A Different Take on Wild Shape Druids - Homebrew Druid Circle

[ScrtAgentSteve]

I had a brief thought about how cool it would be if there were another Wild Shape subclass for Druid with a different take, and also how cool it would be if the Druid would focus on shapeshifting into something other than beasts. So in a small amount of time I threw together this subclass and am quite happy with how it turned out! It's yet to be playtested or really finetuned, as I've found that I've hit some kind of sweet spot where adjustment is questionable. Hence me bringing it to as many places as possible to have it be evaluated and especially critiqued. Lay it on me! And if you think it's cool, please do use it. I'm especially interested in hearing about it in action.

Best viewed here: ... I've just registered to this forum to be able to post this creation of mine... So forgive me having to bypass the system; I'd rather not just throw the raw unformatted text into this post itself.

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/H1BrdNwUIN

[Bjarkmundur]

What I great idea! Love the flavour. This goes into my "sexy homebrewes" folder ^^

[ScrtAgentSteve]

What I great idea! Love the flavour. This goes into my "sexy homebrewes" folder ^^

Thank you! Message me if you end up using it and how that works out. I really need some playtesters.

[sandmote]

This idea is always particularly hard to balance, just based on how often aberrations and monstrosities are something beside a harder hitting bag of hit points. Because they don't need to be harder hitting bags of hit points to maintain balance in the party.

My overall concern with your subclass is that you've granted players equal CR transformations as moon druids, but traded self healing for far stronger abilities. Giving your players the ability to wildshape into a Basilisk (https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/basilisk) is probably a bad idea. Dealing with a Basilisk player is far more troublesome than a giant eagle player.

Gruesome Transformation is great, as is the bonus from Unnature Focus (although I'd strip out the penalty). I'd also let players keep their languages and wisdom bonus when wildshapinng into aberrations and monstrosities which can speak. And leave the base classes' wild shape abilities.

Basically, weaken the bonuses to prevent abuse instead of adding penalties that stop players from acting like druids.

I will now proceeded to shill my take on the idea: The Circle of the Outer Planes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?580096-Circle-of-the-Outer-Planes). That one focuses on aberrations/monstrosities as a bonus, and also includes bonuses for "extraplanar," versions of beasts.

Druid circles typically also have two circle spells for each of 2nd-5th level.

I'm a bit biased about such a subclass being a good idea, but the extra stuff is certainly well made. I'd just re-balance the subclass away from being so effective at breaking combat.

[ScrtAgentSteve]

This idea is always particularly hard to balance, just based on how often aberrations and monstrosities are something beside a harder hitting bag of hit points. Because they don't need to be harder hitting bags of hit points to maintain balance in the party.

My overall concern with your subclass is that you've granted players equal CR transformations as moon druids, but traded self healing for far stronger abilities. Giving your players the ability to wildshape into a Basilisk is probably a bad idea. Dealing with a Basilisk player is far more troublesome than a giant eagle player.

Gruesome Transformation is great, as is the bonus from Unnature Focus (although I'd strip out the penalty). I'd also let players keep their languages and wisdom bonus when wildshapinng into aberrations and monstrosities which can speak. And leave the base classes' wild shape abilities.

Basically, weaken the bonuses to prevent abuse instead of adding penalties that stop players from acting like druids.

I will now proceeded to shill my take on the idea: The *Subclass Link*. That one focuses on aberrations/monstrosities as a bonus, and also includes bonuses for "extraplanar," versions of beasts.

Druid circles typically also have two circle spells for each of 2nd-5th level.

I'm a bit biased about such a subclass being a good idea, but the extra stuff is certainly well made. I'd just re-balance the subclass away from being so effective at breaking combat.

Thank you! I appreciate the extensive look at my little subclass, though if I'm honest, with your plug at the end it ends up sounding like you're saying "This is okay but mine's better!". :D No hard feelings here, however. To address your points:

Whilst these creatures do boast some more tricky and specific abilities, the CR is still the same as any other beast a Circle of the Moon druid would be able to turn into, which is why I assumed the balance would be there and aberrations/monstrosities would only offer unique approaches to combat and problem solving (whilst losing the versatility of so many beasts to transform into).

Thematically, the point of this class is less that this is a druid who is dabbling in eldritch arts, but rather a druid who has devoted themselves to the study of what opposes nature; strange monsters and generally things that "don't belong in nature", which is why they are stripped of their beast-handling ways. They've simply never learned how to deal with beasts; maybe such a character has an aversion for such common animals, or even a disdain. Being able to speak as themselves whilst shapeshifted into an intelligent creature kind of breaks the weirdness narrative. Perhaps balance-wise that last perk doesn't need a counter-balance, but to me it doesn't make sense that they can just keep talking as though they hadn't just entered the mind of something so difficult (for a druid) to fathom.

As for circle spells: Compared to Circle of the Land, which focuses on spellcasting, I wanted to add otherworldly spells to this type of druid without making that the focus of the subclass; the focus remains in shapeshifting and controlling/otherwise dealing with such unnatural beings.

I'll take your points into consideration and I'd doubly appreciate it if you would convey specific changes you would make to improve this, so that I can see where your mind is at specifically, and I might implement some such changes if I'm convinced!

[sandmote]

Thank you! I appreciate the extensive look at my little subclass, though if I'm honest, with your plug at the end it ends up sounding like you're saying "This is okay but mine's better!". :D No hard feelings here, however.
Yeah, I wasn't sure how to not make it sound like that. The relevant bit is that I've at least tried to deal with some of the weird stuff that comes from trying to make aberrations and monstrosities usable to a player.


Whilst these creatures do boast some more tricky and specific abilities, the CR is still the same as any other beast a Circle of the Moon druid would be able to turn into, which is why I assumed the balance would be there and aberrations/monstrosities would only offer unique approaches to combat and problem solving (whilst losing the versatility of so many beasts to transform into).
There's a couple bits you should probably flesh out before you can equate beasts with other monster types: beasts (at least the ones from 1st party books) can't cast spells. You should probably specify how you're balancing spells per wild shape. Some aberrations and monstrosities can inflict long-lasting (or permanent) effects on enemies. At the very least you should probably specific how you're handling.