By Your Powers Combined: A Land Druid Handbook by Chameleon-X

[Tymmofar]

By Your Powers Combined A Land Druid Handbook
As originally published by Chameleon-X on the Wizards of the Coast message boards

Personal Note: Since the guide was saved as a notepad file, all the color ratings are now lost. I could try to give the features ratings but that would probably alter the original guide so i'll just leave it as it is for now.


Though the Circle of the Moon Druid receives most of the attention (on account of being borderline broken), the Land Druid is still no pushover. With generally higher AC and the ability to cast more spells, as well as retaining access to Wild Shape for primarily utility purposes, the Circle of the Land Druid is an extremely versatile and effective magic-user. With a little bit of everything, it can fill nearly any role you want it to. Use this guide if you're looking to create a primary caster with both offensive and support capabilities, or if you just like the idea of summoning an army of wolves to devour your enemies!

1. Introduction
This guide will use the following ratings

Red is crap. It is clearly worse than other options, or only useful in specific corner cases.
Purple is below average; its only useful in rare instances, and even then it's just okay.
Black is really meh. It can be good or bad, depending on your style, but there's definitely better stuff out there.
Blue is good. It's an above-average choice for most builds.
Sky Blue is great. It's better than most other options, and a solid choice for any Druid.
Gold is excellent. This is the borderline broken stuff that you pretty much have to take unless you care more about flavor than mechanical advantage.


2. Class Features
As a Land Druid, your class features are a bit sparse. However, you make up for this with an extremely versatile selection of spells, and the ability to cast more of them a day.

Druidic This is largely a throwaway feature that will rarely come up, unless there happens to be another Druid in your party, or you run into a bunch of NPCs who can speak this secret language. It's basically just... there.

SpellcastingThis is, obviously, your bread and butter. As a Land Druid, you won't be focusing a lot on wild shape, so the majority of your capabilities are going to revolve around spells. You are a full caster, with a selection of spells that lean heavily toward support, but also allow you to deal significant damage with the right build.

Wild Shape Though this is the main focus of Moon Druids, Wild Shape is far more situational for Land Druids, since it takes up your action and is limited to creatures of CR 1 or lower (which you only gain access to at 8th level). You probably won't be using this in battle much, except to get an extra boost of HP in a crisis situation, or to pursue a creature that can outrun your humanoid form.
Out of combat, however, this feature is much more useful, as the various forms you gain access to allow you to do recon and set up ambushes almost as well as a Rogue. Your exploration abilities (including swimming, climbing, flying, burrowing, and the benefits of being an innocuous tiny animal) make the Ranger's abilities look like cheap parlor tricks!

Bonus Cantrip This is the first benefit you gain from the Circle of the Land, and it's decent. One extra cantrip is always nice, although it would be better if the Druid had a larger selection of cantrips to choose from.

Natural Recovery this feature is basically the same as the Wizard's Arcane Recovery feature. At maximum, this feature allows you to recover 10 1st level spell slots per day during a short rest, though the actual number of recovered slots can be much lower if you choose higher level slots. None of the slots can be higher than 5th level, but all the best spammable spells are 5th or lower anyway (coughpolymorphcough)

Circle Spells Depending on your choice of Land, this feature can be more or less useful.It has a dual purpose in that it not only provides you with a list of auto-prepared spells (freeing up space for more spells you might want to prepare), and also grants access to spells that Druids normally can't cast. For a comparison of the different lands, see the next section.

Land's Stride Can be great in campaigns that feature a lot of travel through rough terrain, especially if you do a lot of scouting for the party. In combat, this can allow you to escape pursuit by creatures who can't pass through difficult terrain, especially if that terrain would cause them damage. Stand in a patch of thorny briars and sling flaming spheres at them from relative safety. The bonus against magical plants is situational, but still a nice addition.

Nature's Ward The first benefit is largely useless unless your campaign includes a lot of elementals or fey, but what you really want from this feature is the immunity to poison and disease. A lot of monsters have nasty poison and disease effects, and you're one of a select few classes to gain outright immunity to such maladies!

Nature's Sanctuary A really flavorful feature whose usefulness depends largely on your DM. By the time you reach 14th level, how many beasts or plant creatures are you likely to run into Honestly, it seems like this and Nature's Ward should've been swapped. In any case, it can still be of great use in the event that you run across a powerful NPC with a bunch of guard dogs or something.

Timeless Body Unless your campaign spans a number of centuries, this feature is likely to be useless. The only instance where this would provide you any mechanical benefit is if your DM likes Time Travel highjinks.

Beast Spells
This feature is exceptionally useful for Moon Druids, but it's still a good feature for you. Though burning an action on Wild Shape is still a big price to pay, this feature at least allows you to cast a selection of your spells while mixing it up as a beast. With a little reflavoring, this can have pretty badass RP uses too (Wild Shape into a Giant Eagle and cast Call Lightning; congratulations, you are now a Thunderbird!).

Archdruid Combined with the above feature, you are now a lethal spellcaster in both humanoid and beast form! Turn into a tiger and slash enemies with your flame claws, become a frost-spewing dinosaur, or just lay down Haste or summon a Swarm of Elementals to aid you while tearing it up as a grizzly bear. Though your limited selection of forms for wild shape don't provide you the same level of nigh invincinbility this feature grants to Moon Druids, the benefit of an infinitely regenerating temp HP buffer cannot be understated!


3. Circle Spells and Land Types
As stated before, your selection of Land will be the defining feature of your Druid build. There are two main reasons for choosing a particular Land. Most players will seek to maximize the number of new spells that are added to their spell list, since many spells (coughhastecough) are amazing in the right party. Alternatively, you may choose a land type for flavor reasons (e.g. a Drow Druid would have a hard time justifying any land type but Underdark), or because the Circle Spells provided by it are spells you would want to always have prepared anyway (thereby freeing up space for less obviously useful spells).

Arctic Druid Only two spells on this list are unavailable to the base Druid; the excellent control spell, Slow and Cone of Cold. Other than those two spells, however, the rest of the list is fairly meh. If you are a heavily control-focused wizard who's priority is shutting down your enemies instead of killing them, you might consider this Land, but otherwise, you'll probably want to look elsewhere.

Coastal Druid This Land provides a more trickster-type playstyle, with access to Misty Step
and Mirror Image as well as giving you an auto-prepared Conjure Elemental (which, strangely, is not limited to Water Elementals). The other spells on the list are, however, very situational.

Desert Druid As a Druid of the Desert you gain access to Blur, Silence and Create Food and Water, and also can auto-prepare Blight, Protection From Energy and Insect Plague. Depending on your campaign, this Land can be extremely useful, and in a desert-focused campaign (like Dark Sun) this Land is a top contender.

Forest Druid You gain access to Divination, and Spider Climb, a spell made useless by the fact that you can actually climb as a spider as early as level 2, without burning a spell slot. On the other hand, you have both Barkskin and Call Lightning auto-prepared, which can really help if you plan on using those spells a lot. However, these are the only noteworthy spells on the list.

Grassland Druid Welcome to the motherload, boys and girls! This Land grants you four non-Druid spells; Invisibility, Haste, Divination, and Dream. Just Haste would be a reason to suggest this Land, but with Invisibility added in, as well as two additional (albeit lackluster) spells tacked on, this becomes a top contender for the best overall land. However, if your party lacks a front-line fighter that you can drop Haste on, and you have little use for stealth, some of the other lands may be more attractive.

Mountain Druid You gain Spider Climb, Lightning Bolt, and Passwall. The other spells on this list are reasonably useful, making this a pretty solid choice. You can use Wall of Stone for utility or control, and Stoneskin for some added resilience against non-magical weapon users.

Swamp Druid You can use Darkness, Melf's Acid Arrow, and Stinking Cloud. You also have Insect Plague auto-prepared. Other than the awesomeness that is Stinking Cloud (especially once you gain Nature's Ward at level 10), this land doesn't really give you anything remarkable. But then again, if you want Stinking Cloud, you should really just choose...

Underdark Druid The only real competition for the Grassland Druid, the Underdark Druid comes with a great selection of spells, including Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, Greater Invisibility, Spider Climb, and Web. It also comes with Insect Plague and Gaseous Form auto-prepared. If your party doesn't have a good target for Haste, and you can come up with an in-game reason your character lives in the Underdark, then this is the clear choice.