D&D (2024) Druid w/ Pet Dinosaur - Help Me Build Character

[MGibster]

I have a player with a character concept a bit outside the norm. He's playing a Druid, and his intention is to have a pet animal that does the direct fighting while he sits in the back and casts supportive spells. If you've ever played World of Warcraft, this sounds an awful lot like one of their Hunters. I'm not quite sure how to go about helping the player's vision come true. I want to be fair to all the other players, so I don't want to just give the Druid a foolproof method of doing a bunch of extra damage and do all his regular Druid stuff. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it, and I thought you guys might be helpful.

One avenue I see is to multiclass into Ranger for three levels and become a Beastmaster. But so far, my player indicates his desire to be a Druid and just train this animal like one might train an attack dog. Okay, but how should that work? A Beastmaster Ranger can use his bonus action to have its pet attack, should I allow the same for my Druid with his trained animal? The pet's a dinosaur, I mentioned that, right? Anyway, it's a dinosaur, and I'm not even sure how many hit dice it should have. At some point, I would expect the party to level high enough to where this pet is going to be left in the dust. i.e. It's abilities will not keep up.

Any ideas?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'd probably just port the Ranger's Beastmaster subclass over to be the subclass for the Druid, making any small tweaks necessary to fit the new class. You'd use the Beast of the Land companion statblock for it and you'd have to find a replacement for the Level 11 Bestial Fury ability for extra damage related to Hunter's Mark... but that shouldn't be that big of a deal.

 

[MGibster]

I'd probably just port the Ranger's Beastmaster subclass over to be the subclass for the Druid, making any small tweaks necessary to fit the new class. You'd use the Beast of the Land companion statblock for it and you'd have to find a replacement for the Level 11 Bestial Fury ability for extra damage related to Hunter's Mark... but that shouldn't be that big of a deal.

That's an option, but I feel as though this is a bit unfair. Perhaps if I were to remove wilds shape to balance things out?

 

[Tonguez]

Conjure Animal lets you summon a swarm of beasties

just rp'd those beasties as actual dinos instead of a spirit thing and let the Druid use another spellslot to heal the Dino, it balances out since the Druid needs to use their spell slot to get the Dino active

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's an option, but I feel as though this is a bit unfair. Perhaps if I were to remove wilds shape to balance things out?

Obviously you'll have to do what you think will work best for your game... but I don't see anything offhand that would be unbalanced by just using the Beastmaster subclass. I'm imagining that you are thinking that having a druid in wildshape form while also having a beast companion fighting next to them is the problem? I don't know if I would agree with that. The Druid has to command the beast to attack using their Bonus action, which means the beast won't be attacking on the same round the Druid wildshapes. That's one round of beast damage the Druid is giving up. The Beastmaster subclass also normally gives a Ranger the opportunity to give their second attack (that they get via Extra Attack) to let the beast attack again... but the Druid doesn't have Extra Attack as a feature-- meaning that the beast is slightly nerfed in that regard. The beast won't attack as often for a Druid as they would potentially for a Ranger.

Now that being said... the Druid's Circle of the Stars is a subclass that swaps out the wildshape feature for a different use... so if you really didn't want the Druid PC to wildshape you could let them spend their wildshape uses for some other action. Like for instance when the beast is given the order to attack when the Druid uses their Bonus action... you could allow the Druid to also spend a wildshape use to let the beast attack twice. Now for all I know that could be even more overpowered than just letting the Druid wildshape... but that's something you'd have to figure out for yourself.

But speaking personally, here's my philosophy on the matter-- any potentially "unbalanced" thing I might give to a particular player for their character I just treat as being nothing more than like a giving them a magic item. You give a player a magic item, that character is now "unbalanced" compared to the other players in the party (if we are going under the assumption that all the classes have been designed to be relatively balanced against each other.) So giving a PC a different subclass or new class feature or whatever? That's just like getting a magic item except there's no physical object. And as the party plays... at least for me... if I ever find certain characters seem more powerful than others in the party, I just start giving out magic items to help the underpowered ones and everything works out. And that's the easy way to handle this situation-- if the Beastmaster Druid PC feels overpowered... just give out some magic items that will get taken and use by the other PCs and everything will work out fine.