My regular playing group has done a few one-shots this past year and I have noticed in each one someone has played a Moon Druid. I’ve yet to play Druid so I have to ask, is Moon that much better for its wildshapes, or is it just the situational one-shot?
Circle of the Land is typically much worse than the Circle of the Moon, especially in one-shots, if you're just using PHB, then the choice is pretty obvious, but if you're using XGtE, then the other circles (Dreams and Shepherd) are interesting alternatives if you don't just wanna be a bog-standard Moon Druid like most every other druid. The Circle of Dreams is basically Land but trades out some spells for other, usually better, features. The Circle of the Shepherd is all about summons, animal companion, and communing with beasts and fey
The various Druid circles are geared towards different play styles, so it's a question of what you want to do with your Druid. The Druid spell list leans more towards support & control than straight face-wrecking, so if you want to be more offense-oriented in combat, Circle Of The Moon may be the one for you. It probably also appeals to one-shot builds because it gives you an effective combat option that doesn't burn spell slots.
Moon is the most straightforwardly good. Turn into big animal, hit things, take lots of hits with your massive refreshable animal HP pool.
The others lean more towards spellcasting with a focus on support and control rather than facetanking or DPS - so it's easier to mess up and be ineffective, and sometimes less obvious how effective you're being. This is probably even more pronounced in one-shots, where you don't have time to figure out how to work with your party, so the simple "go forward and kill things as a big beast" is much easier to get right.
Circle of the Land is typically much worse than the Circle of the Moon, especially in one-shots, if you're just using PHB, then the choice is pretty obvious, but if you're using XGtE, then the other circles (Dreams and Shepherd) are interesting alternatives if you don't just wanna be a bog-standard Moon Druid like most every other druid. The Circle of Dreams is basically Land but trades out some spells for other, usually better, features. The Circle of the Shepherd is all about summons, animal companion, and communing with beasts and fey
This is only true at the lower levels because circle of the moon is fairly front loaded so it has more obvious advantages at lower levels.
What is good with a druid depends on the level of the druid. Circle of the lands at higher levels are spell casting power houses in their own right and even Moon Druids tend to lean into spell casting quite a bit. So it's a matter of what kind of one shot your doing and at what level, as well as your personal style.
Circle of the moon benefits from monsters not being statted to fight monsters, Moon druids turn into these monsters (usually the best one they can for the circumstances) making what they are capable of doing in a given situation beyond what the encounter was prepared for.
Land druids are so much nastier. If you cant think of and have prepped all the different animals you will be using as a moon druid, to deploy at the first call of 'roll initiative' then land druids less arduous extra spells known seems much easier to play, oh and it is. Those spells however should define the difference between you and every other subtype of land druid as well as any other druid type. If they dont, or your chosen sub-subclass spells dont turn out to be useful in an adventure or worse a campaign you will feel lacklustre. Until you get to 10th. Like all race / feat / spell / class /subclass combinations there is a chance that you have made some clangers and your less than optimal. If your land druid is thinking: Immunity to poison and disease? thats weak, not many creatures left that will use that on us past 10th! You are falling into a trap of your own making.
Have you got darkvision by race? If no, use the 2nd level spell for 8 hours. Now two words: Yellow Mold. Thats it, just yellow mold, any encounter out of the sun and abilities in concert to keep it portable and deployable will quickly make any area into a death trap for everyone except the poison immune. Can you make yourself invisible with your land druid subclass? You can! Oh well prodding yellow mold doesnt count as an attack or casting a spell so thats 2d10 poison in a 10' radius every time you want it and 1d10 per round till a successful save is made without losing invisibility. Yellow mold rests in areas and grows new patches. This is an area denial bacteriological weapon. The cons to this approach are, once again you wont really need a party and are a massive danger to it until you cleanse it before meeting back up.
Other alternatives now that Carrion crawlers are not hated aberrations is to beat one to a bruised pulp and transport it with you, liberally soaking yourself in its secretions so you can paralyze the unwary. Growing (carefully) Gas spores. or recruiting vegepygmy and spreading russet mold around. If you would prefer to find ways to eliminate 80% of all monsters risk reduced or free then remember Goldblum's advice 'land.... finds a way' *
Shepherd druids should be able to out heal any other character ever, and provide more temporary hitpoints with the unicorn totem / spell cast for healing and bear for just after rest buffing. Throw in resting as a rat in a sling another party member carries as they travel and you might rack up 9 short rests or more a day, never take part in a combat but full healing and buffing everyone between each ratnap.
Dreams are shepherds for people not twigging on to the above method and apart from that provide a lot of camping fun, think of them as the useful 5th man in a 4 man party, the one who stays back and looks after the camp cooking pot and the horses whilst the others explore the cave / dungeon / evil floating glacier.
In summary, depending on whether your games support clever players and 'dear god your a monster!' players or not will determine whether moon is 'best' for either you or the table in general. Smart play and cleverness should be rewarded, but play that even if allowable will ruin the adventure for everyone else playing should not be. I disagree that moon druids are frontloaded however. They are power houses at 2 to 4th, collapse the closer they come to 9th and then at 10th they will destroy nearly every set adventure and many non source book ones. at 20th this problem is capstoned with an ability that will sadly have them targeted by every single instant kill attack in the books because little else can stop them. (and good luck if they have a 5th level aid cast on them!)
You don't even actually necessarily have to use an instakill even though it's highly effective. Stun or paralyze the crap out of a moon druid and it's just a sitting duck. stun doesn't go away just because they lose their animal form. And there are ways to reapply stuns. Some animal forms are also vulnerable to sleep spells because after a certain point they are often the lowest HP things in the room. Or just plain stupefy them into uselessness.
As for Elemental forms. Sure they look strong and can be strong depending on how they are used. But against anything prepared to fight against elementals. or can give themselves resistance or immunity to that kind of elemental. They are just great big annoyances.
Fateless, The difference between a dumb as a rock monster elemental played by the DM and a player controlling it as a druid is as different as sun and moon
1) elementals are immune to exhaustion
2) at 10th elemental form lasts for 5 hours
3) a druid regains wildshape, a class ability, on a short rest, meaning even before 20th they can have two forms ready to go as they dont lose class abilities in elemental form.
4) spells are blocked by total cover
5) earth elementals tremorsense means you can see through the medium of earth
6) earth elementals have a 10' reach, siege monster, burrow and pass through natural earth and unworked stone.
So in summary, moon druids never sleep, attack from beneath the earth over 5' from any possible repercussion and spells are unable to affect them. Any blockages to attacks such as worked stone can be punched through. Only held actions waiting for the inevitable broken legs to attack will have a chance of landing and the +5 cover will raise the ac to 22. If injured badly the elemental can retreat and shortrest its hd, attack again, switch forms to 'fresh earth elemental' Thats more attrition than you could ever need. Buildings arent safe havens, Siege monsters will destroy the foundations, Structures become xp piggy banks you smash to get your pocket money from. Only arctic glaciers, thin molten crusts non sea bottom and aerial adventures or similar prevent the slow but inevitable death machine.
Again, consider if this will be fun for the rest of the table and dont do it if it will detract from others enjoyment (yes even the DM's, if they crafted a magnum opus adventure thats their beloved child then dont break it) And have fun yourself!
As for Elemental forms. Sure they look strong and can be strong depending on how they are used. But against anything prepared to fight against elementals. or can give themselves resistance or immunity to that kind of elemental. They are just great big annoyances.
You make it sound like the Moon Druid becomes no better than a summoned/conjured Elemental, this is not the case. For starters, the Druid retains their mental stats, so the Int of 5 and Wis of 10 won't be a thing. As for "anything prepared to fight against Elementals", how do you mean? Elementals have few real weaknesses, and they don't share any weaknesses in common. And when it comes to resisting an Elemental's offense, three of the four Elemental forms would be doing magical bludgeoning damage, which no official monsters have immunity to and not many have resistance. Fire damage, sure that gets resisted a lot. But when facing enemies who aren't resistant, you'll be doing persistent damage and you'll be throwing off auto-hit fire damage at anyone who hits you up close. Plus each one is 100ish HP, giving you a fair amount of time to go all smashy-smash especially if you burn some spell slots to heal yourself.
Elemental Wild Shape forms are far from invincible, but they're still pretty awesome.
Elementals work because they are unprepared for them. There are ways to deal with them to greatly weaken them.
Water Elementals suffer from issues from ice magic for example. They have no resistance to it and any frost damage at all cuts their movement to 10 feet if they aren't in the water. You can actually slow them down so much they can be turned basically immobile and largely ineffective if not in water. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/water-elemental
The Fire Elemental is actually weak to water. There are several spells that can do quite a lot of damage to them just by catching them in the area. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/fire-elemental
The earth elemental is vulnerable to Thunder damage. meaning that it takes extra damage from all thunder spells that hits it. Again there are several of these. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/earth-elemental
The air elemental is the only one without some kind of inherent weakness because of it's elemental nature.
I also made sure to link the DND Beyond versions of them so you can see how they are officially written. Like I said. Against a prepared enemy. They aren't nearly the threat they seem. They look cool and they have a new level of utility. and they add that bit of awesomeness but that awesomeness doesn't exactly translate into actual power. And they all have resistance only to non-magical melee damage. Meaning there are a lot of things that can actually hurt them fully that you wouldn't expect depending on the source. (Such as summoned beasts by a Summoner or Circle of the Shepard.)
They also don't do very impressive damage. Sure they are decent compared to beating on something with a staff and they are an upgrade from most beast forms. Specially with their extra added abilities. But they are still falling slightly behind and they suffer against anything prepared to deal with them.
And other than making their attacks Magical to avoid mundane bludgeoning resistance when making attacks with three of them. They don't improve all that much from much of what the Moon Druid actually has Itself.
Elementals are useful and impressive if played in the right situation which takes into account the terrain, the type of monsters being dealt with and having the right spells prepared to augment the elemental's abilities. Earth glide is very useful if you are already in difficult natural terrain or manage to catch several foes in a Sleet Storm spell. Protection from Energy on a Moon Druid who can maintain concentration on a Call Lightning spell while shifted into a Water Elemental can zap itself and all creatures in its space while doing Whelm damage in the same round.
I do feel that getting only 2 Wildshape forms until level 20 is a bit weak since you have to expend all Wildshapes to get into Elemental form. That cuts down on the versatility of the Moon Druid subclass quite a bit until level 20, which most people never play to. Fateless is correct that a BBEG using scrying spells or a well-placed homunculus can ambush a 'Shaped Elemental Moon Druid pretty effectively as a result.
Elementals work because they are unprepared for them. There are ways to deal with them to greatly weaken them.
Water Elementals suffer from issues from ice magic for example. They have no resistance to it and any frost damage at all cuts their movement to 10 feet if they aren't in the water. You can actually slow them down so much they can be turned basically immobile and largely ineffective if not in water. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/water-elemental
The Fire Elemental is actually weak to water. There are several spells that can do quite a lot of damage to them just by catching them in the area. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/fire-elemental
The earth elemental is vulnerable to Thunder damage. meaning that it takes extra damage from all thunder spells that hits it. Again there are several of these. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/earth-elemental
The air elemental is the only one without some kind of inherent weakness because of it's elemental nature.
I also made sure to link the DND Beyond versions of them so you can see how they are officially written. Like I said. Against a prepared enemy. They aren't nearly the threat they seem. They look cool and they have a new level of utility. and they add that bit of awesomeness but that awesomeness doesn't exactly translate into actual power. And they all have resistance only to non-magical melee damage. Meaning there are a lot of things that can actually hurt them fully that you wouldn't expect depending on the source. (Such as summoned beasts by a Summoner or Circle of the Shepard.)
They also don't do very impressive damage. Sure they are decent compared to beating on something with a staff and they are an upgrade from most beast forms. Specially with their extra added abilities. But they are still falling slightly behind and they suffer against anything prepared to deal with them.
And other than making their attacks Magical to avoid mundane bludgeoning resistance when making attacks with three of them. They don't improve all that much from much of what the Moon Druid actually has Itself.
I see your argument, but I simply don't understand why you handwave elemental form away as though it's simply a "minor annoyance" and not really that powerful. One of the things about wildshape in general is the versatility, and elementals play very nicely into that. As others here have pointed out, elementals controlled by players are a lot more powerful than dumb NPC elementals, because players can use their abilities in all sorts of created ways. AND you get to keep your wisdom, intelligence and charisma scores. AND you get to keep your class features and concentration on spells. AND you get to cast spells to varying degrees as you progress in levels. When we talk about an elemental wildshape, we're not just talking about an elemental, we're talking about a PC who is ALSO an elemental. And we're talking about a sack of hit points that, even when it's gone, leaves you with the druid itself to deal with. In that sense, wildshape is a strict bonus. I won't even get into level 20, which is ridiculous on multiple levels.
To your main point, that elementals are counterable. Yes. Yes they are. But if you're building every encounter with specifically "how do I counter the druid?" in mind as your question, that in itself speaks to the power of the class. What if you want to build a generic encounter against a troll or a dragon or some sort of demon? In most situations, the right elemental can break that encounter.
You mentioned in one of your other comments the idea of stunning elementals. This is possible, but it is one of the few conditions most elementals are susceptible to. They are straight up immune to most of the status effects monsters would use against them, which is in itself powerful. Elementals also tend to have high str, dex and con and get your wis, int and char scores and saving throws as well. Good luck getting them to consistently fail saving throws against stun effects.
You act as though, "I can build encounters to counter moon druid, therefore moon druid isn't really that OP." Really? As DM you certainly better be able to build encounters to counter any class if you have to.
ANOTHER aspect of it is that while, yes, elementals do have weaknesses, they don't really tend to SHARE weaknesses. One of the issues with preparing for wildshape in general is that you never know what wildshape you're going to have to prepare for. In fact, typically what sort of enemies you send dictates what sort of wildshape the druid assumes. Many of the wildshapes are honestly sort of samey, but for Circle of the Moon in particular, the elementals are not samey at all. Between them, they have resistance against most of the common damage types. Sure, earth elemental is vulnerable to thunder - so maybe, if you're going up against an enemy that specifically does thunder damage, you want to NOT use an earth elemental. Sure, fire elemental takes damage from water, but it takes only one damage from every gallon of water it's doused with. That won't be a problem in most situations. But maybe against enemies who use some sort of water attack (create water, for example) or if you're in the middle of the ocean, then don't use water elemental. Air elemental, as you pointed out, doesn't have much of a specific weakness at all. Obviously, a smart player will avoid water elemental against enemies that do cold damage.
The only ways to cheese this are to either choose/modify the enemies and powers after they choose the wildshape, which is frankly lazy DM-ing IMO, or to have enemies who are literally Swiss army knife prepared for all four types - and remember, all four types under the control of players who will play them smartly and also have their class features and, at later levels, spell-casting.
If you're going to perform 2 year old thread necromancy, you should probably make sure the posters are still around and still think that way before you start actively disagreeing with them.
Elementals work because they are unprepared for them. There are ways to deal with them to greatly weaken them.
Water Elementals suffer from issues from ice magic for example. They have no resistance to it and any frost damage at all cuts their movement to 10 feet if they aren't in the water. You can actually slow them down so much they can be turned basically immobile and largely ineffective if not in water. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/water-elemental
The Fire Elemental is actually weak to water. There are several spells that can do quite a lot of damage to them just by catching them in the area. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/fire-elemental
The earth elemental is vulnerable to Thunder damage. meaning that it takes extra damage from all thunder spells that hits it. Again there are several of these. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/earth-elemental
The air elemental is the only one without some kind of inherent weakness because of it's elemental nature.
I also made sure to link the DND Beyond versions of them so you can see how they are officially written. Like I said. Against a prepared enemy. They aren't nearly the threat they seem. They look cool and they have a new level of utility. and they add that bit of awesomeness but that awesomeness doesn't exactly translate into actual power. And they all have resistance only to non-magical melee damage. Meaning there are a lot of things that can actually hurt them fully that you wouldn't expect depending on the source. (Such as summoned beasts by a Summoner or Circle of the Shepard.)
They also don't do very impressive damage. Sure they are decent compared to beating on something with a staff and they are an upgrade from most beast forms. Specially with their extra added abilities. But they are still falling slightly behind and they suffer against anything prepared to deal with them.
And other than making their attacks Magical to avoid mundane bludgeoning resistance when making attacks with three of them. They don't improve all that much from much of what the Moon Druid actually has Itself.
I see your argument, but I simply don't understand why you handwave elemental form away as though it's simply a "minor annoyance" and not really that powerful. One of the things about wildshape in general is the versatility, and elementals play very nicely into that. As others here have pointed out, elementals controlled by players are a lot more powerful than dumb NPC elementals, because players can use their abilities in all sorts of created ways. AND you get to keep your wisdom, intelligence and charisma scores. AND you get to keep your class features and concentration on spells. AND you get to cast spells to varying degrees as you progress in levels. When we talk about an elemental wildshape, we're not just talking about an elemental, we're talking about a PC who is ALSO an elemental. And we're talking about a sack of hit points that, even when it's gone, leaves you with the druid itself to deal with. In that sense, wildshape is a strict bonus. I won't even get into level 20, which is ridiculous on multiple levels.
To your main point, that elementals are counterable. Yes. Yes they are. But if you're building every encounter with specifically "how do I counter the druid?" in mind as your question, that in itself speaks to the power of the class. What if you want to build a generic encounter against a troll or a dragon or some sort of demon? In most situations, the right elemental can break that encounter.
You mentioned in one of your other comments the idea of stunning elementals. This is possible, but it is one of the few conditions most elementals are susceptible to. They are straight up immune to most of the status effects monsters would use against them, which is in itself powerful. Elementals also tend to have high str, dex and con and get your wis, int and char scores and saving throws as well. Good luck getting them to consistently fail saving throws against stun effects.
You act as though, "I can build encounters to counter moon druid, therefore moon druid isn't really that OP." Really? As DM you certainly better be able to build encounters to counter any class if you have to.
ANOTHER aspect of it is that while, yes, elementals do have weaknesses, they don't really tend to SHARE weaknesses. One of the issues with preparing for wildshape in general is that you never know what wildshape you're going to have to prepare for. In fact, typically what sort of enemies you send dictates what sort of wildshape the druid assumes. Many of the wildshapes are honestly sort of samey, but for Circle of the Moon in particular, the elementals are not samey at all. Between them, they have resistance against most of the common damage types. Sure, earth elemental is vulnerable to thunder - so maybe, if you're going up against an enemy that specifically does thunder damage, you want to NOT use an earth elemental. Sure, fire elemental takes damage from water, but it takes only one damage from every gallon of water it's doused with. That won't be a problem in most situations. But maybe against enemies who use some sort of water attack (create water, for example) or if you're in the middle of the ocean, then don't use water elemental. Air elemental, as you pointed out, doesn't have much of a specific weakness at all. Obviously, a smart player will avoid water elemental against enemies that do cold damage.
The only ways to cheese this are to either choose/modify the enemies and powers after they choose the wildshape, which is frankly lazy DM-ing IMO, or to have enemies who are literally Swiss army knife prepared for all four types - and remember, all four types under the control of players who will play them smartly and also have their class features and, at later levels, spell-casting.
No. For most of their careers there is no casting while you are shape changed. Also even with a con that's probably better than the Druid's natural Con. Without some good building into being able to keep concentration your not necessarily going to keep those spells once your shape changed since Druids do not naturally have Proficiency in Con and plenty of Moon Druids do not necessarily invest into what can be seen by some as necessary Caster feats despite having a strong side because it doesn't help their Shape Changing all that much. So it's common that the increased con is only a 2 or 3 point gain on concentration rolls anyway.
Also. You don't have to build to counter elementals. Anybody that is just building with a variety of elements can automatically counter elementals. And the Level 20 Druid has glaring grey area's and weaknesses that often get ignored.
So it's not speaking to the testament of the class or even the wildshape into elementals if it's easily counterable without a special build. A general build with just alternatives instead of obsession over single elements (usually fire) shows that there is a weakness. Because this supposed strength in this idea that you have to build to counter them doesn't actually exist. The Reason for this is because any actual smart caster. Specially another Druid or a Wizard naturally already has many counters from different elements naturally because they are widely applicable without special consideration to elementals because Elementals aren't the only things with abilities like Elemental Resistances to work around. Ray of Frost is a cantrip so it's easy to have on hand even if it's not used much. There are thunder spells galore to be taken for the earth elementals. And there are useful water based spells that sometimes get overlooked but tend to have a variety of uses.
And no. Elementals aren't naturally dumb when it comes to using their abilities. They understand them better than a Druid ever will because they are completely natural to them. So your not goign to somehow just magically use them better just because your a druid wildshaping into one since wildshaping is primarily about mimicing the thing that you turn into. Many of these so called Creative Uses tend to bend the rules quite a bit as well but tend to get deemed ok for Rule of Cool. But you cannot guarantee them to work.
As for their Immunities? The only thing all those status immunities get in the way of is players who rely on various status effects. But they aren't actually a big deal. And your still not protected from Stun which is often considered one of the more powerful status effects and one of the few that is truly ingrained into a class. otherwise they just don't realistically mean all that much. Because most of them are fairly niche when not produced by spells (most often by the players) and only found on specific monsters that may or may not have other ways to deal with Elementals or other abilities of their own. Or they are potentially on things like Demons which if your summoning them just to fight elementals you may have bigger problems than the fact that elementals resisting such abilities.
While Elemental Forms make wildshaping and the moon druid viable for a bit longer. They aren't some ground breaking super force that you seem to think they are. And they suffer from the same overall flaw that beasts do. The Things you fight are just going to get so much bigger and stronger and hit better that Elemental Shapes for the most part are not going to last too much longer than the beast shapes. Even just concerted physical efforts by strong martials can quickly take them down if they really want to and they focus on that task. potentially leaving the druid with the problem that they are now under prepared to deal with several angry people with sharp pieces of steel in their face. The bigger problem tends to be that the martial characters just don't think of this until it's too late for them and they've already been worn down by other threats because the elemental was not able to threaten them enough and they focused elsewhere.
I will agree with you about not being able to cast in wild-shape for most of their career. Judging how good elemental forms are really depends on exactly when in a druid's career we're judging them. I'm not an especially big druid fan myself, so I don't have any particular stake in defending Moon Druids - they're just strong. Perhaps not as strong as the low levels, but druids in general arguably get one of the strongest 18th level abilities and one of the strongest (if not the strongest) capstones in the entire game. Infinite wildshape is simply ridiculous. Even before you gain access to spellcasting in beast form you still do have concentration on spells, though, and although that concentration can certainly be broken, it won't necessarily be broken with your good con in elemental form. It really just depends on how you roll. Unless you're taking a lot of damage on a single hit, those con saves are DC 10 for the most part.
Regarding players playing elementals smarter, it's not so much that elementals are dumb (although they don't have super high intelligence either). It's a matter of the fact that DM's tend to play elementals dumb. Most DM's are not trying to play opponents optimally because most DM's aren't setting out for a TPK and if they really want one they can always just throw more stuff at the party. DM's play elementals for roleplay purposes rather than to their max potential.
Regarding casters being able to counter elementals, yes, yes they often can. Casters are the best equipped enemies to deal with elemental shape. However, casters are only a small part of D&D monsters. Dragons aren't casters. They're single element engines that can be countered nicely by elementals. Vampires aren't casters. A lot of the ablities they rely on are worthless against elemental wildshapes. Bandits, giants, trolls, packs of wolves, the list goes on and on. You've essentially limited yourself to versatile casters with a variety of damage types as the way of dealing with elementals - and those same casters tend to be squishy. As casters, they also tend to want to do things other than damage, like status effects. However, as we've talked about, elementals are immune to most status effects and have a fast movement speed compared to players that lets them dodge in and out of battle. Their attacks are also by no means as weak as you make them out to be. The air elemental has a 2d8+5 multiattack. So 4d8+10 between both attacks (or roughly 28 damage a turn). Compare that to eldritch blast at level 11th level (you get elemental form at level 10). At 11th level, a warlock gets three rays of eldritch blast and a warlock who specs into eldritch blast will get 3d10+15 damage, assuming they've maxed their charisma to 20 - which obviously assumes very good rolls. That's roughly equivalent damage - just slightly more, and Eldritch blast warlocks are considered DPS cannons, whereas druids in wildshape are supposed to function more as tanks. With hex in addition, warlocks will do significantly more damage for sure, but still not THAT much more, and at the expense of one of the few spell slots warlocks get.
At mid levels, elemental shape gives a tanky, decently high damage option for wildshape. It's solidly pc level (or more) of free health that you have on top of your regular druid health, and that you can heal up with spell slots, not to mention resistances against most common types of damage unless you're going against spellcasters designed to deal with you. At level 20, you go from a decent health bonus to infinite wildshapes and enemies who are required to nuke you down within a turn in order to do anything - AND you get essentially all the benefits of being a regular druid while in wildshape. So yes, at level 20, moon druid is busted as heck! Is it more OP than wizard who can just wish and rewrite reality? No. But It's pretty dang strong.
My regular playing group has done a few one-shots this past year and I have noticed in each one someone has played a Moon Druid. I’ve yet to play Druid so I have to ask, is Moon that much better for its wildshapes, or is it just the situational one-shot?
It is definitely powerful, and probably the best tank/melee build for druids.
I think land druids are better casters because they get am extra cantrip and can recover some spell slots on short rest.
Circle of the Land is typically much worse than the Circle of the Moon, especially in one-shots, if you're just using PHB, then the choice is pretty obvious, but if you're using XGtE, then the other circles (Dreams and Shepherd) are interesting alternatives if you don't just wanna be a bog-standard Moon Druid like most every other druid. The Circle of Dreams is basically Land but trades out some spells for other, usually better, features. The Circle of the Shepherd is all about summons, animal companion, and communing with beasts and fey
The proud owner of over 8000 hours in Terraria.
Send help pleaseThe various Druid circles are geared towards different play styles, so it's a question of what you want to do with your Druid. The Druid spell list leans more towards support & control than straight face-wrecking, so if you want to be more offense-oriented in combat, Circle Of The Moon may be the one for you. It probably also appeals to one-shot builds because it gives you an effective combat option that doesn't burn spell slots.
Moon is the most straightforwardly good. Turn into big animal, hit things, take lots of hits with your massive refreshable animal HP pool.
The others lean more towards spellcasting with a focus on support and control rather than facetanking or DPS - so it's easier to mess up and be ineffective, and sometimes less obvious how effective you're being. This is probably even more pronounced in one-shots, where you don't have time to figure out how to work with your party, so the simple "go forward and kill things as a big beast" is much easier to get right.
This is only true at the lower levels because circle of the moon is fairly front loaded so it has more obvious advantages at lower levels.
What is good with a druid depends on the level of the druid. Circle of the lands at higher levels are spell casting power houses in their own right and even Moon Druids tend to lean into spell casting quite a bit. So it's a matter of what kind of one shot your doing and at what level, as well as your personal style.
Circle of the moon benefits from monsters not being statted to fight monsters, Moon druids turn into these monsters (usually the best one they can for the circumstances) making what they are capable of doing in a given situation beyond what the encounter was prepared for.
Land druids are so much nastier. If you cant think of and have prepped all the different animals you will be using as a moon druid, to deploy at the first call of 'roll initiative' then land druids less arduous extra spells known seems much easier to play, oh and it is. Those spells however should define the difference between you and every other subtype of land druid as well as any other druid type. If they dont, or your chosen sub-subclass spells dont turn out to be useful in an adventure or worse a campaign you will feel lacklustre. Until you get to 10th. Like all race / feat / spell / class /subclass combinations there is a chance that you have made some clangers and your less than optimal. If your land druid is thinking: Immunity to poison and disease? thats weak, not many creatures left that will use that on us past 10th! You are falling into a trap of your own making.
Have you got darkvision by race? If no, use the 2nd level spell for 8 hours. Now two words: Yellow Mold. Thats it, just yellow mold, any encounter out of the sun and abilities in concert to keep it portable and deployable will quickly make any area into a death trap for everyone except the poison immune. Can you make yourself invisible with your land druid subclass? You can! Oh well prodding yellow mold doesnt count as an attack or casting a spell so thats 2d10 poison in a 10' radius every time you want it and 1d10 per round till a successful save is made without losing invisibility. Yellow mold rests in areas and grows new patches. This is an area denial bacteriological weapon. The cons to this approach are, once again you wont really need a party and are a massive danger to it until you cleanse it before meeting back up.
Other alternatives now that Carrion crawlers are not hated aberrations is to beat one to a bruised pulp and transport it with you, liberally soaking yourself in its secretions so you can paralyze the unwary. Growing (carefully) Gas spores. or recruiting vegepygmy and spreading russet mold around. If you would prefer to find ways to eliminate 80% of all monsters risk reduced or free then remember Goldblum's advice 'land.... finds a way' *
Shepherd druids should be able to out heal any other character ever, and provide more temporary hitpoints with the unicorn totem / spell cast for healing and bear for just after rest buffing. Throw in resting as a rat in a sling another party member carries as they travel and you might rack up 9 short rests or more a day, never take part in a combat but full healing and buffing everyone between each ratnap.
Dreams are shepherds for people not twigging on to the above method and apart from that provide a lot of camping fun, think of them as the useful 5th man in a 4 man party, the one who stays back and looks after the camp cooking pot and the horses whilst the others explore the cave / dungeon / evil floating glacier.
In summary, depending on whether your games support clever players and 'dear god your a monster!' players or not will determine whether moon is 'best' for either you or the table in general. Smart play and cleverness should be rewarded, but play that even if allowable will ruin the adventure for everyone else playing should not be. I disagree that moon druids are frontloaded however. They are power houses at 2 to 4th, collapse the closer they come to 9th and then at 10th they will destroy nearly every set adventure and many non source book ones. at 20th this problem is capstoned with an ability that will sadly have them targeted by every single instant kill attack in the books because little else can stop them. (and good luck if they have a 5th level aid cast on them!)
You don't even actually necessarily have to use an instakill even though it's highly effective. Stun or paralyze the crap out of a moon druid and it's just a sitting duck. stun doesn't go away just because they lose their animal form. And there are ways to reapply stuns. Some animal forms are also vulnerable to sleep spells because after a certain point they are often the lowest HP things in the room. Or just plain stupefy them into uselessness.
As for Elemental forms. Sure they look strong and can be strong depending on how they are used. But against anything prepared to fight against elementals. or can give themselves resistance or immunity to that kind of elemental. They are just great big annoyances.
Fateless, The difference between a dumb as a rock monster elemental played by the DM and a player controlling it as a druid is as different as sun and moon
1) elementals are immune to exhaustion
2) at 10th elemental form lasts for 5 hours
3) a druid regains wildshape, a class ability, on a short rest, meaning even before 20th they can have two forms ready to go as they dont lose class abilities in elemental form.
4) spells are blocked by total cover
5) earth elementals tremorsense means you can see through the medium of earth
6) earth elementals have a 10' reach, siege monster, burrow and pass through natural earth and unworked stone.
So in summary, moon druids never sleep, attack from beneath the earth over 5' from any possible repercussion and spells are unable to affect them. Any blockages to attacks such as worked stone can be punched through. Only held actions waiting for the inevitable broken legs to attack will have a chance of landing and the +5 cover will raise the ac to 22. If injured badly the elemental can retreat and shortrest its hd, attack again, switch forms to 'fresh earth elemental' Thats more attrition than you could ever need. Buildings arent safe havens, Siege monsters will destroy the foundations, Structures become xp piggy banks you smash to get your pocket money from. Only arctic glaciers, thin molten crusts non sea bottom and aerial adventures or similar prevent the slow but inevitable death machine.
Again, consider if this will be fun for the rest of the table and dont do it if it will detract from others enjoyment (yes even the DM's, if they crafted a magnum opus adventure thats their beloved child then dont break it) And have fun yourself!
You make it sound like the Moon Druid becomes no better than a summoned/conjured Elemental, this is not the case. For starters, the Druid retains their mental stats, so the Int of 5 and Wis of 10 won't be a thing. As for "anything prepared to fight against Elementals", how do you mean? Elementals have few real weaknesses, and they don't share any weaknesses in common. And when it comes to resisting an Elemental's offense, three of the four Elemental forms would be doing magical bludgeoning damage, which no official monsters have immunity to and not many have resistance. Fire damage, sure that gets resisted a lot. But when facing enemies who aren't resistant, you'll be doing persistent damage and you'll be throwing off auto-hit fire damage at anyone who hits you up close. Plus each one is 100ish HP, giving you a fair amount of time to go all smashy-smash especially if you burn some spell slots to heal yourself.
Elemental Wild Shape forms are far from invincible, but they're still pretty awesome.
Elementals work because they are unprepared for them. There are ways to deal with them to greatly weaken them.
Water Elementals suffer from issues from ice magic for example. They have no resistance to it and any frost damage at all cuts their movement to 10 feet if they aren't in the water. You can actually slow them down so much they can be turned basically immobile and largely ineffective if not in water. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/water-elemental
The Fire Elemental is actually weak to water. There are several spells that can do quite a lot of damage to them just by catching them in the area. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/fire-elemental
The earth elemental is vulnerable to Thunder damage. meaning that it takes extra damage from all thunder spells that hits it. Again there are several of these. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/earth-elemental
The air elemental is the only one without some kind of inherent weakness because of it's elemental nature.
I also made sure to link the DND Beyond versions of them so you can see how they are officially written. Like I said. Against a prepared enemy. They aren't nearly the threat they seem. They look cool and they have a new level of utility. and they add that bit of awesomeness but that awesomeness doesn't exactly translate into actual power. And they all have resistance only to non-magical melee damage. Meaning there are a lot of things that can actually hurt them fully that you wouldn't expect depending on the source. (Such as summoned beasts by a Summoner or Circle of the Shepard.)
They also don't do very impressive damage. Sure they are decent compared to beating on something with a staff and they are an upgrade from most beast forms. Specially with their extra added abilities. But they are still falling slightly behind and they suffer against anything prepared to deal with them.
And other than making their attacks Magical to avoid mundane bludgeoning resistance when making attacks with three of them. They don't improve all that much from much of what the Moon Druid actually has Itself.
Elementals are useful and impressive if played in the right situation which takes into account the terrain, the type of monsters being dealt with and having the right spells prepared to augment the elemental's abilities. Earth glide is very useful if you are already in difficult natural terrain or manage to catch several foes in a Sleet Storm spell. Protection from Energy on a Moon Druid who can maintain concentration on a Call Lightning spell while shifted into a Water Elemental can zap itself and all creatures in its space while doing Whelm damage in the same round.
I do feel that getting only 2 Wildshape forms until level 20 is a bit weak since you have to expend all Wildshapes to get into Elemental form. That cuts down on the versatility of the Moon Druid subclass quite a bit until level 20, which most people never play to. Fateless is correct that a BBEG using scrying spells or a well-placed homunculus can ambush a 'Shaped Elemental Moon Druid pretty effectively as a result.
I rather enjoy this thread turned out. A lot of great points for comparison, especially one-shots vs campaigns.
I see your argument, but I simply don't understand why you handwave elemental form away as though it's simply a "minor annoyance" and not really that powerful. One of the things about wildshape in general is the versatility, and elementals play very nicely into that. As others here have pointed out, elementals controlled by players are a lot more powerful than dumb NPC elementals, because players can use their abilities in all sorts of created ways. AND you get to keep your wisdom, intelligence and charisma scores. AND you get to keep your class features and concentration on spells. AND you get to cast spells to varying degrees as you progress in levels. When we talk about an elemental wildshape, we're not just talking about an elemental, we're talking about a PC who is ALSO an elemental. And we're talking about a sack of hit points that, even when it's gone, leaves you with the druid itself to deal with. In that sense, wildshape is a strict bonus. I won't even get into level 20, which is ridiculous on multiple levels.
To your main point, that elementals are counterable. Yes. Yes they are. But if you're building every encounter with specifically "how do I counter the druid?" in mind as your question, that in itself speaks to the power of the class. What if you want to build a generic encounter against a troll or a dragon or some sort of demon? In most situations, the right elemental can break that encounter.
You mentioned in one of your other comments the idea of stunning elementals. This is possible, but it is one of the few conditions most elementals are susceptible to. They are straight up immune to most of the status effects monsters would use against them, which is in itself powerful. Elementals also tend to have high str, dex and con and get your wis, int and char scores and saving throws as well. Good luck getting them to consistently fail saving throws against stun effects.
You act as though, "I can build encounters to counter moon druid, therefore moon druid isn't really that OP." Really? As DM you certainly better be able to build encounters to counter any class if you have to.
ANOTHER aspect of it is that while, yes, elementals do have weaknesses, they don't really tend to SHARE weaknesses. One of the issues with preparing for wildshape in general is that you never know what wildshape you're going to have to prepare for. In fact, typically what sort of enemies you send dictates what sort of wildshape the druid assumes. Many of the wildshapes are honestly sort of samey, but for Circle of the Moon in particular, the elementals are not samey at all. Between them, they have resistance against most of the common damage types. Sure, earth elemental is vulnerable to thunder - so maybe, if you're going up against an enemy that specifically does thunder damage, you want to NOT use an earth elemental. Sure, fire elemental takes damage from water, but it takes only one damage from every gallon of water it's doused with. That won't be a problem in most situations. But maybe against enemies who use some sort of water attack (create water, for example) or if you're in the middle of the ocean, then don't use water elemental. Air elemental, as you pointed out, doesn't have much of a specific weakness at all. Obviously, a smart player will avoid water elemental against enemies that do cold damage.
The only ways to cheese this are to either choose/modify the enemies and powers after they choose the wildshape, which is frankly lazy DM-ing IMO, or to have enemies who are literally Swiss army knife prepared for all four types - and remember, all four types under the control of players who will play them smartly and also have their class features and, at later levels, spell-casting.
If you're going to perform 2 year old thread necromancy, you should probably make sure the posters are still around and still think that way before you start actively disagreeing with them.
No. For most of their careers there is no casting while you are shape changed. Also even with a con that's probably better than the Druid's natural Con. Without some good building into being able to keep concentration your not necessarily going to keep those spells once your shape changed since Druids do not naturally have Proficiency in Con and plenty of Moon Druids do not necessarily invest into what can be seen by some as necessary Caster feats despite having a strong side because it doesn't help their Shape Changing all that much. So it's common that the increased con is only a 2 or 3 point gain on concentration rolls anyway.
Also. You don't have to build to counter elementals. Anybody that is just building with a variety of elements can automatically counter elementals. And the Level 20 Druid has glaring grey area's and weaknesses that often get ignored.
So it's not speaking to the testament of the class or even the wildshape into elementals if it's easily counterable without a special build. A general build with just alternatives instead of obsession over single elements (usually fire) shows that there is a weakness. Because this supposed strength in this idea that you have to build to counter them doesn't actually exist. The Reason for this is because any actual smart caster. Specially another Druid or a Wizard naturally already has many counters from different elements naturally because they are widely applicable without special consideration to elementals because Elementals aren't the only things with abilities like Elemental Resistances to work around. Ray of Frost is a cantrip so it's easy to have on hand even if it's not used much. There are thunder spells galore to be taken for the earth elementals. And there are useful water based spells that sometimes get overlooked but tend to have a variety of uses.
And no. Elementals aren't naturally dumb when it comes to using their abilities. They understand them better than a Druid ever will because they are completely natural to them. So your not goign to somehow just magically use them better just because your a druid wildshaping into one since wildshaping is primarily about mimicing the thing that you turn into. Many of these so called Creative Uses tend to bend the rules quite a bit as well but tend to get deemed ok for Rule of Cool. But you cannot guarantee them to work.
As for their Immunities? The only thing all those status immunities get in the way of is players who rely on various status effects. But they aren't actually a big deal. And your still not protected from Stun which is often considered one of the more powerful status effects and one of the few that is truly ingrained into a class. otherwise they just don't realistically mean all that much. Because most of them are fairly niche when not produced by spells (most often by the players) and only found on specific monsters that may or may not have other ways to deal with Elementals or other abilities of their own. Or they are potentially on things like Demons which if your summoning them just to fight elementals you may have bigger problems than the fact that elementals resisting such abilities.
While Elemental Forms make wildshaping and the moon druid viable for a bit longer. They aren't some ground breaking super force that you seem to think they are. And they suffer from the same overall flaw that beasts do. The Things you fight are just going to get so much bigger and stronger and hit better that Elemental Shapes for the most part are not going to last too much longer than the beast shapes. Even just concerted physical efforts by strong martials can quickly take them down if they really want to and they focus on that task. potentially leaving the druid with the problem that they are now under prepared to deal with several angry people with sharp pieces of steel in their face. The bigger problem tends to be that the martial characters just don't think of this until it's too late for them and they've already been worn down by other threats because the elemental was not able to threaten them enough and they focused elsewhere.
I will agree with you about not being able to cast in wild-shape for most of their career. Judging how good elemental forms are really depends on exactly when in a druid's career we're judging them. I'm not an especially big druid fan myself, so I don't have any particular stake in defending Moon Druids - they're just strong. Perhaps not as strong as the low levels, but druids in general arguably get one of the strongest 18th level abilities and one of the strongest (if not the strongest) capstones in the entire game. Infinite wildshape is simply ridiculous. Even before you gain access to spellcasting in beast form you still do have concentration on spells, though, and although that concentration can certainly be broken, it won't necessarily be broken with your good con in elemental form. It really just depends on how you roll. Unless you're taking a lot of damage on a single hit, those con saves are DC 10 for the most part.
Regarding players playing elementals smarter, it's not so much that elementals are dumb (although they don't have super high intelligence either). It's a matter of the fact that DM's tend to play elementals dumb. Most DM's are not trying to play opponents optimally because most DM's aren't setting out for a TPK and if they really want one they can always just throw more stuff at the party. DM's play elementals for roleplay purposes rather than to their max potential.
Regarding casters being able to counter elementals, yes, yes they often can. Casters are the best equipped enemies to deal with elemental shape. However, casters are only a small part of D&D monsters. Dragons aren't casters. They're single element engines that can be countered nicely by elementals. Vampires aren't casters. A lot of the ablities they rely on are worthless against elemental wildshapes. Bandits, giants, trolls, packs of wolves, the list goes on and on. You've essentially limited yourself to versatile casters with a variety of damage types as the way of dealing with elementals - and those same casters tend to be squishy. As casters, they also tend to want to do things other than damage, like status effects. However, as we've talked about, elementals are immune to most status effects and have a fast movement speed compared to players that lets them dodge in and out of battle. Their attacks are also by no means as weak as you make them out to be. The air elemental has a 2d8+5 multiattack. So 4d8+10 between both attacks (or roughly 28 damage a turn). Compare that to eldritch blast at level 11th level (you get elemental form at level 10). At 11th level, a warlock gets three rays of eldritch blast and a warlock who specs into eldritch blast will get 3d10+15 damage, assuming they've maxed their charisma to 20 - which obviously assumes very good rolls. That's roughly equivalent damage - just slightly more, and Eldritch blast warlocks are considered DPS cannons, whereas druids in wildshape are supposed to function more as tanks. With hex in addition, warlocks will do significantly more damage for sure, but still not THAT much more, and at the expense of one of the few spell slots warlocks get.
At mid levels, elemental shape gives a tanky, decently high damage option for wildshape. It's solidly pc level (or more) of free health that you have on top of your regular druid health, and that you can heal up with spell slots, not to mention resistances against most common types of damage unless you're going against spellcasters designed to deal with you. At level 20, you go from a decent health bonus to infinite wildshapes and enemies who are required to nuke you down within a turn in order to do anything - AND you get essentially all the benefits of being a regular druid while in wildshape. So yes, at level 20, moon druid is busted as heck! Is it more OP than wizard who can just wish and rewrite reality? No. But It's pretty dang strong.
Tl:dr, moon druid lets you tank quite well while still utilizing spell slots, and at level 2, is an absolute powerhouse.
Land is basically Wizard is for people who want wizard 's features with the druid's spells, good for a striker or controller.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.