Quote Originally Posted by KyleG View Post
It wonder if having combat forms as basically a pool of extra hp is the wrong approach. Maybe your form adds temp hp but you can use all your hp in that form until you fall unconscious. Infact "combat forms" is exactly how you could allow more wildshapes with that form being limited and anything not combat eg. Cr0 being unlimited uses.

But absolutely lean into the druid being a wildshaper with 1/2 casting.
Circle of the land make this more like a ranger or an elementalist even allowing trading of combat wilshapes for enhanced spell casting or metamagic like qualities.
Circle of the shepherd theming remains the same - calling a pack to aid you.
Circle of the moon becomes lycanthropic in nature, hybrid form options perhaps
To be honest, I'm actually more comfortable with the Pact Magicky casting progress, because it's sort of mix between a full-caster and ½-caster (technically still a full-caster given that they still have access to a spell list of total 9 levels of spells). Since druids have a "full-caster" spell-list, I'd rather not radically restrict that part.

However, what I could try, is to make the druids progress through spell levels at half the normal pace (like a half-caster), while keeping the progression for the number of spell slots, as is normal for Pact Magic, and finally make it part of becoming an Arch Druid to gain the ability to cast their higher than 5th level spells, once/long rest for each spell level.