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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Gender
    Male2Female

    Default Re: Tell Me Your Experiences Playing Moon Druids!

    1. Was it an enjoyable class for you?

    Kind of. My moments of most enjoyment were usually from the Druid part of it, rather than the Moon side, though many of those were due to some incorrect rules.

    2. How much time did you spend in combat in your “Caster Form” as opposed to Wild Shaped?

    I spent a fair amount of time in "Caster Form" because I needed to heal or drop a new spell now that my Concentration had dropped. I often had to use my Wild Shape in a defensive fashion so as to not die, so I had to be sparing with it.

    3. Is it as weak at higher levels as some people claim?

    I got to 11th level, so I'm not sure whether that qualifies as "higher". I felt my Wildshapes were pretty useless in the level 5-9 bracket, and while Elemental Wildshape is quite good it's also very limiting.

    4. Did the temporary HP boost from wild shaped forms allow you to be an effective tank for the party?

    No. I was often beaten out of my wild shape forms within a round or two. Despite the DM giving me a special magic item that allowed my wildshapes to effectively wear +1 Hide Armour (or to boost their Natural Armour by 1, whichever was higher) my overall low AC made me an easy target. Our AC 17 Fighter and our Bear Totem Barbarian were far tougher than I was.

    I did manage to tank in Wildshape once or twice. One time, I grappled and locked down a solo Umber Hulk in Giant Constrictor Snake form, allowing my team to close their eyes against its gaze without taking disadvantage. I also managed to tank one boss, a Yuan-Ti Anathema with levels in UA Samurai, for a couple rounds in Earth Elemental Form as I was immune to his poison bites and resistant to his damage.

    5. Was it a pain to keep track of what creatures you can wild shape into, and did your DM give you trouble with the “Animals you have seen” clause?

    My DM gave me access to any non-dinosaur animal from the start, and we ran into a few dinosaurs on the continent we were exploring. Unfortunately, I only ever used one of the dinosaur forms we got (Ankylosaurus) as the ones we found I didn't want or didn't have CR for (Triceratops, Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus) and the ones I did want (Quetzalcoatlus, Deinonychus) we never found.

    I used the ForgedAnvil character sheet (http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdown...ownloadid=1234) which allowed me to keep the stats of five of my favoured forms on hand. For one-off use forms, I used any of the 5e monster references online.

    6. Did you try multiclassing at all? What feats did you pick up?

    I didn't multiclass because my Druid casting seemed a lot better than my shapeshifting, so it seemed a waste to throw good levels after bad trying to optimize that. Going to 5th level Barbarian makes a wildshape-focused Druid extremely effective, though (see my post here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...60&postcount=7).

    I lost Concentration a lot, and that was really frustrating to me. I ended up grabbing War Caster at 4 and Resilient: Con at 8, which made my save DC suffer. We had been playing incorrectly with Conjure Animals so that seemed like the only spell I needed, so I didn't see the need to optimize my already-crappy save DC (I used point buy rather than rolling like most other characters did, so my Wis was lower than others' casting stats).

    A few notes about RAW:

    Tetrasodium says that you can apply your proficiency bonus to your wildshape forms' attacks rather than theirs. My understanding of the RAW is that there's nothing saying that you gain proficiency with your bear form's claws or bite, which means that you fall back to their proficiency bonus per Wildshape text, and so your own proficiency bonus has no effect on your wildshapes' attacks. This means that in practice your wildshape attack bonuses are going to lag behind your teammates', as they're not only increasing with Proficiency but also with magic weapons and ASIs and Strength-boosting items and all that.

    A lot of people here seem to use Conjure Animals to get whatever creatures they like. The official ruling is that it's the DM's choice of which animals you get from spells like this and Conjure Woodland Beings; see the Sage Advice Compendium (https://media.wizards.com/2015/downl...ndium_1.02.pdf).

    Being able to choose your animals as you wish is incredibly, insanely powerful, and it's clear why they ruled against it. Eight Giant Poisonous Snakes can deal up to or even more than a hundred damage in a single round, with a very solid to-hit bonus and an AC that means they're not trivially killed. Furthermore, their 10ft blindsight makes them hard counters to many types of enemies (gaze attackers like Medusae/Basilisks, hiding types like enemy Rogues, etc.) and their 10ft reach means "dash and surround the enemy 10ft away" is a tactic that basically forces a melee enemy to Disengage or get chomped. Perhaps worse, eight Constrictor Snakes can effectively guarantee you a grapple-and-restrain against just about any enemy, and they too have Blindsight. I'm personally a fan of "Operation: Octopus Triangulation"; summon two Giant Octopodes and wildshape into a third in a triangle 15ft from the target; wherever it moves, it takes two Octopus attacks and is likely pinned. Two Giant Spiders can lockdown an enemy from range with solid reliability.

    Another warning: DMs don't seem to like it when you use the "8 CR 1/4 beasts" option of Conjure Animals, simply due to the way it slows down the game. That's almost always the most powerful option as well, so be careful. My DM asked me to stop using that option at about the same time we found out that the DM picks your animals, and after summoning a quartet of Giant Goats and then a quartet of Black Bears, neither of which did anything useful, I basically dropped that spell from my list.

    My overall feeling of the Moon Druid in my game was that it was decent at surviving and not a whole lot else. Overall high enemy Str makes your best 1st-level spell (Entangle) hard to stick, and 2nd level isn't much better; I often found myself wishing for Land Druid's access to Web. I didn't discover how awesome Plant Growth was while I was playing, so once Conjure Animals was revealed to not be as good as I thought, my 3rd-level spells were mostly just Call Lightning. Polymorph is amazing (especially as the DM was using Tome of Beasts, which gave me access to things like Gbahali and Young Spinosaurus) to such a degree that the other Druid 4ths fell by the wayside, except for the occasional Wall of Fire. Druid 5ths are okay (Transmute Rock is nice because no Concentration, Insect Plague is okay) but I often ended up using my 5th-level slots for more Polymorph.

    On the wildshape front, I found it occasionally cool but usually just a tool to stay alive. Having the pool of backup hit points makes you a tough target; the only time I died in combat that game was to our Warlock nemesis' Finger of Death when I was at fifth level (passed the save, still died). I also managed to survive getting swallowed by a Neothelid after I'd dropped a Wall of Fire in the pit its coils were in (it couldn't really get away) by taking Ankylosaurus form and burning spell slot after spell slot staying alive (and passing my Concentration, due to the ridiculous investment I'd made in that) until my Wall and my party killed it. However, I felt that wildshape's use as an offensive tool is quite weak past the 2nd-level jump, with the exception of some Giant Elk charging around 6th. Being in the front line is too dangerous; your low AC means your high HP doesn't meant much, and your to-hit is pretty weak relative to your fellows. Elemental Wildshape solves some of these problems but because it takes both your wildshape charges, it's a gamble because if you need to cast you won't have any wildshape cover at all.

    I often ended up spending spell slots more freely than wildshapes, given the number of them you get per day. Intense sequential combats (like storming an enemy castle) or just large single combats made my wildshapes a precious resource that I needed to use to keep myself alive above anything else.

    Until I got Polymorph, my biggest problem with the class was that I often was the only one left in good condition but my spells were just insufficient to dig us out of whatever situation we were in. After I got Polymorph, the rest of my spells didn't matter.

    To try to salvage the overall depressive tone of this post, here's my highlights from playing a Moon Druid through 11th:
    • Grappling down a Wyrmling Red Dragon in Giant Octopus form after it took down our Cleric and our Monk with its breath on its first turn, so our Sorcerer could Chromatic Orb it to death
    • Dragging a Draegloth out of its darkness and killing it with a combination of Constrictor Snakes and Giant Owls.
    • Dropping eight Constrictor Snakes on a Youngish Shadow Dragon that had been slowly picking us off, pinning it so we could bring it into the light and kill it
    • Surviving getting swallowed by a Neothelid by taking Ankylosaurus form and healing, and keeping Concentration on the Wall of Fire that was killing it throughout
    • Stopping the crew of a Gith pirate ship from swarming us by putting a Wall of Fire over the below-deck staircase
    • Managing to stick a Hold Person on an Abominable Beauty (CR 11 humanoid, deals 8d6 fire to anything touching her) and tossing my scroll of Protection from Energy to our useless 5th-level Necromancer so he could Fire-protect our GWM Fighter, who promptly dropped five crits on the Beauty
    • Surviving a Fey ambush (Darklings, Dryads, a Skeleton Troll and a Yeth Hound) and bulling through a Wall of Thorns (in Saber-Toothed Tiger form) to rescue our Warlock
    • Surviving getting ambushed by a Sand Spider by Polymorphing myself to a Savager and smashing it apart while still webbed in its den
    • Tanking a class-levelled Yuan-Ti Anathema for two rounds in Earth Elemental form, before Polymorphing our Warlock to a Savager which dropped a few dozen HP off the Anathema, forcing it to run and letting our Monk kill it
    On creating medieval thermobaric detonations:
    Quote Originally Posted by Ravens_cry View Post
    *strokes chin*
    Hmmm, I like the way you think.
    On rewriting your own past into a stable time loop of invulnerability:
    Quote Originally Posted by rockdeworld View Post
    Kardar233's Illithid:
    *strokes chin*
    Hmmm, I like the way you think.
    Quote Originally Posted by rockdeworld View Post
    kardar233's Tyr: So ok, it seems to me that your character evades death o_O. Congratulations *fanfare*

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    BarbarianGuy

    Join Date
    Sep 2011

    Default Re: Tell Me Your Experiences Playing Moon Druids!

    When I am playing a Moon Druid I feel a decent tank, but it is necessary to cast Barskin as many animals have bad AC. And of course, its concentration means you risk losing the spell when you are hit.

    My master is fairly open to animals "you saw," so I had good choice. As Druid you can also cast Polymorph if you want to shape in something different. I think this is fairly critical, if you miss the good animals; you are really ineffective.

    As expected, you need animals with special powers you want: War Horses are fast, Giant Spiders have the web attack, Dire Wolfs have Pack Tactics, Deinonychus have Pounce... Unfortunately, unless you have special Epic Boons (or via Polymorph) you will never transform in a Giant Ape or a T-Rex...

    By RAW feats are passed to your wildshape form, so I used Resilient to make my COS save easier (for concentration); other Feats can be useful. Maybe Athlete to increase your STR? Or Mobile to be able to Charge and flee?

    My suggestion is then:
    . Consider a single level as Warlock (Great Old One) so you can talk even when Wild Shaped, fortunately the Great Old One is probably the least capricious of the patrons as by RAW literally "might be unaware of your existence or entirely indifferent to you." To be able to use eldritch blast as cantrip is always good too; on the flip side if you really plan to play up to level 20, to lose the Druid capstone power is bad and at that level parties can communicate easily via Telepathic Bond. Perhaps your master will allow a quest to retrain the level, but once again it is DM call.
    . Talk with your master about what you can wildshape into. If your master is limiting, it is like playing a Wizard without spells. Just don't. Play a Lore Bard.
    Last edited by etrpgb; 2018-03-18 at 05:42 AM.

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