Those are helpful severdread, thank you. Were you able to search those in a database or something? If so, I'd love to use it.

Better plan, staff of swarming insects summons  a radius cloud of flying creatures, animal shapes, you suddenly have 100’s of cr 4 creatures and have this created an instant army!

Circle of shepherd druid should also have give them extra temp hp and magical attacks:)

Somehow, I missed this spell.

Druids have some spectacular class-specific spells, don’t they?

I would say this is Wild shape others.  Essentially this allows the druid to wild shape their companions so they can stealth along with them or otherwise move undetected or at least ignored.  You could also use it as a way for everyone to travel at a faster speed then they may be able to otherwise. 

The first line says "Turn others into beasts" so not on yourself, but you should be able to maintain concentration as you use your own wildshape ability.  

I would say that changing every round and getting a new HP pool is  WOW, but acceptable.  Things you'd fight at level 15+ would one shot your CR 4 changed self and even with things at the right CR or slightly higher, it would be a fun fight so why not.

I like this spell, seems well balanced to me and adds some fun into the game instead of just a more powerful version of earlier spell.  

Or just be a bard to pick up “animate dead” and this. Also, this works on other summons like from “find steed” or “find familiar”.

Be careful with stuff like the awakened white moose. That statblook represents a unique beast from a specific adventure that someone has cast the awaken spell on. If your characters haven't personally met the awakened white moose they shouldn't even know it exists, or it literally shouldn't exist if the events of Rime of the Frostmaiden haven't occured in your setting.

You could definitely ask the DM to use the white moose's statblock to represent a generic moose that you could turn into since it doesn't seem like there is a generic moose statblock. I don't own rime of the frostmaiden so I can't check the white moose, but awakened animals from specific adventures might have things in their statblock (other than the obvious adjusted mental stats and language) a natural beast wouldn't.

This is an amazing spell for an army combat.

Because you can change the forms you have mobility advantage. You can bring your army with giant eagles then transform them into white moose, if the enemy flees to water you transform the army into giant octopuses and keep the battle going.

Insect Plague cast a few hundred feet above BBEG.  Animal Shapes to turn locusts into something heavy that doesn't fly.  If only physics worked like that in DnD

Quote from Ghotir >>

Insect Plague cast a few hundred feet above BBEG.  Animal Shapes to turn locusts into something heavy that doesn't fly.  If only physics worked like that in DnD

 I've seen this idea shared a lot online. I don't think that would actually work for a few reasons:

1) The locusts might not count as "creatures" since they are magically conjured. Insect Plague is a conjuration spell.

2) If the conjured locusts do count as creatures, they still would not be able to consent to the Animal Shapes spell. Animal Shapes specifies that it only works on willing creatures.

3) While Insect Plague has a range of 300 feet, Animal Shapes only has a range of 30 feet. So your Druid better have a way to fly if you still want to try this out.

I agree. Still, I did the Insect Plague / Animal Shapes GoogleFu Back of Napkin Math. Assuming the insects would consent (there better be some damn good RP for getting some summoned insects to consent to anything but "bite everything in this area") and assuming you cajoled enough with the DM (better spend an inspiration or something) ...

First, I estimated the Number of Locusts. Settled desert locust swarms can have up to 150,000,000/km^2 or 150/m^2 on the ground. I'm going to assume that many would fill the square meter above them when they took off and calculate that as the density for the Insect Plague. So, (GOOGLES) a 20ft radius sphere has a volume of 949 cubic meters, which is filled with about (ROUNDING) 142,000 locusts.

Step Two: Pick a Beast. Large is the limit, but weight is a premium so I'm gonna go with Walrus. Each one weighs, conservatively, about 2,200 lbs. This means that the Insect Plague is now a 20 ft radius sphere instantly filled with 312.4 million pounds of Walrus. Seems a lot. By an order of magnitude, actually. Like, this is going to be bad for everyone involved. Walrus Meat Explosion™ bad. 

Notoriously, 142,000 walruses will not want to stay in a 40ft diameter sphere for much longer than "at all." This IS magic so they will expand to fill all available space in the same turn as the spell was cast. That means the walruses must occupy the closest 142,000 2x2x2 volumes from the point of origin. If they expand to a sphere (assuming a large creature needs a 10'x10'x10' cube, 14,200,000 cubic feet), that's a sphere of walruses 300 feet in diameter. That means the walruses forced to the outermost part of the sphere by the end of the turn had to travel at about 340mph or 500 feet per second to get there (assuming a turn is 0.3 seconds). That's about 3.7 times faster than a minivan's top speed of 90 mph (my stand-in for the terminal velocity of a walrus). 3.7 sounds better than 4, which sounds like a number we can apply to the falling damage maximum of 20d6. So, four times that? And we'll use the 4 to calculate the total area of the damage. So, 4 times the initial radius? Since we've pushed into the realm of physics, there's no simple bludgeoning damage here.

An explosion of blubbery matter blossoms into existence the size of a gladiatorial arena above the boss monster, the outer face charring to a tasty crust as it tries to press tons and tons of air out of the way. It seems to hang in the air for a beat as reality double-checks the math of the horror you have just unleashed before ballooning outwards in a supersonic rain of atomically burning walrus matter. The druid, who had to be inside the insect swarm to fit it all within their thirty-foot range, now knows what the billionaires on that sub felt when it gave. Nothing at all. Same for the walruses, thankfully. For everyone else, well, it's much, much worse. All creatures, structures, and items within 600 feet take 280 (80d6) force damage as the airburst walrus bomb destroys an area one-quarter mile across.

Randall Munroe, is that you? :P

Jokes aside, thank you for the Fermi estimate! I liked your style. Two minor corrections to your assumptions though:

• A large creature doesn't necessarily need a 3-meters-wide cube. It is the space it occupies in combat (which may not even be the case for creatures like snakes that are long but thin), but it/they can still allow passage for another through the space they control, and they can squeeze through a narrower space if they choose. I would divide the volume required by two at least.
• A turn isn't 0.3 seconds. It's 6 seconds. A round also lasts 6 seconds, even if there are ten turns taking place one after the other. The combat system is meant as a convenient approximation that works most of the time, where turns are conceptually simultaneous but resolved one after the other in practice. Like with all rules, when this approximation stops working, the GM/DM is supposed to find a way around special cases. Otherwise one has to allow the peasant railgun...