This makes me think that if D&D had been redesigned for an East Asian or South Asian market instead of a US market, maybe a class associated with environment/natural areas/treehuggers/etc. would be more popular since polytheism never died in Japan or India.
It's not the polytheistic origins that make it "uncool", norse mythology is also pagan / polytheistic but is very popular at the moment. It's a cultural backlash against the environmentalism movement of the 1980s/1990s, largely driven by corporate propaganda.
Maybe. It's kind of hard to gauge what political/social messages most players are most influenced by. I mean, a person can love reneweable energy but hate laws that protect rare/endangered species. You can think that eagles and owls are cool as heck but also hate anything even vaguely associated with furries, which Druids have been tarnished by due to Wildshape and some people's ummm, "thirsty" imaginations. I do agree there is a lot of anti-environmentalist propaganda, but if this is a big influence on why Druid is the least popular, why did Rangers, which also use Druid spells and are arguably just as out of step with anti-environmentalists, not get dunked on the same way?
Aragorn is more popular & well-known than Radagast the Brown due to how Peter Jackson's Tolkien movies were done.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
why did Rangers, which also use Druid spells and are arguably just as out of step with anti-environmentalists, not get dunked on the same way?
Rangers aren't perceived as protectors of nature the way Druid is. They are more hunters, trackers, and survivalists (see popularity of survivalism in various reality shows). But they also did get dunked on, they aren't a very popular class and TBH many ranger players don't really use their druid spells. Plus, similar to Druid, Ranger didn't get many subclasses until they were turned into a "pet" class.
Druids carry IRL baggage attached to their very name that Dungeons & Dragons kinda didn't help.
Actual Druids weren't neutral-leaning spellcasting nature magicians. They were moreso record keepers & officiants. Pre-paper paper pushers, not Radaghast the Brown, Satanists, or (human/blood) sacrifice machines like what pop culture tends to pigeonhole them into.
So there's that in addition to in-game reasons.
Are you speaking as a historian, archaelogist or hobbyist? Just curious.
Re: Aragorn. I agree. That circles back to the question of whether Druid's lack of popularity is driven in large part by a lack of positive pop cultural cache? Astrix? A semi-obscure comic book character who has none of the powers that Druids in 5e have and definitely not a "masculine" role model. I mean, I'm sure it helped the Ranger class popularity that Viggo Mortensen has been voted "Sexiest Man Alive" more than once. Not to mention the popularity of Orlando Bloom so much so that Peter Jackson included his character in the Hobbit movies even though Legolas was not a cannon character in that series.
I would venture to guess that wildshaping has also been less popular in part because there are so few positive characters in US/European entertainment that embody the ability to change appearances or forms. Despite being a "super spy," James Bond rarely wore a serious disguise. In the X-Men animated series, the popular characters are people like Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Gambit. and Rogue. The actual shapeshifters, like Morph and Mystique, never got much air time. While questionable, we can more or less graft the most popular X-Men characters to D&D classes thusly:
In contrast, you are far more likely to find positive, at least semi-popular shapeshifting characters in Japanese fantasy fiction. The tanukis of "Pom Poko," Sen in "Spirited Away," heck Eren Yeager of "Attack on Titan." Shapeshifters in Western fantasy and science fiction, are, in contrast, almost always villains, and rarely the popular ones.
Werewolves are a popular fantasy trope and now more often as the hero than the villain in Western media, you also have the Animorphs, tons of TV shows and movies (e.g. Brave, Cinderella, Princess and the Frog) featuring shapeshifting as neutral or heroes. So I don't think it's the shapeshifting that makes them inherently unpopular, certainly the baggage associated with shapeshifting is far less than baggage associated with making a deal with the devil (i.e. warlocks).
If we assume gender roles are at play, then "caring" is a feminine associated trait, hence an archetype associated with "caring" such as caring for the environment would be unpopular among male players, whereas violence-associate archetypes would be more popular. But Druids can equally be viewed as a "wrath of nature" type class so I don't know how feminine associated the class would be as a whole. Add to this that for 5e there is a 60:40 split for gender among players, I'm not convinced that's a major factor.
It is true that there isn't much portrayal of druid-like characters in modern media - though I would actually count Storm as a druid rather than a sorcerer - which can also be why players have less inspiration to make druid characters in D&D since many players create D&D characters based on other characters they like. You've got Radagast who was humiliated in his portrayal, Tom Bombadil & the skinchanger the Hobbit, Neville Longbottom (also largely a humiliated character), Storm (not very popular / became a joke due to poor writing & poor acting), some portrayals of Merlin, maybe Merida (Brave) or Elsa (Frozen) though they could created as Rangers or Sorcerers as well, kinda Aquaman (though he might be more of a Ranger), Rafikki (Lion King), and maybe some of the characters from Jurassic Park.
Re: Aragorn. I agree. That circles back to the question of whether Druid's lack of popularity is driven in large part by a lack of positive pop cultural cache? Astrix? A semi-obscure comic book character who has none of the powers that Druids in 5e have and definitely not a "masculine" role model. I mean, I'm sure it helped the Ranger class popularity that Viggo Mortensen has been voted "Sexiest Man Alive" more than once. Not to mention the popularity of Orlando Bloom so much so that Peter Jackson included his character in the Hobbit movies even though Legolas was not a cannon character in that series.
I would venture to guess that wildshaping has also been less popular in part because there are so few positive characters in US/European entertainment that embody the ability to change appearances or forms. Despite being a "super spy," James Bond rarely wore a serious disguise. In the X-Men animated series, the popular characters are people like Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Gambit. and Rogue. The actual shapeshifters, like Morph and Mystique, never got much air time. While questionable, we can more or less graft the most popular X-Men characters to D&D classes thusly:
In contrast, you are far more likely to find positive, at least semi-popular shapeshifting characters in Japanese fantasy fiction. The tanukis of "Pom Poko," Sen in "Spirited Away," heck Eren Yeager of "Attack on Titan." Shapeshifters in Western fantasy and science fiction, are, in contrast, almost always villains, and rarely the popular ones.
Radagast is barely mentioned in the books, while Aragorn is a central character. This isn't a PJ film depiction problem. That's outside the scope of the discussion though.
Druid's never been a popular class for a good variety of reasons. First and foremost, if you wanted a nature priest, a nature domain cleric was just better due to a better spell list, and lack of druid baggage. And 2014 druids had a lot of baggage. Before we get deeper into the laundry list of problems with the 2014 druid, we have to address the elephant in the room; it comes with an inferior spell list. While there's some good spells there, there's not much that stands out as must haves that cause people to overlook the other flaws in the 2014 druid. If you're wanting to be a cool, flexible spell caster than arcane casters and clerics are going to generally suit you better. In order to want to play a druid, you have to want the class features. Let's take a look at those.
Druid's core feature is wildshape. In 2014, wildshape was pretty limited in what you could do with it generally. You could shapeshift. If you don't like the concept of shapeshifting, you're out of luck. Then there's the whole armor debacle. They tried to tell you what your character does and does not choose to do. Rather than give you proficiency in hide armor, they gave you medium then told you that you choose to not wear any medium armor except hide. Then they doubled down and said there's not a balance problem with wearing metal armor, they just tossed that in for fluff. Some DMs take it as a rule that you cannot wear it (which it did not actually say), others took it as a guide line, and the flavor that it was intended to be. Nature domain clerics didn't have that problem. Then there's weapons. The druid list was uninspiring. Off the top of my head, the only thing that druids got that clerics did not get was the scimitar. The base druid was just pretty poor, and generally, the subclasses couldn't save the chassis.
2024 has fixed those major issues, other than the spell list which is still lack luster. That said, druid has a track record of being an unpopular class. WOTC is in a tough place; do they expend resources on a class that there is no evidence will inspire players to play it, or are they better served by spending those dev cycles on classes that people have traditionally shown a high interest in? I've seen nothing at all to indicate that druid content is going to sell a book. WOTC has access to a lot better information than I do, but if that information indicated that druid content was going to sell books, I have to assume they'd be writing it.
TL/DR: Druid UA is in the rubbish bin where players have tossed the class in general.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Radagast is barely mentioned in the books, while Aragorn is a central character. This isn't a PJ film depiction problem. That's outside the scope of the discussion though.
Druid's never been a popular class for a good variety of reasons. First and foremost, if you wanted a nature priest, a nature domain cleric was just better due to a better spell list, and lack of druid baggage. And 2014 druids had a lot of baggage. Before we get deeper into the laundry list of problems with the 2014 druid, we have to address the elephant in the room; it comes with an inferior spell list. While there's some good spells there, there's not much that stands out as must haves that cause people to overlook the other flaws in the 2014 druid. If you're wanting to be a cool, flexible spell caster than arcane casters and clerics are going to generally suit you better. In order to want to play a druid, you have to want the class features. Let's take a look at those.
Druid's core feature is wildshape. In 2014, wildshape was pretty limited in what you could do with it generally. You could shapeshift. If you don't like the concept of shapeshifting, you're out of luck. Then there's the whole armor debacle. They tried to tell you what your character does and does not choose to do. Rather than give you proficiency in hide armor, they gave you medium then told you that you choose to not wear any medium armor except hide. Then they doubled down and said there's not a balance problem with wearing metal armor, they just tossed that in for fluff. Some DMs take it as a rule that you cannot wear it (which it did not actually say), others took it as a guide line, and the flavor that it was intended to be. Nature domain clerics didn't have that problem. Then there's weapons. The druid list was uninspiring. Off the top of my head, the only thing that druids got that clerics did not get was the scimitar. The base druid was just pretty poor, and generally, the subclasses couldn't save the chassis.
2024 has fixed those major issues, other than the spell list which is still lack luster. That said, druid has a track record of being an unpopular class. WOTC is in a tough place; do they expend resources on a class that there is no evidence will inspire players to play it, or are they better served by spending those dev cycles on classes that people have traditionally shown a high interest in? I've seen nothing at all to indicate that druid content is going to sell a book. WOTC has access to a lot better information than I do, but if that information indicated that druid content was going to sell books, I have to assume they'd be writing it.
TL/DR: Druid UA is in the rubbish bin where players have tossed the class in general.
I agree with you on the Med. armor thing. That's a weird limitation from older editions. I also agree with you about weapons.
I disagree about everything else. The 2014 Druid and the Cleric both had a major lack of mobility spells and strong AoE blast spells. Clerics get a few more direct heal and protection options, but Druids have always had way more methods to outright prevent damage to the party.
I think what it amounts to is that the 2014 Clerics have (A) far more variety in terms of subclasses; and B) easier to play because direct damage and damage reduction was baked into easy to understand dice calculations for low level characters.
The 2014 PHB had far more options for building the kind of Cleric you want than the kind of Druid you want. You want a Cleric with blast spells? Light or Tempest. You want a front liner who's good at buffing nearby allies? Life, Nature or War. You want to do outside-the-box stuff by combining non-Cleric spells with a Cleric chassis? Trickery or Knowledge. The sheer variety of Cleric sub-classes puts most other classes to shame. This not only made pure Cleric builds more popular, it also made Cleric multi-classes appealing for a far wider variety of builds.
While Cleric and Druid are characterized as "healers" who aren't too squishy, the design goals of D&D in 5e intentionally limited Druid power b/c of how OP Druids got in 3.5e. I don't think that is a problem per se, since, IMO, Druids got the better spell list long term, but Clerics generally got buffed compared to 3.5: no more requirement to only use bludgeoning weapons, the addition of low-level spells that changed their action economy, and Channel Divinity. Heck, Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians alone changed up the Cleric build meta in a big way, since the former is a great B.A. usage WITHOUT using concentration and Spirit Guardians requires nothing but maintaining concentration to instigate both damage and move reduction of nearby opponents. You can literally spend your turns just using Dodge and still kill every turn. In contrast, 2014 Druids have almost Zero usages of their bonus action to do direct damage and most of their control spells also do Zero damage until Wall of Fire. Again, I think this was very intentionally done to prevent Druids from getting to 3.5e levels of power.
Seriously, the most annoying thing about the Druid spell list is not so much that it lacks power, but that it does very little to directly kill opponents. 2014 Druids are the best attrition-kill class in the game next to Wizards. What I mean by attrition-kill is that Druid spells outright deny the opponent the ability to harm the party. Fog Cloud, Entangle, Sleet Storm, Wind Wall, Maelstrom, Anti-life Shell, etc. Great control spells. Zero damage to opponents. It's not until 4th level that Druids get any meaningful AoE spell (Ice Storm) or AoE damage+control spell (Wall of Fire) outside of Conjure X spells. And 5th level barely increases that.
In summary, the relative unpopularity of the Druid class is at least 50% attributable to the devs' intentional design goals to limit Druid power, not b/c Druids are somehow unplayable.
Werewolves are a popular fantasy trope and now more often as the hero than the villain in Western media, you also have the Animorphs, tons of TV shows and movies (e.g. Brave, Cinderella, Princess and the Frog) featuring shapeshifting as neutral or heroes. So I don't think it's the shapeshifting that makes them inherently unpopular, certainly the baggage associated with shapeshifting is far less than baggage associated with making a deal with the devil (i.e. warlocks).
If we assume gender roles are at play, then "caring" is a feminine associated trait, hence an archetype associated with "caring" such as caring for the environment would be unpopular among male players, whereas violence-associate archetypes would be more popular. But Druids can equally be viewed as a "wrath of nature" type class so I don't know how feminine associated the class would be as a whole. Add to this that for 5e there is a 60:40 split for gender among players, I'm not convinced that's a major factor.
It is true that there isn't much portrayal of druid-like characters in modern media - though I would actually count Storm as a druid rather than a sorcerer - which can also be why players have less inspiration to make druid characters in D&D since many players create D&D characters based on other characters they like. You've got Radagast who was humiliated in his portrayal, Tom Bombadil & the skinchanger the Hobbit, Neville Longbottom (also largely a humiliated character), Storm (not very popular / became a joke due to poor writing & poor acting), some portrayals of Merlin, maybe Merida (Brave) or Elsa (Frozen) though they could created as Rangers or Sorcerers as well, kinda Aquaman (though he might be more of a Ranger), Rafikki (Lion King), and maybe some of the characters from Jurassic Park.
Animorphs haven't been in the popular imagination for over 25 years. Werewolves are popular in books, but they are rarely the protagonist or main love interest in movies or TV shows outside of ... True Blood? No wait, the vampires are the main love interest there. Ummm.... Twilight. Nope, the vampires take center stage again. (And probably not too much cross-over in terms of fanbase with D&D.) Okay, maybe the Underworld series. Sure, where they share the limelight with vampires, again. But only the very last of the Underworld movies was released in the last 20 years. I guess you can sort of argue that vampires are also shapeshifters, but the "turn into a bat" ability is not actually used much in movies and TV shows that feature vampires for whatever reason; but when it is, it's rarely portrayed as being very useful (even though echolocation is very useful IRL).
I think your inclusion of Cinderella and the Princess and the Frog are very questionable. Cinderella only changes clothes. The protagonist in the Princess and the Frog had very little agency in deciding to transform, which kind of is the opposite direction of intentional shapeshifting. Like, shapeshifting as a power that you want to have as opposed to a curse.
Re: Storm. Not a strong case since most of her kit centered on is lightning/thunder damage, wind and flight. Anybody who wants to maximize lightning/thunder damage is going to go with either Storm Sorc, Tempest Cleric, or both, since most wind spells in 5e don't grant a flying speed. (Historically, Storm has been popular with non-white women who read X-Men b/c she is literally the only non-white character in the X-Men TV show or the X-Men movies who is at least around the main cast (even if she rarely gets the spotlight), which has mostly revolved around Jean Grey, Wolvy, Scott Summers, Rogue, and Professor X.)
Now, do i think Druids should have gotten a subclass that does good thunder/lightning damage? Sure, why not? However, if you read my previous post on this thread, you will note the ways that the devs already limited the Druid class's diversity of powers on purpose. So I doubt it's ever been in the cards for them to become the OP damage dealers that Wizards/Sorcs/Light/Tempest Clerics are.
Aragorn is more popular & well-known than Radagast the Brown due to how Peter Jackson's Tolkien movies were done.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Rangers aren't perceived as protectors of nature the way Druid is. They are more hunters, trackers, and survivalists (see popularity of survivalism in various reality shows). But they also did get dunked on, they aren't a very popular class and TBH many ranger players don't really use their druid spells. Plus, similar to Druid, Ranger didn't get many subclasses until they were turned into a "pet" class.
Are you speaking as a historian, archaelogist or hobbyist? Just curious.
Re: Aragorn. I agree. That circles back to the question of whether Druid's lack of popularity is driven in large part by a lack of positive pop cultural cache? Astrix? A semi-obscure comic book character who has none of the powers that Druids in 5e have and definitely not a "masculine" role model. I mean, I'm sure it helped the Ranger class popularity that Viggo Mortensen has been voted "Sexiest Man Alive" more than once. Not to mention the popularity of Orlando Bloom so much so that Peter Jackson included his character in the Hobbit movies even though Legolas was not a cannon character in that series.
I would venture to guess that wildshaping has also been less popular in part because there are so few positive characters in US/European entertainment that embody the ability to change appearances or forms. Despite being a "super spy," James Bond rarely wore a serious disguise. In the X-Men animated series, the popular characters are people like Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Gambit. and Rogue. The actual shapeshifters, like Morph and Mystique, never got much air time. While questionable, we can more or less graft the most popular X-Men characters to D&D classes thusly:
Wolverine - Barbarian; Storm - Sorcerer; Magneto - Wizard (with a god complex); Nightcrawler - Monk (very Shadow Mk); Gambit - Rogue (Soul Knife vibes); and Rogue - ??? (she steals powers)
In contrast, you are far more likely to find positive, at least semi-popular shapeshifting characters in Japanese fantasy fiction. The tanukis of "Pom Poko," Sen in "Spirited Away," heck Eren Yeager of "Attack on Titan." Shapeshifters in Western fantasy and science fiction, are, in contrast, almost always villains, and rarely the popular ones.
Werewolves are a popular fantasy trope and now more often as the hero than the villain in Western media, you also have the Animorphs, tons of TV shows and movies (e.g. Brave, Cinderella, Princess and the Frog) featuring shapeshifting as neutral or heroes. So I don't think it's the shapeshifting that makes them inherently unpopular, certainly the baggage associated with shapeshifting is far less than baggage associated with making a deal with the devil (i.e. warlocks).
If we assume gender roles are at play, then "caring" is a feminine associated trait, hence an archetype associated with "caring" such as caring for the environment would be unpopular among male players, whereas violence-associate archetypes would be more popular. But Druids can equally be viewed as a "wrath of nature" type class so I don't know how feminine associated the class would be as a whole. Add to this that for 5e there is a 60:40 split for gender among players, I'm not convinced that's a major factor.
It is true that there isn't much portrayal of druid-like characters in modern media - though I would actually count Storm as a druid rather than a sorcerer - which can also be why players have less inspiration to make druid characters in D&D since many players create D&D characters based on other characters they like. You've got Radagast who was humiliated in his portrayal, Tom Bombadil & the skinchanger the Hobbit, Neville Longbottom (also largely a humiliated character), Storm (not very popular / became a joke due to poor writing & poor acting), some portrayals of Merlin, maybe Merida (Brave) or Elsa (Frozen) though they could created as Rangers or Sorcerers as well, kinda Aquaman (though he might be more of a Ranger), Rafikki (Lion King), and maybe some of the characters from Jurassic Park.
Radagast is barely mentioned in the books, while Aragorn is a central character. This isn't a PJ film depiction problem. That's outside the scope of the discussion though.
Druid's never been a popular class for a good variety of reasons. First and foremost, if you wanted a nature priest, a nature domain cleric was just better due to a better spell list, and lack of druid baggage. And 2014 druids had a lot of baggage. Before we get deeper into the laundry list of problems with the 2014 druid, we have to address the elephant in the room; it comes with an inferior spell list. While there's some good spells there, there's not much that stands out as must haves that cause people to overlook the other flaws in the 2014 druid. If you're wanting to be a cool, flexible spell caster than arcane casters and clerics are going to generally suit you better. In order to want to play a druid, you have to want the class features. Let's take a look at those.
Druid's core feature is wildshape. In 2014, wildshape was pretty limited in what you could do with it generally. You could shapeshift. If you don't like the concept of shapeshifting, you're out of luck. Then there's the whole armor debacle. They tried to tell you what your character does and does not choose to do. Rather than give you proficiency in hide armor, they gave you medium then told you that you choose to not wear any medium armor except hide. Then they doubled down and said there's not a balance problem with wearing metal armor, they just tossed that in for fluff. Some DMs take it as a rule that you cannot wear it (which it did not actually say), others took it as a guide line, and the flavor that it was intended to be. Nature domain clerics didn't have that problem. Then there's weapons. The druid list was uninspiring. Off the top of my head, the only thing that druids got that clerics did not get was the scimitar. The base druid was just pretty poor, and generally, the subclasses couldn't save the chassis.
2024 has fixed those major issues, other than the spell list which is still lack luster. That said, druid has a track record of being an unpopular class. WOTC is in a tough place; do they expend resources on a class that there is no evidence will inspire players to play it, or are they better served by spending those dev cycles on classes that people have traditionally shown a high interest in? I've seen nothing at all to indicate that druid content is going to sell a book. WOTC has access to a lot better information than I do, but if that information indicated that druid content was going to sell books, I have to assume they'd be writing it.
TL/DR: Druid UA is in the rubbish bin where players have tossed the class in general.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I agree with you on the Med. armor thing. That's a weird limitation from older editions. I also agree with you about weapons.
I disagree about everything else. The 2014 Druid and the Cleric both had a major lack of mobility spells and strong AoE blast spells. Clerics get a few more direct heal and protection options, but Druids have always had way more methods to outright prevent damage to the party.
I think what it amounts to is that the 2014 Clerics have (A) far more variety in terms of subclasses; and B) easier to play because direct damage and damage reduction was baked into easy to understand dice calculations for low level characters.
The 2014 PHB had far more options for building the kind of Cleric you want than the kind of Druid you want. You want a Cleric with blast spells? Light or Tempest. You want a front liner who's good at buffing nearby allies? Life, Nature or War. You want to do outside-the-box stuff by combining non-Cleric spells with a Cleric chassis? Trickery or Knowledge. The sheer variety of Cleric sub-classes puts most other classes to shame. This not only made pure Cleric builds more popular, it also made Cleric multi-classes appealing for a far wider variety of builds.
While Cleric and Druid are characterized as "healers" who aren't too squishy, the design goals of D&D in 5e intentionally limited Druid power b/c of how OP Druids got in 3.5e. I don't think that is a problem per se, since, IMO, Druids got the better spell list long term, but Clerics generally got buffed compared to 3.5: no more requirement to only use bludgeoning weapons, the addition of low-level spells that changed their action economy, and Channel Divinity. Heck, Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians alone changed up the Cleric build meta in a big way, since the former is a great B.A. usage WITHOUT using concentration and Spirit Guardians requires nothing but maintaining concentration to instigate both damage and move reduction of nearby opponents. You can literally spend your turns just using Dodge and still kill every turn. In contrast, 2014 Druids have almost Zero usages of their bonus action to do direct damage and most of their control spells also do Zero damage until Wall of Fire. Again, I think this was very intentionally done to prevent Druids from getting to 3.5e levels of power.
Seriously, the most annoying thing about the Druid spell list is not so much that it lacks power, but that it does very little to directly kill opponents. 2014 Druids are the best attrition-kill class in the game next to Wizards. What I mean by attrition-kill is that Druid spells outright deny the opponent the ability to harm the party. Fog Cloud, Entangle, Sleet Storm, Wind Wall, Maelstrom, Anti-life Shell, etc. Great control spells. Zero damage to opponents. It's not until 4th level that Druids get any meaningful AoE spell (Ice Storm) or AoE damage+control spell (Wall of Fire) outside of Conjure X spells. And 5th level barely increases that.
In summary, the relative unpopularity of the Druid class is at least 50% attributable to the devs' intentional design goals to limit Druid power, not b/c Druids are somehow unplayable.
Animorphs haven't been in the popular imagination for over 25 years. Werewolves are popular in books, but they are rarely the protagonist or main love interest in movies or TV shows outside of ... True Blood? No wait, the vampires are the main love interest there. Ummm.... Twilight. Nope, the vampires take center stage again. (And probably not too much cross-over in terms of fanbase with D&D.) Okay, maybe the Underworld series. Sure, where they share the limelight with vampires, again. But only the very last of the Underworld movies was released in the last 20 years. I guess you can sort of argue that vampires are also shapeshifters, but the "turn into a bat" ability is not actually used much in movies and TV shows that feature vampires for whatever reason; but when it is, it's rarely portrayed as being very useful (even though echolocation is very useful IRL).
I think your inclusion of Cinderella and the Princess and the Frog are very questionable. Cinderella only changes clothes. The protagonist in the Princess and the Frog had very little agency in deciding to transform, which kind of is the opposite direction of intentional shapeshifting. Like, shapeshifting as a power that you want to have as opposed to a curse.
Re: Storm. Not a strong case since most of her kit centered on is lightning/thunder damage, wind and flight. Anybody who wants to maximize lightning/thunder damage is going to go with either Storm Sorc, Tempest Cleric, or both, since most wind spells in 5e don't grant a flying speed. (Historically, Storm has been popular with non-white women who read X-Men b/c she is literally the only non-white character in the X-Men TV show or the X-Men movies who is at least around the main cast (even if she rarely gets the spotlight), which has mostly revolved around Jean Grey, Wolvy, Scott Summers, Rogue, and Professor X.)
Now, do i think Druids should have gotten a subclass that does good thunder/lightning damage? Sure, why not? However, if you read my previous post on this thread, you will note the ways that the devs already limited the Druid class's diversity of powers on purpose. So I doubt it's ever been in the cards for them to become the OP damage dealers that Wizards/Sorcs/Light/Tempest Clerics are.