Base Class: Druid
Circle of Dreams has a cool theme but many of its features fail to impress especially after TCE. This version has been buffed appropriately and a few features have been reworked to fit my ideas for this subclass.
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This is only here for silly DDB homebrew restrictions. Ignore this.
Circle of Dreams Spells
When you reach certain levels in this class you gain access to additional spells as shown on the Circle of Dreams Spells table.
Once you gain access to one of these spells, you always have it prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. If you gain access to a spell that doesn’t appear on the druid spell list, the spell is nonetheless a druid spell for you.
| DRUID LEVEL | SPELLS |
|---|---|
| 2nd | Disguise Self, Silent Image |
| 3rd | See Invisibility, Silence |
| 5th | Hypnotic Pattern, Slow |
| 7th | Divination, Greater Invisibility |
| 9th | Awaken, Dream, Passwall |
Balm of the Summer Court
At 2nd level, you become imbued with the blessings of the Summer Court. You are a font of energy that offers respite from injuries. You have a pool of fey energy represented by a number of d6s equal to your druid level.
As a bonus action, you can choose one creature you can see within 120 feet of you and spend a number of those dice equal to half your druid level or less. Roll the spent dice and add them together. The target regains a number of hit points equal to the total. The target also gains 3 temporary hit point per die spent.
At 11th level your pool of dice increases to d10's and your target gains 5 temporary hit points per die spent. You regain all expended dice when you finish a long rest.
Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow
At 6th level, home can be wherever you are. During a short or long rest, you can invoke the shadowy power of the Gloaming Court to help guard your respite. At the start of the rest, you touch a point in space and a sphere of magic will appear, centered on that point. The radius of this sphere is equal to 5 times your Druid level.
While within the sphere, you and your allies gain a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) and Wisdom (Perception) checks, and any light in the sphere isn’t visible outside it. Hostile creatures that enter this sphere must make a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC or otherwise fall unconscious until they take damage or until you finish your rest. A hostile creature who succeeds will avoid falling unconscious but will take 2d4 psychic damage every minute it spends within the sphere as the magic continuously attempts to interfere.
While you are unconscious within this sphere, you may spend one use of your Wilds Shape feature to become either a: Brigganock, Blink Dog, Pixie, or Reflection (TCE p.158). You may remain in this form for the entire duration of your rest and still gain the benefits of your rest despite being allowed to remain active in this form for the duration. This Wild Shape form is bound to the sphere and cannot leave, you are also unable to communicate complex thoughts while in these forms.
The sphere vanishes at the end of the rest or when you leave the sphere.
Tiny Hut still directly competes with this ability but I've buffed this enough to where it feels more viable and to a point where I think people would look forward to using this every rest. The radius of the sphere now scales very well and hostile creatures aren't so free to just wander in anymore.
As far as the new Wild Shape benefit goes: I'm imagining the druid falls asleep and their body just responds to some dream, accidently Wild Shaping even though they're unconscious; picture a sleepwalking druid. This is also a great buff since the druid can reliably serve as a guard for anyone resting within the sphere. The limit on speech is to avoid too much focus on the druid during rests and to play up that sleep-walking theme I have in mind, though since they're intended to serve as a guard, they can retain the ability to alert others.
Hidden Paths
Starting at 10th level, you can use the hidden, magical pathways that some fey use to traverse space in the blink of an eye. As a bonus action on your turn, you can teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. Alternatively, you can use your action to teleport one willing creature you touch up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. You may use these actions even while unconscious or while in a Wild Shape form. Lastly, any creature you teleport may immediately Hide, no action required.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.
This was already a strong ability, yes; but teleports are pretty common. I wanted to this feature to work while unconscious & Wild Shaped since that kind of plays into the sleepwalking druid theme I have. Automatically hiding helps to distinguish this ability too from other teleports. Now you can teleport and disappear which feels like it fits into a chaotic fey sort of thing to do.
Oh, yes, and I increased the teleport for other creatures to be 60 instead of 30. You're already having to sacrifice your action instead of bonus action. That's a big enough tax in my opinion. A maximum of 60 feet makes this ability much more attractive as an action.
Fey Healing
Whenever you heal a creature with your Balm of the Summer Court feature, you can end one condition on it per dice you spent. Until the end of you next long rest, you have advantage on all Charisma checks against any creatures you've healed with that feature.
If a creature is not suffering from any conditions--and the creature is not in initiative order--you can instead lull it to sleep as if you had cast Catnap. The creature must be willing and each creature can only gain the benefits of this catnap effect once per long rest. Any willing creature you put to sleep with this feature is also affected by a 5th level Dream spell.
At 20th level, any creature you put to put to sleep with this ability will also be under the effects of Modify Memory and Geas. A creature can attempt to save against these effects with a successful Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. They have advantage on this save if they share an alignment with you or if they have benefitted from your Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow. The Geas effect's duration only lasts until the next long rest.
The original 14th level feature, Walker in Dreams, is cool but I personally didn't care for it. It offered a lot of spell options but they were all niche. I wanted this feature to loop back around to the healing aspect of this subclass but also finally add some of the famous, creative, fey mischief. Now the healing offers more support, a lot more, admittedly. But with some fun, minor consequences for other players.
You'll be able to heal others but have a bit of fun while doing it. You'll be better at convincing and deceiving them. You'll be able to offer them a quick rest but you'll control their dreams. And eventually you can alter their memories if you so choose, while compelling them to act a certain way.
The DM should encourage a player to keep 90% of these dreams pretty simple. No need to make every dream an elaborately-detailed chaos. Telling the whole party that they all dream of frogs is just as unexpected as an elaborate 30-minute story involving clowns, dad jokes, and unexplained trauma. My point is to have fun with this feature but don't take too much time please--at least not every time. Dream can be a great device for telling a story but not every dream needs to tell a story. Please chaos responsibly!
Also, yes, this does a lot but it's all limited to willing creatures and is limited by resource dice, long rests, and conditions. Catnap is handy but I expect most of the time it will be a narrative tool instead of a mechanical one. Like, if you need a short rest, you're likely going to take one--now you're going to just wave your hand a little and make it take less time in game. This does a lot but at the same time I don't think it does too much, hopefully other DMs agree.
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Posted Apr 26, 2024Fey healing is EXTREMELY powerful as it doesn't specify it is gained at 14th level. It's also a greater restoration at will non-spell, I would recommend limiting the conditions removable by this to be the same as what lesser restoration would give you. Otherwise you will be able to cure 14 levels of exhaustions per long rest, or 14 cases of petrification, or 14 curses, or so on and so forth.
I would suggest: maybe put a requirement on how many dice you need to use to cure an affliction, Lesser restoration being tied to one dice, and the effects of greater restoration being tied to ~three~ ish dice?
Also - the ability to use Hidden Paths while unconscious, while very strong (Id say too strong) as an idea, it also doesnt function. When unconscious you are unaware of your surroundings, so you wouldnt even know where your target was. Also, as a part of being unconscious, you are incapacitated, so you cannot use actions, bonus actions, or reactions - the cost to the ability being one action makes being able to use it while unconscious impossible.
I have a pretty large suggestion for improving this one, hear me out though:
One: To make things less confusing, you could put both functions as a bonus action, and make them happen simultaneously. You would no longer need to be touching the one you're transporting, but instead of letting you pick where they go youd be swapping places.
This would make the fey trickery aesthetic feel a bit more prevalent. You'd still get to pick whether to move yourself, someone else, or both at the same time, but this just shortens it down a bit more. Remove the stuff about being able to use it while unconscious, and remove the ability to give someone a hide action out of turn order.
It would be plenty powerful like this, and an excellent way to get someone out of dodge. You could use your action to wildshape into something with a bunch of hitpoints, and then swap places with a really injured teammate in the middle of trouble. Then on the subsequent turn, you could use this to get out of there yourself! Sets it apart from dimension door, and makes for a handy dandy way of preventing damage rather than repairing it, since youre giving up a bonus action which would otherwise be good for using the healing word or balm of the summer court options.