D&D 5E UA Druid Speculation/Wishlists

[dropbear8mybaby]

An elemental summoner, ala 1e druid, would be cool.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Swarm would be nice.

I expect a "Circle of the Spirits" for shaman-esque druids

I'd hope for an animal companion druid, but given the utter shenanigans rangers are going through with regards to their animal companion, I just don't know. I don't know that you can balance having a dang tiger fight alongside you at 2nd level. Even you turning INTO a Tiger is borderline OP at 2nd level, and this would let you do that damage, plus your own.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I think that if there's an Animal Companion Druid, it'll probably be the Shaman. After all they made the Spirit Companion the big feature of the Shaman after a bunch of tries at the concept, so I definitely see them using those types of Shaman for Druids with Animal Companions. And the Companion going down in combat is going to be easily fixed if the companion is really just some sort of manifested spirit.

 

[RCanine]

I'd have two picks. The first is an animal-companion-oriented druid, the second one would be a one that focuses on wild shape, but more like 4E's version of wild shape, which remained medium sized and had a single shared hit point total.

I think both of those designs are a bit challenging to make mechanically distinct, but they're the types of druids I want​ to play.

 

[Redthistle]

Circle of the Stars: Diviners/Seers.

Circle of the Law: Brehon judges out of Irish-Celtic legend.

Circle of the Stones: Priests of a faith older than the Gods.

Here! Here! to these suggestions, especially the Brehon judges.

True confession: I am a fan of Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma mysteries, an excellent resource to get a feel of Brehon law.

 

[costermonger]

I think an anti-druid of some kind is possible. 2e had a kit for it and 3e had various flavours including variant class abilities around death including getting turn undead and atleast one prestige class (blighter). don't know about 4e but that still shows a history for the archetype.
Other archetypes from past editions include terrain specific (already covered with land spell lists), anti-civilization groups, wild shape specialists (moon), animal companions (unlikely considering the issues with the ranger), swarm/vermin shapeshifters and druids that become plants of some sort.
I would like to see the last two the most as far as flavour goes, but mechanically i'd like an option between the melee speciality of moon druids and the heavily spell reliant land druids. it would probably need extra spell access for melee buffs, but subclass abilities could cover it too.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Given that the college of glamour bard had a fey origin and the fair number of fey in Volo's Guide to Monsters, maybe a circle of the gates druid that focused on the Feywild and/or Shadowfell would be a good fit.

 

[rgoodbb]

Swarm is cool

Something more plant based as well: Circle of the Oak maybe.
"Warp Wood for the win!"

 

[Parmandur]

Some good ideas in this thread.

My thought is, given the direction they have been going with multiclass subclasses,maybe we will see some Druid Circles that bend the archetype towards other classes, a rogueish or wizardish subclass of some sort?

 

[Ganymede81]

Circle of the Calamity - Focuses on harnessing the power of natural disasters.