Plant Wildshaping?

[TechnOkami]

Under the level limitations as presented by the PHB, would the ability to wildshape into Plant Creatures be too powerful? Is there anything that's particularly game breaking or overpowered?

I'm tinkering with a Druid of Rot atm, and I was thinking one of the Circle's Features would be Plant Wildshaping.

[Requilac]

Hmm, an interesting concept. Although I see nothing precisely game breaking about it, many of the plant creatures are much too overpowered for wild shape. It is not automatically recognizable but a lot of times plant creatures have some rather major powers aside from stats which would be devastating for a PC. Here is a list of all the plant creatures of CR 1 or below within the MM and a commentary from me...

Awakened shrub: The fact that you can automatically hide in a flawless manner without even making a check is rather worrisome, and bound to be easily abused.
Blights (all of them): same reason as awaken shrub
Gas spore: you can spread a disease that can insta-kill something within 1d12 + their con modifier hours? While not instantly useful in the midst of combat that can effectively remove a target from the game entirely if they fail one save so you need to be concerned about it.
Myconid adult: an attack which stuns is way overpowered for something you could wild shape into you, even if the save DC is low.
Myconid sprout: this one seems fine actually.
Quaggoth spore servant: this one is fine too.
Shrieker: normally I would be worried because it has false appaerance, but judging by the fact that you cannot really stealth around because you will be screaming your head of whenever something steps within 30 ft of you it should be fine.
Violet fungus: same reason as awakened shrub.

You see, a lot of the plant creatures have false appearance, and instantly succeeding on stealth checks is very brutal even if you cannot move all that quickly. And the plants that do not have that feature can impose a very devastating condition. Of all the creatures here only three out of ten of them would I approve of as a DM (myconid sprout, quaggoth spore servant and shrieker). Sometimes a monster is not just deadly because of their stats, and you need to factor that in. Also remember that features which are balanced for monsters (instant success on stealth checks) are much more volatile when given to PCs. I would advise against doing this.

[TechnOkami]

Hm, those are all good points. And even if I moved it farther down the leveling process a lot of those powers are rather strong. I will probably not include it then. Thank you Requilac.

[Ninja_Prawn]

As a counterpoint: I don't think false appearance is game-breaking on a wildshape form. I would allow a druid to move undetected without stealth checks if they turned into a spider or fly, too, so it's not really giving them that much more.

The myconid adult is potentially a problem, but the stun only has a 5 foot range and its attack is a good bit weaker than the black bear.

All told, I'd still be happy to allow something like this (http://www.middlefingerofvecna.com/2017/03/circle-of-root-and-stem.html) in my games.

[TechnOkami]

Interesting, though not really what I want to accomplish. The more I look at it though and the more research I do the better of an idea I get for it though.

Essentially I'm trying to make a Druid which feels like a borderline Necromancer, but not quite so deep in the whole "Plague and Disease" field of power.

So, of the theoretical things the Circle I'm working on (Circle of Rot is what I'll probably end up calling it), I've got a few abilities.

-Myconid-esque Telepathy, except it's 30 ft, can be sprayed onto organic entities at will and last for 24 hours.

-Basically a straight copy pasta of the Myconid's ability to create pseudo zombies, except they don't degrade over time and last longer for the sake of ability usability, with some kind of cap on how many can be controlled at a time (or, I could make them degrade overtime and have the ability only be limited to the amount of corpses readily available, need to think on that one)

-I want this circle to have the ability to gain hitpoints from things that die around it (again, pseudo-indirect necromancy)

-I really want to figure out how to simulate a damage over time effect. I was thinking it would be some kind of DoT debuff which is applied, and then does a single point of damage at the beginning and end of the affected creature's turn, with maybe it increasing to a 1d2 or a 1d4. I don't know how useful or balanced it would be however.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Maybe crib some parts of this (http://mfov.magehandpress.com/2015/08/circle-of-desolation.html)? It's got the damage over time and life draining effects, after a fashion.