Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hey all, similar to my Bard Curious post, do folks have any tips for a Druid build that would be friendly for a newish spellcaster?
I've really enjoyed my first caster, a Light Cleric, for its wide utility and potency. Seems Druids could be equally powerful but also a bit more complex? Thoughts? Thx!
I think Druids and Clerics are pretty much on the same order of complexity. They have essentially the same spellcasting mechanics (though the list of available spells is a bit different) and while Druids do have this ability to shapeshift into animals that Clerics do not, it's a lot like Channel Divinity in terms of how you use and keep track of it.
Which Druid subclass you choose can have a big impact on how it plays. For spellcasting, you want Circle of the Land. For fighting in animal form, you want Circle of the Moon. Circle of the Stars is kind of a hybrid support caster and ranged blaster. Circle of the Sea is new and fairly weird and I haven't tried it myself.
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According to previews Youtubers like the Dungeon Dudes, it’s getting a BIG overhall in the WoW expansion. Your best options to wild shape into will be two level-scaling forms: the cat (a rogue) and a bear (a tank).
This will be exclusive to the moon druid, so for now focus on the spells. They get a lot of interesting late-game options like shapechange in exchange for not getting other spells such normally get.
Oh, and if you can get ahold of it, get Conjuration Adept. The spelllist has a duplicate, but it grants all your conjuration spells like summons ia boost to concentration checks that eliminates the need for war caster.
One more tip: don’t have stary wisp selected before you select the moon druid spellclaas. If you do, it will be on your spell list twice, and if you try to remove the one you will get an error screen and have to go back to change subclasses and deselect it then.
Also, the old rules about armor are out the window, so I starter off as a fighter for medium armor. I don’t think you can use a shield with your spell casting focus unless you take war caster, but it’s a worthy tradeoff for conjurstion adept. From there, just choose the two options that improve your spellcasting when you level up since you don’t need the armor boost from being a druid since you are a fighter too. This actually might be innecessary at this point since you wild shape and i may change it to pure druid for faster progression, one more spell and the extra 7th level spellslot, but I digress.
Anyway, the future looks bright for druids, but if you don’t want to study the monster manual you need to either do mostly without them and get Arcana Unleashed or wait until the WoW expansion releases.
The World of Warcraft expansion has already released for subscribers. It does not include a "big overhaul" of the Druid class, though it does offer a couple of new options. I would use caution when recommending it to people, as the WoW class structures are definitely outside the "core" D&D rules and many DMs may not be interested in using them.
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Oh. Sorry. I mean, they included things like the remade Swashbuckler Rogue, so I figured they counted as WotC content.
Anyway, that’s still good advice to find out from your DM whenever there is new content to see what they are comfortable with running
Cool thank you.
What are your thoughts on wildshaping and its place in the Druid toolkit? Pros/Cons/Tips?
Wild Shape can be great for scouting, eavesdropping, and getting into places you otherwise might not be able to. Turn into a bird and scope out an area before you enter. Turn into a spider and listen in on people's conversations. Turn into a mouse and scurry into a secure building through a tiny hole in the wall.
Due to the CR limits on what you can transform into, it's usually not super useful for fighting. The exception to this is the Circle of the Moon subclass, which has several features (most notably a much higher CR limit) that make using Wild Shape in combat much more effective. At higher levels it can fall off, though, due to a lack of scaling on the beast forms' attack bonuses.
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Thanks. Yeah, on the one hand, not the main reason I had been contemplating Druid. I'm exploring a caster that can do a mix of support and control, etc, and is a prepared caster. (Already playing a Cleric).
But Wild Shape is an important part of Druid, so wouldn't want to just ignore it.
The other thing to keep in mind is that most of the subclasses offer subclass-specific alternative uses for your Wild Shape "charges" other than shapeshifting. The one from Circle of Stars in particular is very versatile and you end up using it a lot more than the beast forms.
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So, light cleric is a blaster. Try stars druid; they make good blasters, healers, controllers, and summoners. Im running a level forst gnome stars druid in a 5.5e cyberpunk campaign.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
As of now (June 2026), currently playing 5.5E homebrew cyber/diesel punk and the Wildsea.
Moon is widely considered the best subclass, but that is due to wildshape. If that isn’t your thing, Stars is the next best iption due to overall DPs. I will also say though that Circle of the Land has better spell options. Finally, I would only use Sea in a nautical campaign (if even then.)