Any reviews on the Spore Druid?

[Man_Over_Game]

Hey, all. I've heard a lot of bad things about the Spore Druid on paper, but has anyone got any in-game experience with one? I like the overall idea of a Druid mage-tank to support their close-range, martial-centric spellcasting, but I want to make sure it's a solid option first.

[Amechra]

The only actual experience I have with it involves a player who constantly forgets all of her class features, so she hasn't actually used any of the features (other than Chill Touching a few times).

But as a DM, I noticed that most of the monsters I was grabbing for a fire-themed side adventure were immune to the extra damage from Symbiotic Entity. It being Poison damage is a pain, especially since the transformation takes your Action. I've been considering letting my player activate it as a bonus action, because then it might actually get used.

[Man_Over_Game]

The only actual experience I have with it involves a player who constantly forgets all of her class features, so she hasn't actually used any of the features (other than Chill Touching a few times).

But as a DM, I noticed that most of the monsters I was grabbing for a fire-themed side adventure were immune to the extra damage from Symbiotic Entity. It being Poison damage is a pain, especially since the transformation takes your Action. I've been considering letting my player activate it as a bonus action, because then it might actually get used.

No good news so far. I might just allow the option to halve the Poison damage to deal Necrotic damage instead.

[Christew]

Yeah, the class design is a bit of a catch-22. Poison damage is often resisted/immune and the only real way around it is to take something like Horizon Walker 3 so that Planar Warrior can change your damage type to force. Unfortunately this means that you are missing out on 3 levels of THP from Symbiotic Entity and that you don't really feel that druid-y until tier 2/3.

It is an interesting semi-melee druid that has a really solid list of options for action economy, but the poison damage coupled with the fact that Symbiotic Entity drops when you run out of THP is a bit of a bummer.

I had fun playing up to Horizon Walker 3/Spore 7, but I think the subclass could be better designed. It feels like they were married to the damage type for thematic reasons and kind of ignored the mechanical reality that the MM is chock full of poison mitigation.

[Amechra]

I've sometimes thought that Necrotic and Poison should just be rolled into one damage type, and anything with Immunity to Poison just gets resistance to Necrotic damage instead.

[elyktsorb]

As someone who tested out a Rogue 6(Scout)/Druid 9 (Spore) Multiclass in a campaign. My thoughts..

This is kind of a meh subclass overall. Firstly the Poison damage is garbage, if you are going to be playing a campaign where poison damage is heavily resisted by, or is ineffective against most of the enemies in it, I would recommend not playing this subclass. OR I would recommend asking your DM to make the Poison rider damage of your melee attacks into Necrotic (like it should have been in the first place.)

Now the first big issue is actually the crux of Symbiotic Entity, in that, sure it makes you live longer in melee range, but so does normal wild shape. The difference is that you can cast spells still, but since you don't get much in the way of AC, any concentration spells you have won't stay up any more than if you were using wildshape, and wildshape has the versatility benefit. To that end I find that multiclassing Fighter for a 1 lvl dip is beneficial just to grab 2 weapon fighting style, since Symbiotic entity enables you to deal the extra poison damage on every melee attack you make, so getting a 2nd attack in means another weapon die +d6.

Secondly I would basically recommend dishing out your Halo of Spores damage every turn since Druid's don't have much to use their reaction on anyway. Though if you leave your reaction open to opportunity attack you get the poison rider on that so it's kind of flexible?

The next big thing that kind of sucks is the spell list.

blindness/deafness and gentle repose at 3rd lvl? Okay one of these can have use and the other one is so niche it's not even worth mentioning outside of campaigns that heavily feature people being turned into undead (a campaign you wouldn't want to run a spore druid in because of the poison immunity)

5th level animate dead/gaseous form? Gaseous form is a decent tool to not have to waste your wildshape for scouting, but animate dead is borderline useless. IF you're playing an in character druid, I don't know how you'd ever justify using animate dead since it doesn't come with the caveat of saying it's 'fungus related' like your ability does later. Secondly, if you're trying to get the most out of your poison rider damage, your using your bonus attack for the extra attack, which commanding your undead would compete with.

7th lvl blight is pretty great, confusion, ehhh..

9th lvl contagion and cloudkill are both pretty amazing.

So, next big issue. You're 6th lvl ability Fungal Infestation is garbage.

'If a beast or a humanoid that is Small or Medium dies within 10 feet of you, you can use your reaction to animate it, causing it to stand up immediately with 1 hit point. The creature uses the zombie stat block in the Monster Manual. It remains animate for 1 hour, after which time it collapses and dies.' First of all, a lot of meh restrictions in a Small or Medium creature that dies with 10ft of you. Basically this means you need to be on the front lines to use this ability, but why would you want to be, it's terrible. You raise a Zombie with 1 hp. If you follow RAW strictly, then this zombie is garbage, if you subscribe to the theory that the zombie in question can use and is proficient with the armor/weapons it was using when it was alive a moment ago. Then these zombies are slightly less garbage.

These zombies never scale, they deal Bludgeoning Damage (by stat block) so they can't bypass regular magical resistance, spawning with 1 hp means that if anything touches them will be very likely to take them down since the Undead Fortitude will ALWAYS be the 5 + the damage taken since they only have 1 hit point.

At best these Zombies may get in a hit or two before going down, at worst they at least soak 1 hit.

10th lvl, spreading spores is like super garbage. I'm not sure why this wasn't just baked into the lvl 2 ability, this ability should be some buff for your undead summons.

14th lvl, this feature is baller.


Fighter 6, Spore Druid 14 might be interesting, since it gives you more base hp, a fighting style and an extra attack to help utilize your bonus poison damage, and doesn't deviate too much from your spell progression.


Rogue 16/ Spore Druid 4 has merit in that you can give yourself a temp hp buffer if you need it, though more importantly cunning action will help you keep your 16 hp to get your poison damage, the additional d6 poison damage from symbiotic entity can make up for your Sneak attack progression, and not to mention the amazing utility having Pass Without Trace and regular Wildshape on a Rogue is.

Going Straight Spore Druid is an option, but it's not terribly interesting since at most you only ever deal and additional 2d6 of poison damage if you try to two weapon fight as a druid straight, and being able to cast spells in melee.

Though.. As it stands there is very little reason to play a tanky melee druid that isn't a Moon Druid. Which is the subclass Spore Druid is pretty much directly competing with.

[Dork_Forge]

I played on in UA (with a UA centaur) MC'd with a Monk and had a lot of fun with it, but the changes they made pretty much killed it to me (the reaction damage is now just needless hoops for little benefit and you only gain the extra damage whilst you have your temp hp... so best play a skirmisher or hope you don't get hit then?

[ScoutTrooper]

I've played it out of the Ravnica book. ran Centaur , Folk Hero with it. Had decent roles for Ability Scores. The Party Comp was Tabaxi Rogue, V.Human Ranger, Water Gensai Sorc. So it filled the roll of tank well. The DM got use to the spores as reaction damage, and usual opening combat was Charge, melee attack, hooves, spore damage.

Getting higher up to pull up a Zombie with 1 HP for either small amount of DPR or at the very least another target to pull damage off another ally.

I didn't run into any issues of damage falling off, we didn't get tangled up with too many exotic mobs that had Poison resistance (homebrew world) mostly fought Orcs.

The setup of taking a round to prepare the form made for tricky engagements that usually left the rouge to face tank for the first round until I could charge in. Also being a Druid and having access to a lot of battlefield aliments made me a little stressed of hoping to make the right choice of staying back and throwing an entangle out first. Also being a Tank Druid, and using Concentration spells War Caster is a must.

My DM was also cool with me using Primal Savagery in conjunction with the extra spore damage that's RAW for melee weapon damage.

Didn't make it past level 8 sadly before DM fatigue set in. We kind of kept going in unpredictable ways for him to keep up.

[Merudo]

Spore Druid is pretty decent actually. The main issue is that it can't match up to the overpowered Moon Druid and Shepherd Druid.

Chill Touch can be extremely valuable for a Druid as it provides them with a long range (120 feet) attack that does a reasonable Xd8 damage. Without it, a Druid is stuck using Thorn Whip / Produce Flame with a miserable 30 feet range. It especially shines if the DM is using large battle maps or maps at a 10+ ft per square scale (hello Storm King's Thunder).

Symbiotic Entity provides 4THP per level - a large boost to durability that shouldn't be underestimated. Think about it this way: a Druid with 16 con gets 8HP per level, so adding 4THP on top of this gives them 50% more health! In a way, the Spore Druid is similar to the Blade Singer - the main benefit of both subclasses is that it makes the caster much harder to kill.

The level 2 and 3 spells are quite useful too. Blindness/Deafness is a helpful non-concentration debuff (Druid have very few of these) that only gets better when upcasted. Gentle Repose can behave as a pseudo delayed revivify if casted within 1 minute of death. And Animate Dead makes the Spore Druid an even better minionmancer able to combine skeleton archers with conjured animals.

animate dead is borderline useless. IF you're playing an in character druid, I don't know how you'd ever justify using animate dead since it doesn't come with the caveat of saying it's 'fungus related' like your ability does later.

"Unlike most other druids, they see nothing inherently wrong with undeath, which they consider to be a companion to life and death."

Animate Dead is not at all useless, in fact it's the best spell on their circle list.

[elyktsorb]

"Unlike most other druids, they see nothing inherently wrong with undeath, which they consider to be a companion to life and death."

Animate Dead is not at all useless, in fact it's the best spell on their circle list.

Yeah, I don't really vibe with that statement since it makes 0 sense. Undeath is not a companion to life and death, no where in dnd does undeath get some sort of neutral ground (to my knowledge at least). Not to mention just because that flavor makes it okay for the druid in question doesn't excuse it in a general sense, I'm pretty sure most people see undead as an evil thing, typically because of that whole negative energy thing.

But even if you take that into account if you wanted to be a good minionmancer you'd be a Shepard Druid, and if you wanted to play around with Undead, you'd be a Necromancer. Both of those Spore doesn't compete with terribly well imo.

[Merudo]

Yeah, I don't really vibe with that statement since it makes 0 sense. Undeath is not a companion to life and death, no where in dnd does undeath get some sort of neutral ground (to my knowledge at least). Not to mention just because that flavor makes it okay for the druid in question doesn't excuse it in a general sense, I'm pretty sure most people see undead as an evil thing, typically because of that whole negative energy thing.

But even if you take that into account if you wanted to be a good minionmancer you'd be a Shepard Druid, and if you wanted to play around with Undead, you'd be a Necromancer. Both of those Spore doesn't compete with terribly well imo.

I don't know what to say, man. It is written in the rules that Spore Druids are OK with undead. They have Animate Dead on their list. Clearly they are meant to use the spell. And "negative energy" is not in the description of Animate Undead.

Personally I just flavor the Spore Druid's Animate Dead so that the undead are created through fungus. NPCs and party members are much more likely to be accepting of a strange Druid that dabble in fungus than of your usual necromancer.

Honestly I find the combo of Animate Dead and Conjure Animals rather potent. Your summons can act as a meat wall while your skeleton archers wreak havoc on the enemy. The Druid is arguably the most spell slot efficient of the spellcasters so you'll likely have a few spell slots left at the end of the day to raise more skeletons. Sure, the Shepherd Druid is better against enemies resistant to non-magical weapons, but otherwise the two are roughly as good at summoning.

Keep in mind the Animate Dead shenanigans are on top of the 4THP per level provided by Symbiotic Entity. People lose their mind over the Abjurer's Arcane Ward ability - which only gives 2HP per level (+ int mod). The Symbiotic Entity's is almost twice as potent, can be activated twice, and fully recharges on short rests.

[Falconcry]

I have 4 levels of Spore on my Grung Way of Mercy (UA) monk. Tons of poison and necrotic damage which is great in the right campaign and fine in others. In the end you are still a monk and druid even if you DM drops you in an icy crevice full of undead. Chill Touch really helps with monk range as does Create Water for the grung’s nightly mud bath.

[Satori01]

no where in dnd does undeath get some sort of neutral ground (to my knowledge at least). .

Well the obvious answer, my good fellow is: (drum roll)

Ravinica.

You know the setting, the subclass is published in.

Eberron, is also an acceptable answer.

Both published, official, settings.
Unlike your own personal, aesthetic choice on “what feels right” for your table.

Just as there is almost no “wrong” frozen yogurt topping choices,
the same can be side for the cosmology/mythology of a D&D game.

There is almost no, wrong types of game.

[Alexwellace]

I ran a spore druid up to level 8 in a campaign. Triton spore druid, ok stats, was a very very fun character. Instead of fungus and spores, I fluffed it as an invasive species of coral that overtook things, and zombies having coral growths on their heads like the Clickers in The Last of Us.

Druid is a good class naturally, and having chill touch as a cantrip was certainly nice, however I designed my character to be able to mix it up in combat. Usually my first turn was to cast symbiotic entitiy, and shillelagh and Polearm Master. Then wade into combat to make 1 attack + bonus action attack, both benefitting from my +d6 poison damage as well as using my reaction to passively force con checks.

It wasn't amazing damage, but honestly using any character if you can use all 3 of your actions to cause damage (action, bonus, reaction) consistently then I don't think it's fair to say that's bad. Summoning Zombies as a reaction was also fun.

Overall, the class is dripping in character, but I think it really shines in lower level campaigns. I wouldn't have wanted to play it above level 10 without speaking with the DM to change poison to, say, acid. But the flavour of the class is amazing, my campaign ended with my character becoming the ''big bad final boss'' when we discovered that the invasive coral was in-fact a watery counterpart to the daemonic Zuggtmoy and that by spreading this coral as I did I accidentally caused a daemonic invasion. Druid is perhaps one of the strongest classes naturally, so Spore features on top is more of a characterful side-grade than a powerful upgrade.

**Edit -- Also as stated above, Animate Dead + Conjure animals + animate zombies as a reaction work together crazy well. I tried not to do it often, because it felt like it stole the spotlight from other players, but when we where in a tight place or we needed an ace in the hole to beat a boss, I'd conjur 8 velociraptors and 4 zombies and just drown the boss in teeth. <-- The DM explictly shown us a velociraptor and lets us 'suggest' what we summon. My favourite things to conjure where 2 giant octopi.