but with smart tactics, it can be a good subclass.
Thanks for the comment. I do think that some of the most underpowered subclasses on paper can be really fun to play if you put some forethought in ahead of time. Don’t worry too much about dealing maximum damage as long as your having fun.
I believe most interested people know this by now, but tasha's new book changed the symbiotic entity damage type from poison to necrotic. It's the only change I saw from the ravnica one to the new printed tasha's cauldron version.
That’s a nice buff, a lot less creatures are resistant to necrotic damage.
You're wrong about raising a friendly zombie that has just gone down. Zombies are not humanoids nor are they beasts - they are undead. The text says beast or humanoid that is medium or smaller. Also, zomboys and skelegirls don't need to be any particular shape; You can have your pet zombie look like a shambling mushroom, a boar with no mouth, 9 arms doing a continuous cartwheel, and other unimaginable body-horrors. You can charm a pack of wolves to fight for you using level one slots, and then animate them into unlife - until the pack no longer needs them. Then finally let them rot away and grow new life.
TLDR: You can't use your Fungal Infestation reaction to bring back already animated zombies from their recent demise.
Thanks for the correction, it’s good to know there are some rules lawyers watching the channel. You guys keep me checking my facts before videos come out.
That idea for using your Spores with Gaseous Form was a great idea since the attack originates from the spores and not you so you can attack with them
I like that but it may be up to DM interpretation.
Similar story for Invisibility. Technically not an attack, so doesn't break. Wild Shape into a tiny spider or gnat, turn Invisible, go ham.
🍄Are you questioning the power of Magic Mushrooms?🍄
Yeah...
Nope. No no no, the mushrooms are very powerful!!
I love this subclass. I am a devotee of Moonshine Cybin. Plus I want to play a necromancer without calling myself a necromancer.
Spore Druid is totally a fungimancer.
I'm currently designing my own Dungeons & Dragons compatible subclass book, check out the behind the scenes video: th-cam.com/video/AMvQNtJZM9w/w-d-xo.html
Check out some of my other subclass reviews in this playlist th-cam.com/play/PLcJxbxz7P6i3sM5I2igJJTH1D7RivAto4.html
Addendum: the symbiotic entity damage is now necrotic instead of poison, giving the Spore Druid a better match up against a lot of the creatures resistant to poison at later levels.
Played this kind of druid and had him flavored as swamp thing. Was tons of fun
One issue no one mentions is that the halo of spores and fungal infestation both use a reaction. Since you get one reaction per round it really limits them
That is a downside but once you're able to "throw" your spores I think that solves the issue
Beast attacks in wildshape are considered melee weapon attacks so the damage from symbiotic entity increases your giant eagle damage, also, yes you can use symbiotic entity while wildshaped and give your 1hp rat a boatload of temp hp, unfortunately it’s a bit resource heavy (short rest recharge though, so that’s nice), only lasts 10 minutes, and takes some time to set up, so activate your abilities before starting up combat it you can.
Using Fungal Infestation to keep your zombies alive is brilliant! Thanks for the tip.
Imma reflavor him as a dessert mummie type mage and add earth spells. Spores will be sandstorm
I'm subclassing this with an Undead Patron Warlock!
Great idea, you’ll end up having a small army of minions to play with.
From my experience any boss mooks are your mooks. Assuming prep time after level 6 go in to a den with 4 zombies from animate dead to gang up on a guy and drag him to to wake him a s send him back out and repeat useing you first 4 to drag the goons and your spore zombies to go out and beat the hell out of them. At that level you could also meat shield with conjure animals lol still works with no prep just slower
chill touch for life
also i would go Shillelagh and never look back with my wooden 'longsword'
perhaps a ranger 5 would be good for this?
Thanks for the nice overview!
I give Spore Druid a C+ mechanically,
but A+ for flavor.
I love how you incorporate strategy into these guides.
Unfortunately your idea of giving zombies 'orcish resilience' doesn't work, the feature requires the target to be a beast or humanoid, it can't be undead.
The thing I love about this class is that most of its features don't have a hard limit. Besides Symbiotic Entity (and by extension Spreading spores) being tied to wildshape, all of it's features only require a reaction or bonus action, no 'until next long rest' in it
Fungal infestation can be used as many times as your wisdom modifier (minimum once) between long rests.
Circle of Spores sounds like fun. I hadn't really thought of crossing the natural order of things with undeath, but it works for this class. By the way, where is your accent from?
what if u use a myconid homebrew /other maker race and spores druid.
Really helpful video!
I found that Guardian of Nature is a fantastic spell to pair with this class. YOu can turn into either the Primal beast (primal fungus?) form to gain +10 ft movement, stack Longstrider with that and you get =20 ft movement to keep creatures within your halo of spores. You can also change itno the Great tree (Great mushroom) form and it turns 15 ft around you into difficult terrain, and you can still have the extra 10ft move with longstrider, so you can control a nice area and slow down enemies, and you gain bonuses on concentration and other saving throws. Then there are the zombies. :) they only have 1 HP, but it can force a fighter who doesn't have area of effect to be harrassed by 4 to 5 zombies, who culd grapple and bit him. The Temp HP are Temp, but are nice. Mechanically is one of the weaker druid classes, BUT, druids are strong, the extra spells are nice, and at the table, if you deep dive into the RP aspect of this, change spells names like Faerie Fire to Fungal Fire or maybe explain that Longstrider are the spores enabling you to move 10 ft. faster, or healing, etc, its very, VERY fun at the table !!!
I am startin to play a campaing with a Deep Gnome Druid of Sphoros, lets see...
Let me know how it goes. As a Druid gnome are you considering a mount?
@@RichMerry Not in beggining. I am considering take a FEAT (My GM allows chage a 2 lvl feature for a FEAT, than take that featurae at lvl 4). The feat probably will be Magic ininiate (Wizard) to take a familiar frog to have a permanent source of poison The idea is a poisoner Spear with symbiotic extra damage toghether. I change Herbalism to Poisoners kit
I have a question, the CloudKill and others that cause poison damage can affect me??
If yes, even if I have poison immunity?
Running point buy with a Hill Dwarf I end up at 8/14/20/10/20/10 with 263 Hit Points (+4 Con, +4 Wis, Tough feat & average HP) or a Tortle with 16/8/20/8/18/10 & 243 Hit Points (+4 Con, +2 Wis, Durable & Tough feats & once again average HP).
In either case I play the character as a perpetually high AF hippie with a strong Canadian accent (including excessive use of the word "Hozer") who's very kind, supportive & encouraging but makes Grog from Critical Role look like Einstein (even though Grog has, like, 6 Int).
The figurine I use is a druid with mushrooms growing all over him (Tortle & Dwarf each) with the entire thing painted black (no special color detail) as he channels a black, magical "fungus" or "mold" through his entire body. Whenever I turn a humanoid into a zombie I use a solid black Myconid figurine, as I'm flooding the entire body with mold & animating their remains. Once the zombies die, they "melt" into a puddle of black goo that immediately grows various plants & fungus. I even have names for all 3 of them: Dave, Davin, Dylan & Dale.
Party leader gives a speech on what to do next, why it's so important & then asks for team input--but I just slowly look at him and go "Uh... huh?"
How can one combine gaseous form and cloudkill if they're both concentration spells?
I'ma be honest with you, I've been looking at circle of spores druid since it came out during guildmaster's guide to ravnica. It's sad to see that they haven't changed anything about the class, additionally, I believe the class is underpowered, the poison damage bonus you get is resisted or does nothing against most creatures. The necrotic damage is followed by a con save (an ability modifier that most creatures have a higher stat in), and none of the abilties really spike up the power at all. The biggest bonus to circle of spores, is the temp hp you get from using symbiotic entity, the issue with that however, is you can achieve that, in a better way, by utilizing moon druid. I would rate circle of spores as one of the worst druid subclasses because of that.
On a meta level it’s not the best tank subclass for the Druid but the fact you can raise dead at 5th level means you can use the action economy to tie a lot of creatures to one area, adding value to your area of effect abilities.
Isn't there a new feat that allows you to ignore poison resistance and immunity in tasha's
@@RichMerry yeah, too bad you can only use it on humanoids...
I think it gets overlooked that you wildshape and maintain your full caster body. You can do a lot better job of hovering near the front lines with the melee and supporting them while using your reaction to shoot out necrotic damage against priority targets in range. I do wish you got to Wildshape as a bonus action though. I’ve got one at 7th level, and he does a really nice job of keeping the melee moving and being really annoying to enemies while just being quite tanky.
Getting to run up behind the big boys and give them a touch cure wounds can be really clutch and you don’t put yourself at too high a risk. Symbiotic Entity + Great Tree does combo nicely, though you lose out on the 10 temp hit points... but you are making a bunch of saves with adv, making terrain tough for your opponents and keeping the heals flowing.
@@benjnorris57 Except the spores wild shape drops the moment you lose your temp hp. Which means the moment something decides to breath on you or look at your direction, the core part of your kit gets dropped and you effectively waste another turn and wild shape just to get it back up.
you're basically peer pressuring your DM to not target you ever, else deny you from playing the subclass.
Uh! Nice audio quality, like and sub!
Keep up the good content
Thanks dude, every comment helps the algorithm. I’ll keep making them if you keep watching them.
Don’t cloud form make you supper slow with only ten feet of movement or am I wrong
It's an early version of wind walk. So it can be replaced.
@@dragonhearthx8369 it just seems the flying isn’t worth the movement being reduced to only ten feet. I would still use it for the resistances and getting past doors but not movement
@@user-mu8ok5xf8d couple it with cloud kill and RP a toxic personality
Sadly vine whip is not a melee weapon attack
There’s too little synergy with this subclass. The level 6 feature is a waste of a reaction that is not only trash, but stops you from using your other reaction feature.
The level 6 feature should have been extra attack like the bladesinger, swordbard, or valor bard. Maybe a defensive reaction ability like defensive duelist too.
Shouldn’t have to work so hard to figure out how to use a subclass.
I don’t think it’s supposed to be a melee fighter as such, there are better Druid subclasses for that if your committed to getting into the thick of combat.
@@RichMerry well that was kind of my point. The melee weapon damage is too limiting. It should work with any attacks since that’s not the focus.
Since that single feature is limited to melee weapon attacks specifically, there’s really no other features in the subclass that directly support this limitation.
I am wondering, how Blindness/Deafness will hurt spellcasters? Also, are falling asleep while making your comments? xd
I wont effect your spells for verbal components, but check with your DM for a ruling on spells like Tole the Dead. It might go either way if the target is deaf. Again with blindness it will effect your aim but its really something that would have a ruling on a spell by spell basis.
"A blinded creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight.
Attack Rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack Rolls have disadvantage."
Can't cast spells like Fireball when blind. Since the spell calls for a point you can see.
One thing I never liked was that the symbiotic entity is tied to the temporary hit points. Say you activate this feature and then take a massive hit. Your temp hit points are now gone and you wasted that turn.
It's no different with regular Wild Shapes. At least you didn't take all that damage directly to your health pool.
@@rameking1 at 20th level, you would have 80 temporary hit points. Also you can maintain your wild shape longer through healing. You cannot regain temporary hit points through healing.
You also take the remaining damage once your temporary hit points are gone
@@rameking1 also you can stay in wild shape for hours where symbiotic entity is only 10 minutes max.
And to clarify if you accept temporary hit points given by a different source than from symbiotic entity, you still lose all the benefits.
@@dragonhearthx8369 I've been playing spore druid for awhile now and the easily accessible temp HP has saved my character several times. Wild shape also gives you more HP but unless you are high enough level to cast spells while wild shaped or are a moon druid, that wild shape form is not going to be too useful in combat.
This subclass doesn't seem to know what it wants to do. Most of the features encourages you do go into melee, with Halo of spores and Fungal Infestation only having 10 range and Symbiotic entity increasing melee damage..
Doesn't help that Halo of spores deals incredibly small amounts of damage AND competes with the Fungal Infestation feature.. Ontop of that the Symbiotic entity takes an action to activate.. It's very poorly thought out and seems very underpowered. I
You lose the entity by taking damage, and the subclass doesn't get extra attack.. It's very much telling me that it wants to be a melee druid, but the lacks the fundamental support features for that kinda playstyle..
The concept is amazing but the executing is a huge let down.
I think it allows you to be melee in the early levels. And then ranged at later levels when melee is no longer viable as a druid. That's not a bad thing since the melee option is still there at later levels if needed and with the optional caster feature you can swap your cantrips to be less melee oriented every A.S.I.
Sounds like a botinst
No. No it isn't