Moon Druid or Spore Druid

[MsMazikeen]

Hi I'm new to dnd and would like some guidance?

[Civis Mundi]

Hello and welcome!

Moon Druid is one of the stronger possible things to be, especially at lower levels. Spore Druids are workable, but they're definitely weaker in comparison. There's been some debate around these parts on how it might be improved and how best to use it.

As a Moon Druid, your Wild Shape will be your main schtick in combat, and it's very powerful. Note that you can't cast spells while you're Wild Shaped, but you can concentrate on them. Druids get a lot of concentration spells, so you can pick one that works for you and then Wild Shape.

Also, you can't talk while Wild Shaped, but you can stay in your animal form for quite a while. Doing animal charades to get your point across is half the fun, but it's possible to circumvent it with a source of telepathy, like the Ghostwise Halfling.

For more detail, you'll probably want to check here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?583036-Unleash-Your-Inner-Beast-A-Moon-Druid-Guide-(5e)). It's a vital resource for any aspiring Moon Druid.

[Sherlockpwns]

Hi I'm new to dnd and would like some guidance?

Moon will be a lot easier to play as a new player, just pre-select a few things you're likely to turn into and go maul stuff. Remember that as a moon druid your HP when transformed doesn't take away from your HP as a character (except for spillover damage). So if you take 10 damage as a bear and transform back, you are unhurt.

This makes early game moon druids exceptionally durable. By mid-late game you'll be comfortable enough with the system to find all kinds of ways to make the Moon Druid shape change useful. From the "power" aspect, most people agree that Moon Druids are massively powerful in the early game and drop off a bit at level 5-9, then get another big boost at 10, before falling behind a bit from ~12-19.

And by falling off a bit I mean just that, they're still perfectly viable, but you'll find that casting spells at higher levels is often better use of your turn than turning into a fire elemental. :D

[heavyfuel]

All Druids are really strong because their strengths lie in their spells and wild shape.

Spells give the druid excellent combat prowess and utility, while wild shape is more utility focused.

Moon Druid, however, makes Wild Shape good for combat as well as utility. It's an amazing subclass at lv 2, and it makes a great tank since your Wild Shape form has its separate HP, however, its efficacy drops fast with levels. The reasons for this are two:
- The strength of the animals available to you scales slower than enemies' strength on a level by level basis;
- Since you can't cast spells while trasnformed, as you gain more and better spells, the less time you'll want to spend as an animal in combat.

Spore Druid, on the other hand, is often disappointing if your focus is Halo of Spores. It's kinda of crap feature. Symbiotic Entity makes you an amazing tank since you'll probably have more HP than anyone on the party when you use it. If you can, use it before combat starts (it lasts 10 full minutes) so you don't have to spend an action in vombat activating it.

So, which should you pick? Really, it's a matter of preference.

Do you want to transform into a wolf and bite people? Go Moon. It's amazing up until ~lv 5 or 7. Do you want to make a tanky guy casting nature themed spells? Go Spore.

Are these the only two druids you're considering?

[sithlordnergal]

Moon Druid is insanely tanky, and I feel is pretty good for a new player's first Druid. It allows you to tank and be on the front lines for the first several levels, though I disagree that the Moon Druid drops off at any point, especially if you use the spells in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Their role simply changes a bit at higher levels:

From levels 2-5, you'll be in the front lines, acting as a serious damage dealer and tank. You'll be able to soak up more attacks than anyone else at this level.

Levels 6-9 you fall back to be a more support/control caster. You can still make good use of your wild shapes, but they won't be nearly as strong as your spells at this point. Thankfully, your spell selection rivals everyone, with a great mix of control, damage, utility, and debuff spells. You kind of lack standard buff spells, but make up for it with the fact that nearly all of your spells deal damage and either provide battle field control or debuff potential.

10-19: This is kind of similar to levels 6-9, the big difference is that you can now go toe-to-toe with things again as an Elemental. Keep in mind, you are still not a tank like you were at the very beginning. You're more like a Monk now, you move in and out of Combat as a striker. Your spells are still your biggest and best thing though, so don't ignore them.

20: You're back to being a full on tank, even better than you were back in levels 2-5. If you reach this point, you have the best of every world. You essentially have infinite HP, to the point where only Disintegrate, Immolation, and Power Word Kill can actually kill you, because you have unlimited Wild Shapes and can use your Bonus Action to refresh your HP every single round. You don't have to drop out of Wild Shape or choose a new form. If you wanna go from being an Earth Elemental with half HP to an Earth elemental with full HP, you can with your bonus action. And even better, you now get your spell casting back, along with a permanent Subtle Spell.


EDIT: This knowledge comes from personal experience. I have a Moon Druid that I took from level 1 to level 20 in AL, and while Adventures League is different from Homebrew games, the Druid's use remains largely the same

[elyktsorb]

If your campaign isn't going further than lvl 5 don't play spore because at that point it's just a weaker Land Druid in the spells department.

If your campaign involves creatures immune to poison then don't pick Spore at all.

Moon is just more fun to play imo compared to Spore.

[Xenken]

Well in fairness, level 5 itself is Animate Dead, which I would say is one of Spore's biggest upsides over any other druid.

Spores is also notably easier on the side of keeping stats on lots of forms. It can also be easier on handling spellcasting and concentration since you don't routinely go into spellcasting=off mode.

That said, you really do like PAM and you really do hate poison immunity. Ask your DM about both and if one condition can't be met I'd say switch to Moon and make sure you have forms ready.

I include links to forms in the guide in my sig which was basically made for you so go check it out.

[Psyren]

I'm playing a Moon Druid now (we reached 7th level) and I agree wholeheartedly with how strong they are. Here's some quick tips:

1) Because you get the physical stats of the creature you turn into, you can focus on your mental stats at character creation. This allows you to readily perform both the roles of primary caster and meatshield for your party, even if you can't do both simultaneously you can do whichever one the party needs. You'll have fewer spell slots than other druids but the spells you do get will hit just as hard, and often softening up an enemy with something like Erupting Earth before shapeshifting and wading in is a useful tactic.

2) You get back all your wild shape every time you short rest, so don't be stingy. You'll get a feel for how often your group calls for a short rest after a few sessions, and can then use your wild shapes strategically for things like scouting ahead or traversal. Remember, every time you turn into something with a climb speed, that's one less party member that needs to be flown up a cliff - two if you carry someone on your back.

3) If you're in a form with scent, "what do I smell" is always a great question while the group is searching around. I can't count the amount of times I've found a hidden corpse or detected undead or goblinoids in the area before anyone else, letting us avoid an ambush.

4) Your biggest drawback to wildshape is the inability to cast or speak. Not casting isn't too bad since Moon Druids can convert spell slots into healing anyway, but the speak part can be frustrating. However, a number of other classes get Speak with Animals, like Bards, Warlocks or Rangers (even at will in a few cases!), so if you have one of those, they can make a point of preparing a copy each day. Failing that, use your legs/tail to draw lines in the dirt if its available, or work out some simple signals ahead of time with your party like growling when you detect enemies, whining for locked doors or traps, bounding in a circle for treasure etc.

5) Don't let the party waste healing on you unless its absolutely necessary - no matter how beat up your wild shape form gets, none of it carries over to your main form unless all the hit points are used up, plus you can burn slots to heal yourself as a bonus action as mentioned above.

6) Xanathar's is by far your best friend as a moon druid - it helps to solve all the "what animals have I seen" debates once and for all. Work that out with your GM at character creation and you'll never have to have this argument again. Bonus points if they let you come from an area that contains more than one of these terrain types - my own druid was allowed to come from a coastal cliff region near the grove where my druidic circle would meet occasionally, giving me three terrains worth of forms to choose from.

7) Druids get a lot of great utility magic. Our group stopped tracking rations very soon into the campaign because of my Goodberry, the pull effect from Thorn Whip has seen many uses for us, and I've used Enhance Ability to get our treasure hauls onto the all-important cart.

[Civis Mundi]

Well in fairness, level 5 itself is Animate Dead, which I would say is one of Spore's biggest upsides over any other druid.

That said, animate dead can be a lot to keep track of even for experienced players, and experienced DMs. Beyond using them for scouting and trap-busting, attempts to assemble the undead army of your dreams could be a DM's nightmare.

[DeadMech]

I'm playing a moon druid and it's quite fun. It can be allot of paperwork, I keep written out notes of all the stats of all the forms I have as well as written notes of my spells. It's allot of of options. Buttons and levers for days. Which is amazing fun to have available but it can be too much for some people.

I'm really looking forward to tracking down a staff of the woodlands. Since I don't think there is any reason you can't wildshape into awakened animals once you have seen them. Which gets around that not being able to talk in beast shape problem.

[sambojin]

If it's your first time playing a druid, go Moon or Land (Grasslands). I'd probably lean on the side of Grasslands being a tiny bit easier to learn.

Knowing how important your spell casting is can be the major difference between a good druid player, and the meme bear. Even figuring out how different spells actually work can be an experience, because some druid spells are a bit fiddly.

You still get little wildshape with Grasslands, and it's a surprisingly helpful HP and attack buffer for lvls 2-5. But it'll help you focus on your spells rather than just wildshape. And you do get a lot of very useful spells as one.


There's nothing actually wrong with going Moon. It's my most played class. It's just a far more knowledge based class to play well than the average full caster is. You can do pretty well with it by just being a bear. It's just that there's so much more you could do.

If you're playing around a table, grab the Companions for 5e app for your phone. It makes all that preparation and paperwork for wildshape go away immediately.


Tldr; be a Moon or a Grasslands Druid. Don't be a Spore druid.

[Psyren]

Since there are a bunch of Moon Druid fans here - for obvious reasons our 5e group recently switched to roll20 and managing the stats of various forms is becoming a bit of an annoyance. My thought was to get with the GM between sessions and make a bunch of extra sheets for some of my greatest hits, but is there a better option for letting me swap out my stats on the fly?

[Sherlockpwns]

In roll20 the DM should have tokens with all the main beast forms and they can add them to the party sheet. When you transform just drag and drop it in. If you click on it you should be able to bring up its sheet and click on it like you would your char sheet.

Only thing to note is it won't have your mental stats, so you'll have to remember if you're making a will save or something to do it manually (/r 1d20) and just add your character modifier... but for things like its size, stats, attacks, etc, it should be entirely baked in if your DM has the right tools purchased.

If not... well, I say just open a few tabs of common creatures you could become and roll them manually. Importing by hand sounds terrible :)

[elyktsorb]

Since there are a bunch of Moon Druid fans here - for obvious reasons our 5e group recently switched to roll20 and managing the stats of various forms is becoming a bit of an annoyance. My thought was to get with the GM between sessions and make a bunch of extra sheets for some of my greatest hits, but is there a better option for letting me swap out my stats on the fly?

On roll20 I just ask the DM to assign me extra character sheets that I fill in with my druid in the animal form. Since typically I never used more than like, 3 animals at a time for various things and if I ever turned into like a rat or a spider, we didn't bother pulling a sheet for that.

[Psyren]

In roll20 the DM should have tokens with all the main beast forms and they can add them to the party sheet. When you transform just drag and drop it in. If you click on it you should be able to bring up its sheet and click on it like you would your char sheet.

Only thing to note is it won't have your mental stats, so you'll have to remember if you're making a will save or something to do it manually (/r 1d20) and just add your character modifier... but for things like its size, stats, attacks, etc, it should be entirely baked in if your DM has the right tools purchased.

Do you mean like from the Compendium? That would definitely be useful. I have probably a dozen or more forms at this point between backstory and gameplay so that would be a lot more handy than trying to make sheets for all of them.

[Misterwhisper]

Spore druid is pretty cool, if your DM will let you use the UA version instead of the print version.