Archer Druid Subclass?

Bladesinger isn't really a functional martial character. It has a common issue with full casters trying to be something else: once you have gained a few caster levels you are far to busy casting spells to have a chance to draw a martial weapon. "Not casting a spell" is almost always a sub-optimal tactical choice.

It exists not because a martial wizard was needed, but because Bladesingers have a long and deep tradition in Forgotten Realms lore.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

77IM

Explorer!!!
Supporter
[MENTION=6880599]ClaytonCross[/MENTION] you are full of good ideas on this thread. You made me realize that the druid shouldn't be stealing class features from the ranger or paladin... they should be stealing from the cleric. So, I made this thing: Circle of the Sun
 

ClaytonCross

Kinder reader Inflection wanted
[MENTION=6880599]ClaytonCross[/MENTION] you are full of good ideas on this thread. You made me realize that the druid shouldn't be stealing class features from the ranger or paladin... they should be stealing from the cleric. So, I made this thing: Circle of the Sun

lol, well ok. I'll take it.

Looking over your design a couple of suggestions/notes

1.you forgot to mark the level you get Channel Primal Energy.

2. Druids get more Wild Shape feature charges than Clerics get channel divinity. If would recommend it costing 2 wild shape charges per Channel Primal Energy to bring them more in line with each other.

3. I would recommend at the least that Turn the Unnatural read "Each aberration or undead (your choice)" instead of "and" because doing both is already stronger than "Turn Undead" which has been a signature spell of clerics as long as I can remember, and doing both at the same time (while really rare) is supper over powered by comparison. That's said, if you made it Aberrations only it would make the ability more distinctively the Druids ability without stepping on the party Clerics toes in their moment to shine. I get that undead is corruption, I just believe that it is also a party game and you need to leave room for things that are already class specialties and "Turn Undead" is not just a cleric specialty but perhaps their most famous one second to having healing spell which druid also have.

4. Rite of the Summer Solstice is and interesting "oh crap" button if two or more party members fall in one turn. The dispelimg darkness however has some drawbacks you might not have considered. In particular the party warlock is not going to be happy when you dispel the darkness spell he just cast with one of his/her 2-4 spell slots. If you don't use it because your so your warlock can do his thing then you might lose some party members. Also, this spell just with the healing and AC Bonus is pretty powerful. I would recommend changing the light effect to bright light actually excluding areas of magical darkness specifically then add something more like fairy fire "all creatures except one you choose that obscured or hidden by non-magical darkness or are invisible are illuminated with a faint glow and revealing them for the duration". The duration of 1 minute for a spell the heals, stops players from dying (Mass spare the dying), reveals enemies in some way, and raises your defenses is too powerful for a bonus action and one minute duration spell without a concentration restriction even with cost of two wild shape charges, better to extend the range to 60ft +30 ft so it can cover more players at once and reduce the duration to "Until the end of your next turn". Remember, its adding to all healing from any source including healing potion and other players spells by ending it at the end of your turn everyone including yourself gets a chance to benefit and when you consider things like mass cure wounds that's super powerful. Also, the static +wisdom to AC is too powerful and to inflexible as a static. Making all attacks vs the caster at disadvantage means clerics don't have to max out wisdom to benefit incase they put a lot into str,dex,con, and a minimum 13 wiz etc. and it means and effective +5 to AC while leaving it more to chance against high rolls.

Example:

Rite of the Summer Solstice. You can channel the power of the sun. As an action, you create a wave of light emanating from yourself that lasts until the end of your next turn that stretches out as bright light for 60 feet then dim light for another 30feet causing any attacks against you to be made at disadvantage. All creatures except ones you choose are illuminated with a faint glow and revealing them for the duration. If they are obscured or hidden by non-magical darkness or are invisible they are revealed and unable to hide for the duration. When you or an ally within 30 feet of you regains lost hit points, they heal an additional number of hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum +1). An ally within 30 feet who drops to 0 hit points but is not killed automatically becomes stable.

6. Solar Strike is more powerful that smite with a permanent +1d8/+2d8 radiant. I would recommend +1d4/+2d4 (I know d6 would similar to hex or hunter's mark, but this more powerful since their is not concentration requirement so it can stack with a number of other things)

7. Sun's Bounty … This is the equitant of 12 Greater healing potions (gold value 3,000gp) that normally would take you 120 days to make, made in 8 hours for 1 silver..... This is so broken I am not even going to touch this. I might recommend something like Hero's feast as an alternate template all together.
 



Coroc

Hero
Take an attack cantrip, refluff it as Moonbow, you can even let it deal radiant damage and needing no arrows and take Wis as attack stat. It will not break anything if it does not do more than 1d10 damage. You can either require it to have a bow at hand or even let it create a shimmering bow made from moonlight.

Heck you can even make it stronger but that's more fiddly and should have something to balance it out e.g. no wildshape.
 

Li Shenron

Legend
Yes, sure, you COULD build an archer druid by multiclassing, but I'm just thinking out loud (well, on paper...I mean, digitally) here.

I'm imagining a druid circle that focuses on protecting sacred areas from outsiders/trespassers/invaders. Circle of Wardens? ("Circle of Wagons"...heh heh heh...)

Note: all of this could apply equally to melee weapons, but in my mind I'm imagining bows or even slings.

Two obvious ideas are:
- Use Wisdom instead of Dex for bow/sling attacks (Shillelagh for ranged weapons)
- Divine Smite equivalent. Poison would be the most flavorful damage type, but so many creatures have resistance/immunity to Poison.

Any ideas for nifty abilities be that aren't just damage boosts?

Bonus spells list might include:
- Alarm
- Hunter's Mark
- Suggestion
- See Invisibility
- ???

Thoughts?

Meh... honestly I don't think archery is a character concept significant enough to design a subclass for it. In fact, the closest example is possibly the Arcane Archer which is eventually quite a lot more than just an archer (the other attempted subclass was the Sharpshooter and was rejected heavily).

But IMHO it's not even significant enough to multiclass for it... Just get a feat or two and it's enough. Perhaps the bad part of it, is that getting the basic proficiency in bows is very expensive, as it costs the first feat just to get that (I remember that during the playtest the weapon-specialization feats included proficiency, but the PHB ones do not so you need to spend a separate feat on that).
 


I personally don't think there's any design space for it, particularly given that the ranger exists. Give them an extra attack and they already step on the ranger's (weak) martial toes. The ranger only gets 2 attacks, has a sorry spell progression with limited spells known, and their minor exploration benefits are subjective and highly DM/campaign dependent (not to mention quite replaceable with magic). With any additional martial bent, the 9 level spellcasting, shapeshifting druid would grossly "out ranger" the ranger.

If you're willing to write the PHB ranger off as a lost cause, I suppose there's some room to explore this concept. But unlike the paladin, there just isn't much of a power gap for anything functional between the full caster and the hybrid version. Either they get decent bow attacks (and then why would you want to be a ranger?) or their bow attacks are basically refluffed cantrips (which is fine, but not enough to hang a subclass on).
 

G

Guest 6801328

Guest
I personally don't think there's any design space for it, particularly given that the ranger exists.

I find it curious that people keep making this comparison. I find Druids to be thematically so different from Rangers. But maybe mechanically they aren't?

FWIW I do agree that "Druid with a bow" isn't a sufficient concept by itself. Part of what I was hoping to discuss in this thread was if there's a deeper concept to mine here, of which "...with a bow" is just a thematically appropriate component. It wouldn't need to compete DPR-wise with a Ranger, but it should be something...cool and Druid-ish.

Maybe there's no "here" here, but the best ideas come from exploring areas that are overlooked/dismissed by the unimaginative masses.
 

Remove ads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Remove ads

Recent & Upcoming Releases

Top