It is balanced by the fact that druids can only get a couple wild shapes per day, and they have the normal beasts AC. They have fixed that by giving you a tiny amount of temp HP but more AC, and many more uses of this now mediocre feature.

A lvl 15 Druid would get 45THP on top of their current HP when they wild shape. That’s for each time they Wild shape. 

"Wild Companion

A new feature for the 2024 Druid is the ability to expend a use of Wild Shape or a spell slot to cast the Find Familiar spell without any material components. This was an optional feature introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything that is now part of the base class for the 2024 Druid. This means Druids who don’t want to spend their time shape-shifting can still interact with an animal companion!"

Does it mean that you can cast Find Familiar  as Ritual and not spend any spellslots or wildshape at all? or have they change ritual rules?

Quote from FFox1604 >>

Quote from GinoDiClarissio >>

Where is the warlock changes page for 2024? They released the video earlier than the druid video.

 Where did they post it I would love a look at the warlock or sorcerer, but druid looks great

 The Warlock is coming soon, but the Sorcerer still hasn't been revealed.

no wonder you're making a new monster manual the moon druid subclass just got huge! boost in action economy and DPS. I can only hope the all the monsters gain bonus actions and reactions to help give them a chance to fight...as teleporting 30 feet to every few seconds with no cost is going to drive me insane as a DM & means i need all my mobs to have 60-80 feet mobility to keep attacking...as a player utterly amazing. "restriction" on who you can now wild shape into is a restriction as i now no longer have a huge pool of creatures to pick from. Casting spells at 3rd level is very OP and makes the druid look like a Swiss army knife of i can do everything in one go...the only good part about this release is the add magic attack damage that gives weaker forms extra dps to keep up & makes ghosts or other mods less of a threat.

The wild shape changes seem like a major nerf to Druids .. they might be somewhat more flexible in use but the temporary hit points are meagre for either normal or even moon Druids.

A level 6 moon Druid changes to a CR2 beast and gets 18 temporary hit points .. rather than the 42 hit points of a polar bear. The comment about being knocked out of beast form before you can take an action in the current version is disingenuous since in the new version, the character will instead be dead making the entire beast form switch rather useless.

In addition, beast CR doesn’t scale into tier 3 and 4 … CR 4,5,6 beast shapes are limited in choice, most are huge or gargantuan, and aren’t very useful.

Elementals shapes were useful for a reason .. though even these aren’t very competitive at higher levels unless the DM uses the player proficiency bonus rather than the beast’s for to hit calculations (as a house rule). 

Without that, high level wild shape use will have no place in actual play because they will generally be pretty useless unfortunately. 

I realize that there was a desire to correct the moon Druid balance in the level 2-4 range but moon Druids VERY quickly lost their luster after that and these changes just continued to nerf the class. Adding a d8 or 2d8 to damage once a turn at higher levels is also pretty pathetic. A cleric who relies on spells like spirit guardians gets the same to boost their one attack. The poor wild shaped moon Druid has 1-3 fairly pathetic attacks and nothing in the subclass to boost those attacks .. yet they seem to still give up most of their spell casting while wild-shaped (not sure what they have access to beyond the curing spell mentioned).

personally the only potential issue i have is the way the wildshape hp works since is just flat tied to your druid level rather than say your druid level times or plus some number, especially at lower levels

Y'all are really underselling the tankiness of the new moon druid. Yes it's less than the old one, but the old one was overpowered and completely too tanky. 

Now you can spend spell slots to wild shape. Meaning at level 5 you can spend your wild shapes each for 15 temp hp whenever you lose those temp hp. Then continue to do so with your spell slots. A level 5 druid can spend their 2 wild shapes and their 4 1st level spell slots on a total of 90 temp hp. And then still have their 2nd and 3rd level slots.

At 10th level they can spend their 3 wild shape uses and their 4 1st level slots and 3 2nd level slots on a total of 10 uses of wild shape at 30 temp hp per use, meaning they would have 300 total temp hp, that's not something you could have done with the old moon druid at this level, at least not without a short rest. 

Those temp hp may not stack but all you have to do is reuse wild shape whenever you lose them.

At an average of 3 rounds of combat that's 90 temp hp for a combat. With 10 uses of it, only using low level slots, that's 3 combats that you will have a huge damage buffer and using higher level slots or getting short rests extends that capability. 

And now they have much better damage potential instead of just being tanks that don't do much damage wise. They can also heal and cast a few spells while still in wild shape.

Overall better balanced, better moon flavor, with still huge tank potential, now you just have to invest in that potential instead of just being a tank that then becomes a spellcaster.

You say it was too overpowered and tanky, but it had low AC and very limited uses per day. I don't DM a lot so I personally don't see that big of an issue of having an overpowered mechanic In A PVE co-op game. It's not like players are attacking each other that often. I personally would love a subclass that lets me go in back to be a tank. 

It's disappointing that they didn't reveal more about Circle of the Land Druids; I might be upset over nothing.

Land's Aid is a less effective use of wild shape compared to Moon, Stars, or Sea Druids. While it's understandable since Land Druids can recover spell slots and have flexibility in choosing spells, it should at least be a Bonus Action.

They nerfed Natural Recovery: now you can only cast one of your 1st-level spells from the Land you chose for free, instead of any spell from the list. Casting Burning Hands, Sleep, or Ray of Sickness at higher levels isn't very useful.

Nature's Ward remains the same as in the playtest. It's alright.

Nature's Sanctuary doesn't seem strong enough for a final ability.

Limiting the number of known wildshapes by so much is incredibly lame. A massive part of the fun of wild shape is its versatility.

You don't DM a lot, so the problem doesn't fall to you to balance encounters around extremely powerful effects. Twice per short rest was still enough uses to trivialize a lot of encounters.

Yes the game is PvE, but inter-party balance is important as to not make other players characters feel less inferior.

When your cleric character keeps dropping to 0 hit points and spending spell slots and the Druid in the party is a formidable tank that once they reach 0 hit points with a wild shape that has as many hit points as you do and then start to spend their spell slots as a completely healthy full caster, you will likely feel inferior. 

When as a DM you are attempting to challenge your party and the Moon Druid basically has 2 hit point pools that makes them tankier than the Barbarian and they keep trivializing your encounters, you feel bad. And if you increased the difficulty to challenge the Druid the encounters would be far too hard and punishing for the other characters.

There has to be some semblance of inter-party balance. If one character fulfills the roles of 2-3 characters, the rest of the party will likely feel overshadowed and inferior. 

Beyond that, you still can be extremely tanky, you just now have to spend spell slots to do so, rather than being tanky for free and a full caster as well. You actually have to choose as you play your character. 

Wild Resurgence is amazing for continuing to be a tanky animal and now there isn't one subclass that so obviously overshadows the others to the point of being banned at many tables.

Oh boy, I hate to say this Temp HP rule is not it, to me it functionally makes it kinda useless for me to be a beast in wildshape, perhaps I get more utility out of my shape, but this temp HP (that cant stack based on temp HP rules, or be healed because its temp HP and not actual HP) is at no point going to be more useful than the CR 1/4 wolf who had 13. At level 2 getting 13 more HP to use before yours got touched was no small boost, a level 20 druid only getting 20 temp hp is one attack at that level of play. Circle of moon getting 3 times your level is not to terribly much better, especially with their wildshape getting access to higher CR transformations who would absolutely have more functional HP than any temp that they gained just doesnt feel right. I dont see how thematically being a brown bear (usually with an HP of 32) would give you less temp HP than he actually has. 

A fix to this in my eyes is to give you the creatures HP in temp HP, for example if you became a rat with an HP of 1, than you get 1 temp HP, if you did become that bear with 32 HP then boom, 32 temp HP. I still really like the rule of not reverting back when you lose them. I also really like the idea of moon druids having a "better" temp hp pool to make them feel like better shifters, but when I think of beasts influenced by the moon I think more of their ability to take any hit unless its silver, regenerate minor wounds and such, I think a way to balance the moon with my previously suggested changes is maybe they gain Temp HP at the start of their turns when wild shaped equal to 2 times their druid level, a "regeneration" effect that isnt to broken because you cant just sit back and heal all day, but while wild shaped they are built like a warebeast. Im still toying around with how im gonna have to make this work in my home games, but my druids all feel like they just lost all motivation to ever use wildshape to be a beast, which is such a defining feature of this class. 

Overall I felt the problem with druid was that each subclass needed more to do with their wildshape, not to take away the want to use it for its baseline properties. Even if you take all the choices to upgrade your wildshape attacks, your cantrips are just starting to go up in damage and will probably outweigh the useful of a pretty small bump up in damage I also feel that if maybe that damage went up just one more time, say levels 5 10 and 15 then it would dang near keep up and match cantrip growth and give me a real choice between a spell with maybe an extra effect, vs a little more wildshape damage. 

Overall the update to subclasses was much needed, but I really need to see wildshape improve a bit before I move my players out of the 2014 edition 

I often play a circle of the moon Druid and I find I’m not liking the new temp hp rule. As it stands now at level 6 if I were to transform into a giant constructor snake at level 6 I’d get 60 hp from the snake. This a a huge amount when compared to the underwhelming 18 you get with the new rules. I do get that being able to add your wisdom modifier would possibly help with AC but, there are other ways around this.  I would also use and often plan to be purposefully knocked from my wildshape to avoid having to use a bonus action. For example if I wanted to cast an AOE spell I’d maneuver myself into harms way, take a huge beating and when I was knocked from my wildshape I’d cast my spell then revert back if able and get the heck out of there. 

Quote from ShroomMage >>

Quote from GinoDiClarissio >>

Where is the warlock changes page for 2024? They released the video earlier than the druid video.

And for that matter, where's the rest of the druid? This article talks exclusively about Wild Shape and Circle of the Moon. Where's the rest of the druid? The other subclasses?

Are they really insisting we have to watch their YT podcast format? It's such an awful way to distribute information, especially for those of us who struggle with auditory processing. It doesn't help that they don't even bother providing their own captions!

x2 , I don't like that the circle of the moon is receiving so much attention, it is not the only subclass of the druid, and it is the most hated in 2014 because of how broken it was at certain levels that overshadowed the rest, they would have made a thread for all the subclasses of the druid instead of just this one, or at most if it was one for an entire subclass it should have been a new one.

I just read above that this weekend they will publish the post on the warlock 2024 (He still doesn't have it even though the video of him is there.) and another on the druid that does cover all his subclasses. But even so, it doesn't seem appropriate or fair to me that they would have created this one that is centered for this subclass (and the wild shape base change.).

I'm loving these changes to the Druid! They were already my favorite class but they're even better now.

What a terrible level 10 feature. That's seriously supposed to replace being an elemental? And to act like temporary hitpoints lets you stay in wildshape longer is a ridiculous idea. The animal hit points are way more than temporary hitpoints, and the bonus action reshape and the extra wildshapes took care of the issue of being knocked out of shape. And then if you were knocked out of shape you would still have spells and your own druid hitpoints. It's frustrating because there is a lot of good here and then garbage. 

The limited number of known forms seems like such a weird and unnecessary restriction on Wild Shape to me, and having to pick them in advance each day.

Non-Moon druids aren't going to use Wild Shape in melee now they have to use their own HP while getting wounded all the time due to a beast's relatively low AC.

That's fine if you want only Circle of the Moon to be combat Wild Shapers. But the limited forms restriction really nerfs Wild Shape's flexibility as a utility power that can be used creatively in all sorts of other non-combat situations.

Wild Shape is the druid's USP but these changes unfortunately make it a bit of a waste of time for anyone who's not Circle of the Moon.

And it's exactly this class as to why I have no intentions of getting the 2024 books. I'll stick with the 2014 versions thank you very much.

From the video, it seems like all druids can speak with animals without expending a spell slot, and while that's amazing--that was a core feature of the Circle of the Shepherd druids. What do they get in exchange, since they no longer have a unique 2nd level feature? Can they get some circle spells, like all the other circles have?