Quote Originally Posted by Theodoxus View Post
I'm not sure how you'd go about codifying it, but if something like: Wildshape/Moon is a 1/3 caster, Animal Companion is a 1/2 caster, and "Balance/Resto" is a full caster, I think it would work well.

What I'm not sure you're talking about, putting it into Warlock parlance, is if these are Patrons or Pact Boons.

I would think making this kind of division at the patron/subclass level would make the most sense. Since they're granted at 1st level, there's no pulling back of slot progression, and it doesn't affect multiclassing.

Circle of the Moon and Circle of the Land are pretty obvious. (Though Moon only grants the 2014 baseline Druid Wildshape - see below.)
I'd incorporate Stars with Land, and maybe add an option at 1st level to emphasize healing, like with Life only slightly different bonuses, or blasting like an Evocation's sculp spell effect.
Circle of Companionship (I think it flows better than Shepherd, but I'm not adamant about it) would grant a companion, but unlike Rangers, I think it should include options for plants and fungus. Sort of rolling Spores and Shepherd together; the companion itself would work akin to the Ranger's (might even subsume the Ranger's BM completely...)

Then the Primal Boons... I'm thinking doubling down on circle aspects... Beast, Book, and Staff.
Beast grants a limited WS capability, probably 1/LR (with invocation support to boost it). But when coupled with Moon, it grants 2014 Moon wildshape.
Book works like the Warlock boon (extra cantrips), but grants an extra spell slot of your highest level instead of rituals and ritual casting.
Staff grants the Find Familiar spell, but for Companionship it instead boosts your companion (adding HP, maybe doubling the PB bonus they receive, etc.)

Invocations (Primal Gifts?) would then both modify the Boons, and grant other druid specific benefits (Barkskin, maybe boosting Goodberry to restore 1+PB HP?, continual Shillelagh on any club wielded, etc.)
I was envisioning Wild Companion, Wild Shape, and Old Knowledge as Pact Boons, or the starting point for those chains of invocations (see my above write-up for further details). The parallels would be something like:
Wild Companion = Chain
Wild Shape = Blade
Old Knowledge = Book

I don't think you need to go all the way down to 1/3 caster for Moon, or half caster for Companion (besides that is really hard to do). Just simply have Wild Shape consume a Primal Slot (Pact Slot) to change (and gain some temp HP), that will consume a fair amount of slots (probably all or nearly all at lower levels). The 2/3rds to full caster where my example ends up as is almost certainly balanced if taking full advantage of Wild Shape or the Companion consumes Primal Slots. I took a slightly different approach, I made Wild Shape extremely Gifts (Invocations) intensive just to get to Moon Druid competency, with the hope the reduced spell casting capacity would balance it out. If it doesn't having Wild Shape consume Primal Slots would be the next step (and could allow you to buff some of the Gifts associated with Wild Shape).

Subclasses would be something else, ideally a lot of them besides Moon would be re-usable. More or less binding certain Pact Boons to certain Subclasses is a major issue of the 5e Warlock (and what lead to Hexbalde's silliness), so trying to avoid that seems wise.