A quick Ravnica update! During a live streamed show this week, WoC's Nathan Stewart showed off the Circle of Spores druid from the upcoming Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. Thanks to the folks over at sageadvice.eu for grabbing screenshots!
Not sure I understand the reason for changing it from Poison to Necrotic though, especially when the extra melee damage from the Symbiotic Entity is still Poison.
im pretty sure it’s an Easter egg for the MtG players. The fungus Druid is very flavored around Golgari, who in Magic are green and black mana. Poison is green, and Necrotic is Black in this case.
I mentioned this on reddit, but I'll repeat it here.
This feels like a subclass that is going to feel very bad to play at an actual table.
Con saves are not a good thing to target, especially when the effect does nothing on a save. This is not a feature that is going to succeed very often.
The melee attack adding poison damage is sad, because poison is the most resisted damage type in the game. In addition to that, there is no scaling since Druids never get extra attacks. It's like the Moon Druid level 2 boost without benefits later in the game.
Lastly, the zombie feature is going to clash with Halo of Spores because both are competing for your reaction. In fights where you are fighting beasts or humanoids, you are going to have to forgo using Halo of Spores in order to have a chance to raise a zombie. Competing action economies like this make for messy gameplay.
It looks like it will be very strong early game, but fall off heavily with levels to the point where you probably won't even want to be a melee fighter once you get Spreading Spores. Maybe that's ok, maybe it will be cool to have a character that starts as a melee fighter and transitions into a mage. However, I always read about how people only play up until level 10 or so. If that is the case then you will probably really like your first few levels and feel pretty weak by the end of the campaign.
I like it, it's thematic and is a very unique iteration of the druid. I don't think WOTC goes into making subclasses thinking how can we make this the most overpowered choice?