D&D 5E Moon Circle Druid Play Report

[Cannyjiggit]

editted the correct part of my post instead.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think it might be wise to let the druid play as written for a while before pulling out the nerf hammer. Just be certain you truly understand the class, and that you are enforcing the rules already in place, such as no talking in beast form and the time limits on shapeshifting.
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The importance of this advice cannot be understated.

 

[Joe Liker]

As an example, the bear has 35hp. The enemies in the encounter hit on average of 5hp of damage or so. That's 7 hits before the first bear goes down. No matter, druid can just wild shape back into a bear again for another 35 free hp. 7 hits later, the druid is back to druid form, and the enemies accomplished nothing.

The bear only has AC 11, so out of those 7 hits, only 3 or 4 would have hit a fighter, and only 4 or 5 would have hit most other party members.

But why are the enemies focusing exclusively on the bear? If they start killing the bear's friends, maybe the bear decides it's time to stop mauling and start healing. What about ranged attacks? Faced with an extremely strong melee combatant, why are the enemies even willing to go toe-to-toe rather than running away and picking it off with missiles? If I were tasked with killing a bear, you can bet I'd use a gun, not a knife. The utter lack of ranged attacks is a pretty big drawback for Mr. Bear.

If the DM is running the combat like a weak computer AI, the problem is not with one player's class. If you think the bear is too strong, you might want to consider exploiting its weaknesses.

 

[sithramir]

Everyone forgets the big point of power from wildshape. It's all the free HP's. Whaaa I'm getting hit more than the others. Who cares because I lose the HP's as soon as the spell ends anyway.

All the melee options from different animals is great too but no need for healing.

And when it ends you still have a full caster with healing who can wear armor who is basically fresh.

Hard to see it played and not go wait a second...

Put it this way. Send 2 of your melee PCs against it and see who wins. Its not all powerful but noticeably more at those levels

 

[KarinsDad]

Everyone forgets the big point of power from wildshape. It's all the free HP's. Whaaa I'm getting hit more than the others. Who cares because I lose the HP's as soon as the spell ends anyway.

All the melee options from different animals is great too but no need for healing.

And when it ends you still have a full caster with healing who can wear armor who is basically fresh.

Hard to see it played and not go wait a second...

Put it this way. Send 2 of your melee PCs against it and see who wins. Its not all powerful but noticeably more at those levels

I totally get this POV.

However, at our table, the players would love the fact that a fellow PC would have this ability. Our current Fighter has Heavy Armor Master and Parry and Second Wind (and Plate Armor and Shield most of the time). He soaks up (and avoids) a ton of damage that just goes away, just like for the Druid. Granted, he takes a little bit of damage, but at third level, he could ignore upwards of 45 or 50 points of damage in a massive fight (and has on several occasions). That's 6 or 7 1st level (or 4 2nd level) Cure Wound spells between short rests that do not need to be cast.

Not one player at our table has commented on how OP this is. We like it, even if it is not our PC.

When one has more of a team view of the PCs instead of an individual one, these strong game elements sometimes seem less unbalanced. However, I can definitely see where a DM might not view it that way.

 

[enigma32]

The bear only has AC 11, so out of those 7 hits, only 3 or 4 would have hit a fighter, and only 4 or 5 would have hit most other party members.

But why are the enemies focusing exclusively on the bear? If they start killing the bear's friends, maybe the bear decides it's time to stop mauling and start healing. What about ranged attacks? Faced with an extremely strong melee combatant, why are the enemies even willing to go toe-to-toe rather than running away and picking it off with missiles? If I were tasked with killing a bear, you can bet I'd use a gun, not a knife. The utter lack of ranged attacks is a pretty big drawback for Mr. Bear.

If the DM is running the combat like a weak computer AI, the problem is not with one player's class. If you think the bear is too strong, you might want to consider exploiting its weaknesses.

Did I forget to mention that the bear moves faster than most humanoids? He's pretty good at chasing down mobiles that try to use slings.

As for exploiting his weaknesses, that comes with a whole new set of issues. First, the game is not the DM vs the players. Not all enemies will know the proper way to take down a wild shaped druid just because I do. Also, I know from experience that it sucks to have a DM build encounters to nullify a certain player. Sure, I can build a bunch of encounters where the enemies are long range and never give the druid a chance to use his shiny powers, but that isn't fair to the player. The problem with an OP character in your game is that once introduced, there really is no fair way to deal with it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm pretty sure even the most dim witted creature knows it's better to attack a brown bear from range rather than walk right into melee. And it's not the DM vs the players to have the opponents act like they normally would in a logical manner appropriate to their intelligence and/or instinct.. There are plenty of fair ways to deal with this, you just need to think about it

 

[Stalker0]

Our current Fighter has Heavy Armor Master and Parry and Second Wind (and Plate Armor and Shield most of the time).

Do most 2nd level fighters have plate armor?

 

[keterys]

I think Parry is also not from 2nd level or lower. Technically, neither is (or should be) heavy armor master, but variant humans get to get it 3 levels early.

And yeah, I've heard lots of people say Heavy Armor Mastery is busted good at level 1 and 2. It falls away pretty quick, though.

Much like the druid. It's a problem at 2nd level. Whether you care, beats me. My advice, much like the ones for people complaining about feats (both that you don't get them fast enough and that they're too powerful at 1st), and for those who complain that the chance to die alters drastically from 1st to, say, 3rd: start at 4th level. The game system has some low level issues (features, for those who like that style), most of which are solved by leaving the apprentice tier.

Though a wild mage can still accidentally kill the whole party with a wild surge.

 

[pemerton]

haha, if a player said they were raised by tigers, I'd say, "Really? More likely you were eaten by tigers.". For one, tigers don't behave like that; they are pretty solitary. Secondly, it's pretty silly.

Huh? Being raised by animals is pretty much a staple of fantasy/fairy tales. For Romulus and Remus (and Mowgli) it was wolves, for Tarzan it was apes, but why couldn't it be lions? Or a tiger? Or some other animal that takes the player's fancy?