New Wild Shape

[Bolares]

Wildshape's function in combat was that it made you more robust, like you'd expect a large bear to be. The free HP was just how it was done. If the new wildshape gave you AC equal to 10+2xWIS it would still do that, but AC that caps out at 15 and a d8 hit dice just doesn't make for a viable melee frontliner.

A druid with a shield and a shillelagh can have more ac, access to spells and about the same melee damage until level 5. after level 5 you have half the number of attacks, but being able to cast spells is reason enough to never wild shape in combat.

 

[billd91]

Wild shape was a very player unfriendly ability, as the standard player resources did not contain what was needed to use it properly. That is fixed by standard stat blocks.

I think that's the one thing on this post I agree with. I have no problem with there being a standard set of adjustments for a wild shaping druid. It makes the game design easier, up to a point. I'm not entirely keen on replacing Str and Dex with Wis every time since you could end up with some unusually dexterous elephants or strong dik-diks. And that's a bit weird.

And seriously, I feel the image of the unsuspicious deer in the background suddenly turning to a long bearded man with lightning crackling around their fingers is a much cooler druid-themed start of combat than the wannabe werewolf style dominating in 5ed now.

That may be your take on it. And you could do that with 5e wildshaping too. Why not let the druid player choose the way they want to perceive their character? If they want to transform into a bear or other combat-focused animal as their vision of how their druid fights, that should be perfectly fine.

There's a point when focusing on niche protection or game balance just ends up making it too weird. And a druid not learning to turn into some of the most mundane creatures in the world like hares, weasels, badgers, and ravens until they're already halfway up their ultimate power scale is almost too deranged to contemplate. For a zero to hero character like D&D covers, you'd think these forms should be the first shapes for a fledgling druid to learn.

The D&D Next druid's wildshaping with its array of standard forms didn't survive the play test surveys. I guess we'll see if this iteration of that idea does.

 

[billd91]

A druid with a shield and a shillelagh can have more ac, access to spells and about the same melee damage until level 5. after level 5 you have half the number of attacks, but being able to cast spells is reason enough to never wild shape in combat.

IF that's the kind of druid you want to play. If you want to play the animal combatant, however, those extra hit points from the forms were pretty important since most of the animal forms get chewed through fast.

 

[Bolares]

IF that's the kind of druid you want to play. If you want to play the animal combatant, however, those extra hit points from the forms were pretty important since most of the animal forms get chewed through fast.

Maybe I wasn't clear. i'm saying that now there is no reason to go to wild shape. I agree with you on the importance of the extra hit points, or at least some other form of expanded survivability.

 

[Bolares]

And there is a flavor problem to me to. Maybe it's just me, but transforming in to a generic stat block and saying it's a bear or a wolf or anything I like doesn't give me the same immersion of using the stat block of that beast. I agree the 5e wild shape is cumbersome, but if you are going to give me fixed stat blocks, at least give me more than one so I can choose something.

 

[mellored]

Personally, I'd rather have empty levels than levels filled with features I'm not going to use. That's power budget being assigned that could have gone into more generic features or allow for stronger subclasses.

My personal view is that wildshape, or at least combat wildshape, shouldn't be a core druid feature.

Agreed.

IMO, the core features should utility. Including wild shape into non-combat stuff like a deer, summoning non-combat animals, controling non-combat fire, non-combat weather.

And the sub-classes give combat options. Combat wild shape. Combat summons. Combat wild fire. Combat weather.

 

[Stalker0]

. Tiny forms tend to have surprisingly bad Stealth abilities.

except they have the best disguise ability in the game.

Oh look I see a rat….who cares I’m in a castle filled with rats, rats are just a thing. Why would the enemy suddenly care about this one rat he happens to see?

Nothing is what, leaving the Druid to just go about his business investigating everything. And if I am attacked, I can slip into the tiny hole i came through, giving me way better protection than if a rogue was caught.

Druids are the best scouts by far, it’s not even close to me. They get that and full spell casting, that’s just too good to me. I think the nerfs are reasonable, or weaken their spellcasting to give them better wild shape. For example, when they wildshape (at 5th level let’s say) they can go tiny if they consume 1 3rd level slot. So they pay for the privilege of that powerful scouting

 

[OB1]

except they have the best disguise ability in the game.

Oh look I see a rat….who cares I’m in a castle filled with rats, rats are just a thing. Why would the enemy suddenly care about this one rat he happens to see?

Nothing is what, leaving the Druid to just go about his business investigating everything. And if I am attacked, I can slip into the tiny hole i came through, giving me way better protection than if a rogue was caught.

Druids are the best scouts by far, it’s not even close to me. They get that and full spell casting, that’s just too good to me. I think the nerfs are reasonable, or weaken their spellcasting to give them better wild shape.

Show me a castle full of rats and I'll show you a druid popping out of wild shape after getting pounced by a castle cat

 

[Clint_L]

The issue here is partially one of backwards compatibility. I know that technically these changes are backwards compatible in the sense that they still work within the framework of 5e. But in terms of how they play, they are such a radical alteration of what the druid is as a class, especially the moon druid, that a player would be justifiably upset. This would be very much like (in fact, almost exactly the same as) telling feral druids in World of Warcraft that they can no longer tank, and most of their combat options and damage are being nerfed, too.

Getting the hit points of whatever you transformed in was the cornerstone of wild shape, along with the flexibility for shapes to fit different situations. The first is just flat out gone, the second dramatically reduced. And I also emphasize how lousy it is to have to wait until level 11 (so functionally never, for 90% of druids) to get to become tiny with all the fun opportunities that presents.

Druids overall are considered a mediocre class, aside from moon druids, so the entire class taking a nerf is just going to make them even less popular than they currently are. Moon druids currently are in a strange state in that they are way OP at levels 2-4 and again at levels 17-20, but pretty balanced in the middle. Certainly that needs some massaging. But with this set of changes they become probably the worst sub-class of what is going to be seen as one of the worst classes.

I know some folks will argue that druids are already great without wild shape because they are a full caster class and yada yada, but that's not what is shown by actual player preferences. So these changes take a bat to a class that, moon druids aside, probably needed a slight buff.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Wildshape plus Pass Without Trace did make Druids very insane scouts/thieves/infiltrators.

I get the need to nerf Druids, they're definitely one of the strongest classes (I'd put 'em at number 2 myself), but the new Wildshape just seems a bit uninspired to me.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I like the general direction, even if it needs some refinement. Keeping DM facing material out the hands of players is the only bit of design philosophy I've seen in OneD&D that I consider to be substantially better than what LevelUp does.

 

[mellored]

Level 1
Druid magic. Once per short rest, you can do one of the following. These all take concentration, as if concentrating on a spell.

-Harmless wild shape. As an action you can turn into an unobtrusive prey creature, such as a deer or mouse, that most people will overlook. You can not attack, speak, or cast spells in this form, but otherwise still use your game statistics. You can end the form as a bonus action, or if you are knocked unconscious.

-Influence plants. You spend 10 minutes getting a plant to grow into a particular shape that it could of naturally grown into. This can be used to make roots appear as a ladder, or vines become swing, or have a tree bend over to reach the top of a building. A plant can only be affected by this feature once per month.

-Influence weather. You adjust the natural weather one step in a 1 mile radius. This can turn light rain into heavy rain, or a cold day into just a mild one. This effect doesn't stack.

-Influence fire. You can gently directing the flow of a large natural fire within 150'. This is a slow effect and does not allow the fire to do anything unnatural, though can be unlikely. For instance, you could allow you to have a druid grove untouched by a forest fire, or push a town fire to leap to a certain building (assuming the residents don't extinguish it first).

Level 2:
Healing blossom.

Level 3, chose a sub class.
Combat wild shape.
Combat plant shape.
Combat fire shape.
Combat weather shape.

Level ?
Improved Druid magic.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

If this new wildshape feature becomes the official version, I will simply not use this Druid going forward even if I like most of the other class revisions. There are only two features I like from this UA version and I might graft them into the 2014 Druid but that’s really all I’ll use from this revision.

 

[TwoSix]

A druid with a shield and a shillelagh can have more ac, access to spells and about the same melee damage until level 5. after level 5 you have half the number of attacks, but being able to cast spells is reason enough to never wild shape in combat.

Yep. Wildshape is actually a combat downgrade in Tier 1, unless they decide to nerf shillelagh (which seems quite possible). The only benefit I see is increased speed and better Str/Dex checks.

 

[Bolares]

Wildshape plus Pass Without Trace did make Druids very insane scouts/thieves/infiltrators.

I get the need to nerf Druids, they're definitely one of the strongest classes (I'd put 'em at number 2 myself), but the new Wildshape just seems a bit uninspired to me.

I don’t think druids needed a nerf. They are the keast played class in the PHB, nerfing them won’t improve that

 

[Bolares]

Yep. Wildshape is actually a combat downgrade in Tier 1, unless they decide to nerf shillelagh (which seems quite possible). The only benefit I see is increased speed and better Str/Dex checks.

If they don’t nerf shillelagh, I’d say even in tier 2 it’s a downgrade, because of the loss of access to spellcasting

 

[Zubatcarteira]

I don’t think druids needed a nerf. They are the keast played class in the PHB, nerfing them won’t improve that

I'd bet they're less played more for complexity and just having annoying things to deal with, like the metal armor thing, wildshape needing to look for statblocks and have seen them in-game, prepared spellcasting with a lot of concentration, summoning spells being annoying to deal with, etc. The SRD also has the Land subclass, not the Moon one, so that's what appears on Beyond if you don't have stuff unlocked, which I think would impact things a bit as well.

Making things simpler and having Moon as default would prob help more. Having played both a Druid and a Barbarian back to back, the power and versatility difference is just night and day.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I think we need to dig into what a Druid can and should do and what the limits of those should be. Some people have rightfully brought up that the Druid has stepped on other classes toes (possibly more so than the Wizard which might be another "problem"). Not counting the ridiculous things a (high-level) 3.5e Druid can do, like being wildshaped into a bear casting spells while riding on a dire bear companion, leading a horde of summoned bears.

And I felt summoning was another big aspect of the Druid in the past too, and I guess they could use those beast stats for some summons I guess, but they'd have to be weaker than wildshaping because of the existing in 2 places thing, as in being a humanoid caster and having something out there fighting. Whereas I feel wildshaping should be like summoning but stronger, in that it's sort of like you are summoning something, but disappearing from the area.

Though this is too much of a combat-centric outlook into what Wildshaping is, and I always thought scouting was a major thing. It's still there with the familiar, but I've felt it's better if it was the Druid themselves.

I guess it can go back to Wildshape vs Summons, into the whole being there or not there at the time as a thing.

 

[Azzy]

I generally like the expanded options of Channel Nature (not in love with the name, though—something like "Nature's Blessing" would sound better) including Wild Companion (from Tasha's) and Healing Blossoms (though I think that how it's currently implemented is underwhelming). Despite these new options, most of the features of the base class revolve around Wildshape, to my dismay, instead of adding more interesting non-Wildshape features. And speaking of the Wildshape ability, they make it worse: gone are the ablative hp, you don't gain an aquatic form until 7th level (as opposed to 4th level in the 2014 PHB), you don't gain an aerial form until 9th level (as opposed to 8th level), and, quixotically, you can't turn into a Tiny creature until 11th level! Even though I'd like to see Wildshape de-emphasized in the base class, it didn't need to be nerfed!

I do understand that the templates will make things easier, and I'm mostly okay with them. However, the execution is lackluster—like others have suggested, I'd be more onboard with these templates if you could modify the base form with secondary traits such as pounce, pack tactics, spider climb, etc. to better model different animal types.

As to the Circle of the Moon... What the hell, WotC?! This subclass was about being able to use more powerful Wildshape forms than the base class and being able to tank effectively. Now all you get is the standard Wildshape form with a bonus action Unarmed Strike. Again, the loss of ablative hp hurt the tanking ability of this subclass and, if that wasn't enough, the 6th-level Primal Strike ability is gone—nerf upon nerf. Elemental Wildshape has been changed, too—while it now comes online at 6th level (instead of 10th level), you no longer turn into an elemental, but instead gain elemental resistance/damage to attacks. Not exactly awful, but a change that's unnecessary. Overall, this revised subclass is a major downgrade and something I wouldn't want to play.

 

[OB1]

Just thought of a small change that could be made to the playtest version of the Druid that would align with the goals of making the Druid more focused on spellcasting but still give an excellent reason to Wildshape with the new stat blocks.

When you enter your Wildshape form, taking damage does not force a concentration check.

The major buff of not having your concentration broken is offset by the weaker and less useful animal form, but still gives the PC something to do every turn while they concentrate on a summons or other spell.