I think it depends on the player. In our current campaign, the person playing a Druid is playing them almost like a naturalist from the 1700s, minus the stereotypical obsession with dissection. Their Druid is obsessed with finding new animals and studying them. In our last campaign, the person playing a Druid played them as a tactical nature wizard, using their familiar to deliver spells and create impediments for our enemies.
In my campaign that I am playing, I am definitely the latter, the nature wizard (no familiar), and I think that played correctly, Druids can be not only fun to play, but also verrry powerful.
You can never go wrong with rolling druid. And if you get boring with class that can control every natural elemental power, support / heal anyone you wish, fight as ranged caster or mele in Shapeshift (great to every situation, as long as you have the beast for the situation - and you always have some).
You can't really go wrong with druid. Maybe it is the feeling of many options and not many people are into the nature stuff...
It's just what you make of it. You can be badass fighter / barbarian who swings his axe and executes everyone in his way, or sorcerer / wizard who burns his enemies with fireball. BUT Druid can do it too, all of it, And if you still think Druid is boring, than just go play fighter human you casual... :P
I don't have a lot of experience, my first character, a druid is only level three now, spores druid, but I've been feeling it hey, you can style your druid & backstory in a variety of ways so I'm not going into that, but what I will say is this, I have heard people saying that they look over the druid spell list & nothing excites them the way a wizard's or cleric's does because there aren't a lot of dps but when playing a druid, think less about how you can kill enemies & how you can change screw up your DM'S plans. Your DM knows the map they made it, they hid the enemies & they know to use it to their advantage. The druid changes all that, use Entangle to lock a group of enemies together for an AoE like fireball. If you activate warding wind thats 20ft of the map, covered in difficult terrain wherever you stand, enemies will have to run around you, or risk it & run through the wind also, ranged attacks through the wind are at disadvantage so allies inside or behind it are also protected as well as you... Fearie fire, gives everyone advantage to attacks against effected for as long as you hold concentration. Longstrider is perfect for moving around, perfect for giving your shorter, slower allies that little edge (it's 1hour & no concentration you can't go wrong) we had an enemy running away from the party, & they had a substantial lead, thorn whip however just pulled her back 10 feet a round & we managed to gain up quite easily.... there is a lot of utility & if you focus more on being the mountain your party stands upon, rather than the fire that falls from the sky, you'll see how much fun it is to play a druid, like I said, I'm only level three, (will make four in the next two weeks I'm thinking) but I'm having a lot of fun playing this class.
So i know this thread is 3 years old but heck, I’ll take the opportunity to talk about my favorite class,
To each their own, but I love druid. I didn’t care much for shape-shifting either when I started playing, but Tasha’s took away the need to have to do really that by giving the class Find Familiar. To add to that, there are a handful of classes that have fun, alternative uses for Wildshape. But even if you do need to / want to use it for stealth or scouting or utility — it can feel good to solve a problem by being able to shift into something that can help.
I find the nature theme of the class to be very exciting. I love the druid’s ties to plants, animals, and especially fey. To me, no other class (besides maybe Ranger) makes me feel like I get to play a character that stepped out of a whimsical fairy-tale, which is a flavor that I absolutely adore.
Druids are controllers and supporters, which is a playstyle that I’ve always gravitated towards. I feel great when I can summon a familiar in combat to help my party members. It’s fun for me to be able to summon creatures, or heal up my party, or lay down an entangle to help the group succeed. Druid is an extremely flexible class.
It doesn’t matter to me that they don’t have insane dpr and can!t wear metal armor. (i don’t care to wear metal armor anyway. I avoid it even when i’m not playing a druid.) I admit though that having concentration on the majority of your spells sucks a lot.
Druids can be boring/useless at some point of the adventure, but they have the best utility spells and best utility actions in combat. I've played some mmoRPGs and I found this class as hilarious as a jokester. I mean, they can be hard to kill and at the same time easy to kill.
The Pros :
* they can summon minions, or they can use their action to command a swarm of aniimals / insects over the enemies. * they can also place traps............... (( yes, they can use their preferred terrain on their advantage )). * they can transform themselves into a WILD FEROCIOUS BBEG monster.
The cons :
* When you place them in a terrain they don't have advantage, then they become easy meat.
That's why is more important knowing how to play that class without being stuck on the try. They can use the wild life at their benefit and advantage, ruining a Warlock necromancer gameplay.
So here’s my point of view druid is the most powerful class this is basically a fact but are they the best class probably not.
Most people who play druid plays one of 3 subclasses 1. (Circle of Spores) 2. (Circle of Stars) and 3. (Circle of the Moon) and there’s a good reason for that the rest kind of suck and here’s the reason why wild shape. Wild shape might be the strongest and worst designed ability in the game the biggest problems are that Circle of the Moon and the polymorph spell and similar spells exist firstly unless you’re playing one of the 3 before mentioned subclass your Wild shape is kind of useless simply because you will never be able to transform into a creature stronger then cr 1 that means little to no interesting new transformations unless they are small or have a fast flying speed that is of course unless you use the polymorph spell or a similar spell or you happen to be a moon Druid who can go up to cr 6 but this still not high enough to become the powerful beast they have do you become them you guessed it polymorph spores and stars get around this by having alternative uses for wild shape but if you want to focus on transforming you might as well play a wizard but let say you want to play Druid the way it was designed for you simply then you summon 5 minions and wild shapes into creatures with a higher con then you and spend 2 to 5 minutes on your minions attacks in comparison to the others players 30 seconds to 2 minutes and watch as the encounter get destroyed by the turn economy not fun for the dm and not fun for the other players because of this the Druid is also lacking customisation because there’s only so many to make empowered by nature and turns into animals interesting
In conclusion sadly the Druid doesn’t have that many ways to be fun for a hold group without sacrificing your power the other players enjoyment or the dms sanity but the fact is that everything I have just mentioned is the reason some players love it unlike most other classes that are generally like the Druid is loved by its niche of players but generally dislike by most others.
"So here’s my point of view druid is the most powerful class this is basically a fact"
Given that a Wizard can create infinite armies, be immortal, and can instant kill most creatures - I'm gonna have have to question why you think druids are most powerful as a fact when the actual fact is - they're not?
Druids are powerful and how fun they are, depends on how you play them and the campaign you are in. If you are focusing on combat then yeah, the options tend to become a bit more limited. Druids aren't purely combat focused. They have a variety of abilities and spells for utility and out of combat stuff. They are fantastic at exploration and spying. They can thrive in almost any environment that other classes may struggle with - particularly underwater. I find most complaints about druids being lacklustre largely stem from a "combat" perspective. That perspective is incredibly narrow and limited. In games that aren't combat-focused, Druids can be incredibly fun to play and very versatile.
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I LOVE playing my Autognome Stars Druid! He gets free guidance and guiding bolts and starry bonus attacks through starry form archer, plus cosmic omen. That said, none of the other druid subclasses interest me.
Well here’s my reasoning Druid and wizard are relatively comparable what puts Druids head is there ability to fit most other roles they can tank as well as Barbarian heal as well as a cleric and attack as many times as a fighter and yes they may not be able to control as many creatures as wizard but they don’t need to spend days to weeks prep time and can still summon enough creatures to reck the turn economy and in addition Druids can also become immortal but you right they don’t an ability to instant kill most creatures unless we count be being crusted be a whale as instantaneous death he he
So wizards are generally only at their most powerful if they have prep time unlike druids who are at their most powerful nearly all of the time
I LOVE playing my Autognome Stars Druid! He gets free guidance and guiding bolts and starry bonus attacks through starry form archer, plus cosmic omen. That said, none of the other druid subclasses interest me.
Yeah, that’s the only subclass that has the slightest interest for me as well.
It's a play style thing. i know a moon druid who is happy to play as a bear half the time and another player who does a lot of creature summoning. I'm more of a blaster/backup healer.
At level 2 and 3 Moon druids are completely broken for the amount of damage they can do and absorb
Shepherd druids are the masters on summoning
Wildfire druids have great battle field control as their spirit can teleport party members around the battlefield
The base druids doesn't do massive amounts of damage but they make up for that with their ability to support.
I admit there are a number of druid features that can be bad for gameplay for example if a player casts conjure animals they have no idea what the DM will give them so they then have to read through the creatures stat block and decide what to do and then take the turns up to 32 creatures they have summoned (OK most often only 8) which is very boring for the rest of the party with nothing to do while the Druid player makes their turn.
I admit there are a number of druid features that can be bad for gameplay for example if a player casts conjure animals they have no idea what the DM will give them so they then have to read through the creatures stat block and decide what to do and then take the turns up to 32 creatures they have summoned (OK most often only 8) which is very boring for the rest of the party with nothing to do while the Druid player makes their turn.
Although this is easily mitigated by having a bunch of stat blocks pre-determined, and giving 1 or 2 to each player to control. The druid issues the commands and the other players roll the dice for the summoned creatures.
Or, if you're on something like Roll20 - just macro it.
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I admit there are a number of druid features that can be bad for gameplay for example if a player casts conjure animals they have no idea what the DM will give them so they then have to read through the creatures stat block and decide what to do and then take the turns up to 32 creatures they have summoned (OK most often only 8) which is very boring for the rest of the party with nothing to do while the Druid player makes their turn.
Although this is easily mitigated by having a bunch of stat blocks pre-determined, and giving 1 or 2 to each player to control. The druid issues the commands and the other players roll the dice for the summoned creatures.
Or, if you're on something like Roll20 - just macro it.
I agree there are way to mitigate it. With my druid I discussed how to deal with Conjure animals / conjure woodland beings etc. We decided that I get to choose the creature (so I can decide in advance what to do with them) but a maximum of 4 can be used in combat (5 giant owls can be used to transport the whole party) and pixies are CR 1 for the purpose of the spell. They also always go immediately after my turn like the more recent summon spells.
There is also a balance issue 8 Elk are much more powerful than 1 cave bear (and more powerful than other 3rd level spells).
I’ve been playing a Land Druid for several years (level 16 atm) and one thing I have issues with are the amount of good spells that all require concentration or that have big AOE so become situational if you’re not always in big areas with enemies spread out. Love my wall of fire/stone spells though. There was one battle that Sleet Storm worked fantastically But not one time since then so I unprepared it.
Early levels I used conjure animals but only for two Dire Wolves, with DM permission, to keep the combat going. But haven’t used it in many levels, just don’t want to bog things down. I would like to see what changes, if any, they make in 5eR.
Druids are definitely not boring. The class offers a lot of tools to come up with a wide range of interesting tactics and ways to play.
The main issue is Druid is the only class that comes with a concrete ideology attached. Druids are environmentalists. A wizard doesn't have to be pro books or pro knowledge. Heck, you could feasibly roll a wizard who hates magic and only went to college because it's what their parents wanted. But a druid gets their power from their relationship with nature. It's very hard to work around that if you as a player just don't like nature-themed characters. The closest equivalent to this is cleric, but cleric players get to choose their god and have a huge list of subclasses to flavor their cleric however they want. Druid subclasses explore different facets of nature and different environmentalist ideologies, but they're all still fundamentally allies of nature.
This isn't an issue for someone like me who loves nature and loves to play nature-themed characters, though. I wouldn't want them to change Druid to cater to non-druid players. But as long as druid is tied to environmentalism I don't think it'll ever stop being near the bottom of classes played. Especially today when pro-environmentalist messages are becoming repetitive and most environmentalist characters in media are depicted as myopic villains rather than heroes.
Druids are definitely not boring. The class offers a lot of tools to come up with a wide range of interesting tactics and ways to play.
The main issue is Druid is the only class that comes with a concrete ideology attached. Druids are environmentalists. A wizard doesn't have to be pro books or pro knowledge. Heck, you could feasibly roll a wizard who hates magic and only went to college because it's what their parents wanted. But a druid gets their power from their relationship with nature. It's very hard to work around that if you as a player just don't like nature-themed characters. The closest equivalent to this is cleric, but cleric players get to choose their god and have a huge list of subclasses to flavor their cleric however they want. Druid subclasses explore different facets of nature and different environmentalist ideologies, but they're all still fundamentally allies of nature.
This isn't an issue for someone like me who loves nature and loves to play nature-themed characters, though. I wouldn't want them to change Druid to cater to non-druid players. But as long as druid is tied to environmentalism I don't think it'll ever stop being near the bottom of classes played. Especially today when pro-environmentalist messages are becoming repetitive and most environmentalist characters in media are depicted as myopic villains rather than heroes.
Stars Druids are still druids. They're still fundamentally nature worshipers whose power comes from their relationship with nature. They just study the stars as an aspect of nature in the same way a Dreams Druid focuses on the nature of the Feywild or Wildfire Druids focus on the destructive aspects of nature through fire.
Nature isn't JUST trees and animals, and Stars Druids explore that aspect of nature worship. But they're still environmentalists.
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In my campaign that I am playing, I am definitely the latter, the nature wizard (no familiar), and I think that played correctly, Druids can be not only fun to play, but also verrry powerful.
You can never go wrong with rolling druid. And if you get boring with class that can control every natural elemental power, support / heal anyone you wish, fight as ranged caster or mele in Shapeshift (great to every situation, as long as you have the beast for the situation - and you always have some).
You can't really go wrong with druid. Maybe it is the feeling of many options and not many people are into the nature stuff...
It's just what you make of it. You can be badass fighter / barbarian who swings his axe and executes everyone in his way, or sorcerer / wizard who burns his enemies with fireball. BUT Druid can do it too, all of it, And if you still think Druid is boring, than just go play fighter human you casual... :P
Druids are so OP when they turn into something else, while in their true form they remain a bit mehh.
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
I don't have a lot of experience, my first character, a druid is only level three now, spores druid, but I've been feeling it hey, you can style your druid & backstory in a variety of ways so I'm not going into that, but what I will say is this, I have heard people saying that they look over the druid spell list & nothing excites them the way a wizard's or cleric's does because there aren't a lot of dps but when playing a druid, think less about how you can kill enemies & how you can change screw up your DM'S plans. Your DM knows the map they made it, they hid the enemies & they know to use it to their advantage. The druid changes all that, use Entangle to lock a group of enemies together for an AoE like fireball. If you activate warding wind thats 20ft of the map, covered in difficult terrain wherever you stand, enemies will have to run around you, or risk it & run through the wind also, ranged attacks through the wind are at disadvantage so allies inside or behind it are also protected as well as you... Fearie fire, gives everyone advantage to attacks against effected for as long as you hold concentration. Longstrider is perfect for moving around, perfect for giving your shorter, slower allies that little edge (it's 1hour & no concentration you can't go wrong) we had an enemy running away from the party, & they had a substantial lead, thorn whip however just pulled her back 10 feet a round & we managed to gain up quite easily.... there is a lot of utility & if you focus more on being the mountain your party stands upon, rather than the fire that falls from the sky, you'll see how much fun it is to play a druid, like I said, I'm only level three, (will make four in the next two weeks I'm thinking) but I'm having a lot of fun playing this class.
So i know this thread is 3 years old but heck, I’ll take the opportunity to talk about my favorite class,
To each their own, but I love druid. I didn’t care much for shape-shifting either when I started playing, but Tasha’s took away the need to have to do really that by giving the class Find Familiar. To add to that, there are a handful of classes that have fun, alternative uses for Wildshape. But even if you do need to / want to use it for stealth or scouting or utility — it can feel good to solve a problem by being able to shift into something that can help.
I find the nature theme of the class to be very exciting. I love the druid’s ties to plants, animals, and especially fey. To me, no other class (besides maybe Ranger) makes me feel like I get to play a character that stepped out of a whimsical fairy-tale, which is a flavor that I absolutely adore.
Druids are controllers and supporters, which is a playstyle that I’ve always gravitated towards. I feel great when I can summon a familiar in combat to help my party members. It’s fun for me to be able to summon creatures, or heal up my party, or lay down an entangle to help the group succeed. Druid is an extremely flexible class.
It doesn’t matter to me that they don’t have insane dpr and can!t wear metal armor. (i don’t care to wear metal armor anyway. I avoid it even when i’m not playing a druid.) I admit though that having concentration on the majority of your spells sucks a lot.
Druids can be boring/useless at some point of the adventure, but they have the best utility spells and best utility actions in combat. I've played some mmoRPGs and I found this class as hilarious as a jokester. I mean, they can be hard to kill and at the same time easy to kill.
The Pros :
* they can summon minions, or they can use their action to command a swarm of aniimals / insects over the enemies.
* they can also place traps............... (( yes, they can use their preferred terrain on their advantage )).
* they can transform themselves into a WILD FEROCIOUS BBEG monster.
The cons :
* When you place them in a terrain they don't have advantage, then they become easy meat.
That's why is more important knowing how to play that class without being stuck on the try. They can use the wild life at their benefit and advantage, ruining a Warlock necromancer gameplay.
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
So here’s my point of view druid is the most powerful class this is basically a fact but are they the best class probably not.
Most people who play druid plays one of 3 subclasses 1. (Circle of Spores) 2. (Circle of Stars) and 3. (Circle of the Moon) and there’s a good reason for that the rest kind of suck and here’s the reason why wild shape. Wild shape might be the strongest and worst designed ability in the game the biggest problems are that Circle of the Moon and the polymorph spell and similar spells exist firstly unless you’re playing one of the 3 before mentioned subclass your Wild shape is kind of useless simply because you will never be able to transform into a creature stronger then cr 1 that means little to no interesting new transformations unless they are small or have a fast flying speed that is of course unless you use the polymorph spell or a similar spell or you happen to be a moon Druid who can go up to cr 6 but this still not high enough to become the powerful beast they have do you become them you guessed it polymorph spores and stars get around this by having alternative uses for wild shape but if you want to focus on transforming you might as well play a wizard but let say you want to play Druid the way it was designed for you simply then you summon 5 minions and wild shapes into creatures with a higher con then you and spend 2 to 5 minutes on your minions attacks in comparison to the others players 30 seconds to 2 minutes and watch as the encounter get destroyed by the turn economy not fun for the dm and not fun for the other players because of this the Druid is also lacking customisation because there’s only so many to make empowered by nature and turns into animals interesting
In conclusion sadly the Druid doesn’t have that many ways to be fun for a hold group without sacrificing your power the other players enjoyment or the dms sanity but the fact is that everything I have just mentioned is the reason some players love it unlike most other classes that are generally like the Druid is loved by its niche of players but generally dislike by most others.
"So here’s my point of view druid is the most powerful class this is basically a fact"
Given that a Wizard can create infinite armies, be immortal, and can instant kill most creatures - I'm gonna have have to question why you think druids are most powerful as a fact when the actual fact is - they're not?
Druids are powerful and how fun they are, depends on how you play them and the campaign you are in. If you are focusing on combat then yeah, the options tend to become a bit more limited. Druids aren't purely combat focused. They have a variety of abilities and spells for utility and out of combat stuff. They are fantastic at exploration and spying. They can thrive in almost any environment that other classes may struggle with - particularly underwater. I find most complaints about druids being lacklustre largely stem from a "combat" perspective. That perspective is incredibly narrow and limited. In games that aren't combat-focused, Druids can be incredibly fun to play and very versatile.
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IMO, yes. I’m just not a fan of Wildshape, and the nature theme does nothing for me.
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I LOVE playing my Autognome Stars Druid! He gets free guidance and guiding bolts and starry bonus attacks through starry form archer, plus cosmic omen. That said, none of the other druid subclasses interest me.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Well here’s my reasoning Druid and wizard are relatively comparable what puts Druids head is there ability to fit most other roles they can tank as well as Barbarian heal as well as a cleric and attack as many times as a fighter and yes they may not be able to control as many creatures as wizard but they don’t need to spend days to weeks prep time and can still summon enough creatures to reck the turn economy and in addition Druids can also become immortal but you right they don’t an ability to instant kill most creatures unless we count be being crusted be a whale as instantaneous death he he
So wizards are generally only at their most powerful if they have prep time unlike druids who are at their most powerful nearly all of the time
Yeah, that’s the only subclass that has the slightest interest for me as well.
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It's a play style thing. i know a moon druid who is happy to play as a bear half the time and another player who does a lot of creature summoning. I'm more of a blaster/backup healer.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Druids are very effective in combat for example:
The base druids doesn't do massive amounts of damage but they make up for that with their ability to support.
I admit there are a number of druid features that can be bad for gameplay for example if a player casts conjure animals they have no idea what the DM will give them so they then have to read through the creatures stat block and decide what to do and then take the turns up to 32 creatures they have summoned (OK most often only 8) which is very boring for the rest of the party with nothing to do while the Druid player makes their turn.
Although this is easily mitigated by having a bunch of stat blocks pre-determined, and giving 1 or 2 to each player to control. The druid issues the commands and the other players roll the dice for the summoned creatures.
Or, if you're on something like Roll20 - just macro it.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I agree there are way to mitigate it. With my druid I discussed how to deal with Conjure animals / conjure woodland beings etc. We decided that I get to choose the creature (so I can decide in advance what to do with them) but a maximum of 4 can be used in combat (5 giant owls can be used to transport the whole party) and pixies are CR 1 for the purpose of the spell. They also always go immediately after my turn like the more recent summon spells.
There is also a balance issue 8 Elk are much more powerful than 1 cave bear (and more powerful than other 3rd level spells).
I’ve been playing a Land Druid for several years (level 16 atm) and one thing I have issues with are the amount of good spells that all require concentration or that have big AOE so become situational if you’re not always in big areas with enemies spread out. Love my wall of fire/stone spells though. There was one battle that Sleet Storm worked fantastically But not one time since then so I unprepared it.
Early levels I used conjure animals but only for two Dire Wolves, with DM permission, to keep the combat going. But haven’t used it in many levels, just don’t want to bog things down. I would like to see what changes, if any, they make in 5eR.
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Druids are definitely not boring. The class offers a lot of tools to come up with a wide range of interesting tactics and ways to play.
The main issue is Druid is the only class that comes with a concrete ideology attached. Druids are environmentalists. A wizard doesn't have to be pro books or pro knowledge. Heck, you could feasibly roll a wizard who hates magic and only went to college because it's what their parents wanted. But a druid gets their power from their relationship with nature. It's very hard to work around that if you as a player just don't like nature-themed characters. The closest equivalent to this is cleric, but cleric players get to choose their god and have a huge list of subclasses to flavor their cleric however they want. Druid subclasses explore different facets of nature and different environmentalist ideologies, but they're all still fundamentally allies of nature.
This isn't an issue for someone like me who loves nature and loves to play nature-themed characters, though. I wouldn't want them to change Druid to cater to non-druid players. But as long as druid is tied to environmentalism I don't think it'll ever stop being near the bottom of classes played. Especially today when pro-environmentalist messages are becoming repetitive and most environmentalist characters in media are depicted as myopic villains rather than heroes.
What about a Stars Druid?
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Stars Druids are still druids. They're still fundamentally nature worshipers whose power comes from their relationship with nature. They just study the stars as an aspect of nature in the same way a Dreams Druid focuses on the nature of the Feywild or Wildfire Druids focus on the destructive aspects of nature through fire.
Nature isn't JUST trees and animals, and Stars Druids explore that aspect of nature worship. But they're still environmentalists.