I love the Circle of Spores Druid because it’s so wierd. I haven’t quite wrapped my head around the “beauty in decay” notion of this circle. I like the idea of a subclass that doesn’t make me feel the need to play an evil PC like a death domain cleric or a necromancer. So how do you explain the lore of the circle of spores in your game? Do you play a druid who worships the god of death? A character from the under dark who really likes mushrooms? I kind of like the idea of a spore druid as some kind of perversion to the Druidic order like an oath breaker paladin.
I see it as moreso an acceptance of death rather than exactly wanting to cause it. Where other druids may venerate the spreading of life or the lives of animals, the spore druid seems more into the full cycles of life. Something big dies, and molds, fungus, small plants and animals recycle the flesh, one life becomes many, and the cycle continues ever onward. The ability to make fungal zombies seems like it is less towards the whole necromancy bringing back the dead, but merely one new version of that cycle. The dead being used in more ways than just being broken down. They would be closer, to me anyways, to something like a grave cleric or the raven queen warlock, in how they accept death and believe all things have a time in which they fall.
OK that all makes sense. I just want to make sure that my Hill Dwarf Spore Druid is not seen by other players (or NPC’s for that matter) as just another evil wannabe-lich necromancer. Hey, wait up guys! Let me turn into a bunny so you can see what a nice and fuzzy druid I really am! I do plan, however, to take full advantage of both Animate Dead and Fungal Infestation in the near future (I’m only 4th level now). In my mind, I picture the zombies and skeletons slowing growing (or blooming?) into mushroom constructs aka “my Fun Guys”… more like fungus golems, perhaps?. I guess the carcass is really just organic matter that feeds the living fungus. That’s still pretty creepy! Maybe we are all just fertilizer anyhow?
Here's a conversation my spore druid had with the cleric in our party. He was bugging her all day about how spore druids can "stomach the things they do", he was going in circles (get it?) until she replied with this.
Druid: Tell me, do you know why you bury the dead? or turn them to ash with pyres? Cleric: Uh.. because leaving them out in the open will cause sickness? Druid: *giggle* silly, that's much of an excuse as the other two I mentioned~ Cleric: Excuse? Excuse for what? Druid: To look away. Cleric: "look away"? Druid: We of the spore... we choose not to look away. Not when everyone else has. Cleric: ...
She's a True Neutral Eladrin, wise but not at all intelligent, so I thought it would make sense that she explains her circle's belief through emotion and not a full blown rant. I had her circle's philosophy written down for our DM, but this moment just says a lot more about the Circle of Spore in our game.
My Spore Druid is a Water Genasi (Triton) and instead of basic fungus my Druid instead focusses on the use of a Fungal-like Coral. The Idea is that a meteor from the Moon of Water (In the campaign the elemental planes are moons orbiting the material place rather than different planes) crashed into the sea near the Triton enclave and brought with it this extra-planar Coral that is expanding out from the crash site across the sea. The meteor leaks extra-planar energy, causing a high number of Water Genasi in the surrounding Triton population, and Water Genasi that are born are indoctrinated into the Coral Druid circle. My character is now traveling over land spreading the Coral where-ever he can, hopefully into fresh water sources and drinking water through use of the Plant Growth spell (homebrewed to work on Coral). Other people at the table like the idea, and I take skulls and fashion them into 'plant pots' for my coral. It's all really macabre.
However, what me (not my character, he thinks he's doing good work) and the DM know is that the Coral Meteor was, in fact, a failed attempt by Zuggtmoy to invade the Moon of Water, and the coral carries her corruption and influence. People have recently started acting weird in towns were I've 'diversified the ecosystem' of their water source, it's going to come to a head soon and it's going to be so fun :)
This is really weird. Coral is really a a great idea for a Spore Druid. I’m picturing Bootstrap Bill from the Flying Dutchman. Is your campaign headed for a showdown with Zuggtmoy, herself? That would be epic.
I'm not really sure where it's headed. My character and his people worship the "Coral Queen" as their patron god. The Coral Queen seems to be a benevolent God, and those closest to her (the coral) can hear her whisper in your ear. All the Tritons want to do is spread her unity as much as they can.
The Coral Queen is obviously Zuggtmoy, and she's managed to trick the entire Triton population into becoming essentially cultists. I am currently undecided what my character would do if they found out the truth. And with only an Int of 10 he hasn't worked out why he's not welcome in places of worship for good aligned gods yet 😂 He just thinks it's fish people racism. Presumably when the truth comes out I'll need to make a decision based on the party reaction.
My Circle of Spores druid is based visually off the ideas of a Plague Doctor and the Red Death from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Mask of the Red Death. She’s a 417 year old wood elf, but she doesn’t know what the source of her Spores is. As far as she knows, she’s always had them. (I don’t know what they are, either; I left that up to our DM to either reveal or have it simply be natural.)
While training in the woods with druids, a small sect of them who were followers of Zuggtmoy discovered her Spore-based magic and basically kidnapped her. For years she didn’t know if she would be a prisoner, an unwilling priestess or something like that, or if they were waiting for the right time to sacrifice her to their Lady. So she finally escaped.
Now she does what she can to fight those who harm others while also trying to live a normal life as the landlord of the most profitable and oldest apothecaries in the land. (The country is only 200 years old or so and just finished a 20 year civil war that resulted in the borders being closed). She uses her Spores to hurt those who are doing evil and destroying life.
She views death as a sad thing, but from that sadness new life can grow and the dead are remembered through that which it feeds: flora, fauna, dirt and animals. She has the custom Decompose cantrip Matthew Mercer made for Caduceus Clay and uses it to turn the slain into the next stage of life: fertilizer. That way, the bad people can earn forgiveness by feeding new life and allowing things to grow and the good people are forever remembered by moving on into the most natural state of being.
I love the Circle of Spores. You can go evil with it or you can go in a very positive route with it. For something that seems so dark, there’s a lot of versatility!
I'm currently playing a Circle of Spores, Tortle, Druid in one of my campaigns. He is level 5 right now and I'm starting to struggle with him. I feel like he is being left behind during combat.
Most of my party is dealing with heavy hits and it takes a long time to get my Druid working. Example:
Turn 1: Bonus action Shillelagh, Active Spores
- So there is a full turn of not doing any damage. While Warlock is Shattering all the enemies dead, and Monk and Barbarian are getting multiple attacks on enemies.
Turn 2: Weapon attack. 1D8 + 5 (+1d6). Bonus action maybe? Turn two I'm dealing pathetic damage with my action. If I used primal savagery it's still not a lot of damage (2D10). Then, no bonus actions to do anything helpful. And if I'm lucky, I've dealt 2D4 damage to a creature (very little damage) if they've succeeded a Con saving throw.
Turn 3: Cast a spell that will either buff/debuff/ or do extra damage. Bonus action: nothing unless I choose to use Flaming Sphere on turn 3. Problem is, enemies are all pretty much dead. If lucky i've used my spores to do another 2D4 damage.
VERY, slow.
Example 2:
Turn 1: Flaming Sphere, Heat Metal, or Flame Blade.
Turn 2: Activate spores? Action is used up. If I don't activate spores I can use an action to Flame blade damage with an attack, Debuff spell. Or if I have Flaming sphere out an attack with primal sav. (2d10), and ram someone with the sphere as a bonus action (2D6) dam. Averaging around 13 dam per turn. (2*10/2)+(2*6/2). For a melee druid class thats pretty weak damage.
If I'm lucky, I'm doing 1D4 for reactions.
How can I use Circle of Druid more effectively? I'm either sacrificing a whole turn of combat to ready myself for turn 2. Or, i'm not really doing anything effectively and Sacrificing my sublass abilities? It feels way too weak at level 5, and my party is doing such good damage during battle while I feel like I'm still playing a level 3 character.
You are probably not going to be able to keep up in terms of pure damage output with a warlock or Barbarian.
What about minions? At 5th level you should always have a zombie friend.
You should cast Shillelagh before any encounters. Cast it all the time to have it ready. It last for a minute so it should always be active. If you are walking through a dungeon cast it. About to open a door cast it. This way you could at least save your BA for commanding zombies or moving flaming sphere.
At 6th level you can make weak zombies from a humanoid or a beast as reaction. You should have as many zombies as you can.
Taking 1 level of Arcane Cleric will give you access to Booming Blade and Green Flame Blade as wisdom cantrips. You can stack the damage from these cantrips on top of Shillelagh.
I love the Circle of Spores Druid because it’s so wierd. I haven’t quite wrapped my head around the “beauty in decay” notion of this circle. I like the idea of a subclass that doesn’t make me feel the need to play an evil PC like a death domain cleric or a necromancer. So how do you explain the lore of the circle of spores in your game? Do you play a druid who worships the god of death? A character from the under dark who really likes mushrooms? I kind of like the idea of a spore druid as some kind of perversion to the Druidic order like an oath breaker paladin.
I see it as moreso an acceptance of death rather than exactly wanting to cause it. Where other druids may venerate the spreading of life or the lives of animals, the spore druid seems more into the full cycles of life. Something big dies, and molds, fungus, small plants and animals recycle the flesh, one life becomes many, and the cycle continues ever onward. The ability to make fungal zombies seems like it is less towards the whole necromancy bringing back the dead, but merely one new version of that cycle. The dead being used in more ways than just being broken down. They would be closer, to me anyways, to something like a grave cleric or the raven queen warlock, in how they accept death and believe all things have a time in which they fall.
OK that all makes sense. I just want to make sure that my Hill Dwarf Spore Druid is not seen by other players (or NPC’s for that matter) as just another evil wannabe-lich necromancer. Hey, wait up guys! Let me turn into a bunny so you can see what a nice and fuzzy druid I really am! I do plan, however, to take full advantage of both Animate Dead and Fungal Infestation in the near future (I’m only 4th level now). In my mind, I picture the zombies and skeletons slowing growing (or blooming?) into mushroom constructs aka “my Fun Guys”… more like fungus golems, perhaps?. I guess the carcass is really just organic matter that feeds the living fungus. That’s still pretty creepy! Maybe we are all just fertilizer anyhow?
Here's a conversation my spore druid had with the cleric in our party. He was bugging her all day about how spore druids can "stomach the things they do", he was going in circles (get it?) until she replied with this.
Druid: Tell me, do you know why you bury the dead? or turn them to ash with pyres?
Cleric: Uh.. because leaving them out in the open will cause sickness?
Druid: *giggle* silly, that's much of an excuse as the other two I mentioned~
Cleric: Excuse? Excuse for what?
Druid: To look away.
Cleric: "look away"?
Druid: We of the spore... we choose not to look away. Not when everyone else has.
Cleric: ...
She's a True Neutral Eladrin, wise but not at all intelligent, so I thought it would make sense that she explains her circle's belief through emotion and not a full blown rant.
I had her circle's philosophy written down for our DM, but this moment just says a lot more about the Circle of Spore in our game.
My Spore Druid has an agrarian background, so he relates the arcane fungal infestation of corpses in simply farming terms:
The spirit is sacred, indeed, but husks are simply fertilizer. Do you morn for a rotten tomato in the compost?
My Spore Druid is a Water Genasi (Triton) and instead of basic fungus my Druid instead focusses on the use of a Fungal-like Coral. The Idea is that a meteor from the Moon of Water (In the campaign the elemental planes are moons orbiting the material place rather than different planes) crashed into the sea near the Triton enclave and brought with it this extra-planar Coral that is expanding out from the crash site across the sea. The meteor leaks extra-planar energy, causing a high number of Water Genasi in the surrounding Triton population, and Water Genasi that are born are indoctrinated into the Coral Druid circle. My character is now traveling over land spreading the Coral where-ever he can, hopefully into fresh water sources and drinking water through use of the Plant Growth spell (homebrewed to work on Coral). Other people at the table like the idea, and I take skulls and fashion them into 'plant pots' for my coral. It's all really macabre.
However, what me (not my character, he thinks he's doing good work) and the DM know is that the Coral Meteor was, in fact, a failed attempt by Zuggtmoy to invade the Moon of Water, and the coral carries her corruption and influence. People have recently started acting weird in towns were I've 'diversified the ecosystem' of their water source, it's going to come to a head soon and it's going to be so fun :)
This is really weird. Coral is really a a great idea for a Spore Druid. I’m picturing Bootstrap Bill from the Flying Dutchman. Is your campaign headed for a showdown with Zuggtmoy, herself? That would be epic.
I'm not really sure where it's headed. My character and his people worship the "Coral Queen" as their patron god. The Coral Queen seems to be a benevolent God, and those closest to her (the coral) can hear her whisper in your ear. All the Tritons want to do is spread her unity as much as they can.
The Coral Queen is obviously Zuggtmoy, and she's managed to trick the entire Triton population into becoming essentially cultists. I am currently undecided what my character would do if they found out the truth. And with only an Int of 10 he hasn't worked out why he's not welcome in places of worship for good aligned gods yet 😂 He just thinks it's fish people racism. Presumably when the truth comes out I'll need to make a decision based on the party reaction.
Question, can I use Conjure Woodlands and Fungal Infestation to make them Zombies when they die?
Conjure woodlands says they disappear when they die, and Fungal infestation says, "use reaction... when a creatures dies.."
My Circle of Spores druid is based visually off the ideas of a Plague Doctor and the Red Death from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Mask of the Red Death. She’s a 417 year old wood elf, but she doesn’t know what the source of her Spores is. As far as she knows, she’s always had them. (I don’t know what they are, either; I left that up to our DM to either reveal or have it simply be natural.)
While training in the woods with druids, a small sect of them who were followers of Zuggtmoy discovered her Spore-based magic and basically kidnapped her. For years she didn’t know if she would be a prisoner, an unwilling priestess or something like that, or if they were waiting for the right time to sacrifice her to their Lady. So she finally escaped.
Now she does what she can to fight those who harm others while also trying to live a normal life as the landlord of the most profitable and oldest apothecaries in the land. (The country is only 200 years old or so and just finished a 20 year civil war that resulted in the borders being closed). She uses her Spores to hurt those who are doing evil and destroying life.
She views death as a sad thing, but from that sadness new life can grow and the dead are remembered through that which it feeds: flora, fauna, dirt and animals. She has the custom Decompose cantrip Matthew Mercer made for Caduceus Clay and uses it to turn the slain into the next stage of life: fertilizer. That way, the bad people can earn forgiveness by feeding new life and allowing things to grow and the good people are forever remembered by moving on into the most natural state of being.
I love the Circle of Spores. You can go evil with it or you can go in a very positive route with it. For something that seems so dark, there’s a lot of versatility!
I'm currently playing a Circle of Spores, Tortle, Druid in one of my campaigns. He is level 5 right now and I'm starting to struggle with him. I feel like he is being left behind during combat.
Most of my party is dealing with heavy hits and it takes a long time to get my Druid working. Example:
Turn 1: Bonus action Shillelagh, Active Spores
- So there is a full turn of not doing any damage. While Warlock is Shattering all the enemies dead, and Monk and Barbarian are getting multiple attacks on enemies.
Turn 2: Weapon attack. 1D8 + 5 (+1d6). Bonus action maybe? Turn two I'm dealing pathetic damage with my action. If I used primal savagery it's still not a lot of damage (2D10). Then, no bonus actions to do anything helpful. And if I'm lucky, I've dealt 2D4 damage to a creature (very little damage) if they've succeeded a Con saving throw.
Turn 3: Cast a spell that will either buff/debuff/ or do extra damage. Bonus action: nothing unless I choose to use Flaming Sphere on turn 3. Problem is, enemies are all pretty much dead. If lucky i've used my spores to do another 2D4 damage.
VERY, slow.
Example 2:
Turn 1: Flaming Sphere, Heat Metal, or Flame Blade.
Turn 2: Activate spores? Action is used up. If I don't activate spores I can use an action to Flame blade damage with an attack, Debuff spell. Or if I have Flaming sphere out an attack with primal sav. (2d10), and ram someone with the sphere as a bonus action (2D6) dam. Averaging around 13 dam per turn. (2*10/2)+(2*6/2). For a melee druid class thats pretty weak damage.
If I'm lucky, I'm doing 1D4 for reactions.
How can I use Circle of Druid more effectively? I'm either sacrificing a whole turn of combat to ready myself for turn 2. Or, i'm not really doing anything effectively and Sacrificing my sublass abilities? It feels way too weak at level 5, and my party is doing such good damage during battle while I feel like I'm still playing a level 3 character.
Show me your stat block, equipment and spell selections.
Reality is that which we perceive it to be.
You are probably not going to be able to keep up in terms of pure damage output with a warlock or Barbarian.
What about minions? At 5th level you should always have a zombie friend.
You should cast Shillelagh before any encounters. Cast it all the time to have it ready. It last for a minute so it should always be active. If you are walking through a dungeon cast it. About to open a door cast it. This way you could at least save your BA for commanding zombies or moving flaming sphere.
At 6th level you can make weak zombies from a humanoid or a beast as reaction. You should have as many zombies as you can.
Taking 1 level of Arcane Cleric will give you access to Booming Blade and Green Flame Blade as wisdom cantrips. You can stack the damage from these cantrips on top of Shillelagh.
Where can i find that in my circle selection cuse all i have is the basic ones and play tested stuff do i need a certain book?
You need Guildmasters guide to Ravnica, or to just buy the spores option from the shop :D
I don't do melee with my Spores druid, probably should, but I love doing spells LMAO. And I use the spores for flavour.