One thing I like about 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, as opposed to the 1st and 2nd edition D&D of my youth, is how the designers have broadened the depiction of classic classes to make them far more interesting. A paladin is longer bound to be a pompous holy warrior, clerics can be much more than bland skeleton-turning healers, and you don’t have to dress in a white frock, sickling mistletoe if you want to play a druid.
Hands up if you hate mistletoe!
The fresh, original artwork of the Player’s Handbook and its evocative class description, with intriguing background prompts, pushes you towards a character concept that feels far broader than the frail, old, Stonehenge worshipper you might have played in the late 1980s. And while this evolution is to be applauded, one thing I never expected was for the druid class to become the party’s official ‘tank’.
All the druid needed was a sexy makeover! (Art by Wizards of the Coast).
If you’ve been playing D&D for longer than half an hour, you probably know by now that tank is the phrase players use to describe the member(s) of their party who fight on the front line and soak up enemy hits, enabling more delicate rogues, rangers and wizards to contribute to the fight from a safe distance.
With their disdain of metallic armour and spells like call lightning (a great damage dealer… which gets a bit boring!), the druid was traditionally filed very much under ‘squishy, ranged damage dealer’ in early editions of the game, but that’s all changed dramatically with the introduction of Wild Shape.
…the druid was traditionally filed very much under ‘squishy, ranged damage dealer’ in early editions of the game, but that’s all changed dramatically with the introduction of Wild Shape.
In 5th edition, Circle of the Moon druids can turn into a creature with many more hit points than itself twice in between rests, and deplete all of those hit points, before changing back to its normal form unharmed.
Cool…. but mind-bogglingly imbalanced.
I’m not going to crunch the numbers too much on this, but a level two Circle of the Moon druid, who might naturally have 17 hit points, could easily access 222 extra hit points during the course of an adventuring day, by Wild Shaping six times into a dire wolf with 37 hit points (and that based on a day with just two short rests).
Just let that sink in… and then ask: what the actual fuck!?
That blows any comparable abilities out of the material plane of existence. A fighter’s (the traditional tank!) Second Wind feature, used three times at 2nd level, would get you around 21 extra hp. 😱
And that’s just the hit points.
Erm, should you really be setting fire to that tree?
If I told you I was homebrewing a class that, on top of cleric-level spellcasting abilities, could also climb walls at 2nd level, breathe underwater at 4th level, fly at 8th level, that could shrink to the size of a mouse almost at will, gain darkvision when it wanted, gain advantage on perception rolls, move at 50ft a round, etc. etc. you would think… “this guy is creating the most broken class of all time!” But these are all the added bonuses a druid can take advantage of, in addition to the obscene truckloads of temporary hit points it gains as a result of the Wild Shape ability.
Much as I love the concept, fun and flavour of Wild Shape, this is simply overpowered and unbalancing, especially in the lower levels of the game… (where, incidentally, I play most of my D&D).
One character shouldn’t be 10 times or more harder to kill than the other members of the adventuring party, especially not when you consider how many other powers it picks up by virtue of the same ability.
If like me you believe Wild Shape needs a rethink, let’s consider what we can do to change it.
Wild Shape Fix Number 1
I can’t really understand why the designers pressed the nuclear option when it came to making Circle of the Moon so much tankier than the Circle of the Land. A straight forward fix might be to create a new table that reflects the Circle of Moon’s specialisation, without going completely overboard.
| Level | Max CR (C/Land) | Max CR (C/Moon) | Max CR (C/Moon in RAW) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2nd | 1/4 | 1/2 | 1 |
| 4th | 1/2 | 1 | 1 |
| 8th | 1 | 2 | 2 (from 6th level) |
| 10th | 1 | 3 | 3 (from 9th) |
| 12th | 1 | 4 | 4 |
| 14th | 2 | 5 | 4 |
| 16th | 2 | 6 | 5 (from 15th) |
| 18th | 2 | 7 | 6 |
| 20th | 2 | 8 | 6 |
Design Notes: In my experience (so far), the real unbalancing aspect of Wild Shape for Circle of the Moon druids is the excess of hit points at lower levels that makes them virtually unkillable in comparison with their peers, so that’s what I’ve chipped away at in this revised table. While I’ve actually made the Wild Shape better at higher levels, so at 20th level you can turn into a T-Rex… (let’s face it, who doesn’t want to do that at some time in their D&D career!). Plus I’ve thrown Circle of the Land druids a bone, by letting them access CR 2 creatures from 14th level onwards. This table sits better for me, because now the druid has a steadier rate of progression, and I believe players will enjoy more turning into a dire wolf at 4th level if they were restricted to just a normal wolf at 2nd and 3rd level. (At least they will if they hadn’t already read the Player’s Handbook).
Additional Restriction: On further thought, I would add another restriction that will really tidy up this class option for me. I would state that the total sum of the Challenge Ratings of the beasts which the druid Wild Shapes into between long rests cannot exceed the druid’s level. In other words a level 4 druid can transform into four CR 1 creatures during a day, or two CR 1 creatures and four CR 1/2 creatures, etc. etc. I like this because it is almost bound to bring more variety and imagination into play, and presents some tough choices for the PC. This ruling also tidies up the extremely problematic 20th level Circle of the Moon ability of unlimited Wild Shapes (ie. unlimited hit points!). Using my rule, the 20th level druid can still Wild Shape into near unlimited small creatures (assuming such beasts have CR 1/8 that would make 160 transformations, so more than enough!), but they can only transform into the mighty T-Rex twice a day (after which they still have some space for other transformations).
Just a couple of druids hanging out…
Wild Shape Fix Number 2
If you are nervous about changing the rules (go on try it!), or your players get the hump at ‘being nerfed’ (note: unless something is seriously damaging play, I recommend only introducing rules changes BEFORE a new campaign starts, not in the middle of one!), then there’s a way to deal with Wild Shape staring up at you from the hallowed pages of the Player’s Handbook itself.
“Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before.” (p.66).
To save a lot of hassle arguing over what a character has seen in their long life of adventuring, before the campaign started, I would introduce a simple mechanic. When a player wishes to transform into a beast of CR 1 or over they must succeed on an Nature check to see if they happened to have seen it or not on their travels. I would set the DC as 15 for CR1, DC 20 for CR2, DC 25 for CR3 and DC 30 for CR4 and above. Obviously you can use common sense a bit to adjust them, if the creature is particularly common etc. If the druid passes the check, obviously they don’t have to make it again to transform into the same beast at a later date. If they fail the check, they have not seen the beast in question and cannot transform into said animal unless they encounter it within your adventure, or else go on a beast hunt in their down time. (For a beast hunt, let them choose the creature they wish to observe, and then set a DC for a Survival check based on them spending one week tracking it down in its natural habitat).
(I’ve just realised there is also something about this on p.24 of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. A list of tables of beasts by terrain type, that you can tie in with your druid’s background to make assumptions about what creatures they might have observed in the wilderness. Note: I like the idea that a druid needs to observe, not just see a beast).
Wild Shape Fix Number 3
Without wanting to get into that timeless old debate about ‘realism in fantasy’ (bangs head on desk!), my imagining of Wild Shape dictates that the druid becomes the creature it transforms into. The fact that said creature can be clawed, chopped, mauled and fireballed to death, and then transform back into a fully fit druid, without a scratch on them, is really immersion breaking for me.
One of the best homebrew rules that another DM in our group introduced onto our table, was that being reduced to 0 hit points gives you two levels of exhaustion. Suddenly dying means something again, and that silly D&D farce of lying broken and unconscious in one round followed by springing up and running full speed into the fray in the next round, having received some healing, was done away with. Now if you went down, if you did manage to get healed, you were operating at half speed with disadvantage on ability checks. Which makes sense (or at least is some small nod to realism).
I would be sorely tempted to introduce something similar for when druids are knocked out of Wild Shape. Two levels might be too harsh, but one level of exhaustion would mean there were consequences for dying in beast form, and make the whole feature feel a lot less like a temporary hit point gimmick and more like a transformation ability that the druid lives through. This would naturally limit how often the druid could take advantage of Wild Shape for combat purposes, no matter how many short rests they got in the day… and that for me would be a good thing.
Conclusion
Overall I’m glad there’s a new tank in town (sometimes it feels like D&D is turning into a game where most classes want to fight from the sidelines rather than actually engage the enemy, which feels somehow very anti-heroic to me), and Wild Shape is such a fun ability with so much creative potential – but I do feel the designers lost their sense of proportion on this one.
Hopefully using one, or even all, of the fixes that I’ve proposed might help certain gaming tables balance this ability and – if the changes are embraced, rather than cried at – I even believe these changes might actually provoke more fun and creativity, by forcing players to have more strategies and more uses for Wild Shape.
As always, feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments. (Note: I publish > 95% of comments, but if you’re particularly obnoxious I may choose to press delete instead!).
More Stuff
Do you, like me, ever get a strong feeling of apathy when choosing your PC’s weapons? There’s essentially no difference between a mace and a spear, or a shortsword and a scimitar, a longsword and a flail, etc. etc, despite these all being very different weapons… well check out my new 5e melee weapon properties for a touch more variety, realism and crunch in combat.
Pierre-Luc Marsan
I’ve stopped a campaign partly because of the circle of the moon druid. We play with the rules in xanathar guide and even then, the guy is messing up the power balance in the team seriously. It take out the challenge part out the equation, because if i trow bigger monster at him they might kill the others players. I try to change the rules as little as possible, i use a exhaustion system for death. Each time somebody fall inconscious and start rolling for a death save, he or she gain a exhaustion level. This was getting ridiculous, like waiting for a character to fall inconscious to use healing word to raise him and let him spring.back in action with no consequence other than half movement for getting back on their feets. I’m thinking about introducing a flaw where when you transform too often you might ve locked into this form, could make an awesome backdrop for a campaign. Maybe the moon is cursed now because somebody kill the nature god or something. So when you die too often in wild shape, you might be lock in this form, thus dying from a real death. Or maybe you have to roll a wisdom save when you use wild shape to prevent the mind to transform as well, so you become the animal until the wild shape wear off. Another idea is that the mind doesnt come back completely from dying in wild shape and we start rolling on a mental trauma table.. I dont know.
duncan
Hi Pierre-Luc
I’m not surprised to hear your story, the class creates a big problem for DMs… how can you create encounters that threaten a creature with access to nearly 100 hit points a combat at 2nd level, when its peers only have around 20 hit points.
I do think Exhaustion is quite a big penalty… three levels and you’re in trouble, while 2 levels is extremely limiting, and 1 is irritating.
Flavour-wise I like your ideas about the moon being cursed etc., but as a player I wouldn’t enjoy many of your suggestions! I can see troubles ahead with those, esp. if you fail to communicate them ahead of time.
If Wild Shape for Circle of the Moon is bothering you that much, and you don’t like the fixes I already proposed, I would rather remove Circle of the Moon from the table. The other Circles are still very powerful if your players want to play a druid, and Wild Shape can be used for scouting etc. but just not for combat.
Thanks for sharing your experience… let me know how things pan out with your group!
Joe Avins
In general, I think that addressing an overpowered ability by nerfing it the right amount is better than trying to fix it by adding a negative consquence. Some of your ideas have good flavor; I especually like the idea of getting stuck as the animal. But the net effect is that you still have an overpowered ability and the player rarely uses it. When s/he does it’s still overpowered, and when s/he doesn’t then s/he is just left without it. That might average out over lots of sessions when the ability is used once or twice, but this is a case where averaging out really doesn’t help.
I like the original proposed fixes, at least on the surface. I’d need to see them play tested before comitting.
My inclination is to nix the Circle of the Moon as written completely. Then make up a new Circle altogether, just so the moon maiden goddess or whatever isn’t left circless.
Scotty
I play a lot of moon druids and often end up championing them (and druids in general) at tables where I am a DM or a PC. My thoughts:
–I agree with your simulationist perspective about the way in which there’s no drawback from going to zero HP in wildshape. Adding a level of exhaustion when your wildshape goes to zero would be more fun to RP and more mechnically interesting. As for the temp HP, I agree that having some way to carry the effects of taking all that damage from beast form to druid form could be interesting. You have not yet proposed something that strikes me as interesting from mechanics or roleplay standpoint.
–I do think negotiation with the DM before and during the campaign about wildshapes known is effective. I have done this kind of negotiation and find it helpful for all parties involved.
–I also like your revisions to the wildshape table. Your table would be more useful if there were more beast options with a higher CR. However, that change requires a far bigger change to the game. Also, I wonder if moon druids are front-loaded for the same reason warlocks are front-loaded: so much more play happens at lower levels.
–One thing I dislike about about your proposed alteration is the additional mental paperwork required when keeping track of the number of wildshapes. Moon druids are already a headache of mental math to run. There is: knowing beast forms, keeping trick of multiple pools of HP and ACs, and adjudicating saves and skill checks to use when. I enjoy that ticky-tacky work. I know players who refuse to use moon druids based on this issue alone. If the goal is to make the moon druid more fun for everyone at the table, I have doubts that adding more resource pools to track is going to do that work. I wonder if a less demanding mechanical solution would be something like having more combat-oriented moon druid shapes consume two wild shapes. Note that this mechanic of consuming multiple wildshapes already exists for them at level 10. Adding that restriction to more wildshapes would feel reasonable to me as a person who regularly plays moon druids.
More specific-to-my-gaming group thoughts:
–Moon druids are great for me as a PC. I can, exactly as you say, run them as a tank with no issue. I tend to play with people who like to play squishy blasters. Being able to use magic is one of the big perks of D&D 5e for me. So when I run a PC, the moon druid is a great fit: I get to cast spells, and they get a tank. Everyone wins.
–There are other full casters — forge clerics and storm clerics and storm clerics come to mind — who are tough enough to be front-line fighters and could effectively tank for a party.
— Druids seem to be among the least-popular classes to play. In theory, a level 2 moon druid has substantially more HP than a tank at a similar level. In practice, so few people play druids that I wonder how often this imbalance emerges.
–Moon druids make amazing antagonists for a party of PCs.
duncan
Thanks Scotty for the experience and analysis, I agree with most of what you say, so I think no need for me to add too much.
One point that needs addressing:
“Adding a level of exhaustion when your wildshape goes to zero would be more fun to RP and more mechnically interesting. As for the temp HP, I agree that having some way to carry the effects of taking all that damage from beast form to druid form could be interesting. You have not yet proposed something that strikes me as interesting from mechanics or roleplay standpoint.”
A level of exhaustion is my proposal, and I think that is enough by itself. In RAW druids already take excess damage into their druid form, and then a level of exhaustion on top means they can only be reduced all the way to zero once per day without things getting extremely annoying for them.
This by extension limits their extra pools of HP because most PCs will want to wild shape to a new form, or out of form, before hitting zero. So they won’t be able to take advantage of all 37 hit points of dire wolf for example, likely transforming once they are reduced to 10-15 hit points, to avoid the exhaustion penalty.
Scotty
Gotcha. I see your point. I thought you were suggesting something in addition to that point of exhaution.
Merone
Have you experienced wizard shenanigans ? to me after level 5 the wizard is potentialy the strongest class in the game (more than the moon druid) so yes a druid at early level is worth 2 characters. but even damage wise (archer with sharpshooter or crossbow expert) keep up with the druid
duncan
Hey Merone, the damage output of the druid is not too troublesome, and that’s probably why no one really considers them overpowered… they don’t tend to outshine their fellow PCs in taking down the enemy, except possibly at levels 2-4, after which they actually tend do less damage than most characters. What blows my mind is their durability! It’s just WAY beyond the norm.
Actually we haven’t found wizards to be too problematic, strangely. We have taken spells that break the 5e design principles by having no repeat saving throw (ie. Hypnotic Pattern and Banishment) off the table, which probably helps. And while obviously Fireball is great, it’s not that effective against big bosses for example. I’m not a big fan of Polymorph, but no one has taken an interest in using it anyhow. Which spells in particular have proved (overly) influential on your table?
I feel like 5e does a good job of limiting high level spell slots, and in general wizards remain very squishy, so there’s a trade off for their damage dealing and versatility. For me the natural shelf life of a campaign is reaching somewhere between 5th and 15th level, and then we like to draw up new characters anyway, so maybe if I’d seen them more at mid to high level I’d revise my opinion!
DrDebits
Reading this article and then going over to the others was almost scary.
I mostly have the exact same solutions to most problems as Duncan.
Especially this one.
I just had a new moon druid and came to the exact same nerfs. Especially the pool seemed like a clever idea. Not knowing that you already had it.
Btw, I had asked on dicod servers and facebook, an most people actually hated all of the alternatives. Even acted like the druid is no problem at all, because of the 2 points of difference in Beast AC’s.
Here are some other homebrews I use.
-The ooze’s armor/weapon destruction on crits and fumbles.
-Crit effects depending on damage type. (radiant = blinded)
-Medium Armor that does give disadvantage on stealth can add 2 STR rather than 2 DEX.
-Armor loses any DEX bonus when speed is 0. I’m almost about to add “flatfooded” to the game
DrDebits
Reading this article and then going over to the others was almost scary.
I mostly have the exact same solutions to most problems as Duncan.
Especially this one.
I just had a new moon druid and came to the exact same nerfs. Especially the pool seemed like a clever idea. Not knowing that you already had it.
Btw, I had asked on dicod servers and facebook, an most people actually hated all of the alternatives. Even acted like the druid is no problem at all, because of the 2 points of difference in Beast AC’s.
Here are some other homebrews I use.
-The ooze’s armor/weapon destruction on crits and fumbles.
-Crit effects depending on damage type. (radiant = blinded)
-Medium Armor that does give disadvantage on stealth can add 2 STR rather than 2 DEX.
-Armor loses any DEX bonus when speed is 0. I’m almost about to add “flatfooded” to the game
duncan
Hi DrDebits
Yes if you ask people’s opinions about proposed nerfs they will always be disdainful… people (understandably) trust the designers more than some blogger or player they don’t know! Although in a game as complex and rich as D&D, it would be impossible for the designers to have got it exactly right every time, esp. as they can’t be sure how people will go on to use their rules.
And then of course if you ask a person who plays a druid, ‘do you think the druid is overpowered’ they will always say no 😉
Charles
This article seems to be fixing something that isn’t really a problem.
The designers decided to make a moon druid a hit point tank, as it’s primary contribution to a fight. So they had to give it lots of hit points to be effective. Then they had to give it a whole load more, to be cool.
Being a big bag of hit points isn’t normally fun, so the design HAS to ‘feel’ overpowered in order for anybody to enjoy playing the subclass. The key point is that this subclass specifically targets power gamers as the people who might enjoy being a bag of hit points in a fight.
The really clever part is that this funnels the power gamer into a play style that leaves other players to excel at the fun stuff, like doing huge dog, getting kills or winning whole combats with a single spell.
The key point is that the presence of a moon druid in the party improves the fun for the other players at the table, by taking care of the boring task, so they can focus on the fun bits.
The issue of monsters having a hard time killing tanks isn’t specific to moon druids either. Not knowing how to deal with a high ac, or high hp, or high damage reduction player character can be fixed by looking at one of the many new GM advice YouTube channels or forums.
If there is another player at the table who also wants to play a tank, and feels overshadowed, that isn’t an issue with the moon druid, it’s just an issue with having multiple players wanting to take the same role in the party, whichever classes they pick, somebody is going to be ‘better’ at tanking.
Ultimately feel free to nerf the moon druid, it’s you are the GM after all, but don’t be surprised if any nerf that feels ‘balanced’, effectively means the subclass is never seen again at your table.
Scotty
You are my g*dd*mn favorite.
duncan
Hi Charles, you make a good case but in doing so you’ve made some big assumptions about the designers’ intentions and how the moon druid developed. I very much doubt the process went as you imply.
For one I don’t see that the designers have tried to delineate player roles, so much as made some good better at some things and worse at others. Usually ensuring that they have as many weak points as strong ones (the paladin being the exception, in my experience).
Nor do I think most players go into the game saying… I want to create an amazing ‘tank’. Or ‘healer’, or ‘damage dealer’. They just want to build a powerful character with cool abilities that they can envision bringing into play during various scenarios.
For me the moon druid is unbalanced because, in it’s area of strength, it’s not 10 or 20% better than the next best class, as you might expect, but almost 500 percent better..
At second level a druid might have 17 hp + 222 temp hit points a day = 239
A fighter might have 20 + 21 temp hits points day = 41
Ok I didn’t take into consideration AC… but I just can’t see why anyone thinks that’s balanced. It VERY clearly isn’t.
Meanwhile, it’s not as if the druid is a one trick pony… out of combat it can outshine the rogue and ranger by using wild shape, and it’s still got very solid and versatile spellcasting to boot.
I agree that being a great tank is relatively unproblematic vs. being a great damage dealer (who outshines all the other PCs), but I don’t look at the class and think that’s a good piece of design. Rather the opposite. It sits WAY too far out of the norms that the designers themselves created.
Teayrz
AC on a moon druid form at cr 1 is locked to 12 or lower with the only exception being the fire wolf at 14(assuming ur dm let’s you have seen a fire wolf). This is a huge factor to just ignore like you have when any other tank class will have higher then a 14 AC at lvl 1.
A barb at lvl 2 will also have double hp due to rage dmg reductions AND can have a high AC.
More importantly the other tanks scale better with AC and general player power where moon druids are super op at lvl 2 then gain no power increases in combat form untill lvl 6 and then lvl 10.
If you are looking for a broken tank class it’s the barbarian with the totem warrior subclass(they are gloriously unkillable)
duncan
The totem of the bear barbarian is pretty great at tanking, but I still think the druid is disproportionately ahead of the pack. Also I have to disagree that barbarians can have a great AC. Assuming you go for Strength as their core stat you’re looking at AC 14 with the standard build for a very long time. (A barbarian with a shield is severely limiting their damage output, thus defeating the point of being a barbarian!)
Then also consider that you do have to be raging to get those hp bonuses, I think overall it’s a long way behind the druid.
A quick glance at 5th level might put the barbarian at 48 starting hit points. Plus another 42 from hit dice it can access during a day. 90 hit points then, which which with three rages it can probably consider to have some 150ish hp pool throughout the whole day.
A moon druid at 5th level might start with 38 hit points with another 32 from hit dice, so 70 hit points. Plus 222 from six dire wolf (also AC 14) wild shapes equals a total of 292 hit points… close to double the bear totem barbarian. ALSO I just remembered the druid can access 16d8 of healing, using the combat wild shape ability to convert spell slots to hp, if it wanted to, so another 72 hit points: for a total of 364 hit points in an adventuring day (or even more if it used Cure Wounds out of combat instead).
I’m sure there are some counter arguments and things I forgot, but I think the druid is by far the best tank, and if we were to say that the barbarian’s superior damage output was cancelled out by the druid’s casting flexibility then I think the druid is a much more powerful, and WAY more versatile class overall.
duncan
Forgot to add, a druid can get the barbarian’s rage ability by taking just 1 level of barbarian… so yeah, it blows the barbarian out of the water, by going and stealing its best ability very cheaply.
Justin
The problem with all of this is that the Druid class in general is one of the least played because they have so little damage compared to the others. Aside from level 2 to 4, they very quickly fall behind on damage, instead having higher hp pools.
You forget that D&D isn’t about killing your players, it’s about creating an exciting and fun story for everyone. If you think they’re getting too many short rests and want them to feel the danger in combat, then focus them. Their strength is their tankiness, so use it against them. Throw deadly encounters at them, and reason that a bear or direwolf is threatening to your monsters/bandits/etc, or that it’s closest, so they’re attacking the closest threat. You want them to feel their strength being pronounced to feel strong, just as you would want a mage to get to fireball a cluster of mobs or a paladin to get to smite a boss for high damage. If they take 90 damage in a single combat, they’ll be worried they’ll die, and know anyone else would have. But THEY didn’t, and they’ll feel amazing for it.
Just as you would with anyone, build encounters around the party, and if feel you need to, focus a player to get them to feel an intense danger. The wildshape player will likely get very tired of just wildshaping if you never damage them, just like anyone else. They can take more damage than most though, so dish out more. Min-maxer’s especially allow for higher danger rating combat more easily, since they’re prepared for more danger.
If you want to kill them for some reason, too, then ambush them. A yeti in the arctic, freezing them before they wildshape; an assassin knocking them out or outright assassinating them, etc. Your complaints mostly seem to stem from “I can’t wear him down, so I’ve thought to nerf him.” I honestly prefer the opposite approach, since it makes the players feel empowered, while accomplishing the same objective.
I don’t feel you’re wrong per-se, so much as you didn’t want to work around the fact they’re a tank. I think it’d feel great if you talk with your player and ask them what they think would be most fair. Do they want to fulfill the tank power fantasy? Do you feel you shouldn’t need to focus them, and they only want to play a control mage? You can easily finds lots of solutions online, and you can assure they feel content with it, instead of potentially just making them feel weak. I feel the slower level 2 CR scaling is fair potentially, myself, but it’s all something you want to make sure your player isn’t discouraged by. If they feel they’ll weak from it, noone will play it ever again for you, just like players avoid paladins when the DM cheats them out of their oaths. The balancing is a two way street.
tl;dr because essay. Just focus them and have a deadlier encounter, or ambush them before they can wildshape. If you nerf them, they’ll likely just feel like a weak member of the team.
Tom Frickanisce Jr
Use DMG Variant Gritty Realism.
duncan
hi Tom, hmmm not convinced that solves any issues here. Gritty Variant probably makes a druid more powerful vs. its colleagues given that Wild Shapes recharges on a short rest.
In general, Gritty Variant is not a plug and play solution to anything IMHO, given how much it distorts typical D&D gameplay…. have you used it to good effect?
Bails
Also add to the fact that at level 20 druids can wildshape almost infinitely.
Captain_Pete
If I were running a campaign with a Moon Druid I’d just rule that damage passes from one Wild Shape to another. So if the druid takes 30HP in one wild shape form that has 27HP, then changes back, they take 3HP as per the rules, but if they then change back, the wild shape (even if it’s a different one) is still down 30HP (and if it’s a shape that has less than 30HP, they can’t Wild Shape to that form again). I’d throw some rules in about regaining wild shape HP after a long rest. For me that would restore the character to what it was meant to be (a nature flavoured character who can add to encounters by changing into a variety of creatures) rather than a glitch in the rules used by min-maxers to get infinite hit points.
Kenneth
I play a moon druid, though I haven’t DMed for one. Tbh, almost all of the suggestions (except for what forms you’ve seen) make me just want to pick another class. True, a moon druid has a big pile of hitpoints. But the AC and damage output are consistently lower, and all the advantages of different animals can turn to disadvantages instantly. Let’s see how the dire wolf deals with a ladder, for example.
Dain
How do you deal with strength of creature encumberance issues, absorbing equipment, etc. The moon druid can just load up until they can barely walk, turn into a bat and fly off.
Abel
I had the same issue with my party’s moon Druid until I realized that despite being HP invulnerable, they’re actually cripplingly limited in any other aspect- they can’t even talk!
Trying to straight damage them into defeat will never work, but they’re insanely vulnerable to conditions. Making them unconscious with drow poison or the sleep spell etc. cancels their wild shape immediately. Basically killing one of their invulnerable forms in a single hit.
Forms that are capable of carrying a rider are large enough to be climbed on top of (DMG’s section on climbing on an enemy like terrain-alternate grapple). Instead of athletics OR acrobatics like every other contest, this is limited to the druids acrobatics only- which forms like the bears have pretty terrible stats in. Climb on top so they can’t attack you in their current form and then troll them with other annoying abilities like booming blade or something. And cancel their ability to ever heal by hitting them with chill touch every round.
They’re also super susceptible to debuffs from on hit abilitiesdue to low AC- which carry over between shape changes. For example, the “shadow” drains 1d4 strength every hit which only restores on a long rest. Instead of taking an infinite amount of attacks to hurt the Druid, they immediately face the threat of being a few hits from death.
Their wisdom is pretty high but even a super low level cleric might get lucky and waste an entire charge of wild shape by commanding it to “change”
Dain
I am a big advocate of letting the players decide if something needs fixed. NPCs are not stupid, if something is an obvious advantage then more and more NPCs will show up with the same ideas. When that happens players start getting the wrong end of it and they soon start suggesting alterations themselves. In this case a few encounters with moon druids or moon druid multi-classed NPCs will have the players reassess the “advantages” of leaving the rules as they are. even if they’re happy to leave the rules as is, what strategies do the players come up with against opposing moon druids, other NPCs will use the same ideas.
Anthony
There’ are a lot of things your not considering here.
Yes moon Druid are strong at level 2, however there not as strong as you make out. Very very few campaigns have six short rest per long rest, at most there are 1 or 2. Which brings the hp difference down considerably.
Additionally post level 4 the fighters and pure Casters will completely out damage the Moon Druid as the beast start to tail off then.
However the peaks and troughs of player power are to be expected and they give each player a chance to feel strong. Take that away from the Druid at 2 then he won’t get another chance to feel strong until level 18, (Some might say elementals at 10 are a peak point but I didn’t find elemental shapes worthwhile as a moon Druid, mostly because the game I was in had v few short rests.)
If you have 6 short rest a game then the likes of warlocks and sorcerer are going to be more op than Druids, with their short rest orientated characters
rigel
How much HP is, in my opinion, not the most important factor in determining how “tanky” a creature is, and certainly not in determining how overpowered one is.
I personally find Circle of the Moon druids to be borderline useless in combat. As a DM, my player plays as one. I just ignore his forms for the most part. They don’t do much damage to begin with and they have incredibly low AC. They aren’t dangerous. Kill the other PCs and then kill the Circle of the Moon.
Thats not to say they can’t be overpowered. A circle of the Moon that casts a powerful concentration spell, takes the form of a tanky flying creature, then flies away – could be incredibly annoying and overpowered in the right circumstances. But I don’t find a low AC bag of hit points with low attack and damage overpowered.
An overpowered creature is only as powerful as it can hitand deal damage without taking it.
duncan
I totally agree that doing mega damage is certainly more dangerous to a balanced game than sacks of HP (but still doesn’t really excuse giving moon druids 1000% more hit points that other classes).
Concentration spells are not that useful for moon druids because of their low ACs, but at least it forces the DM to target them – making them better tanks.
Also sentinel feat is a good choice for anyone who wants to play a druid tank, while savage attacker helps your damage output a little.
I play a moon druid and find that I am able to contribute more than average in combat, but my colleagues are more RP focused tbf and not very optimised. Being large and being able to move at 40/50 feet can be very handy in certain combats, while you are not forced to wild shape – often the druid’s suite of spells offer better options.
Kobo1d
NGL, moon druids are extremely op… at lvl 2,3,4 and 20. At every other level, shepherd simply outclasses them. https://tabletopbuilds.com/the-myth-of-party-roles/ Tanks also rely on their dm to target them, so if you play druid to tank… your dm is allowing you to tank.