Curious how people would go about building a druid tank PC concept. I feel like you should be able to use wild shape to soak some damage. The problem is, most wild shape ACs are woefully low. Barkskin can get them to 16. Is there a practical way to add aditional AC on top of Barkskin?
In a way, wild shape is more suitable to tanking than offensive combat, since a base druid can't wild shape and attack in the same turn, but can wild shape and *be* attacked in the first round.
You need Circle of the Moon for this idea to ever be productive, and only starting at about 6th lvl when you get:
Circle Forms
The rites of your circle grant you the ability to transform into more dangerous animal forms. Starting at 6th level, you can transform into a beast with a challenge rating as high as your druid level divided by 3, rounded down.
Moon allows Wild Shape and dismissal on a bonus action. The Circle Form allows cr2 creatures with higher hp at lvl 6. Before that, most creatures options are low ac and hp unless the DM allows you to roll hp or take max instead of average stat block hp shown.
Even at CR 2, I can't find a beast with AC higher than 14.
Having a little more hit points does help, though, so Moon is probably the way to go. It seems like the only druid for powergamers, as other wild shapes are barely useful in combat.
Wild shapes are immensly useful in combat. They give you a bunch of extra HP and abilities which, at least on higher levels, are just ridiculously good. Up until level 10 the Spore Druid is probably a better HP-tank than the Moon Druid though.
Other druid subclasses can powergame in different ways, but if it's pure HP-tanking, it's Moon or Spore.
Being a tank is more than being a bad of hit points or being hard to hit. You want to be the focus of the enemy, imposing disadvantage on targets other than you, or making yourself vulnerable to attack so enemies will want to attack you instead of others.
Being a tank is more than being a bad of hit points or being hard to hit. You want to be the focus of the enemy, imposing disadvantage on targets other than you, or making yourself vulnerable to attack so enemies will want to attack you instead of others.
Sure. I also often like to take advantage of being a Large creature to block choke points and make myself the only viable target.
A single level of Monk (probably an easy to qualify MC for a Druid), or better, a Barbarian (probably a difficult to qualify MC for a druid) will make many Beast AC's increase by 2 or 3. The Barbarian MC has the benefit of also providing Rage damage reduction (only if you're not trying to concentrate on a spell), which makes those beast HP stretch even further.
The Spores Druid isn't quite as tanky as the Moon Druid, since it receives 4 THP/druid level rather than an independent HP pool (so can't be healed)... but staying in a humanoid form that can benefit from armor and a shield means that a Spore's "Symbiotic Entity" shapeform likely has higher AC than a Moon druid would (and likely will be a more effective attacker as well).
There might be some way, especially with a Life Cleric MC, to turn a Wildfire or a Stars druid into some sort of healing tank, who can heal themselves faster than enemies can burst them down. That sounds... probably like a not very efficient high-tier build to try to pull together, so I'd stick with Moon or Spores for druid tanking.
A single level of Monk (probably an easy to qualify MC for a Druid), or better, a Barbarian (probably a difficult to qualify MC for a druid) will make many Beast AC's increase by 2 or 3. The Barbarian MC has the benefit of also providing Rage damage reduction (only if you're not trying to concentrate on a spell), which makes those beast HP stretch even further.
The Spores Druid isn't quite as tanky as the Moon Druid, since it receives 4 THP/druid level rather than an independent HP pool (so can't be healed)... but staying in a humanoid form that can benefit from armor and a shield means that a Spore's "Symbiotic Entity" shapeform likely has higher AC than a Moon druid would (and likely will be a more effective attacker as well).
There might be some way, especially with a Life Cleric MC, to turn a Wildfire or a Stars druid into some sort of healing tank, who can heal themselves faster than enemies can burst them down. That sounds... probably like a not very efficient high-tier build to try to pull together, so I'd stick with Moon or Spores for druid tanking.
Moon Druid/Bearbarian is amazing for tanking damage. The boatload of THP you get from the forms plus the damage resistance from Bear Totem is just staggering.
A single level of Monk (probably an easy to qualify MC for a Druid), or better, a Barbarian (probably a difficult to qualify MC for a druid) will make many Beast AC's increase by 2 or 3. The Barbarian MC has the benefit of also providing Rage damage reduction (only if you're not trying to concentrate on a spell), which makes those beast HP stretch even further.
The Spores Druid isn't quite as tanky as the Moon Druid, since it receives 4 THP/druid level rather than an independent HP pool (so can't be healed)... but staying in a humanoid form that can benefit from armor and a shield means that a Spore's "Symbiotic Entity" shapeform likely has higher AC than a Moon druid would (and likely will be a more effective attacker as well).
There might be some way, especially with a Life Cleric MC, to turn a Wildfire or a Stars druid into some sort of healing tank, who can heal themselves faster than enemies can burst them down. That sounds... probably like a not very efficient high-tier build to try to pull together, so I'd stick with Moon or Spores for druid tanking.
Hmm, interesting. Unarmored Defense can't stack with Barkskin (not sure anything can) since both set AC to a fixed value, rather than at a bonus.
However, my interpretation of Unarmored Defense in wild shape is that the creature's Dex and Con would apply, or the creature's Dex and PC's Wis for monk. A high Dex creature like a Giant Spider with your own Wis of +4 or +5 could get you to 17-18 AC without casting a spell.
The Spores Druid isn't quite as tanky as the Moon Druid, since it receives 4 THP/druid level rather than an independent HP pool (so can't be healed)... but staying in a humanoid form that can benefit from armor and a shield means that a Spore's "Symbiotic Entity" shapeform likely has higher AC than a Moon druid would (and likely will be a more effective attacker as well).
The upside to the Spore druid's temporary HP is that they can renew them each turn without having to drop their wild shape. A moon druid will get more HP, yes, but to renew them you have drop your wild shape which leaves you in your druid form for a turn. Of course, this is only relevant at level 20.
Considering that a Druid only has two uses of Wild Shape per short rest for the first 19 levels of its existence, and that their wild shape takes a full action, I don't think that Spore Druids re-shaping in two rounds back to back is likely enough to be relevant to their suitability as tanks! But yes, at level 20, they can re-up 80 THP every round. That's probably quite a lot more HP than you're going to find on any CR 1 beasts that non-Moon druids have access to shape into every turn, but less than the CR 6 beasts that Druids will be spending every turn as (as a Bonus Action).
Interestingly, I think that Moon Druid's can still Wild Shape as an action if they choose to (if they otherwise already used their Bonus).
Combat Wild Shape
When you choose this circle at 2nd level, you gain the ability to use Wild Shape on your turn as a bonus action, rather than as an action.
"Gain the ability to" implies to me that this is an additional ability, not a total replacement of the basic ability to shape as an action. It would be a pretty niche situation (especially before level 20) where that would be practically useful.... but a level 20 Moon Druid that wants to move through a damaging area or a lot of Opportunity Attacks could in theory turn into two Brontosauri on the same turn using both Bonus and Action.
Druids are less of an AC tank than they are a HP tank. If you have a good constitution score and choose your wildshapes wisely, you can end up with a ridiculous among of HP. At that point, it doesn't really matter what your AC or saves are, you can take most of everything.
Druids are less of an AC tank than they are a HP tank. If you have a good constitution score and choose your wildshapes wisely, you can end up with a ridiculous among of HP. At that point, it doesn't really matter what your AC or saves are, you can take most of everything.
In my experience it matters a lot. As a warforged druid (old warforged rules), my character has a 22 AC in humanoid form. In wild shape I can't do better than 14. In my last session, I decided to tank attacks from four enemies, each with 2 attacks. It was necessary to wild shape to do this tanking, because otherwise they'd just waltz past me and attack the squishy wizard. I ended up taking 4 hits for around 50 damage. With my humanoid AC, I probably would have taken 1-2 hits.
So I agree that druids' forte as a tank is with HP, but having good AC is a good complement if you can get it.
The Spores Druid isn't quite as tanky as the Moon Druid, since it receives 4 THP/druid level rather than an independent HP pool (so can't be healed)... but staying in a humanoid form that can benefit from armor and a shield means that a Spore's "Symbiotic Entity" shapeform likely has higher AC than a Moon druid would (and likely will be a more effective attacker as well).
The upside to the Spore druid's temporary HP is that they can renew them each turn without having to drop their wild shape. A moon druid will get more HP, yes, but to renew them you have drop your wild shape which leaves you in your druid form for a turn. Of course, this is only relevant at level 20.
You can reup wild shape without dropping wild shape.
You can reup wild shape without dropping wild shape.
This is true. It takes a second (bonus action) use of Wild Shape to go back to humanoid, but nothing in Wild Shape says that you can't use it as normal to go from Beast->Beast. I'd never noticed that before, good catch.
The Spores Druid isn't quite as tanky as the Moon Druid, since it receives 4 THP/druid level rather than an independent HP pool (so can't be healed)... but staying in a humanoid form that can benefit from armor and a shield means that a Spore's "Symbiotic Entity" shapeform likely has higher AC than a Moon druid would (and likely will be a more effective attacker as well).
The upside to the Spore druid's temporary HP is that they can renew them each turn without having to drop their wild shape. A moon druid will get more HP, yes, but to renew them you have drop your wild shape which leaves you in your druid form for a turn. Of course, this is only relevant at level 20.
You can reup wild shape without dropping wild shape.
If you take the mage armor eldritch feat you can use mage armor and it transfer into your beast shape. Makes moon druid (especially the elemental wind) much better.
I mean depending on what kind of tank you want to make you might actually prefer to have a lower AC, so that enemies are more inclined to attack you. If you're a brick wall with an AC in the 20s, any intelligent enemies will try to bypass you and go after enemies they can actually damage, which kinda defeats the purpose of being a tank.
Side note, and completely opposed to giving enemies a reason to attack you, the new humblewood book has some great spells for druids that really lean into the tank roll. Druids already have access to fire shield with Tasha's. And humblewood gives them both "Spiny Shield"(reaction spell that reduces incoming damage by 2d4 and reflects it back on attacker for 1 round) and "Stellar Bodies" ( you gain 2 motes of stars around you that you can shoot or keep them and have enemies make a WIS save or take 1d8 damage per mote you still have.) None are concentration, fire shield and stellar bodies are both 4th level spells, spiny shield is 1st level. While it takes 2 rounds to set up the full retaliation, (and 2 4th level spells) if you have a way of forcing enemies to attack you they take up to 4d8+2d4 damage EVERY TIME they hit you, while all incoming damage is reduced by 2d4. That's an average of 24 damage each time you're hit to the enemy. All while tanking for your allies. Although you can't be wildshaped to use spiny shield, so this works better with spores druids than with moon druids.
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Curious how people would go about building a druid tank PC concept. I feel like you should be able to use wild shape to soak some damage. The problem is, most wild shape ACs are woefully low. Barkskin can get them to 16. Is there a practical way to add aditional AC on top of Barkskin?
In a way, wild shape is more suitable to tanking than offensive combat, since a base druid can't wild shape and attack in the same turn, but can wild shape and *be* attacked in the first round.
You need Circle of the Moon for this idea to ever be productive, and only starting at about 6th lvl when you get:
Circle Forms
The rites of your circle grant you the ability to transform into more dangerous animal forms. Starting at 6th level, you can transform into a beast with a challenge rating as high as your druid level divided by 3, rounded down.
Moon allows Wild Shape and dismissal on a bonus action. The Circle Form allows cr2 creatures with higher hp at lvl 6. Before that, most creatures options are low ac and hp unless the DM allows you to roll hp or take max instead of average stat block hp shown.
Even at CR 2, I can't find a beast with AC higher than 14.
Having a little more hit points does help, though, so Moon is probably the way to go. It seems like the only druid for powergamers, as other wild shapes are barely useful in combat.
Wild shapes are immensly useful in combat. They give you a bunch of extra HP and abilities which, at least on higher levels, are just ridiculously good. Up until level 10 the Spore Druid is probably a better HP-tank than the Moon Druid though.
Other druid subclasses can powergame in different ways, but if it's pure HP-tanking, it's Moon or Spore.
Being a tank is more than being a bad of hit points or being hard to hit. You want to be the focus of the enemy, imposing disadvantage on targets other than you, or making yourself vulnerable to attack so enemies will want to attack you instead of others.
Sure. I also often like to take advantage of being a Large creature to block choke points and make myself the only viable target.
A single level of Monk (probably an easy to qualify MC for a Druid), or better, a Barbarian (probably a difficult to qualify MC for a druid) will make many Beast AC's increase by 2 or 3. The Barbarian MC has the benefit of also providing Rage damage reduction (only if you're not trying to concentrate on a spell), which makes those beast HP stretch even further.
The Spores Druid isn't quite as tanky as the Moon Druid, since it receives 4 THP/druid level rather than an independent HP pool (so can't be healed)... but staying in a humanoid form that can benefit from armor and a shield means that a Spore's "Symbiotic Entity" shapeform likely has higher AC than a Moon druid would (and likely will be a more effective attacker as well).
There might be some way, especially with a Life Cleric MC, to turn a Wildfire or a Stars druid into some sort of healing tank, who can heal themselves faster than enemies can burst them down. That sounds... probably like a not very efficient high-tier build to try to pull together, so I'd stick with Moon or Spores for druid tanking.
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Moon Druid/Bearbarian is amazing for tanking damage. The boatload of THP you get from the forms plus the damage resistance from Bear Totem is just staggering.
Hmm, interesting. Unarmored Defense can't stack with Barkskin (not sure anything can) since both set AC to a fixed value, rather than at a bonus.
However, my interpretation of Unarmored Defense in wild shape is that the creature's Dex and Con would apply, or the creature's Dex and PC's Wis for monk. A high Dex creature like a Giant Spider with your own Wis of +4 or +5 could get you to 17-18 AC without casting a spell.
Right, it’s usually equal to or superior to Barkskin for most beasts, which frees you up to concentrate on something more useful.
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The upside to the Spore druid's temporary HP is that they can renew them each turn without having to drop their wild shape. A moon druid will get more HP, yes, but to renew them you have drop your wild shape which leaves you in your druid form for a turn. Of course, this is only relevant at level 20.
Considering that a Druid only has two uses of Wild Shape per short rest for the first 19 levels of its existence, and that their wild shape takes a full action, I don't think that Spore Druids re-shaping in two rounds back to back is likely enough to be relevant to their suitability as tanks! But yes, at level 20, they can re-up 80 THP every round. That's probably quite a lot more HP than you're going to find on any CR 1 beasts that non-Moon druids have access to shape into every turn, but less than the CR 6 beasts that Druids will be spending every turn as (as a Bonus Action).
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Interestingly, I think that Moon Druid's can still Wild Shape as an action if they choose to (if they otherwise already used their Bonus).
"Gain the ability to" implies to me that this is an additional ability, not a total replacement of the basic ability to shape as an action. It would be a pretty niche situation (especially before level 20) where that would be practically useful.... but a level 20 Moon Druid that wants to move through a damaging area or a lot of Opportunity Attacks could in theory turn into two Brontosauri on the same turn using both Bonus and Action.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Druids are less of an AC tank than they are a HP tank. If you have a good constitution score and choose your wildshapes wisely, you can end up with a ridiculous among of HP. At that point, it doesn't really matter what your AC or saves are, you can take most of everything.
In my experience it matters a lot. As a warforged druid (old warforged rules), my character has a 22 AC in humanoid form. In wild shape I can't do better than 14. In my last session, I decided to tank attacks from four enemies, each with 2 attacks. It was necessary to wild shape to do this tanking, because otherwise they'd just waltz past me and attack the squishy wizard. I ended up taking 4 hits for around 50 damage. With my humanoid AC, I probably would have taken 1-2 hits.
So I agree that druids' forte as a tank is with HP, but having good AC is a good complement if you can get it.
You can reup wild shape without dropping wild shape.
This is true. It takes a second (bonus action) use of Wild Shape to go back to humanoid, but nothing in Wild Shape says that you can't use it as normal to go from Beast->Beast. I'd never noticed that before, good catch.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
You are indeed correct, thanks!
If you take the mage armor eldritch feat you can use mage armor and it transfer into your beast shape. Makes moon druid (especially the elemental wind) much better.
I mean depending on what kind of tank you want to make you might actually prefer to have a lower AC, so that enemies are more inclined to attack you. If you're a brick wall with an AC in the 20s, any intelligent enemies will try to bypass you and go after enemies they can actually damage, which kinda defeats the purpose of being a tank.
Side note, and completely opposed to giving enemies a reason to attack you, the new humblewood book has some great spells for druids that really lean into the tank roll. Druids already have access to fire shield with Tasha's. And humblewood gives them both "Spiny Shield"(reaction spell that reduces incoming damage by 2d4 and reflects it back on attacker for 1 round) and "Stellar Bodies" ( you gain 2 motes of stars around you that you can shoot or keep them and have enemies make a WIS save or take 1d8 damage per mote you still have.) None are concentration, fire shield and stellar bodies are both 4th level spells, spiny shield is 1st level. While it takes 2 rounds to set up the full retaliation, (and 2 4th level spells) if you have a way of forcing enemies to attack you they take up to 4d8+2d4 damage EVERY TIME they hit you, while all incoming damage is reduced by 2d4. That's an average of 24 damage each time you're hit to the enemy. All while tanking for your allies. Although you can't be wildshaped to use spiny shield, so this works better with spores druids than with moon druids.