D&D General Wild Shape: Inefficient or Useless?

[BenjaminPey]

I found Wild Shape to be super useful and efficient. You can scout an entire zone as an inocuous animal, not even needing to be stealthy (though you can if need be). You can climb vertical surface, spy on everyone, burrow to hide. You can carry heavy burden and run as fast as a horse, because, well, because you're a horse.
Apart from being a bit lackluster in combat (though you can opt for the Circle of the Moon to greatly alleviate that, Moon Druid are deadly in combat. Conjure animal and wild shape into a bear, claw them for advantage, bite them, rip them apart), it can be a super useful, flavorful, and frankly character defining feature if you want it to be.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

How do you all feel on this? Do you find wild shape a useful option for Druids or not? If not, what would be a good way to fix it without breaking things?

What Druid subclass are you using? Wild Shape is primarily meant for Moon Druids. As any other subclass it's a decent utility ability but yeah it's not meant to be all that useful since they rely on their other subclass abilities.

As an edit: In the 2024 rules they do a much better job of ensuring that all subclasses have Level 3 abilities which expend uses of Wild Shape, so that it is equally critical for all subclasses. So it's definitely an issue in the 2014 rules that WotC recognized and attempted to address

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Wildshape into a squirrel and you will can explore the enemy camp in the night. Their horses and dogs will smell a squirrel, not a predator or human intruder.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

My fiancée chose Moon Druid for her current character, but she's also been underwhelmed by the wildshape feature. She wants to turn into animals during combat, but to her there never seems to be a good indicator that it would be worth it to do so versus casting spells.

Me personally, I think that there's room to spit the spellcasting and wildshape features of the Druid into two separate classes.

 

[CreamCloud0]

My fiancée chose Moon Druid for her current character, but she's also been underwhelmed by the wildshape feature. She wants to turn into animals during combat, but to her there never seems to be a good indicator that it would be worth it to do so versus casting spells.

Me personally, I think that there's room to spit the spellcasting and wildshape features of the Druid into two separate classes.

this is something i've suggested here a few times before, it's something i really think it would benefit both halves of the druid, the caster side gets to focus on actually being the nature caster and you get to expand the thematic design space of the wildshape half by putting it into it's own 'shapeshifter' class,

 

[mellored]

My fiancée chose Moon Druid for her current character, but she's also been underwhelmed by the wildshape feature. She wants to turn into animals during combat, but to her there never seems to be a good indicator that it would be worth it to do so versus casting spells.

Generally you cast a concentration spell (preferably before combat, scout with your Familar), turn into a beast, and charge in.

Cast spiked growth, then change into something that can push/grapple (giant scorpion) and drag them though the spikes.

Any druid can cast Moonbeam/Conjure Animals/Call Lightning/Heat Metal, turn into something with movement to stay safe (flying, burrow, or just 60' move horse) and safely deal damage.


Also after level 5, you can expend a level 1 slot, bonus action, and refresh your THP on any turn. Keeping you quite tanky.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

My fiancée chose Moon Druid for her current character, but she's also been underwhelmed by the wildshape feature. She wants to turn into animals during combat, but to her there never seems to be a good indicator that it would be worth it to do so versus casting spells.

That seems hard to believe that a moon druid would frequently find remaining in humanoid form casting spells in combat to be better than utilizing Wild Shape (which can be done with spells cast first).

What level is she and what creatures is she turning into? The damage and tankiness for a moon druid should be vastly better using wild shape than from solely spells, unless maybe if you're using 2014 rules at high level since the scaling is famously overpowered at low levels then very weak at high levels without multiclassing. That was addressed in the 2024 rules to smooth out the damage and HP scaling, but was definitely a problem in 2014 rules

 

[Minigiant]

If you want more combat form, then moon druid can do that. Thought honestly I feel Barbarian would make a better "turn into beast" class

I would love there to be a nonCaster Wildshape class. And Druid to just tap onto Wildshape. And Barbarian and Ranger each getting a Wildshape subclass.

But Wildshape still being primarily being exploration outside of that class or another class's subclass choice.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

I would love there to be a nonCaster Wildshape class. And Druid to just tap onto Wildshape. And Barbarian and Ranger each getting a Wildshape subclass.

As far as official content goes I think the closest we'll get is Wildheart Barbarian which is kinda sorta Wildshape except not really, and then various species have Wildshape-esque features but are not very powerful. Rangers have their animal companions but I can't see them getting actual Wildshaping animal powers themselves.

 

[Tessarael]

Providing you can hit multiple opponents, spells like Moonbeam, Call Lightning, and Conjure Animals are more effective in combat than just wild shaping. Moonbeam and Call Lightning both require an action to activate each turn, so there's no benefit to being wild shaped in such cases. Conjure Animals doesn't require an action to move on your turn, so you can use it effectively while wild shaped.

I disagree somewhat with the suggestion that it makes sense to cast a concentration spell, bonus action wild shape as a Circle of the Moon Druid, then fling yourself into combat. Tactically, if it is a spell worth keeping going each turn (i.e., you spent a high level spell slot to cast it, and it is doing a decent amount of damage), then you probably should minimize the risk of losing concentration, unless you have high AC. In D&D 2024, Circle of the Moon Druid's have wild shape AC 13 + Wisdom modifier, unless the shape's AC is higher, so moderately high AC can be achieved.

So I would argue that wild shaping is often an alternative to spell casting, rather than something that you do simultaneously with spell casting. You can benefit from doing both together at times, but that's higher resource usage, and may not be so effective.

At Moon Druid level 6, you can wild shape into a CR 2 Quetzalcoatlus and make fly by attacks that don't provoke attacks of opportunity. Tactical choices like this can be very effective in conjunction with a spell like Conjure Animals, which you can move each turn without interfering with your combat effectiveness.