Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Druid Circles And Wild Shape

Dreams is right up my alley, and may lead to me creating my first druid character in 5e. Starting to feel like we are getting a lot of Fey and Shadowfell themed options in these. Perhaps that's a clue to where the 2017 Fall supplement is going to focus? Elminster's Journey's across the Planes, a guide.

 

[Parmandur]

I dunno what y'all are talking about, Archdruid is freaking amazing: ignore pretty much all spell components, including Druid focus (exception being cost based materials), and unlimited Wild Shape? No Druid doesn't want that: note that Moon Druids still are 9th level spellcasters, and Land Druids still Wild Shape (and at level 20 can cast while a tiger no problem or limit)...

 

[phantomK9]

In regard to the Circle of Dreaming, its obvious that the mechanical abilities simply don't match the idea that is put forth through the fluff description.

In my mind a Druid Path that deals with the Feywild should accomplish the following things:

1. Give the druid access to additional Enchantment and/or Illusion spells that they normally wouldn't have. This would be done very similarly to how additional spells are handled currently through the Circle of the Land. Even better, when this Circle is taken, give the player a choice of either Summer Court or Winter Court, much like Circle of Land lets you choose a land, but only two options. The list of spells could be different based on which court you choose.

2. Enhance summoning of Fey creatures. There are several spells in the Druid list that allow you to summon Fey creatures, Conjure Woodland Beings for example. These spells should be boosted in some way, whether it is giving more creatures or more HD/hp per creature or allowing higher CR creatures.

3. Allow the druid to use wild shape to turn into Fey creatures. Blink dog comes to mind right away, but possibly some others? The list isn't very long, but pixie, satyr, dryad....maybe

4. Give unique abilities for overland movement. The Hidden Paths ability is a good ability but it also needs a component for travel times outside of combat.

 

[Zansy]

I'm looking over these subclasses, I like them conceptually, and they each have a feature or two that I like, but the rest leaves much to be desired.
Personally, I don't feel much "Feyness" from the Dream Circle, though I do like the teleportation and camp ability.
Circle of the shepherd sounds delightful to me, But I'm not at ease with the 2nd level abilites (Just imagining all the easy sneak attacks your party rogue will get from the hawk spirit...) the rest will need to be playtested to see how those abilities mesh together, I'd imagine.
Circle of the Twilight sounds bad ace, I'm concerned though because as mentioned previously, all that extra damage will do very little (if at all!) against the stronger undead that are a higher priority. this Druid seems so much better at slaying life than death. needs revising, if nothing else, to make it more competent against Undead.

 

[Dausuul]

"Once you use either option—teleporting yourself or an ally—you can’t use that option again until 1d4 rounds have passed."

Ick ick ick. No. Bad Wizards, no spellbook.

"X rounds" duration tracking was a serious bookkeeping headache in 3E. It was killed in 4E, and remains essentially dead in 5E. (Lots of stuff has a 1-minute duration, but combat seldom lasts long enough for that to matter; you can handwave it as "till the end of combat" and it's fine.) I do not want to reopen this can of worms.

A recharge roll is a much better solution.

 

[Ovarwa]

Or even simpler and faster, it takes a bonus action to recharge. Effectively, the first use per encounter is free. Subsequent uses consume a bonus action per use.

 

[Chaosmancer]

"Once you use either option—teleporting yourself or an ally—you can’t use that option again until 1d4 rounds have passed."

Ick ick ick. No. Bad Wizards, no spellbook.

"X rounds" duration tracking was a serious bookkeeping headache in 3E. It was killed in 4E, and remains essentially dead in 5E. (Lots of stuff has a 1-minute duration, but combat seldom lasts long enough for that to matter; you can handwave it as "till the end of combat" and it's fine.) I do not want to reopen this can of worms.

A recharge roll is a much better solution.

Wasn't one of the bigger problems with 3.5 per round tracking the fact that you would have multiple per round things all on different tracks at the same time?

I get that this could be a slippery slope, but a single ability that takes 3 rounds to come back (if you even care if it comes back by that point) is vastly different than tracking 4 different effects that last 3, 5, 2 and 9 rounds while casting a 4 round spell that turn.

With the highly limited stacking potential in 5e, and the fact that only multi-classing would allow a Dream Druid and say a Hexblade rogue who had a similar ability to stack and overlap like that.

 

[Jer]

A recharge roll is a much better solution.

I was going to suggest the same thing. At the start of your round you roll a d20. On a 16 or higher the ability recharges and you can use it again. (Certain powers in 13th Age function this way and it works great, though more of them are a 25% chance to recharge after the battle is over rather than per round).

There's a lot less bookkeeping - the player just has to remember that they have a recharge roll to make every round rather than trying to track how many rounds its been since they used that power. And statistically it works out about the same (though not exactly) as having the power come back in 1d4 rounds. The only thing you lose is knowing exactly which round you'll be able to use that ability again, which at my table is a good trade (because my players are more likely to forget to track the rounds than they are to remember to make the recharge check every round).

 

[RCanine]

Or even simpler and faster, it takes a bonus action to recharge. Effectively, the first use per encounter is free. Subsequent uses consume a bonus action per use.

Druids (unlike monks and rogues) have practically nothing to use their bonus action on; this would be equivalent to having it always available.

 

[insight994]

Mighty Summoner allows you to summon "powerful creatures?" Like, how powerful are we talkin' here? Can I summon a plesiosaur? A dragon turtle? Or just a killer whale? A little clarity, please.


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[Harzel]

Mighty Summoner allows you to summon "powerful creatures?" Like, how powerful are we talkin' here? Can I summon a plesiosaur? A dragon turtle? Or just a killer whale? A little clarity, please.

Mighty Summoner just upgrades the beasts that can be summoned with spells. So the spell descriptions say what can be summoned. For instance, using the 3rd level Conjure Animals, you could summon two Giant Eagles. With Mighty Summoner, each would have an additional 8 HP (since they have 4 HD), and their attacks would be considered magical.