Optimized Druid

[kbob]

Ok, so as the title suggests, im looking for the most optimized, brokenly, busted, unfair, almost downright cheating Druid. It has to be from offical WoTC material and Forgetten Realms compatible. He can multiclass into one other class as well (but doesnt have to) Any suggestions?

[Rukelnikov]

Shepard, summon away, have fun.

[dejarnjc]

Ok, so as the title suggests, im looking for the most optimized, brokenly, busted, unfair, almost downright cheating Druid. It has to be from offical WoTC material and Forgetten Realms compatible. He can multiclass into one other class as well (but doesnt have to) Any suggestions?

Most would probably agree that a standard Moon Druid, no multi-classing, build is optimal.

Variant Human, max out WIS, 2nd highest stat CON (keep it at an odd #), make sure you have a 14 in DEX. Start with Resilient(CON) or Warcaster so you don't lose concentration easily. Continue pumping points into WIS as you level. Once you're at 20 WIS consider getting the other one of the 1st two feats I mentioned. Once you've got that, continue maxing out your Constitution.

Alternatively you can start as a hill dwarf or wood elf since dark vision plus either extra HP or increased movement is cool.

Use medium armor and a shield. Convince your DM that the non-metal armor thing is BS and wear Half Plate once you can afford it or else convince your DM that you can construct Half Plate out of magical wood or magic stone or chitin or bone or something.

Use healing spirit for all of your healing needs and convince your DM that the spell does not need any houserule fixes.

In combat, primarily use summoning spells. Conjure animals alone will be an amazing spell until 7th level when you get conjure woodland beings, at that point summon (2) CR 1 quicklings to wreck **** in combat.



Done.

[stoutstien]

Ok, so as the title suggests, im looking for the most optimized, brokenly, busted, unfair, almost downright cheating Druid. It has to be from offical WoTC material and Forgetten Realms compatible. He can multiclass into one other class as well (but doesnt have to) Any suggestions?
Is this for a publish adventure or homebrew?
A V human with a the observant feat at lv one can have a passive perception of 23 with animorph you dont h e to worry about darkvision very often.
in a smaller party I would say Shepherd (depending how your DM rules summoning spells) in a larger party I'd say Moon druid (giant hyena is a npc grinder at low levels)

Edit grab prodigy later on to to push your pass perception even higher! Or Athletics if you want to be a grappling Moon druid.gaint octopus lockdown

[Yunru]

For Moon Druids, dependent on whether you (correctly :P ) view natural weapons as unarmed strikes, Monk is amazing.
If you (incorrectly :P ) view them as weapons, Hexblade is amazing.

[Man_Over_Game]

Most would probably agree that a standard Moon Druid, no multi-classing, build is optimal

Moon Druid is overly strong at level 20, but dipping a single level into Barbarian will make levels 3-19 so easy that you won't even care.

Now instead of relying on a beast's low AC, you can have your AC scale with their Dexterity and Constitution values (which are generally very high). Additionally, a CR 1 creature you can shift into as a level 2 Druid is the Black Bear with 34 HP. With Rage, that effectively is doubled against physical damage. That's 68 damage per use of Wild Shape, twice a day. Also, Rage grants you +2 damage on Strength-based attacks, and many beasts have access to Multiattack, meaning you get more mileage out of Rage.

Pack on Sentinel, so the DM can't resort to just ignoring you in combat, and he'll be scratching his head on figuring out how to deal with you.

[dejarnjc]

Moon Druid is overly strong at level 20, but dipping a single level into Barbarian will make levels 3-19 so easy that you won't even care.


While I agree in principal, in practice it's never seemed worth it to me (DM/campaign dependent). Generally my entire party has been knocked out or died before my single classed moon druid would have to worry about his health.

[kbob]

Great ideas. It is a homebrew currently but this is an ongoing world. The next adventure may be published.
Im still new to 5e (coming from 3.5). I assumed a summoner would be optimal with something equivalent to natural spell (which it seems is gone altogether). So is wild shaping and going into melee with moon druid optimal now?

[Man_Over_Game]

Great ideas. It is a homebrew currently but this is an ongoing world. The next adventure may be published.
Im still new to 5e (coming from 3.5). I assumed a summoner would be optimal with something equivalent to natural spell (which it seems is gone altogether). So is wild shaping and going into melee with moon druid optimal now?

Yup.

These are the average health values of characters per level:

•Level 1: 11 HP
•Level 2: 18 HP
•Level 3: 25 HP
•Level 4: 32 HP
•Level 5: 39 HP
•Level 6: 46 HP
•Level 7: 53 HP
•Level 8: 60 HP

The Moon Druid can do his enhanced Wild Shape at level 2, gains access to CR 1 creatures, one of which is the aforemented Black Bear with 34 HP. He can shift into this twice per Short Rest. Assuming your group has the recommended 2 Short Rests per day, that means the Druid can absorb about 60 damage between each of those Short Rests. Assuming there's no waste of hitpoints, that translates to 180 damage that they can absorb in a day.

And this is before considering the fact that Moon Druids are full casters and have their own hitpoints that are separate from the Wild Shape. When using Barbarian Rage, double those values unless someone is shooting spells at you.

[ATHATH]

Shepard Druid 5. Use Conjure Animals to summon 8 giant owls, then sit back as they rip through everything that dares to oppose you. Velociraptors look pretty decent as well, but they look to be much squishier (and unable to do hit and run strikes with Flyby) than the owls are.

Slightly unorthodox here, but Paladin 1/Moon Druid 1/Paladin 1/Moon Druid X will let you smite with the Multiattack actions of your beast forms. Paladin and Moon Druid form a nice synergy with each other: Moon Druids tend to have a lot of unused spell slots at the end of the day (as they can't cast spells while in Wild Shape form), while Paladins tend to guzzle spell slots (do remember that you CAN use Divine Smite while in Wild Shape form). It does run into a few issues, though: There aren't very many good CR 2 Wild Shape forms with Multiattack (the upgrade from brown bear to cave bear is barely (see what I did there?) noticeable) and your concentration on your spells will often get broken because of your low AC. That second problem is a nasty one, as Conjure Animals is so brokenly good that it's often better to hide after casting the spell instead of directly fighting in combat so you won't risk losing concentration on the spell (and at that point, why aren't you playing a Shepherd Druid?).

Tldr; Paladin/Druid is good, but only if your DM bans or nerfs summons (if they don't, then Shepherd Druid is much stronger because it lets your animals bypass resistance to nonmagical damage), if you don't want to slow combat down by rolling attacks and damage for 8 more creatures, or if you don't want to overshadow everyone. I mean, I guess it doesn't STOP being good just because summoning spells exist, but your main schtick gets outclassed pretty hard by summoning spells.

There are a couple of utility Wild Shape forms and Beast summons that you might want to know about the existence of: cranium rats (telepathy, nondetection, and immunity to effects that would read your thoughts or sense your emotions), tressyms (poison sense and magical invisibility fails to conceal anything from your sight), deep rothes (Dancing Lights as a racial spell (which only really matters for your summons, as you can't cast spells while Wild Shaped), crag cats (spell turning(!) and nondetection), and (giant) apes (decent ranged attack, which most wild shape forms lack). Turning into a female steeder after casting the Jump spell on yourself used to be a way to move around really quickly, but they were later updated to not be Beasts.

Might I ask WHY you want a brokenly powerful character?

[kbob]

So summoning sounds like its still OP. Overwhelm.
The reason for brokenness is mainly to see if it can be done, that and the DM encouraged us to pull out all the stops. His only regulations were mostly mentioned before. The only other ones are that you cannot mutliclass warlock (which i didnt mention cuz i saw no way that would be of siginificant advantage to a druid). I wanted to play a druid because i had a human bard in 3.5 with a wood elf, druid cohort. The druid was a low charisma, nerdy, animal loving (PETA level), overly nice (to the point people hated in character but laughed out of character). And now i want to rebirth him but as a PC this time. I actually thought about being a “cohort” for one of the other players. He left the bard years ago, giving up all hope as the bard was too self absorbed and materialistic (ornsomething like that). Anyway, I realize “leadership” is no longer a thing (THANKFULLY) but i wanted to RP him as an elf who will follow you around as your “cohort” but is secretly trying to indictrinate you with his extremist nature loving propaganda. Genuinely likes you, but “realizes” you are brainwashed and a product and pawn of society. But ya, thats it.

[Man_Over_Game]

So summoning sounds like its still OP. Overwhelm.
The reason for brokenness is mainly to see if it can be done, that and the DM encouraged us to pull out all the stops. His only regulations were mostly mentioned before. The only other ones are that you cannot mutliclass warlock (which i didnt mention cuz i saw no way that would be of siginificant advantage to a druid). I wanted to play a druid because i had a human bard in 3.5 with a wood elf, druid cohort. The druid was a low charisma, nerdy, animal loving (PETA level), overly nice (to the point people hated in character but laughed out of character). And now i want to rebirth him but as a PC this time. I actually thought about being a “cohort” for one of the other players. He left the bard years ago, giving up all hope as the bard was too self absorbed and materialistic (ornsomething like that). Anyway, I realize “leadership” is no longer a thing (THANKFULLY) but i wanted to RP him as an elf who will follow you around as your “cohort” but is secretly trying to indictrinate you with his extremist nature loving propaganda. Genuinely likes you, but “realizes” you are brainwashed and a product and pawn of society. But ya, thats it.

Bare in mind, the DM chooses what you summon, and the Shephard Druid doesn't provide any benefit to his summons until level 6. Additionally, your summons rely on Concentration, which is broken upon a failed Constitution saving throw every time the Druid takes damage.

It's powerful, assuming the best case scenario.

However, Moon Druid has no real possible counter, which is why I recommended it. There are plenty of things the DM can implement to deal with a summoner Druid, but even knowing how bad the Moon Druid is, I can't think of too many ways of dealing with them other than just trying to ignore them.

[Seekergeek]

I'm not sure if it is strictly RAI or not, but our table determined that the hill dwarf's extra HP ultimately carried over to the wildshape forms on account of this: "You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. However, you can’t use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense."

My hill dwarf moon druid barbarian was beastly. Heh. Puns.

[Citan]

Moon Druid is overly strong at level 20, but dipping a single level into Barbarian will make levels 3-19 so easy that you won't even care.

Now instead of relying on a beast's low AC, you can have your AC scale with their Dexterity and Constitution values (which are generally very high). Additionally, a CR 1 creature you can shift into as a level 2 Druid is the Black Bear with 34 HP. With Rage, that effectively is doubled against physical damage. That's 68 damage per use of Wild Shape, twice a day. Also, Rage grants you +2 damage on Strength-based attacks, and many beasts have access to Multiattack, meaning you get more mileage out of Rage.

Pack on Sentinel, so the DM can't resort to just ignoring you in combat, and he'll be scratching his head on figuring out how to deal with you.
Meh.
First, you're a DRUID. You WILL want to max your WIS, and start with 16. So you're not really gaining anything here by favoring Constitution (going Barbarian) *unless* you plan on stacking feats instead. If you'd like to boost AC with a dip, it's much better to go Monk for that reason (plus it's easier stats-wise).
Second, if a DM agrees that class-based Unarmored works with Wild Shape, he could agree that racial-based works too, so you could go turtle (not that big a stretch -both are incoherent anyways-). The big deal is rather the Dexterity part, and there is no real way around it.
Alternatively, simply get Mage Armor on you one way or another, for a +2 average bonus AC which is always nice.

Second...


Yup.

These are the average health values of characters per level:

•Level 1: 11 HP
•Level 2: 18 HP
•Level 3: 25 HP
•Level 4: 32 HP
•Level 5: 39 HP
•Level 6: 46 HP
•Level 7: 53 HP
•Level 8: 60 HP

The Moon Druid can do his enhanced Wild Shape at level 2, gains access to CR 1 creatures, one of which is the aforemented Black Bear with 34 HP. He can shift into this twice per Short Rest. Assuming your group has the recommended 2 Short Rests per day, that means the Druid can absorb about 60 damage between each of those Short Rests. Assuming there's no waste of hitpoints, that translates to 180 damage that they can absorb in a day.

And this is before considering the fact that Moon Druids are full casters and have their own hitpoints that are separate from the Wild Shape. When using Barbarian Rage, double those values unless someone is shooting spells at you.
As many people, you avoid (on purpose or not, no idea) to talk about the incredibly weaker AC you get as such beast, which completely destroys the accuracy of the comparison.

Brown Bear has normally 11 AC: make it 13 with Mage Armor (13+0) or Unarmored(10+0+3), it's the same.
At level 2, any proper frontliner has 18 AC *MINIMUM*. Most will sport 20 with a shield or Defense fighting style or other shenanigans.

At that level, you are facing creatures that have +4 to hit.
Druid will get hit on a 70% chance basis (or 60% with 13 AC).
Comparatively, a Fighter with best equipment at the time (so 19 AC with chain mail + Defense + shield) will get hit only 30% of the time.
So in fact Rage resistance is needed to just get on the basic level of martials. And I say "basic" on purpose, because martials have many tools at their disposal to help reduce threat upon them as they level up (defensive features, spells, multiple attacks to set enemies at disadvantage for their attacks, etc).

Moon Druid can be a nice off-tank if nobody else has the shoulders for it (like filling in for one or two turns). But it can't compare to "true" tanks. Especially when you start taking into account everything else that can threaten them (especially spells).

Going into Barbarian can be a great deal to IF one is sure he'll never reach level 20 (or don't care about long-run optimization) or if you make a true dual-class concept by getting at least as deep as 3-4 levels. Then indeed, you can have a "tank Druid". Otherwise it's, very simply, just a (big) trap.
As is considering a pure Moon Druid as a "tank". It just isn't in essence (although you can certainly build towards it with feats and stat choice) until you get level 10, at which time you get Earth Elemental, which IS certainly a tanky one (but we are speaking level 10 already here, which is far).
Plus it forces you to cast one spell per fight only or be ready to "waste" your shape by getting out early to cast an emergency Healing Words or whatever. I don't mind myself, but some people could view this as a self-nerf (the same that view Valor/Swords Bard or Bladesingers using buffs on themselves to "just fight" as a waste of their potential ^^).

[Man_Over_Game]

Even assuming the AC difference of an 11 AC bear vs a 16 AC Barbarian, you're talking about a 5 AC difference to hit. That's the difference between someone hitting you 50% of the time and 75% of the time.

Or, roughly taking 50% more damage from attacks.

With 34 HP at level 2, you have roughly double the amount of HP that anyone should have while in Bear form. You are roughly taking 150% damage compared to someone with good AC while having 200% of the HP to soak it with.

You can also Wild Shape twice per Short Rest.

For the unarmored defensive traits, there was Sage Advice clarifying that class/feat features can always be applied during Wild Shape, but racial features don't. https://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/01/14/druid-monk-unarmored-defense-in-shapeshift-form/

Considering you gain the Saving Throw proficiencies of both the beast and your Druid, as well as the physical stats of the beast and the mental stats of the Druid, as well as the fact that your low AC isn't going to be relevant too much when it comes to spells, you're fairly resistant to magic.

------------

Assuming your low AC is enough to grant your enemies a 100% hit rate, and combat lasts about 4 rounds, you'd have to take about 9 damage per round before being forced out of Druid form, when you have about 16 HP to survive with. You then can Shift again for another 34 HP and another 4 rounds of combat. Take a Short Rest, do it again. Keep doing this until you have to rely on your Druid spellcasting.

Compared to a Fighter, who has about 20 HP at level 2, and is hit 50% of the time, that 9 damage per round turns into 4.5 damage per round on average. Rounding up, he'd be able to last 5 rounds throughout the day. The Fighter could use Second Wind, but that would only extend his lifespan by about one round per Short Rest.

You could include Hit Die to the Fighter, I suppose, but the Druid deserves access to the same resource, so I didn't include it.

[sithlordnergal]

So, this heavily depends on two things:

1) What sort of beasts can you expect to see, does the DM count polymorphed allies as "seeing" a beast?

2) Does your DM allow you to choose what gets summoned, or do they choose?

If you'll see a lot of beasts and your DM allows Polymorph to count go Moon Druid. You'll have a ton of temp HP, making you a great tank, and at level 10 you'll get Elemental Wild Shapes with massively boost your damage and tanking abilities. I suggest taking War Caster and that feat that gives you Con save proficiency. You'll be able to cast/concentrate on a spell, tank, and hit things all at once.

If your DM allows you to choose what is summoned go Shepard Druid. Being able to choose your summons is a massive boost to the Shepard Druid. Otherwise you're kind of at the DM's whims. Technically, your DM could say "Ok, you want a single beast that is CR 2 or lower...I give you one cr 1/8th beast." Of course, if your DM is doing that then you have a lot of other problems, and that is an extreme example, but still. Your DM does not need to give you a summon that is advantageous to you.

[Rukelnikov]

I can't think of too many ways of dealing with them other than just trying to ignore them.

It's actually very easy, hand out many magic items.

Our first 5e campaign, coming from 3e had many magic items, by lvl 16 everyone had at least +2 armor, shield and or weapon, plus some wondrous.

Beast forms can't generally compete there.

[Edgerunner]

Just a plain old Land Druid.

A Land Druid, in competent hands, can change a battlefield in a moment. They can Summon/Conjure even better than a Conjuration Wizard IMO, buff and debuff till the cows come home and they can heal all while still being able to WildShape. Not to mention Out of Combat abilities.

They don't get a lot of love but a Land Druid does not deserve to be considered a lower tier sub-class. They can change just about Any encounter and they can do it with different spells at their leisure.

Land Druids got Versatility.

[sophontteks]

Moon druids are over-rated.
Shepherd druids break the game.

[dejarnjc]

Moon druids are over-rated.
Shepherd druids break the game.

Not sure how they could break the game unless you're referring to the non-concentration aspect of their 14th level feature but I would never call that broken.

[OverLordOcelot]

At level 2, any proper frontliner has 18 AC *MINIMUM*. Most will sport 20 with a shield or Defense fighting style or other shenanigans.

It's kind of silly to define 'frontliner' in a way that a character who has more HP than the rest of the party put together without even using slots for healing isn't one, and that most damage oriented melee types don't qualify. A fighter or paladin using a 2-hander will have 16 AC (Chain or Scale and +2 dex), a barbarian will usually have 15-16 (scale and dex, or unarmored and dex), and saying that 2-handed raging barbarians don't belong on the front line is... unusual, to say the least.


Moon Druid can be a nice off-tank if nobody else has the shoulders for it (like filling in for one or two turns). But it can't compare to "true" tanks. Especially when you start taking into account everything else that can threaten them (especially spells).

First you'll need to define "true" tanks and "off-tanks"; people like to throw those terms around, but they don't have any well-defined meaning, and I'm not seeing what the supposed deficiency of a moon druid is unless you've defined tank primarily by AC, which is silly.

Also, moon druids have some powerful resistances to attacks that other tanks lack. Moon druids are immune to 'person' spells while in form, which breaks spells that can destroy a party relying on a regular tank like Dominate Person and Hold Person. Animal forms are also mostly large or huge, which provides immunity to swallow attacks, significantly weakens enemy grappling, and enables control via grappling that smaller tanks just can't do. A number of forms (Giant octopus, Giant Constrictor Snake, Giant Scorpion, to name one at each of the first three CR levels) have a grapple (often with restrain) that lands automatically on attack, which adds a control angle other tanks lack. Being able to stop something like a Froghemouth from moving and give the entire party advantage on attacks and it disadvantage on attacks is a pretty powerful maneuver for a 6th level character to pull off.

[Rukelnikov]

Not sure how they could break the game unless you're referring to the non-concentration aspect of their 14th level feature but I would never call that broken.

Because of action economy + bounded accuracy

[sophontteks]

Not sure how they could break the game unless you're referring to the non-concentration aspect of their 14th level feature but I would never call that broken.
The hp they give is static. Its massive when given to creatures with small hit die. This on top of giving them all magic damage and being able to heal everyone with one use of healing word thanks to unicorn spirit.

Yeah, its pretty broken.

[dejarnjc]

Because of action economy + bounded accuracy

Uh so like every other summoning class in the game?


The hp they give is static. Its massive when given to creatures with small hit die. This on top of giving them all magic damage and being able to heal everyone with one use of healing word thanks to unicorn spirit.

Yeah, its pretty broken.

Both are strong abilities I'd agree but I still don't see what's "broken" about them.

[Rukelnikov]

Uh so like every other summoning class in the game?

Can you name all those other classes?

[kbob]

This is a genuine inquiry and not a slight at anyone (insay this as text does not have tonal voice or facial expressions):
I see a lot of damage, ac, and hp discussion on 5e forums. Perhaps 3.5 is THAT different, but from a math and game mechanics perspective, Action economy, battlefield control, and versatility/utilities have always seemed, from what i could tell, dominate. Overwhelm the enemy with more turns/going first/never allowing them to act, setting the field so that you have advantage and the enemy disadvantage, and being able to overcome more challenges (other than just combat) make a class superior and pottentially broken. Is combat in 5e that much different that those things are secondary to raw damage/ac/hp?

[Rukelnikov]

This is a genuine inquiry and not a slight at anyone (insay this as text does not have tonal voice or facial expressions):
I see a lot of damage, ac, and hp discussion on 5e forums. Perhaps 3.5 is THAT different, but from a math and game mechanics perspective, Action economy, battlefield control, and versatility/utilities have always seemed, from what i could tell, dominate. Overwhelm the enemy with more turns/going first/never allowing them to act, setting the field so that you have advantage and the enemy disadvantage, and being able to overcome more challenges (other than just combat) make a class superior and pottentially broken. Is combat in 5e that much different that those things are secondary to raw damage/ac/hp?

Nah, its pretty much the same, without the insane one shot damage potential that 3.x had, however in 3.x after say, lvl 9, every spell was also a potential one shot :S

[kbob]

Also, i think i missed where it talks about the DM choosing summons. I have friend who plays in AL and he says the player chooses. However, i see a lot of people claiming the DM chooses (which seems weird and certainly weaker). Which is correct?

[kbob]

Nah, its pretty much the same, without the insane one shot damage potential that 3.x had, however in 3.x after say, lvl 9, every spell was also a potential one shot :S
Thanks that helps.
Also thanks to everyone who has contributed to answering my questions.

[Rukelnikov]

Also, i think i missed where it talks about the DM choosing summons. I have friend who plays in AL and he says the player chooses. However, i see a lot of people claiming the DM chooses (which seems weird and certainly weaker). Which is correct?

Copied from Sage Advice Compendium:

When you cast a spell like conjure woodland beings, does the spellcaster or the DM choose the creatures that are conjured?

A number of spells in the game let you summon creatures. Conjure animals, conjure celestial, conjure minor elementals, and conjure woodland beings are just a few examples.
Some spells of this sort specify that the spellcaster chooses the creature conjured. For example, find familiar gives the caster a list of animals to choose from.
Other spells of this sort let the spellcaster choose from among several broad options. For example, conjure minor elementals offers four options. Here are the first two:

• One elemental of challenge rating 2 or lower
• Two elementals of challenge rating 1 or lower

The design intent for options like these is that the spellcaster chooses one of them, and then the DM decides what creatures appear that fit the chosen option. For example, if you pick the second option, the DM chooses the two elementals that have a challenge rating of 1 or lower.

A spellcaster can certainly express a preference for what creatures shows up, but it’s up to the DM to determine if they do. The DM will often choose creatures that are appropriate for the campaign and that will be fun to introduce in a scene.


Thanks that helps.
Also thanks to everyone who has contributed to answering my questions.

No prob ;)

[AttilatheYeon]

My 2 cp. Hill dwarf moon druid/barbarian with Dwarven Fortitude is pretty indestructible. Between rage, wildshape and healing when you take the dodge action, it'd be pretty hard to die in combat.

[OverLordOcelot]

Is combat in 5e that much different that those things are secondary to raw damage/ac/hp?

AC and HP are really easy to analyze mathematically, and so come up in discussions a lot. People online love to theorycraft, and often do white room analysis, where it's really easy to do some AC, HP, damage calculations and come up with numbers for damage per round and time to live, then treat those as the definite and only facts that matter, and then reach conclusions like 'if you don't have at least 18 AC, you don't belong on the front line. It doesn't match real gameplay experience, but it's easy to 'prove' and stick to as a claim.

One of the most egregious examples of this that I recall was in a thread where a guy used the attack and damage values from the 'these are the expected values for this CR' chart. He determined that his character could easily survive for some really excessive time against them (like 45 rounds) because he had his AC really high and a displacement cloak that gave enemies disadvantage to hit. Because of this calculation, he claimed that his character could easily tank half a dozen CR15 creatures to protect his allies while healing the party of any incidental damage. I pointed out that three of the four CR 15 enemies in the monster manual would absolutely wreck him (dragons have breath and wing buffets to kill the cloak, mummy lord has harm and insect swarm) and that the fourth one (purple worm) was too large for him to even be able to stay adjacent to six of them at once without unusual circumstances, and he really had no response.

[Trustypeaches]

However, Moon Druid has no real possible counter, which is why I recommended it. There are plenty of things the DM can implement to deal with a summoner Druid, but even knowing how bad the Moon Druid is, I can't think of too many ways of dealing with them other than just trying to ignore them.Here are a couple:

Druids generally have poor INT and CHA saves, making them vulnerable to a lot of spells and features that target those saves
All of Moon Druid's most powerful forms are Large (or Huge) sized creatures, which have many complications, especially in cramped indoor environments. Their presence can make it difficult for allies to maneuver around and the Druid must squeeze to push through small 5 feet wide corridors (i.e. the standard), which can make kiting them very easy.
They lack any ranged attacks unless they spend their concentration on Call Lighting or a similar spell.
They cannot speak while Wild Shaped.

[sophontteks]

The easiest way to counter a moon druid is a narrow corridor. Most their shapes are large.

[OverLordOcelot]

However, Moon Druid has no real possible counter, which is why I recommended it. There are plenty of things the DM can implement to deal with a summoner Druid, but even knowing how bad the Moon Druid is, I can't think of too many ways of dealing with them other than just trying to ignore them.

I don't get why you'd say this - I love playing a moon druid, but they're not invulnerable. Narrow corridors nullify pretty much all of the combat effective forms except earth elemental, and warded or 'covered by something that isn't stone' corridors block that. They're still susceptible to a lot of crowd control. Simple damage can take down their HP pool faster than they can burn slots to heal, things like harm and disintegrate will basically wipe out 1/2 uses of wild shape. They generally lack ranged weapons and (pre elementals) flight on effective forms, so can't do much against ranged attackers. They're certainly tough and a lot of fun to play, but I don't get why you'd think they're uncounterable, or even what that means.

[Waazraath]

This is a genuine inquiry and not a slight at anyone (insay this as text does not have tonal voice or facial expressions):
I see a lot of damage, ac, and hp discussion on 5e forums. Perhaps 3.5 is THAT different, but from a math and game mechanics perspective, Action economy, battlefield control, and versatility/utilities have always seemed, from what i could tell, dominate. Overwhelm the enemy with more turns/going first/never allowing them to act, setting the field so that you have advantage and the enemy disadvantage, and being able to overcome more challenges (other than just combat) make a class superior and pottentially broken. Is combat in 5e that much different that those things are secondary to raw damage/ac/hp?


Nah, its pretty much the same, without the insane one shot damage potential that 3.x had, however in 3.x after say, lvl 9, every spell was also a potential one shot :S

Beg to differ. Caster power has been tuned down dramaticly between 3.5 and 5e. To name a few:
- most 5e controll spells get a new save every turn, or end when taking damage (making hold, dominate etc. all much less powerful compared to 3.5)
- concentration mechanic makes it easier to shut down spells in 5e, and limits options since a caster can keep only one up, instead of running 3 bfc-spells at the same time in a crazy combo.
- spells are easier dispelled in 5e (stronger dispell magic, and introduction of the counterspell spell)
- the crazy action economy manipulation (among others through metamagic, psionic shenenigans, or spells like celerity) in 3.5 is mostly gone
- the importance of raw damage increased in 5e, because monsters in general have less defenses against it, and all character classes can dish it out pretty well, making taking a monster down quick possible (without it having regeneration, damage resistance, crazy AC and HP, etc.).

Don't get me wrong, battlefield controll, buffing, debuffing, summoning it's still all possible, and can be (very) good. But it is by no means mandatory, or per se superior. (in general, in 5e. Specificly for the druid, shepherd summonor is of course bloody strong.)

[Son of A Lich!]

I left 3.5 when I had to make a flow chart to define my player's ranger options for his bow. Are you attacking a favored enemy? Yes: +2. No: N/A. Are you firing more then 1 arrow in a shot? Are you within 30 ft? etc.

So tedious and definitely un-fun when a wizard would typically undo the combat with a save or die spell. I started using M&M to play D&D games where everyone is generally balanced to the PL level.

I think that the biggest difference between 5e and 3.P is that most players are relatively new or dropped out of 3.5 years ago and are relearning the system fresh.

I have to work in means of battlefield control, as a DM, to keep the combat going. If my players are walking in and slogging through doing damage as quickly as possible to reach the end of the encounter, I feel like I lost as a DM. Everyone should have something to do and an enemy to fight. In 3.5, this meant having to bend over backwards to keep the Wizards and CoDzillas occupied so that the monk or rogue or Fighter could engage with something and participate.

With 5e, it's about making something cool and different then a 30x30ft room. Falling through the ruins of a city, in the remains of windmill, as a phase spider is attacking the players and his webs are phasing in and out again with him... only for the players to realize that there is more then one phase spider and they are quickly falling into an egg sack. Now, the party wants to get caught in the webs, and find secure footing, before the phase webs disappear again.

I couldn't do that in 3e. In 3e, the combat would have been flooded with Summons and the wizard would use a floating disk to keep himself afloat while the party played wack-a-mole with the phase spiders before Fiendish Badgers could eat them alive.

[Citan]

Even assuming the AC difference of an 11 AC bear vs a 16 AC Barbarian, you're talking about a 5 AC difference to hit. That's the difference between someone hitting you 50% of the time and 75% of the time.

Nice way to ignore the actual proper comparison.
First, Barbarian has no reason to have less than 18 if he wants to tank (medium armor + shield).
Second, I was talking about a Fighter, but that is overall irrelevant to be honest, any tank will have 18 minimum at start. By level 5-6, any character that properly wants to tank can reach a consistent 20-21 AC.

Third, Druid has nothing in damage prevention/reduction besides using slots for measly heal, unless he uses Healing Spirit (which is imo a pretty decent tactic but I know not everyone agrees on that). And most of its control capacity comes from precast spell, which are for most of them environmental ones so need careful use to bother enemies without hampering allies (or self, since Moon Druid does not get the "free pass on difficult terrain" like Land Druid unless casting Freedom of Movement).

Fighters have Shield/Parry in addition to Second Wind, have multiple attacks to Shove opponents prone (to move away with OA at disadvantage, or Grapple them to stick them on ground). Some archetypes have reliable ways to impose disadvantage on attacking other than them. They can protect allies with Protection.
Barbarians also have those Shove/Grapple tactics available, in addition to Danger Sense, additional rage benefits (all damage if Bear, better movement if Hawk) and much higher HP. Some archetypes also get additional features to force enemies to attack them.
Rogues can Disengage for free, get Uncanny Dodge when facing one powerful attack (and Arcane Tricksters can instead use Shield), can Hide as needed to avoid threat, and can Grapple with Expertise.
Paladins have high AC and high saves overall, as are Monks of higher level. Both classes get features allowing them to be sticky.
Any of those could grab Defensive Duelist at higher level for a costly, but interesting, way to avoid some attacks.
Any of those also have ranged capabilities so can adapt positioning to balance in an optimal way "ability to damage" "ability to draw aggro" "risk of getting hurt".

Most beasts don't have good saving throws overall either.
And CR 1 and 2 forms make choose either high HP and crappy DEX and AC or medium all-around.

Plz stop pretending that Moon Druid can be in essence as good of a tank as others with or without a single level in Barbarian. Until they get Elemental Forms at level 10 (because at that time you get *two* forms with native 17+ AC and those are the only ones), that is simply untrue. Moon Druid can be possibly a "decent secondary tank" with heavy feat investment and adequate party to be able to use all environmental spells without bothering them.
Moon Druid + Barb can be good tanks only with a balanced multiclass (at least Barb 4 for Danger Sense, Reckless Attack, Wolf/Bear/Tundra) and adequate feat investment. Because then you are really building upon the "Wild Shape attacks" part of the class, optimizing on the fact you'll be potent enough into it that you can be viewed by allies and enemies alike as a "martial enemy" (or rather a "Polymorphed Barbarian").

Otherwise, you're just a "good enough" damage dealer or emergency meatshield, but your true worth still comes essentially from your spells (which are blocked when raging, duh). And overall those spells can do much more in preventing threat to friends that your Wild Shapes. So even one level of Barbarian will come back to bite you hard every level after the 11-12th. What's worse, once you get Earth Elemental form, the "resistance" part of that single level dip becomes mostly redundant (still worse when facing magical sources of piercing/bludgeoning/slashing but those are not comon) so it becomes a matter of "prevent spellcasting to get +4 damage per turn and advantage on STR checks".
And if you manage to reach levels 17+, you'll cringe to see how that level you took now pushes months or years away the ability to subtle cast spells, and permanently blocks that "unlimited shape" graal.


Considering you gain the Saving Throw proficiencies of both the beast and your Druid, as well as the physical stats of the beast and the mental stats of the Druid, as well as the fact that your low AC isn't going to be relevant too much when it comes to spells, you're fairly resistant to magic.

Most beasts have very crappy physical saving throws and no named proficiencies, so that point is largely moot.
For the bolded part, say that to my NPC Druid whose Brown Bear went down from 34 to 6 HP from a single Inflict Wounds from a player, then 2 rounds after (going out of shape per HP depletion and activating second use) went down from near full HP (~30) to 0 in two normal hit and one critical hit (Attack + Flurry).
This was a 1-vs-1 lvl 3 Druid against a Monk 2 / Death Cleric 1 player with just average AC and HP. On paper, Druid should have made minced meat of him using only short-rest (so easily replenishable) resources. And that was the initial plan on my part, make him understand he was yet to be a fearsome force.
In the end, only thing that allowed Druid to take over before being downed was a successful Hold Person (which, looking back, he should have tried immediately instead of goofing around and trying to be conservative).
This experience came after a few others of player/NPC playing along party and trying to tank, being put out of form in a single round due to focus fire of 2-3 enemies (not especially metagaming, just that Druid had to get in melee to hit, so he was the closest target for most enemies).
That day I definitely learned how overrated that so-called "Moon Druid tanking" was. If you don't invest into it, it's good to absorb a few hits in emergency or otherwise actually use beasts's abilities (like climbing or running away fast). No more.

[dejarnjc]

Can you name all those other classes?

Druid, wizard, cleric. All archetypes of each. They're all excellent minionmancy classes.

[TheUser]

If your DM worships Sage Advice this build doesn't work but the wording of RAW would indicate that Kobold Moon Druids are nuts.

Wildshape dictates that you retain the "benefits" of any class or race feature.
Because Sunlight Sensitivity for Kobolds isn't a benefit the Druid would keep Pack Tactics and lose Sunlight Sensitivity while in Wildshape.

It's so broken DM's have road blocked me with Sage Advice when I attempt to explain that RAW it's 100% legal.

Anyway, a moon druid with Pack Tactics pretty much always has advantage and can wreak havoc in wildshape. Go for things like Sentinel, Resillient Constitution and later on Savage Attacker and you'll be getting some amazing DPR as well as great tank potential.

I'd never considered a level of Hexblade but it certainly would make the build even better, but at this rate you won't have any troubles hitting so it might not be worth it.

Just use your spells on things that don't require saves/to hit and you'll be peachy.

Don't worry about splashing barbarian either, you get Stoneskin at level 7 to gain resistance, and most wildshape forms have high natural armor but crummy dex so the dex + con AC is hardly worth it. You're better off just focusing on Druid levels to get better forms sooner.

[OverLordOcelot]

Nice way to ignore the actual proper comparison.
First, Barbarian has no reason to have less than 18 if he wants to tank (medium armor + shield).
Second, I was talking about a Fighter, but that is overall irrelevant to be honest, any tank will have 18 minimum at start. By level 5-6, any character that properly wants to tank can reach a consistent 20-21 AC.

You still haven't defined 'tank' here, and when you're talking about consistent AC of 20-21 on a 5-6 level character you seem to be talking about someone who does shield and one-hander, heavy armor, and picks defensive fighting style - which contradicts your expectation of fighters having protection style and excludes barbarians. Or you're assuming defensive magic items and/or full plate, in which case the druid should be getting similar resources. The problem with layering defense on defense is that your 'tank' then lacks the ability to force enemies to actually spend their attacks on him, and there's no aggro mechanics to exploit in 5e the way there is in an MMO.

I think your definition of 'tank' (and in your earlier post 'front liner') is simply flawed.


And most of its control capacity comes from precast spell, which are for most of them environmental ones so need careful use to bother enemies without hampering allies (or self, since Moon Druid does not get the "free pass on difficult terrain" like Land Druid unless casting Freedom of Movement).

Yes, you have to play intelligently, you can't just blithely toss plant growth or fog cloud, or badly place a wall of fire and expect to win fights. But I don't think that 'your abilities are not an I WIN button and you have to think about using them' is really a condemnation of the class, especially when you're comparing to classes that don't even have that sort of battlefield control. You are also overlooking the druid's ability to conjure creatures as part of battlefield control, and dropping a bunch of wolves, bears, octopi, or whatever in the middle of the enemy can disrupt their plans.


Fighters have Shield/Parry in addition to Second Wind, have multiple attacks to Shove opponents prone (to move away with OA at disadvantage, or Grapple them to stick them on ground). Some archetypes have reliable ways to impose disadvantage on attacking other than them.

It's amusing that you mention the weaker grappling capability of fighters without mentioning moon druid grappling here. Giant constrictor snake, for example, just has to land an attack to have the enemy grappled and restrained, which imposes disadvantage and gives allies advantage. And can grapple pretty much anything, while the fighter can't do his grappling shenanigans on huge creatures, and has a hard time moving large creatures.


For the bolded part, say that to my NPC Druid whose Brown Bear went down from 34 to 6 HP from a single Inflict Wounds from a player, then 2 rounds after (going out of shape per HP depletion and activating second use) went down from near full HP (~30) to 0 in two normal hit and one critical hit (Attack + Flurry).
This was a 1-vs-1 lvl 3 Druid against a Monk 2 / Death Cleric 1 player with just average AC and HP. On paper, Druid should have made minced meat of him using only short-rest (so easily replenishable) resources. And that was the initial plan on my part, make him understand he was yet to be a fearsome force.
In the end, only thing that allowed Druid to take over before being downed was a successful Hold Person (which, looking back, he should have tried immediately instead of goofing around and trying to be conservative).

So you had a one on one fight between two characters built as PCs in which one PC burned half of his long-rest spell slots and rolled well, while the second one didn't use any spells at the start. After realizing how badly he was playing, the second PC actually used a spell and handily won the fight in spite of soaking a lot of damage. And your conclusion is that a druid still winning the fight even though he wasn't using his main class abilities (spells) until the end shows that the druid is weak?

[sophontteks]

Agree with Citan, any barbarian can easily hit 18 AC and use reckless attack to make them a better target. The HP of a moon druid's form disappear very fast, and they don't scale well. And mind you the diference between 50% hits and 25% hits translates to the barbarian taking half damage, which is a quarter damage factoring resistance.

On offense things are even worse. Moon druids hit well at level 2 and 3. After that they start to hit like a wet noodle. Their wildshapes have some of the worst offensive potential in the game. Its so bad that they are normally better off forgoing all attacks for a single grapple, and barbarians are still better at that thx to advantage.

Every time a moon druid is hit, which will be often, they need to roll concentration. These low AC forms really cripple their ability to keep spells up then. They struggle to be both a caster and a tank, and they are significantly worse at either role then true casters and true tanks. This is made even worse by the fact that they can't cast at all while in wild form. RIP clutch healing.

In essense a moon druid has less resources as time goes on too, since elemental forms require both wild shapes, and these forms are nessesary to cope with the terrible scaling of wild forms. So, the moon druid can only do it every other fight on average, and must be very careful about using forms outside of combat. Ironically then, its the moon druid who is the worst druid for using wild shape for out of combat utility.

Now back the the shepherd.

The shepherd can tank better then moon druids because of summoning. There are other summoners in the game, but their abilities pale in comparison. A shepherd can heal all summons passively and with unicorn spirit, gives them all magic attacks, and gives them a pretty hefty HP boost. No other summoner comes close to this.

These summoned creatures have crazy offensive potential. They can summon what is effectively multiple moon druids worth of animals. Summons are balanced by having non-magic attacks, except these ones actually have magic attacks. And just like moon druids, if the enemy chews through this wall of HP, the shepherd can just cast again.

Except, unlike a moon druid, a shepherd is free to cast while tanking for the team. The shepherd also isn't taking unnessesary concentration checks.

Shepherds scale better. As they level they gain access to better summons then animals and they can summon more often. The mid and late game shepherd abilities are also pretty insane.

Shepherds are arguably the best healers in the game. Unicorn spirit is OP. One use of healing word can bring back the entire team on a bonus action. The sheer value of turning level 1 spells into mass heals is, again, insane.

Finally the shepherds have better utility and fluff. They are free to use their wildshapes out of combat without hurting their in-combat potential. And they can speak to animals at-will. A massively underappreciated ability. I actually made a shepherd who focused on using animals as a spy network and it was brutally effective at no resource cost.

[Amdy_vill]

Ok, so as the title suggests, im looking for the most optimized, brokenly, busted, unfair, almost downright cheating Druid. It has to be from offical WoTC material and Forgetten Realms compatible. He can multiclass into one other class as well (but doesnt have to) Any suggestions?

moon Druid. at early levels cast con animal and transfrom into that animals(suggestion wolf/dire wolf). remember that feats and there stat bumps carry over into animal forms as they are counted as class abilities. at later levels cast batter con spells before transforming. you can also call lightning. when you run out of wild shapes polymorph.

[Man_Over_Game]

Why Moon Druids aren't that good


Why Citan is wrong

Yeah, I kinda saw the same thing.

Burst damage, crit, landed three hits, and the Druid won. Inflict Wounds deals between 3-30 damage (16.5 average) and your example had the Druid take 28 from the spell. (There's a 1% chance to get =>28 damage from 3d10 (https://anydice.com/program/39))

If the Monk had less than a +3 Con Mod and took average for his hit dice, he'd have 27 HP. The Monk would have been dead in the first round with that kind of luck, and yet the Druid survived to take a crit and two attacks the following turns and still won.


Even assuming the AC difference of an 11 AC bear vs a 16 AC Barbarian, you're talking about a 5 AC difference to hit. That's the difference between someone hitting you 50% of the time and 75% of the time.


Nice way to ignore the actual proper comparison.

I think you might have missed the second part of the same post:



Even assuming the ...

[...]

Assuming your low AC is enough to grant your enemies a 100% hit rate, and combat lasts about 4 rounds, you'd have to take about 9 damage per round before being forced out of Druid form, when you have about 16 HP to survive with. You then can Shift again for another 34 HP and another 4 rounds of combat. Take a Short Rest, do it again. Keep doing this until you have to rely on your Druid spellcasting.

Compared to a Fighter, who has about 20 HP at level 2, and is hit 50% of the time, that 9 damage per round turns into 4.5 damage per round on average. Rounding up, he'd be able to last 5 rounds throughout the day. The Fighter could use Second Wind, but that would only extend his lifespan by about one round per Short Rest.

You could include Hit Die to the Fighter, I suppose, but the Druid deserves access to the same resource, so I didn't include it.

This would be a comparison to an AC 11 Bear form, a 21 AC Fighter, and an enemy creature that has +10 to hit.

[OverLordOcelot]

Agree with Citan, any barbarian can easily hit 18 AC and use reckless attack to make them a better target. The HP of a moon druid's form disappear very fast, and they don't scale well. And mind you the diference between 50% hits and 25% hits translates to the barbarian taking half damage, which is a quarter damage factoring resistance.

Again, barbarians are only able to hit 18AC at low levels by forgoing 2-handed weapons for shields, which means they're not doing the crazy damage possibly with reach and sentinel shenanigans that GWM/PAM/Sentinal builds do. The crazy damage stuff that comes up on the forums doesn't have an early 18 AC. The post talks later about forms hitting like a 'wet noodle', but seems to be comparing druid damage to high damage GWM/SS builds and not sword and board or to non-sustainable nova-smite paladins, while at the same time comparing druid defenses to sword and board AC.


On offense things are even worse. Moon druids hit well at level 2 and 3. After that they start to hit like a wet noodle. Their wildshapes have some of the worst offensive potential in the game. Its so bad that they are normally better off forgoing all attacks for a single grapple, and barbarians are still better at that thx to advantage.

Druids can pick a form that has grapple as a rider on their to-hit roll, like the ones I listed out earlier. Giant scorpion, for example, can do 2 attacks with a grapple rider each round, plus a stiger with d10 and 4d10 poison damage. They're not going to hit like a GWM user, but that's not something you can just shrug off. Also a barbarian is only capable of grappling against large and smaller enemies; against huge and larger enemies, he can't grapple because of the size difference, so I'm not sure how one can class his grappling as strictly 'better' when there are whole common categories of enemies he can't touch. The druid can also do things like get advantage


They struggle to be both a caster and a tank, and they are significantly worse at either role then true casters and true tanks. This is made even worse by the fact that they can't cast at all while in wild form. RIP clutch healing.

For the benefit of any newbies trying to learn here: no one tossing these terms around has defined what a 'tank' is or why a 'caster' isn't one, so the quoted comment is basically meaningless. If you're tanking then you use your abilities to tank, for a moon druid you combine your spells with forms to tank, you don't just go into a form and count everything else as 'not tanking'. If you're playing a druid of any flavor and not using your spells, you're going to do badly because you're not using your major class ability. Also of what he's calling tanking classes, only paladins can do clutch healing, and it requires a regular action and touch range. That's not all that much better than the druid's bonus action self-heal.

[Rukelnikov]

Druid, wizard, cleric. All archetypes of each. They're all excellent minionmancy classes.

Not really. Cleric only has 2 such spells:

*Plannar Ally, lvl 6, it is under no compulsion to do your bidding, you have to convince it to cooperate, and drains xp as an NPC, its a powerful spell, but its basically summon DMPC.
*Conjure Celestial, lvl 7, 1 min cast time.

So it only really has 1 where you can use your summon as you wish and gets access to it at lvl 13, also no summon oriented subclass.

Neither is usable in combat

Wizard does much better but not in combat:

*Find Familiar, Summon Lesser Demons, Summon Greater Demons, Conjure Minor Elementals, Infernal Calling, Conjure elemental

Summon Lesser/Greater Demons are the only ones that can be cast as an action, the lesser ones you can't control and are actually hostile, the greater ones get a save every round, and when they make it they become hostile.

Druid is the only one that can summon as an action, manage the creatures it summons, and not have them turn on the caster.

[sophontteks]

Again, barbarians are only able to hit 18AC at low levels by forgoing 2-handed weapons for shields, which means they're not doing the crazy damage possibly with reach and sentinel shenanigans that GWM/PAM/Sentinal builds do. The crazy damage stuff that comes up on the forums doesn't have an early 18 AC. The post talks later about forms hitting like a 'wet noodle', but seems to be comparing druid damage to high damage GWM/SS builds and not sword and board or to non-sustainable nova-smite paladins, while at the same time comparing druid defenses to sword and board AC.

A barbarian can use a shield or drop it as they please. Using it they are still by far out damaging a moon druid. I'm at a total loss how you think a druid is keeping up when their attack bonuses don't even increase. They start off strong, but very quickly struggle to even land an attack, let alone compete with a real martial class.




Druids can pick a form that has grapple as a rider on their to-hit roll, like the ones I listed out earlier. Giant scorpion, for example, can do 2 attacks with a grapple rider each round, plus a stiger with d10 and 4d10 poison damage. They're not going to hit like a GWM user, but that's not something you can just shrug off. Also a barbarian is only capable of grappling against large and smaller enemies; against huge and larger enemies, he can't grapple because of the size difference, so I'm not sure how one can class his grappling as strictly 'better' when there are whole common categories of enemies he can't touch. The druid can also do things like get advantage

A giant scorpion has a whopping +4 attack. Less then a level 1 martial. It rarely hits. This is the problem. This is why druids hit like wet noodles, or basically. They just don't hit at all.

A barbarian, on the other hand, grapples with advantage vs. the opponents dex/strength, rather then AC. It rarely misses. Enemies rarely have athletics, but every martial has it.

Finally, the enemy can make a contested check to eacape the grapple. A scorpion has 15 strength. A barbarian has advantage and 18-20 strength.

Yeah the giant scorpion is in no way coming close to a competitive grappler. A competitive grappler can grapple consistently. He can reliably combo with casters and reliable pin the enemy down on demand.



For the benefit of any newbies trying to learn here: no one tossing these terms around has defined what a 'tank' is or why a 'caster' isn't one, so the quoted comment is basically meaningless. If you're tanking then you use your abilities to tank, for a moon druid you combine your spells with forms to tank, you don't just go into a form and count everything else as 'not tanking'. If you're playing a druid of any flavor and not using your spells, you're going to do badly because you're not using your major class ability. Also of what he's calling tanking classes, only paladins can do clutch healing, and it requires a regular action and touch range. That's not all that much better than the druid's bonus action self-heal.
Exactly my point. A moon druid can't use his spells while wildshaped, and all the best druid spells are concentration. A moon druid quite literally can't take full advantage of his spellcasting potential. Its a huge loss, and its a big reason why a shepherd is much stronger.

As for clutch healing. A shepherd can heal everything in his aura as a bonus action. Clutch is when you have multiple teammates down and bring them all back up in an instant. And shepherds tank just fine by creation massive hp walls of summons.

[Yunru]

Odd you cherry pick the Giant Scorpion. Since CR 3 is the only CR that has the problem you mention (except maybe 6).

[GlenSmash!]

While I agree in principal, in practice it's never seemed worth it to me (DM/campaign dependent). Generally my entire party has been knocked out or died before my single classed moon druid would have to worry about his health.

I've found this to be true too. The best Moon Druids I've seen weren't OP multiclasses, but players who knew what spell to cast before wildshaping. A simple Wind Wall can help protect your party at range before you go beast. Spike growth is good to stop melee. A healing spirit does wonders too.

[dejarnjc]

Not really. Cleric only has 2 such spells:

*Plannar Ally, lvl 6, it is under no compulsion to do your bidding, you have to convince it to cooperate, and drains xp as an NPC, its a powerful spell, but its basically summon DMPC.
*Conjure Celestial, lvl 7, 1 min cast time.

So it only really has 1 where you can use your summon as you wish and gets access to it at lvl 13, also no summon oriented subclass.

Neither is usable in combat

Wizard does much better but not in combat:

*Find Familiar, Summon Lesser Demons, Summon Greater Demons, Conjure Minor Elementals, Infernal Calling, Conjure elemental

Summon Lesser/Greater Demons are the only ones that can be cast as an action, the lesser ones you can't control and are actually hostile, the greater ones get a save every round, and when they make it they become hostile.

Animate Dead is one of the best minionmancy spells in the game though it is obviously campaign and party dependent. Regardless, Clerics and wizards can both cast this spell making them both excellent minionmancers.

Wizard also has tiny servant though YMMV on whether this is an effective minionmancy spell.


Druid is the only one that can summon as an action, manage the creatures it summons, and not have them turn on the caster.

Technically rangers can too but they're obviously not in the same category spell slot-wise. This is certainly a plus for the druid minionmancer. Generally speaking, I'd say that druids are the most flexible of the minionmancy classes but clerics and wizards can certainly hold their own.



I've found this to be true too. The best Moon Druids I've seen weren't OP multiclasses, but players who knew what spell to cast before wildshaping. A simple Wind Wall can help protect your party at range before you go beast. Spike growth is good to stop melee. A healing spirit does wonders too.

Truth. The power of the moon druid its its versatility. It does most everything very well.

It can heal.
It can tank.
It can summon - yeah, yeah shephard summons have more HP and can be healed... experiences probably differ on this but my own are that if the enemies are wasting time attacking your summons and not the party then your party will clean them up fast
It can crowd control.
It can cast save or suck spells.
It is difficult to lock down (wildshape can allow the druid to auto escape grapples, restraints, environmental effects etc.)

The main weakness of moon druids, IMO, are the lack of blasting/burst damage, the lack of non-concentration spells, and their reliability on maintaining concentration on the spells they cast before wildshaping.


I'm not saying they're the best class out there or anything. They're just a great generalist class that happens to be super survivable.

[GlenSmash!]

My 2 cp. Hill dwarf moon druid/barbarian with Dwarven Fortitude is pretty indestructible. Between rage, wildshape and healing when you take the dodge action, it'd be pretty hard to die in combat.

Combined with periapt of wound closure it's even better.

Though I would go with Monk over Barbarian so I could Dodge with a bonus action.

[Zuras]

If you are looking for Druid build that feels broken, Moon + Barbarian or Shepherd are the two real winners.

You will only feel broken for a couple of levels, though.

A Moon Druid 2/Barbarian 1 is completely outside the power curve for a regular Tier 1 party. Similarly, a Shepherd Druid at levels 5-7, leaning hard on Conjure Animals, is absolutely amazing.

At level 8 and beyond, though, Druids don’t really outpace other classes at potential damage or combat potential, they just become ridiculously flexible. Because you have full access to your entire spell list, at high levels you end up feeling OP in situations where you got intel and prepared the right spells, not because of a specific build.

I’ve played a Moon Druid through 17 levels, and while I only felt OP at 2nd and 5th level (when first gaining Wildshape and Conjure Animals), I absolutely never felt weak or that I wasn’t pulling my weight in the party.

[Citan]

You still haven't defined 'tank' here, and when you're talking about consistent AC of 20-21 on a 5-6 level character you seem to be talking about someone who does shield and one-hander, heavy armor, and picks defensive fighting style - which contradicts your expectation of fighters having protection style and excludes barbarians. Or you're assuming defensive magic items and/or full plate, in which case the druid should be getting similar resources. The problem with layering defense on defense is that your 'tank' then lacks the ability to force enemies to actually spend their attacks on him, and there's no aggro mechanics to exploit in 5e the way there is in an MMO.

I think your definition of 'tank' (and in your earlier post 'front liner') is simply flawed.



Yes, you have to play intelligently, you can't just blithely toss plant growth or fog cloud, or badly place a wall of fire and expect to win fights. But I don't think that 'your abilities are not an I WIN button and you have to think about using them' is really a condemnation of the class, especially when you're comparing to classes that don't even have that sort of battlefield control. You are also overlooking the druid's ability to conjure creatures as part of battlefield control, and dropping a bunch of wolves, bears, octopi, or whatever in the middle of the enemy can disrupt their plans.



It's amusing that you mention the weaker grappling capability of fighters without mentioning moon druid grappling here. Giant constrictor snake, for example, just has to land an attack to have the enemy grappled and restrained, which imposes disadvantage and gives allies advantage. And can grapple pretty much anything, while the fighter can't do his grappling shenanigans on huge creatures, and has a hard time moving large creatures.



So you had a one on one fight between two characters built as PCs in which one PC burned half of his long-rest spell slots and rolled well, while the second one didn't use any spells at the start. After realizing how badly he was playing, the second PC actually used a spell and handily won the fight in spite of soaking a lot of damage. And your conclusion is that a druid still winning the fight even though he wasn't using his main class abilities (spells) until the end shows that the druid is weak?
You are not really constructive considering how you cherry-pick and put my arguments out of context to try and decredibilize me, but I'll make the effort to answer just one more time.

1. High AC: I was picking Fighter because Fighter's defense comes from high AC first. Barbarian has resistance and high HP to compensate, so he can cope with 17 AC if he wants to keep a hand for grapple. Or go with 18-19 AC with shield and Shove instead. And contrarily to what you said,
a) Druid can not and will never get the same equipment as others, per the fluff restrictions on armor.
b) There ARE MANY WAYS to aggro, and I quoted quite a few of them. Sadly, none of them are among Druid capabilities besides every thing any martial can do (Shove/Grapple) better than a Druid in beast form.

2. Giant Constrictor Snake: not only does this requires your DM to agree you saw one in your life, which is far from a given imx, that one has only 12 AC and 60 HP, and only a +6 to hit. So yeah you are taking the one particular form that has particular Grapple at the cost of overall everything else. Barbarian of that level has the same +6 to hit but can deal more damage, or mix Grapple and attack, both with much better chance than the Druid. A Fighter of that level will have picked either Sentinel or PAM or Shield Master depending on what aspect of tanking he wants to focus on.

3. Tanking: is comprised of "keeping aggro and otherwise use own abilities to prevent threat/damage to friends", "surviving threat on self". Not hard to understand, commonly and widely accepted definition, that goes far beyond just "being able to absorb hits".

4. Conjure Animals is definitely an awesome spell that can be used for tanking, but that's something any Druid (or Bard for that matter, or Ranger) can do. With higher chance of not breaking concentration early while we are at it, since keeping away from direct threat while contributing in other ways (Thorns Whip being the most obvious, or low-level damage spells, or Sacred Flame from feat for example). So totally irrelevant to the comparative merits of Moon archetype for tanking.

5. If you had actually paid attention and properly read, you would have noticed that the one PC vs PC fight I spoke about was just the penultimate of multiple experiences of low-middle level Druids getting torn down because "hey I'm a Moon Druid I can tank": AC -and actual defensive abilities- are *actually important* until level 13+.

6. Also, back on question of equipment, since you spoke of it, good luck getting any equipement like +1 armor that can be "worn" by a creature (including the strangely "just uncommon" Adamantine armor that is yet much more powerful than any +3 armor at higher level). Or +1 weapon for that matter, although the discussion is more on resilience than damage.

------
Just to illustrate, these are examples of characters (single class or very nearly) that can be good tanks imo.
1. Paladins
a) Crown Paladin: high base AC, good base HP, ways to heal self, Channel Divinity to force enemies to keep close to him (not great by itself, but paired with party coordination or spell hampering vision/movement becomes really efficient), Command and Compelled Duel prepared, smite spells otherwise.
b). Conquest Paladin: possibly better, thanks to Channel Divinity that can be summed up as "friendly Fear".
c). Redemption Paladin: possibly better in another way, thanks to Channel Divinity that returns damage and ability to take damage in place of someone else.
All of these can easily pick a Shield and Shield Master, or Sentinel, and also give other ways to protect friends between Bless and Auras that gives themselves a high chance to avoid effects and keep concentration.

2. Fighters
a) Eldricht Knight: access to Shield and Absorb Element, although few slots, help him survive 2-3 rounds of being overcrowded thanks to an easy 25 AC (only critical hits are still dangerous hence love for Adamantine). He can easily stack feats like Sentinel, PAM or Mage Slayer. Once getting access to Eldricht Strike, can completely hold down one or several enemies although that does cost him a big chunk of long-rest resources.
One flaw that can easily be addressed by multiclassing into a caster (or even just dipping).
b). Cavalier Fighter: counter-intuitively, all except one features work without a mount. The ability to set disadvantage on attacking anyone other than you, for free (as long as you get a melee hit) is probably the best ability from a investment/resource cunsumption/benefit ratio.
c) Battlemaster: pick Trip, Goading, Rally and otherwise apply the same building ideas as the others.
All three get multiple attacks to further vary how they mix attack, defense and control.
Note: at higher level, Champion becomes the best tank because of its regenerative abilities, but at higher level any class can be made into tanking so I'll keep around levels 5-11.

3. Nature Cleric: 20 AC, Spirit Guardians to pair with either Thorns Whip or Sentinel+Shillelagh and even possibly Plant Growth, ability to keep allies alive with Warding Bond.
Alternative: Tempest, that can get Booming Blade + Warcaster for decent damage with rider and fits thematically, or Forge, that can boasts an impressive "base" 22 AC (heavy armor enchanted + shield + lvl 6 bonus) and still get Thorns Whip or Booming Blade from Magic Initiate.

4. Long Death Monk: free Fear as an action, THP on kill, plus the classic Stunning Strike nova. Once you get past level 7-8, you can be pretty sturdy.
Alternative: Open Hand Monk with Prodigy feat for Expertise into Athletics and using and abusing both common Shove/Grapple and archetype riders on Flurry (since he's as effective with any body part, you can grapple two creatures and still make headbutts or kicks).
Alternative, possibly better actually: Drunken Master that can freely choose between evasion or stickiness, and has a very, VERY good "attack redirection" feature.
Alternative, possibly better in another way: Kensei Monk: pick any/several among Sentinel, Mage Slayer and PAM and you're overall set. At higher level since benefits affect mainly your weapon it's another incentive to use Ki on Dodge/Dash.
At higher level, 4E becomes better than the others at tanking (if you specialize it as such) because the higher ability cost is more manageable.
On that, any Monk past level 8 is capable of tanking: decent base AC (18), ability to reroll, ability to Dodge and Stunning Strike and enough Ki to sustain this plus sparing Flurry and SS makes them capable enough to tank even if they are yet far from others (and until they get level 14 then 18 to become the best tanks).

5. Arcane Trickster Rogue with Tough or Grappler depending on whether you want to maximize defense or keep it balanced: like EK, main benefits come from spells (although AT also gets Uncanny Dodge and Evasion which won't help at all against crowds but works wonder for 1-on-1), flaw is little number of slots. Multiclassing into a caster helps much.

6. Swords Bard: gets a decent AC boost up to 5 times per short rest, that can be stacked with Shield from Magice Secrets (much) later. Gets several spells to force enemy to aggro him if you don't want to play a classic controller. Grab Inspiring Leader for a very decent boost to survivability for you and friends.
On higher levels, note that Bards get some of the most powerful aggro spell, and it does not even endangers them: Antipathy/Sympathy! The problem is making the spell useful without itself being under its effect, but it can be done without too much hassle as long as you can plan away.

7. Bladesinger Wizard: 19-20 AC from level 2-4 depending on starting attributes, every encounter, unless you have bad luck and have long encounters or more than 2 between short rest. Of course you have a miserable hit die so you cannot actually tank until you're level 5-6 far minimum. As you progress things get much better, between Mirror Image, Fire Shield to quote only the few low level spells I remember, because past 6th level spells this becomes stupid.

8. Strength Ranger: pick Heavy Armor Master, use Ensnaring Strike or Warding Wind at low level, then whatever among Plant Growth, Healing Spirit or Conjure Animals to keep enemies busy in addition to basic martial tactics.

9. Fiend or Hexblade or Archfey Warlock 5+: use either Hexblade to get armor and shield, pick Sentinel and hack away with archetype's Hex, Shadow Blade and Shield Master, or get Fiend with Moderately Armored feat if you want, preferably Sentinel, and stack Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield before you go get them (or maybe use mass Command to make them come towards you before you unleash a Fear). A single level of Rogue for Expertise opens other interesting options like picking instead Grappler feat so you can Booming Blade them at advantage while keeping them above a Create Bonfire.
Or be Chain Archfey, cast Plant Growth, get familiar to hover around with Darkness while you herd them with Repelling Blast / Grasp of Hadar, or keep Darkness on you as a Blade and go hack at them.

10. Shepherd Druid: just keep Healing Spirit active along with your Unicorn Aura, moving the former as needed, and otherwise getting into melee, Dodging/attacking as needed and using a Healing Words on yourself as needed. Since anytime you cast a spell you restore "Druid level" to allies in your Aura, even at just level 6 you basically can get a Mass Healing Words for the cost of a level 1 spell, before even taking into account Healing Spirit capabilities. Of course, if you're bothered keeping concentration on a healing spell (which is probably overkill anyways), the famous Conjure Animals is here (although you are not really aggroing yourself ^^).
If you can get a Cleric pal ready to use Warding Bond on you, good luck to the DM to kill party with regular tactics (of course several spell-based tactics or CaW can still mess you up bad).

11. Divine Soul Sorcerer: pick Extended, upcast Extended Aid/Death Wards, pick Inspiring Leader and Tough to offset the low AC and HP (or just dip one level into something giving armor proficiency), use Command (from Cleric) to keep enemies to you, Cause Fear to put them in disarray without friendly fire, or twin Warding Bond friends if you really went and big on HP and self-sacrifice. Or simply build yourself up to use Cleric tactics (Command, Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon, Dodge, Sanctuary) or Sorcerer tactics (Hypnotic Pattern, Fear, Stinking Cloud, Slow, etc).

[Trustypeaches]

Not really. Cleric only has 2 such spells:

*Plannar Ally, lvl 6, it is under no compulsion to do your bidding, you have to convince it to cooperate, and drains xp as an NPC, its a powerful spell, but its basically summon DMPC.
*Conjure Celestial, lvl 7, 1 min cast time.

So it only really has 1 where you can use your summon as you wish and gets access to it at lvl 13, also no summon oriented subclass.

Neither is usable in combat

Wizard does much better but not in combat:

*Find Familiar, Summon Lesser Demons, Summon Greater Demons, Conjure Minor Elementals, Infernal Calling, Conjure elemental

Summon Lesser/Greater Demons are the only ones that can be cast as an action, the lesser ones you can't control and are actually hostile, the greater ones get a save every round, and when they make it they become hostile.

Druid is the only one that can summon as an action, manage the creatures it summons, and not have them turn on the caster.Are we forgetting Animate Undead and Animate Objects, two of the best summoning spells in the game?

[MaxWilson]

2. Giant Constrictor Snake: not only does this requires your DM to agree you saw one in your life, which is far from a given imx, that one has only 12 AC and 60 HP, and only a +6 to hit.

Nitpick: it's pretty trivial to get Giant Constrictor to AC 15 via Mage Armor. (Your wizard or EK buddy who learned Mage Armor for his own sake will get a lot of mileage out of also casting it on you, and then it benefits most of your forms from wildshaped Giant Octopus or Giant Constrictor to Polymorphed Giant Ape.) And of course, once the enemy is in your coils he has disadvantage on attacks against you, at which points AC 15 actually starts to feel pretty tanky.

"Only" +6 to hit, but you're getting one attack per round, and a possible opportunity attack if the enemy tries to ignore you and attack someone else--that's a reasonably good incentive for monsters to attack you, IME.

While we're on the topic of grappling and snakes... technically you could summon 8 constrictor snakes and they can restrain anything of any size waaaay better than the fighter could. In practice, you probably won't get 8 snakes, and no sane DM will let them restrain a Gargantuan creature anyway, no matter what the rules say.

Nevertheless a Moon Druid is indeed an excellent spellcaster and a good tank to boot. Shepherd Druid is a better summoner but Moon Druid is a better generalist.

[Rukelnikov]

Animate Dead is one of the best minionmancy spells in the game though it is obviously campaign and party dependent. Regardless, Clerics and wizards can both cast this spell making them both excellent minionmancers.

Wizard also has tiny servant though YMMV on whether this is an effective minionmancy spell.

We were talking about summoning spells, but even then this, and Create Undead, require even more prep than the 1 min Conjures since you need to have humanoid corpses around and spend slots every morning to keep them around docile, and logistics.


Technically rangers can too but they're obviously not in the same category spell slot-wise. This is certainly a plus for the druid minionmancer. Generally speaking, I'd say that druids are the most flexible of the minionmancy classes but clerics and wizards can certainly hold their own.

That's true, forgot about rangers. I'd say the Wizard can hold his own. Cleric's got Animate Dead which is hard/very hard to pull 80% of the time, and no subclass dedicated to them.

[MaxWilson]

We were talking about summoning spells, but even then this, and Create Undead, require even more prep than the 1 min Conjures since you need to have humanoid corpses around and spend slots every morning to keep them around docile, and logistics.

There are alternatives to spending spell slots every day. Note for example that wights are susceptible to Mass Suggestion and Geas because they're not immune to charm, and those spells can last for months or years or (in the case of Geas IX) even permanently. Not relevant until high levels though.

[Man_Over_Game]

There are alternatives to spending spell slots every day. Note for example that wights are susceptible to Mass Suggestion and Geas because they're not immune to charm, and those spells can last for months or years or (in the case of Geas IX) even permanently. Not relevant until high levels though.

Huh. The alternative to an army of Simulacrum genies, an army of blackmailed Wights who have no choice but to obey your every command or kill themselves.

[Rukelnikov]

There are alternatives to spending spell slots every day. Note for example that wights are susceptible to Mass Suggestion and Geas because they're not immune to charm, and those spells can last for months or years or (in the case of Geas IX) even permanently. Not relevant until high levels though.

But suggestion or geas dont let you micro manage them.

[Man_Over_Game]

But suggestion or geas dont let you micro manage them.

"Obey my commands and protect me from those who wish me harm."

[Citan]

Nitpick: it's pretty trivial to get Giant Constrictor to AC 15 via Mage Armor. (Your wizard or EK buddy who learned Mage Armor for his own sake will get a lot of mileage out of also casting it on you, and then it benefits most of your forms from wildshaped Giant Octopus or Giant Constrictor to Polymorphed Giant Ape.) And of course, once the enemy is in your coils he has disadvantage on attacks against you, at which points AC 15 actually starts to feel pretty tanky.

"Only" +6 to hit, but you're getting one attack per round, and a possible opportunity attack if the enemy tries to ignore you and attack someone else--that's a reasonably good incentive for monsters to attack you, IME.

While we're on the topic of grappling and snakes... technically you could summon 8 constrictor snakes and they can restrain anything of any size waaaay better than the fighter could. In practice, you probably won't get 8 snakes, and no sane DM will let them restrain a Gargantuan creature anyway, no matter what the rules say.

Nevertheless a Moon Druid is indeed an excellent spellcaster and a good tank to boot. Shepherd Druid is a better summoner but Moon Druid is a better generalist.
True, I 100% agree to the fact it's easy enough to boost yourself AC by average +2 on whatever form with Mage Armor.
I also completely agree on the opportunity attacks, but those are things humanoids characters have other (and sometimes better) ways to enhance. Druid's only improvement is taking the Sentinel feat, which is the second really useful feat for a tanking Druid.
It can certainly be worth it, no doubt on that. And you can certainly build a Moon Druid into a pretty good tank without multiclassing if you dedicate everything to it from the start (like the aforementioned Dwarven for the "use Die when Dodging" + Sentinel feat or a racial providing CON-based Unarmored for example to go with Earth Elemental, or Magic Initiate for Mage Armor on Water Elemental). But you'll still need to wait for level 10 before you can compensate the lack of actual tanking abilities through just sheer HP/AC/Offense.

But that is a different thing than saying "Moon Druid has enough tools to tank without careful choices", which is not accurate, although it is perfectly true for at the very least Paladins, Clerics and some archetypes among other classes (confer my edit above, in which I realize I forgot about Swashbuckler Rogue's level 9 ability, my bad ^^).

That's the same reason why I put Conjure Animals aside: it's the kind of awesomeness *any* Druid (or Ranger or Bard) can use, possibly with better reliability since no obligation to get into melee to deal damage (so less risk of losing concentration -even if we agree any guy that uses concentration spell as go-to tactic will pick Resilience). So it's irrelevant to the choice of archetype, except for thematic reason (Playing a Druid that lives 100% as a beast leading a pack does have charm ;)).

And I agree that Moon Druid is overall a better generalist because "by essence" you can simply more easily do whatever kind of task that requires subtletly, strength, mobility, discretion or prudence since you have many more chances to transform into the best beast for current environment and population. Any Druid could, more or less, match that kind of versatility by proxy (using Conjure spells) but this means using slots and rituals, and is overall more cumbersome in comparison.

In the particular topic of fight though, I'd argue that Shepherd Druid is better in versatility until level 10 because you can choose different effect on each use of Aura and its scales. Plus the big incentive on using Conjure Animals (but as I said, any Druid can cast it, and archetype has no bearing on actual beast choice either, so I'll put that aside ^^).
After that though, I have no opinion until level 18-20: I love the improved conjurations, but indeed Elemental Forms are plain awesome. :)

Once you get "Subtle casting" in any beast (or elemental) form, considering on top of that the sheer number of different creatures a Druid of that level knows (or can get to know thanks to all travel/communication/location spells), of course Moon Druid is leagues above for a solo (or at least "self-centered" ) character. Shepherd does still have merit as a teamplayer (mass-healing 20 HP for a 1st level slot is useful at any level imo ^^).

[Trustypeaches]

We were talking about summoning spells, but even then this, and Create Undead, require even more prep than the 1 min Conjures since you need to have humanoid corpses around and spend slots every morning to keep them around docile, and logistics.

That's true, forgot about rangers. I'd say the Wizard can hold his own. Cleric's got Animate Dead which is hard/very hard to pull 80% of the time, and no subclass dedicated to them.Bards, (Forge) Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers also all get Animate Objects, which while not a long duration spell is one of the most potent summonings in the game.

[MaxWilson]

"Obey my commands and protect me from those who wish me harm."

I'd probably opt for something a little bit more formal: "Join the Dread Legion of Obedient Wights!" [which I happen to be the CO of].

Joining a mercenary organization for no good reason is approximately as reasonable a suggestion as giving away your warhorse to a beggar for no reason at all.

Yes, the wights can be a bit of a headache because now all of your employees are murderous murdering murderers who murder things for fun, but hey, that's roleplaying for you. :-) Just make sure you have good "people" skills including Intimidation, and keep them busy as much as possible murdering monsters for treasure (or country, or whatever the equivalent situation is in your campaign) instead of people.

===============================================


True, I 100% agree to the fact it's easy enough to boost yourself AC by average +2 on whatever form with Mage Armor.
I also completely agree on the opportunity attacks, but those are things humanoids characters have other (and sometimes better) ways to enhance. Druid's only improvement is taking the Sentinel feat, which is the second really useful feat for a tanking Druid.

Sentinel is okay but IMO a bit overrated. You can get a lot of the same mileage out of plain old Giant Octopus/Constrictor/Lizard/Crocodile form, because after all what you're really after for tanking purposes is an opportunity attack which prevents an enemy from moving, and with a restraining attack you've already got that. Sentinel is still useful against enemies that can teleport (Githyankis are so annoying!) but that's a minority of monsters.

When comparing Barbarians to Moon Druids though, I look at e.g. a Deadly encounter with Githyankis where the 6th level Warbarian walks out of the fight with 14/55 HP left and the Moon Druid tank walks out of the fight with 28/39 HP left plus 44/60 wildshape HP left in the bank, and there's no question in my mind that the Moon Druid is a more durable tank despite making some poor decisions during the fight. 120 HP per short rest is a tough advantage to beat--getting resistance from Rage doesn't come close to making up for having only 1/3 as much HP, especially because Rage only works against some damage types.


Lightly edited for readability.


Suddenly, four Githyanki warriors appear and attack!
10W 17Ch++ 16S 15C+ 13D+ 11I Pedro the Half-elf Warbarian
11I 11W 11C+ 8Ch 13D++ 8S Martin the Moon Druid
10D 15I+ 12W+ 8S 9Ch 14C Morty the Forge/Necromancer
7 17Ch++ 8 15D 12W+ 15C+ - Half Elf Divine Shepherdlock

Morty doesn't have skeletons yet and is down to only 10 SP.
Martin the Skulker Goblin Moon Druid
Pedro the GWM Fiend Warbearian (Str 16) w/ Agonizing Repelling Blast and Improved Pact Weapon.
Morty, Mobile Forge Necro
Leia, Divine Soul/Shepherd

Anyway, the githyanki warriors pull out their swords.
* Leia's new HP: 49
49
* Pedro's new HP: 55
55
* Morty's new HP: 38
38
* Martin's new HP: 39
39
* Gith1's new HP: 49
49
* Gith2's new HP: 49
49
* Gith3's new HP: 49
49
* Gith4's new HP: 49
49
The four githyanki will each attack one PC.
Morty will Dodge
Leia will cast Conjure Wolves and throw up a Bear Totem.
Martin will shift to Giant Constrictor Snake form and attack Leia's Githyanki.
Pedro will attack Morty's Githyanki.
* Attack on Leia: [2.att 17 +4 4d6+2] damage.
[10+19] => 29
(17) -> 10
13+4
[8+2] => 10
(22) -> 19
18+4
[17+2] => 19
Attack on Leia: 29 damage.
She Shields!
* 7 becomes -7
Leia's SP changed from 0 to -7
* Leia's Init: [d20+3]
[11+3] => 14
Leia's Init: 14
* Githyanki's init: [d20+2]
[2+2] => 4
Githyanki's init: 4
* 11
Leia's thp changed from 0 to 11
* 11
Leia's thp changed from 11 to 22
* 11
Leia's thp changed from 22 to 33
* 11
Leia's thp changed from 33 to 44
* Leia's new thp: 11
11
* Pedro's new thp: 11
11
* Morty's new thp: 11
11
* Martin's new thp: 11
11
* 19 becomes -19
Leia's thp changed from 11 to -8
* Leia's new thp: 0
0
* 8 becomes -8
Leia's hp changed from 49 to 41
* Leia's new SP: 30
30
* 7 becomes -7
Leia's sp changed from 30 to 23
* Leia's concentration: [d20+6]
[17+6] => 23
Leia's concentration: 23
She keeps concentration on her wolves!
There are 8 wolves but I won't bother to enter them yet.
* Anyway, Martin's init: [d20+2]
[15+2] => 17
Anyway, Martin's init: 17
* Martin is way faster than the Githyanki. Does he hit? [d20+6]
[11+6] => 17
Martin is way faster than the Githyanki. Does he hit? 17
* Yes, he hits! The Githyanki is restrained! It also takes some damage. [2d8+4]
[13+4] => 17
Yes, he hits! The Githyanki is restrained! It also takes some damage. 17
* 17 becomes -17
Gith1's HP changed from 49 to 32
But the Githyanki is able to Misty Step away and still make its attack as planned! Githyanki are so annoying.
* How about Martin's Githyanki? [2.att 15 4 4d6+2]
[16+29] => 45
(23) -> 16
19+4
[14+2] => 16
(24) -> 29
20+4
[27+2] => 29
How about Martin's Githyanki? 45
Oh, a hit and a crit! Martin takes 45 points of slashing and psychic damage!
Pedro...
Recklessly Attacks Morty's Githyanki.
* 2.att 17 +1a 2d6+13: [20+0] => 20
(18) -> 20
17+1
max(17,9) => 17
[7+13] => 20
(16) -> 0
15+1
max(15,2) => 15
* Martin's new CHP: 60
60
* 45 becomes -45
Martin's CHP changed from 60 to 15
* 20 becomes -20
Gith3's CHP changed from 0 to -20
* Gith1.HP: 32
* Gith2.HP: 49
* Gith3.HP: 49
* Gith4.HP: 49
* Gith3 attacks Morty for [2.att 20 +4d 4d6+2]
[0+0] => 0
(18) -> 0
14+4
min(14,19) => 14
(10) -> 0
6+4
min(20,6) => 6
Gith3 attacks Morty for 0
Gith3 misses Morty!
* 20 becomes -20
Gith3's HP changed from 49 to 29
* Gith3's new chp: 0
0
* Gith3.HP: 29
* Gith4 attacks Pedro. [2.att 17 +4a (2d6+2)/2+2d6]
[8+10] => 18
(22) -> 8
18+4
max(18,3) => 18
[4+4] => 8
8 becomes 4
[6+2] => 8
(19) -> 10
15+4
max(15,1) => 15
[4+6] => 10
9 becomes 4
[7+2] => 9
Gith4 attacks Pedro. 18
Pedro takes 18 HP of slashing and psychic damage! Maybe he was too reckless.
* 18 becomes -18
Pedro's THP changed from 11 to -7
* Pedro's new thp: 0
0
* 7 becomes -7
Pedro's HP changed from 55 to 48
* Pedro's init: [d20+3]
[17+3] => 20
Pedro's init: 20
* Gith3's init: [d20+2]
[11+2] => 13
Gith3's init: 13
Gith3 likewise had to spend a Misty Step to avoid an opportunity attack. Githyanki are so annoying!
Next round, the situation is changing.
The wolves are all attacking Gith1 on Leia.
One of them will take an opportunity attack.
But they have plenty of thp so eh.
Leia will Dodge.
Martin will again try to constrict Gith1
Gith1 and 2 will attack Martin.
Morty will Dodge.
Oh, actually, Martin should have dealt 22 damage last round from Rage.
* 2 becomes -2
Gith3's HP changed from 29 to 27
Martin will Delay
Gith 3 and 4 will attack Pedro
* 4.att 17 4 4d6+2: [22+0+12+0] => 34
(23) -> 22
19+4
[20+2] => 22
(14) -> 0
10+4
(20) -> 12
16+4
[10+2] => 12
(10) -> 0
6+4
* 34 becomes -34
Pedro's HP changed from 48 to 14
I meant that Pedro will delay. Martin is attacking.
* att 17 +6 2d8+4: (26) -> 23
20+6
[19+4] => 23
Martin hits!
* 23 becomes -23
Gith1's HP changed from 32 to 9
* d20+4: [1+4] => 5
Gith1 makes its attacks at disadvantage.
* 2.att 15 4d 4d6+2: [0+0] => 0
(5) -> 0
1+4
min(1,1) => 1
(9) -> 0
5+4
min(5,12) => 5
Clean misses!
* Gith2 attacks: [2.att 15 4 4d6+2]
[16+10] => 26
(20) -> 16
16+4
[14+2] => 16
(22) -> 10
18+4
[8+2] => 10
Gith2 attacks: 26
* 26 becomes -26
Martin's CHP changed from 15 to -11
Martin reverts to humanoid form!
* Martin's new CHP: 0
0
* 11 becomes -11
Martin's HP changed from 39 to 28
The Githyanki now Misty Steps away again, and Martin does another wildshape.
* Martin's new CHP: 60
60
* Gith3.HP: 27
* Gith4.HP: 49
Pedro attacks Gith3.
* 2.att 17 6 2d6+3+2: [10+0] => 10
(19) -> 10
13+6
[5+3+2] => 10
(8) -> 0
2+6
* 10 becomes -10
Gith3's HP changed from 27 to 17
Pedro shouts for help! "Morty, I'm running out of steam here! Do something!"
Pedro will attack Gith3. Gith3 and 4 will attack Pedro. Morty will cast Hypnotic Pattern on Gith3-4.
Martin will attack Gith1. Gith1 will attack Martin. Gith2 will Delay.
Oh, forgot to do the wolves last time. Okay.
* 8.att 17 4a 2d4+2: [5+0+10+0+0+12+6+7] => 40
(21) -> 5
17+4
max(7,17) => 17
[3+2] => 5
(15) -> 0
11+4
max(11,9) => 11
(22) -> 10
18+4
max(2,18) => 18
[8+2] => 10
(13) -> 0
9+4
max(9,3) => 9
(9) -> 0
5+4
max(5,4) => 5
(24) -> 12
20+4
max(20,13) => 20
[10+2] => 12
(22) -> 6
18+4
max(18,16) => 18
[4+2] => 6
(23) -> 7
19+4
max(4,19) => 19
[5+2] => 7
* The wolves attack for a total of [8.att 17 4a 2d4+2] damage.
[0+7+0+9+5+0+6+7] => 34
(7) -> 0
3+4
max(3,2) => 3
(17) -> 7
13+4
max(13,13) => 13
[5+2] => 7
(12) -> 0
8+4
max(4,8) => 8
(20) -> 9
16+4
max(16,11) => 16
[7+2] => 9
(22) -> 5
18+4
max(11,18) => 18
[3+2] => 5
(7) -> 0
3+4
max(3,3) => 3
(18) -> 6
14+4
max(14,3) => 14
[4+2] => 6
(20) -> 7
16+4
max(4,16) => 16
[5+2] => 7
The wolves attack for a total of 34 damage.
* Gith1 might fall prone: [d20+2]
[5+2] => 7
Gith1 might fall prone: 7
It does!
* It makes an opportunity attack while prone: [att 13 4d 4d6+2]
(9) -> 0
5+4
min(12,5) => 5
It makes an opportunity attack while prone: 0
It misses!
* 15 becomes -15
Gith1's HP changed from 9 to -6
Wait, scratch that, it doesn't fall prone. I was looking at the wrong set of rolls.
Wolf has 11 HP
Wolf has 11 thp
* Wolf1's new HP: 11
11
* Wolf1's new thp: 11
11
* 4d6+2: [9+2] => 11
* 11 becomes -11
Wolf1's thp changed from 11 to 0
The Githyanki hit the first wolf for 11 HP of slashing and psychic damage before it got hamstrung.
* 1 becomes -1
Gith1's hp changed from -6 to -7
* 18 becomes -18
Gith2's HP changed from 49 to 31
Is it prone now?
* 3.(d20+2 at least 11)?: [0+1+1] => 2
(5) -> 0
3+2
(17) -> 1
15+2
(20) -> 1
18+2
It's prone!
But now it will get up.
Okay, NOW we have a new round.
Pedro attacks Gith3, Gith3 and 4 attack Pedro, Martin will cast Hypnotic Pattern.
* Is it possible to get both Gith 3-4 and Gith2? d6d
min(2,5) => 2
Is it possible to get both Gith 3-4 and Gith2? 2
Nope.
Wolves will finish off Gith2.
I mean Morty will cast Hypnotic Pattern. Martin will try, again, to get Gith2.
Leia will Dodge some more.
Oh wait, also forgot to do Gith 1-2s attacks on Martin last time.
No, I didn't, they knocked him out of snake form.
Martin changes his mind: the situation with Leia is well in hand, he will Disengage over to Gith3-4 and try to grapple one of them.
This could result in Martin hypnotizing more than planned.
Better roll init.
Martin: d20+2
* Martin: [d20+2], Pedro: [d20+3], Gith2-4: [3.d20+2], Morty: [d20]
[13+2] => 15
[11+3] => 14
[3+14+19] => 36
[1+2] => 3
[12+2] => 14
[17+2] => 19
17
Martin: 15, Pedro: 14, Gith2-4: 36, Morty: 17
* Gith3: [2.att 15 4 4d6+2]
[0+0] => 0
(11) -> 0
7+4
(14) -> 0
10+4
Gith3: 0
* Gith3 completely misses Martin! Opportunity attack: [att 15 4 4d6+2]
(21) -> 16
17+4
[14+2] => 16
Gith3 completely misses Martin! Opportunity attack: 16
Hits!
* 16 becomes -16
Martin's CHP changed from 60 to 44
* Hypnotic Pattern DC 14: Pedro [d20] Githyankis [2.d20+3]
1
[9+23] => 32
[6+3] => 9
[20+3] => 23
Hypnotic Pattern DC 14: Pedro 1 Githyankis 32
Pedro is Hypnotized and so is Githyanki 1.
* 5 becomes -5
Morty's SP changed from 0 to -5
* Morty's new SP: 10
10
* 5 becomes -5
Morty's SP changed from 10 to 5
"Sorry," he gasps, "I'm out of juice!"
* Martin: [att 17 6 2d8+4]
(24) -> 17
18+6
[13+4] => 17
Martin: 17
* 17 becomes -17
Gith3's HP changed from 17 to 0
Morty releases the hypnotic pattern and Pedro and Gith4 make their attacks simultaneously.
* 2.att 17 2d6+5: [13+0] => 13
(17) -> 13
[8+5] => 13
(10) -> 0
* 13 becomes -13
Gith4's HP changed from 49 to 36
* 4.att 17 4 4d6+2: [17+0+0+0] => 17
(17) -> 17
13+4
[15+2] => 17
(14) -> 0
10+4
(12) -> 0
8+4
(8) -> 0
4+4
* 4.att 17 4 (2d6+2)/2+2d6: [0+0+0+0] => 0
(8) -> 0
4+4
(9) -> 0
5+4
(11) -> 0
7+4
(15) -> 0
11+4
Pedro manages to Parry the Githyanki's blows while striking it once in return!
* 7.att 17 4a 2d4+2: [0+6+8+8+8+0+8] => 38
(7) -> 0
3+4
max(3,3) => 3
(20) -> 6
16+4
max(10,16) => 16
[4+2] => 6
(17) -> 8
13+4
max(13,1) => 13
[6+2] => 8
(24) -> 8
20+4
max(20,20) => 20
[6+2] => 8
(24) -> 8
20+4
max(4,20) => 20
[6+2] => 8
(13) -> 0
9+4
max(8,9) => 9
(17) -> 8
13+4
max(1,13) => 13
[6+2] => 8
* 38 becomes -38
Gith2's HP changed from 31 to -7
Gith2 goes down under the savage wolf bites!
Leia calls, "Go get 'em, boys!"
* Gith1.hp: -7
* Gith2.hp: -7
* Gith3.hp: 0
* Gith4.hp: 36
Gith4 snarls in frustration and rage as the tables have turned. He will try to get away next round.
Leia Fire Bolts, Morty will Booming Blade, Martin will constrict, and the wolves will try to run over and bite it while Pedro Recklessly attacks.
* Leia: [d20+3] Pedro: [d20+2] Morty: [d20] Martin: [d20+2] Wolves: [7.d20+3] Githyanki: [d20+2]
[9+3] => 12
[17+2] => 19
12
[20+2] => 22
[18+14+6+21+11+20+14] => 104
[15+3] => 18
[11+3] => 14
[3+3] => 6
[18+3] => 21
[8+3] => 11
[17+3] => 20
[11+3] => 14
[8+2] => 10
Leia: 12 Pedro: 19 Morty: 12 Martin: 22 Wolves: 104 Githyanki: 10
Looks like everyone except one Wolf gets to go before the Githyanki can Misty Step away.
* One wolf: [att 17 4a 2d4+2]
(23) -> 7
19+4
max(19,12) => 19
[5+2] => 7
One wolf: 7
Hits!
* d20+2: [4+2] => 6
Githyanki falls prone.
* 7 becomes -7
Gith4's HP changed from 36 to 29
Gith4.condition = prone
Oh, I've been forgetting all along about Pedro's magical weapon.
Pedro: [2.att 2a 2d6+14]
* Pedro.hp: 14
* Pedro: [2.att 17 2a 2d6+14]
[26+18] => 44
(22) -> 26
20+2
max(16,20) => 20
[12+14] => 26
(20) -> 18
18+2
max(4,18) => 18
[4+14] => 18
Pedro: 44
Pedro smites mightily and the Githyanki falls!
* 44 becomes -44
Gith4's HP changed from 29 to -15
* Pedro.Hp: 14
* Pedro.thp: 0
* Martin.hp: 28
* Martin.chp: 44
* 6
Pedro's thp changed from 0 to 6
>> Martin.CHP
* Martin.CHP: 44
>>

It can certainly be worth it, no doubt on that. And you can certainly build a Moon Druid into a pretty good tank without multiclassing if you dedicate everything to it from the start (like the aforementioned Dwarven for the "use Die when Dodging" + Sentinel feat or a racial providing CON-based Unarmored for example to go with Earth Elemental, or Magic Initiate for Mage Armor on Water Elemental). But you'll still need to wait for level 10 before you can compensate the lack of actual tanking abilities through just sheer HP/AC/Offense.

See, that's the thing. While you can get some good mileage out of features like Sentinel, you don't have to. In the fight above, the Goblin Skulker Moon Druid has zero tanking abilities, and yet he takes on the Githyankis more efficiently than the GWM Warbarian just on the strength of wildshape, despite the Githyankis being harder-than-the-average-bear to tank. (Misty Step 3/day is sooo annoying!) What you don't see is that after the fight, it's the Moon Druid who can efficiently heal himself and the Warbarian via Goodberries from the day before or Healing Spirit, and then an hour later he can be back to full wildshape quota as well, whereas the Warbarian would be basically out of oomph for the day and would have to revert to caster mode (using warlock spells from range) instead of tanking, if not for the Moon Druid.

(Did I mention that the Warbarian's stats were 16 14 16 11 10 18 and the Moon Druid's stats were 8 15 12 11 11 8?)


But that is a different thing than saying "Moon Druid has enough tools to tank without careful choices", which is not accurate *snip*

I disagree.

[dejarnjc]

We were talking about summoning spells

Not to be too pedantic but we were talking about your claim that shepherd druids are OP and your statement that it's due to action economy and bounded accuracy which then led into the discussion about summoning/minionmancy.

[Rukelnikov]

"Obey my commands and protect me from those who wish me harm."

And the creature will do what ir considers best to follow those commands, you are not choosing the actions for it


Not to be too pedantic but we were talking about your claim that shepherd druids are OP and your statement that it's due to action economy and bounded accuracy which then led into the discussion about summoning/minionmancy.

Yeah, because summoning allows access to that combination on the spot, the others don't.

[OverLordOcelot]

3. Tanking: is comprised of "keeping aggro and otherwise use own abilities to prevent threat/damage to friends", "surviving threat on self". Not hard to understand, commonly and widely accepted definition, that goes far beyond just "being able to absorb hits".

b) There ARE MANY WAYS to aggro, and I quoted quite a few of them. Sadly, none of them are among Druid capabilities besides every thing any martial can do (Shove/Grapple) better than a Druid in beast form.

With higher chance of not breaking concentration early while we are at it, since keeping away from direct threat

So you've gone and defined 'tank' using another ill-defined word 'aggro', then stated that druids can't do that without either defining the word or explaining why druids can't 'aggro'. If aggro means some specific thing then you have to define it, and it's probably nonsensical to require it. If it just means 'get enemies to want to hit them', then druids have a plethora of abilities to do that, regardless of how much you want to ignore them. Most notably, the third line that I quoted is you talking about how much aggro a druid casting conjure animals draws, and that if the druid casts it and is near the enemy they will try to attack him - how is that not aggro, exactly?

There are many ways to aggro, and many of them work for the the moon druid. Like I keep pointing out and you keep ignoring moon druids have grappling abilities that martial classes can't match - in particular the ability to grapple large creatures and the ability to restrain enemies without spending a feat and restraining yourself. You keep making declarations, not backing them up with anything but bluster and arrogance, and then ignoring when they're shown to be incorrect.

Also, your definition of 'tank' here doesn't support your contention that someone needs a high AC to be a tank.


2. Giant Constrictor Snake: not only does this requires your DM to agree you saw one in your life, which is far from a given imx, that one has only 12 AC and 60 HP, and only a +6 to hit.

This isn't really true. At 5th level a druid can conjure a CR2 creature, so can conjure a giant constrictor snake easily if they are allowed to pick summons. At 7th level a druid can polymorph allies into any beast with no restriction on having seen the beast, so can view any beast they want at the cost of one spell as long as they have a willing ally.

So at worst the form is unavailable at 6th level and any form is avilable afterwards, but if the DM doesn't let the druid pick conjured animals, then the shepard druid that you rank so highly as has much, much more trouble, becaue shepard druid relies on conjuring animals a lot more than the moon druid does.


So yeah you are taking the one particular form that has particular Grapple at the cost of overall everything else.

Intelligently using abilities is part of tanking well. You pick a form to go onto on the basis of how well it's going to help the party, not how well it would do in white room fights against things you're not fighting right now.


Barbarian of that level has the same +6 to hit but can deal more damage, or mix Grapple and attack, both with much better chance than the Druid. A Fighter of that level will have picked either Sentinel or PAM or Shield Master depending on what aspect of tanking he wants to focus on.

The barbarian will be doing marginally more damage if they go sword and board like you say is required, the crazy high barbarian damage comes from things like GWM. But the barbarian can't match the ability of the snake - he can't grapple huge or larger creatures, and doesn't restrain them (unless he took a feat and chooses to restrain himself, negating his higher AC). Doing less damage yourself but enabling the entire group to get advantage is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff, buffing your entire group is quite useful. None of the feats the fighter might take give the entire party advantage on attacks against the creature, and sentinel is an option for the druid, though I find that it's pretty overrated in practice.


4. Conjure Animals is definitely an awesome spell that can be used for tanking, but that's something any Druid (or Bard for that matter, or Ranger) can do... So totally irrelevant to the comparative merits of Moon archetype for tanking.

When your 'how good is this subclass at tanking' evaluation ignores one of the stronger tanking abilities of the class for suprious reasons, it's clear that you're not providing a reasonable evaluation of that subclass, but just coming up with excuses to discount it.

Also, if we're following this rule that 'if other subclasses can do it it doesn't count', then everything you've listed barbarians and fighters as doing doesn't count for evaluating their tanking, as any one of them can do it. Heavy armor and defense style are open to all fighters, so no AC20. All of the feats are open to everyone, so can't count, same with shoving and grappling.


5. If you had actually paid attention and properly read, you would have noticed that the one PC vs PC fight I spoke about was just the penultimate of multiple experiences of low-middle level Druids getting torn down because "hey I'm a Moon Druid I can tank": AC -and actual defensive abilities- are *actually important* until level 13+.

If you had paid attention, I and other people pointed out that your example fight involved the druid playing badly and the other character getting extremely lucky (28 on 3d10 plus a crit and all hits on attacks), it's not some reasonable evaluation. AND THE DRUID STILL WON in the end, they just had to actually try to win instead of messing around. I don't think anyone is going to disagree that if you take on an equal level opponent, don't use your abilities, and they get lucky, you're going to have a rough time of it.

[Man_Over_Game]

There's an interesting debate regarding whether Moon Druids are overpowered or not as a Q&A on RPG Stack Exchange here: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/136373/are-moon-druids-overpowered-at-levels-2-6-if-so-by-how-much

It seems very relevant to this discussion, and has some good insight on both sides.

[MaxWilson]

The barbarian will be doing marginally more damage if they go sword and board like you say is required, the crazy high barbarian damage comes from things like GWM. But the barbarian can't match the ability of the snake - he can't grapple huge or larger creatures, and doesn't restrain them (unless he took a feat and chooses to restrain himself, negating his higher AC). Doing less damage yourself but enabling the entire group to get advantage is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff, buffing your entire group is quite useful. None of the feats the fighter might take give the entire party advantage on attacks against the creature, and sentinel is an option for the druid, though I find that it's pretty overrated in practice.

Agreed. Plus the Barbarian is much, much less durable.

[GlenSmash!]

Agreed. Plus the Barbarian is much, much less durable.

Indeed.

I'm playing SKT as a level 5 Zealot and we have a level 5 moon druid in the party too. There is no debate about who can stop big foes in their tracks better and soak up damage better.

I've accepted my role as guy who targets lower AC and HP enemies with GWM to mop up the field quickly. and occasionally stop a second tough baddy.

[Alucard89]

I was playing as summoner Moon-Druid no problem in AL till leve 14 where I dropped a character.

My build was focusing on Summoning my wild allies, change into beast form and go into battle with them, focusing on single target. I loved Giant Constrictor Snake as I could grapple target and all my summons had advantage on attack vs it :)

I took War Caster at level 4 and Resilence (CON) at level 8. Our party Sorcerer was casting extended Mage Armor anyway on me so I had 13+ Dex AC, which was fine. And we had Devotion Paladin in party with 20 CHA at level 8 so +5 Aura.

Anyway, combining War Caster, Resilence (CON) and occasional (not always in range) Paladin Aura I was able to keep concentration most of the time without problem, especially that each of my summons was additional target on battlefield. After that I planned to just bumb WIS but never got there.

Shep Druid would be better summoner but killing me with 2 Wild Shapes on short rest was already a problem.

And each druid can be broken with infamous Summon 8 pixies, get 4 of them to polymoprh party to T-Rexes, and other 4 to cast Flight on them. Then all 8 hide somewhere. Bum! 4 Flying T-Rexes :P. It's old combo but novice DMs still get cought with it :).

[MaxWilson]

Indeed.

I'm playing SKT as a level 5 Zealot and we have a level 5 moon druid in the party too. There is no debate about who can stop big foes in their tracks better and soak up damage better.

I've accepted my role as guy who targets lower AC and HP enemies with GWM to mop up the field quickly. and occasionally stop a second tough baddy.

You're also the guy who can quickly kill the guy that the Moon Druid Octopus is holding restrained. It's not a wholly terrible place to be, although a fighter would be better at it (Action Surge 4 GWM attacks at advantage against a restrained target is better than 2 attacks at redundant advantage from Reckless Attack + Restrained). Moon Druids are less than great at actually killing things, but they do make terrific tanks as long as the enemy can't teleport.


Shep Druid would be better summoner but killing me with 2 Wild Shapes on short rest was already a problem.

Any Druid including Shepherd can do Giant Octopus form by 8th level which gets you 52 HP and AC 14 with Mage Armor, i.e. 104 HP per short rest. For a supposedly non-tanky archetype that's quite a lot of free HP. Crummy movement speed though.

[GlenSmash!]

You're also the guy who can quickly kill the guy that the Moon Druid Octopus is holding restrained. It's not a wholly terrible place to be, although a fighter would be better at it (Action Surge 4 GWM attacks at advantage against a restrained target is better than 2 attacks at redundant advantage from Reckless Attack + Restrained). Moon Druids are less than great at actually killing things, but they do make terrific tanks as long as the enemy can't teleport.

Yep, we actually do have a fighter that does that, though she seems to use her Acton surge for Dash 9 times out of 10.

I often wonder if my eye rolls are prominently visible over skype. :smallyuk:


Any Druid including Shepherd can do Giant Octopus form by 8th level which gets you 52 HP and AC 14 with Mage Armor, i.e. 104 HP per short rest. For a supposedly non-tanky archetype that's quite a lot of free HP. Crummy movement speed though.

16 AC with Barkskin though it does take a 2nd level slot. The movement issue does take some planning around.

[OverLordOcelot]

16 AC with Barkskin though it does take a 2nd level slot. The movement issue does take some planning around.

The problem with barkskin isn't the 2nd level slot, it's that it takes concentration. It means you can't have up conjured animals or an elemental, or use moonbeam, or wall of X, or polymorph your teammate into a creature. If it was just a 2nd level spell slot, it would be a good, solid spell. For movement, longstrider (non concentration) helps a lot, it doubles the octopus's speed.

[MaxWilson]

The problem with barkskin isn't the 2nd level slot, it's that it takes concentration. It means you can't have up conjured animals or an elemental, or use moonbeam, or wall of X, or polymorph your teammate into a creature. If it was just a 2nd level spell slot, it would be a good, solid spell. For movement, longstrider (non concentration) helps a lot, it doubles the octopus's speed.

If it was a second-level spell that lasted for one hour without concentration, I would still be kind of iffy about it for a Shepherd Druid, since those are "free" HP anyway and Mage Armor already gives you AC 14-15, and second-level slots can be used for great stuff like Spike Growth and after-combat Healing Spirit. But since it does cost concentration, it's a no-brainer: I wouldn't even prepare Barkskin.

Agree about Longstrider, although it isn't always necessary. (10' movement speed isn't much, but 15' reach is a lot, especially indoors.) In many cases where Longstrider would be worth the bother, you won't even WANT to do the Giant Octopus thing for "free" HP, because you'll be too busy concentrating on something good like Conjure Animals, so if you do wildshape it will be into something that can fly, like a Giant Owl or Giant Eagle.

[OverLordOcelot]

Agree about Longstrider, although it isn't always necessary. (10' movement speed isn't much, but 15' reach is a lot, especially indoors.) In many cases where Longstrider would be worth the bother, you won't even WANT to do the Giant Octopus thing for "free" HP, because you'll be too busy concentrating on something good like Conjure Animals, so if you do wildshape it will be into something that can fly, like a Giant Owl or Giant Eagle.

Well without it the octopus can just move next to where it was (it's on a 10x10 base and move 10'), which means in combat it can't really get past anything, making it really hard to move around. Also, 20' is fast enough that you are still reasonably mobile if you want to stay in it after the encounter (say you're worried about traps or an ambush) you should be fine, while if the party is stuck to 10' movement it's likely to cause the DM to treat the party differently. You certainly don't need longstrider to use the octopus as a HP bank, but the spell removes the biggest disadvantage of the form on land so it's worth keeping in mind. Also it's a useful long-concentration buff that lots of characters can use, so is a good 'keep it on the list' spell (like a lot of druid spells).

[MaxWilson]

Well without it the octopus can just move next to where it was (it's on a 10x10 base and move 10'), which means in combat it can't really get past anything, making it really hard to move around. Also, 20' is fast enough that you are still reasonably mobile if you want to stay in it after the encounter (say you're worried about traps or an ambush) you should be fine, while if the party is stuck to 10' movement it's likely to cause the DM to treat the party differently. You certainly don't need longstrider to use the octopus as a HP bank, but the spell removes the biggest disadvantage of the form on land so it's worth keeping in mind. Also it's a useful long-concentration buff that lots of characters can use, so is a good 'keep it on the list' spell (like a lot of druid spells).

Two thoughts:

(1) The Octopus does have a bonus action Dash under some circumstances. Ask your DM whether the "only underwater" part applies only to the ink or also to the dash. Based on RAW it's ambiguous; based on the logic of how octopuses actually work I'd rule it as only underwater, but some DMs rule differently.

(2) You can move before you wildshape into an Octopus, e.g. into a chokepoint, or to provide half-cover for back-line party members like a wizard or a Sharpshooter fighter. In this scenario you don't need or want a lot of movement.

Overall I think we agree--Longstrider is not absolutely necessary, but it's worth keeping in mind because the synergy can be quite nice. And I agree that it's nice for everybody, not just druids. Having Longstrider up can sometimes be the difference between an easy win and a costly battle. It's particularly nice that it scales well, because (IMO) it's generally hard to predict when you will need it within the next hour, so once you realize that you do need it you can cast it on multiple targets with a single action and then leave. (Even if you take an opportunity attack due to not Disengaging, against a 30' move target may be the last time they ever get a chance to attack you, so it's a net win.)

[GlenSmash!]

You can move before you wildshape into an Octopus, e.g. into a chokepoint, or to provide half-cover for back-line party members like a wizard or a Sharpshooter fighter. In this scenario you don't need or want a lot of movement.

This is my preferred method for Giant Octopus. Get up to your big bad then shift and tentacle it in place. Even with a Hill dwarfs 25 it works better.