The fact that healing is the way it is in DnD is kind of irrelevant to the topic I’d say.
Dreams isn’t exactly the strongest support subclass, but is it one of the worst subclasses in the entire game? I’m inclined to say no. Is it one of the weaker if not the weakest druid subclass? Possibly. Half of its features are niche and campaign / DM dependent, and the other half are great. I don’t think it’s an amazing subclass, but its still playable. None of its features work against you or cripple your ability to play a druid. You still have access to the same spell list that makes the class great.
Some players don’t care about playing the game in the most optimal way possible. Sometimes you just want to use your turn give your buddy some extra HP and not care about DnD’s math. Sometimes you just want to TP your party members away from death. Those are the people that this class is designed for.
I don't think I disagree. I really like the flavor of Dreams, but it isn't mechanically strong. The worst subclass in the game? Nah. Druid is too strong of a class, first of all. Secondly, there are still trap subclasses like the battlerager and berserker and some monk subclasses.
I am somewhat disappointed that neither of the XGtE druid subclasses got bonus spells, when the Tasha's ones got them. Really, there are a lot of thematic spells that Dreams could have gotten, and shepherd is a trap unless you choose to prepare the correct spells.
I think that the thing people were disagreeing with is your insistence on Balm being a useless or weak ability when it’s really not, or at least not as bad as you’re making it seem.
Maybe other people like it. They're allowed to like it. Let people like what they want to like.
No. It's my personal goal to prevent anyone from playing this. Tonight i'm going to go down to the local game store and look for circle of dreams druids to steal their character sheets.
I'm currently playing a Circle of Dreams druid and having a lot of fun with it, but I don't care if its OP or not. The character growing and exploring his connection to the fey has been pretty entertaining. What is the worst subclass, I have no idea - I guess that depends on why you play. If you're looking to max out damage and be an unstoppable force this isn't the path for you. If you want a character with a unique skill set that is more utility, its not a bad choice. Balm of the Summer Court has been super handy at lower levels when you don't want to burn up precious spell slots.
I'm currently playing a Circle of Dreams druid and having a lot of fun with it, but I don't care if its OP or not. The character growing and exploring his connection to the fey has been pretty entertaining. What is the worst subclass, I have no idea - I guess that depends on why you play. If you're looking to max out damage and be an unstoppable force this isn't the path for you. If you want a character with a unique skill set that is more utility, its not a bad choice. Balm of the Summer Court has been super handy at lower levels when you don't want to burn up precious spell slots.
How one plays and how they set up their character tends to have way more to say about what is the worst subclass over anything to do objectively with the subclasses features. People like to rag on features and consider them overpowered or under powered or useless. But ones own stats and style tends to affect things far more.
The level 2 feature can be mostly replaced by healing word.
The level 6 ability (stealthy rests) is something most DM's just gloss over anyway.
The level 10 ability is quite good, but playing a terrible subclass for 9 levels just so it becomes okay is not very appealing.
If you make it to level 14, you get another decent ability. Congrats, the subclass is finally almost worth playing by the time you're past where most campaigns go.
I don't see the appeal of playing a character for 10 levels of just being a gimmick where you can do a tiny bit of healing to stop someone from dying. Yes, you can do it a lot of times as a bonus action, but if you're only healing for 1d6, those players are going to get dropped right back down to 0 very easily. Going "all in" on the strategy of healing someone for a couple of points to get them back up is neither appealing nor overly effective.
Just compare the wildfire druid to the dreams... both get extra free healing (d8 to healing spells and 2d10+wis when creatures die for the wildfire) and both can teleport allies (wildfire can do it earlier and more often, but only 15 ft). And yet wildfire gets so much more for levels that people actually play at.
I play a Dreams Druid in one of my campaigns, and I think you're judging the subclass a bit harshly. I'm not even sure how you'd go about objectively rating each subclass relative to all the others. I get the desire for rating things, though, and in my very subjective opinion Dreams is a mid tier subclass. In the popular nomenclature, maybe a B.
In response to your comments,
1. Yeah, no additional spells isn't as good as additional spells. What I like about Balm (besides the awesome RP that I wield the power of Titania to keep death at bay) is that it frees me to use other first level spells. I treat healing as action preservation rather than trying to refill HP to full. If you're unconscious then you, of course, get no actions. If I can hit you with a bonus action ability before your turn, then the group gets your actions. When I have Healing Word as a spell, I'm always going to preserve 1st level slots to be sure I can pick up whoever goes down. When I can rely on those Balm actions instead it frees me to cast other 1st level spells more aggressively through the day.
2. Balm of the Sumer Court is way better than Healing Word. Better range, can be cast when shape shifted, flexible healing amount. I'm not sure how you could possibly consider Healing Word to be better. In fact, I would word it, "Healing Word can be completely replaced by Balm." There's no reason to prepare it, and you should definitely prepare other 1st level spells instead.
3. Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow is not a strong ability. It provides some utility that may or may not be applicable in your campaign. If you don't have a Tiny Hut caster, though, it's sure better than nothing.
4. Hidden Paths is amazing, and I don't think we're in disagreement here at all. At level 10, you're going to get 5 Misty Steps on steroids, a spell that is not on the druid spell list. And, extra spells are better, right? You also get the flexibility of using one of those cast to send someone else 30'. This ability very much plays along the theme that Balm set, you get abilities that effectively give you additional spell slots. Do I plan on using Balm 10 times a day at this level? No, but I have a lot of flexibility to mold my casting to the needs of the adventuring day.
Do I think it's worth it to play though 9 levels to get to Hidden Paths? Of course I do. I think one of the areas that we disagree the most on is what does healing really do in this game. I'm glad that we don't have massive healing capabilities. I think that style is best left to the video games. Really whether Balm heals 1d6 or 1d10 is irrelevant to me. I approach healing, like I said, as a means to keep my fellow adventurers in the fight. Can that be a yoyo if the DM really wants to beat down one character? Sure, that's possible. But, if I stand you up, and then you deliver a killing blow, the party wins. The amount I heal you isn't what is important, getting you back in the fight is the intent.
Wildfire Druid sounds fun, and I could imagine playing one. It sounds fun, but you're using the lvl 10 ability of Wildfire, which is situational at best. Comparing the entire 10 level package of Dreams to Wildfire, I'm still happy I picked Dreams, and I think while you can look at individual abilities as better or worse, on whole I don't see a massive power differential between them. Wildfire for sure is more offensive, but Dreams is more supportive. Pick you poison.
Do I think it's worth it to play though 9 levels to get to Hidden Paths? Of course I do. I think one of the areas that we disagree the most on is what does healing really do in this game. I'm glad that we don't have massive healing capabilities. I think that style is best left to the video games. Really whether Balm heals 1d6 or 1d10 is irrelevant to me. I approach healing, like I said, as a means to keep my fellow adventurers in the fight. Can that be a yoyo if the DM really wants to beat down one character? Sure, that's possible. But, if I stand you up, and then you deliver a killing blow, the party wins. The amount I heal you isn't what is important, getting you back in the fight is the intent.
There's something to note about Yoyo'ing that really should be addressed. Yoyo'ing is entirely a product of DM's playing nice on the party and/or playing their enemies in very dumb ways. The reality is that in most encounters if the DM wanted to kill you after you popped back up if you only recieved minimal healing, then you would be dead, And most smart enemies would do themselves a favor by ensuring that you actually died so you didn't pop back up again. Some DM's will even play them this way for various reasons. healing is only a last resort mechanic because of this allowance by DM's. Without it healing would mean a lot more in a fight and would be required either in larger amounts or much sooner to make a severely damaged player not look like an easy target to be ganged up on and swing things in the opponents favor. Some DM's also draw a middle ground. They don't play the enemies much smarter. They'll let you keep getting back up to a certain point. But they impose other penalties on bouncing back up from the edge of death repeatedly.
And when your dealing with such the way that some people treat healing as something to do only after battle or after somebody has already fallen would mean death to a lot more characters and possibly a lot more angry party members because you could have saved them by healing them earlier, or in a different way, or with more healing.
So this is all something to keep in mind when people are bashing healing or saying it has little to no value or the whole point is just deal more damage so you don't take any. Because the enemies very easily could be doing worse to you and taking advantage of some of these mentalities quite easily.
Yeah I agree fateless.. the yoyo effect is kind of how I would describe every tough encounter... someone goes down, and then revived, makes it through a single round to attack only to get knocked down again.. in one of custom games my friend and I ran, we implanted a house rule that a "healed" pc that was below 0-HP always recieved one level of exhaustion when they were "revived", unless it was magical healing from a level 2 or higher spell or a class ability like the Summer Courts Balm. It's honestly kind of brutal, which is what we're aiming for, but it certainly made uses like this more of a necessity and also encouraged players to be weary when they got knocked out.
Again, it's a house rule, but it certainly made the players make better use of healing prior to someone going unconscious
Sometime I might try a house rule where when you get healed you have to pass a con save to gain consciousness after being healed up from 0 HP. DC would use the same rule as for concentration checks but based on the amount you went negative minus how much you got healed for.
Ex: you're at 5 HP. Dragon breaths on you for -40 hp. So -35. You get healed for 5 HP. DC = 30/2 or 15. So You're not longer dying, you have 5 HP and unless you pass a DC 15 con save you'll be unconscious for a number of hours.
Yeah I agree fateless.. the yoyo effect is kind of how I would describe every tough encounter... someone goes down, and then revived, makes it through a single round to attack only to get knocked down again.. in one of custom games my friend and I ran, we implanted a house rule that a "healed" pc that was below 0-HP always recieved one level of exhaustion when they were "revived", unless it was magical healing from a level 2 or higher spell or a class ability like the Summer Courts Balm. It's honestly kind of brutal, which is what we're aiming for, but it certainly made uses like this more of a necessity and also encouraged players to be weary when they got knocked out.
Again, it's a house rule, but it certainly made the players make better use of healing prior to someone going unconscious
I've seen a few examples. I like both given in this thread. But I will mention on this one specifically just because i want to say I've seen a variation of this. Where each time you get knocked out actually requires a higher level spell slot (or number of equivalent healing dice) to avoid exhaustion and it's over at least the whole day and not just a single battle. So there becomes a point where you can't avoid exhaustion and then at some point it will kill you regardless and some kind of raise dead or revivify or whatever will be needed to bring you back. The most extreme case I saw was until your exhaustion levels were gone but more often when i saw this variant it was just simply over the whole day until you long rested over night. Then you would accrue this scaling penalty all over again.
I really like the flavor of the Circle of Dreams. The only thing, in my opinion, that brings it down is the Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow, which is a Druid flavored Leomund's Tiny Hut. There is just nothing special about the ability with a thematically interesting Circle.
It would be nice if the linkage to the Feywild was more connected. Like, using the Hearth provided each person temp HP, or provided Guidance on the first ability check of the day, or the Druid could travel in some dream form and the Hearth transported to wherever he/she was at the end of the duration.
I really like the flavor of the Circle of Dreams. The only thing, in my opinion, that brings it down is the Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow, which is a Druid flavored Leomund's Tiny Hut. There is just nothing special about the ability with a thematically interesting Circle.
It would be nice if the linkage to the Feywild was more connected. Like, using the Hearth provided each person temp HP, or provided Guidance on the first ability check of the day, or the Druid could travel in some dream form and the Hearth transported to wherever he/she was at the end of the duration.
The Hearth works on Short Rests and Long Rests, requires no action or time to cast, has no spell slot or daily limit, and gives some nice Stealth/Perception advantages as well. As a DM who loves to roll for wandering monsters at each rest, this can foil a lot of my encounters, whereas an opaque round egg cannot.
I've thoroughly enjoyed trying to make the most of this circle with a fey-inspired trickster build.
In terms of bringing power to bear with this circle, it's a three-part mix. One area effect spell, a dash of push/pull spells, with some hidden paths for unlimited positional flexibility. A variety of tactical options open up, and mayhem ensues. I promise you'll love the trouble you can get into when you can get almost anywhere on the battlefield. You'll be Thunderwaving everything back into that Spike Growth, Maelstrom, or whatever else your party can put up. Thornwhip, Tidalwave, etc...
I know OP already acknowledged the benefit of hidden paths, but I also want to say it has had a multiplicative effect with my Sentinel and War Casting feats. I have far more action economy and area control, and now I never feel like I've wasted an action shapeshifting because I can still heal or opportunity attack. I'm also playing a halfling with the primal savagery cantrip to round out the fey theme; I imagine getting underfoot and biting a lot. I understand this isn't for everyone, but I've enjoyed making the most of it and mixing it up on the front lines.
For me, the other two are liberating as the last few posters noted. Balm empowers me to throw a little healing around to reward my party. It's been great to use it as a means of self-expression; that's something healing spells rarely give me. I feel like it's mine to bestow "at-will". I have no regret from burning actions or spell prep so I can use it without feeling like a heal bot or overly typecast. Whenever I feel the summer court would enjoy or endorse some party member's behaviour, I bonus action some of it out.
Last, I should say I find the Hearth equally easy to role play in a nap anywhere kind of sense. I'd also consider using it as an "I'm going to sleep on it" kind of perception check. Settle down for a short rest in front of some mystery and see if your GM will let you apply the perception check when you search it upon waking. It wouldn't hurt to try... I know it's pushing it but think it's on point in terms of dreams providing inspiration and guidance.
For crapsake, if you don't like it DON'T PLAY IT.
It's as simple as that.
Maybe other people like it. They're allowed to like it. Let people like what they want to like.
Do I have to keep getting notifications about every dumb comment on this thread every dang hour???
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Tayn of Darkwood. Human Life Cleric. Lvl 10.
Unsubscribe to the thread then AnzioFaro
The fact that healing is the way it is in DnD is kind of irrelevant to the topic I’d say.
Dreams isn’t exactly the strongest support subclass, but is it one of the worst subclasses in the entire game? I’m inclined to say no. Is it one of the weaker if not the weakest druid subclass? Possibly. Half of its features are niche and campaign / DM dependent, and the other half are great. I don’t think it’s an amazing subclass, but its still playable. None of its features work against you or cripple your ability to play a druid. You still have access to the same spell list that makes the class great.
Some players don’t care about playing the game in the most optimal way possible. Sometimes you just want to use your turn give your buddy some extra HP and not care about DnD’s math. Sometimes you just want to TP your party members away from death. Those are the people that this class is designed for.
👌
So what have you been arguing with again?
Mostly, people trying to tear apart my ideas with misunderstandings of what they actually are.
Yeah no one did that Wolf. You just insisted on arguing about it like people were. Have fun on your ship mate.
I think that the thing people were disagreeing with is your insistence on Balm being a useless or weak ability when it’s really not, or at least not as bad as you’re making it seem.
No. It's my personal goal to prevent anyone from playing this. Tonight i'm going to go down to the local game store and look for circle of dreams druids to steal their character sheets.
lol.
I'm currently playing a Circle of Dreams druid and having a lot of fun with it, but I don't care if its OP or not. The character growing and exploring his connection to the fey has been pretty entertaining. What is the worst subclass, I have no idea - I guess that depends on why you play. If you're looking to max out damage and be an unstoppable force this isn't the path for you. If you want a character with a unique skill set that is more utility, its not a bad choice. Balm of the Summer Court has been super handy at lower levels when you don't want to burn up precious spell slots.
It do be fun though
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"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
How one plays and how they set up their character tends to have way more to say about what is the worst subclass over anything to do objectively with the subclasses features. People like to rag on features and consider them overpowered or under powered or useless. But ones own stats and style tends to affect things far more.
I play a Dreams Druid in one of my campaigns, and I think you're judging the subclass a bit harshly. I'm not even sure how you'd go about objectively rating each subclass relative to all the others. I get the desire for rating things, though, and in my very subjective opinion Dreams is a mid tier subclass. In the popular nomenclature, maybe a B.
In response to your comments,
1. Yeah, no additional spells isn't as good as additional spells. What I like about Balm (besides the awesome RP that I wield the power of Titania to keep death at bay) is that it frees me to use other first level spells. I treat healing as action preservation rather than trying to refill HP to full. If you're unconscious then you, of course, get no actions. If I can hit you with a bonus action ability before your turn, then the group gets your actions. When I have Healing Word as a spell, I'm always going to preserve 1st level slots to be sure I can pick up whoever goes down. When I can rely on those Balm actions instead it frees me to cast other 1st level spells more aggressively through the day.
2. Balm of the Sumer Court is way better than Healing Word. Better range, can be cast when shape shifted, flexible healing amount. I'm not sure how you could possibly consider Healing Word to be better. In fact, I would word it, "Healing Word can be completely replaced by Balm." There's no reason to prepare it, and you should definitely prepare other 1st level spells instead.
3. Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow is not a strong ability. It provides some utility that may or may not be applicable in your campaign. If you don't have a Tiny Hut caster, though, it's sure better than nothing.
4. Hidden Paths is amazing, and I don't think we're in disagreement here at all. At level 10, you're going to get 5 Misty Steps on steroids, a spell that is not on the druid spell list. And, extra spells are better, right? You also get the flexibility of using one of those cast to send someone else 30'. This ability very much plays along the theme that Balm set, you get abilities that effectively give you additional spell slots. Do I plan on using Balm 10 times a day at this level? No, but I have a lot of flexibility to mold my casting to the needs of the adventuring day.
Do I think it's worth it to play though 9 levels to get to Hidden Paths? Of course I do. I think one of the areas that we disagree the most on is what does healing really do in this game. I'm glad that we don't have massive healing capabilities. I think that style is best left to the video games. Really whether Balm heals 1d6 or 1d10 is irrelevant to me. I approach healing, like I said, as a means to keep my fellow adventurers in the fight. Can that be a yoyo if the DM really wants to beat down one character? Sure, that's possible. But, if I stand you up, and then you deliver a killing blow, the party wins. The amount I heal you isn't what is important, getting you back in the fight is the intent.
Wildfire Druid sounds fun, and I could imagine playing one. It sounds fun, but you're using the lvl 10 ability of Wildfire, which is situational at best. Comparing the entire 10 level package of Dreams to Wildfire, I'm still happy I picked Dreams, and I think while you can look at individual abilities as better or worse, on whole I don't see a massive power differential between them. Wildfire for sure is more offensive, but Dreams is more supportive. Pick you poison.
There's something to note about Yoyo'ing that really should be addressed. Yoyo'ing is entirely a product of DM's playing nice on the party and/or playing their enemies in very dumb ways. The reality is that in most encounters if the DM wanted to kill you after you popped back up if you only recieved minimal healing, then you would be dead, And most smart enemies would do themselves a favor by ensuring that you actually died so you didn't pop back up again. Some DM's will even play them this way for various reasons. healing is only a last resort mechanic because of this allowance by DM's. Without it healing would mean a lot more in a fight and would be required either in larger amounts or much sooner to make a severely damaged player not look like an easy target to be ganged up on and swing things in the opponents favor. Some DM's also draw a middle ground. They don't play the enemies much smarter. They'll let you keep getting back up to a certain point. But they impose other penalties on bouncing back up from the edge of death repeatedly.
And when your dealing with such the way that some people treat healing as something to do only after battle or after somebody has already fallen would mean death to a lot more characters and possibly a lot more angry party members because you could have saved them by healing them earlier, or in a different way, or with more healing.
So this is all something to keep in mind when people are bashing healing or saying it has little to no value or the whole point is just deal more damage so you don't take any. Because the enemies very easily could be doing worse to you and taking advantage of some of these mentalities quite easily.
Yeah I agree fateless.. the yoyo effect is kind of how I would describe every tough encounter... someone goes down, and then revived, makes it through a single round to attack only to get knocked down again.. in one of custom games my friend and I ran, we implanted a house rule that a "healed" pc that was below 0-HP always recieved one level of exhaustion when they were "revived", unless it was magical healing from a level 2 or higher spell or a class ability like the Summer Courts Balm. It's honestly kind of brutal, which is what we're aiming for, but it certainly made uses like this more of a necessity and also encouraged players to be weary when they got knocked out.
Again, it's a house rule, but it certainly made the players make better use of healing prior to someone going unconscious
Sometime I might try a house rule where when you get healed you have to pass a con save to gain consciousness after being healed up from 0 HP. DC would use the same rule as for concentration checks but based on the amount you went negative minus how much you got healed for.
Ex: you're at 5 HP. Dragon breaths on you for -40 hp. So -35. You get healed for 5 HP. DC = 30/2 or 15. So You're not longer dying, you have 5 HP and unless you pass a DC 15 con save you'll be unconscious for a number of hours.
I've seen a few examples. I like both given in this thread. But I will mention on this one specifically just because i want to say I've seen a variation of this. Where each time you get knocked out actually requires a higher level spell slot (or number of equivalent healing dice) to avoid exhaustion and it's over at least the whole day and not just a single battle. So there becomes a point where you can't avoid exhaustion and then at some point it will kill you regardless and some kind of raise dead or revivify or whatever will be needed to bring you back. The most extreme case I saw was until your exhaustion levels were gone but more often when i saw this variant it was just simply over the whole day until you long rested over night. Then you would accrue this scaling penalty all over again.
I really like the flavor of the Circle of Dreams. The only thing, in my opinion, that brings it down is the Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow, which is a Druid flavored Leomund's Tiny Hut. There is just nothing special about the ability with a thematically interesting Circle.
It would be nice if the linkage to the Feywild was more connected. Like, using the Hearth provided each person temp HP, or provided Guidance on the first ability check of the day, or the Druid could travel in some dream form and the Hearth transported to wherever he/she was at the end of the duration.
The Hearth works on Short Rests and Long Rests, requires no action or time to cast, has no spell slot or daily limit, and gives some nice Stealth/Perception advantages as well. As a DM who loves to roll for wandering monsters at each rest, this can foil a lot of my encounters, whereas an opaque round egg cannot.
I've thoroughly enjoyed trying to make the most of this circle with a fey-inspired trickster build.
In terms of bringing power to bear with this circle, it's a three-part mix. One area effect spell, a dash of push/pull spells, with some hidden paths for unlimited positional flexibility. A variety of tactical options open up, and mayhem ensues. I promise you'll love the trouble you can get into when you can get almost anywhere on the battlefield. You'll be Thunderwaving everything back into that Spike Growth, Maelstrom, or whatever else your party can put up. Thornwhip, Tidalwave, etc...
I know OP already acknowledged the benefit of hidden paths, but I also want to say it has had a multiplicative effect with my Sentinel and War Casting feats. I have far more action economy and area control, and now I never feel like I've wasted an action shapeshifting because I can still heal or opportunity attack. I'm also playing a halfling with the primal savagery cantrip to round out the fey theme; I imagine getting underfoot and biting a lot. I understand this isn't for everyone, but I've enjoyed making the most of it and mixing it up on the front lines.
For me, the other two are liberating as the last few posters noted. Balm empowers me to throw a little healing around to reward my party. It's been great to use it as a means of self-expression; that's something healing spells rarely give me. I feel like it's mine to bestow "at-will". I have no regret from burning actions or spell prep so I can use it without feeling like a heal bot or overly typecast. Whenever I feel the summer court would enjoy or endorse some party member's behaviour, I bonus action some of it out.
Last, I should say I find the Hearth equally easy to role play in a nap anywhere kind of sense. I'd also consider using it as an "I'm going to sleep on it" kind of perception check. Settle down for a short rest in front of some mystery and see if your GM will let you apply the perception check when you search it upon waking. It wouldn't hurt to try... I know it's pushing it but think it's on point in terms of dreams providing inspiration and guidance.