God Wiz...er...I mean, Druid?

[KarinsDad]

Obviously. Milage may vary, and I can see a point being made that some DM's might dislike Raptors or so, but I've yet to see a DM say "nope" to a Druid who wants to summon a pack of wolves. Or "Reef sharks...? You are getting monkeys, my friend".

DMs at my table say nope all of the time by making it random. Besides, if you get monkeys, they can be commanded to Help the melee PCs. They can be commanded to form a line and all do the Dodge action. Let alone the places that they can get into. Monkeys rule in 5E.

 

[BacchusNL]

DMs at my table say nope all of the time by making it random. Besides, if you get monkeys, they can be commanded to Help the melee PCs. They can be commanded to form a line and all do the Dodge action. Let alone the places that they can get into. Monkeys rule in 5E.

Yeah...monkeys are awesome. Less so when you are underwater and was hoping to summon a pack of Reef Sharks though. Great way to miss the point !

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah...monkeys are awesome. Less so when you are underwater and was hoping to summon a pack of Reef Sharks though. Great way to miss the point !

Maybe. But I don’t think he did.

He disagreed with your main point that dm’s give a player say in the animals they summon by citing his experieience with a random summon that he gets no say in. That’s a pretty common method for determining what you summon when the dm doesn’t grant you the ability to pick yourself.

His comment about monkeys was a side note about how well he likes monkeys. It wasn’t a claim that you were wrong, just a claim you could have used a better example.

 

[FrogReaver]

What everyone else said, but also Heat Metal. It is a nasty debuff that only druids and bards get. Target metal armor to make a creature have permanent disadvantage on attacks and checks. Free bonus action damage every turn. Target a weapon to disarm if you thing they can't make a Con save (or don't want to, because success means they are still holding scalding hot metal).

Heat metal is an awesome spell. It’s just damage though and only works well against a small subset of enemies, those that use metal armor. I don’t think it helps fulfill the god Druid concept better than other spells you could take do. But it’s still a great spell to have

 

[FrogReaver]

Snare doesn't!
It's also conveniently on the Druid spell list, making it worth consideration.

Another handy spell for Druid's is Guidance. The best buffing Cantrip in the game.

Snare also takes a minute to cast and consumes 25ft of rope. I don’t think it’s very useful because of those things.

Guidance is great. I wasn’t ranking cantrips but it is great.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Thanks for some great advice guys.

I'm going to give summon-type spells a miss. They are tactically great, but I want to avoid hogging the screen time at the table.

Any thoughts on which druid circle?

If you're looking to get access to as many non-druid spells as possible underdark is the way to go. You mentioned building for 5th level and at that point all of the underdark spells granted are spells you wouldn't normally be able to cast. I also have a soft spot for it since Web is one of my favourite spells. It's pretty similar to entangle but it's control is reusable, triggering a save if you manage to push targets back into the area with something like Thunderwave.

Grassland stands out for Invisibility and Haste which are both very solid.

Coast gets you Mirror Image and Misty Step which are pretty good defensively.

Mountain gives Lightning Bolt which can very easily become a bread and butter spell. When playing a wizard I found that falling back on blast spells once I had a control spell up could be pretty effective.

 

[FrogReaver]

I wanted to give mountain another nudge. Spider climb is great for a god wizard as it allows the party easy access to places they normally couldn’t go.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Heat metal is an awesome spell. It’s just damage though and only works well against a small subset of enemies, those that use metal armor. I don’t think it helps fulfill the god Druid concept better than other spells you could take do. But it’s still a great spell to have

You really need to look at the spell before dismissing it. Heat metal also imposes disadvantage on the enemy while they're touching the object. If you cast it on armor, you get the 'just damage' as a bonus action every round AND impose disadvantage on all of their attacks. If you cast it on a weapon, they have the choice of either dropping the weapon or taking disadvantage (and damage every round when you use your bonus action) for the rest of the fight. That's a huge ability to weaken an enemy, especially a 'boss type' enemy. And for added goodness - while there's a con save listed, it's not a save against the better effects of the spell; if you make the con save, it just lets you drop a weapon without taking damage, it doesn't let you avoid the disadvantage effect.

Giving an enemy disadvantage on all attacks for the cost of a 2nd level spell slot and concentration is really powerful - sometimes it will cripple a major enemy, and at higher level it's nice for reducing damage from the 'some bandits attack you on your way into the dungeon' encounters.

 

[FrogReaver]

You really need to look at the spell before dismissing it. Heat metal also imposes disadvantage on the enemy while they're touching the object. If you cast it on armor, you get the 'just damage' as a bonus action every round AND impose disadvantage on all of their attacks. If you cast it on a weapon, they have the choice of either dropping the weapon or taking disadvantage (and damage every round when you use your bonus action) for the rest of the fight. That's a huge ability to weaken an enemy, especially a 'boss type' enemy. And for added goodness - while there's a con save listed, it's not a save against the better effects of the spell; if you make the con save, it just lets you drop a weapon without taking damage, it doesn't let you avoid the disadvantage effect.

Giving an enemy disadvantage on all attacks for the cost of a 2nd level spell slot and concentration is really powerful - sometimes it will cripple a major enemy, and at higher level it's nice for reducing damage from the 'some bandits attack you on your way into the dungeon' encounters.

Cool. I didn’t realize it gave disadvantage to attacks. That makes it a lot better than I had thought. It’s competitive with wind wall IMO.

 

[rgoodbb]

I was really looking forward to Heat Metal and took it at third level as a Druid. Used it one time only all the way to 7th. Not one decent enemy wearing armour. Not one! Really disappointing. I made an Oni drop its glaive with it but that was pretty meh. Incredibly niche for my Druid unfortunately.