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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Enrahim2" data-source="post: 8948353" data-attributes="member: 7039850">I am curious - for those unhappy that the hulk megatank build for druids are gone - How would you feel if that was instead moved to the barbarian class, as an upgraded totem warrior/beast subclass? That is you are locked down to a single animal, not having the versatility of the druid. However you get the full flavor and versatility of your chosen animal along with the base barbarian rage buffs.The reason I ask is that I do recognize this as a pretty cool playstyle, it just seem to belong with the barbarian. That is the class that is supposed to have bursts of extreme martial power.I have seen noone talking about how this is fiting the traditional flavor of druid in folklore - except for pointing out that transforming to small animals is sort of a standard. To me calm herbalists gathering in circles and having animal friends come to mind. If angered, I think of them as the organizers and commanders mashaling the powers of nature. Think Merlin or miraculix. I dont think I have seen a single source outside RPG where anything called "Druid" take a animal shape to brute force the situation. There are definitely room for that kind of fantasy, as demonstrated by Beorn, werewolves or animorphs, but these are certanly not the magic using druid trope.As such getting rid of "power use" of wild shape appear like a good way to make the class more suitable for the more traditional druid concept. Rake ghe moon druid: I still think it might be relevant, but would need to be played with more care, and likely be more situational. For instance summonig up a bunch of animals change to their shape and do some self buffing before combat, and you have effectively a boosted combination of mirror image and spirit guardians while hitting close to a fighter. And this would be a tactic that resonate much more with my idea of a flavorful "Druid", than the owlbear-rager.So yes, if you only played the Druid for power, then I don't weep for you a second if you now feel you have to change class. That just mean the balancing works. I do find the tiny limitation problematic though, as that is a source of a lot of fun. I however also accept it is massively overpowered at level 1. I think I would have liked to see it earlier than level 11, but the question is what should then be shuffled later? Maybe elemental resistance as that seem less iconic?When it come to not having separate statblock per animal, I actually do not see the big problem. You can take the shape of a viper, but if you want the venom, you need a real one sound fully thematically aproperiate to me. Actually I think this can give some interesting flavor like the wolf that mystical creeps up the steep cliff <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> I can't immediately think of any big iconic effect that we would be missing out on with the shapes suggested.</blockquote>

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