Exactly! People that think the role of Druid is to tank are missing out on the long history of the Druid being the supplemental and battlefield control spell caster that it has long been. Going back to 2nd ed, Wild Shape worked much like this, and it worked GREAT!
The druid spell list is perfectly fine, you can play a druid without using wild shape... but if they intend wild shape to be useless they should just remove it.
Wildshape is pretty horrible now. Even as a Moon Druid I don't see much incentive to use it over just staying in caster form and casting spells. If they want druid to be a fullcaster they should let us cast in beast form much, much earlier. At least that way Wildshape becomes an alternative to cantrips, but even then I dunno if it'd be worth the loss of AC, and going anywhere near melee range in animal form would be suicide.
Honestly 5e's wildshape was fine. It gave a great deal of versatility to the class that could be used in creative ways to solve problems and have fun. These new templates completely remove all that utility and gives nothing in return. Just including one or two basic stat blocks for new players would've solved the problem these templates are trying to solve without gutting the class.
DRUID IS CONSTITUTION BUILD NOW TO NOT LOSE YOUR CONCENTRATION.
so in wildshape, You retain your personality, memories, ability to speak, and Wild Shape. You lose access to all your other features, such as the ability to cast spells(you can continue to concentrate on one)
so your Incentivized to not be a martial YOU ARE A PRIEST GROUP ill explain below
your a concentration caster now, you use wildshape alternating forms, to cast concentration spells starting at lv13. You can cast wilshape hold concentration return to human to cast non concentration spell return to wildshape KEEP DISTANCE to hold concentration or if you started wildshape turn human cast concentration spell return to wildshape and hold concentration. YOU TURN NATURE VS YOUR ENEMIES AND HEAL ALLIES 7 Regenerate 7 Reverse Gravity 8 Animal Shapes 8 Control Weather 8 Earthquake 8 Tsunami 9 Shapechange And you can cast abjuration spell in wildshape ontop that dont take your concentration away like mass healing word or mass cure wounds.
TINY CRITTER ALLOWS YOU TO GET COVER BEHIND ALLY OR HIDE WITH DEX STEALTH.
The purpose of a druid is no longer to tank, the role of the druid has been specialized to field control and AOE damage.
Exactly! People that think the role of Druid is to tank are missing out on the long history of the Druid being the supplemental and battlefield control spell caster that it has long been. Going back to 2nd ed, Wild Shape worked much like this, and it worked GREAT!
Now, my 20th level Druid with 177 hit points can take the shape of an owlbear or tiny frog with a 22 strength and 22 dexterity giving it +12 to initiative while casting spells at the enemy or healing his friends.
For those that didn't know, Jeremy said that when you Wild Shape, it is YOU taking a new form, so your feats would carry over. In the above initiative case, my character has Alert. Bad Ass.
Except the wildshape feature clearly says you dont
I like the change on Wild Shape, I just don't like how weak it is.
I gave a bigger explanation here Post but to summarize: Increase a bit the AC of the animal forms, grant some Temp HP, Merge Tiny Critter to the level 5 feature, and allow to use class/racial features while in wild shape. With thouse changes, there is a reason to change forms - even for non-moon druids.
What I really liked is the moon druid level 6 + level 10 features, those are pretty fun!
It's changes like this that rocks my confidence in the team. Like...what person who is good at game design says "right, we have a game where the old class will still be available, but we want to move the new class away from being wholly dependent on a particular class ability, so...we'll make that class ability objectively worse than the original...and then make almost all of the class features revolve around said class ability".
It just seems such a 'duh' thing that I'm finding it hard that they'd think that this was a good move. There's not even any logic behind it, from what I can tell. The best I can come up with is that they nerfed Wildshape to make room in the class potency for new magic based abilities...and then forgot to add the new abilities. Maybe the new spell list is much more potent? I'm not so sharp on that aspect, but it's all I can think of. Seems a bit lame to have your spell list replace class features as your attraction point, though.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
to be fair 4 of the new class features were already features but were lumped into the level 2 feature as a progression table (ok technically might of the land wasnt in the table but there wasnt a restriction on climb speed or multiattack anyway and tiny sized was never restricted so thats a nerf) the only real new class features for ws in the base class is altering forms and wild resurgance. but i do think that the base class should concentrate equally on all the base channel nature abilities or spellcasting rather than make it look like a wild shape bloat
I don't think the new wildshape is worse than the old one, for moon druids, sure it is worse but for druid in general, it is a simplification. The only part that is a definite downgrade is not replacing your HP with the beasts, but I believe this can be resolved with granting temp HP and perhaps adding some type of druid armour which transforms with you to act like barding for a bit more AC. I am also not entirely convinced by tiny forms being locked out til later levels either, I suppose it is to stop players turning into things small enough to crawl through locks or other similar gaps at low levels.
To be honest, the idea of a Druid that can do all sorts of things other than Wild Shape seems cool. I would be fine with the Druid and beast sharing hit points, as long as the Druid got some temp HP and abilities other than Wild Shape.
So, thinking about it more, the concept they talked about in the video actually sounds really cool. They just didn’t do a very good job of implementing that idea here.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
Y'all, take a deep breath. Wildshape is simply undertuned, that's easily fixable.
All Moon Druid Wildshape needs is:
- More AC (say, 13+Wis for Land/Sea and 10+Wis for Sky)
- Some utility animal abilities in the various forms (like web, charge, pack tactics etc.) This part is trickier since they probably don't want page-length statblocks.
I keep seeing the comment "no one plays druid" this is vastly different than my experience.
For reference I assisted in running an in store dnd group (2 AL tables 1 free table )as well as play on line with players across the world. Druids seem to be present at 85-95% of the games.
There seems to be less of a presence in Liveplay but not to the point where they are Rarer than other specialized classes.
Can any one support or debunk such claims?
In addition to the DDB stuff, Roll20 released 5e class stats at one point you might be able to dig up. Druids were indeed in last place, while Fighter was the most popular class.
I really don't get why people think that. The video itself enumerates several reasons why the old druid was, in fact, NOT fine. Say what you will about the new one, but the old wildshape was NOT fine.
I really don't get why people think that. The video itself enumerates several reasons why the old druid was, in fact, NOT fine. Say what you will about the new one, but the old wildshape was NOT fine.
I can agree with that sentiment, but I think that versatility is one of wildshape's most important features, whether choosing a different creature for what it can do in combat that is most beneficial in the situation that is presented, or one that is most useful for some form of exploration. Getting rid of tiny creatures until a ridiculously high level destroys a lot of the exploration benefits, and reducing access to different movement modes earlier on goes even further in this way. I do agree that a generic but customizable statblock that can have various features might be an improvement, but it may make the feature even more complicated than searching through the ten or fifteen beasts worth considering in the monster manual. The a la carte suggestions that some have made and I have liked force people to consider a multitude of choices every time they use the wildshape feature, which could make the decision even slower and harder to keep track of than a limited selection of worthwhile beasts that are available now.
I really don't get why people think that. The video itself enumerates several reasons why the old druid was, in fact, NOT fine. Say what you will about the new one, but the old wildshape was NOT fine.
I can agree with that sentiment, but I think that versatility is one of wildshape's most important features, whether choosing a different creature for what it can do in combat that is most beneficial in the situation that is presented, or one that is most useful for some form of exploration. Getting rid of tiny creatures until a ridiculously high level destroys a lot of the exploration benefits, and reducing access to different movement modes earlier on goes even further in this way. I do agree that a generic but customizable statblock that can have various features might be an improvement, but it may make the feature even more complicated than searching through the ten or fifteen beasts worth considering in the monster manual. The a la carte suggestions that some have made and I have liked force people to consider a multitude of choices every time they use the wildshape feature, which could make the decision even slower and harder to keep track of than a limited selection of worthwhile beasts that are available now.
Sure, the new druid definitely needs a lot of work, or perhaps sent completely back to the drawing board. But the old one wasn't very good either. I just find it mindbogglingly crazy how everyone is suddenly happy with the least popular class of 5e.
EDIT - We need a new druid. The old one was bad. The 1d&d druid isn't the direction I want to see it go in. But that's no reason to romanticize the old one.
It's changes like this that rocks my confidence in the team. Like...what person who is good at game design says "right, we have a game where the old class will still be available, but we want to move the new class away from being wholly dependent on a particular class ability, so...we'll make that class ability objectively worse than the original...and then make almost all of the class features revolve around said class ability".
It just seems such a 'duh' thing that I'm finding it hard that they'd think that this was a good move. There's not even any logic behind it, from what I can tell. The best I can come up with is that they nerfed Wildshape to make room in the class potency for new magic based abilities...and then forgot to add the new abilities. Maybe the new spell list is much more potent? I'm not so sharp on that aspect, but it's all I can think of. Seems a bit lame to have your spell list replace class features as your attraction point, though.
The logic I think is in part based on what JC said - most players who play a Druid character want to become a specific animal. If their goal was in part to design a class around people who want to be the party's squirrel, this outcome follows that logic.
I think they wanted to simplify the class and bring all of the Priest classes in line with Channel X abilities. As well as generally to reduce the attractiveness of multi-class dips and spread the power across the class levels more. I think this UA does all that, as much as additional changes are needed.
The logic I think is in part based on what JC said - most players who play a Druid character want to become a specific animal. If their goal was in part to design a class around people who want to be the party's squirrel, this outcome follows that logic.
Except, of course, that you can't actually turn into the party's squirrel until level 11, at which point you can do it for ten minutes.
I really don't get why people think that. The video itself enumerates several reasons why the old druid was, in fact, NOT fine. Say what you will about the new one, but the old wildshape was NOT fine.
I can agree with that sentiment, but I think that versatility is one of wildshape's most important features, whether choosing a different creature for what it can do in combat that is most beneficial in the situation that is presented, or one that is most useful for some form of exploration. Getting rid of tiny creatures until a ridiculously high level destroys a lot of the exploration benefits, and reducing access to different movement modes earlier on goes even further in this way. I do agree that a generic but customizable statblock that can have various features might be an improvement, but it may make the feature even more complicated than searching through the ten or fifteen beasts worth considering in the monster manual. The a la carte suggestions that some have made and I have liked force people to consider a multitude of choices every time they use the wildshape feature, which could make the decision even slower and harder to keep track of than a limited selection of worthwhile beasts that are available now.
Sure, the new druid definitely needs a lot of work, or perhaps sent completely back to the drawing board. But the old one wasn't very good either. I just find it mindbogglingly crazy how everyone is suddenly happy with the least popular class of 5e.
EDIT - We need a new druid. The old one was bad. The 1d&d druid isn't the direction I want to see it go in. But that's no reason to romanticize the old one.
Probably because there will always be a least popular class, but that doesn't mean no one plays it or enjoys it. 75% of the games I've played in had a druid in the party and the people playing it really enjoyed it. There is a lot of good in 5e druid, but it's not perfect (no class is). TBH I don't think anything WotC does will make druid significantly more popular becausr it's fundamental fantasy - back to nature, tree hugger - is not a popular one in the current culture. Indeed, I've seen many games where the classic druid fantasy is treated as the villain.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
The druid spell list is perfectly fine, you can play a druid without using wild shape... but if they intend wild shape to be useless they should just remove it.
Wildshape is pretty horrible now. Even as a Moon Druid I don't see much incentive to use it over just staying in caster form and casting spells. If they want druid to be a fullcaster they should let us cast in beast form much, much earlier. At least that way Wildshape becomes an alternative to cantrips, but even then I dunno if it'd be worth the loss of AC, and going anywhere near melee range in animal form would be suicide.
Honestly 5e's wildshape was fine. It gave a great deal of versatility to the class that could be used in creative ways to solve problems and have fun. These new templates completely remove all that utility and gives nothing in return. Just including one or two basic stat blocks for new players would've solved the problem these templates are trying to solve without gutting the class.
Except the wildshape feature clearly says you dont
I like the change on Wild Shape, I just don't like how weak it is.
I gave a bigger explanation here Post but to summarize: Increase a bit the AC of the animal forms, grant some Temp HP, Merge Tiny Critter to the level 5 feature, and allow to use class/racial features while in wild shape. With thouse changes, there is a reason to change forms - even for non-moon druids.
What I really liked is the moon druid level 6 + level 10 features, those are pretty fun!
It's changes like this that rocks my confidence in the team. Like...what person who is good at game design says "right, we have a game where the old class will still be available, but we want to move the new class away from being wholly dependent on a particular class ability, so...we'll make that class ability objectively worse than the original...and then make almost all of the class features revolve around said class ability".
It just seems such a 'duh' thing that I'm finding it hard that they'd think that this was a good move. There's not even any logic behind it, from what I can tell. The best I can come up with is that they nerfed Wildshape to make room in the class potency for new magic based abilities...and then forgot to add the new abilities. Maybe the new spell list is much more potent? I'm not so sharp on that aspect, but it's all I can think of. Seems a bit lame to have your spell list replace class features as your attraction point, though.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
to be fair 4 of the new class features were already features but were lumped into the level 2 feature as a progression table (ok technically might of the land wasnt in the table but there wasnt a restriction on climb speed or multiattack anyway and tiny sized was never restricted so thats a nerf) the only real new class features for ws in the base class is altering forms and wild resurgance. but i do think that the base class should concentrate equally on all the base channel nature abilities or spellcasting rather than make it look like a wild shape bloat
I don't think the new wildshape is worse than the old one, for moon druids, sure it is worse but for druid in general, it is a simplification. The only part that is a definite downgrade is not replacing your HP with the beasts, but I believe this can be resolved with granting temp HP and perhaps adding some type of druid armour which transforms with you to act like barding for a bit more AC. I am also not entirely convinced by tiny forms being locked out til later levels either, I suppose it is to stop players turning into things small enough to crawl through locks or other similar gaps at low levels.
To be honest, the idea of a Druid that can do all sorts of things other than Wild Shape seems cool. I would be fine with the Druid and beast sharing hit points, as long as the Druid got some temp HP and abilities other than Wild Shape.
So, thinking about it more, the concept they talked about in the video actually sounds really cool. They just didn’t do a very good job of implementing that idea here.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.i still dont like the idea of just getting temp hp as temp hp can not be healed
Just use Wildshape again, you can use wildshape while wildshaped now, so you just refresh a new version of the form.
Or instead they could just have their max HP increased by a certain amount while they maintain wildshape instead of fiddling with temp HP.
Y'all, take a deep breath. Wildshape is simply undertuned, that's easily fixable.
All Moon Druid Wildshape needs is:
- More AC (say, 13+Wis for Land/Sea and 10+Wis for Sky)
- Some utility animal abilities in the various forms (like web, charge, pack tactics etc.) This part is trickier since they probably don't want page-length statblocks.
In addition to the DDB stuff, Roll20 released 5e class stats at one point you might be able to dig up. Druids were indeed in last place, while Fighter was the most popular class.
this new ua wont help that. in fact prob make it worse so if their plan is to remove the druid from 5e then good job
I really don't get why people think that. The video itself enumerates several reasons why the old druid was, in fact, NOT fine. Say what you will about the new one, but the old wildshape was NOT fine.
I can agree with that sentiment, but I think that versatility is one of wildshape's most important features, whether choosing a different creature for what it can do in combat that is most beneficial in the situation that is presented, or one that is most useful for some form of exploration. Getting rid of tiny creatures until a ridiculously high level destroys a lot of the exploration benefits, and reducing access to different movement modes earlier on goes even further in this way. I do agree that a generic but customizable statblock that can have various features might be an improvement, but it may make the feature even more complicated than searching through the ten or fifteen beasts worth considering in the monster manual. The a la carte suggestions that some have made and I have liked force people to consider a multitude of choices every time they use the wildshape feature, which could make the decision even slower and harder to keep track of than a limited selection of worthwhile beasts that are available now.
i think i would have been happy (or at least happier) with using the primal beast forms for the ranger as a base
Sure, the new druid definitely needs a lot of work, or perhaps sent completely back to the drawing board. But the old one wasn't very good either. I just find it mindbogglingly crazy how everyone is suddenly happy with the least popular class of 5e.
EDIT - We need a new druid. The old one was bad. The 1d&d druid isn't the direction I want to see it go in. But that's no reason to romanticize the old one.
The logic I think is in part based on what JC said - most players who play a Druid character want to become a specific animal. If their goal was in part to design a class around people who want to be the party's squirrel, this outcome follows that logic.
I think they wanted to simplify the class and bring all of the Priest classes in line with Channel X abilities. As well as generally to reduce the attractiveness of multi-class dips and spread the power across the class levels more. I think this UA does all that, as much as additional changes are needed.
Except, of course, that you can't actually turn into the party's squirrel until level 11, at which point you can do it for ten minutes.
Probably because there will always be a least popular class, but that doesn't mean no one plays it or enjoys it. 75% of the games I've played in had a druid in the party and the people playing it really enjoyed it. There is a lot of good in 5e druid, but it's not perfect (no class is). TBH I don't think anything WotC does will make druid significantly more popular becausr it's fundamental fantasy - back to nature, tree hugger - is not a popular one in the current culture. Indeed, I've seen many games where the classic druid fantasy is treated as the villain.