Utterly stunned to see them gut the one really cool ability of druids.
And I say that while absolutely loving the templates idea. I totally disagree with the "generic" criticism of this concept. There were only a few beasts that were worth using anyway, and we all damn well know it.
But to take away the extra wildshape hp is... I'm just stunned. Being able to occasionally turn into a hp sink was situationally useful. Now you'd really have to be a fool to wade into combat in your wildshape.
At the very least, they need to make being a Tiny-sized creature possible from level 1. Removing that as an option is... again, stunned. You can no longer use it in combat, you can no longer scout safely with it. What... what is it they want us to use it for?!
I think, after watching the videos and reading the UA, that the Druid is, like the rogue, being moved out the martial arena. The changes to wildshape, the elimination of medium armor all make me think they are trying to take the Druid and especially the moon Druid out of the combat arena and back into being a caster primarily with wildshape as more of a spy/investigation tool than a combat tool. I see some of the same thing with the Paladin. By reducing the smites to a single one in a turn reducing their nova damage they are bringing the Paladin more in line with the ranger and probably with the fighters. If you think of them as trying to balance the combat abilities of the martials and focus the casters more on casting the changes make some sense. I do think some temp HP when wildshaping would help the Druid even if it’s not regularly in melee combat.
I would posit that R5e Wild Shape, if people are truly seeing it as almost entirely nothing but a spare HP sink, is not a well designed class feature. People like it because they're used to it, not because it's good. The vast majority of legal beast shapes are 100% crotchless-pants useless, and the existence of R5e Wild Shape also severely inhibits monster design because any Beast of appropriate level must also be designed with the fact that it can be a Wild Shape form first and foremost in the developer's brains.
Perhaps the new version isn't there yet, but I'd caution people against clinging too hard to the R5e version.
If folks see Wild Shape as no more than an HP sink, then they obviously don't know anything about Druids or have a prejudice against them. When I swap to a cave bear, the bear's HP is half of my Druid's (at lvl 10). It's armor class is 12. My Druid's is 18. My cave bear can't cast spells, but can expend spell slots for a 1d8 heal per slot level, so, sure, the class gets extra HP from Wild Shape, but it's eaten up much easier than nearly any other class. That's pretty balanced...
Why would you expect a majority of beasts to be be amazing? They can't all be winners. Picking your Wild Shape form is about utility. How is it going to benefit you and the group? Perhaps being an ape isn't all that great in Wild Shape, but summon four of them and then Wild Shaping into a bear can be quite hilarious and fun! Plus...you don't have to be optimal all the time. That gets boring...
And I highly doubt Wild Shape affects the devs' ability to create beast monsters. There are several that would be nice in the monster manual, but they've been swapped to monstrosities (they are beasts in all but type only) or are at a CR level that is either unattainable or resides at the fringe upper levels of Moon Druids.
Giant lists of literal Build-A-Bear traits seem unlikely, and would provoke just as much nerdrage as the "over-generic" templates do. Remember - this is a community that has spent three years now being evil to itself over species ASIs going away, and one of the prime complaints is "THEY'LL JUST TURN EVERYTHING INTO A RANDOM GRAB BAG AND LET PEOPLE MAKE WHATEVER UNHOLY ABOMINATION THEY LIKE AND I WON'T HAVE IT!" I don't foresee Build-A-Bear becoming a thing for druids.
I haven't been through the whole thread yet but I haven't seen anyone mention the wildshape nerf to scouting and infiltration. A major advantage of wildshape was the ability to transform into a spider or a mouse to pass unnoticed. Now you're stuck with a generic option and its not until level 11 that you can shift into a tiny creature, and only for 10 minutes at that.
Having played a moon druid in 5e, here's a partial list of forms I made use of
Brown Bear, for doing damage (I didn't get access to that form at level 2, so I used other combat forms, but they were immediately replaced when the bear became available)
Crab, because I wanted to sneak through a narrow underground river.
Giant Badger, because I really wanted a burrow movement speed at the moment.
Giant Elk, because it's fast and a decent pile of hit points, both of which are nice for running away.
Giant Spider, because spider climb and blindsense and strong enough to carry my allies.
Mastiff, because I needed stats for a dog, which I wanted so I could move around a city unnoticed.
Polar Bear, because it's a better version of the brown bear.
Reef Shark, just because I needed to do some underwater stuff.
I would posit that R5e Wild Shape, if people are truly seeing it as almost entirely nothing but a spare HP sink, is not a well designed class feature.
You are right: Wild Shape effectively works as a bunch of extra Hit Points, and perhaps some more damage for a bit. The mechanic forces you to pick between combat or turning it into an animal for role-playing, or just anything fun outside of battle anyways. However, the way this UA is attempting to fix this issue is not good, to say the least.
A better solution would still work. However, it would just tamper with some of the valves that give Druids both the monster's HP, and their own. Honestly, halving the total hit points of a monster really doesn't seem too unreasonable.
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I like the idea I think someone floated about being able to use spell slots to improve wild shape forms. Perhaps they could develop some spells that could be cast at the time of wild shaping to give say enhanced defense, a big stack of temp HP, attack power, scouting ability, etc.
Utterly stunned to see them gut the one really cool ability of druids.
And I say that while absolutely loving the templates idea. I totally disagree with the "generic" criticism of this concept. There were only a few beasts that were worth using anyway, and we all damn well know it.
But to take away the extra wildshape hp is... I'm just stunned. Being able to occasionally turn into a hp sink was situationally useful. Now you'd really have to be a fool to wade into combat in your wildshape.
At the very least, they need to make being a Tiny-sized creature possible from level 1. Removing that as an option is... again, stunned. You can no longer use it in combat, you can no longer scout safely with it. What... what is it they want us to use it for?!
I disagree with that, "there were only a worth using" If you only use them for battle. The big idea is that it is situational and that you can choose between better options, yes it need some improvement int he list but is still better than those generic templates that only give you a Speed advantage
I haven’t seen anyone mention the major change to Find Familiar yet. You’re no longer blind and deaf in regards to your own sense when you use your familiar’s senses now.
Giant lists of literal Build-A-Bear traits seem unlikely, and would provoke just as much nerdrage as the "over-generic" templates do. Remember - this is a community that has spent three years now being evil to itself over species ASIs going away, and one of the prime complaints is "THEY'LL JUST TURN EVERYTHING INTO A RANDOM GRAB BAG AND LET PEOPLE MAKE WHATEVER UNHOLY ABOMINATION THEY LIKE AND I WON'T HAVE IT!" I don't foresee Build-A-Bear becoming a thing for druids.
Well if they actually ask people to feedback and people feedback them that the generic templates are horrible, why should we get horrible generic templates. Literally current Wildshape is awesome. It covers battle with a variety of animals, either just as sack of meat, a proper strategically animal with some advantages or some solid attacks; it covers roleplay by having utility animals and also covers entretaining by changing into something funny.
Oof. This is basically my worst case scenario for druid. They've completely gutted my favorite class. I can say for sure that I won't be playing the new edition if this is how it looks when released.
The one thing I like is that Wildshape got rolled into Channel Nature. This feels like a good way to let non-wildshape users still get a use out of that resource and is less clumsy than "exhaust a use of wildshape to do X" that some of the recent subclasses enjoy.
But then you turn around and make most of the druid features wildshape specific rather than adding more uses to Channel Nature. That makes no sense to me, and to be frank do we REALLY need an entire class feature to give us a swim speed? Has a PC having a swim speed at level 2 ever broken someone's campaign? I get making us wait to level 8-9 for flight, but 4 and now 7 for swim speed just seems pointlessly restrictive. That could easily be a new non-Wildshape feature.
But oh boy did they absolutely eviscerate wildshape as a feature. Templates were my worst-case scenario and here they are, exactly as generic and limiting as I imagined them.
Choosing a Wildshape was about more than just picking the best tank or damage dealer. It was about choosing the form that best suited the situation. As a Moon Druid player I've turned into a giant spider to scale a wall and attack the enemy archers up above, turned into a Giant Toad to swallow the enemy caster alive, turned into a Gaint Constrictor Snake to grapple down a dangerous enemy melee fighter, and much more.
All that is gone now. Wildshape is purely there for travel or combat, but oh boy does it suck for combat now. Max of 15AC and we don't get extra HP in the new form? It's a death sentence. I guess they intend for us to cast Barkskin to keep us alive, but that nerfs us in another way in that we have to choose between baseline survival in melee and maintaining our damaging spells like Flaming Sphere or Call Lightning in our animal forms.
Use for travel was nerfed too. No more Huge forms, so we can't turn into a Quetzalcoatlus and carry two or three party members on our backs. Our speed is also quite limited compared to a lot of existing forms too. Not that it matters because overland travel wasn't nearly as important as our function as a stealthy scout, which has ALSO been nerfed as we can't turn into tiny creatures until level 11.
So alright. They clearly don't want druid to wildshape in combat or for stealth, so maybe we're meant to be casters? Except that no, we still can't cast in Wildshape either until level 17 and we get only one feature that benefits our spellcasting during our entire leveling process.
It seems like they want us to be wildshaping often based on Wild Resurgence and Alternating Forms, but there's no incentive to constantly shapeshift around because all our forms have the same abilities. It would be amazing if we could switch from a giant spider one turn to cast Web, then swap to caster to hit the captured enemies with Flaming Sphere, then swap again to a bear to maul our enemies, but as-is I'd honestly just stay in my caster form permanently so I always have access to spells.
tl;dr: This new druid is awful. It has been drained of most of the abilities that gave the class the complexity that I love about it and removed much of the class' ability to get creative with its features to come up with unique solutions to different problems. The few positive changes seem lackluster and underdeveloped and in no way add back the complexity and creativity that the class used to offer.
Also losing Medium Armor is a disappointment and makes the class just a little more MAD, as we now need Dexterity to maximize our AC.
I agree with a lot of comments about wild shape. I don't think it's all that hard to fix though.
Put Tiny size at level 1, or if they must, level 2. I'll take tiny size wild shape over a familiar.
Give at least Moon Druids some temp HP when they wild shape, perhaps 5 per level.
In addition to the 3 core stat blocks (which I think are fine starting points), add a list of additional features you can choose from each time you Wild Shape, such as Pack Tactics, Burrowing, or Flyby Attack. Even just 10 options to choose from would give a lot more versatility to this. Maybe let Moon Druids choose more than one of these features as they level up.
As for this being too Wild Shape heavy, I disagree. It's almost exactly the same as it was before, just organized differently. In 5e, you by default could be tiny sized, get a burrow speed, and get multiattack; now those are gated by level. Alternating forms is new, but being able to drop out of your tiny mouse scout form (which is no longer a weak 1hp thing that disappears with any damage) to start unleashing all of your spells during a full battle, and then pop back into mouse form without using another Wild Shape--that seems focused more on folks who don't want to lean on Wild Shape. There's Wild Resurgence, which is useless if you NEVER wild shape. The existing Druid's level 20 power was entirely about Wild Shape; now it isn't specific to Wild Shape at all.
I think with the right tinkering, this could be a really good change to the class, especially for starting players but also for more advanced players who don't like the lack of steady progression.
Also, what is the deal with Quick Attack? Why are Moon Druids good at Unarmed Strikes? Nothing in the description limits this to Wild Shape, and even then, what? I guess in animal form you get a bonus action grapple, shove, or an extra 6 damage (maybe pick up the Grappler feat?). I guess it adds extra versatility but it seems odd to me that they would be good at trained unarmed fighting rather than a bonus action Bestial Strike attack.
5TH LEVEL: MIGHT OF THE LAND ... unlock that form’s Climb Speed ...
11TH LEVEL: TINY CRITTER You gain the ability to become a Tiny creature .... you can stay in that form no longer than 10 minutes ....
Cat - Tiny Beast with climbing 30ft .... so you can't actually be one until level 11 now.
Badger - Tiny Beast with burrow 5ft .... no longer an option.
Bat - Tiny Beast with flight and 60ft blind sight ... no longer an option.
Octopus - Tiny Beast with advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made while underwater ... no longer an option.
Spider - Tiny Beast with spider climb, web sense, and web walk ... no longer an option
Giant Fire Beatle - small beast that can be a light source for the party ... no longer an option.
In short, All the stealth, special attacks (like poisons, grapples, rams, pounces, and pack tactics), special movement (like spider climb, burrow), blindsight, mounts and other utility options... gone.
Full elemental options... gone
I am sure I missed some.
.... Seems like a massive nerf to roleplay and utility options to provide mediocre, boring, but easily used combat options. You can use it more freely but they took away most of the reasons you would want to.
I do like all druids getting "13TH LEVEL: ALTERNATING FORMS" being able to switch between the two within the usage times fixes the "... they are cat and can't speak with the party right now" issue but ... "within the next minute" .... is a needless nerf that almost completely ruins it.
The moon druid feature "Swift Transformation" which is also needlessly nerfed with "no more than once on a turn"... since wildshape is no longer resetting HP, why would it be bad to let the player spend 2 of their max 4 channel natures, their aciton, and their bonus action... on what must be a Mutiple types of movement? Player turns into a mouse to run through a whole in a door then into a bird to fly off... not broken and cool. The only reason they would not do this is because they thinking people are to dumb to figure out movement changes between forms... but that doesn't make since because the wildshapes all have different movement from the player character so people will have to figure that out anyway and it's not that hard.
Maybe it is just me, but I feel like they should remove the restrictions for lvl 5 climibing, lvl 7 swiming, lvl 9 flying, and lvl 11 Tiny. If you have to have restrictions allow tiny with one special ability from adv. stealth, spider climb, flight, swim, climb, adv. perception, dark vision 30ft, and pact tactics from level 1. Small with two abilities adding additional options of poison, multi-attack, and dark vision 60ft at level 5. Medium with three abilities adding additional options of grapples, rams, pounces, and dark vision 90ft at level 7, and large with four abilities adding additional option of dark vision 120ft at level 9, Huge with five abilities adding additional option blindsight at level 11.
The lack of inflection in text means that a reader of any post adds their own inflection as they "verbalize" it in their head. I write long and repetitive in an effort to be clear and avoid my intent from being skewed or inverted. I am also bad at examples. It is common for people to skim my posts pull out the idea they think I mean or want to argue against or focus on my bad example instead of the point I am actually trying to make. I apologies for the confusion my failure to be clear and concise creates.
They really went too hard in on druids and Wild Shape. And I don't think it's actually simpler. While it's true the player only needs to worry about three stat blocks, and the DM doesn't need to fret about letting them look at the Monster Manual, they're kind of complex for stat blocks. There isn't much in the way of tactical differences, which makes it all feel kind of bland. Not even Circle of the Moon fixes that. Some of it's interesting, and I kind of do like the elemental forms, but it feels more like a subsystem for the class' primary feature the druid is now a shapeshifter with full spellcasting.
And the shapeshifting is just downright weird. If you pick a Large Animal of the Land anytime after 5th-level, you could be a spider-horse with the humanoid subtype. Maybe it's just me, but none of that makes any dang sense.
As for the paladin, I think it's mostly fine. Moving their Divine Sense to being a Channel Divinity seems logical, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out. And limiting Divine Smite to a single use per turn seems right to me, though I'm not crazy about saying you can't also cast a spell during the turn. And letting it work with ranged attacks...might be too much. But on the other hand, there now seems to be real TWF support. I know that makes a lot of people happy.
The new Oath of Devotion seems fine. They dumped the old 15th-level feature, and moved back the 7th-level feature to 10th-level, to make room for Smite of Protection. Seems to be they're now encouraging uses of Divine Smite, while also throttling it, and I look forward to seeing how other subclasses get their smites modified.
The changes to find familiar and find steed seem interesting; even if the star blocks bring back the same issues I had with Wild Shape. I like the idea of using spell slots to make the creature stronger, at least. And the several smite spells can now all be upcast for greater effect. I don't like how the damage seems to have no rhyme or reason, and I hope that gets evened out. And any banishing effect still needs to give the spellcaster the option to impose disadvantage on the saving throw. I'm fine with it being their action, but I recognize that might not work for everyone.
As for Unarmed Strike, I like the saving throw instead of making an attack roll. But I'm on the fence about the new grappled. There's no longer an automatic attempt to end after the affected's turn, so now it's back to using your action or not. Maybe if you could sacrifice half your movement...
One thing i have against temp 5hp is lack of healing for it. The hp pool was inline with other transformation spells like polymorph which also gives you a hp pool. As it stands tho the ws stat blocks are worse than the primal beast companion stats for the ranger
Swap the level 10 and 14 features for moon druid, change the max CR to 1/4, and instead of getting a fresh HP buffer equal to the form's HP make it equal your druid level +5 but you're not forced to drop form once those temp HP are gone. There, moon druid is more balanced.
As for the paladin, I think it's mostly fine. Moving their Divine Sense to being a Channel Divinity seems logical, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out. And limiting Divine Smite to a single use per turn seems right to me, though I'm not crazy about saying you can't also cast a spell during the turn. And letting it work with ranged attacks...might be too much. But on the other hand, there now seems to be real TWF support. I know that makes a lot of people happy.
I think its so you can't double smite first with the feature and then the smite spells. They took away smiting on multiple attacks so it makes sense you can't smite and banish smite with the same attack. And since you have to attack to trigger a smite only bonus action spells are removed from consideration, so for the paladin that is probably just the smite spells. So outside a fighter multi class with action surge i don't think it really impacts things too much.
My issue is I am not sure many of the spell smites are worth memorizing for the paladin, they are not much better than the smite ability. Now on a melee cleric, maybe they might be worth it.
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Utterly stunned to see them gut the one really cool ability of druids.
And I say that while absolutely loving the templates idea. I totally disagree with the "generic" criticism of this concept. There were only a few beasts that were worth using anyway, and we all damn well know it.
But to take away the extra wildshape hp is... I'm just stunned. Being able to occasionally turn into a hp sink was situationally useful. Now you'd really have to be a fool to wade into combat in your wildshape.
At the very least, they need to make being a Tiny-sized creature possible from level 1. Removing that as an option is... again, stunned. You can no longer use it in combat, you can no longer scout safely with it. What... what is it they want us to use it for?!
I think, after watching the videos and reading the UA, that the Druid is, like the rogue, being moved out the martial arena. The changes to wildshape, the elimination of medium armor all make me think they are trying to take the Druid and especially the moon Druid out of the combat arena and back into being a caster primarily with wildshape as more of a spy/investigation tool than a combat tool. I see some of the same thing with the Paladin. By reducing the smites to a single one in a turn reducing their nova damage they are bringing the Paladin more in line with the ranger and probably with the fighters. If you think of them as trying to balance the combat abilities of the martials and focus the casters more on casting the changes make some sense. I do think some temp HP when wildshaping would help the Druid even if it’s not regularly in melee combat.
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If folks see Wild Shape as no more than an HP sink, then they obviously don't know anything about Druids or have a prejudice against them. When I swap to a cave bear, the bear's HP is half of my Druid's (at lvl 10). It's armor class is 12. My Druid's is 18. My cave bear can't cast spells, but can expend spell slots for a 1d8 heal per slot level, so, sure, the class gets extra HP from Wild Shape, but it's eaten up much easier than nearly any other class. That's pretty balanced...
Why would you expect a majority of beasts to be be amazing? They can't all be winners. Picking your Wild Shape form is about utility. How is it going to benefit you and the group? Perhaps being an ape isn't all that great in Wild Shape, but summon four of them and then Wild Shaping into a bear can be quite hilarious and fun! Plus...you don't have to be optimal all the time. That gets boring...
And I highly doubt Wild Shape affects the devs' ability to create beast monsters. There are several that would be nice in the monster manual, but they've been swapped to monstrosities (they are beasts in all but type only) or are at a CR level that is either unattainable or resides at the fringe upper levels of Moon Druids.
New version over current is a hard pass...
Giant lists of literal Build-A-Bear traits seem unlikely, and would provoke just as much nerdrage as the "over-generic" templates do. Remember - this is a community that has spent three years now being evil to itself over species ASIs going away, and one of the prime complaints is "THEY'LL JUST TURN EVERYTHING INTO A RANDOM GRAB BAG AND LET PEOPLE MAKE WHATEVER UNHOLY ABOMINATION THEY LIKE AND I WON'T HAVE IT!" I don't foresee Build-A-Bear becoming a thing for druids.
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I haven't been through the whole thread yet but I haven't seen anyone mention the wildshape nerf to scouting and infiltration. A major advantage of wildshape was the ability to transform into a spider or a mouse to pass unnoticed. Now you're stuck with a generic option and its not until level 11 that you can shift into a tiny creature, and only for 10 minutes at that.
Having played a moon druid in 5e, here's a partial list of forms I made use of
There are other forms that I considered but never actually managed to use, such as the giant octopus.
The new wild shape is just inadequate as a combat form, and it doesn't have the utility of any of the other forms.
You are right: Wild Shape effectively works as a bunch of extra Hit Points, and perhaps some more damage for a bit. The mechanic forces you to pick between combat or turning it into an animal for role-playing, or just anything fun outside of battle anyways. However, the way this UA is attempting to fix this issue is not good, to say the least.
A better solution would still work. However, it would just tamper with some of the valves that give Druids both the monster's HP, and their own. Honestly, halving the total hit points of a monster really doesn't seem too unreasonable.
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HERE.I like the idea I think someone floated about being able to use spell slots to improve wild shape forms. Perhaps they could develop some spells that could be cast at the time of wild shaping to give say enhanced defense, a big stack of temp HP, attack power, scouting ability, etc.
I disagree with that, "there were only a worth using" If you only use them for battle. The big idea is that it is situational and that you can choose between better options, yes it need some improvement int he list but is still better than those generic templates that only give you a Speed advantage
I haven’t seen anyone mention the major change to Find Familiar yet. You’re no longer blind and deaf in regards to your own sense when you use your familiar’s senses now.
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Well if they actually ask people to feedback and people feedback them that the generic templates are horrible, why should we get horrible generic templates. Literally current Wildshape is awesome. It covers battle with a variety of animals, either just as sack of meat, a proper strategically animal with some advantages or some solid attacks; it covers roleplay by having utility animals and also covers entretaining by changing into something funny.
So lets not fix something that is working
Oof. This is basically my worst case scenario for druid. They've completely gutted my favorite class. I can say for sure that I won't be playing the new edition if this is how it looks when released.
The one thing I like is that Wildshape got rolled into Channel Nature. This feels like a good way to let non-wildshape users still get a use out of that resource and is less clumsy than "exhaust a use of wildshape to do X" that some of the recent subclasses enjoy.
But then you turn around and make most of the druid features wildshape specific rather than adding more uses to Channel Nature. That makes no sense to me, and to be frank do we REALLY need an entire class feature to give us a swim speed? Has a PC having a swim speed at level 2 ever broken someone's campaign? I get making us wait to level 8-9 for flight, but 4 and now 7 for swim speed just seems pointlessly restrictive. That could easily be a new non-Wildshape feature.
But oh boy did they absolutely eviscerate wildshape as a feature. Templates were my worst-case scenario and here they are, exactly as generic and limiting as I imagined them.
Choosing a Wildshape was about more than just picking the best tank or damage dealer. It was about choosing the form that best suited the situation. As a Moon Druid player I've turned into a giant spider to scale a wall and attack the enemy archers up above, turned into a Giant Toad to swallow the enemy caster alive, turned into a Gaint Constrictor Snake to grapple down a dangerous enemy melee fighter, and much more.
All that is gone now. Wildshape is purely there for travel or combat, but oh boy does it suck for combat now. Max of 15AC and we don't get extra HP in the new form? It's a death sentence. I guess they intend for us to cast Barkskin to keep us alive, but that nerfs us in another way in that we have to choose between baseline survival in melee and maintaining our damaging spells like Flaming Sphere or Call Lightning in our animal forms.
Use for travel was nerfed too. No more Huge forms, so we can't turn into a Quetzalcoatlus and carry two or three party members on our backs. Our speed is also quite limited compared to a lot of existing forms too. Not that it matters because overland travel wasn't nearly as important as our function as a stealthy scout, which has ALSO been nerfed as we can't turn into tiny creatures until level 11.
So alright. They clearly don't want druid to wildshape in combat or for stealth, so maybe we're meant to be casters? Except that no, we still can't cast in Wildshape either until level 17 and we get only one feature that benefits our spellcasting during our entire leveling process.
It seems like they want us to be wildshaping often based on Wild Resurgence and Alternating Forms, but there's no incentive to constantly shapeshift around because all our forms have the same abilities. It would be amazing if we could switch from a giant spider one turn to cast Web, then swap to caster to hit the captured enemies with Flaming Sphere, then swap again to a bear to maul our enemies, but as-is I'd honestly just stay in my caster form permanently so I always have access to spells.
tl;dr: This new druid is awful. It has been drained of most of the abilities that gave the class the complexity that I love about it and removed much of the class' ability to get creative with its features to come up with unique solutions to different problems. The few positive changes seem lackluster and underdeveloped and in no way add back the complexity and creativity that the class used to offer.
Also losing Medium Armor is a disappointment and makes the class just a little more MAD, as we now need Dexterity to maximize our AC.
I agree with a lot of comments about wild shape. I don't think it's all that hard to fix though.
As for this being too Wild Shape heavy, I disagree. It's almost exactly the same as it was before, just organized differently. In 5e, you by default could be tiny sized, get a burrow speed, and get multiattack; now those are gated by level. Alternating forms is new, but being able to drop out of your tiny mouse scout form (which is no longer a weak 1hp thing that disappears with any damage) to start unleashing all of your spells during a full battle, and then pop back into mouse form without using another Wild Shape--that seems focused more on folks who don't want to lean on Wild Shape. There's Wild Resurgence, which is useless if you NEVER wild shape. The existing Druid's level 20 power was entirely about Wild Shape; now it isn't specific to Wild Shape at all.
I think with the right tinkering, this could be a really good change to the class, especially for starting players but also for more advanced players who don't like the lack of steady progression.
Also, what is the deal with Quick Attack? Why are Moon Druids good at Unarmed Strikes? Nothing in the description limits this to Wild Shape, and even then, what? I guess in animal form you get a bonus action grapple, shove, or an extra 6 damage (maybe pick up the Grappler feat?). I guess it adds extra versatility but it seems odd to me that they would be good at trained unarmed fighting rather than a bonus action Bestial Strike attack.
5TH LEVEL: MIGHT OF THE LAND ... unlock that form’s Climb Speed ...
11TH LEVEL: TINY CRITTER You gain the ability to become a Tiny creature .... you can stay in that form no longer than 10 minutes ....
Cat - Tiny Beast with climbing 30ft .... so you can't actually be one until level 11 now.
Badger - Tiny Beast with burrow 5ft .... no longer an option.
Bat - Tiny Beast with flight and 60ft blind sight ... no longer an option.
Octopus - Tiny Beast with advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made while underwater ... no longer an option.
Spider - Tiny Beast with spider climb, web sense, and web walk ... no longer an option
Giant Fire Beatle - small beast that can be a light source for the party ... no longer an option.
In short, All the stealth, special attacks (like poisons, grapples, rams, pounces, and pack tactics), special movement (like spider climb, burrow), blindsight, mounts and other utility options... gone.
Full elemental options... gone
I am sure I missed some.
.... Seems like a massive nerf to roleplay and utility options to provide mediocre, boring, but easily used combat options. You can use it more freely but they took away most of the reasons you would want to.
I do like all druids getting "13TH LEVEL: ALTERNATING FORMS" being able to switch between the two within the usage times fixes the "... they are cat and can't speak with the party right now" issue but ... "within the next minute" .... is a needless nerf that almost completely ruins it.
The moon druid feature "Swift Transformation" which is also needlessly nerfed with "no more than once on a turn"... since wildshape is no longer resetting HP, why would it be bad to let the player spend 2 of their max 4 channel natures, their aciton, and their bonus action... on what must be a Mutiple types of movement? Player turns into a mouse to run through a whole in a door then into a bird to fly off... not broken and cool. The only reason they would not do this is because they thinking people are to dumb to figure out movement changes between forms... but that doesn't make since because the wildshapes all have different movement from the player character so people will have to figure that out anyway and it's not that hard.
Maybe it is just me, but I feel like they should remove the restrictions for lvl 5 climibing, lvl 7 swiming, lvl 9 flying, and lvl 11 Tiny. If you have to have restrictions allow tiny with one special ability from adv. stealth, spider climb, flight, swim, climb, adv. perception, dark vision 30ft, and pact tactics from level 1. Small with two abilities adding additional options of poison, multi-attack, and dark vision 60ft at level 5. Medium with three abilities adding additional options of grapples, rams, pounces, and dark vision 90ft at level 7, and large with four abilities adding additional option of dark vision 120ft at level 9, Huge with five abilities adding additional option blindsight at level 11.
The lack of inflection in text means that a reader of any post adds their own inflection as they "verbalize" it in their head. I write long and repetitive in an effort to be clear and avoid my intent from being skewed or inverted. I am also bad at examples. It is common for people to skim my posts pull out the idea they think I mean or want to argue against or focus on my bad example instead of the point I am actually trying to make. I apologies for the confusion my failure to be clear and concise creates.
They really went too hard in on druids and Wild Shape. And I don't think it's actually simpler. While it's true the player only needs to worry about three stat blocks, and the DM doesn't need to fret about letting them look at the Monster Manual, they're kind of complex for stat blocks. There isn't much in the way of tactical differences, which makes it all feel kind of bland. Not even Circle of the Moon fixes that. Some of it's interesting, and I kind of do like the elemental forms, but it feels more like a subsystem for the class' primary feature the druid is now a shapeshifter with full spellcasting.
And the shapeshifting is just downright weird. If you pick a Large Animal of the Land anytime after 5th-level, you could be a spider-horse with the humanoid subtype. Maybe it's just me, but none of that makes any dang sense.
As for the paladin, I think it's mostly fine. Moving their Divine Sense to being a Channel Divinity seems logical, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out. And limiting Divine Smite to a single use per turn seems right to me, though I'm not crazy about saying you can't also cast a spell during the turn. And letting it work with ranged attacks...might be too much. But on the other hand, there now seems to be real TWF support. I know that makes a lot of people happy.
The new Oath of Devotion seems fine. They dumped the old 15th-level feature, and moved back the 7th-level feature to 10th-level, to make room for Smite of Protection. Seems to be they're now encouraging uses of Divine Smite, while also throttling it, and I look forward to seeing how other subclasses get their smites modified.
The changes to find familiar and find steed seem interesting; even if the star blocks bring back the same issues I had with Wild Shape. I like the idea of using spell slots to make the creature stronger, at least. And the several smite spells can now all be upcast for greater effect. I don't like how the damage seems to have no rhyme or reason, and I hope that gets evened out. And any banishing effect still needs to give the spellcaster the option to impose disadvantage on the saving throw. I'm fine with it being their action, but I recognize that might not work for everyone.
As for Unarmed Strike, I like the saving throw instead of making an attack roll. But I'm on the fence about the new grappled. There's no longer an automatic attempt to end after the affected's turn, so now it's back to using your action or not. Maybe if you could sacrifice half your movement...
Terrible overhaul of Druid. Just terrible.
Oh Gods no!!
This scripts the Wilds shape and saps player creativity!!
And who came up with Tiny Beast?? The very idea is terrible
Open interpretation is exactly what gave 5e so much story support and workability.
Why on earth would it make sense for ANYONE to say " I can't shift into a mouse or mouse sized deer but I can be a tiger! "
This is like 1980s D&D in some of the worst and uninspiring ways!
One thing i have against temp 5hp is lack of healing for it. The hp pool was inline with other transformation spells like polymorph which also gives you a hp pool. As it stands tho the ws stat blocks are worse than the primal beast companion stats for the ranger
Swap the level 10 and 14 features for moon druid, change the max CR to 1/4, and instead of getting a fresh HP buffer equal to the form's HP make it equal your druid level +5 but you're not forced to drop form once those temp HP are gone. There, moon druid is more balanced.
I think its so you can't double smite first with the feature and then the smite spells. They took away smiting on multiple attacks so it makes sense you can't smite and banish smite with the same attack. And since you have to attack to trigger a smite only bonus action spells are removed from consideration, so for the paladin that is probably just the smite spells. So outside a fighter multi class with action surge i don't think it really impacts things too much.
My issue is I am not sure many of the spell smites are worth memorizing for the paladin, they are not much better than the smite ability. Now on a melee cleric, maybe they might be worth it.