I like to limit my druids beasts they summon. A played a Tortle Druid named Horde (a fairy dragon used his shell to hide his "dragon horde") who stuck soully with insects and a few swamp critters. My GM was nice enough to allow me vultures and their giant cousins which became my favorite flying beast.
Hahaha, I love the image that each pony has its own trick. Imagine, all brown ponies, except one is snapping it's fingers, one is reaching in a top hat, another one is doing some sort of moonwalk, another has a ping pong paddle, one with a spinning plate.. very funny.
Meh, there are plenty of nasty spells out there. The metal restriction is a holdover from a time when clerics could only use blunt weapons, and doesn't make any sense with it's old fey-inspired lore once they allowed any metal weapons. The 5e thing isn't even a restriction. It says they won't; not that they can't. The easy response is to say that _mine will_ . Especially since: 1) Mielikki druids could wear metal without issue - meaning any story/lore reason is sufficient 2) Metal is way more natural than processed hides and leather.
It's a Scam. High level druids sell "Ironwood" (Level 6 Transmutation) that make Wood function exactly as Metal. So they say that you can't wear Metal, and have to buy their "Ironwood" equivalents.
In the final ranking slide, I made an error here by placing the Druids on an early draft which caused some of the earlier ranked subclasses to show in incorrect placements. Here is a link to the image that is correct: treantmonk.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/setdruid.png
For Moon, I've had DM's use its strength at level 2 as an excuse to not hold back with low level encounters. Moon druid lets you actually have a balanced encounter at Death House, or in the early stuff in Icewind Dale where some things can hit up to 40 on a level 2 character. But thats more with how bad WotC are at making early level encounters than moon druid itself.
the problem it's not the subclass itself, it's the relationship with the party. I'll be not happy if I'm a fighter and the druid overshadow me in every combat against monsters that could kill me with 1 hit (and can also cast spells); it's not really fun...
Death House isn't bad because it is hard. There is every opportunity for the players to realize escape is their best option and checks in place to resolve attempting it. It's in the name! And it makes it a horror instead of just a grim fantasy.
I’ve always loved the Dream Druid, I just really wished it got a spell list. Adding some illusion or enchantment spells would’ve really added to that fey flavor and give the subclass the little bit of extra power it needed. As for its sixth level ability, no one ever said you couldn’t have it and something like tiny hut up at the same time. This doesn’t completely salvage the ability but it does make it much more useful.
You kind of do, though. You get a number of Healing Words/day=your level at 2nd level, and up to 5 Misty Step+ at level 10. Both with versatile usage and excellent range that don't prevent you from using your Action to cast a spell. Honestly, I'm not sure why this is worse than CotL, which has a smattering of ho-hum abilities and a spell list with no two spell levels guaranteed to have a useful spell choice.
Yeah, no. Healing Word is one of the best first level spells in my experience (the 5E yo-yo), and getting a better version that doesn't eat up a spell slot so I can actually do cool things at levels 2 rather than keep Healing Word contingencies like I would otherwise? Maybe it's due to my playstyle, but this is easily my favorite Druid subclass, and I honestly find it better in practice than some of these others. If someone told me at second level I'd have effectively *five* first level spell slots, and *two* of them are improved Healing Word? Yeah.
I think the moon druid problem highlights a much larger problem of the game, that's not necessarily the fault of the moon druid itself. The challenge ratings of enemies make no fucking sense in this game. They're only good for getting an extremely vague idea of how strong monsters are, but should never be used for fine-tuning an encounter. It really feels like they initially thought of CR as a way to determine exp, and then decided that they don't need to give a fuck about balancing it because of that because they're just encouraging people to play by milestones now anyways. Granted, even if CR ratings made sense, moon druid would still be nuts. Druid's been a big problem since forever, being a full caster with 3 hp bars and the attacking stats of a fighter is nuts. It would just be at a more consistent power level throughout the game. As an aside, you forgot something important relating to scaling with the moon druid. Levels 6-9, they might not be overpowered but they're still really really strong. But what I actually take issue with is level 10 and over. They're still easily A-tier. You can cast sunbeam and concentrate on that spell while shifted into an earth elemental, giving you the tankiest stats in the game if there's no barbarian around while having a really good con saving throw for your concentration spell that you can activate each turn for a really good AoE attack. Or, if that doesn't suit your preference, there's a number of other useful concentration spells that allow for a similar playstyle that no other class can really replicate, save for maybe the bladesinger wizard that's still going to have really low hp, or a sorcadin, but that's a multiclass (and one of the best.) And even though the elementals you turn into dont get better over the levels, they don't reeaaaallly need to. You should be seeing them as a multiplier to the effectiveness of your concentration spells that do improve as you level up. And sure, the wizard, or the other fullcasters that have invested into it, can cast a few defensive spells before they focus on helping out the team, but every turn that you spend casting a spell to protect yourself is a turn that you have made zero progress towards resolving the conflict. If combat lasts 5 turns, and a wizard spends the first 2 turns of the combat casting mirror image and blur, they were essentially useless for 40% of the fight AND they wasted two spell slots on just being able to participate. Meanwhile, moondruid can set up their hyper defense AND contribute to the fight at the SAME TIME on the FIRST TURN. All of this for the use of a feature that recharges on a short rest (free if you've got a pal with tiny hut,) and a single spell slot. And without that, they're still an amazing caster. IMO, at every single level of the game, moon druid is one of the best pure classes to have barring homebrew and multi. It's just a matter between them being strong, and being gamebreakingly overpowered.
This is a really good point to make. Last week in my Monday game our DM threw a CR15 Death Knight and 2 Ogre Skeletons at our lvl 5 party of 4. We are normally a party of 5 but were down a player, and funny thing is that fight was specifically for him too, but oh well. We took him down in 3 rounds. If we had not had the NPC wizard helping us it would only have taken 1 more round. What was our saving grace against this heinous foe you might ask? Our cleric managed to lock down the 2 ogre skeletons with Turn Undead (they both failed, even with adv. from the death knight). We 4 surrounded him for everyone to have flanking advantage. Between the rogue's sneak attack and my elven accuracy crit fishing 2h longsword+hex+hexblades curse attacks, he did not stand a chance.
@@jorgemargenat2277 I am aware. The DM showed us the statblock after the battle in case there was any doubt. What happened was we beat him on initiative so we bum rushed him and surrounded him like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. We use flanking so everyone had advantage. Rogue was getting sneak attack every turn, fighter and I never missed, even the cleric did some decent damage with his warhammer. In one round we did over 150 damage, just from the party, the npc that was with us did about 40. The DM actually gave him MUCH more HP than a regular death knight would normally have. The two ogre skeletons were locked down by turn undead. They could neither move nor attack and just stood in the corners of the room. The entire party made our saves against his spells an barely took any damage. So yeah, I stand by what I said.
Circle of the Land makes the same mistake that the Thief sub does, both from the PHB and early in the games design; they include features that should just be part of the main classes ability list.
Absolutely this. Every single "Biome" spell from the Land Druid's circle spells should just be baseline to begin with. So should Nature's Recovery and Nature's ward and Sanctuary are just very bad and need to be completely reworked.
The first question I ask a player wanting to play a druid is always, "What is your shield, half plate, and scimitar going to be made of?" For a full caster in any high magic setting, having armor and weapons not made of ordinary metal is a low bar. Enchanted wood, living flames, woven fungus, stone plates. There's no reason to limit druids to hide or leather armor.
I was surprised to see you gloss right over the last line of the Wildfire's Enhanced Bond ability. Being able to cast a spell from the wildfire spirit is pretty nice, even if it is hampered a bit by the spirit's turn being just after yours. With enough environmental hazards around it is pretty nice to have that additional vantage point for casting a thorn whip.
I was thinking of the exact same thing, but it seems you got there first. It really makes casting cone spells easier and helps with the short range of Druid cantrips. Also, you can pull targets upwards with Thorn whip using this.
I think wildfire druid seems like potentially one of the most fun druids available. So many interesting tactical options on already good controller chassis.
@@TreantmonksTemple Also, wildfire spirit has a range limit for where you can summon it... but no restriction on staying within a range of you after. And it lasts an hour with a fly speed. Add in a familiar that'll last a few hours that you can share senses with while it stays out of range of attacks, and you have a full-caster disposable scout that can attack enemies, distract them so they have penalties to perception to detect the party sneaking up behind them, interfere with them during a chase (as long as someone is willing to carry the druid during it), and even drop the druid's powerful summoning spells in the middle of enemy camps without a target they can attack to break concentration. All that really makes me feel like it's worth bumping up to an A tier. Not S tier, though if wildfire spirit lasted hour/ druid level, then I might just argue for it having the potential to be game breaking in the wrong hands.
I know I'm a bit late, but you can't you just prepare an action so that you cast a spell AFTER the wildfire spirit moves ? I played a wildfire druid and my DM allowed me do that, making my wildfire spirit able to go to a wounded ally and cast cure wounds.
Stars level 10 ability makes it the premier after combat healer in my eyes and makes combat WAY more flexible. Switching form at the start of each turn at no cost is really strong. For instance, a single healing word with chalice at level 10 (assuming 18 wis) heals an average of 6.5 + 13 = 19.5. That's insane.
I think the cooler benefit of Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow as compared to Tiny Hut is it's increased size. 30 ft radius is huge! But it's not like you can count on having a huge horde of allies to travel around with. With a few dreams druids though, one could quickly begin considering hiding pretty large armies in plain sight.
Whoa, whoa whoa. Don't diss Hawk Spirit. That thing basically lets you cast the best cantrip in the game (True Strike) for free every turn, without even using your action!
Skipped over the Level 10 Circle of Stars' last line for Twinkling Constellations: Moreover, at the start of each of your turns while in your Starry Form, you can change which constellation glimmers on your body. That's huge. All of these effects are great, but you only got one of the three per combat or two until this point. Add the scaling and you're not just boosting your desired option, but having your cake, eating it too, finding out it's healthy for you, and the new recipe tastes better than ever.
He also missed the ability of Enhanced Bond (Circle of Wildfire) to allow casting spells from the location of your Wildfire Spirit. That's a HUGE feature and totally unremarked upon. I even wonder if he took it into account in his rankings.
There is some guidance for this. Dragon scale armor is scale mail, but not made of metal. This can be used as a bases to extrapolate to other materials.
Man I’ve been absolutely loving this series. Thank you for making my week so much more enjoyable. You may not know who the people are that watch your videos but it really does brighten my day. Have a wonderful week Tree Monk
I think stars guiding bolt is being under valued. At early levels it kills instantly compared to two swings from a bear at level 1-3 for trash mobs. Also not forgetting archer literally costs a bonus action just like wild shape and allows you to add 1d8 damage every turn which is still just as strong as the bear. This also scales better, but it's your opinion.
Plus druids have very few non-concentration offensive options at spell levels 1-2. Ice Knife is a great spell but the 1d10 piercing damage it does is a lot less than Guiding Bolt and the cold damage is save or suck (so if enemies make the save they take no damage). Plus radiant damage prevents creatures like vampires from regenerating.
It is really strong. The fact that it is still only half as strong as Moon Druid ( doesn't get Bear HP and hit dice ) is crazy. It is like they gave Moon Druid the best parts of Spores and Stars without any of the scaling.
1d8+wis but yes, while this subclass drops even that little extra hp other druids get with wildform on early lvls, it is very potent in terms of damage output at least on lvls 2-4.
Did not expect the Moon Druid there when you have had a guide to the class since the beginnings of this channel. But playing a Moon Druid in a campaign where we were levels 2-4 for WAY TOO LONG, I was just feeling bad being 50%+ of our combat ability.
Mad respect. Though for others that get that situation talk to your DM and other players and make sure they are cool with it for real. Sometimes it can be a problem but a bit of player to player communication can help everyone keep having fun. (You seem like a good person and I bet you already did that.)
Thanks for another great video! I understand the 'S' ranking for moon druid, they can be overwhelming for the majority of games. Even if their damage peters out, the bonus hitpoints are never bad. I love shapeshifting though, and when I do play the subclass I try to fill missing roles for a party (usually a defender in a group of casters with a rogue.) The beast form AC leaves much to be desired however, so at higher levels it is easy to have concentration broken by common attacks.
Play a variant human moon druid with the healer feat. Not only will you outclass every other player in combat ability, but also (passive) healing. It gets silly when you can heal all your party members for a full hp-1hd per short rest until lvl 5.
I’m starting a campaign tomorrow as a moon Druid and now I feel bad. I just liked the thought of fighting as an animal. Maybe I’ll limit myself. Use one wild shape for scouting and another for a utility CR 1 like spider or toad. Kinda want to roll a new character.
@@kuhlbeans don’t let it put you off too much, these things are largely analyzed only for pure optimal play. There’s several ways to play any subclass, and many wild shape options aside from the “best” for combat that add to role play, aesthetic, tone, etc.. but the same written character could probably be a different subclass without much change at all..
I just started playing a Shepherd Druid. It might be a one trick pony, but oh what a trick, so much versatility and control. I also got a ton out of your video on how to deal with Summoning at the table and had a good talk with our DM we are excited to have this at the table now. Its a must for anyone playing a druid and especially a Shepherd (of the forest) kind of druid.
The druid in my game is wearing medium armor made of animal pelts. The metal limitation is only a hindrance if you have a sterile, unimaginative DM. There is no valid reason to dwell on its restrictions too heavily.
Agreed. Last session, the party took an ancient steampunk train, and I enjoyed roleplaying my druid being visibly sick being surrounded by all this iron for all the travel duration. We are going for the whole "natural/fey creatures despise and are sick around the industrious iron of men", and it's very flavorful.
I agree that there is no reason to dwell on this "restriction," because it's not a restriction at all. The metal restriction is a holdover from a time when clerics could only use blunt weapons, and doesn't make any sense with it's old fey-inspired lore once they allowed any metal weapons. As I mentioned, the 5e thing isn't even a restriction. It says they won't; not that they can't. The easy response is to say that _mine will_ . Especially since: 1) Mielikki druids could wear metal without issue - meaning any story/lore reason is sufficient 2) Metal is way more natural than processed hides and leather.
Fun fact: Medium armor made of leather, wood and even bone existed in the real world. th-cam.com/video/396rERpXHCU/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/LP8QB_7Jsdc/w-d-xo.html
I had a Firbolg Life Cleric Grassland Druid who came from a long line of master carpenters. He made a masterwork wooden plate heavy armor or varying woods and animals sinews to absorb the impacts.
The fix I suggest trying for Moon Druid. When you get the feature instead of CR 1 you get CR 1/2, still better than the normal druid and you still have the double attack issue. but health is a LOT less. At level 5 you get CR1, and increase by 1 for every level past level 5. Meaning 6 is unchanged, but 7 is 3, 8 is 4, 9 is 5 all the way up to CR 9 at level 13. In addition, for the "transform into elementals" I think you can just make it any elemental of a CR that you can turn into up to level 15 when you hit CR 11. So if you want to "rebalance' the moon druid try this out. You still have the ape and Black bear to contend with early on, but they are no where near as bad.
Having recently completed a 3.5 year lvl 1-20 campaign as a Moon Druid, I agree with much of your assessment of this incredible subclass, including the dip in comparative power in mid tiers. In early tiers I sometimes on purpose didn't wildshape just to allow other players the chance to shine. For several levels around 8-9 I would sit back in battles and cast control spells instead of low powered CR2-3 wildshape, but really hit my stride at level 10 when with Earth Elemental. The missing kicker in your assessment is pre-casting Guardian of Nature with the Primal Beast option before wildshape. This gives you advantage on all attacks (strength based) with +1d6 dmg on attacks. If you've also been able to have Longstrider cast before the battle starts then you have massive movement, including burrowing through the ground (defeats Wall of Force and other difficult terrain) and attacking enemies from beneath.....or even grappling them and dragging them underground.
I also think that Moon Druid hits a comfortable stride at level 10 after having floundered for a few levels, before dropping off a little again until tier 4. I once played a Moon Druid Firbolg who my DM allowed to count as one size larger for the purpose of carrying a creature after grappling in addition to carry capacity. Turning into a large air elemental and casting spike growth to drag medium sized creatures through was rad as hell.
Been loving this series, great breakdowns of the classes. At 10:30 though, the tweet states that studded leather doesn't count as non-metal, as in it counts as metal in his games.
I feel like one of the under-recognized limitations on Wild Shape is the condition "assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before". If I'm DM'ing a Druid, I want to know before the game how widely they have traveled and what animals they have come across. There's no reason to give them full access to every beast in the game. Have they really seen a deinonychus before? Have they been to the deep forests and the deserts and grasslands? Unless they have a Far Traveler background, I'd be skeptical that this lvl 1 character has seen such a wide array of beasts. So even if they want to power game it, make them earn it with a well described back story.
This. I always give an extremely limited number of beasts. PCs feel more rewarded when they encounter something on the actual journey. I feel like that should be standard? Not sure why he didn’t talk about that.
This is a pretty common point, my issue with this from a gameplay perspective is that it encourages the player to optimise their character theme and backstory around what Pokém- I mean beasts are good
Stars Druid is so good. Also its important to note that if you're casting guiding bolt as a regular spell/after you've expended your PB uses, it can be upcast with higher level slots and anyone telling you otherwise is wrong. Also 10 minutes is more than enough for combat, that's like 100 rounds lmao
The circle of dreams "Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow" can, by RAW, be used in an incredibly game-y way that honestly I can't even begin to imagine how it could be justified in world. Because starting a rest isn't an action of any kind and your rest can be ended voluntarily at any time... coupled with this ability having unlimited uses means that as long as you start to doze off every 30 feet of movement you could theoretically carry this bubble with you at all times. I can't think of a single DM on the planet that would *allow* this, as it's very much not the intended use of the ability, but in this context it's actually quite powerful. For a less cheesy use, though, since it pops up instantly you can easily use this to cover the 10 minute ritual casting for tiny hut. That's not a *long* time, but depending on where you're trying to bed down it can make a difference.
Their spellist for me already syarts with Entangle. I love entangle, especially with the sharpshooter ranger in my team. I can set them up awesomely to make hitting even easier ~
I’ve always noted the power of versatility of druids, less so the bards, but it’s only the lack of “outdoor” campaigns that seems to keep this class from dominating the tables.
As a new player who knows nothing about the game, i really appreciate your videos, i used your ranger subclass video to base my half orc ranger, and I do not regret it at all. It's been so much.
For shepherd druids, after playing quite a lot, some multi classing is ok, and even a lot of it ( after druid 6 ) but however you go about it, I found that saving spell slots for conjure animals is indeed best, however, conjure animals has a per 2 spell slots upcast potential, meaning that you only cast it with your 3/5/7/9 lvl spell slots. The 4/6/8 give you nothing. 4/6/8 are good for woodland beings, or, even better, 4/6/8 can be used for buffing / control / other utility or damage. This lets you with a 1-2 spell slot lvls for whatever you like ( like goodberries and upcasted longstriders ) and 4/6/8 for stuff like freedom of movement / polymorph / 4th lvl longstrider might be overkill / woodland beings / heroes’ feast / wind walk / animal shapes. Multi classing can unlock some other spells that could upcast well ( like Aid through clockwork / cleric )
Moon Druid Fix using Tasha's Summon Spells as Template: - Combat Wild Shape: unchanged - Circle Forms becomes Beastial Form: You can use your Wild Shape ability to take the form of a Beastial Spirit as if conjured by the Summon Beast spell cast at the highest level for which you have spell slots. (Water form becomes available at Druid level 4, and Air form becomes available at Druid level 8) - Primal Strike: unchanged - Elemental Wild Shape becomes Elemental Form: You can use your Wild Shape ability to take the form of an Elemental Spirit as if conjured by the Summon Elemental spell cast at the highest level for which you have spell slots. - Thousand Forms becomes Myriad Forms: You can use your Wild Shape ability to take the form of an Aberrant, Celestial, Construct, Fey, Fiendish, Shadow, or Undead Spirit as if conjured by their respective summon spells cast at the highest level for which you have spell slots. - Archdruid Restriction: You can use your Wild Shape to transform using the Beastial, Elemental, or Myriad Forms features a total of 3 times per short rest, and may transform into any creature available to the base Druid class's Wild Shape feature an unlimited number of times.
Or just make it a free polymorph but your cr is player level-1 and without concentration. This is usually how i rule it in my table and i add extra homebrewed beast for the higher levels.
@@frking100 You still have the problem of a level 2 druid wildshaping into a cr1 creature, while also prolonging the problematic power level for more time, so it's actually the opposite of a fix, it makes it even more broken
@@frking100 The problem is primarely being broken 2-4, and to a lesser extent infnite hitpoints at the cost of your bonus action at level 20(but capstone should be great imho). Having damage comparable to the rest of the party 5-9, and still more hitpoints is fine. Being very good defensively, but having not amazing dmg at level 10+ is fine. You are still a full spell caster. So your "fix" addresses something that was not the issue.
The Druid seems to be the most misunderstood class in 5e and idk what this says about me but its been my favorite class so far. I've play a homebrew subclass from lvl 1-6 and so far I think my DM build a very balanced subclass. I played a circle of the moon from 1-3 so of course I felt unkillable haha. And I played a circle of spores Druid in an evil campaign from lvl 5-9. They've all been a blast to play and I've focused them all around battlefield control.
I really liked your ranking of the Shepherd druid as A tier. One aspect of the subclass that I think you undersold in your video was just how good of a healer a unicorn spirit totem druid can be. Being able to duplicate/twin healing spells for creatures within your aura is incredibly power, even if it is situational, and since most of the good healing spells aren't concentration (shut up healing spirit) it synergizes well with the subclasses' emphasis on summoning.
And boy does it scale well, I'm playing the fabled tier 4 atm and an ability that cost a bonus action and first level slots (healing word) healing based on level breaks stuff. I've seen a single heling work heal almost combined 200 HP
With spores, getting a way to make additional attacks is good. Like PAM or a level dip in war domain cleric. And it's also stacks with hex/hunter's mark
I've played moon druid in a rules light campaign 2-5 (ie the DM didn't understand the rules, took off his armor in one turn when I cast heat metal, moved his invisible unhidden creature so I somehow missed with faerie fire, let me take multiple bonus actions with a hyena form...which is wrong). Big drop off in power on levels 4/5. Which is actually cool because it lets you start to experience the more caster aspects of the class. It is better to use your cantrip at level 5 than to wild shape, unless you are trying to grapple from 15 feet away as a giant octopus, swallow something as a giant toad, assuming the DM even let you see those. My DM didn't understand the reason I didn't ever wild shape into the mountain lion he showed me...and I told him multiple times it is too low CR. Long story short, we didn't continue that campaign because the DM didn't understand the rules. Moon druid is still good even with power drop off. You can use the wild shape as a hit point sink. The armor class sucks, that's what it is supposed to be used for anyway--hit point sink and for some utilities (grapple, swallow, jump, senses, web attack restrain, climbing upside down, etc). Druid is a utility class with unique healing options and excellent battle field control options. I disagree with this guy's assessment of moon druids. Level 2 I agree, but there are lots of classes that have overpowered abilities at one level. Does anyone stay level 2 long enough for it to matter? Also, the druid can use wild shape as a sort of twice per long rest free disengage since changing shape doesn't use your movement. So if you control four spaces, you can wild shape out into one away from the monster if you use the bonus action to leave wild shape. If you are knocked out of wild shape, the enemy can always use their movement to advance close to you in caster form if they want to deny the free disengage. This way it is balanced.
Unless the class can for some reason get those spells earlier then mostly no. Most classes get a feature at lvl 10 and the next one at lvl 14 but most adventures are done by this point or you only have a couple of sessions left in the campaign. So the spells he probably values more are 1-4 and spell levels 5-7 have a lower priority.
The thing about few mobility spells in the druid list is Wildshape IS their mobility class feature. At level 2 they can get a standard speed of 60, a climb, or a burrow. At level 4, swim speed. At level 8, flying speed. And they get to do this while potentially taking on new senses, stealth capabilities, an inconspicuous disguise, and so on, all at once. Wildshape will be up a lot more often than the equivalent wizard mobility spells could too.
For the Metal Armor Taboo, there is a way around it with Scale Mail armor - make the armor out of Natural Scales - case in point, the Dragon Scale armors as listed in the DMG (Very Rare/Major Tier-type stuff - gives a +1 bonus to AC, lets you locate a dragon of the same type the armor is made from, advantage in certain saving throws that dragons tend to impose, and resistance to certain damage types), and the Serpent Scale Armor in CM (Reward for the Book of Cylinders section - applies full dexterity modifier, and no Disadvantage on Stealth Checks). Using that info as a basis for what to do, I, being the DM at the time, actually gave a Loxodon Druid Crocodile Scale Armor - basically reskinned the armor so that it was made from crocodile scales (which has some precedence in real life), which, with 14 Dexterity, and a shield, gave them 18 AC, which was one more than the GWF Fighter, who had Splint Armor. Sadly, we didn't have any sessions afterwards, so I haven't gotten around to do anything extra about it - as part of the idea is that the crew got hired, and equipped by a patron, and thus said Crocodile Scale Armor, was not originally made with the druid in mind - basically, it was going to have been made for and belonged to a Goliath, and I was going to have said druid roll a d20 to see how well it fit - 1 would cause a penalty (of -1) and disadvantage on Dexterity Saving throws for being a really bad fit, 2-9 would make it a little short, but usable (cosmetic issue), 10-19 would make it long but usable (cosmetic issue), while a 20 would grant a bonus (of +1) and Advantage on Dexterity Saving throws for being a perfect fit. Just something to keep in mind, in case you want to increase the AC of any druids in a party - just give them reskinned scale mail armor that was made with scales from crocodiles, large lizards, large snakes, other reptiles - heck, maybe you can make a Generic Dragon Scale armor that is a mishmash of scales from different dragon types - maybe they pay the city near where they have their lair their cast-off scales to keep Dragon Hunters off their backs or to allow them to hunt in the nearby area without getting a Bounty for snagging the occasional cow/sheep/other livestock during leaner times, and said city turns said scales into armor for their guards or some such thing.
Played a Spores druid throughout levels 12-17. If anyone's considering the subclass and/or optimizing it, here's what I learned: - The 1d6 damage on weapon attacks from Symbiotic Entity is really lackluster on its own. If you don't take Magic Initiate for a weapon attack cantrip, it doesn't make much of a difference; however, if you played like I did (having a horde of animate zombies at all times, and therefore no spell slots), the boosts towards melee can be helpful. - I did not have an opportunity to use Fungal Infestation once, since the reaction use time clashes with Halo of Spores. Cool feature, though it would be a lot more meaningful without the restrictions. - The THP from Symbiotic Entity might be encouraging to make you frontline and tank, but don't forget that Symbiotic Entity ends if you lose the THP, which weakens you a little bit. Thereafter, it's an action casting time, so it's worth being mindful of how you position yourself. - I don't know if there's been any discussion about the synergy of Animal Shapes and Animate Dead, but it's terrifyingly powerful. I chose not to use it after I ran some numbers about just how much damage i'd be dealing with 50 giant scorpions, and if you're a DM, beware. - Another note on Animate Dead: Zombies and Skeletons benefit *hugely* from advantage in terms of how many hits they will land. Entangle is a fantastic and budget option to boost your damage output on a couple of enemies; otherwise, supplementing a horde of zombies with a pack of wolves from Conjure Animals to knock prone is also a good choice. - Like Shepherd Druid, you probably wanna speak with your DM about the amount of summoning you're going to be doing if you choose to hone in on Animate Dead. I wouldn't recommend it without having some kind of calculator app of VTT like Foundry to handle the damage of the horde, or else you risk slowing the combat down by quite a lot. Spores was a very fun subclass though. Not super powerful (in terms of minionmancy, i'm sure you're still outclassed by Shepherd, though I have no evidence to support this guess), but it came with a lot of good flavor and made for a really fun experience regardless. Would recommend.
I think the best way to play a Spore Druid isn't to take it into Melee, that's a trap of the subclass in my opinion, it's probably best to just use Symbiotic Entity at the start of a day and enjoy the Temp HP it provides while ignoring the rest of that ability's feature. In some ways, the Spore Druid is better at being in the back lines than other Druids. You get Chill Touch for free, which is far from the best attack cantrip, but has a really good range with 120 Feet, more than any other Druid Cantrip. As much as I like the Thorn Whip cantrip, I don't always want to be 30 feet from an enemy. Another cool thing you can do is take Magic Stone and give it to your Zombies or Skeletons from Animate dead, giving them a ranged option. Start a battle with your big concentration spell and spend every turn afterwards casting Magic Stone and dodging. Rather than being recognized as the 'Melee Druid', Spore should be seen as the 'Sturdy Druids'.
I think the best think about spores is being able to animate the dead and not have to concentrate on it, unlike shepherd. Shepherd is amazing, but spores allows you to have an army while you can still cast huge concentration spells for control. Sure your conjure animals can shape a battlefield but so can zombies and undead, while you entangle/spikegrowth/fog cloud everything. Spores is surprisingly an insanely strong battlefield control tactician. Use undead to grapple people in poison/spores. The only downside is how nothing scales with spores. The damage just becomes so lackluster later. I would love it if they made symbiotic damage apply to friendlys within the spores at 6 or something. This would fix a lot of the issues it has with scaling. ANOTHER big big issue is make sure your going to be in a campaign where you will be fighting things that you can infest. If you play spores in an undead campaign where all you fight is undead zombies/things you can’t infest then you will NOT have fun. Overall I had a blast with my spores Druid.
The spore druid suffers from a poor design philosophy in my opinion. It's abilities heavily incentivise melee combat, but because you lose half the features with THP, and those THP typically last one round, you're left trying to make the character work using only half the features. I don't doubt that the horde approach has worked for you guys, but it's clearly not the intended option IMO. *That* is the Shepards domain.
@@Golmov_the_Wretched I actually totally agree with you on that. after a year in review, and attempting to play the same character once again, but with a revised homebrew version of Spores druid, I agree with every reply left on this comment thread so far. my problems with spore druid stem from that it seems to promise you two things: (a) you will be doing necromancy, and (b) you will be in melee. but, as you said, its melee abilities have a bit of a design conundrum, and while animate dead is cool, spore druid isn't comparable in necromancy to, say, a necromancer wizard (ignoring subclass features), due to not having access to finger of death. not to mention, that playstyle is quite campaign-dependent. in hindsight, back when I played spores for the first time in its vanilla form, I think Symbiotic Entity was the only feature I ever got any use out of, and it was almost only for the THP. I played that character from levels 11-17, so I had at least a chance at using all of those features, but they were irrelevant. I think my enjoyment of the spores druid was more like, "I'm enjoying playing a *druid*, and spores is cool to me". so looking back on it, I don't feel as highly about spores as I used to. if I were to recommend it to a new player, I would be crystal clear with them, that, "hey. you're really just going to be playing a land druid with temp HP and some neat flavor. if you *get* to use animate dead, things will start to feel unique, but that won't be every game. be aware."
For those who didn't catch it, Spare the Dying is a cantrip. Thus it actually can be used alongside a spell. Shepherd Druids still get the benefit of bringing up their downed allies, though.
Loved my moon Druid. My dm did custom add some other cr beasts later, and I played responsible, early levels, just not to overshadow. We had a lot of turn over first 3 levels so went from tank to healer to control/aoe back to tank again. The pure versatility is what makes them my fave class. Yes it is overpowered at those levels, just be a good group player, let others shine too.
Major thing with Landstride is that it works with plant growth since the plants created are not magical even though they are grown through a spell, thus turning facing a land druid in a forest or grassy plain into a miserable experience, infact this has become almost expected of rangers or druids that both get landsride in our group since it is one of the most powerful things you can do since there is no save involved and the plants can't be dispelled, leaving just flying as an out for most enemies.
I always wanted Spores to get Extra Attack at 6th instead of Fungal Infestation, akin to Bladesinger, or moving FI to 2nd and removing Halo altogether, with EA at 6th. It had such a potential to be the first normal form melee druid with Form, Ele Weapon and Extra Attack, maybe Polearm Master for more attacks
My DM house ruled Land Stride let's me shrug off magical difficult terrain if my own magic is creating it. So I can waltz into Spike Growth or Sleet Storm without having any negatives. That really helps. We're also doing Rime of the Frostmaiden, which is a pretty good campaign for Land Druids.
100% again on the rankings. Interestingly, I've always viewed the Druid as more of an area denial controller, than a summoner. I mean, I know the summon spells are there. But they're as much a pain for me as the rest of the party. I love me some Plant Growth, and consider Fog Cloud very underrated. Overall, this is really close to clerics as overall favorite.
shepherd ftw; it's a shame that you can't spend your wild shapes to do the aura thing, but at least now with tasha we can use wild shape to get a familiar which will also benefit from the spirit with temporary hp
That sounds like an awesome house rule to implement so that it becomes a more readily available feature... Hmm then again it'd make the bear spirit arguably busted, 14 temp hp(at lvl2) on every party member per short/long rest is super meaty.
Just wanted to point out that the 6th level feature of the Spores Druid works on Giant Wasps or Giant Centipedes from Druid's Giant Insect spell. If you're intending to use this spell you're probably already carrying jars of these critters for it already and its honestly a great spell so the opportunity cost is low. Also for a bit extra flavour there is literally such a thing as zombie wasps, though they're called that for zombifying other insects...
What I'm starting to learn from these and I wonder if the trend will continue is that I either like some of the most powerful class sub class combinations or I like the worst ones with almost no in-between, lol.
Heyo, great video! I was surprised that you did not mention Stars Druids extra 10 lvl feature; the one where you can switch between Starry forms at the beginning of your turn for free :) It makes Starry form incredibly more versatile ✌️
A small comment about wildfire druids because I've been looking at building one soon and this part wasn't mentioned at all: Enhanced Bond (level 6 feature) also lets you cast most spells from your wildfire spirit's position instead of yours. A lot of the druid's damaging cantrips have a much shorter range than some other classes have (Frostbite has 60 ft range but is very un-thematic for a fire druid, I don't like Create Bonfire since it takes concentration, everything else is 30 feet) and I think it's nice to be able to do something with your action after casting a concentration spell while still being a safe distance away. Ironically, this doesn't work with Produce Flame, since the spell technically has a range of self even though you make the attack at a 30-ft range, but you could still use Thorn Whip from pretty far away and drag the creature you hit towards your spirit instead of towards you (edit: I was sort of mistaken, someone else mentioned this in the comments, I just didn't scroll far enough)
I played a Shepard Druid for a long time. Aya the Wolf Queen, Wood Elf we eventually made it to level 20. at the beginning DM said that with Conjure Animals, I could let him roll random beasts or only pick Wolves. Had a lot of fun over that campaign. And at the end, I know it wasn't the best use of a 9th level spell, but summoning 32 wolves, while wildshaped as a Direwolf, and dropping a Bear Totem for the Temp HP to everyone for the fight. It was a lot of fun. (And after the first round of combat when a Metor wrecked all my wolves I swapped to Battlefield control.) Edit: Also a tip for potential summoners to keep the party from hating you, that worked great at our table. Give out control of your pets to the other members of the party. No one likes when you take 9 turns, but if everyone gets 2 or 3 turns and can have a battle buddy. Excellent.
Oh, the other thing I was going to mention is that I don't really think the druid is arguably the best controller. Wizard (and sorcerer) just has it beat in my opinion. Sleep > entangle (though entangle stays good longer, wizard can switch to grease), web > spike growth, hypnotic pattern > plant growth, wall of force > wall of stone (which wizard gets anyway).
For me I find the "druids wont wear metal armor" reads the same to me as "only elves can be bladesingers" or "Paladins must be lawful good". It feels like an arbitrary, traditional limitation that I don't enforce on anybody
Honestly it doesn't even make sense from a narrative standpoint. Metal is part of nature. Native Iron exists, so does a lot of other metals. Using a metal armor seems like more "nature friendly" then using hide/leather/bone, considering those are obtained from dead animals.
@@Loeher while it isn't worded that way I think it is that the metal is refined and worked and not raw ore. I don't think it makes sense either for Example a Hill Dwarf Druid you would need a very good reason to ignore that part of your heritage. Another is something like Vax in Critical Role a single level dip really hinders you otherwise I would always take a level of Druid with my cleric just to have goodberry and Shillelagh but I can't justify the armor punishment for one level that is basically theme as cleric has better options for both. And what do you do with a Warforged Druid? do you call him a nimblewright or does the metal skinned man get a pass on not using metal armor?
Unlike the other restrictions you listed, this one has a direct impact on the strength of the class though. It prevents druids from easily having an AC comparable to that of clerics. Given that druids are already defensively strong with absorb elements, summons to take hits for them, and wildshape to provide a bunch of extra HP, plus the fact that unlike clerics, few of their spells require druids to be in the middle of the action, it's hard to not see the restriction as a mechanical decision by designers to stop the druid from being good at everything.
@@nickm9102 From what I've seen, warforged druids either "get a pass" on having metal in the innate armor that gives them +1 AC, or that innate armor is assumed to be made from wood or stone. Any additional armor (which does get integrated as per usual) follows the typical druid prohibition.
I allow PC to have armour normally made of metal to be made by monster parts, like shells, exoskeletons or dragon scales, if they can find the right monster and someone with extraordinary skill to make the armour for them.
Moon Druid should have been built with a “Wildshape” template that steadily grew in power as you leveled. That way you wouldn’t be so overpowered at level 2 and you wouldn’t have to worry about falling off so hard as the game progresses.
Agreed. I'm actually a bit surprised that wasn't offered as an optional class feature in Tasha's, considering the designers have gotten on the template idea with summon spells and pets.
@@98gabrius He also provided an alternative table for beasts' CRs in his Wariant Druid video if you want a more classic approach. By the way, I find his templates from the Fixing Wildshape video having some problems. I would suggest thinking a bit more about the numbers. The beasts deal a lot of damage, and while it can not be that much from an optimizer's perspective, for a normal party it can feel too strong, considering you're still a full caster. At least make them use normal hp instead of temp hp.
For the Moon Druid, to deal with the various beasts, one could restrict it to what the person could have realistically seen. If they lived by the sea, maybe mostly sea beasts. If they lived as a hunter in woodlands, woodland type animals. In the Tundra, maybe those sorts of animals. City Dweller - there's a number of wild animals that live in urbanized areas (like deer), or could be domesticated enough to be found as pets, and maybe roll a d20 to see if they ever went to the zoo/circus-type place (equivalent forms have been around for a long time actually).
Heart of moonlight and shadow can pair with leomunds tiny hut so that the enemies might not see the hut, and if they’re hiding and waiting to ambush you when you leave the spell, you have a vastly better chance of noticing them and preventing the surprise round ( yes, technically surprise rounds don’t exist, but the surprise rules make something that’s basically surprise rounds
You neglected to mention the other aspect of the wildfire druids level 6 ability. The fact that you can have your spells originate from the wildfire spirit makes placing cone spells much easier, and gives flexibility to Thorn whip cantrip among other things. This could like it will be quite fun to play with.
I think you missed one of the biggest features for the Wildfire Druid. The Enhanced Bond feature also allows spells to be cast from your spirits location, which means now you have a a lvl 1 Cure Wounds with range instead of touch that heals for 2d8+Mod. That is incredibly powerful. Also since the spirit has a fly speed it can be above the battlefield and use a cone spell like burning hands straight down without worry of hitting allies. This greatly changes which spells are viable for a creative player.
@@bigdream_dreambig So my table ruled (and i understand this is just for us) that since the cone has a range, in this case 15 feet, there is a range to the spell and self is just the origin point (ie thunderwave). The wording for the spirit only limits spells with range of self that dont go outward like booming blade. But my argument for Cure wounds still stands, i just keep forgetting we house ruled some stuff.
@@vaalnailo5789 Yes, Cure Wounds seemed to be the one spell for which this feature would be particularly useful, following Rules As Written. The only others I found that might possibly come up were Contagion, Barkskin, and Stoneskin. (Several mobility spells would also qualify and be relevant in combat, but Fiery Teleportation is better for that.)
One thing I think might have been missed from the wildfire Druid enhanced bond bonuses is this. It doesn’t specify that the bonus damage/healing applies to one target, only that it applies to one roll of the die. Which means aoe spells get the the boost to every person hit. This feature pretty much just makes all fire and healing spells (with exceptions) cast at one level higher for free.
Dream druid bonus heal is a game changer at tier 1. One more spell to choose beyond healing word, one spell on a pickup heal round. Our dm switched to team initiative and being able to cast and heal (revive) on most turns is excellent efficiency.
So I know later level features are given less weight for how you rate them and some of them are very underwhelming but a few of these subclasses actually get pretty fantastic level 14 features so it was a bit disappointing to not see them brought up.
Recently played lvl 5 druid for the first time in a one shot. I played Sheppard, and picked up a lot of spells that revolved around befriending or charming Animals. Depending on what your DM rules as far as taking a befriended animal into combat (my table rules yes, but with limitations), it can be really good combined with totems and conjure animals, as long as your setting provides wild creatures to use. Permanent speak with animals is good for this set up. One issue i noticed when building the character is that there was not one single spell on the list that was A. Single Target B. No Aoe Splash and C. Not concentration. That's a bit of an issue, but luckily we play our level 5 one shots allowed to pick one of any uncommon magic item, with a few obvious exceptions. I chose Coiling Grasp Tattoo to fill this hole. As for the Metal Armor thing, you might be able to talk to your DM when you get to higher levels to get something like plate armor, but have it made of something like chitin or whatever. really depends on what your DM thinks of that rule.
jeez. finally, someone who agrees with my take on moon druids. i hear a lot of people whine about them being powerful, but most of these people never got past level 5, and certainly not in this class.
I wrote a comment about this that got deleted for some reason, but I played a moon druid from level 1-20, and I definitely think moon druid wildshape is still overpowered through their whole career. Their damage tapers off eventually, but it doesn't matter, because you have literal hundreds of disposable HP. Any hit you take while wildshaped is damage that has been 100% mitigated for your group and an action wasted for the enemy. You also get both uses back after a short rest, so you have no reason not to make use of all the damage you can soak, within reason. You also have a large or greater sized body, which means you can easily roadblock enemies, and if you take the Sentinel feat you become even harder to get away from. This is tanking potential on a level no other class can match, except maybe Bear Totem Barbarian. Except even bear barbarians still take damage that needs to be healed up, moon druid damage taken is just completely absorbed and doesn't matter at all. This is on top of being a full caster with an extremely versatile spell list and the ability to memorize any of them on a long rest like a Cleric. You have control, damage, exploration and healing magic. Basically, and I don't mean this in an insulting way, if you think Moon Druid's wildshape is bad at mid level and above because your personal damage contribution is mediocre, you're forgetting that D&D is a team game and you're still debatably the best damage sponge in the entire game on top of being a caster whose spell list is like if a Cleric and a Wizard had a baby. So you don't go from overpowered to weak as you level, you go from game-breakingly busted to just overpowered.
Also, small correct. Wildfire Spirit does 1d6 plus Proficiency Bonus dmg vs Wisdom modifier dmg that you noted. So slightly less damage for both the d6 vs d8 for Archer and PB vs Wisdom modifier.
An important check not often discussed is that druids are limited to shapechanging to only those animals they have seen before. A good DM can use this advantageously to balance the moon druid.
Moon and Shepherd are my favorite by far. Being able to be a damage sponge while the allowing the rest of the party to unload damage is just good team work. Gotta admit though, as much as I love Moon I kinda feel it needs some errata to help with the swinging of power.
The druid's wildshape is an instance of lazy design. They should have specified a number of forms it could take with formulas for how those forms improved as one levels up, and then a second table of forms for the Moon Druid with similar improvements. So many of them should have been much lower in hit points. Each shape should have carried some minor benefit that differentiate them from the other shapes. The way they designed it just causes them to be super uneven, which causes them to be both under powered and over powered at the same time.
I disagree. It's appropriate and thematic for a druid to have access to every beast form they've seen. The only problem is the power of those forms doesn't always align well with the character level.
Sometimes, I cast Plant Growth to control the battlefield first, then upcast Conjure Animals, typically indicating something with flight like Giant Owls or Flying Snakes. Takes a little working with the DM, but usually works out great.
About Spores, actually while you have that wild-shape-replacer active your halo of spores rolls additional die, so that 10 lvl aoe ability will deal 2d10.
Not sure if it's been brought up already in the comments, but I don't hear anything about enhanced bond's second part, where a spell you cast other than self can originate from the spirit instead of yourself. With the fly speed, it can enhance Thorn Whip pretty well to pull enemies into zones or even just pull them straight up and drop them for +1d6 and prone. I love the idea of a Wildfire Druid/Swarmkeeper Ranger focusing on Thorn Whip
48:20 Guild merchant lets you start with a mule and a cart, pick whichever small race you like and ride your horse into battle. When it dies, sick your zombie on your enemies. You might even be able to make your mule a sidekick for a longer lasting mount
Moon druids are bananas. Something I don't hear people mention often though is the low AC that comes with beast forms. It certainly doesn't balance it out, but enemies are hitting the wildshaped druid a lot more often than most other members of the party, unless you've got some sort of spell to boost your defense.
I homebrewed a revised version of the Circle of the Land which changes some of the spells, and allows Land's Stride to effect magical difficult terrain as well as non magical difficult terrain. Then Nature's Ward, immunity to charmed, frightened, and poisoned just in general. And then of course immune to disease.
What I did is allow at 6th to make himself and up to WIS mod number of allies be immune to the effects of "terrain" spells the Druid casts. And at 10 th level I allowed the Druid to cast it's expanded spells once per long rest each without spending slots.
The biggest drawback to the Moon Druid is that playing one in a long campaign will make you want to buy *every* new book that comes out, in the hope that they will have new, useful beasts. I think some Wildshape scaling on the order of Summon Beast could make the Moon Druid effective but not overbearing across the full level range (except maybe level 20). Of course, that's current design philosophy versus 2014 design philosophy, but it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to work out. Edit: other comments reminded me that Treantmonk has already done something similar... I'll have to see if I can get my DM to allow it, next time I get the urge to wildshape.
Your druid has to have seen the creature to be able to wild shape into it. Any _reasonable_ application of this rule will prevent foolish beast prospecting. (Dylan Ba -- Has your druid ever _seen_ a "Zealoraptor"?)
I realize this series is very focused on power rankings, but there’s no table I’ve played in where the Moon Druid has actually been problematic. No player I’ve played with WANTS to overshadow the party, just to be an effective team member. It’s possible to not choose the top level forms for every encounter, or not always wildshape. Maybe my tables are different than most, but I find the “break your game” claims to be more of white room theorycrafting than representative of real world play. I could be wrong.
@@sharkforce8147 absolutely - I guess I was reacting to Treantmonk saying he would regret playing if someone chose Moon Druid, which may be an indication that his games may be vastly different than any game I’ve been a part of.
So came up with a very interesting and fun idea that appears to work RAW. Be a chain pact warlock lvl 3 (any subclass seems to fit this okay), next be lvl 6+ sheperd druid. Now the fun part. You can obtain a new set of familiars from find familiar (note it doesnt limit to the warlocks casting of find familiar). We pick imp. Now thanks to Tashas we burn a wildshape charge for a familiar, and using chain pact, we conjure our imp. Since summoned this way it counts as a fey. Since it counts as a fey and we summoned it it gets the hp bonus from lvl 6 druid (now 16hp). We pop the bear on it if you wanted and thats an additional 11 hp. Now the fun comes if you go another 3 lvls into sorc and pick up dragons breath to stay invisible while "attacking" or shocking grasp (lose invisible). You have a flying (mostly invisible) pikachu. enjoy!
Treantmonk: Shepherd druid is a bit of a one-trick pony.
Shepherd Druid: I can summon two dozen of those.
Nice.
🤔 Does that mean you now have 24 tricks? 🐴
It’s a really good and versatile trick!
I like to limit my druids beasts they summon. A played a Tortle Druid named Horde (a fairy dragon used his shell to hide his "dragon horde") who stuck soully with insects and a few swamp critters. My GM was nice enough to allow me vultures and their giant cousins which became my favorite flying beast.
Hahaha, I love the image that each pony has its own trick.
Imagine,
all brown ponies, except one is snapping it's fingers, one is reaching in a top hat, another one is doing some sort of moonwalk, another has a ping pong paddle, one with a spinning plate.. very funny.
I like to view the metal armour taboo as common sense. Druids know how to cast Heat Metal. Knowing what it does, I wouldn't wear metal either.
Realistically there would be a similar spell for every material regardless.
Meh, there are plenty of nasty spells out there.
The metal restriction is a holdover from a time when clerics could only use blunt weapons, and doesn't make any sense with it's old fey-inspired lore once they allowed any metal weapons.
The 5e thing isn't even a restriction. It says they won't; not that they can't. The easy response is to say that _mine will_ . Especially since:
1) Mielikki druids could wear metal without issue - meaning any story/lore reason is sufficient
2) Metal is way more natural than processed hides and leather.
@@zedek_ fair point about leather since you would need to process it with chemical to make it more durable
It's a Scam.
High level druids sell "Ironwood" (Level 6 Transmutation) that make Wood function exactly as Metal.
So they say that you can't wear Metal, and have to buy their "Ironwood" equivalents.
always thought it was because metal must be more difficult to shapeshift
In the final ranking slide, I made an error here by placing the Druids on an early draft which caused some of the earlier ranked subclasses to show in incorrect placements. Here is a link to the image that is correct: treantmonk.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/setdruid.png
Treant, that error was happening since bards video
Where can we see the full tier list with all of the classes as he adds them?
At the end of this series do you think you'll get around to explaining placement between classes?
For Moon, I've had DM's use its strength at level 2 as an excuse to not hold back with low level encounters. Moon druid lets you actually have a balanced encounter at Death House, or in the early stuff in Icewind Dale where some things can hit up to 40 on a level 2 character. But thats more with how bad WotC are at making early level encounters than moon druid itself.
So it's not just us finding Icewind Dale tough
the problem it's not the subclass itself, it's the relationship with the party.
I'll be not happy if I'm a fighter and the druid overshadow me in every combat against monsters that could kill me with 1 hit (and can also cast spells); it's not really fun...
Moon druid has to be the fighter in a group for it to work.
@@chrisdin4109 be a mark of warding moon druid. precast armor of agathys and mage armor. turn into a giant snake. profit as tank.
Death House isn't bad because it is hard. There is every opportunity for the players to realize escape is their best option and checks in place to resolve attempting it. It's in the name! And it makes it a horror instead of just a grim fantasy.
I’ve always loved the Dream Druid, I just really wished it got a spell list. Adding some illusion or enchantment spells would’ve really added to that fey flavor and give the subclass the little bit of extra power it needed.
As for its sixth level ability, no one ever said you couldn’t have it and something like tiny hut up at the same time. This doesn’t completely salvage the ability but it does make it much more useful.
You kind of do, though. You get a number of Healing Words/day=your level at 2nd level, and up to 5 Misty Step+ at level 10. Both with versatile usage and excellent range that don't prevent you from using your Action to cast a spell. Honestly, I'm not sure why this is worse than CotL, which has a smattering of ho-hum abilities and a spell list with no two spell levels guaranteed to have a useful spell choice.
Yeah, no. Healing Word is one of the best first level spells in my experience (the 5E yo-yo), and getting a better version that doesn't eat up a spell slot so I can actually do cool things at levels 2 rather than keep Healing Word contingencies like I would otherwise? Maybe it's due to my playstyle, but this is easily my favorite Druid subclass, and I honestly find it better in practice than some of these others.
If someone told me at second level I'd have effectively *five* first level spell slots, and *two* of them are improved Healing Word?
Yeah.
@@miahmagick Okay you make good points but was it your intention to be rude? It's hard to tell just by reading it
@@snazzyfeathers Not really. I might have had my feathers ruffled a bit by the placement, but it definitely wasn't intended to be antagonistic.
A bit more spelldiversion will not break the lowest ranked druid class. Talk to your DM and homebrew a nice spelllist"
I think the moon druid problem highlights a much larger problem of the game, that's not necessarily the fault of the moon druid itself. The challenge ratings of enemies make no fucking sense in this game. They're only good for getting an extremely vague idea of how strong monsters are, but should never be used for fine-tuning an encounter. It really feels like they initially thought of CR as a way to determine exp, and then decided that they don't need to give a fuck about balancing it because of that because they're just encouraging people to play by milestones now anyways.
Granted, even if CR ratings made sense, moon druid would still be nuts. Druid's been a big problem since forever, being a full caster with 3 hp bars and the attacking stats of a fighter is nuts. It would just be at a more consistent power level throughout the game.
As an aside, you forgot something important relating to scaling with the moon druid. Levels 6-9, they might not be overpowered but they're still really really strong. But what I actually take issue with is level 10 and over. They're still easily A-tier. You can cast sunbeam and concentrate on that spell while shifted into an earth elemental, giving you the tankiest stats in the game if there's no barbarian around while having a really good con saving throw for your concentration spell that you can activate each turn for a really good AoE attack. Or, if that doesn't suit your preference, there's a number of other useful concentration spells that allow for a similar playstyle that no other class can really replicate, save for maybe the bladesinger wizard that's still going to have really low hp, or a sorcadin, but that's a multiclass (and one of the best.) And even though the elementals you turn into dont get better over the levels, they don't reeaaaallly need to. You should be seeing them as a multiplier to the effectiveness of your concentration spells that do improve as you level up.
And sure, the wizard, or the other fullcasters that have invested into it, can cast a few defensive spells before they focus on helping out the team, but every turn that you spend casting a spell to protect yourself is a turn that you have made zero progress towards resolving the conflict. If combat lasts 5 turns, and a wizard spends the first 2 turns of the combat casting mirror image and blur, they were essentially useless for 40% of the fight AND they wasted two spell slots on just being able to participate. Meanwhile, moondruid can set up their hyper defense AND contribute to the fight at the SAME TIME on the FIRST TURN. All of this for the use of a feature that recharges on a short rest (free if you've got a pal with tiny hut,) and a single spell slot. And without that, they're still an amazing caster.
IMO, at every single level of the game, moon druid is one of the best pure classes to have barring homebrew and multi. It's just a matter between them being strong, and being gamebreakingly overpowered.
This is a really good point to make. Last week in my Monday game our DM threw a CR15 Death Knight and 2 Ogre Skeletons at our lvl 5 party of 4. We are normally a party of 5 but were down a player, and funny thing is that fight was specifically for him too, but oh well. We took him down in 3 rounds. If we had not had the NPC wizard helping us it would only have taken 1 more round.
What was our saving grace against this heinous foe you might ask? Our cleric managed to lock down the 2 ogre skeletons with Turn Undead (they both failed, even with adv. from the death knight). We 4 surrounded him for everyone to have flanking advantage. Between the rogue's sneak attack and my elven accuracy crit fishing 2h longsword+hex+hexblades curse attacks, he did not stand a chance.
@@jorgemargenat2277 I am aware. The DM showed us the statblock after the battle in case there was any doubt. What happened was we beat him on initiative so we bum rushed him and surrounded him like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. We use flanking so everyone had advantage. Rogue was getting sneak attack every turn, fighter and I never missed, even the cleric did some decent damage with his warhammer. In one round we did over 150 damage, just from the party, the npc that was with us did about 40. The DM actually gave him MUCH more HP than a regular death knight would normally have. The two ogre skeletons were locked down by turn undead. They could neither move nor attack and just stood in the corners of the room. The entire party made our saves against his spells an barely took any damage. So yeah, I stand by what I said.
You forget at level 7 when Wildshape starts to lose power druids get polymorph
Circle of the Land makes the same mistake that the Thief sub does, both from the PHB and early in the games design; they include features that should just be part of the main classes ability list.
Absolutely this. Every single "Biome" spell from the Land Druid's circle spells should just be baseline to begin with. So should Nature's Recovery and Nature's ward and Sanctuary are just very bad and need to be completely reworked.
The sheep's sacrifice will bring glory to his family
Does he also get 72 ewes in heaven? 💋😝🐑
Druid: I don’t use metal; it violates my sacred oaths.
Carries scimitar on belt made of 80-100% metal.
The first question I ask a player wanting to play a druid is always, "What is your shield, half plate, and scimitar going to be made of?"
For a full caster in any high magic setting, having armor and weapons not made of ordinary metal is a low bar. Enchanted wood, living flames, woven fungus, stone plates. There's no reason to limit druids to hide or leather armor.
@@CitanulsPumpkin an astute point about alternatives to metal- this is fantasy after all! We have ankheg full plate.
Bone
I was surprised to see you gloss right over the last line of the Wildfire's Enhanced Bond ability. Being able to cast a spell from the wildfire spirit is pretty nice, even if it is hampered a bit by the spirit's turn being just after yours. With enough environmental hazards around it is pretty nice to have that additional vantage point for casting a thorn whip.
I was thinking of the exact same thing, but it seems you got there first. It really makes casting cone spells easier and helps with the short range of Druid cantrips. Also, you can pull targets upwards with Thorn whip using this.
Yeah, I think I got so caught up in the teleporting I forgot to talk about the spell platform aspect. Oops.
I think wildfire druid seems like potentially one of the most fun druids available. So many interesting tactical options on already good controller chassis.
@@TreantmonksTemple Also, wildfire spirit has a range limit for where you can summon it... but no restriction on staying within a range of you after. And it lasts an hour with a fly speed. Add in a familiar that'll last a few hours that you can share senses with while it stays out of range of attacks, and you have a full-caster disposable scout that can attack enemies, distract them so they have penalties to perception to detect the party sneaking up behind them, interfere with them during a chase (as long as someone is willing to carry the druid during it), and even drop the druid's powerful summoning spells in the middle of enemy camps without a target they can attack to break concentration. All that really makes me feel like it's worth bumping up to an A tier. Not S tier, though if wildfire spirit lasted hour/ druid level, then I might just argue for it having the potential to be game breaking in the wrong hands.
I know I'm a bit late, but you can't you just prepare an action so that you cast a spell AFTER the wildfire spirit moves ? I played a wildfire druid and my DM allowed me do that, making my wildfire spirit able to go to a wounded ally and cast cure wounds.
Stars level 10 ability makes it the premier after combat healer in my eyes and makes combat WAY more flexible. Switching form at the start of each turn at no cost is really strong. For instance, a single healing word with chalice at level 10 (assuming 18 wis) heals an average of 6.5 + 13 = 19.5. That's insane.
I think the cooler benefit of Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow as compared to Tiny Hut is it's increased size. 30 ft radius is huge! But it's not like you can count on having a huge horde of allies to travel around with. With a few dreams druids though, one could quickly begin considering hiding pretty large armies in plain sight.
That’s so you can hide with all your sheep.
Or just mounts. You can't put your mount in a Hut unless you're Small.
Whoa, whoa whoa. Don't diss Hawk Spirit. That thing basically lets you cast the best cantrip in the game (True Strike) for free every turn, without even using your action!
in WOTC's defense people loved that feature on the mastermind rogue lol
Druid's don't wear armor that would be affected by Heat Metal. They know its power and fear it much.
so cast-off armor would be fine then?
Skipped over the Level 10 Circle of Stars' last line for Twinkling Constellations: Moreover, at the start of each of your turns while in your Starry Form, you can change which constellation glimmers on your body.
That's huge. All of these effects are great, but you only got one of the three per combat or two until this point. Add the scaling and you're not just boosting your desired option, but having your cake, eating it too, finding out it's healthy for you, and the new recipe tastes better than ever.
He also missed the ability of Enhanced Bond (Circle of Wildfire) to allow casting spells from the location of your Wildfire Spirit. That's a HUGE feature and totally unremarked upon. I even wonder if he took it into account in his rankings.
As a dm I let my druids attempt to craft equivalent armor out of other materials.
That's a great idea.
I was able to use a fabricate spell to turn bullete plating into half plate for our druid. Stuff like that just makes sense for a fun adventure
There is some guidance for this. Dragon scale armor is scale mail, but not made of metal. This can be used as a bases to extrapolate to other materials.
@@mojorn8837 did literally the same shit for our ranger!
My DM let me have Scale Mail made from the chiton of some giant beetle monster.
Man I’ve been absolutely loving this series.
Thank you for making my week so much more enjoyable. You may not know who the people are that watch your videos but it really does brighten my day.
Have a wonderful week Tree Monk
So glad to hear that koZmo! You just made my week more enjoyable too
@@TreantmonksTemple ⚔️ ❤️ 💪🏼 😊
I think stars guiding bolt is being under valued. At early levels it kills instantly compared to two swings from a bear at level 1-3 for trash mobs. Also not forgetting archer literally costs a bonus action just like wild shape and allows you to add 1d8 damage every turn which is still just as strong as the bear. This also scales better, but it's your opinion.
Plus druids have very few non-concentration offensive options at spell levels 1-2. Ice Knife is a great spell but the 1d10 piercing damage it does is a lot less than Guiding Bolt and the cold damage is save or suck (so if enemies make the save they take no damage). Plus radiant damage prevents creatures like vampires from regenerating.
It is really strong. The fact that it is still only half as strong as Moon Druid ( doesn't get Bear HP and hit dice ) is crazy. It is like they gave Moon Druid the best parts of Spores and Stars without any of the scaling.
1d8+wis but yes, while this subclass drops even that little extra hp other druids get with wildform on early lvls, it is very potent in terms of damage output at least on lvls 2-4.
Great video! I hope Tasha's trend of giving Druids new things to do with their Wildshape is the way to go, it seems to have worked out so far.
For sure, it's a smart move I think to go that way with druid subclasses.
Did not expect the Moon Druid there when you have had a guide to the class since the beginnings of this channel. But playing a Moon Druid in a campaign where we were levels 2-4 for WAY TOO LONG, I was just feeling bad being 50%+ of our combat ability.
Mad respect. Though for others that get that situation talk to your DM and other players and make sure they are cool with it for real. Sometimes it can be a problem but a bit of player to player communication can help everyone keep having fun. (You seem like a good person and I bet you already did that.)
Thanks for another great video! I understand the 'S' ranking for moon druid, they can be overwhelming for the majority of games. Even if their damage peters out, the bonus hitpoints are never bad. I love shapeshifting though, and when I do play the subclass I try to fill missing roles for a party (usually a defender in a group of casters with a rogue.) The beast form AC leaves much to be desired however, so at higher levels it is easy to have concentration broken by common attacks.
Play a variant human moon druid with the healer feat. Not only will you outclass every other player in combat ability, but also (passive) healing. It gets silly when you can heal all your party members for a full hp-1hd per short rest until lvl 5.
I’m starting a campaign tomorrow as a moon Druid and now I feel bad. I just liked the thought of fighting as an animal. Maybe I’ll limit myself. Use one wild shape for scouting and another for a utility CR 1 like spider or toad. Kinda want to roll a new character.
@@kuhlbeans don’t let it put you off too much, these things are largely analyzed only for pure optimal play. There’s several ways to play any subclass, and many wild shape options aside from the “best” for combat that add to role play, aesthetic, tone, etc.. but the same written character could probably be a different subclass without much change at all..
I just started playing a Shepherd Druid. It might be a one trick pony, but oh what a trick, so much versatility and control. I also got a ton out of your video on how to deal with Summoning at the table and had a good talk with our DM we are excited to have this at the table now. Its a must for anyone playing a druid and especially a Shepherd (of the forest) kind of druid.
The druid in my game is wearing medium armor made of animal pelts. The metal limitation is only a hindrance if you have a sterile, unimaginative DM. There is no valid reason to dwell on its restrictions too heavily.
Agreed. Last session, the party took an ancient steampunk train, and I enjoyed roleplaying my druid being visibly sick being surrounded by all this iron for all the travel duration. We are going for the whole "natural/fey creatures despise and are sick around the industrious iron of men", and it's very flavorful.
I agree that there is no reason to dwell on this "restriction," because it's not a restriction at all.
The metal restriction is a holdover from a time when clerics could only use blunt weapons, and doesn't make any sense with it's old fey-inspired lore once they allowed any metal weapons.
As I mentioned, the 5e thing isn't even a restriction. It says they won't; not that they can't. The easy response is to say that _mine will_ . Especially since:
1) Mielikki druids could wear metal without issue - meaning any story/lore reason is sufficient
2) Metal is way more natural than processed hides and leather.
Fun fact: Medium armor made of leather, wood and even bone existed in the real world.
th-cam.com/video/396rERpXHCU/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/LP8QB_7Jsdc/w-d-xo.html
Or maybe just actually follow limitations and accept you don't get a guy that gets to do it all
I had a Firbolg Life Cleric Grassland Druid who came from a long line of master carpenters. He made a masterwork wooden plate heavy armor or varying woods and animals sinews to absorb the impacts.
Weren't some Samurai armours made out of wood?
@@Iamstrad yes sir, his helm was a kabuto
The fix I suggest trying for Moon Druid. When you get the feature instead of CR 1 you get CR 1/2, still better than the normal druid and you still have the double attack issue. but health is a LOT less. At level 5 you get CR1, and increase by 1 for every level past level 5. Meaning 6 is unchanged, but 7 is 3, 8 is 4, 9 is 5 all the way up to CR 9 at level 13. In addition, for the "transform into elementals" I think you can just make it any elemental of a CR that you can turn into up to level 15 when you hit CR 11. So if you want to "rebalance' the moon druid try this out. You still have the ape and Black bear to contend with early on, but they are no where near as bad.
With the number of subclasses you will have in that chart, maybe you should attribute a color to each class to make it easier to read.
I'll look into that.
"You could bring along a poor defenseless sheep" Jesus Christ Treantmonk!
I'm playing a Greek themed adventure, and my players are frequently having to sacrifice cows to appease the God of the sea 🤣
Druid is one of my favorites love to see you covering my next character is going to be a wildfire druid
Having recently completed a 3.5 year lvl 1-20 campaign as a Moon Druid, I agree with much of your assessment of this incredible subclass, including the dip in comparative power in mid tiers. In early tiers I sometimes on purpose didn't wildshape just to allow other players the chance to shine. For several levels around 8-9 I would sit back in battles and cast control spells instead of low powered CR2-3 wildshape, but really hit my stride at level 10 when with Earth Elemental. The missing kicker in your assessment is pre-casting Guardian of Nature with the Primal Beast option before wildshape. This gives you advantage on all attacks (strength based) with +1d6 dmg on attacks. If you've also been able to have Longstrider cast before the battle starts then you have massive movement, including burrowing through the ground (defeats Wall of Force and other difficult terrain) and attacking enemies from beneath.....or even grappling them and dragging them underground.
I also think that Moon Druid hits a comfortable stride at level 10 after having floundered for a few levels, before dropping off a little again until tier 4. I once played a Moon Druid Firbolg who my DM allowed to count as one size larger for the purpose of carrying a creature after grappling in addition to carry capacity. Turning into a large air elemental and casting spike growth to drag medium sized creatures through was rad as hell.
Been loving this series, great breakdowns of the classes. At 10:30 though, the tweet states that studded leather doesn't count as non-metal, as in it counts as metal in his games.
I think I misread that, so the designers have given even less clear direction than I thought.
I feel like one of the under-recognized limitations on Wild Shape is the condition "assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before". If I'm DM'ing a Druid, I want to know before the game how widely they have traveled and what animals they have come across. There's no reason to give them full access to every beast in the game. Have they really seen a deinonychus before? Have they been to the deep forests and the deserts and grasslands? Unless they have a Far Traveler background, I'd be skeptical that this lvl 1 character has seen such a wide array of beasts. So even if they want to power game it, make them earn it with a well described back story.
This. I always give an extremely limited number of beasts. PCs feel more rewarded when they encounter something on the actual journey. I feel like that should be standard? Not sure why he didn’t talk about that.
@@partimentieveryday cause polymorph you don't have to have seen the beast before so it's a good work-around
@@sterben4897 Polymorph is a 4th level spell so no it’s not a good work around at all. Long after the moon Druid is a problem at level 2.
This is a pretty common point, my issue with this from a gameplay perspective is that it encourages the player to optimise their character theme and backstory around what Pokém- I mean beasts are good
@@partimentieveryday I mean, the problem with moon druid at level 2 is the brown bear, and I'm a city boy and even I've seen a brown bear in the wild.
Stars Druid is so good. Also its important to note that if you're casting guiding bolt as a regular spell/after you've expended your PB uses, it can be upcast with higher level slots and anyone telling you otherwise is wrong. Also 10 minutes is more than enough for combat, that's like 100 rounds lmao
The circle of dreams "Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow" can, by RAW, be used in an incredibly game-y way that honestly I can't even begin to imagine how it could be justified in world. Because starting a rest isn't an action of any kind and your rest can be ended voluntarily at any time... coupled with this ability having unlimited uses means that as long as you start to doze off every 30 feet of movement you could theoretically carry this bubble with you at all times. I can't think of a single DM on the planet that would *allow* this, as it's very much not the intended use of the ability, but in this context it's actually quite powerful.
For a less cheesy use, though, since it pops up instantly you can easily use this to cover the 10 minute ritual casting for tiny hut. That's not a *long* time, but depending on where you're trying to bed down it can make a difference.
Their spellist for me already syarts with Entangle. I love entangle, especially with the sharpshooter ranger in my team. I can set them up awesomely to make hitting even easier ~
I’ve always noted the power of versatility of druids, less so the bards, but it’s only the lack of “outdoor” campaigns that seems to keep this class from dominating the tables.
Just use Wood/Leather Spiked Armor. The text says it’s USUALLY made of metal. So it can be made out of other materials.
As a new player who knows nothing about the game, i really appreciate your videos, i used your ranger subclass video to base my half orc ranger, and I do not regret it at all. It's been so much.
For shepherd druids, after playing quite a lot, some multi classing is ok, and even a lot of it ( after druid 6 ) but however you go about it, I found that saving spell slots for conjure animals is indeed best, however, conjure animals has a per 2 spell slots upcast potential, meaning that you only cast it with your 3/5/7/9 lvl spell slots. The 4/6/8 give you nothing. 4/6/8 are good for woodland beings, or, even better, 4/6/8 can be used for buffing / control / other utility or damage.
This lets you with a 1-2 spell slot lvls for whatever you like ( like goodberries and upcasted longstriders ) and 4/6/8 for stuff like freedom of movement / polymorph / 4th lvl longstrider might be overkill / woodland beings / heroes’ feast / wind walk / animal shapes. Multi classing can unlock some other spells that could upcast well ( like Aid through clockwork / cleric )
Moon Druid Fix using Tasha's Summon Spells as Template:
- Combat Wild Shape: unchanged
- Circle Forms becomes Beastial Form: You can use your Wild Shape ability to take the form of a Beastial Spirit as if conjured by the Summon Beast spell cast at the highest level for which you have spell slots. (Water form becomes available at Druid level 4, and Air form becomes available at Druid level 8)
- Primal Strike: unchanged
- Elemental Wild Shape becomes Elemental Form: You can use your Wild Shape ability to take the form of an Elemental Spirit as if conjured by the Summon Elemental spell cast at the highest level for which you have spell slots.
- Thousand Forms becomes Myriad Forms: You can use your Wild Shape ability to take the form of an Aberrant, Celestial, Construct, Fey, Fiendish, Shadow, or Undead Spirit as if conjured by their respective summon spells cast at the highest level for which you have spell slots.
- Archdruid Restriction: You can use your Wild Shape to transform using the Beastial, Elemental, or Myriad Forms features a total of 3 times per short rest, and may transform into any creature available to the base Druid class's Wild Shape feature an unlimited number of times.
Yes! This was my thought for a fix as well! Thanks for doing the brainstorming.
Or just make it a free polymorph but your cr is player level-1 and without concentration. This is usually how i rule it in my table and i add extra homebrewed beast for the higher levels.
@@frking100 You still have the problem of a level 2 druid wildshaping into a cr1 creature, while also prolonging the problematic power level for more time, so it's actually the opposite of a fix, it makes it even more broken
@@PAPP0NE It's already broken but now it scales better instead of falling off super hard.
@@frking100 The problem is primarely being broken 2-4, and to a lesser extent infnite hitpoints at the cost of your bonus action at level 20(but capstone should be great imho). Having damage comparable to the rest of the party 5-9, and still more hitpoints is fine. Being very good defensively, but having not amazing dmg at level 10+ is fine. You are still a full spell caster. So your "fix" addresses something that was not the issue.
The Druid seems to be the most misunderstood class in 5e and idk what this says about me but its been my favorite class so far. I've play a homebrew subclass from lvl 1-6 and so far I think my DM build a very balanced subclass. I played a circle of the moon from 1-3 so of course I felt unkillable haha. And I played a circle of spores Druid in an evil campaign from lvl 5-9. They've all been a blast to play and I've focused them all around battlefield control.
Can't wait for monks F tier occupation
Yeah I want to know which subclass is the worst of the worst lol
@@CRWM987 Obviously, elemental monk. I am interested, if there any monks subclasses, that can make it to E\D\C, before tasha
As a lover of the Monk I agree, actually I'm playing a four elements monk in a campaign and it's fun, not super strong by any means but fun.
I really liked your ranking of the Shepherd druid as A tier. One aspect of the subclass that I think you undersold in your video was just how good of a healer a unicorn spirit totem druid can be. Being able to duplicate/twin healing spells for creatures within your aura is incredibly power, even if it is situational, and since most of the good healing spells aren't concentration (shut up healing spirit) it synergizes well with the subclasses' emphasis on summoning.
And boy does it scale well, I'm playing the fabled tier 4 atm and an ability that cost a bonus action and first level slots (healing word) healing based on level breaks stuff. I've seen a single heling work heal almost combined 200 HP
With spores, getting a way to make additional attacks is good. Like PAM or a level dip in war domain cleric. And it's also stacks with hex/hunter's mark
The Moon Druid at higher levels will disappoint with the fantasy, but you're still a full-featured Druid outside that, so you won't be bad.
I've played moon druid in a rules light campaign 2-5 (ie the DM didn't understand the rules, took off his armor in one turn when I cast heat metal, moved his invisible unhidden creature so I somehow missed with faerie fire, let me take multiple bonus actions with a hyena form...which is wrong).
Big drop off in power on levels 4/5. Which is actually cool because it lets you start to experience the more caster aspects of the class. It is better to use your cantrip at level 5 than to wild shape, unless you are trying to grapple from 15 feet away as a giant octopus, swallow something as a giant toad, assuming the DM even let you see those. My DM didn't understand the reason I didn't ever wild shape into the mountain lion he showed me...and I told him multiple times it is too low CR. Long story short, we didn't continue that campaign because the DM didn't understand the rules.
Moon druid is still good even with power drop off. You can use the wild shape as a hit point sink. The armor class sucks, that's what it is supposed to be used for anyway--hit point sink and for some utilities (grapple, swallow, jump, senses, web attack restrain, climbing upside down, etc). Druid is a utility class with unique healing options and excellent battle field control options.
I disagree with this guy's assessment of moon druids. Level 2 I agree, but there are lots of classes that have overpowered abilities at one level. Does anyone stay level 2 long enough for it to matter?
Also, the druid can use wild shape as a sort of twice per long rest free disengage since changing shape doesn't use your movement. So if you control four spaces, you can wild shape out into one away from the monster if you use the bonus action to leave wild shape. If you are knocked out of wild shape, the enemy can always use their movement to advance close to you in caster form if they want to deny the free disengage. This way it is balanced.
You get shapechange as a 9th level spell so the dream is not completely dead late game.
If class features over level 10 aren’t really considered in the rankings does that mean spells above 5th level are also not considered?
No, no. He's got a point.
Unless the class can for some reason get those spells earlier then mostly no. Most classes get a feature at lvl 10 and the next one at lvl 14 but most adventures are done by this point or you only have a couple of sessions left in the campaign. So the spells he probably values more are 1-4 and spell levels 5-7 have a lower priority.
That is essentially correct.
This series is fantastic. Excited for all the classes to come!
The thing about few mobility spells in the druid list is Wildshape IS their mobility class feature. At level 2 they can get a standard speed of 60, a climb, or a burrow. At level 4, swim speed. At level 8, flying speed. And they get to do this while potentially taking on new senses, stealth capabilities, an inconspicuous disguise, and so on, all at once. Wildshape will be up a lot more often than the equivalent wizard mobility spells could too.
Tomb of Annihilation has scorpion armor a druid can wear if they get heavy armor proficiency. Very nice 👌
For the Metal Armor Taboo, there is a way around it with Scale Mail armor - make the armor out of Natural Scales - case in point, the Dragon Scale armors as listed in the DMG (Very Rare/Major Tier-type stuff - gives a +1 bonus to AC, lets you locate a dragon of the same type the armor is made from, advantage in certain saving throws that dragons tend to impose, and resistance to certain damage types), and the Serpent Scale Armor in CM (Reward for the Book of Cylinders section - applies full dexterity modifier, and no Disadvantage on Stealth Checks).
Using that info as a basis for what to do, I, being the DM at the time, actually gave a Loxodon Druid Crocodile Scale Armor - basically reskinned the armor so that it was made from crocodile scales (which has some precedence in real life), which, with 14 Dexterity, and a shield, gave them 18 AC, which was one more than the GWF Fighter, who had Splint Armor. Sadly, we didn't have any sessions afterwards, so I haven't gotten around to do anything extra about it - as part of the idea is that the crew got hired, and equipped by a patron, and thus said Crocodile Scale Armor, was not originally made with the druid in mind - basically, it was going to have been made for and belonged to a Goliath, and I was going to have said druid roll a d20 to see how well it fit - 1 would cause a penalty (of -1) and disadvantage on Dexterity Saving throws for being a really bad fit, 2-9 would make it a little short, but usable (cosmetic issue), 10-19 would make it long but usable (cosmetic issue), while a 20 would grant a bonus (of +1) and Advantage on Dexterity Saving throws for being a perfect fit.
Just something to keep in mind, in case you want to increase the AC of any druids in a party - just give them reskinned scale mail armor that was made with scales from crocodiles, large lizards, large snakes, other reptiles - heck, maybe you can make a Generic Dragon Scale armor that is a mishmash of scales from different dragon types - maybe they pay the city near where they have their lair their cast-off scales to keep Dragon Hunters off their backs or to allow them to hunt in the nearby area without getting a Bounty for snagging the occasional cow/sheep/other livestock during leaner times, and said city turns said scales into armor for their guards or some such thing.
Played a Spores druid throughout levels 12-17. If anyone's considering the subclass and/or optimizing it, here's what I learned:
- The 1d6 damage on weapon attacks from Symbiotic Entity is really lackluster on its own. If you don't take Magic Initiate for a weapon attack cantrip, it doesn't make much of a difference; however, if you played like I did (having a horde of animate zombies at all times, and therefore no spell slots), the boosts towards melee can be helpful.
- I did not have an opportunity to use Fungal Infestation once, since the reaction use time clashes with Halo of Spores. Cool feature, though it would be a lot more meaningful without the restrictions.
- The THP from Symbiotic Entity might be encouraging to make you frontline and tank, but don't forget that Symbiotic Entity ends if you lose the THP, which weakens you a little bit. Thereafter, it's an action casting time, so it's worth being mindful of how you position yourself.
- I don't know if there's been any discussion about the synergy of Animal Shapes and Animate Dead, but it's terrifyingly powerful. I chose not to use it after I ran some numbers about just how much damage i'd be dealing with 50 giant scorpions, and if you're a DM, beware.
- Another note on Animate Dead: Zombies and Skeletons benefit *hugely* from advantage in terms of how many hits they will land. Entangle is a fantastic and budget option to boost your damage output on a couple of enemies; otherwise, supplementing a horde of zombies with a pack of wolves from Conjure Animals to knock prone is also a good choice.
- Like Shepherd Druid, you probably wanna speak with your DM about the amount of summoning you're going to be doing if you choose to hone in on Animate Dead. I wouldn't recommend it without having some kind of calculator app of VTT like Foundry to handle the damage of the horde, or else you risk slowing the combat down by quite a lot.
Spores was a very fun subclass though. Not super powerful (in terms of minionmancy, i'm sure you're still outclassed by Shepherd, though I have no evidence to support this guess), but it came with a lot of good flavor and made for a really fun experience regardless. Would recommend.
I think the best way to play a Spore Druid isn't to take it into Melee, that's a trap of the subclass in my opinion, it's probably best to just use Symbiotic Entity at the start of a day and enjoy the Temp HP it provides while ignoring the rest of that ability's feature.
In some ways, the Spore Druid is better at being in the back lines than other Druids. You get Chill Touch for free, which is far from the best attack cantrip, but has a really good range with 120 Feet, more than any other Druid Cantrip. As much as I like the Thorn Whip cantrip, I don't always want to be 30 feet from an enemy.
Another cool thing you can do is take Magic Stone and give it to your Zombies or Skeletons from Animate dead, giving them a ranged option. Start a battle with your big concentration spell and spend every turn afterwards casting Magic Stone and dodging.
Rather than being recognized as the 'Melee Druid', Spore should be seen as the 'Sturdy Druids'.
I think the best think about spores is being able to animate the dead and not have to concentrate on it, unlike shepherd.
Shepherd is amazing, but spores allows you to have an army while you can still cast huge concentration spells for control. Sure your conjure animals can shape a battlefield but so can zombies and undead, while you entangle/spikegrowth/fog cloud everything.
Spores is surprisingly an insanely strong battlefield control tactician. Use undead to grapple people in poison/spores. The only downside is how nothing scales with spores. The damage just becomes so lackluster later. I would love it if they made symbiotic damage apply to friendlys within the spores at 6 or something. This would fix a lot of the issues it has with scaling.
ANOTHER big big issue is make sure your going to be in a campaign where you will be fighting things that you can infest. If you play spores in an undead campaign where all you fight is undead zombies/things you can’t infest then you will NOT have fun.
Overall I had a blast with my spores Druid.
The spore druid suffers from a poor design philosophy in my opinion. It's abilities heavily incentivise melee combat, but because you lose half the features with THP, and those THP typically last one round, you're left trying to make the character work using only half the features.
I don't doubt that the horde approach has worked for you guys, but it's clearly not the intended option IMO. *That* is the Shepards domain.
@@Golmov_the_Wretched I actually totally agree with you on that. after a year in review, and attempting to play the same character once again, but with a revised homebrew version of Spores druid, I agree with every reply left on this comment thread so far.
my problems with spore druid stem from that it seems to promise you two things: (a) you will be doing necromancy, and (b) you will be in melee. but, as you said, its melee abilities have a bit of a design conundrum, and while animate dead is cool, spore druid isn't comparable in necromancy to, say, a necromancer wizard (ignoring subclass features), due to not having access to finger of death. not to mention, that playstyle is quite campaign-dependent.
in hindsight, back when I played spores for the first time in its vanilla form, I think Symbiotic Entity was the only feature I ever got any use out of, and it was almost only for the THP. I played that character from levels 11-17, so I had at least a chance at using all of those features, but they were irrelevant. I think my enjoyment of the spores druid was more like, "I'm enjoying playing a *druid*, and spores is cool to me".
so looking back on it, I don't feel as highly about spores as I used to. if I were to recommend it to a new player, I would be crystal clear with them, that, "hey. you're really just going to be playing a land druid with temp HP and some neat flavor. if you *get* to use animate dead, things will start to feel unique, but that won't be every game. be aware."
For those who didn't catch it, Spare the Dying is a cantrip. Thus it actually can be used alongside a spell. Shepherd Druids still get the benefit of bringing up their downed allies, though.
Loved my moon Druid. My dm did custom add some other cr beasts later, and I played responsible, early levels, just not to overshadow. We had a lot of turn over first 3 levels so went from tank to healer to control/aoe back to tank again. The pure versatility is what makes them my fave class. Yes it is overpowered at those levels, just be a good group player, let others shine too.
Major thing with Landstride is that it works with plant growth since the plants created are not magical even though they are grown through a spell, thus turning facing a land druid in a forest or grassy plain into a miserable experience, infact this has become almost expected of rangers or druids that both get landsride in our group since it is one of the most powerful things you can do since there is no save involved and the plants can't be dispelled, leaving just flying as an out for most enemies.
I always wanted Spores to get Extra Attack at 6th instead of Fungal Infestation, akin to Bladesinger, or moving FI to 2nd and removing Halo altogether, with EA at 6th. It had such a potential to be the first normal form melee druid with Form, Ele Weapon and Extra Attack, maybe Polearm Master for more attacks
My DM house ruled Land Stride let's me shrug off magical difficult terrain if my own magic is creating it. So I can waltz into Spike Growth or Sleet Storm without having any negatives. That really helps.
We're also doing Rime of the Frostmaiden, which is a pretty good campaign for Land Druids.
100% again on the rankings.
Interestingly, I've always viewed the Druid as more of an area denial controller, than a summoner. I mean, I know the summon spells are there. But they're as much a pain for me as the rest of the party. I love me some Plant Growth, and consider Fog Cloud very underrated.
Overall, this is really close to clerics as overall favorite.
Great minds.
'nuf said
shepherd ftw; it's a shame that you can't spend your wild shapes to do the aura thing, but at least now with tasha we can use wild shape to get a familiar which will also benefit from the spirit with temporary hp
That sounds like an awesome house rule to implement so that it becomes a more readily available feature... Hmm then again it'd make the bear spirit arguably busted, 14 temp hp(at lvl2) on every party member per short/long rest is super meaty.
Just wanted to point out that the 6th level feature of the Spores Druid works on Giant Wasps or Giant Centipedes from Druid's Giant Insect spell. If you're intending to use this spell you're probably already carrying jars of these critters for it already and its honestly a great spell so the opportunity cost is low.
Also for a bit extra flavour there is literally such a thing as zombie wasps, though they're called that for zombifying other insects...
What I'm starting to learn from these and I wonder if the trend will continue is that I either like some of the most powerful class sub class combinations or I like the worst ones with almost no in-between, lol.
Heyo, great video! I was surprised that you did not mention Stars Druids extra 10 lvl feature; the one where you can switch between Starry forms at the beginning of your turn for free :) It makes Starry form incredibly more versatile ✌️
A small comment about wildfire druids because I've been looking at building one soon and this part wasn't mentioned at all: Enhanced Bond (level 6 feature) also lets you cast most spells from your wildfire spirit's position instead of yours.
A lot of the druid's damaging cantrips have a much shorter range than some other classes have (Frostbite has 60 ft range but is very un-thematic for a fire druid, I don't like Create Bonfire since it takes concentration, everything else is 30 feet) and I think it's nice to be able to do something with your action after casting a concentration spell while still being a safe distance away.
Ironically, this doesn't work with Produce Flame, since the spell technically has a range of self even though you make the attack at a 30-ft range, but you could still use Thorn Whip from pretty far away and drag the creature you hit towards your spirit instead of towards you
(edit: I was sort of mistaken, someone else mentioned this in the comments, I just didn't scroll far enough)
I always hear "hello optimancers" and that's so on brand.
I played a Shepard Druid for a long time. Aya the Wolf Queen, Wood Elf we eventually made it to level 20. at the beginning DM said that with Conjure Animals, I could let him roll random beasts or only pick Wolves. Had a lot of fun over that campaign. And at the end, I know it wasn't the best use of a 9th level spell, but summoning 32 wolves, while wildshaped as a Direwolf, and dropping a Bear Totem for the Temp HP to everyone for the fight. It was a lot of fun. (And after the first round of combat when a Metor wrecked all my wolves I swapped to Battlefield control.)
Edit: Also a tip for potential summoners to keep the party from hating you, that worked great at our table. Give out control of your pets to the other members of the party. No one likes when you take 9 turns, but if everyone gets 2 or 3 turns and can have a battle buddy. Excellent.
the moon druid at high level feels more like a regular druid with a side order of shapeshifting than an actual combat druid
Oh, the other thing I was going to mention is that I don't really think the druid is arguably the best controller. Wizard (and sorcerer) just has it beat in my opinion. Sleep > entangle (though entangle stays good longer, wizard can switch to grease), web > spike growth, hypnotic pattern > plant growth, wall of force > wall of stone (which wizard gets anyway).
For me I find the "druids wont wear metal armor" reads the same to me as "only elves can be bladesingers" or "Paladins must be lawful good". It feels like an arbitrary, traditional limitation that I don't enforce on anybody
Honestly it doesn't even make sense from a narrative standpoint.
Metal is part of nature. Native Iron exists, so does a lot of other metals.
Using a metal armor seems like more "nature friendly" then using hide/leather/bone, considering those are obtained from dead animals.
@@Loeher while it isn't worded that way I think it is that the metal is refined and worked and not raw ore. I don't think it makes sense either for Example a Hill Dwarf Druid you would need a very good reason to ignore that part of your heritage. Another is something like Vax in Critical Role a single level dip really hinders you otherwise I would always take a level of Druid with my cleric just to have goodberry and Shillelagh but I can't justify the armor punishment for one level that is basically theme as cleric has better options for both. And what do you do with a Warforged Druid? do you call him a nimblewright or does the metal skinned man get a pass on not using metal armor?
Unlike the other restrictions you listed, this one has a direct impact on the strength of the class though. It prevents druids from easily having an AC comparable to that of clerics. Given that druids are already defensively strong with absorb elements, summons to take hits for them, and wildshape to provide a bunch of extra HP, plus the fact that unlike clerics, few of their spells require druids to be in the middle of the action, it's hard to not see the restriction as a mechanical decision by designers to stop the druid from being good at everything.
@@nickm9102 From what I've seen, warforged druids either "get a pass" on having metal in the innate armor that gives them +1 AC, or that innate armor is assumed to be made from wood or stone. Any additional armor (which does get integrated as per usual) follows the typical druid prohibition.
@@bigdream_dreambig So they are offended by metal armor and not the metal body? I mean this sounds like modern society...insanity level and all.
Correction: 10:29 Chris Perkins says Studded Leather doesn't count as NON-metal armor in his game (Meaning Druids can't wear it in his game).
I allow PC to have armour normally made of metal to be made by monster parts, like shells, exoskeletons or dragon scales, if they can find the right monster and someone with extraordinary skill to make the armour for them.
THIS is the breakdown ive been searching for.
Mixing a spore druid with a swarm keeper ranger or oath of ancients Paladin could be fun thematically. I want to play around with that now and see.
Quick summary of druids.
Shepard, Unstoppable Force.
Moon, Immovable Object.
rest is cool but meh.
Moon Druid should have been built with a “Wildshape” template that steadily grew in power as you leveled. That way you wouldn’t be so overpowered at level 2 and you wouldn’t have to worry about falling off so hard as the game progresses.
treantmonk already made a video fixing wildshape where he made templates. Gonna be testing them out soon
Agreed. I'm actually a bit surprised that wasn't offered as an optional class feature in Tasha's, considering the designers have gotten on the template idea with summon spells and pets.
Yea similar to the beastmaster ranger from Tasha's, where your companion hp scales with your level and their dmge with proficiency bonus.
@@98gabrius He also provided an alternative table for beasts' CRs in his Wariant Druid video if you want a more classic approach.
By the way, I find his templates from the Fixing Wildshape video having some problems. I would suggest thinking a bit more about the numbers. The beasts deal a lot of damage, and while it can not be that much from an optimizer's perspective, for a normal party it can feel too strong, considering you're still a full caster. At least make them use normal hp instead of temp hp.
What if the temporary hp bonus when you wildshape was limited to the beast's hp minus your own max hp?
Love the series, Chris
Appreciated
For the Moon Druid, to deal with the various beasts, one could restrict it to what the person could have realistically seen. If they lived by the sea, maybe mostly sea beasts. If they lived as a hunter in woodlands, woodland type animals. In the Tundra, maybe those sorts of animals. City Dweller - there's a number of wild animals that live in urbanized areas (like deer), or could be domesticated enough to be found as pets, and maybe roll a d20 to see if they ever went to the zoo/circus-type place (equivalent forms have been around for a long time actually).
Heart of moonlight and shadow can pair with leomunds tiny hut so that the enemies might not see the hut, and if they’re hiding and waiting to ambush you when you leave the spell, you have a vastly better chance of noticing them and preventing the surprise round ( yes, technically surprise rounds don’t exist, but the surprise rules make something that’s basically surprise rounds
I have used stone shape speak with plants and plant growth to make armor for my druid from non metal materials
Maybe they should have done to Circle Shapes what they have done to Ranger's Companion.
You neglected to mention the other aspect of the wildfire druids level 6 ability. The fact that you can have your spells originate from the wildfire spirit makes placing cone spells much easier, and gives flexibility to Thorn whip cantrip among other things. This could like it will be quite fun to play with.
I think you missed one of the biggest features for the Wildfire Druid. The Enhanced Bond feature also allows spells to be cast from your spirits location, which means now you have a a lvl 1 Cure Wounds with range instead of touch that heals for 2d8+Mod. That is incredibly powerful. Also since the spirit has a fly speed it can be above the battlefield and use a cone spell like burning hands straight down without worry of hitting allies. This greatly changes which spells are viable for a creative player.
Unfortunately, Burning Hands has a range of "self," so doesn't qualify, and the Wildfire Druid doesn't have access to any other cone spells.
@@bigdream_dreambig So my table ruled (and i understand this is just for us) that since the cone has a range, in this case 15 feet, there is a range to the spell and self is just the origin point (ie thunderwave). The wording for the spirit only limits spells with range of self that dont go outward like booming blade.
But my argument for Cure wounds still stands, i just keep forgetting we house ruled some stuff.
@@vaalnailo5789 Yes, Cure Wounds seemed to be the one spell for which this feature would be particularly useful, following Rules As Written. The only others I found that might possibly come up were Contagion, Barkskin, and Stoneskin. (Several mobility spells would also qualify and be relevant in combat, but Fiery Teleportation is better for that.)
One thing I think might have been missed from the wildfire Druid enhanced bond bonuses is this. It doesn’t specify that the bonus damage/healing applies to one target, only that it applies to one roll of the die. Which means aoe spells get the the boost to every person hit.
This feature pretty much just makes all fire and healing spells (with exceptions) cast at one level higher for free.
Dream druid bonus heal is a game changer at tier 1. One more spell to choose beyond healing word, one spell on a pickup heal round. Our dm switched to team initiative and being able to cast and heal (revive) on most turns is excellent efficiency.
So I know later level features are given less weight for how you rate them and some of them are very underwhelming but a few of these subclasses actually get pretty fantastic level 14 features so it was a bit disappointing to not see them brought up.
Maybe in a different analysis video, in this series I'm focusing on what we should expect at the table in a campaign that starts at low level.
Recently played lvl 5 druid for the first time in a one shot. I played Sheppard, and picked up a lot of spells that revolved around befriending or charming Animals. Depending on what your DM rules as far as taking a befriended animal into combat (my table rules yes, but with limitations), it can be really good combined with totems and conjure animals, as long as your setting provides wild creatures to use. Permanent speak with animals is good for this set up.
One issue i noticed when building the character is that there was not one single spell on the list that was A. Single Target B. No Aoe Splash and C. Not concentration. That's a bit of an issue, but luckily we play our level 5 one shots allowed to pick one of any uncommon magic item, with a few obvious exceptions. I chose Coiling Grasp Tattoo to fill this hole.
As for the Metal Armor thing, you might be able to talk to your DM when you get to higher levels to get something like plate armor, but have it made of something like chitin or whatever. really depends on what your DM thinks of that rule.
jeez. finally, someone who agrees with my take on moon druids. i hear a lot of people whine about them being powerful, but most of these people never got past level 5, and certainly not in this class.
I wrote a comment about this that got deleted for some reason, but I played a moon druid from level 1-20, and I definitely think moon druid wildshape is still overpowered through their whole career.
Their damage tapers off eventually, but it doesn't matter, because you have literal hundreds of disposable HP. Any hit you take while wildshaped is damage that has been 100% mitigated for your group and an action wasted for the enemy. You also get both uses back after a short rest, so you have no reason not to make use of all the damage you can soak, within reason. You also have a large or greater sized body, which means you can easily roadblock enemies, and if you take the Sentinel feat you become even harder to get away from.
This is tanking potential on a level no other class can match, except maybe Bear Totem Barbarian. Except even bear barbarians still take damage that needs to be healed up, moon druid damage taken is just completely absorbed and doesn't matter at all.
This is on top of being a full caster with an extremely versatile spell list and the ability to memorize any of them on a long rest like a Cleric. You have control, damage, exploration and healing magic.
Basically, and I don't mean this in an insulting way, if you think Moon Druid's wildshape is bad at mid level and above because your personal damage contribution is mediocre, you're forgetting that D&D is a team game and you're still debatably the best damage sponge in the entire game on top of being a caster whose spell list is like if a Cleric and a Wizard had a baby. So you don't go from overpowered to weak as you level, you go from game-breakingly busted to just overpowered.
Metal is natural and some is even organic, Druids are just too picky.
Also, small correct. Wildfire Spirit does 1d6 plus Proficiency Bonus dmg vs Wisdom modifier dmg that you noted. So slightly less damage for both the d6 vs d8 for Archer and PB vs Wisdom modifier.
Been excited for this one, thanks!
An important check not often discussed is that druids are limited to shapechanging to only those animals they have seen before. A good DM can use this advantageously to balance the moon druid.
Moon and Shepherd are my favorite by far. Being able to be a damage sponge while the allowing the rest of the party to unload damage is just good team work. Gotta admit though, as much as I love Moon I kinda feel it needs some errata to help with the swinging of power.
The druid's wildshape is an instance of lazy design. They should have specified a number of forms it could take with formulas for how those forms improved as one levels up, and then a second table of forms for the Moon Druid with similar improvements. So many of them should have been much lower in hit points. Each shape should have carried some minor benefit that differentiate them from the other shapes. The way they designed it just causes them to be super uneven, which causes them to be both under powered and over powered at the same time.
I disagree. It's appropriate and thematic for a druid to have access to every beast form they've seen. The only problem is the power of those forms doesn't always align well with the character level.
Sometimes, I cast Plant Growth to control the battlefield first, then upcast Conjure Animals, typically indicating something with flight like Giant Owls or Flying Snakes. Takes a little working with the DM, but usually works out great.
About Spores, actually while you have that wild-shape-replacer active your halo of spores rolls additional die, so that 10 lvl aoe ability will deal 2d10.
Not sure if it's been brought up already in the comments, but I don't hear anything about enhanced bond's second part, where a spell you cast other than self can originate from the spirit instead of yourself.
With the fly speed, it can enhance Thorn Whip pretty well to pull enemies into zones or even just pull them straight up and drop them for +1d6 and prone.
I love the idea of a Wildfire Druid/Swarmkeeper Ranger focusing on Thorn Whip
48:20
Guild merchant lets you start with a mule and a cart, pick whichever small race you like and ride your horse into battle. When it dies, sick your zombie on your enemies. You might even be able to make your mule a sidekick for a longer lasting mount
Great video. Love these!
Moon druids are bananas. Something I don't hear people mention often though is the low AC that comes with beast forms. It certainly doesn't balance it out, but enemies are hitting the wildshaped druid a lot more often than most other members of the party, unless you've got some sort of spell to boost your defense.
I homebrewed a revised version of the Circle of the Land which changes some of the spells, and allows Land's Stride to effect magical difficult terrain as well as non magical difficult terrain. Then Nature's Ward, immunity to charmed, frightened, and poisoned just in general. And then of course immune to disease.
What I did is allow at 6th to make himself and up to WIS mod number of allies be immune to the effects of "terrain" spells the Druid casts. And at 10 th level I allowed the Druid to cast it's expanded spells once per long rest each without spending slots.
@@pedrodarosamello64 Those are good ideas as well and I might consider them too in future campaigns
The biggest drawback to the Moon Druid is that playing one in a long campaign will make you want to buy *every* new book that comes out, in the hope that they will have new, useful beasts.
I think some Wildshape scaling on the order of Summon Beast could make the Moon Druid effective but not overbearing across the full level range (except maybe level 20). Of course, that's current design philosophy versus 2014 design philosophy, but it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to work out. Edit: other comments reminded me that Treantmonk has already done something similar... I'll have to see if I can get my DM to allow it, next time I get the urge to wildshape.
Gotta see if I can convince my DM to allow Zealoraptors! Its Adventure League legal!!
Your druid has to have seen the creature to be able to wild shape into it. Any _reasonable_ application of this rule will prevent foolish beast prospecting. (Dylan Ba -- Has your druid ever _seen_ a "Zealoraptor"?)
50:38 what cantrip did you say? Cause it sounds like welcome and captions thinks it too.
I realize this series is very focused on power rankings, but there’s no table I’ve played in where the Moon Druid has actually been problematic. No player I’ve played with WANTS to overshadow the party, just to be an effective team member. It’s possible to not choose the top level forms for every encounter, or not always wildshape.
Maybe my tables are different than most, but I find the “break your game” claims to be more of white room theorycrafting than representative of real world play. I could be wrong.
still def S tier btw
@@sharkforce8147 absolutely - I guess I was reacting to Treantmonk saying he would regret playing if someone chose Moon Druid, which may be an indication that his games may be vastly different than any game I’ve been a part of.
@@sharkforce8147 and my point is that in my real world play experience, that hasn’t actually happened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So came up with a very interesting and fun idea that appears to work RAW. Be a chain pact warlock lvl 3 (any subclass seems to fit this okay), next be lvl 6+ sheperd druid. Now the fun part. You can obtain a new set of familiars from find familiar (note it doesnt limit to the warlocks casting of find familiar). We pick imp. Now thanks to Tashas we burn a wildshape charge for a familiar, and using chain pact, we conjure our imp. Since summoned this way it counts as a fey. Since it counts as a fey and we summoned it it gets the hp bonus from lvl 6 druid (now 16hp). We pop the bear on it if you wanted and thats an additional 11 hp. Now the fun comes if you go another 3 lvls into sorc and pick up dragons breath to stay invisible while "attacking" or shocking grasp (lose invisible). You have a flying (mostly invisible) pikachu. enjoy!