Druid - Circle of the Elemental Warrior [PEACH]

[nickl_2000]

This is an expansion/modification of the Druid Circle of Flame I wrote last week. I wanted to create an up close and person Druid who can mix it up in melee better than the average Druid. Of all the caster classes, I think the Druid gish is the weakest. I've toned down a few of the features, but overall I've given the class more choices and versatility. I am a tiny bit concerned that all the abilities are combat focused, but I am not sure what ribbon features would be put in there. If you have thoughts or ideas on anything, please let me know.


Druid - Circle of the Elemental Warrior
Druids of the circle of Elemental Warrior see both the beauty and the destructive forces of the elements. They embrace the natural world and use its power to protect themselves and destroy their enemies.


Bonus Cantrip
At second level, you learn the the Shillelagh cantrip if you don’t already have it.


Elemental Adept
Additionally, at second level, at the end of a long rest, you choose one of the elements (Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder). When you cast the the spell Shillelagh you may choose for the spell to do Bludgeoning damage or your chosen element.

So, this is current listed at the end of a long rest. Should it be short rest instead? Or is it fine the way it is currently?


Extra Attack
Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Martial Gish, they get two attacks


Elemental Aura
At level 10, you learn to channel your wild druidic magic into an aura of elemental energy. As an action, you can expend a use of your Wild Shape feature to surround your body with elemental power. For the next minute, you are resistant to your chosen element and any hostile creature within 5 feet of you at the start of their turn takes your wisdom modifier in damage of your chosen elemental type.

Many of the druid subclass abilities trigger of wildshape, so here you go. It's protective and gives you a little bit of offensive ability as well


Elemental Mastery
At level 14 you master the elements. As such, other creatures immune to your chosen elemental damage are only considered resistant to it (this does not stack with the elemental adept feat). Additionally, when do elemental damage of your chosen type, you do an extra 1d10 damage.

Now you can damage through a creatures immunity, making your elemental damage always useful. Additionally, you do extra damage. I purposely chose to make it impact all damage of the chosen element, not just melee attacks to give the Druid more options.

[Rukelnikov]

Heya, I already like this one much more, its simpler and I can see where I'm going.

Now, onto it, I can't decide whether Elemental Adept should be SR or LR, martials generally work on SR, but the Druid is still a full caster and some of the features (mainly elemental mastery) would make his LR spells much more useful, so I think I'd either keep it LR, or make it at the end of a SR or LR you may spend both uses of Wild Shape to change your focus (I think I like this mode better).

About ribbons... the cheap and easy would be to give it the elemental cantrips for free, but giving all of them at lvl 2 would be too much, maybe you get the cantrip of the element you are currently attuned to? I don't completely like this, since most people playing this class would like to have access to many elemental cantrips. Maybe you gain 1 of the 4 elemental cantrips at 2nd lvl and an additional one at 6th, 10th, 14th?

[nickl_2000]

Heya, I already like this one much more, its simpler and I can see where I'm going.

Now, onto it, I can't decide whether Elemental Adept should be SR or LR, martials generally work on SR, but the Druid is still a full caster and some of the features (mainly elemental mastery) would make his LR spells much more useful, so I think I'd either keep it LR, or make it at the end of a SR or LR you may spend both uses of Wild Shape to change your focus (I think I like this mode better).

About ribbons... the cheap and easy would be to give it the elemental cantrips for free, but giving all of them at lvl 2 would be too much, maybe you get the cantrip of the element you are currently attuned to? I don't completely like this, since most people playing this class would like to have access to many elemental cantrips. Maybe you gain 1 of the 4 elemental cantrips at 2nd lvl and an additional one at 6th, 10th, 14th?

I don't like requiring someone to use wildshape to change, simply because you have to use a wildshape to activate the elemental aura and I don't want to take away from that. I think I will leave it at a long rest since that is when you do spell selection anyways. I did consider non melee spells for the level 14 ability, I think it makes sense that a druid focusing on lightning damage can do extra damage with call lightning.

When I am thinking about ribbon abilities, I am talking about abilities that are out of combat (social tier, downtime items, exploration tier, etc). So, I wouldn't consider an extra combat cantrip a ribbon. That being said, I did consider giving an elemental cantrip based on the element that you selected, but I think it is both to powerful at level 2 and takes away from the theme of a close up melee druid.