I've now played the Druid a few times. Obviously, its offensive ability is fairly limited, but the ability to turn into virtually any animal I want is a blast. Need to scale a wall? Become a spider. Dive under the water? Become a shark or crocodile. Need a quick buffer of HP to get out of a jam in combat? Become a bear. 5e really throws the limits off transformations by having the power recharge every short rest.
The spells are also really solid. I can give everyone +10 to stealth checks. Goodberry is always a favorite (especially since I recharge 2 slots on a short rest). The animal-related spells are a bit tricky to grapple with, but I think with a little creativity, they should become plenty useful. DMs don't often think a lot about fauna, so I'm guessing I'll need to help mine along by asking what kinds of animals might be around.
It's certainly a lot better than the 4e Druid. Since most 4e spells were combat-oriented, taking animal form really crippled the character. I remember a friend of mine trying to play a druid in a 4e campaign I was running, and it just plain didn't work. It wasn't as bad as the summoner wizard he tried earlier, but still, it just wasn't much fun.
In 4e, your animal form was pure fluff. Basically, you had a set of abilities you could use in human form, and a set of abilities you could use in animal form. It fell into the trap a lot of classes in that edition did, where there were seemingly tons of powers you could mix and match, but you really needed to focus on one specific grouping to be any good. Either go with Beast Form abilities or stick strictly with human form abilities. Otherwise, you wind up with powers you almost never use. It also had that common issue of certain spells having such specific conditions attached to them that the right opportunity to use them never really came up.
5e doesn't have this issue, of course. The Druid has a fairly large selection of spells, and many of them can be used outside of combat. This particular druid isn't going the Circle of the Moon route, so I'm mostly playing as a humanoid caster who uses Wild Shape sparingly and mostly to get out of jams (like being pulled into the water by a merrow).
It's a good class.
Your friend's druid worked like a charm, because the druid would turn into a swarm of BEEZ that would take half-damage to all the awesome melee attackers you'd throw at him. The druid would bee-up, bounce out of melee range, then drop back into human form and drop long-range harassment, repeat. He didn't do a huge amount of damage but he would never, ever, EVER die.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, your friend remembers that you got so raging butthurt about not being able to destroy the Bee Druid that you and him cooked up a special large frog monster to consume the bees and take away body parts of the druid. Then the frog shit out a wizard for your friend to play next.
I agree that most of the main druid builds (and honestly, most of the builds for spellcaster classes in 4e) always felt too situational. But they could be fun to play.
Your friend's druid worked like a charm, because the druid would turn into a swarm of BEEZ that would take half-damage to all the awesome melee attackers you'd throw at him. The druid would bee-up, bounce out of melee range, then drop back into human form and drop long-range harassment, repeat. He didn't do a huge amount of damage but he would never, ever, EVER die.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, your friend remembers that you got so raging butthurt about not being able to destroy the Bee Druid that you and him cooked up a special large frog monster to consume the bees and take away body parts of the druid. Then the frog shit out a wizard for your friend to play next.
I agree that most of the main druid builds (and honestly, most of the builds for spellcaster classes in 4e) always felt too situational. But they could be fun to play.
In 5e, the way the DM deals with butt-hurt is Revenants. Those things are super LOL.
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