I've been asking questions about the druid as I haven't played one yet. Starting at Lvl 5 going to 20. I'm starting to grasp some of the implications of the two sub classes. I am concerned about player and DM reaction to the druid character played as a summoner.
As an Example #1 (just using stat block attk/dam values) at 6th lvl the Shepard druid (w/ Bear Totem) could summon 4 CR1/2 bears base hp 19. +6(mighty summoner) +11 (bear totem) = 36hp. That's 144 hp on the table. (If there are 6 characters in the 30' radius -- 66 hp.) That would be 210 hp. Does the DM account for that? The bears might average 48 damage and the shepard could cantrip for 9. (57 damage in the round)
#2 Moon druid. same bears and Wildshaping into CR2 bear-- 118 hp on the table. Average damage almost 70 per round) (If everyone hits)
So 70 vs 57 damage per round. 144hp vs. 118hp. And adding in the party temp hit points might make a difference.
(The Unicorn totem enable me heal everyone in the radius anytime healing is done. Hard to quantify that with numbers.)
Later features would be Wildshaping into Elemental vs. Healing summoned creatures while they're in the totem area.
Maintaining Concentration is priority one -- (my opinion, after doing a practice encounter with the moon druid. Whenever he gets hit, it is at least a dc 10 save. As a Shepard will be trying to stand back and plink away with a cantrip and avoid damage, but have a feeling that the summoner is going to be targeted anyway.
This is just a basic look, I don't know how things change when I can summon casters. (I guess the dryad could cast barkskin and goodberry or the Satyr can be ranged attacks)
What are the opinions about playing these sub classes?
I've not played Shepard druid at high levels before, though I have done plenty of conjuring animals and other various spells, and have also played moon druid at a higher level (tier 3).
Summoning depends quite a bit with what your facing and so on, aoe will tear through them, and most of what you summon will have a low attack bonus so anything with a decent AC isn't likely to be taking too many attacks. I personally think one of the stronger applications is battlefield control with them, body wall melee enemies, having your animals drag friendly PCs away from danger, that kind of thing. It may be a strong utility, but certainly not unbeatable. This is also more practical in an online setting since its much easier to roll a mass of dice with a dice calculator than actual physical amounts. Also worth noting is the idea of you using conjure animals to make flying mounts for the party both for in combat and out of combat overland travel.
Moon druid on the other hand... is basically just a character with a good amount of health, comparable to a barbarian in that sense. Moon druids certainly start off pretty strong in tier 1 and early tier two but other classes do end up catching up, and you get spells that are good enough you might not actually spend all your time in wildshape.
TLDR if your planning to be upcasting conjure animals and summoning 24 giant crabs, ask your gm first. Otherwise balance wise your likely fine, with a few power jumps here or there but over the course of many levels you shouldn't be out of the power range of your team mates. Also remember that you DO have team mates in your party, and druids are one of the best synergy classes, so find out what everyone else is doing.
Shepard druid can be powerful. They can also heavily slow down a game with all the extra actions to go through each round. It also depends on how DM treats it as well. Some DM's allow you to pick what you summon but RAW the DM can choose your summons based on the CR you pick. Moon druid is probably the strongest you get better wildshapes and you can heal your wildshape as a bonus by expending a spell slot. You can tank hits and deal decent damage. Out of wildshape you are still a full caster with a great spell selection. I personally like the flavor of the Dreams druid with ability to really aid the party with your support abilities.
I'd say that balance-wise, both have a massive capacity for abuse. The spell conjure animals can either give you a minor boost through having allies, or be absolutely game-breaking in power/time needed to run your animals, and this stays fairly consistent even at the highest levels. (Side note: I recommend staying away from snakes in general because while they have massive damage output and crazy speed/versatility they take FOREVER to run.) If you plan on going level 5-20 I'd say that Shepard is the best option because while the capstone ability for druids is incredibly powerful for Moons, you won't see a lot of benefits from the moon subclass until then because it is mostly powerful at levels 2-4. For concentration, the best is probably to go with just hiding away your character and focusing on running the conjurations and getting some feats to help out with dealing with the hits that you do end up taking. If you want to maintain concentration Moon is NOT the way to go because you'll in melee and constantly taking damage, forcing you to make more saves to maintain it.
The best think that you can do to help to speed the game is to choose not to summon the maximum amount of creatures. If you choose to summon a CR 2 or two CR 1 creatures with your 3rd level slot, then you aren't getting too many more actions than a martial class, and those events can be easier to resolve than some of the single actions that other casters may use. It may not be mechanically optimal to summon 2 instead of 8, but it is a lot easier to deal with for me as a player and my DM.
There-in lies the issue with Sheppard Druids. If you play them optimally (not even "power gaming", but making the best use of your resources) it slows the game down enormously (combat). There are many different options to minimize it, but all of them ultimately result in sacrificing optimal character design for the benefit and fun of the rest of the group.
I honestly don't know what the answer is, and it's not Druid specific as it applies to anyone trying to play a class designed around summoning/controlling more than 1 creature at a time.
I guess the math says that summoning 8 is optimal in comparison to 1 or 2, but I didn't really find that it was all that different in actual practice. Most of the CR 1/4 die in one hit (and a bunch die at once if they get caught in an area effect), and their to hit bonus was so low that they were practically incapable of hitting some enemies.
What I did as the DM with a pack of natural, not summoned, wolves who the party’s Druid befriended was I had each player play 2 wolves in addition to their PC. Yes, they slowed the combat down, but since everyone was playing a couple of wolves everyone still got the same amount of play time.
There-in lies the issue with Sheppard Druids. If you play them optimally (not even "power gaming", but making the best use of your resources) it slows the game down enormously (combat). There are many different options to minimize it, but all of them ultimately result in sacrificing optimal character design for the benefit and fun of the rest of the group.
I honestly don't know what the answer is, and it's not Druid specific as it applies to anyone trying to play a class designed around summoning/controlling more than 1 creature at a time.
I would probably ask a player to not play swarmmaster characters and would tell them up front that if they bog combat down, I will start clearing the board with AOE encounters. It's a crappy answer and extremely unfair, but bogging things down for everyone else is unfair too.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Having a list of different animals based on the environment you are in helps, that way the player starts to request beasts that are natural to the environment (so eventually they pick things that are going to make sense and doesn't impact the game).
How I sped up my shepherd druid while still summoning monsters in like more then half of the combats.
1) Make a table: Especially for the CR 1/4 and CR 1/2 stuff, I went through and built a list of beasts that fit the criteria and aren't a hassle to run (sorry wolves). That means I can prep the total list of possible monsters (along with their adjusted HP) ahead of time, and omit all the REALLY cumbersome monsters to run from the higher counts (anything with pack tactics, most stuff with on hit knock downs, really anything that stops me from rolling 8 d20s at once). In the time when we could play in the same room, that chart was printed and taped to the back of a tiny whiteboard that also tracked hp. It was really handy.
2) Average damage: If I summon more than 2 things, I skip the dice rolling and just do average damage.
3) "swarm" base: For 8+ summons, I go the size + 2 route. All the beasts share the same giant space, creatures can walk through it, everyone's reach is 0. It's not the true swarm rules, it's just a way of representing 8 bases without suddenly having 32 squares worth of giant lizard or something clogging up a room.
4) initiative: Don't roll it, summons just go after me and all together.
With those modifications in place, I feel like I still manage to hit the "spirit" of what the spell is trying to do, I STILL have the ability to summon a giant wall of disposable meat if it's needed, and honestly my turn along with all of my summons goes faster then some of the players with more complicated choices to make (since the beasts are generally given pretty simple commands).
edit: As to how the shepherd helps the rest of the group, the shepherd is a *champion* support character. Thanks to the spirit totem, the amount of healing you can dish out varies from "really good" per short rest (bear spirit), to RIDICULOUSLY GOOD (unicorn spirit). There's a lot of chatter about which one is "better", but it loosely boils down to Bear is great for "fire and forget", while Unicorn pays amazing dividends, but will eat actions and spells to get that payout. It's my "special occasion" healing.
@Tim: I'm a new player, level one Druid, planning for Circle of Shepherd. Worried about slowing game down or making less fun for everyone else. My group has 4 players and your DM. Your solution--sending 2 wolves to assist each player--did the player--did everyone seem to like it?
I have to review the rules more closely, and I guess enchanted spirit type animals I could summon would only really follow my Druid commands, but if I summoned 4 or 8 animals, couldn't I also divide them up and instruct them to try to support & protect each player (send 1 or 2 to "guard" everyone)? Or if someone is really weak/injured despite my healing efforts, send several animals to defend a prone player for example?
I hope you don't mind responding to questions on an old post from you...it just sounds like a really good solution to occasionally use to help name summoning more fun/practical/less of a burden on everybody.
I AM planning on having cards & charts on anything I might summon to help speed stuff up, and will review options like using averages instead of dice rolls, etc, with my inexperienced but wonderful DM!
Wakararusa, the question you should be asking yourself is do you want your character to get down and dirty in melee combat. If yes, Moon. If no, Shepherd. I would not worry about their relative effectiveness. Druid is a great class with plenty of options, and both subclasses expand upon a particular branch of the Druid's specialties. You will have no problem contributing to your team with either.
As for concerns over party harmony with summons I have this to say (which applies to Moon just as much as Shepherd):
Don't summon more than 2. Just don't do it. Summoning 2 monsters is still a ridiculously effective use of a spell slot, and I'm convinced that no matter how well 4-8 monsters are handled it will be some significant degree of unfun for the table. Flooding the board with animals is a real spotlight stealer.
For any newer players looking at Shepherd read this guide if you haven't: Shepherd Druid Guide. Skip directly to the section called "Party Harmony" and find the orginizational methods that work for you. Conjure Animals takes homework and prep time to run things smoothly enough to not become a huge disruption to the group.
1) Make a table: Especially for the CR 1/4 and CR 1/2 stuff, I went through and built a list of beasts that fit the criteria and aren't a hassle to run (sorry wolves). That means I can prep the total list of possible monsters (along with their adjusted HP) ahead of time, and omit all the REALLY cumbersome monsters to run from the higher counts (anything with pack tactics, most stuff with on hit knock downs, really anything that stops me from rolling 8 d20s at once). In the time when we could play in the same room, that chart was printed and taped to the back of a tiny whiteboard that also tracked hp. It was really handy.
Having a list of different animals based on the environment you are in helps, that way the player starts to request beasts that are natural to the environment (so eventually they pick things that are going to make sense and doesn't impact the game).
I much prefer working with the DM to create a small list of summons based on the origins and concept of the character. I think the methods above work just fine, but I find there is a fundamental problem with leaving what gets summoned up to the DM. It's a time consuming process stacked on top of a time consuming strategy. You have to look up the stats of the monster and then hand those stats over to the player who has to familiarize themselves on the fly and adapt tactics. These things create a lot of pauses in game. But if a player already has the statblocks for a handful of critters and is able to think about tactics with said critters on their downtime it ends up speeding things up quite a bit.
And as a tangential aside, the whole "the summon needs to fit with the environment" doesn't make any sense to me. The spell summons fey spirits that take the form of animals. It doesn't summon real animals from the environment. Summoning creatures the druid is intimately familiar with from their background makes much more sense to me.
@Tim: I'm a new player, level one Druid, planning for Circle of Shepherd. Worried about slowing game down or making less fun for everyone else. My group has 4 players and your DM. Your solution--sending 2 wolves to assist each player--did the player--did everyone seem to like it?
I have to review the rules more closely, and I guess enchanted spirit type animals I could summon would only really follow my Druid commands, but if I summoned 4 or 8 animals, couldn't I also divide them up and instruct them to try to support & protect each player (send 1 or 2 to "guard" everyone)? Or if someone is really weak/injured despite my healing efforts, send several animals to defend a prone player for example?
I hope you don't mind responding to questions on an old post from you...it just sounds like a really good solution to occasionally use to help name summoning more fun/practical/less of a burden on everybody.
I AM planning on having cards & charts on anything I might summon to help speed stuff up, and will review options like using averages instead of dice rolls, etc, with my inexperienced but wonderful DM!
The problem with summoners is not just having to find the creatures, it's actually doing combat with the creatures.
- It's 4-8 extra bags of hitpoints that the DM has to account for.
- It's 4-8 attacks that have to be resolved.
There's really nothing that can be done to speed this up. It's /going/ to bog things down. When I'd DM, as I mentioned in a previous post, I'd talk to my player about it first and say it's a rabbit hole I really do not want to go down. If the player does not take the hint, I /will/ clear those swarms with extreme prejudice using AOE attacks.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Well, if your criteria is power I'll definitely go Shepard instead of moon considering lvl 5-20, I mean, Moon will be stronger only at level 20.
Playing Sheppard your meat shield will have from 40 to 200%(Using Bear totem) more health than Moon's. And the magic weapons for beats is a really big deal since likely half of you opponents will be rersistant and the strongest one could be immune.
If you don't mind I would like to give you the ideia of getting Fey Touched so you can, with one feat get Wis+1, Misty Step and MAINLY dissonant whisper that can be used to trigger AoO with all you summons.
Finally, choosing one or the other, do not forget you still a druid... Excellent on surviving, exploration and even spy. TBH that is another factor that drives me away from Moon, because you feel so much more free to use your WildShape for utility when you don't need it for combat.
Edit: If your DM wan't to choose the creatures, don't mind it, even the weaker creature of the same CR are ok. Now if he indicate that he will choose creatures of lower CR or even "AoE Spell kills your mob all the same" like the guy above, I would suggest to not even play the class or maybe not even on his table. I mean, I can understand a DM banning something he does not want to deal with but just deliberately ruining you experience is just a bad DM characteristic.
I've been asking questions about the druid as I haven't played one yet. Starting at Lvl 5 going to 20. I'm starting to grasp some of the implications of the two sub classes. I am concerned about player and DM reaction to the druid character played as a summoner.
As an Example #1 (just using stat block attk/dam values) at 6th lvl the Shepard druid (w/ Bear Totem) could summon 4 CR1/2 bears base hp 19. +6(mighty summoner) +11 (bear totem) = 36hp. That's 144 hp on the table. (If there are 6 characters in the 30' radius -- 66 hp.) That would be 210 hp. Does the DM account for that? The bears might average 48 damage and the shepard could cantrip for 9. (57 damage in the round)
#2 Moon druid. same bears and Wildshaping into CR2 bear-- 118 hp on the table. Average damage almost 70 per round) (If everyone hits)
So 70 vs 57 damage per round. 144hp vs. 118hp. And adding in the party temp hit points might make a difference.
(The Unicorn totem enable me heal everyone in the radius anytime healing is done. Hard to quantify that with numbers.)
Later features would be Wildshaping into Elemental vs. Healing summoned creatures while they're in the totem area.
Maintaining Concentration is priority one -- (my opinion, after doing a practice encounter with the moon druid. Whenever he gets hit, it is at least a dc 10 save. As a Shepard will be trying to stand back and plink away with a cantrip and avoid damage, but have a feeling that the summoner is going to be targeted anyway.
This is just a basic look, I don't know how things change when I can summon casters. (I guess the dryad could cast barkskin and goodberry or the Satyr can be ranged attacks)
What are the opinions about playing these sub classes?
I've not played Shepard druid at high levels before, though I have done plenty of conjuring animals and other various spells, and have also played moon druid at a higher level (tier 3).
Summoning depends quite a bit with what your facing and so on, aoe will tear through them, and most of what you summon will have a low attack bonus so anything with a decent AC isn't likely to be taking too many attacks. I personally think one of the stronger applications is battlefield control with them, body wall melee enemies, having your animals drag friendly PCs away from danger, that kind of thing. It may be a strong utility, but certainly not unbeatable. This is also more practical in an online setting since its much easier to roll a mass of dice with a dice calculator than actual physical amounts. Also worth noting is the idea of you using conjure animals to make flying mounts for the party both for in combat and out of combat overland travel.
Moon druid on the other hand... is basically just a character with a good amount of health, comparable to a barbarian in that sense. Moon druids certainly start off pretty strong in tier 1 and early tier two but other classes do end up catching up, and you get spells that are good enough you might not actually spend all your time in wildshape.
TLDR if your planning to be upcasting conjure animals and summoning 24 giant crabs, ask your gm first. Otherwise balance wise your likely fine, with a few power jumps here or there but over the course of many levels you shouldn't be out of the power range of your team mates. Also remember that you DO have team mates in your party, and druids are one of the best synergy classes, so find out what everyone else is doing.
Shepard druid can be powerful. They can also heavily slow down a game with all the extra actions to go through each round. It also depends on how DM treats it as well. Some DM's allow you to pick what you summon but RAW the DM can choose your summons based on the CR you pick. Moon druid is probably the strongest you get better wildshapes and you can heal your wildshape as a bonus by expending a spell slot. You can tank hits and deal decent damage. Out of wildshape you are still a full caster with a great spell selection. I personally like the flavor of the Dreams druid with ability to really aid the party with your support abilities.
Your secret is safe with my indifference - Percy
I'd say that balance-wise, both have a massive capacity for abuse. The spell conjure animals can either give you a minor boost through having allies, or be absolutely game-breaking in power/time needed to run your animals, and this stays fairly consistent even at the highest levels. (Side note: I recommend staying away from snakes in general because while they have massive damage output and crazy speed/versatility they take FOREVER to run.) If you plan on going level 5-20 I'd say that Shepard is the best option because while the capstone ability for druids is incredibly powerful for Moons, you won't see a lot of benefits from the moon subclass until then because it is mostly powerful at levels 2-4. For concentration, the best is probably to go with just hiding away your character and focusing on running the conjurations and getting some feats to help out with dealing with the hits that you do end up taking. If you want to maintain concentration Moon is NOT the way to go because you'll in melee and constantly taking damage, forcing you to make more saves to maintain it.
The best think that you can do to help to speed the game is to choose not to summon the maximum amount of creatures. If you choose to summon a CR 2 or two CR 1 creatures with your 3rd level slot, then you aren't getting too many more actions than a martial class, and those events can be easier to resolve than some of the single actions that other casters may use. It may not be mechanically optimal to summon 2 instead of 8, but it is a lot easier to deal with for me as a player and my DM.
There-in lies the issue with Sheppard Druids. If you play them optimally (not even "power gaming", but making the best use of your resources) it slows the game down enormously (combat). There are many different options to minimize it, but all of them ultimately result in sacrificing optimal character design for the benefit and fun of the rest of the group.
I honestly don't know what the answer is, and it's not Druid specific as it applies to anyone trying to play a class designed around summoning/controlling more than 1 creature at a time.
I guess the math says that summoning 8 is optimal in comparison to 1 or 2, but I didn't really find that it was all that different in actual practice. Most of the CR 1/4 die in one hit (and a bunch die at once if they get caught in an area effect), and their to hit bonus was so low that they were practically incapable of hitting some enemies.
What I did as the DM with a pack of natural, not summoned, wolves who the party’s Druid befriended was I had each player play 2 wolves in addition to their PC. Yes, they slowed the combat down, but since everyone was playing a couple of wolves everyone still got the same amount of play time.
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I would probably ask a player to not play swarmmaster characters and would tell them up front that if they bog combat down, I will start clearing the board with AOE encounters. It's a crappy answer and extremely unfair, but bogging things down for everyone else is unfair too.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Having a list of different animals based on the environment you are in helps, that way the player starts to request beasts that are natural to the environment (so eventually they pick things that are going to make sense and doesn't impact the game).
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How I sped up my shepherd druid while still summoning monsters in like more then half of the combats.
1) Make a table: Especially for the CR 1/4 and CR 1/2 stuff, I went through and built a list of beasts that fit the criteria and aren't a hassle to run (sorry wolves). That means I can prep the total list of possible monsters (along with their adjusted HP) ahead of time, and omit all the REALLY cumbersome monsters to run from the higher counts (anything with pack tactics, most stuff with on hit knock downs, really anything that stops me from rolling 8 d20s at once). In the time when we could play in the same room, that chart was printed and taped to the back of a tiny whiteboard that also tracked hp. It was really handy.
2) Average damage: If I summon more than 2 things, I skip the dice rolling and just do average damage.
3) "swarm" base: For 8+ summons, I go the size + 2 route. All the beasts share the same giant space, creatures can walk through it, everyone's reach is 0. It's not the true swarm rules, it's just a way of representing 8 bases without suddenly having 32 squares worth of giant lizard or something clogging up a room.
4) initiative: Don't roll it, summons just go after me and all together.
With those modifications in place, I feel like I still manage to hit the "spirit" of what the spell is trying to do, I STILL have the ability to summon a giant wall of disposable meat if it's needed, and honestly my turn along with all of my summons goes faster then some of the players with more complicated choices to make (since the beasts are generally given pretty simple commands).
edit: As to how the shepherd helps the rest of the group, the shepherd is a *champion* support character. Thanks to the spirit totem, the amount of healing you can dish out varies from "really good" per short rest (bear spirit), to RIDICULOUSLY GOOD (unicorn spirit). There's a lot of chatter about which one is "better", but it loosely boils down to Bear is great for "fire and forget", while Unicorn pays amazing dividends, but will eat actions and spells to get that payout. It's my "special occasion" healing.
@Tim: I'm a new player, level one Druid, planning for Circle of Shepherd. Worried about slowing game down or making less fun for everyone else. My group has 4 players and your DM. Your solution--sending 2 wolves to assist each player--did the player--did everyone seem to like it?
I have to review the rules more closely, and I guess enchanted spirit type animals I could summon would only really follow my Druid commands, but if I summoned 4 or 8 animals, couldn't I also divide them up and instruct them to try to support & protect each player (send 1 or 2 to "guard" everyone)? Or if someone is really weak/injured despite my healing efforts, send several animals to defend a prone player for example?
I hope you don't mind responding to questions on an old post from you...it just sounds like a really good solution to occasionally use to help name summoning more fun/practical/less of a burden on everybody.
I AM planning on having cards & charts on anything I might summon to help speed stuff up, and will review options like using averages instead of dice rolls, etc, with my inexperienced but wonderful DM!
Wakararusa, the question you should be asking yourself is do you want your character to get down and dirty in melee combat. If yes, Moon. If no, Shepherd. I would not worry about their relative effectiveness. Druid is a great class with plenty of options, and both subclasses expand upon a particular branch of the Druid's specialties. You will have no problem contributing to your team with either.
As for concerns over party harmony with summons I have this to say (which applies to Moon just as much as Shepherd):
Don't summon more than 2. Just don't do it. Summoning 2 monsters is still a ridiculously effective use of a spell slot, and I'm convinced that no matter how well 4-8 monsters are handled it will be some significant degree of unfun for the table. Flooding the board with animals is a real spotlight stealer.
For any newer players looking at Shepherd read this guide if you haven't: Shepherd Druid Guide. Skip directly to the section called "Party Harmony" and find the orginizational methods that work for you. Conjure Animals takes homework and prep time to run things smoothly enough to not become a huge disruption to the group.
I much prefer working with the DM to create a small list of summons based on the origins and concept of the character. I think the methods above work just fine, but I find there is a fundamental problem with leaving what gets summoned up to the DM. It's a time consuming process stacked on top of a time consuming strategy. You have to look up the stats of the monster and then hand those stats over to the player who has to familiarize themselves on the fly and adapt tactics. These things create a lot of pauses in game. But if a player already has the statblocks for a handful of critters and is able to think about tactics with said critters on their downtime it ends up speeding things up quite a bit.
And as a tangential aside, the whole "the summon needs to fit with the environment" doesn't make any sense to me. The spell summons fey spirits that take the form of animals. It doesn't summon real animals from the environment. Summoning creatures the druid is intimately familiar with from their background makes much more sense to me.
The problem with summoners is not just having to find the creatures, it's actually doing combat with the creatures.
- It's 4-8 extra bags of hitpoints that the DM has to account for.
- It's 4-8 attacks that have to be resolved.
There's really nothing that can be done to speed this up. It's /going/ to bog things down. When I'd DM, as I mentioned in a previous post, I'd talk to my player about it first and say it's a rabbit hole I really do not want to go down. If the player does not take the hint, I /will/ clear those swarms with extreme prejudice using AOE attacks.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Well, if your criteria is power I'll definitely go Shepard instead of moon considering lvl 5-20, I mean, Moon will be stronger only at level 20.
Playing Sheppard your meat shield will have from 40 to 200%(Using Bear totem) more health than Moon's. And the magic weapons for beats is a really big deal since likely half of you opponents will be rersistant and the strongest one could be immune.
If you don't mind I would like to give you the ideia of getting Fey Touched so you can, with one feat get Wis+1, Misty Step and MAINLY dissonant whisper that can be used to trigger AoO with all you summons.
Finally, choosing one or the other, do not forget you still a druid... Excellent on surviving, exploration and even spy. TBH that is another factor that drives me away from Moon, because you feel so much more free to use your WildShape for utility when you don't need it for combat.
Edit: If your DM wan't to choose the creatures, don't mind it, even the weaker creature of the same CR are ok. Now if he indicate that he will choose creatures of lower CR or even "AoE Spell kills your mob all the same" like the guy above, I would suggest to not even play the class or maybe not even on his table. I mean, I can understand a DM banning something he does not want to deal with but just deliberately ruining you experience is just a bad DM characteristic.