Hi Nhym, nice work. I've just started playing a shepherd up from 1 to 3, but I spent a decent amount of time looking at these option while I was building it and came to a lot of the same conclusions. I apologize if you addressed it in the guide and I missed it, but one thing to consider is that while you determine the CR level, DM's get to determine the specific things that you get from Conjure Woodland Beings, Animals and Minor Elementals. Most DM's aren't going to want to screw you over by picking useless things unless you consistently abuse pixies but it's worth coming up with a system with your DM that resolves what you summon quickly, creates a bit of variety and doesn't result in you getting 8 squids in a desert. There's a decent chance they will just let you pick what you want as long as you switch it up a bit, don't slow the game down and don't overshadow the rest of the party.
One thing I liked about the guide is that it pointed out that there are a ton of useful options beyond 8 wolves or 8 pixies. The class is more fun if you don't just conjure the same thing over and over again.
Hi Nhym, nice work. I've just started playing a shepherd up from 1 to 3, but I spent a decent amount of time looking at these option while I was building it and came to a lot of the same conclusions. I apologize if you addressed it in the guide and I missed it, but one thing to consider is that while you determine the CR level, DM's get to determine the specific things that you get from Conjure Woodland Beings, Animals and Minor Elementals. Most DM's aren't going to want to screw you over by picking useless things unless you consistently abuse pixies but it's worth coming up with a system with your DM that resolves what you summon quickly, creates a bit of variety and doesn't result in you getting 8 squids in a desert. There's a decent chance they will just let you pick what you want as long as you switch it up a bit, don't slow the game down and don't overshadow the rest of the party.
One thing I liked about the guide is that it pointed out that there are a ton of useful options beyond 8 wolves or 8 pixies. The class is more fun if you don't just conjure the same thing over and over again.
Thanks for the comment! You know I could have sworn I added that consideration somewhere but after going through the guide, I guess I missed it. I just added a note about it now. Good catch.
Np. A couple of other things I've found really useful:
Entangle works incredibly well with Bear Spirit, the advantage dramatically cuts down on any friendly fire you might get.
You pointed out how fantastic Plant Growth is as a non-concentration spell. If you combine this with flying summons you can basically solo any encounter that doesn't have good ranged options or flight, especially if you get something like owls with flyby. Quicklings would probably work as well. You can make it better by stacking Erupting Earth for difficult terrain, but verify how to stack it with your DM. I think you mentioned that Crawford announced that they stack, but I don't think anything official came out about whether it's additive or multiplicative. With multiplicative, many things will be unable to move in that zone. With additive, the stack may or may not make a difference in how many squares a monster can move.
I read the guide and it really made me consider this subclass more than I had. You had some ideas on summons that I think I realized were possible but hadn't fully considered the implications of.
How important is actually being a circle of shepherd druid to summoning? How much less effective do you think that you are doing the same types of summoning without the boons from the subclass?
One thing I wasn't sure on though was the Pipes variety of Satyr. I couldn't seem to find them in DDB.
I read the guide and it really made me consider this subclass more than I had. You had some ideas on summons that I think I realized were possible but hadn't fully considered the implications of.
How important is actually being a circle of shepherd druid to summoning? How much less effective do you think that you are doing the same types of summoning without the boons from the subclass?
One thing I wasn't sure on though was the Pipes variety of Satyr. I couldn't seem to find them in DDB.
Lower level Druids of any subclass can use summoning relatively equally, but the Conjure spells fall off pretty hard at mid to high levels for non-Shepherds for two big reasons. Normal conjured creature's attacks are non-magical so when it gets to the point where a lot of enemies have resistance or immunity to non-magical damage, they are pretty neutered without the Shepherd's Mighty Summoner at level 6. Second is that for Conjure Animals and Woodland Beings in particular, the base health is not great. Coupled with relatively poor AC, they can go down in one hit against harder fights (while useful since the hit doesn't go to you or your party, still not the best). Take the CR 1/4 wolf for example; it has 11 hp, but a Shepherd Druid can more than double that at level 6 with each wolf having 26 HP (Mighty Summoner and Bear Spirit). When considering that's just one of 8, that's an extra 120 HP at level 6 across all summons. Thats HUGE for both allowing the summons to keep outputting damage and surviving as meat shields. TLDR Summoning works regardless of subclass at earlier levels (5+), but falls off without a Shepherd.
Satyr Pipes is in the MM, page 267. It isn't its own creature, but rather a variant of the Satyr. It's awesome.
Im looking at this now and I think Giant bat needs to be added onto the great animals list, they have 22hp and 4 hitdice so with mighty summons they have 30 hp and if combined with bear totem they can make an amazing meatsheild. not to mention that they are large and all have a str of 16 so your part can easily ride on them.
You project a phantasmal image of a creature's worst fears. Each creature in a 30-foot cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and become Frightened for the Duration.
While Frightened by this spell, a creature must take the Dash action and move away from you by the safest available route on each of its turns, unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a location where it doesn't have line of sight to you, the creature can make a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends for that creature.
Classes: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
If a party member that has Fear casts it on something and it succeeds I presume Sea Hag can Death Glare it to zero HP? So Sea Hag usefulness will depend greatly on initiative order. (She herself can Horrific Appearance but Death Glare may be the better use of her action)
Death Glare Text:
Death Glare. The hag targets one frightened creature she can see within 30 ft. of her. If the target can see the hag, it must succeed on a DC 11 Wisdom saving throw against this magic or drop to 0 hit points.
Nice work. I didnt see the BESTrace as an option though. Goblin! Ive been playing a Gobbo Shepherd for a while now and its great. Summon, Bonus Hide. Pop out and cast, hide.
Hi Nhym, nice work. I've just started playing a shepherd up from 1 to 3, but I spent a decent amount of time looking at these option while I was building it and came to a lot of the same conclusions. I apologize if you addressed it in the guide and I missed it, but one thing to consider is that while you determine the CR level, DM's get to determine the specific things that you get from Conjure Woodland Beings, Animals and Minor Elementals. Most DM's aren't going to want to screw you over by picking useless things unless you consistently abuse pixies but it's worth coming up with a system with your DM that resolves what you summon quickly, creates a bit of variety and doesn't result in you getting 8 squids in a desert. There's a decent chance they will just let you pick what you want as long as you switch it up a bit, don't slow the game down and don't overshadow the rest of the party.
One thing I liked about the guide is that it pointed out that there are a ton of useful options beyond 8 wolves or 8 pixies. The class is more fun if you don't just conjure the same thing over and over again.
Technically that's not true. You get to decide the creatures CR rating (which just control the amount) and you get to choose the Creatures you summon. At no point does the PBG ever state that it is the DM that choose the creatures, just that they have the statistics. That has led to many memes of Druids abusing it to summon 8 Pixies which transform the entire party in to CR8+ Beasts (T-Rex) with Fly and as such a good deal of DMs (unwarranted might I add) have added "rules" against this which basically mean that Conjure Woodland Creatures is useless as you rarely get to summon Pixies - all the other Fey are useless in a combat situation. I get that it can be "game breaking", but as a DM you have the option to throw even more stuff at the party. Like say - caster creatures with Dispel Magic or Counter Spell. The encounter you have could be calling for back up, you can throw enviromental things in that targets the fey and or the fact that T-Rexes just broke through the roof. While Shepherd druids may be decent in Conjuring fey, beasts and elementals - what they really excel in is party wide healing.
Everyone avoids adressing the elephant in the room. Their insane ability to heal. 1st level cure wounds - avg 70hp restored at 9th level druid/1st level life cleric. Healing Spirit avg of 250hp restored for a 9th level druids/1st level life cleric. Good Berries - 40 hp restored with just a 9 druid/1 life cleric. Cast Unicorn Aura first at 2nd level druid/1st level life cleric and then cast Good Berries - 4hp when consuming - each time someone consumes you proc the heal from Unicorn for an additional 9 to every being inside. Total of 130hp Enjoy.
Shepherd can break many things, Pixies is hardly the worst offense. Great you have 4 Flying T-Rexes.. Then what? You're probably the only one left standing in the room.. All melee mobs will be gunning for you or the Pixies - ain't no way those little fluttershy will survive an onslaught of creatures.
Fantastic work Nhym. Reading your guide helped make my decision clear when i was choosing what circle of druid to build for my last character.
In case it helps anyone else I've linked the Field Guide to Beasts I put together for my shepherd druid. It includes all the stat blocks for beasts, fey, and elementals in a format designed to allow easy comparison, an index of beasts organized by special abilities along with explanations of what all the abilities do, wildshape lists by CR, and random conjuration tables for adding some variety when summoning beasts. The intent was to provide as much data as possible to help in making tactical choices about conjuration/wildshapes, promote responsible conjuration, and to update previously created random conjuration lists with the beasts available on D&DBeyond.
Shepherd is one of the least wisdom dependent Druid subclasses. Nothing about the summoning spells are expressly improved by wisdom, so having a bonus from level 1 is not required. Could be fun.
So just to make sure I understand, any animals/things summoned from any of the spells added with Tasha's don't gain the HP benefits of Mighty Summoner, but any summoned via the spells like Conjure Animals do, correct?
So just to make sure I understand, any animals/things summoned from any of the spells added with Tasha's don't gain the HP benefits of Mighty Summoner, but any summoned via the spells like Conjure Animals do, correct?
Correct. Mighty Summoner gives 2 extra hit points per Hit Die and the new Summon X spells do not use Hit Die.
The healing of the aura is not is not proc'd by the eating of the berry. it is proc'd by the casting of the spell that causes healing to occur when you cast it. It doesn't work with good berries because it's not actually healing anybody when you cast it. Once good berries are created the single point of healing and being full is just a property of the berry as a temporary magical item of it's own. Many people often fail to realize that Goodberry is a form of summoning/item creation spell and not an outright healing spell.
Also. While the Spell does not explicitly state that the DM gets to choose. It actually doesn't state in any way the player gets to choose what they summon either and by default the decision on how things play out is up to the description of how things used and the determination of the DM which is why the opinion that the DM gets to choose to disarm things like Pixie cheese (which is actually easy to break in lots of ways) came into being.
Otherwise Healing is indeed powerful when done by the circle of the Shepard. Which is why they can serve primarily as a parties healer and don't have to be stuck to doing purely summoning or control spells with their kit. They are actually one of the stronger healers in the game even without bothering to get any levels in Life cleric.
I created this guide a while ago but never shared it here, so I hope some find this helpful. Comments and suggestions welcome.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xXgYqPxkEHaCisQ0tteFF-KtsmfJxkOQojeWwHf22n4/edit?usp=sharing
Hi Nhym, nice work. I've just started playing a shepherd up from 1 to 3, but I spent a decent amount of time looking at these option while I was building it and came to a lot of the same conclusions. I apologize if you addressed it in the guide and I missed it, but one thing to consider is that while you determine the CR level, DM's get to determine the specific things that you get from Conjure Woodland Beings, Animals and Minor Elementals. Most DM's aren't going to want to screw you over by picking useless things unless you consistently abuse pixies but it's worth coming up with a system with your DM that resolves what you summon quickly, creates a bit of variety and doesn't result in you getting 8 squids in a desert. There's a decent chance they will just let you pick what you want as long as you switch it up a bit, don't slow the game down and don't overshadow the rest of the party.
One thing I liked about the guide is that it pointed out that there are a ton of useful options beyond 8 wolves or 8 pixies. The class is more fun if you don't just conjure the same thing over and over again.
Thanks for the comment! You know I could have sworn I added that consideration somewhere but after going through the guide, I guess I missed it. I just added a note about it now. Good catch.
Np. A couple of other things I've found really useful:
Entangle works incredibly well with Bear Spirit, the advantage dramatically cuts down on any friendly fire you might get.
You pointed out how fantastic Plant Growth is as a non-concentration spell. If you combine this with flying summons you can basically solo any encounter that doesn't have good ranged options or flight, especially if you get something like owls with flyby. Quicklings would probably work as well. You can make it better by stacking Erupting Earth for difficult terrain, but verify how to stack it with your DM. I think you mentioned that Crawford announced that they stack, but I don't think anything official came out about whether it's additive or multiplicative. With multiplicative, many things will be unable to move in that zone. With additive, the stack may or may not make a difference in how many squares a monster can move.
Good point.
I read the guide and it really made me consider this subclass more than I had. You had some ideas on summons that I think I realized were possible but hadn't fully considered the implications of.
How important is actually being a circle of shepherd druid to summoning? How much less effective do you think that you are doing the same types of summoning without the boons from the subclass?
One thing I wasn't sure on though was the Pipes variety of Satyr. I couldn't seem to find them in DDB.
Lower level Druids of any subclass can use summoning relatively equally, but the Conjure spells fall off pretty hard at mid to high levels for non-Shepherds for two big reasons. Normal conjured creature's attacks are non-magical so when it gets to the point where a lot of enemies have resistance or immunity to non-magical damage, they are pretty neutered without the Shepherd's Mighty Summoner at level 6. Second is that for Conjure Animals and Woodland Beings in particular, the base health is not great. Coupled with relatively poor AC, they can go down in one hit against harder fights (while useful since the hit doesn't go to you or your party, still not the best). Take the CR 1/4 wolf for example; it has 11 hp, but a Shepherd Druid can more than double that at level 6 with each wolf having 26 HP (Mighty Summoner and Bear Spirit). When considering that's just one of 8, that's an extra 120 HP at level 6 across all summons. Thats HUGE for both allowing the summons to keep outputting damage and surviving as meat shields. TLDR Summoning works regardless of subclass at earlier levels (5+), but falls off without a Shepherd.
Satyr Pipes is in the MM, page 267. It isn't its own creature, but rather a variant of the Satyr. It's awesome.
Im looking at this now and I think Giant bat needs to be added onto the great animals list, they have 22hp and 4 hitdice so with mighty summons they have 30 hp and if combined with bear totem they can make an amazing meatsheild. not to mention that they are large and all have a str of 16 so your part can easily ride on them.
Fear isn't on the druid spell list but:
You project a phantasmal image of a creature's worst fears. Each creature in a 30-foot cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and become Frightened for the Duration.
While Frightened by this spell, a creature must take the Dash action and move away from you by the safest available route on each of its turns, unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a location where it doesn't have line of sight to you, the creature can make a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends for that creature.
Classes: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
If a party member that has Fear casts it on something and it succeeds I presume Sea Hag can Death Glare it to zero HP? So Sea Hag usefulness will depend greatly on initiative order. (She herself can Horrific Appearance but Death Glare may be the better use of her action)
Death Glare Text:
Nice work. I didnt see the BESTrace as an option though. Goblin! Ive been playing a Gobbo Shepherd for a while now and its great. Summon, Bonus Hide. Pop out and cast, hide.
Love the guide, thank you!!!
Technically that's not true. You get to decide the creatures CR rating (which just control the amount) and you get to choose the Creatures you summon.
At no point does the PBG ever state that it is the DM that choose the creatures, just that they have the statistics. That has led to many memes of Druids abusing it to summon 8 Pixies which transform the entire party in to CR8+ Beasts (T-Rex) with Fly and as such a good deal of DMs (unwarranted might I add) have added "rules" against this which basically mean that Conjure Woodland Creatures is useless as you rarely get to summon Pixies - all the other Fey are useless in a combat situation.
I get that it can be "game breaking", but as a DM you have the option to throw even more stuff at the party. Like say - caster creatures with Dispel Magic or Counter Spell. The encounter you have could be calling for back up, you can throw enviromental things in that targets the fey and or the fact that T-Rexes just broke through the roof. While Shepherd druids may be decent in Conjuring fey, beasts and elementals - what they really excel in is party wide healing.
Everyone avoids adressing the elephant in the room. Their insane ability to heal.
1st level cure wounds - avg 70hp restored at 9th level druid/1st level life cleric.
Healing Spirit avg of 250hp restored for a 9th level druids/1st level life cleric.
Good Berries - 40 hp restored with just a 9 druid/1 life cleric. Cast Unicorn Aura first at 2nd level druid/1st level life cleric and then cast Good Berries - 4hp when consuming - each time someone consumes you proc the heal from Unicorn for an additional 9 to every being inside. Total of 130hp
Enjoy.
Shepherd can break many things, Pixies is hardly the worst offense. Great you have 4 Flying T-Rexes.. Then what? You're probably the only one left standing in the room.. All melee mobs will be gunning for you or the Pixies - ain't no way those little fluttershy will survive an onslaught of creatures.
Fantastic work Nhym. Reading your guide helped make my decision clear when i was choosing what circle of druid to build for my last character.
In case it helps anyone else I've linked the Field Guide to Beasts I put together for my shepherd druid. It includes all the stat blocks for beasts, fey, and elementals in a format designed to allow easy comparison, an index of beasts organized by special abilities along with explanations of what all the abilities do, wildshape lists by CR, and random conjuration tables for adding some variety when summoning beasts. The intent was to provide as much data as possible to help in making tactical choices about conjuration/wildshapes, promote responsible conjuration, and to update previously created random conjuration lists with the beasts available on D&DBeyond.
hey what would you say about a half-orc druid?
Shepherd is one of the least wisdom dependent Druid subclasses. Nothing about the summoning spells are expressly improved by wisdom, so having a bonus from level 1 is not required. Could be fun.
Updated with a new Roll20 section and online summon management.
Updated for Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
So just to make sure I understand, any animals/things summoned from any of the spells added with Tasha's don't gain the HP benefits of Mighty Summoner, but any summoned via the spells like Conjure Animals do, correct?
Correct. Mighty Summoner gives 2 extra hit points per Hit Die and the new Summon X spells do not use Hit Die.
The healing of the aura is not is not proc'd by the eating of the berry. it is proc'd by the casting of the spell that causes healing to occur when you cast it. It doesn't work with good berries because it's not actually healing anybody when you cast it. Once good berries are created the single point of healing and being full is just a property of the berry as a temporary magical item of it's own. Many people often fail to realize that Goodberry is a form of summoning/item creation spell and not an outright healing spell.
Also. While the Spell does not explicitly state that the DM gets to choose. It actually doesn't state in any way the player gets to choose what they summon either and by default the decision on how things play out is up to the description of how things used and the determination of the DM which is why the opinion that the DM gets to choose to disarm things like Pixie cheese (which is actually easy to break in lots of ways) came into being.
Otherwise Healing is indeed powerful when done by the circle of the Shepard. Which is why they can serve primarily as a parties healer and don't have to be stuck to doing purely summoning or control spells with their kit. They are actually one of the stronger healers in the game even without bothering to get any levels in Life cleric.