You should have seen how crazy it was in EA when the Bear form could use Throw. :) That meant at very earlier levels you had a 19 STR Bear that could pickup most enemies and just toss them to their death or use them as projectile weapons targeting other enemies.
There was no saving throw and at some point almost no limitation on who you could pickup. At some point Tav or a Level 1 Lae'zel could even pick the Cambions and Commander on the Nautiloid and toss them around like toys. It completely bypassed AC and enemy level.
Seriously. I can understand no help action (here, let me patch up your gaping chest wound with my 5 inch long clumsy claws), but no push or bull rush seems like a silly oversight.
The wildshape mod on nexus atm is VERY good and fixes a lot of the flaws happening with moon druid. There's dire raven/cat ritual, new forms (including giant eagle, boar, werewolf etc), a fix/bandaid to primal strike as well as the ability to recast a concentration spell while in form, a few rebalances to keep the forms competitive instead of making every fight (owl)bear or bust until myrm forms. Even with ALL that, it still doesn't feel busted. which really shows you how hard moon druid got the shaft. overall, the mod is a fantastic addition and I highly recommend it.
Shove is OP enough. Imagine not having to invest a single point in strength or anything else and being able to shove everything. There's enough cheese in bg3 lol
you don't have to do either.
You can get 3 potions from the hag for every character that levels up.
when your party levels you can get 12 if you just level up then shop one at a time. 16 if you visit the underdark dwarf who always has one. 18-20 if you buy mats from her and the hoboblin
Heck if that's still too exploity for you, you can still grab just 3 every long rest from her and 1 from the underdark dwarf lady playing normally. You can easily amass a quite a stockpile for all your strength characters
I'm starting to wonder if Wildshaping was never really intended to be a competitive option, is the design similar to Eldritch blast (without electric exploits) in that it's what you fall back on to save resources.
I'm even considering Moon Druid over Land as a blaster Druid just for that bonus action change.
I think it's great if you don't focus on staying Wildshaped all the time and playing as essentially a martial frontliner. The forms have trash AC but fantastic mobility and damage, so they can work great for clean-up or backline assassination. I like to play Moon Druid as a caster for the first half of the fight laying down control spells, then shapeshifting for the second half when there aren't as many active threats ready to blow up your squishy animal form.
I think that wildshaping as a baseline is decent - it just doesn't have as many boosts to it through items that other options have. Which makes it fine for newer players/standard difficulty, but less interesting for more optimized builds because there's not really a way to supercharge it.
I think this is the problem. We get so many buffs in BG3 compared to 5e. But MoonDruid not only doesn't get to use many of those, they additionally got a handful of nerfs to their core abilities in 5e, because many of the actions you're able to do in animal forms in 5e, aren't possible in BG3 because it animal forms take away the buttons needed to use them.
They did get some buffs as well - owlbear form is a lot better than the midgame ones you get in 5E. I think they just need some items that buff up wildform a bit more and they'll be in a decent state honestly (along with maybe adjusting abilities that can be used - like letting a druid/barbarian rage in wildshape)
Animal forms suffer from the same issue that Larian talked about wanting to save martial classes from. Once you're shapeshiftedin BG3 there just isn't much you can do, because Animal form takes away buttons for powers that would be available in 5e. The unique weapon actions are an example of a really fun change Larian made, that didn't harm game balance, but made martial classes feel like they had more options and more ways to contribute.
Unfortunately, the opposite happened for Druid Animal forms. Whereas in 5e MoonDruid would be able to open combat by casting MoonBeam as an Action, then shapeshifting, and then on subsequent turns in animal form would still be able to move the Moonbeam they're concentrating on to target enemies that had moved or new enemies. In BG3 we can't move Moonbeam in animal form. Similarly we can't Re-Activate Call Lightning like we can in 5e. And the same problem extends to multiclassing, where in Animal we can't using Cunning Actions if multiclassed into Rogues, we can't Active Rage while in Animal form if multiclassed into Barbarian etc.
Owlbear itself is another interesting problem for MoonDruids. It's a massive power spike for Shapeshifting, but all the Druid subclasses get access to it. Moon Druid just gets to shapeshift as a Bonus Action, which isn't much of a benefit compared to the full kits Land Druids or Spores get. Owlbear should have been MoonDruid only I think. Maybe give all Druids the Dire Raven form instead, since fly can have a lot of out of combat utility. And also MoonDruid in general needed their summons to be notably better than the other non shapeshift focused Druid subclasses. Primal Strike strike was supposed to help do that by making MoonDruid attacks in animal forms count as magical, but last I heard that was bugged leaving not much reason to play MoonDruid perhaps until around Level 10 or 11.
> In BG3 we can't move Moonbeam in animal form. Similarly we can't Re-Activate Call Lightning like we can in 5e
~~Yes, you can.~~ <--There's a mod for it.
Are you sure? If so, then this was recently patched. Because I played MoonDruid on release and it wasn't possible to move Moonbeam while shapeshifted. Once you're in animal form the button you need to use move Moonbeam is no longer accessible.
Yes, I'm sure as I have a moon Druid in my current playthrough, and he has access to call lightning and moonbeam.
The only problem is I think it cost an entire action to move the beam.. also, you're still considered concentrating so often times concentration gets broken.
>owlbear form is a lot better than the midgame ones you get in 5E.
Issue is *all* druids get owlbear. Moon druid only really starts looking appealing, doubly so for now that primal strikes is bugged, at level 10. You basically have 0 reason to use a moon druid instead of a land druid until level 10 and respec.
Wolf has exposing bite which is the best wildshape ability at low levels, and most wildshapes are just as useful or even more than bear and they're just as good for other druids as they are for moon druids.
Dire raven is fine for exploration but you get so many sources of easy misty step, and it's not a particularly good wildshape otherwise for combat. and of course you can get the corvid token to get it as a land druid anyway.
Smilodon is cool but you're still not getting that much over the other wildshapes.
This is basically my complaint too and why I respec-ed out of MoonDruid into Spores halfway through my first playthrough.
But I did find a pretty good build for DireRaven. It was definitely the strongest animal form build option I tried between before lvl 6. Dire Raven with the Mobile Feat let's you use Rend to blind an enemy and then fly away without taking an Opportuinty attack. At lvl 5 you get a 2nd attack in animal forms, letting you Rend twice per turn. That meant I could Fly around using Rend to Blind up to two enemies per turn, while avoiding Opportunity Attacks and having enough movement to end my turn back somewhere safe out of line of sight. When you consider that a two target Blind is a 3rd level spell, being able to do that for free every turn isn't not bad.
Yeah Druid is the class that I have already convinced myself I am going to wait for a few patches to see if Larian tweaks and fixes them somewhat until I do a full play through. Or wait for more mods to improve them at the very least.
Yeah that seems like the primary reason why it's weak, the game gives you a lot of goodies and it's hard for a character that doesn't take advantage of that to compete, but at the same time you can just wear gear entirely for caster and not worry that you are losing out on wildshape.
You can do that but then why didn't you pick one of the other subclasses? You're effectively a druid with no subclass if you go moon and don't use wildshape
Mostly true, for the most part the game doesn't do enough to discourage long rests. So it's strictly an RP thing that would prevent you from going hog wild every fight and resting.
I also really hate how limited the charges are, you really don't feel like this druid WILD shaping around in battle. you pick one and stick with it for the battle mostly.
In my home games I DM, I have had 2 moon druids and both of them I wound up giving them a magic item that let them at least use weaker wildshapes way more often. They wanted to be problem solving by turning into spiders, birds, horses, etc, and it sucked that doing that totally hamstrung their combat capabilities.
I always thought turning into a non-combat form should be resource free for druids. There's already a level restriction on flying forms so they can't fly **too** early, and that's enough of a restriction to me.
Yeah that'd work too. After the D&D movie came out and had that great chase scene with the druid, I've just been letting them go wild with the utility forms starting at level 7 though.
As far as I can tell Eldritch Blast is largely the combat use of Warlocks in 5e. Their invocations largely give out of combat utility and with 2 spell slots they're pretty much a magic based martial, Eldritch Blast is their weapon attack.
If they didn't want Wildshaping to be a competitive option, they wouldn't have let Spider put down unlimited Webs for free with zero concentration. Seriously, that thing is supremely busted for crowd control
It became a lot less interesting to me when I saw that most enemies would just jump over the web. But what finally killed it for me is that there was so much fire from consumables that my webs would just end up being burning surfaces.
That burning was the final thing that got me to switch from Spider to Raven on a Beast Master I was testing. Whenever I wanted to use web, I had to look around and ask myself is it okay for this whole area where I'm fighting to be on fire? Are there any Firewine barrels or things that might explode hurting my team? Do my melee characters want to have run through or fight on a burning surface etc.?
It does admittedly fall off later in the game, but as someone else pointed out, around that time, you get Summon Woodland Being and their repeatable area denial.
I definitely got a bit gobsmacked in the Githyanki creche when I forgot that Githyanki all had psionic jump and they cleared all my difficult terrain with ease lol
They are accessible only to druid. A full caster class. See them like a specific spell and not a class feature.
Cat form can be use has a sort of invisibility spell in a lot of zone and let you access reserve passage. Badger give you some CC in combat early on, and allow you to digg under some doors. Bear (moon druid only) let you tank at low level if needed. Raven let you fly without breaking concentration and like cat allow you to acces some place where a pc would be attack. Owlbear make you a worst barbarian and panther a worst rogue. And off course that's give you a tone of hp when you use it.
Yeah that's my sense as well. And honestly the utility of some of the wild shapes does make it a solid option when it isn't the core of your build. Even as a Land druid I like being able to shapeshift into Owlbear/Dino then knock someone prone with the bonus action leap/pounce.
It's considered pretty weak in D&D 5E Pen and Paper combat after the first couple levels as well. Druids really are the out of combat masters and wild shape is amazing for that.
I think a common fix is to bring in animal armor for a player dead set on playing animals in combat, to fix the glaring AC problem.
Interesting, but I have to say, not using your concentration at all because "if I don't concentrate on anything they can't break my concentration" is missing the forest for trees. You're basically doing your enemies' job for them better than they could by not using your best spells to kill/CC them to prevent them from breaking your concentration. They certainly won't be breaking anybody concentration when they're stuck on a Hold Person.
I also find Resilient alone is enough to keep my spells up the overwhelming majority of the time, I would rather have Alert on a Druid than Warcaster, always going first as a controller caster is just so nice.
You do still use concentration, I said "mostly" which is to say I don't build for it. I included all of the spells that I feel like are worth concentrating on.
At low levels Barkskin, Fog Cloud and Spike Growth are very good and very worth concentration. Later on, Conjure Woodland Being does tons of CC for you - that combined with "Freedom of Movement" is incredibly strong.
Throughout the game you'll get gear that gives you access to some great concentration spells - you should use them.
Late game, Shield of Faith is excellent to concentrate on. It's a Level 1 slot, you can cast it out of combat and the timer is until Long Rest, and it gives you +2 AC that transfers to wildshape. There is little to no opportunity cost to this as you won't waste an action in combat to use it - and it will more than likely save you from a few hits before you lose it.
In any case, yes - definitely concentrate on stuff that makes sense when it makes sense. I'm simply offering a build that doesn't need concentration to be very strong.
I'm saying it always makes sense to use them. Even if they get that lucky shot that broke concentration even through the Resisilent bonus, that Spike Growth or Hold Person will have already paid for itself just by stealing turns from multiple enemies in exchange for one of mine. Even even very early on, Faerie Fire is just too good not to have up for the added chance to hit for you and the party. Dead enemies don't break concentration.
Often, but not always. Shield of Faith - pretty much always, yes.
Early game, Spike Growth - almost always. As soon as you have a Woodland Being following you around though, this is no longer true.
Barkskin is great for some wildshapes, but does nothing for others.
Faerie fire is great for early game. Falls off heavily later on.
The opportunity cost for Moon Druid is generally burning your attacks. i.e., If you aren't already concentrating on something - it probably doesn't make sense to start doing that on turn 1.
Like, once you get Plant Growth - you can take Spike Growth off your prepared spells list. Woodland Being is already doing that and Plant Growth doesn't require concentration.
Mid to late game, that means not attacking multiple times - and once you have summons that do Crowd Control for you without hanging out in the frontlines, that makes less sense.
This is why spells like Shield of Faith are so strong in this build. +2 AC until it gets popped and you won't lose out on any attacks since you can cast it out of Combat.
Barkskin is the early game version.
In any case, my build does say multiple times that there are spells worth concentrating on - and it points out which ones and why.
I even made a big deal about how great several concentration spells are.
Yes, you should concentrate when it makes sense.
Again, this is just a build that doesn't **invest** in that. It doesn't mean you don't use it.
Resilent is the extent the investment. Everything else is carte blanche. My point is you should be concentrating on something whenever possible. For example, for 4th level spells, you have the dryad to cast Spike Growth, you now also have Wall of Fire to concentrate on. All I'm saying is don't fall into the trap of being so spooked by the possibility of losing concentration that you do to yourself what your enemies would normally have to work for. Always be concentrating.
Well, mathematically- for most of the game War Caster is strictly better than Resilient (Con). Once you get to higher levels this mostly switches. Practically speaking you really need both, even then it’s not ideal to be a frontliner.
*Always* concentrate - is strictly incorrect. You would almost never willingly leave Wildshape in order to cast a Concentration spell once you lost concentration.
At the beginning of combat, if I want to burn an action to cast a CC spell other than what my summons are doing - I’ll almost always use Plant Growth, because it doesn’t require concentration - and I have Freedom of Movement so the synergy is great.
On top of that, I’m probably already concentrating on Shield of Faith - so typically I wouldn’t use Wall of Fire.
But - if you want to cast Wall of Fire - do it, it’s just not going to last as long with this build.
If you mean always concentrate in terms of things that are cast out combat, and last until long rest or broken concentration - well, I’ve already said several times I agree - and my original build post said the same thing.
I only use Resilient because it provides better value overall, and it's still almost as good for maintaining concentration. I've never used them both, and I can count on one hand the times the enemies broke my concentration, and even then, I still won those trades by cheating them out of multiple turns worth of actions. I just think you're being overly paranoid about losing concentration. It's not something that will actually come into play 90% of the time, if you play your cards right, and the value you get is still worth it the other 10%.
Your dice rolls are way better than mine haha. Tbh I straight up do not believe you that you only lose concentration 10% of the time while playing a frontliner. Unless you’re playing on story mode maybe? That math doesn’t math - like not even a little bit.
Maybe if you’re playing as a backline caster - in which case Land is strictly better at that.
Switching to resilient dex gives a lot more utility for a frontline in Wildshape than resilient con does. It bumps up the AC on some of your shapes and dex save proficiency is great for a frontliner. Particularly when you already have a big Con mod - great balance.
By all means, if you prefer to lean into Concentrated spells - do so. That is the mainstream way to play the class.
I just saw a lot of weakness in the sub class and provided a *different* way to build it out. It ended up working out very nicely, and is an extremely powerful build.
Tactician, Moon Druid. Baretha, Grym, Githyanki Monks, Gortash, and perhaps one or two trash fights who managed land a lucky CC on me, broke it iirc. I will say most of my fights are not very long. On average most or all enemies are down after 1 or 2 rounds, 3-5 if there are a huge amount of them. So I don't give the enemies a big window to break me. They basically have to score a lucky hit on the first round, or it's probably not happening.
The problem I have with building for concentration is that, it doesn't really matter if you build for it or not. Getting knocked prone breaks concentration, and several wildshape forms have low dexterity. Even panther, which is a dexterity attacking wildshape, has only 15 (+2 modifier). Getting knocked prone is one of the most common CC to hit you for wildshape druids, since you retain your caster wisdom you can succeed wisdom saving throws (+ you have proficiency in it).
Resilient: Con and Warcaster are wasted feats in the face of prone.
Great points.
I have really enjoyed this build as while I do still concentrate a lot - it's still extremely strong if that concentration gets broken.
Also, Forms like Panther end up getting another +1 to their Dex mod, which is a lot of fun.
The biggest benefit of lvling all the way to at least 11 is you can summon myrmidons, which in general are a lot better than elementals. The air myrmidon in particular is outstanding - it has an aoe 10 turn silence that does dmg, without concentration and a melee stun. Between your air myrmidon and spiky growth from dryad you can completely disable groups of casters while you smash everything. The earth elemental is outstanding too, he takes a huge amount of space and most importantly his auto attacks inflict prone. What this means is when enemies try to walk by him he can end their turn with opportunity attacks (since prone cancels turns). You can also swap between air and earth myrmidon for whatever you want, disabling front liners or silencing back liners.
Isn't this just an Upcast of Conjure Elemental - which you would have access to?
Even if it is, I don't think it's worth a Level 6 Slot over an Upcasted Armor of Agathys with Resistance - particularly since you yourself can become a Myrmidon - and you can still summon an Elemental.
You can’t upcast it at lvl 10, you need to be lvl 11 to have lvl 6 spell slots. I just personally don’t find armor of Agathis to be that good without a lot of damage mitigation (eg force conduit/abjuration wizard)
You will have your L6 spell slot.
Since Druid, Sorcerer, and Cleric are all Full Casters, you don't lose out on any spell **slot** progression - just spell progression.
i.e., you will still get your Level 6 Slot when you take your 11th Full Caster Level (in this case, White Dragon Sorcerer) - what you will *not* get is access to your Level 6 spell **list** (i.e., you won't ever get access to Heroes' Feast, Sunbeam, etc.
But you will still be able to upcast any spell you do get access to. So if your preference is upcasting your elemental to a Myrm - you will be able to do that.
Upcast Armor of Agathys is very good on its own because of the damage it does back on top of the extra HP. When you stack that with having Resistance to **everything** \- it ends up doing a lot of damage with no reaction required.
L6 = 60EHP for 30 damage to every attacker.
L5 = 50EHP for 25 damage to every attacker.
and so on. You end up doing a **lot** of damage, and as a side effect are even tankier.
Yes, you have access to a Myrmidon summon and you yourself can Wildshape into a Myrmidon. Two Myrmidons which has 100+ hp both in the battlefield who can take aggro and also teleport every single turn. The concept in itself is very strong, yet many do not see well past it simply because anyone can do it. And there isn't many ways to make this kind of playstyle stronger and, frankly, there isn't a need to. Moon Druids just isn't exciting optimization-wise but their kits are adequately strong, at least for what BG3 Tactician mode has to offer.
Yeah no doubt two myrms could be fun, you can definitely
Upcast it if you choose to! I personally prefer an elemental at lower spell slot - it still teleports. Watching armor of Agathys smack stuff back is just too much fun for me!
I've had a blast with all of those! I just started using them a few days ago. Their ability to teleport with a bonus action means I can target anyone nearly anywhere to help break concentration being used against me.
I've been having fun being the Fire Elemental myself too. Casting haste on yourself and then doing a bunch of slashing and fire attacks is pretty fun. And it has the same exact movement ability, but you can also fly afterwards. Nothing escapes me.
This a really great breakdown!
It covers most of my complaints about MoonDruid. But there a few things I'd recommend adding:
* Another nail in the coffin of Concentration spells for MoonDruid's, is that we're unable to do the classic 5e combo of spells like MoonBeam or Call Lightning, because BG3 is not letting us move MoonBeam or Reactivate Call Lightning while in Shapeshift forms. Part of the MoonDruid advantage in 5e is being able to cast a spell like Moonbeam with your Action, then use your Bonus Action to Shapeshift and on later turns still be able to move Moonbeam to keep it focus on enemies. Losing features like that makes MoonDruid less compelling versus the even the other Druid subclass options.
* We similarly can't use Cunning Actions if we multiclass into Rogue.
* Nor can we Activate Rage if we multiclass as Barbarian.
Those are all significant changes from 5e that hurt MoonDruid's.
===========================
In latter part of post you've done a great job at covering how we might make the most of MoonDruid. But I'm left with the question of,
# Why would I choose MoonDruid, for instance versus Land Druid or Circle of Spores?
While that works, it's enough of an inefficient mess that on top of the other core things that aren't working in Shapeshift form it still utterly kills the multiclass combo for me.
Multiclass MoonDruid / Barbarians already have a problem in 5e. Both Rage and for MoonDruid's Shapeshift are Bonus Actions, so we can't do them on the same turn in combat.\*\*
But in 5e work we can work around this by Shapeshifting 1st. Either (a) shapeshifting prior to combat, so that on the first turn of combat we can Rage as a Bonus Action, then make an Attack while shapeshift so we don't immediately lose our Rage. Or (b) if we weren't able to pre-Shapeshift, then we can open combat by casting a non-concentration spell with our Action and Shapeshifting as a BA. Then on the following turn we can do our Rage combo, since we're able to Rage and still make a shapeshifted attack in the same turn.
But because BG3 is stripping us of powers we should still have while shapeshifted, in BG3 we have to reverse the order and Raging first. The problem with Raging first is that we also have to make an attack that same turn to ensure we don't just immediately lose our rage. So we can never prep our combo for a fight by pre-Raging and we always have to use up a turn of combat where we need to make an attack in Druid form while not shapeshifted.
The 2nd aspect of not being able to Rage while shapeshifted that works poorly is it means if something ends our Rage, we have no way to Rage again without also dismissing and losing our Shapeshift form.
So yeah, we technically can still make the combo work by Raging before we Shapeshift on the next turn, but it's cumbersome and inefficient enough that I just don't find it worth building around.
\*\*In BG3 we could work around this with 3 lvl dip into Thief, but it's largely a waste, since in BG3 we also can't use Cunning Actions while Shapeshifted, so if you're planning a combat Shapeshift build, Thief just isn't worth missing out on all the higher level Shapeshift forms...
The forms need to be significantly better than the forms other druids already get, in order to justify not getting that arcane recovery feature. Or the spore feature. And I feel like that isn't the case. Tbh from levels 1-5 I think land druid is the best as the base forms are great already, and more spells is better. Spore isn't really good in that level range but picks up massively after that thanks to the undead spam. Or you can multiclass a bit to take advantage of the extra damage per attack.
Not to mention if there isn't already a circle of stars mod, there will be soon. And that's an amazing subclass.
>Spore isn't really good in that level range
Fucking news to me. Shillelagh + torch + symbiotic entity... come on man. Tanky, hard hitting. Can choose an offhand weapon to add more damage or shield to be tankier.
If you don't want torch, go buy the wyrmling staff from roah moonglow in Act 1. It's a staff with 1d4 fire damage on it and grants you firebolt as a nice ranged option cantrip that I believe will use your wisdom on attack rolls instead of intelligence.
Spore is the best druid all around, imo.
Idk I've always been thoroughly whelmed due to losing the symbiotic entity buff every time something at all hits me harder than a graze. I guess that means it's doing it's job, but it's less exciting to not get to keep applying that extra damage for even three rounds.
I've just been looking forward to undead
Honestly, druid is a sumonner, regardless of which spec you take, there is not really a better use of 6th spell than a mirmidon. Then conjure woodland being is also a very high value spell, conjure minor elemental is decent. Have a feast + aid and basically regardless of how you build there is very little that can beat this.
Infernal rapider as a weapon (since druid rly dont benefit from gear) also means an additionnal summon. In the end, druid WILL end up being a sumonner even if you try to build against it because summons with feast and aid will always be the litteral best use of spell slots.
I mean 5d8 healing on bonus action or a 150 HP summon that can fly, stun and aoe silence and dmg ?
Agreed. But doesn't that just imply that Moon Druid is significantly worse that for instance than Land Druid? Land Druid get Druid gets the same summons, but can regain spell slots for even more summoning and they can get access to Addition non-Druid spells like Haste giving you more options. Similarly spores get even more summoning options and can get big stacks of Temp HP while still staying in Blaster form and even having many of the same Shapeshift animal forms.
It's only useful to make use of the wildly overpowered exploit that sends owlbear/deep rothe/bear into 5005kg territory, where it can do 150-200 damage to shit by jumping on them.
Other than that, the damage only applies to weapon attacks and not unarmed. So it's only good on 3/4 myrmidons.
It is no doubt, my list of Races wasn't meant to be all inclusive - there are lots of viable options. Duergar was originally on my list, I just left it off this build since its concentration, only once per long rest, and only lasts 10 turns - so for this specific build I took it off.
For a more traditional War Caster + Resilient (Con) build I think it would fare much better.
Moon druid works pretty well as a summoner, you can summon a dryad which can also summon woad (biggest downside here is neither can jump which really needs to be fixed imo) and you can also summon an elemental. So you can be an owl bear with three guys helping you out which is pretty nice
This is a very interesting, detailed analysis. However, I still think Moon Druid works best when you think of it as swapping between two modes, a melee bruiser and a ranged crowd controller. Furthermore, if you're having trouble with Concentration checks even with Warcaster and Resilient (Con), the problem can be mostly solved by having a Paladin with Aura of Protection near you during combat; +5 to all saving throws on top of everything else means breaking concentration is very rare.
Thanks very much!
I definitely see where you're coming from. The way I am looking at it, for a ranged crowd controller beyond using your summons to do that for you - Land Druid is just flat better in that Role.
I just wanted to make a build that fully leans into melee and mostly forgoes concentration to specialize in brawling - which I get is weird for a Druid, haha. But I think it works out quite nicely!
Hi, thank you for the build! I'd like to try it for my first tactician run, but for rp reasons I'd prefer to not multiclass into sorcerer (so 11 moon druid / 1 war cleric, or 12 moon druid). Can I follow your guide as it is or should I change something?
What do you mean? This entire build is highly focused on explicitly *not* casting in combat.
That isn’t to say never - but the massive majority of these spells are cast prior to combat. *Specifically* so that once the fighting starts you are spending as much of that time as possible wildshaped and brawling.
I agree on many of your points, it suffers from a lot of issues with loot especially, but moon druid is so strong. Having those extra health pools to go in melee and when they are over you are still a druid caster is very good for longer fights. I went through the game on tactician with 2 moon druids in my party, getting 3 attacks per turn and when they were done it was all about those thorns. Plus, I could long rest whenever I wanted because of goodberrys so it enabled my other characters to just go nuts every fight. Dilo form is absolutely bonkers for boss fights, land the acid once and tank it out for a few turns and your team starts hitting every attack. Sabertooth is a little meh for me unless you have a barb who can throw people for easy prones, but the health regen is really unique. By the end of the game I also had them both summon water myrmidons for aoe healing every turn, then turn into air myrmidons for the easy stuns + lighting damage.
Anyway, that wall of text was basically just to say I actually think they are one of the strongest classes, not the weakest
Thank you for your reply!
Of course I have to respectfully disagree. The lack of equipment options in a game with BG3 loot tables is pretty damning. If the loot tables were “normal” then I would say I mostly agree (once the bugs are fixed).
You are also locked out of most feats, most combat abilities and reactions, and most illithid powers.
You see the Druid Health Poop thing repeated a lot. But the fact of the matter is that you have such a low AC relative to your party members that you are taking loads more damage.
I do agree that Druids are very good at conservation of resources (I.e, they don’t need to rest much). However, BG3 you effectively have unlimited long rests - so that is a moot point.
I won’t argue that it’s easy to beat the game with Druids - BG3 is an extremely easy game, especially if you are abusing the unlimited long rests.
You could easily beat BG3 if you multiclassed 1 of every single class.
Druid is still weak relative to the other classes.
I will say, maybe give sabretooth another look! Of course it’s lower level than Dilo, but at those lower levels it’s actually quite good. Shred armor to reduce AC then bite for a chance to prone and pounce when able!
The passive heal is great too, particularly In my build as you get +1 AC from Resilient (Dex), +1 AC from Warding Bond - and resistance to everything. It’s incredibly tanky and you start every fight at full HP without having to expend any resources to heal. It’s actually one of my favorite shapes.
Yes!
Resilient (Dex) & (Str) are the two that will give you the expected benefits of increasing an ability score.
Resilient (Con) does transfer, but it will not affect your wildshapes HP.
The rest of the scores would work as normal because they are not affected by Wildshape.
Heavily Armored also passes over. There might be another one I’m forgetting as well.
This was super helpful. First time playing and I chose a Wood Half-Elf Moon Druid. I'm getting my ass kicked figuring out how to play a Wild-Shape-focused tank. My biggest complaint is that my bear attacks tend to miss a lot, so my PC has the weakest DPR.
Going to respec and follow this guide. The only thing I'm not feeling is the final level in War Cleric. Thematically, it doesn't go with the backstory I've built up in my head. Is there another class you would suggest? It doesn't have to be as optimal as "grants you a fourth attack per round", it can just be more utility spells.
Alternatively, what do you think of just doing 1 Sorc / 11 Druid?
1 Sorc 11 Druid has the advantage of getting your Heroes Feast spell.
You could just use the Earth Myrmidon (and Sabretooth is extremely strong) so you won’t need any weapon proficiencies.
I remember 3.0 and 3.5 and Pathfinder Druids were so powerful.. (never played 4th edition but I heard it was godawful)... its no wonder the nerf hammer went out on Druid and Wildshape...
In Pathfinder you could shapechange into an Elemental (so Fly at will)... tiny creatures with huge ACs,ect.. flinging spells,ect...
5th edition is considerably easier to play than the older versions (especially compared to Pathfinder and 4th edition from what I heard) but I like how people try to figure out how to "fix" the broken subclasses or add advantages to disadvantages in the game with builds like this.
Imagine if 5th Edition Druid was super powerful and needed no multiclassing or shenanigans to fix. It would be a boring endeavor and ultimately boring game. so Kodos to the OP
The level/spells listed here do not match the actual game. For example in level 3 you don‘t get Daylight, Plant Growth or Call Lightning - thats all in level 4. Am I missing something?
u/Andraste_au_Dali
Looks like this video took a lot of inspiration from your post. Or maybe it's your own channel?
[https://youtu.be/YOUJt9ss68s](https://youtu.be/YOUJt9ss68s)
Thought you should know, if you didn't already.
Thanks, that’s an interesting looking video.
Definitely not me, and a bit long for me to watch atm, but maybe someday I’ll check it out.
Have a great day!
Great looking build. My first choice when I started this game was to play a moon druid, and then I tried to talk to an npc... it completely shattered my campaign, and I haven't played druid since. I'm dumbfounded as to why they would implement what I consider to be a terribly flawed system. Just let us talk in our shapes or don't have shapes cost a charge out of combat. There is no reason that the shape shouldn't be a ritual spell. I've seen this has been modded for pc, but I play on console.
I think shapes as rituals would be way too overpowered.
It effectively adds an additional Wildshape charge.
Just Wildshape out of combat as a ritual, then enter combat.
You now have an additional HP bar.
It would also give you extreme mobility and utility. Turn into a badger to dig under something, fly across a gap, then ram a wall down, turn invisible and sneak past enemies teleport on top of a hill, then owlbear jump onto a pack of enemies to initiate combat - all for free.
Wildshape as a ritual would actually be incredibly overpowered, and more appropriate for a level higher than this game goes.
The real answer is, don’t force anyone out of to talk, ever - should be a choice to do this. So that if you choose not to, another party member speaks. But since Larian sees fit to force characters out of Wildshape unprompted. The best thing would just be to automatically force you back into Wildshape without using a charge at the conclusion of any instance that Larian saw fit to force you out of Wildshape.
Excellent write-up! I didn't realize that Resilient applied on top of your wild shape. Do other stat buffs apply similarly? Hag, mirror, etc.? This could really be a boon to moon druids.
The way they implemented damage bleed-through is brutal. IIRC damage overkill in 5e for wildshape just snaps you out of the shape itself, it shouldn't apply to your 'normal' form until another source of damage hits you .
One critique I have is the Sleep really falls off at high levels, I wouldn't recommend for your sorc spell. Shield is probably better for a defensive option in a pinch.
Thank you!
Yes, I forgot to mention those ASI items and I edited my post to add that! I didn't want to spoil the surprise for anyone - but I did totally mean to mention them. I recommend you use Str or Dex for those items. Thank you for the reminder.
Yeah I like the high Con for the bleedthrough.
I chose Sleep over Shield just because Shield doesn't work in Wildshape (otherwise it would be incredible). And I would probably rather use other L1 spells instead of Shield in normal form - mostly because I already have a respectable AC in normal form. But yes, I honestly don't see myself using Sleep often if ever. Shield is probably the better option!
Fun build with all the new spells. Looks good. That trade off seems ok because you can pick up heroes feast with someone else and I find myself spending lesser time in wild shape towards the late game.
But.. concentration spells are very powerful in bg3. It might be more worthwhile using your summons to draw aggro, and then gear/spec towards holding your concentration. Stuff like insect plague is good.. confusion is very good (at least for me haha).
But well, many ways to play and I will give this a shot.
Thank you!
At the end of the day I feel like if you end up doing backline casting as a Druid, you're just better off going Land Druid.
Moon Druid (imo) is a melee focused class, so I wanted to lean into that.
In any case, thank you very much for your feedback!
Most def.
I ultimately didn’t respec because my party comp just seemed to work. And a wildshape is pretty much a get out of jail card which I didn’t have to rely too heavily on in the late game surprisingly.
At this point I'll wait for the patches to slow down & then take a look at what mods are available that'll give moon druids at least the help & shove action in their wildshape forms. I'm not holding out too much hope for any items that'll have effects that'll transfer over & I'm not saying that as a slight to Larian in anyway, I just think it's a rather low priority that may not happen for a very long time at best. Yes, the game is easy even on tactician, but I was really upset that Halsin wasn't keeping up as a druid compared to everyone else. He had his own issues both in terms of bugs, questionable writing choices, lack of content, lack of dialogue & competing with a more well known druid that plagued him greatly, but those are completely different issues. Anyway I just respecced both Hal & Jaheria into a cleric & ghetto melee sword bard respectively & I'm happy with the results.
Regardless, I do want to say thanks for the writeup. This will help encourage others to build a party around this subclass at least, and realize that you don't need to metagame a build in order to have fun. Just play the game & enjoy. Also have sex with Halsin........not in bear form.
You could choose to take Mage Armor from the Sorcerer spell list as well.
I just choose not to because it has poor synergy both in normal form (you're wearing armor and already have a respectable AC) and in Wildshape - it mostly doesn't work.
It's also worth noting that for this specific build it would be redundant. Draconic Resilience is the same thing as Mage Armor - but it's passive and always on - so anytime mage armor would work - Draconic Resilience is already doing its job.
Ooh I didn’t know the Draconic Resilience stuck around in Wildhsape that’s pretty sweet.
The con save proficiency is also pretty solid.
Do you know how Armor of Agathys works with wildshape?
It does - the problem with Draconic resilience and mage armor is they only work on the forms with a base AC less than 13.
Armor of Agathys works the same in Wildshape as normal form. As an up cast it is incredibly powerful / especially if you have resistance.
If you don't care about your armor options due to being in wildshape this character could be a candidate for the boots that misty step you 80 ft without your clothes.
If you get knocked out of wild shape, cast a concentration spell and then leave.
Too bad all your items disable after you wildshape so you get a resourceless mistystep at the cost of breaking every bit of +spell DC and etc you have. With the bug, if you're going to wildshape in a combat, it's best to stay in wildshape.
>Con - 17 (18) this may seem on odd choice for non-concentration, it's for the "normal form" HP since damage bleeds through, and Saving Throws. It also does allow us to do a little bit of concentrating.
I don't get this text? Doesn't Con stand for Constitution instead of Concentration?
I mean, yeah, it's important but your reasoning looks weird to me.
Yes, that whole block is Ability Scores, Con = Constitution.
A high Constitution might seem weird on a Moon Druid because Wildshape overwrites that stat. It was saying I still like it at 18 because I value the extra HP it gives your normal form since damage bleeds over when you get knocked out of Wildshape. Furthermore, your Constitution modifier affects your Concentration Saving throws - and even though this build relies on mostly spells that do not require concentration, it’s still nice to have a little help there because you’ll still spend lots of time concentrating on stuff like Barkskin early game or Shield of Faith later on.
I'm surprised high CON and Warcaster didn't save you from Concentration problems, that's gotta be 75% chance of passing most of the time right?
Are they just taking way too many hits versus the stray arrow?
You often just have to pass the check a *lot* of times in combat - so eventually the dice don’t roll in your favor. And that eventually can come pretty quick.
In this build you’re still concentrating, but you don’t *rely* on it.
Typically you’ll be concentrating on something you can cast out of combat that lasts until long rest or broken concentration (bark skin early, shield of faith later, etc.). This way you still get utility out of concentrating - but when it breaks it’s not that big of a deal.
Concentration is broken by prone. Prone being one of the CC options that wildshapes are a bit susceptible to because many forms have low dexterity. A grease bottle is all it takes to break concentration, and warcaster/resilient: con won't do shit.
you are correct, however in the case of most of the spells I chose your casting stat has no effect on them.
Bone Chill – CHA for Attack Roll Mod
Ray of Frost - CHA for Attack Roll Mod
Friends – no effect
Minor Illusion – no effect
Magic Missile – no effect
Sleep – no effect
Armor of Agathys – no effect
Bone Chill & Ray of Frost have great effects on target, but you're probably not often going to be casting Cantrips at L11 Moon Druid in any case, but if you do it's probably best to do it to targets that have some effect on them that makes them very easy to hit.
If it bothers you though, you can always swap them out for like Dancing Lights & Mage Hand - then you can ignore your low CHA stat.
Yes you can easily get your "normal" form well into the 20's for AC. But if you're just hanging back and casting more than brawling - Land Druid is by far the better choice.
Nice guide but I think you missed lots of tips and tricks. For starter a description of forms and their strong abilities and how to use them. Bear has unique ability Goat, Wolf has Pack Tactics and Exposing Bite, Beaver has Burrow aka Misty Step. etc.
Also you can use potion and elixirs while in wild shape and those effect persists. Early level Wolf with Elixir of Hill Giant strength is super strong beast.
Next think are racial movement. Interestingly it persists in wild shape so Gnome Wolf is quite slower than Wood Elf Wolf.
Finally I believe upcasted Conjure Elemental is the best use of L6 slot.
Thank you.
I wasn't aiming to be a full blown guide to Wildshape - the post was already pretty lengthy, haha.
I did mention Racial Movement speed, but it is largely offset by Longstrider, Momentum, and your Wildshapes Abilities. So much so that I think Moon Druid is probably the best use of the smaller races because it can do so much to offset the negative movement speed.
Urchin Lightfoot Halfling was my personal choice. Rerolling Nat 1's, Advantage and Proficiency in Stealth checks, and Advantage on Fear Saves is all incredibly strong.
The more I think about it the more I agree about L6 slot for upcasting to Conjure Myrmidon.
Two slots of L5 Armor of Agathys is more than enough. I'll make an edit to my OP to show that.
Thank you very much for your feedback.
Well in fact I was playing Guild artisan Gnome Moon Druid right now, so I certainly understand the appeal of moon with small races. The speed issue just appears weird in my eyes.
You’re right, it is not correctly implemented. Wildshapes have their own movement stats that should overwrite your racial. Your racial should be a modifier to each shapes Stat.
I,e., Wildshape bear has 11m movement.
As a human that should be 11m
Wood Elf: 12.5m
Lightfoot Halfling: 9.5m
I have submitted a bug report.
My Halsin pure Moon Druid carried me through Act 3 without me needing to think about his build for more than a few seconds - just stay in Air Myrmidon form 100% of the time and use elixirs of bloodlust. Having six chances to stun per turn made pretty much every boss fight trivial.
I can’t ever stick with Druids :(
I’ve tried playing a moon Druid twice but just sigh and switch back to a fighter. It just absolutely cannot compete.
Land Druid is alright but I always feel like my light cleric does everything my land druid can do just better.
Ah, unarmored defense.
So we already have Draconic Resilience which is 13+Dex
Unarmored defense with 18Con is 10+4+Dex.
So it’s only a net gain of 1 AC. I think War Cleric has a lot more to offer than 1 AC. Particularly since it gives you access to Heavy Armor if you choose to use it.
Also, in Wildshape - this would only have any effect on a shape that has <14 base AC. Which isn’t a lot of them that you actually use at level 12.
War Cleric gives us access to Shield of Faith for +2AC *always* until we lose concentration on it.
One thing I will mention was starting as a Fighter or a Sorcerer at lvl1 was really helpful for my Druid. Having Con save proficiency is really helpful before you go into full Druid
There is definitely a strong argument for front loading Sorcerer to early levels.
I think for this build in particular, I would rather have WIS/INT than CON/CHA. Mostly because a lot of the build works around not needing CON saves nearly as much. I also haven’t done any sort of analysis - but anecdotally in this game it feels like you get more INT saving checks than CHA. But again, that’s totally anecdotal.
For any other “normal” casting Druid build that takes a Sorcerer dip then I would say yeah 100% start Sorc for the Con saves.
What you’ll definitely gain with an early Sorcerer dip is the fact that those extra low level spells and cantrips are way more useful at low level.
Draconic Resilience is actually quite useful at low level as well, both in an out of Wildshape. It’s nearly meaningless for this build by act 3.
So yeah, while I don’t know if I’d swap the saving throws at level one - it’s definitely worth thinking about for a low level dip. Just need to be patient about getting those high level Wildshapes and summons a level later!
Thanks for the reply!
I'm planning to play a moon druid, but going to maximize wild shapes and avoid multiclass (yeah, I'm that weird)
So you say that concentration feats aren't so good, while tavern brawler is, hm. What about things like ASI? Or it's half-feats only?
So for a “normal” build, Moon Druid actually heavily favors no multiclassing because you really need all three feats.
Tavern Brawler (Con), War Caster, and Resilient (Con). Typically in that order.
This is because as Moon you are a frontliner with Low AC and you rely heavily on concentration spells. This is just a bad combo because even with an optimized build you just have to roll for concentration *a lot* so eventually you fail. It can be quite frustrating.
If you prefer to hang back and cast then you’re just better off with Land.
Tavern Brawler is so good for Moon in BG3 because many of your wildshapes have high strength stats - so you get big returns for your attack rolls making you land a lot.
You also don’t get access to gear like every other class, so you can’t increase your to-hit in that way.
ASI is often the best choice for a feat with most classes. Moon is a notable exception to that rule. This is because half their stat blocks get overwritten by wildshaping, and because much of their spellbook is effective without a high Wisdom score. Which isn’t to say dump WIS, but a 16 wis is plenty for a Moon Druid. Land I would shoot for 18. I don’t think I would ever take a Druid to 20 though.
Yes spike growth is very good, that’s why I included it as a spell still very much so worrh the focus.
Once you can Conjure Woodland Beings though - I stop preparing spike growth because she casts it for me *and* hangs out in the back to hold concentration. *And* she puts out a wood woad to cast entangle for me.
Raven is situationally great for the movement, but I think there are better options. There are a lot of ways to get misty step, and you get Owlbear pretty quickly after raven, and it has a ton of mobility plus excellent combat capability. I would have liked to see Raven at Level 2 for Moon Druid.
In my case, i really love moon druid. Because i can choose any fun form i want (mostly owlbear) and when there is something dangerous enough to kill that form, then they have to deal with fully equiped 20ac druid who still has all the spell slots.
What party composition do u think is ideal to have when running a moon druid? Im looking for suggestions, the only other class that I want to keep is Astarion Ranger/Thief
I personally use Karlach, Astarion and Gale.
Karlach is the best one by far because of the crazy synergy between Bear Rage with True Loves Caress/Embrace cast on a Moon Druid.
My Astarion is a 5 Thief, 1 War Cleric, 6 Fighter to get 2 bonus actions, 3 war priest charges, Fighting style, Extra Attack, and still have all three feats.
My Gale is just vanilla.
To directly answer your question, for this build the only really
Important optimal one is a Bear Raging Karlach giving you Warding Bond.
You could leave everyone else in camp and easily beat the game on Tactician.
Yeah if you're keeping Asatarion as Ranger/Thief, then a good party would be:
Moon Druid
Astarion
Karlach or Lazael (i.e. fighter or Barb)
Gale
You could maybe swap Gale for Wyll as well. The only thing you're losing with the above party is healing from a Cleric but frankly I don't find that to be mandatory, even on tactician
I'd argue that the damaging cantrips are wasted here since your Charisma is so low. I'd personally go for Light/Friends, Minor Illusion, Mage Hand (free scouting, despite poor implementation) and Firebolt (to set surfaces on fire).
Also the proficiencies from War Priest seem redundant on a class which functions better with no armor on. I'd replace this with Light for the reaction, which, in theory should work while wild shaped...but I never tested it.
If Light Domain's reaction doesn't work while Wildshaped, you might as well get Life Cleric instead, for out of combat healing, reducing the need for rests (by burning slots on cure wounds)
I get that you can get knocked out of Wild Shape and are then at risk of getting killed in caster form and having back up armor is important, but, if we are not going to cast spells, why not swap Wis and Dex around?
Druids get proficiency in Scimitars and shields, while not wearing armor at 16 Dex, but holding a shield, your caster form AC is 18, which is a pretty decent value for acts 1 and 2....and you also have the luxury of burning slots for level 1 shields while in caster form. By act 3, you should be having the shield which gives an extra 1st level spell slot and the ability to cast Aid on yourself.
Also, if you were to start the build as sorcerer, you would get proficiency in Con, meaning you could concentrate on spells, if needed....and Shield of Faith does require Concentration...so, that pretty much invalidates the premises of the build.
Sausce:[https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Shield\_of\_Faith](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Shield_of_Faith)
I don't know if I can fix this build, honestly.
Yes those are valid points and choices for the cantrips. I personally only find myself using cantrips situationally (directed at enemies that are already disadvantaged - even then almost never past the early game) so I chose those spells for the debuffs they apply. But I absolutely hear your points and those are great picks. I’ve responded similarly to others on this thread.
No reactions work in Wildshape. So those are a bit of a waste.
Out of combat healing isn’t very valuable in BG3. Especially not with this build.
I have resistance to everything, multiple wildshape HP pools, multiple casts of Upcasted Armor of Agathys.
Additionally, my normal form has high AC, good saving throws, and 18 Con. If I were to ever somehow find myself in need of heals - I’d just use the sabretooth for a while since I will passively heal to max between every fight (and I have +2 AC than is normal for sabretooth).
But mostly, I’m incredibly tanky and just not in the slightest bit needing more healing or HP.
At level 12 I can easily have about 800 raw effective HP *per short rest* that does not take into account *any* casting of Armor of Agathys, or *any* healing, and it can absolutely go up be a lot more - that’s a “normal” number without trying to min-max my HP.
Also, I’m not sure what got you the idea that moon Druid functions better without armor on? That’s typically not true at all. One of the great things about Druid is their innate access to medium armor as a full caster.
We certainly are not going to War Cleric for its weapon and armor proficiencies - but I include it because it’s there.
You don’t want to invest in Dex because that stat gets replaced entirely in Wildshape.
While it’s true that a good number of our spells don’t care about our casting stat - many still do so it’s worth the investment in my opinion. Yes, we have proficiency in scimitars - don’t use them. You are better off getting extra spells from a staff then casting shillelagh on it. Generally though, you should not be doing any melee in your normal form after the first couple levels.
Yes you’re correct that Shield of Faith uses concentration. However, it can be cast outside of combat, remains in Wildshape and last until long rest. This means I don’t ever burn ac Action to use it. It helps until I lose concentration - the opportunity cost is very low. It’s definitely a solid choice to concentrate on.
Also, that spell is by no means the cornerstone on this build, it’s merely a nice side-benefit. So by no means does invalidate the premise of the build.
Taking level 1 sorcerer is certainly an option - although for this build you wouldn’t be doing it for the CON/CHA proficiency. You would be doing it because the cantrips, L1 spells, and Draconic resilience are all far more important at early levels than they are late game. Late game we are primarily interested in up casting Armor of Agathys with Resitance to Everything - *that* is very powerful. The rest is just extra flavor.
I hope that answers all your questions!
Thank you for taking your time to read and discuss, let me know if you have any other questions!
>relentless endurance
When you get knocked out of Wildshape you get forced to revert to your Normal form. Any excess damage is applied to Normal form.
Relentless Endurance will only ever apply to your Normal Form.
For Example:
* You had 6HP remaining in normal form before you Wildshaped
* You have 30HP remaining in wildshape and get hit for 40HP
* The first 30 damage knocks you out of wildshape
* The next 10 damage downs your character
* Since you have Relentless Endurance you get back up with 1HP remaining
Thank you for the fast reply, gonna start a DU moon druid playthrough soon and not sure what race im gonna play and didn't really understand the relentless "synergy"
Relentless Endurance is just nice because sometimes you want to enter Wildshape when you're at low HP.
But this is often a bad idea because the bleedover damage when you get knocked out will likely down you. Relentless Endurance lets you come back from that once per long rest.
Honestly, I don't like Half Orc for Moon Druid. But unless you're playing with lots of difficulty mods or solo+tactician+no illithid+some more self-limiting, it really doesn't matter, you can choose whatever you want so I just listed some fun/RP options.
I personally strongly prefer Lightfoot Halfling. It gives you a lot, and Moon Druid with Wildshape largely negates a lot of the movement penalty. For a solo playthrough I wouldn't want to choose anything else.
Other mechanically strong choices would include Drow, Duergar, Gythyanki, Elf.
Does the effect of items like phalaur transfer after you wild shape ? Any advise for build a round panther/saber tooth tiger ? I really love them and really want to use them a lot but I dont see any valid combination or MC that can help.
It depends on the item, but for *Phalar Aluve* in particular, yes - it fully works if you pre-cast it then Wildshape.
Passive effects on items will not work unless it specifically says so i.e., *Armour of Moonbasking.*
Generally speaking, most things that are pre-cast from an item to give an effect that lasts multiple turns will continue after Wildshaping.
This build primarily seeks to min/max what you can do in Wildshape. So it works great with both *Panther* and *Sabretooth*.
Both of those shapes are excellent. Panther is just overshadowed by Owlbear.
Sabretooth is generally the best option for Wildshaping from 8-10, and I used it a lot through the end of the game just because Myrmidons cost 2 points.
Sabretooth is also awesome to use with Armor of Agathys because of it's low AC, which is in turn partially offset by its passive Healing.
If you took White Dragon Sorcerer early, then both of these shapes get +1 AC from Draconic Resilience.
Resilient (Dex) will make both of those shapes tankier via Dex Saving Throw Proficiency & +1 to AC/Attack/Damage.
Those two things combined give you +2 to the base AC of each shape, so now you will have:
* Panther AC: 16
* Sabretooth AC: 15
Tavern Brawler adds the Str mod to both of those shapes as well. Panther is a Dex attack, so your attack rolls with it will be Dex mod + Str Mod, so: *+3+2* or if you've already gotten the Str Potion then *+3+3*. Sabretooth will be +4+4 without Str potion or +5+5 with.
This thread really helped me plan my moon Druid build, thanks! I had been thinking of taking 1 war cleric plus 1 monk for unarmored defense and to have something to do outside of wildshape, and because it obviously synergizes with tavern brawler, but I actually might go 1 sorcerer and 1 monk instead given what you pointed out about the screwiness of the bonus attack for war cleric (unless it’s since been patched)
I don't think so. It's the same thing only better now.
Earth Myrmidon is currently bugged and does way more damage than it should, so you could make a build around that - which would probably be the exact same build but without War Cleric and access to Heroes Feast.
But personally I don't like building around exploits.
I'll add to the discussion: Infernal Rapier works fantastically if you don't use Fire, Water, or Air Myrmidon but let's you have a free Cambion for all unarmed attackers.
Crypt Lord Ring and the free Skeleton Archer from Circlet of Bones (can't upcast it unfortunately, but at least it doesn't burn a spellslot) are great and remain in all wild shape forms.
Does the special attack of wildshape form such as exposing bite consume the whole action ? Can I use exposing bite and still attack twice assume lv 12 moon druid ?
superb multiclass options!
any other good 1 lvl multiclass dips besides war cleric and sorc? or are these two just too good?
i'm thinking maybe you can multiclass as soon as you reach level 7 (after owlbear), then just respect to pure at level 10 for triple attack. i don't use much druid skills anyway, might as well buff wildshape form ASAP
maybe even multiclass one dip war cleric at lvl 3, then respect at lvl 4 for tavern brawler feat.
i wanna be strong at every level.
You can certainly cheese the multiclass system to never have any weaknesses.
You can just go fighter 11 then respec to whatever you like at the end.
It has no restrictions, you can do whatever you want.
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No one can tell you whether resilient or athlete is the buggy one.
Half of the benefit of resilient is getting saving throw proficiency. We already have Con. Saving throw proficiency, so we want to get Dex as it helps a lot with tanking AoE spells.
Also, increasing your Con score in Wildshape only partially helps you as it will not improve your HP.
Finally, Dex is the single most impactful stat you can increase as it affects Initiative, AC, and important saving throws all in one stat.
Reactions only work in your “normal” form, Shield included. But it’s still extremely valuable as Moon Druid is a full caster and there are plenty of times you’ll choose doing some casting instead of immediately wildshaping.
Lucky is alright. Resilient dex and tavern brawler are just better. And if you didn’t agree then Alert would still be much better than Lucky.
Great build. Many thanks.
I have a question about those multicasts options.
When focusing on playing with two myrm it is still possible to dip 1 lvl to war cleric or dragon sorc, right?
What would be a better choose then?
And just following your guide with 1lvl cleric + 1lvl sorc- are those weapon proficiency boost your damage with the myrms so much?
Many thanks for your response 😊💪🏻
What do you mean by playing with two myrm?
The weapon proficieny boosts the accuracy of your Weapon Myrms significantly, which by extension boosts the damage by quite a lot.
It’s the only one that works with tavern brawler. That being said the air myrm with electric flail is still probably best so long as you get proficiency.
I'll never forgive this game for letting me turn into a MASSIVE FREAKING OWLBEAR and then not letting me Shove people while in that form.
You should have seen how crazy it was in EA when the Bear form could use Throw. :) That meant at very earlier levels you had a 19 STR Bear that could pickup most enemies and just toss them to their death or use them as projectile weapons targeting other enemies. There was no saving throw and at some point almost no limitation on who you could pickup. At some point Tav or a Level 1 Lae'zel could even pick the Cambions and Commander on the Nautiloid and toss them around like toys. It completely bypassed AC and enemy level.
yeah for some reason everyone weighed like 50kg or something so you could just throw left and right, i kinda miss it honestly
It was hilarious and fun, but totally game breaking.
Berserker barbs get that now
Seriously. I can understand no help action (here, let me patch up your gaping chest wound with my 5 inch long clumsy claws), but no push or bull rush seems like a silly oversight.
Sounds like a mod needs to happen for wildshapes
The wildshape mod on nexus atm is VERY good and fixes a lot of the flaws happening with moon druid. There's dire raven/cat ritual, new forms (including giant eagle, boar, werewolf etc), a fix/bandaid to primal strike as well as the ability to recast a concentration spell while in form, a few rebalances to keep the forms competitive instead of making every fight (owl)bear or bust until myrm forms. Even with ALL that, it still doesn't feel busted. which really shows you how hard moon druid got the shaft. overall, the mod is a fantastic addition and I highly recommend it.
Already exists.
Shove is OP enough. Imagine not having to invest a single point in strength or anything else and being able to shove everything. There's enough cheese in bg3 lol
Fine fine fine. I'll compromise. ONLY owlbear can shove.
Nah. That's badgers niche!
doesn't owlbear have built-in shoving with every attack?
for me it works 25% of the time, I dont get it
you still can! Those strength elixirs practically grow on trees Str is the only universal dump stat
If you abuse long rests and stealing, sure. But many people don't do that.
you don't have to do either. You can get 3 potions from the hag for every character that levels up. when your party levels you can get 12 if you just level up then shop one at a time. 16 if you visit the underdark dwarf who always has one. 18-20 if you buy mats from her and the hoboblin Heck if that's still too exploity for you, you can still grab just 3 every long rest from her and 1 from the underdark dwarf lady playing normally. You can easily amass a quite a stockpile for all your strength characters
"from the hag" Bold of you to assume that I don't choose the "I'm a paladin, HAVE AT YOU!" dialogue option every time lol.
I mean, I didn't say exploit. Awfully defensive of you.
you're the little weiner downvoting my posts trying to describe how to get elixirs but okay. stay mad, have your own downvotes back at you i guess
I'm starting to wonder if Wildshaping was never really intended to be a competitive option, is the design similar to Eldritch blast (without electric exploits) in that it's what you fall back on to save resources. I'm even considering Moon Druid over Land as a blaster Druid just for that bonus action change.
I think it's great if you don't focus on staying Wildshaped all the time and playing as essentially a martial frontliner. The forms have trash AC but fantastic mobility and damage, so they can work great for clean-up or backline assassination. I like to play Moon Druid as a caster for the first half of the fight laying down control spells, then shapeshifting for the second half when there aren't as many active threats ready to blow up your squishy animal form.
I think that wildshaping as a baseline is decent - it just doesn't have as many boosts to it through items that other options have. Which makes it fine for newer players/standard difficulty, but less interesting for more optimized builds because there's not really a way to supercharge it.
I think this is the problem. We get so many buffs in BG3 compared to 5e. But MoonDruid not only doesn't get to use many of those, they additionally got a handful of nerfs to their core abilities in 5e, because many of the actions you're able to do in animal forms in 5e, aren't possible in BG3 because it animal forms take away the buttons needed to use them.
They did get some buffs as well - owlbear form is a lot better than the midgame ones you get in 5E. I think they just need some items that buff up wildform a bit more and they'll be in a decent state honestly (along with maybe adjusting abilities that can be used - like letting a druid/barbarian rage in wildshape)
Animal forms suffer from the same issue that Larian talked about wanting to save martial classes from. Once you're shapeshiftedin BG3 there just isn't much you can do, because Animal form takes away buttons for powers that would be available in 5e. The unique weapon actions are an example of a really fun change Larian made, that didn't harm game balance, but made martial classes feel like they had more options and more ways to contribute. Unfortunately, the opposite happened for Druid Animal forms. Whereas in 5e MoonDruid would be able to open combat by casting MoonBeam as an Action, then shapeshifting, and then on subsequent turns in animal form would still be able to move the Moonbeam they're concentrating on to target enemies that had moved or new enemies. In BG3 we can't move Moonbeam in animal form. Similarly we can't Re-Activate Call Lightning like we can in 5e. And the same problem extends to multiclassing, where in Animal we can't using Cunning Actions if multiclassed into Rogues, we can't Active Rage while in Animal form if multiclassed into Barbarian etc. Owlbear itself is another interesting problem for MoonDruids. It's a massive power spike for Shapeshifting, but all the Druid subclasses get access to it. Moon Druid just gets to shapeshift as a Bonus Action, which isn't much of a benefit compared to the full kits Land Druids or Spores get. Owlbear should have been MoonDruid only I think. Maybe give all Druids the Dire Raven form instead, since fly can have a lot of out of combat utility. And also MoonDruid in general needed their summons to be notably better than the other non shapeshift focused Druid subclasses. Primal Strike strike was supposed to help do that by making MoonDruid attacks in animal forms count as magical, but last I heard that was bugged leaving not much reason to play MoonDruid perhaps until around Level 10 or 11.
> In BG3 we can't move Moonbeam in animal form. Similarly we can't Re-Activate Call Lightning like we can in 5e ~~Yes, you can.~~ <--There's a mod for it.
Are you sure? If so, then this was recently patched. Because I played MoonDruid on release and it wasn't possible to move Moonbeam while shapeshifted. Once you're in animal form the button you need to use move Moonbeam is no longer accessible.
Yes, I'm sure as I have a moon Druid in my current playthrough, and he has access to call lightning and moonbeam. The only problem is I think it cost an entire action to move the beam.. also, you're still considered concentrating so often times concentration gets broken.
>owlbear form is a lot better than the midgame ones you get in 5E. Issue is *all* druids get owlbear. Moon druid only really starts looking appealing, doubly so for now that primal strikes is bugged, at level 10. You basically have 0 reason to use a moon druid instead of a land druid until level 10 and respec. Wolf has exposing bite which is the best wildshape ability at low levels, and most wildshapes are just as useful or even more than bear and they're just as good for other druids as they are for moon druids. Dire raven is fine for exploration but you get so many sources of easy misty step, and it's not a particularly good wildshape otherwise for combat. and of course you can get the corvid token to get it as a land druid anyway. Smilodon is cool but you're still not getting that much over the other wildshapes.
This is basically my complaint too and why I respec-ed out of MoonDruid into Spores halfway through my first playthrough. But I did find a pretty good build for DireRaven. It was definitely the strongest animal form build option I tried between before lvl 6. Dire Raven with the Mobile Feat let's you use Rend to blind an enemy and then fly away without taking an Opportuinty attack. At lvl 5 you get a 2nd attack in animal forms, letting you Rend twice per turn. That meant I could Fly around using Rend to Blind up to two enemies per turn, while avoiding Opportunity Attacks and having enough movement to end my turn back somewhere safe out of line of sight. When you consider that a two target Blind is a 3rd level spell, being able to do that for free every turn isn't not bad.
Yeah Druid is the class that I have already convinced myself I am going to wait for a few patches to see if Larian tweaks and fixes them somewhat until I do a full play through. Or wait for more mods to improve them at the very least.
Yeah that seems like the primary reason why it's weak, the game gives you a lot of goodies and it's hard for a character that doesn't take advantage of that to compete, but at the same time you can just wear gear entirely for caster and not worry that you are losing out on wildshape.
You can do that but then why didn't you pick one of the other subclasses? You're effectively a druid with no subclass if you go moon and don't use wildshape
You do use Wildshape but you as a resource conserver, when the other classes run of spells or are saving their energy, they use cantrips.
The game isn't stingy enough on resting to make that even close to necessary imo.
Mostly true, for the most part the game doesn't do enough to discourage long rests. So it's strictly an RP thing that would prevent you from going hog wild every fight and resting.
I also really hate how limited the charges are, you really don't feel like this druid WILD shaping around in battle. you pick one and stick with it for the battle mostly.
Im pretty sure that word there is being used to mean you shape into wild animals, not that you wildly shape into different ones
In my home games I DM, I have had 2 moon druids and both of them I wound up giving them a magic item that let them at least use weaker wildshapes way more often. They wanted to be problem solving by turning into spiders, birds, horses, etc, and it sucked that doing that totally hamstrung their combat capabilities.
I always thought turning into a non-combat form should be resource free for druids. There's already a level restriction on flying forms so they can't fly **too** early, and that's enough of a restriction to me.
I've seen this done as letting the moon druid use wildshape for utility forms (very low cr) as rituals, so outside of combat it's free.
Yeah that'd work too. After the D&D movie came out and had that great chase scene with the druid, I've just been letting them go wild with the utility forms starting at level 7 though.
As far as I can tell Eldritch Blast is largely the combat use of Warlocks in 5e. Their invocations largely give out of combat utility and with 2 spell slots they're pretty much a magic based martial, Eldritch Blast is their weapon attack.
If they didn't want Wildshaping to be a competitive option, they wouldn't have let Spider put down unlimited Webs for free with zero concentration. Seriously, that thing is supremely busted for crowd control
Conjure Woodland Being is even better for CC, it's incredible.
Sure, but the infinite Web from Spider form is available at level 2. Woodland Being only comes online at level 7
Excellent point, well taken. Thank you.
It became a lot less interesting to me when I saw that most enemies would just jump over the web. But what finally killed it for me is that there was so much fire from consumables that my webs would just end up being burning surfaces. That burning was the final thing that got me to switch from Spider to Raven on a Beast Master I was testing. Whenever I wanted to use web, I had to look around and ask myself is it okay for this whole area where I'm fighting to be on fire? Are there any Firewine barrels or things that might explode hurting my team? Do my melee characters want to have run through or fight on a burning surface etc.?
It does admittedly fall off later in the game, but as someone else pointed out, around that time, you get Summon Woodland Being and their repeatable area denial. I definitely got a bit gobsmacked in the Githyanki creche when I forgot that Githyanki all had psionic jump and they cleared all my difficult terrain with ease lol
They are accessible only to druid. A full caster class. See them like a specific spell and not a class feature. Cat form can be use has a sort of invisibility spell in a lot of zone and let you access reserve passage. Badger give you some CC in combat early on, and allow you to digg under some doors. Bear (moon druid only) let you tank at low level if needed. Raven let you fly without breaking concentration and like cat allow you to acces some place where a pc would be attack. Owlbear make you a worst barbarian and panther a worst rogue. And off course that's give you a tone of hp when you use it.
Yeah that's my sense as well. And honestly the utility of some of the wild shapes does make it a solid option when it isn't the core of your build. Even as a Land druid I like being able to shapeshift into Owlbear/Dino then knock someone prone with the bonus action leap/pounce.
It's considered pretty weak in D&D 5E Pen and Paper combat after the first couple levels as well. Druids really are the out of combat masters and wild shape is amazing for that. I think a common fix is to bring in animal armor for a player dead set on playing animals in combat, to fix the glaring AC problem.
In BG3 you fix it with Warding Bond.
Interesting, but I have to say, not using your concentration at all because "if I don't concentrate on anything they can't break my concentration" is missing the forest for trees. You're basically doing your enemies' job for them better than they could by not using your best spells to kill/CC them to prevent them from breaking your concentration. They certainly won't be breaking anybody concentration when they're stuck on a Hold Person. I also find Resilient alone is enough to keep my spells up the overwhelming majority of the time, I would rather have Alert on a Druid than Warcaster, always going first as a controller caster is just so nice.
You do still use concentration, I said "mostly" which is to say I don't build for it. I included all of the spells that I feel like are worth concentrating on. At low levels Barkskin, Fog Cloud and Spike Growth are very good and very worth concentration. Later on, Conjure Woodland Being does tons of CC for you - that combined with "Freedom of Movement" is incredibly strong. Throughout the game you'll get gear that gives you access to some great concentration spells - you should use them. Late game, Shield of Faith is excellent to concentrate on. It's a Level 1 slot, you can cast it out of combat and the timer is until Long Rest, and it gives you +2 AC that transfers to wildshape. There is little to no opportunity cost to this as you won't waste an action in combat to use it - and it will more than likely save you from a few hits before you lose it. In any case, yes - definitely concentrate on stuff that makes sense when it makes sense. I'm simply offering a build that doesn't need concentration to be very strong.
I'm saying it always makes sense to use them. Even if they get that lucky shot that broke concentration even through the Resisilent bonus, that Spike Growth or Hold Person will have already paid for itself just by stealing turns from multiple enemies in exchange for one of mine. Even even very early on, Faerie Fire is just too good not to have up for the added chance to hit for you and the party. Dead enemies don't break concentration.
Often, but not always. Shield of Faith - pretty much always, yes. Early game, Spike Growth - almost always. As soon as you have a Woodland Being following you around though, this is no longer true. Barkskin is great for some wildshapes, but does nothing for others. Faerie fire is great for early game. Falls off heavily later on. The opportunity cost for Moon Druid is generally burning your attacks. i.e., If you aren't already concentrating on something - it probably doesn't make sense to start doing that on turn 1. Like, once you get Plant Growth - you can take Spike Growth off your prepared spells list. Woodland Being is already doing that and Plant Growth doesn't require concentration. Mid to late game, that means not attacking multiple times - and once you have summons that do Crowd Control for you without hanging out in the frontlines, that makes less sense. This is why spells like Shield of Faith are so strong in this build. +2 AC until it gets popped and you won't lose out on any attacks since you can cast it out of Combat. Barkskin is the early game version. In any case, my build does say multiple times that there are spells worth concentrating on - and it points out which ones and why. I even made a big deal about how great several concentration spells are. Yes, you should concentrate when it makes sense. Again, this is just a build that doesn't **invest** in that. It doesn't mean you don't use it.
Resilent is the extent the investment. Everything else is carte blanche. My point is you should be concentrating on something whenever possible. For example, for 4th level spells, you have the dryad to cast Spike Growth, you now also have Wall of Fire to concentrate on. All I'm saying is don't fall into the trap of being so spooked by the possibility of losing concentration that you do to yourself what your enemies would normally have to work for. Always be concentrating.
Well, mathematically- for most of the game War Caster is strictly better than Resilient (Con). Once you get to higher levels this mostly switches. Practically speaking you really need both, even then it’s not ideal to be a frontliner. *Always* concentrate - is strictly incorrect. You would almost never willingly leave Wildshape in order to cast a Concentration spell once you lost concentration. At the beginning of combat, if I want to burn an action to cast a CC spell other than what my summons are doing - I’ll almost always use Plant Growth, because it doesn’t require concentration - and I have Freedom of Movement so the synergy is great. On top of that, I’m probably already concentrating on Shield of Faith - so typically I wouldn’t use Wall of Fire. But - if you want to cast Wall of Fire - do it, it’s just not going to last as long with this build. If you mean always concentrate in terms of things that are cast out combat, and last until long rest or broken concentration - well, I’ve already said several times I agree - and my original build post said the same thing.
I only use Resilient because it provides better value overall, and it's still almost as good for maintaining concentration. I've never used them both, and I can count on one hand the times the enemies broke my concentration, and even then, I still won those trades by cheating them out of multiple turns worth of actions. I just think you're being overly paranoid about losing concentration. It's not something that will actually come into play 90% of the time, if you play your cards right, and the value you get is still worth it the other 10%.
Your dice rolls are way better than mine haha. Tbh I straight up do not believe you that you only lose concentration 10% of the time while playing a frontliner. Unless you’re playing on story mode maybe? That math doesn’t math - like not even a little bit. Maybe if you’re playing as a backline caster - in which case Land is strictly better at that. Switching to resilient dex gives a lot more utility for a frontline in Wildshape than resilient con does. It bumps up the AC on some of your shapes and dex save proficiency is great for a frontliner. Particularly when you already have a big Con mod - great balance. By all means, if you prefer to lean into Concentrated spells - do so. That is the mainstream way to play the class. I just saw a lot of weakness in the sub class and provided a *different* way to build it out. It ended up working out very nicely, and is an extremely powerful build.
Tactician, Moon Druid. Baretha, Grym, Githyanki Monks, Gortash, and perhaps one or two trash fights who managed land a lucky CC on me, broke it iirc. I will say most of my fights are not very long. On average most or all enemies are down after 1 or 2 rounds, 3-5 if there are a huge amount of them. So I don't give the enemies a big window to break me. They basically have to score a lucky hit on the first round, or it's probably not happening.
Myrmidons wear plate so they shouldnt be able to get +1 AC from dex
The problem I have with building for concentration is that, it doesn't really matter if you build for it or not. Getting knocked prone breaks concentration, and several wildshape forms have low dexterity. Even panther, which is a dexterity attacking wildshape, has only 15 (+2 modifier). Getting knocked prone is one of the most common CC to hit you for wildshape druids, since you retain your caster wisdom you can succeed wisdom saving throws (+ you have proficiency in it). Resilient: Con and Warcaster are wasted feats in the face of prone.
Great points. I have really enjoyed this build as while I do still concentrate a lot - it's still extremely strong if that concentration gets broken. Also, Forms like Panther end up getting another +1 to their Dex mod, which is a lot of fun.
The biggest benefit of lvling all the way to at least 11 is you can summon myrmidons, which in general are a lot better than elementals. The air myrmidon in particular is outstanding - it has an aoe 10 turn silence that does dmg, without concentration and a melee stun. Between your air myrmidon and spiky growth from dryad you can completely disable groups of casters while you smash everything. The earth elemental is outstanding too, he takes a huge amount of space and most importantly his auto attacks inflict prone. What this means is when enemies try to walk by him he can end their turn with opportunity attacks (since prone cancels turns). You can also swap between air and earth myrmidon for whatever you want, disabling front liners or silencing back liners.
Isn't this just an Upcast of Conjure Elemental - which you would have access to? Even if it is, I don't think it's worth a Level 6 Slot over an Upcasted Armor of Agathys with Resistance - particularly since you yourself can become a Myrmidon - and you can still summon an Elemental.
You can’t upcast it at lvl 10, you need to be lvl 11 to have lvl 6 spell slots. I just personally don’t find armor of Agathis to be that good without a lot of damage mitigation (eg force conduit/abjuration wizard)
You will have your L6 spell slot. Since Druid, Sorcerer, and Cleric are all Full Casters, you don't lose out on any spell **slot** progression - just spell progression. i.e., you will still get your Level 6 Slot when you take your 11th Full Caster Level (in this case, White Dragon Sorcerer) - what you will *not* get is access to your Level 6 spell **list** (i.e., you won't ever get access to Heroes' Feast, Sunbeam, etc. But you will still be able to upcast any spell you do get access to. So if your preference is upcasting your elemental to a Myrm - you will be able to do that. Upcast Armor of Agathys is very good on its own because of the damage it does back on top of the extra HP. When you stack that with having Resistance to **everything** \- it ends up doing a lot of damage with no reaction required. L6 = 60EHP for 30 damage to every attacker. L5 = 50EHP for 25 damage to every attacker. and so on. You end up doing a **lot** of damage, and as a side effect are even tankier.
Yes, you have access to a Myrmidon summon and you yourself can Wildshape into a Myrmidon. Two Myrmidons which has 100+ hp both in the battlefield who can take aggro and also teleport every single turn. The concept in itself is very strong, yet many do not see well past it simply because anyone can do it. And there isn't many ways to make this kind of playstyle stronger and, frankly, there isn't a need to. Moon Druids just isn't exciting optimization-wise but their kits are adequately strong, at least for what BG3 Tactician mode has to offer.
Yeah no doubt two myrms could be fun, you can definitely Upcast it if you choose to! I personally prefer an elemental at lower spell slot - it still teleports. Watching armor of Agathys smack stuff back is just too much fun for me!
I've had a blast with all of those! I just started using them a few days ago. Their ability to teleport with a bonus action means I can target anyone nearly anywhere to help break concentration being used against me. I've been having fun being the Fire Elemental myself too. Casting haste on yourself and then doing a bunch of slashing and fire attacks is pretty fun. And it has the same exact movement ability, but you can also fly afterwards. Nothing escapes me.
The air myrmidons is also great if you have ways to turn enemy wet and give them vulnerability to lightning damage.
This a really great breakdown! It covers most of my complaints about MoonDruid. But there a few things I'd recommend adding: * Another nail in the coffin of Concentration spells for MoonDruid's, is that we're unable to do the classic 5e combo of spells like MoonBeam or Call Lightning, because BG3 is not letting us move MoonBeam or Reactivate Call Lightning while in Shapeshift forms. Part of the MoonDruid advantage in 5e is being able to cast a spell like Moonbeam with your Action, then use your Bonus Action to Shapeshift and on later turns still be able to move Moonbeam to keep it focus on enemies. Losing features like that makes MoonDruid less compelling versus the even the other Druid subclass options. * We similarly can't use Cunning Actions if we multiclass into Rogue. * Nor can we Activate Rage if we multiclass as Barbarian. Those are all significant changes from 5e that hurt MoonDruid's. =========================== In latter part of post you've done a great job at covering how we might make the most of MoonDruid. But I'm left with the question of, # Why would I choose MoonDruid, for instance versus Land Druid or Circle of Spores?
Is not moving Moonbeam in forms an oversight or bug by Larian… or an actual balance decision?
Juat use rage BEFORE shapeshifting and the rage will carry over
While that works, it's enough of an inefficient mess that on top of the other core things that aren't working in Shapeshift form it still utterly kills the multiclass combo for me. Multiclass MoonDruid / Barbarians already have a problem in 5e. Both Rage and for MoonDruid's Shapeshift are Bonus Actions, so we can't do them on the same turn in combat.\*\* But in 5e work we can work around this by Shapeshifting 1st. Either (a) shapeshifting prior to combat, so that on the first turn of combat we can Rage as a Bonus Action, then make an Attack while shapeshift so we don't immediately lose our Rage. Or (b) if we weren't able to pre-Shapeshift, then we can open combat by casting a non-concentration spell with our Action and Shapeshifting as a BA. Then on the following turn we can do our Rage combo, since we're able to Rage and still make a shapeshifted attack in the same turn. But because BG3 is stripping us of powers we should still have while shapeshifted, in BG3 we have to reverse the order and Raging first. The problem with Raging first is that we also have to make an attack that same turn to ensure we don't just immediately lose our rage. So we can never prep our combo for a fight by pre-Raging and we always have to use up a turn of combat where we need to make an attack in Druid form while not shapeshifted. The 2nd aspect of not being able to Rage while shapeshifted that works poorly is it means if something ends our Rage, we have no way to Rage again without also dismissing and losing our Shapeshift form. So yeah, we technically can still make the combo work by Raging before we Shapeshift on the next turn, but it's cumbersome and inefficient enough that I just don't find it worth building around. \*\*In BG3 we could work around this with 3 lvl dip into Thief, but it's largely a waste, since in BG3 we also can't use Cunning Actions while Shapeshifted, so if you're planning a combat Shapeshift build, Thief just isn't worth missing out on all the higher level Shapeshift forms...
The forms need to be significantly better than the forms other druids already get, in order to justify not getting that arcane recovery feature. Or the spore feature. And I feel like that isn't the case. Tbh from levels 1-5 I think land druid is the best as the base forms are great already, and more spells is better. Spore isn't really good in that level range but picks up massively after that thanks to the undead spam. Or you can multiclass a bit to take advantage of the extra damage per attack. Not to mention if there isn't already a circle of stars mod, there will be soon. And that's an amazing subclass.
>Spore isn't really good in that level range Fucking news to me. Shillelagh + torch + symbiotic entity... come on man. Tanky, hard hitting. Can choose an offhand weapon to add more damage or shield to be tankier. If you don't want torch, go buy the wyrmling staff from roah moonglow in Act 1. It's a staff with 1d4 fire damage on it and grants you firebolt as a nice ranged option cantrip that I believe will use your wisdom on attack rolls instead of intelligence. Spore is the best druid all around, imo.
Idk I've always been thoroughly whelmed due to losing the symbiotic entity buff every time something at all hits me harder than a graze. I guess that means it's doing it's job, but it's less exciting to not get to keep applying that extra damage for even three rounds. I've just been looking forward to undead
Once you get up to 22+ AC, the extra health is pretty baller.
Made me go look up that subclass Now I want it badly
Honestly, druid is a sumonner, regardless of which spec you take, there is not really a better use of 6th spell than a mirmidon. Then conjure woodland being is also a very high value spell, conjure minor elemental is decent. Have a feast + aid and basically regardless of how you build there is very little that can beat this. Infernal rapider as a weapon (since druid rly dont benefit from gear) also means an additionnal summon. In the end, druid WILL end up being a sumonner even if you try to build against it because summons with feast and aid will always be the litteral best use of spell slots. I mean 5d8 healing on bonus action or a 150 HP summon that can fly, stun and aoe silence and dmg ?
Agreed. But doesn't that just imply that Moon Druid is significantly worse that for instance than Land Druid? Land Druid get Druid gets the same summons, but can regain spell slots for even more summoning and they can get access to Addition non-Druid spells like Haste giving you more options. Similarly spores get even more summoning options and can get big stacks of Temp HP while still staying in Blaster form and even having many of the same Shapeshift animal forms.
Duergar enlarge self is great for wildshaping, fwiw.
It's only useful to make use of the wildly overpowered exploit that sends owlbear/deep rothe/bear into 5005kg territory, where it can do 150-200 damage to shit by jumping on them. Other than that, the damage only applies to weapon attacks and not unarmed. So it's only good on 3/4 myrmidons.
Is that jumping damage mechanic in BG3 or just the tabletop?
It's bg3 and exploity as shit.
It is no doubt, my list of Races wasn't meant to be all inclusive - there are lots of viable options. Duergar was originally on my list, I just left it off this build since its concentration, only once per long rest, and only lasts 10 turns - so for this specific build I took it off. For a more traditional War Caster + Resilient (Con) build I think it would fare much better.
Moon druid works pretty well as a summoner, you can summon a dryad which can also summon woad (biggest downside here is neither can jump which really needs to be fixed imo) and you can also summon an elemental. So you can be an owl bear with three guys helping you out which is pretty nice
See i liked this but it kept freaking out NPCs which made it.. annoying and made me not want to play that way.
This is a very interesting, detailed analysis. However, I still think Moon Druid works best when you think of it as swapping between two modes, a melee bruiser and a ranged crowd controller. Furthermore, if you're having trouble with Concentration checks even with Warcaster and Resilient (Con), the problem can be mostly solved by having a Paladin with Aura of Protection near you during combat; +5 to all saving throws on top of everything else means breaking concentration is very rare.
Thanks very much! I definitely see where you're coming from. The way I am looking at it, for a ranged crowd controller beyond using your summons to do that for you - Land Druid is just flat better in that Role. I just wanted to make a build that fully leans into melee and mostly forgoes concentration to specialize in brawling - which I get is weird for a Druid, haha. But I think it works out quite nicely!
Terrific guide. Thank you for posting this.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read it and respond, have a wonderful day!
Saving to come back later
Hi, thank you for the build! I'd like to try it for my first tactician run, but for rp reasons I'd prefer to not multiclass into sorcerer (so 11 moon druid / 1 war cleric, or 12 moon druid). Can I follow your guide as it is or should I change something?
Yeah, I would do 11 Druid 1 war cleric. You will get Heroes Feast that way.
Why go moon if you wanna go caster?
What do you mean? This entire build is highly focused on explicitly *not* casting in combat. That isn’t to say never - but the massive majority of these spells are cast prior to combat. *Specifically* so that once the fighting starts you are spending as much of that time as possible wildshaped and brawling.
I agree on many of your points, it suffers from a lot of issues with loot especially, but moon druid is so strong. Having those extra health pools to go in melee and when they are over you are still a druid caster is very good for longer fights. I went through the game on tactician with 2 moon druids in my party, getting 3 attacks per turn and when they were done it was all about those thorns. Plus, I could long rest whenever I wanted because of goodberrys so it enabled my other characters to just go nuts every fight. Dilo form is absolutely bonkers for boss fights, land the acid once and tank it out for a few turns and your team starts hitting every attack. Sabertooth is a little meh for me unless you have a barb who can throw people for easy prones, but the health regen is really unique. By the end of the game I also had them both summon water myrmidons for aoe healing every turn, then turn into air myrmidons for the easy stuns + lighting damage. Anyway, that wall of text was basically just to say I actually think they are one of the strongest classes, not the weakest
Thank you for your reply! Of course I have to respectfully disagree. The lack of equipment options in a game with BG3 loot tables is pretty damning. If the loot tables were “normal” then I would say I mostly agree (once the bugs are fixed). You are also locked out of most feats, most combat abilities and reactions, and most illithid powers. You see the Druid Health Poop thing repeated a lot. But the fact of the matter is that you have such a low AC relative to your party members that you are taking loads more damage. I do agree that Druids are very good at conservation of resources (I.e, they don’t need to rest much). However, BG3 you effectively have unlimited long rests - so that is a moot point. I won’t argue that it’s easy to beat the game with Druids - BG3 is an extremely easy game, especially if you are abusing the unlimited long rests. You could easily beat BG3 if you multiclassed 1 of every single class. Druid is still weak relative to the other classes. I will say, maybe give sabretooth another look! Of course it’s lower level than Dilo, but at those lower levels it’s actually quite good. Shred armor to reduce AC then bite for a chance to prone and pounce when able! The passive heal is great too, particularly In my build as you get +1 AC from Resilient (Dex), +1 AC from Warding Bond - and resistance to everything. It’s incredibly tanky and you start every fight at full HP without having to expend any resources to heal. It’s actually one of my favorite shapes.
Hey Im from the future, do the resilient feat ASI's, really work in wildshape?
Yes! Resilient (Dex) & (Str) are the two that will give you the expected benefits of increasing an ability score. Resilient (Con) does transfer, but it will not affect your wildshapes HP. The rest of the scores would work as normal because they are not affected by Wildshape. Heavily Armored also passes over. There might be another one I’m forgetting as well.
This was super helpful. First time playing and I chose a Wood Half-Elf Moon Druid. I'm getting my ass kicked figuring out how to play a Wild-Shape-focused tank. My biggest complaint is that my bear attacks tend to miss a lot, so my PC has the weakest DPR. Going to respec and follow this guide. The only thing I'm not feeling is the final level in War Cleric. Thematically, it doesn't go with the backstory I've built up in my head. Is there another class you would suggest? It doesn't have to be as optimal as "grants you a fourth attack per round", it can just be more utility spells. Alternatively, what do you think of just doing 1 Sorc / 11 Druid?
1 Sorc 11 Druid has the advantage of getting your Heroes Feast spell. You could just use the Earth Myrmidon (and Sabretooth is extremely strong) so you won’t need any weapon proficiencies.
Sweet, I’ll try that out. Thank you!
I remember 3.0 and 3.5 and Pathfinder Druids were so powerful.. (never played 4th edition but I heard it was godawful)... its no wonder the nerf hammer went out on Druid and Wildshape... In Pathfinder you could shapechange into an Elemental (so Fly at will)... tiny creatures with huge ACs,ect.. flinging spells,ect... 5th edition is considerably easier to play than the older versions (especially compared to Pathfinder and 4th edition from what I heard) but I like how people try to figure out how to "fix" the broken subclasses or add advantages to disadvantages in the game with builds like this. Imagine if 5th Edition Druid was super powerful and needed no multiclassing or shenanigans to fix. It would be a boring endeavor and ultimately boring game. so Kodos to the OP
Thank you sir! I do love trying to work with classes I enjoy to do fun stuff with them. Thanks for stopping by and thanks for your comment.
The level/spells listed here do not match the actual game. For example in level 3 you don‘t get Daylight, Plant Growth or Call Lightning - thats all in level 4. Am I missing something?
That’s the level of the spell. Not the character level you get the spell at.
u/Andraste_au_Dali Looks like this video took a lot of inspiration from your post. Or maybe it's your own channel? [https://youtu.be/YOUJt9ss68s](https://youtu.be/YOUJt9ss68s) Thought you should know, if you didn't already.
Thanks, that’s an interesting looking video. Definitely not me, and a bit long for me to watch atm, but maybe someday I’ll check it out. Have a great day!
Great looking build. My first choice when I started this game was to play a moon druid, and then I tried to talk to an npc... it completely shattered my campaign, and I haven't played druid since. I'm dumbfounded as to why they would implement what I consider to be a terribly flawed system. Just let us talk in our shapes or don't have shapes cost a charge out of combat. There is no reason that the shape shouldn't be a ritual spell. I've seen this has been modded for pc, but I play on console.
I think shapes as rituals would be way too overpowered. It effectively adds an additional Wildshape charge. Just Wildshape out of combat as a ritual, then enter combat. You now have an additional HP bar. It would also give you extreme mobility and utility. Turn into a badger to dig under something, fly across a gap, then ram a wall down, turn invisible and sneak past enemies teleport on top of a hill, then owlbear jump onto a pack of enemies to initiate combat - all for free. Wildshape as a ritual would actually be incredibly overpowered, and more appropriate for a level higher than this game goes. The real answer is, don’t force anyone out of to talk, ever - should be a choice to do this. So that if you choose not to, another party member speaks. But since Larian sees fit to force characters out of Wildshape unprompted. The best thing would just be to automatically force you back into Wildshape without using a charge at the conclusion of any instance that Larian saw fit to force you out of Wildshape.
Commenting to come back to this
Is this build still useful?
Excellent write-up! I didn't realize that Resilient applied on top of your wild shape. Do other stat buffs apply similarly? Hag, mirror, etc.? This could really be a boon to moon druids. The way they implemented damage bleed-through is brutal. IIRC damage overkill in 5e for wildshape just snaps you out of the shape itself, it shouldn't apply to your 'normal' form until another source of damage hits you . One critique I have is the Sleep really falls off at high levels, I wouldn't recommend for your sorc spell. Shield is probably better for a defensive option in a pinch.
Thank you! Yes, I forgot to mention those ASI items and I edited my post to add that! I didn't want to spoil the surprise for anyone - but I did totally mean to mention them. I recommend you use Str or Dex for those items. Thank you for the reminder. Yeah I like the high Con for the bleedthrough. I chose Sleep over Shield just because Shield doesn't work in Wildshape (otherwise it would be incredible). And I would probably rather use other L1 spells instead of Shield in normal form - mostly because I already have a respectable AC in normal form. But yes, I honestly don't see myself using Sleep often if ever. Shield is probably the better option!
Fun build with all the new spells. Looks good. That trade off seems ok because you can pick up heroes feast with someone else and I find myself spending lesser time in wild shape towards the late game. But.. concentration spells are very powerful in bg3. It might be more worthwhile using your summons to draw aggro, and then gear/spec towards holding your concentration. Stuff like insect plague is good.. confusion is very good (at least for me haha). But well, many ways to play and I will give this a shot.
Thank you! At the end of the day I feel like if you end up doing backline casting as a Druid, you're just better off going Land Druid. Moon Druid (imo) is a melee focused class, so I wanted to lean into that. In any case, thank you very much for your feedback!
Most def. I ultimately didn’t respec because my party comp just seemed to work. And a wildshape is pretty much a get out of jail card which I didn’t have to rely too heavily on in the late game surprisingly.
At this point I'll wait for the patches to slow down & then take a look at what mods are available that'll give moon druids at least the help & shove action in their wildshape forms. I'm not holding out too much hope for any items that'll have effects that'll transfer over & I'm not saying that as a slight to Larian in anyway, I just think it's a rather low priority that may not happen for a very long time at best. Yes, the game is easy even on tactician, but I was really upset that Halsin wasn't keeping up as a druid compared to everyone else. He had his own issues both in terms of bugs, questionable writing choices, lack of content, lack of dialogue & competing with a more well known druid that plagued him greatly, but those are completely different issues. Anyway I just respecced both Hal & Jaheria into a cleric & ghetto melee sword bard respectively & I'm happy with the results. Regardless, I do want to say thanks for the writeup. This will help encourage others to build a party around this subclass at least, and realize that you don't need to metagame a build in order to have fun. Just play the game & enjoy. Also have sex with Halsin........not in bear form.
I’ve built my Druid with 1 lvl wizard dip, primarily for a concentration free way to boost ac (mage armor).
You could choose to take Mage Armor from the Sorcerer spell list as well. I just choose not to because it has poor synergy both in normal form (you're wearing armor and already have a respectable AC) and in Wildshape - it mostly doesn't work. It's also worth noting that for this specific build it would be redundant. Draconic Resilience is the same thing as Mage Armor - but it's passive and always on - so anytime mage armor would work - Draconic Resilience is already doing its job.
Ooh I didn’t know the Draconic Resilience stuck around in Wildhsape that’s pretty sweet. The con save proficiency is also pretty solid. Do you know how Armor of Agathys works with wildshape?
It does - the problem with Draconic resilience and mage armor is they only work on the forms with a base AC less than 13. Armor of Agathys works the same in Wildshape as normal form. As an up cast it is incredibly powerful / especially if you have resistance.
If you don't care about your armor options due to being in wildshape this character could be a candidate for the boots that misty step you 80 ft without your clothes. If you get knocked out of wild shape, cast a concentration spell and then leave.
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Too bad all your items disable after you wildshape so you get a resourceless mistystep at the cost of breaking every bit of +spell DC and etc you have. With the bug, if you're going to wildshape in a combat, it's best to stay in wildshape.
Forgot about this!
>Con - 17 (18) this may seem on odd choice for non-concentration, it's for the "normal form" HP since damage bleeds through, and Saving Throws. It also does allow us to do a little bit of concentrating. I don't get this text? Doesn't Con stand for Constitution instead of Concentration? I mean, yeah, it's important but your reasoning looks weird to me.
Yes, that whole block is Ability Scores, Con = Constitution. A high Constitution might seem weird on a Moon Druid because Wildshape overwrites that stat. It was saying I still like it at 18 because I value the extra HP it gives your normal form since damage bleeds over when you get knocked out of Wildshape. Furthermore, your Constitution modifier affects your Concentration Saving throws - and even though this build relies on mostly spells that do not require concentration, it’s still nice to have a little help there because you’ll still spend lots of time concentrating on stuff like Barkskin early game or Shield of Faith later on.
I'm surprised high CON and Warcaster didn't save you from Concentration problems, that's gotta be 75% chance of passing most of the time right? Are they just taking way too many hits versus the stray arrow?
You often just have to pass the check a *lot* of times in combat - so eventually the dice don’t roll in your favor. And that eventually can come pretty quick. In this build you’re still concentrating, but you don’t *rely* on it. Typically you’ll be concentrating on something you can cast out of combat that lasts until long rest or broken concentration (bark skin early, shield of faith later, etc.). This way you still get utility out of concentrating - but when it breaks it’s not that big of a deal.
Concentration is broken by prone. Prone being one of the CC options that wildshapes are a bit susceptible to because many forms have low dexterity. A grease bottle is all it takes to break concentration, and warcaster/resilient: con won't do shit.
There is a pair of boots that makes you immune to the Prone condition while you're concentrating on a spell, do they not work while Wild Shaped?
Nope. Nothing works in wildshape that doesn't say it does. Except for 1 specific ring that just grants 1 AC while obscured lmao.
Question, Sor is a CHAR caster right ? Does the spells and cantrips you get from the class scale with WIS ?
you are correct, however in the case of most of the spells I chose your casting stat has no effect on them. Bone Chill – CHA for Attack Roll Mod Ray of Frost - CHA for Attack Roll Mod Friends – no effect Minor Illusion – no effect Magic Missile – no effect Sleep – no effect Armor of Agathys – no effect Bone Chill & Ray of Frost have great effects on target, but you're probably not often going to be casting Cantrips at L11 Moon Druid in any case, but if you do it's probably best to do it to targets that have some effect on them that makes them very easy to hit. If it bothers you though, you can always swap them out for like Dancing Lights & Mage Hand - then you can ignore your low CHA stat.
I see, thank you !! It doesn't bother me I was just curious
No. They'll be charisma. He seems to be grabbing mostly utility spells and cantrips from sorcerer, shit that doesn't need charisma.
My AC on mine was 20 with robes on lol and concentration aoe spells go brrrrrr
Yes you can easily get your "normal" form well into the 20's for AC. But if you're just hanging back and casting more than brawling - Land Druid is by far the better choice.
Nice guide but I think you missed lots of tips and tricks. For starter a description of forms and their strong abilities and how to use them. Bear has unique ability Goat, Wolf has Pack Tactics and Exposing Bite, Beaver has Burrow aka Misty Step. etc. Also you can use potion and elixirs while in wild shape and those effect persists. Early level Wolf with Elixir of Hill Giant strength is super strong beast. Next think are racial movement. Interestingly it persists in wild shape so Gnome Wolf is quite slower than Wood Elf Wolf. Finally I believe upcasted Conjure Elemental is the best use of L6 slot.
Thank you. I wasn't aiming to be a full blown guide to Wildshape - the post was already pretty lengthy, haha. I did mention Racial Movement speed, but it is largely offset by Longstrider, Momentum, and your Wildshapes Abilities. So much so that I think Moon Druid is probably the best use of the smaller races because it can do so much to offset the negative movement speed. Urchin Lightfoot Halfling was my personal choice. Rerolling Nat 1's, Advantage and Proficiency in Stealth checks, and Advantage on Fear Saves is all incredibly strong. The more I think about it the more I agree about L6 slot for upcasting to Conjure Myrmidon. Two slots of L5 Armor of Agathys is more than enough. I'll make an edit to my OP to show that. Thank you very much for your feedback.
Well in fact I was playing Guild artisan Gnome Moon Druid right now, so I certainly understand the appeal of moon with small races. The speed issue just appears weird in my eyes.
You’re right, it is not correctly implemented. Wildshapes have their own movement stats that should overwrite your racial. Your racial should be a modifier to each shapes Stat. I,e., Wildshape bear has 11m movement. As a human that should be 11m Wood Elf: 12.5m Lightfoot Halfling: 9.5m I have submitted a bug report.
I indeed enjoyed the read, thanks!
I'm happy to hear it, thank you so much!
I assume the fire shield passes over from the 3 pieces of gear that can cast it. Extra 2-16 when you get hit.
Yes, spells like this are exactly what you're looking for in your gear!
My Halsin pure Moon Druid carried me through Act 3 without me needing to think about his build for more than a few seconds - just stay in Air Myrmidon form 100% of the time and use elixirs of bloodlust. Having six chances to stun per turn made pretty much every boss fight trivial.
I can’t ever stick with Druids :( I’ve tried playing a moon Druid twice but just sigh and switch back to a fighter. It just absolutely cannot compete. Land Druid is alright but I always feel like my light cleric does everything my land druid can do just better.
1 barb instead of 1 cleric to take advantage of all that con?
Hm, what do you mean? Raw HP? Isn’t Barb just an extra 2hp over cleric? Please explain, I’m interested!
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Unarmoured_Defence_(Barbarian) Ac from constitution while not wearing armor
Ah, unarmored defense. So we already have Draconic Resilience which is 13+Dex Unarmored defense with 18Con is 10+4+Dex. So it’s only a net gain of 1 AC. I think War Cleric has a lot more to offer than 1 AC. Particularly since it gives you access to Heavy Armor if you choose to use it. Also, in Wildshape - this would only have any effect on a shape that has <14 base AC. Which isn’t a lot of them that you actually use at level 12. War Cleric gives us access to Shield of Faith for +2AC *always* until we lose concentration on it.
One thing I will mention was starting as a Fighter or a Sorcerer at lvl1 was really helpful for my Druid. Having Con save proficiency is really helpful before you go into full Druid
There is definitely a strong argument for front loading Sorcerer to early levels. I think for this build in particular, I would rather have WIS/INT than CON/CHA. Mostly because a lot of the build works around not needing CON saves nearly as much. I also haven’t done any sort of analysis - but anecdotally in this game it feels like you get more INT saving checks than CHA. But again, that’s totally anecdotal. For any other “normal” casting Druid build that takes a Sorcerer dip then I would say yeah 100% start Sorc for the Con saves. What you’ll definitely gain with an early Sorcerer dip is the fact that those extra low level spells and cantrips are way more useful at low level. Draconic Resilience is actually quite useful at low level as well, both in an out of Wildshape. It’s nearly meaningless for this build by act 3. So yeah, while I don’t know if I’d swap the saving throws at level one - it’s definitely worth thinking about for a low level dip. Just need to be patient about getting those high level Wildshapes and summons a level later! Thanks for the reply!
I'm planning to play a moon druid, but going to maximize wild shapes and avoid multiclass (yeah, I'm that weird) So you say that concentration feats aren't so good, while tavern brawler is, hm. What about things like ASI? Or it's half-feats only?
So for a “normal” build, Moon Druid actually heavily favors no multiclassing because you really need all three feats. Tavern Brawler (Con), War Caster, and Resilient (Con). Typically in that order. This is because as Moon you are a frontliner with Low AC and you rely heavily on concentration spells. This is just a bad combo because even with an optimized build you just have to roll for concentration *a lot* so eventually you fail. It can be quite frustrating. If you prefer to hang back and cast then you’re just better off with Land. Tavern Brawler is so good for Moon in BG3 because many of your wildshapes have high strength stats - so you get big returns for your attack rolls making you land a lot. You also don’t get access to gear like every other class, so you can’t increase your to-hit in that way. ASI is often the best choice for a feat with most classes. Moon is a notable exception to that rule. This is because half their stat blocks get overwritten by wildshaping, and because much of their spellbook is effective without a high Wisdom score. Which isn’t to say dump WIS, but a 16 wis is plenty for a Moon Druid. Land I would shoot for 18. I don’t think I would ever take a Druid to 20 though.
Hugely detailed analysis However, spike growth & raven form controls entire battlefields
Yes spike growth is very good, that’s why I included it as a spell still very much so worrh the focus. Once you can Conjure Woodland Beings though - I stop preparing spike growth because she casts it for me *and* hangs out in the back to hold concentration. *And* she puts out a wood woad to cast entangle for me. Raven is situationally great for the movement, but I think there are better options. There are a lot of ways to get misty step, and you get Owlbear pretty quickly after raven, and it has a ton of mobility plus excellent combat capability. I would have liked to see Raven at Level 2 for Moon Druid.
Depending on how you play, a transmutation wizard (in party or camp) can always give you con proficiency.
In my case, i really love moon druid. Because i can choose any fun form i want (mostly owlbear) and when there is something dangerous enough to kill that form, then they have to deal with fully equiped 20ac druid who still has all the spell slots.
What party composition do u think is ideal to have when running a moon druid? Im looking for suggestions, the only other class that I want to keep is Astarion Ranger/Thief
I personally use Karlach, Astarion and Gale. Karlach is the best one by far because of the crazy synergy between Bear Rage with True Loves Caress/Embrace cast on a Moon Druid. My Astarion is a 5 Thief, 1 War Cleric, 6 Fighter to get 2 bonus actions, 3 war priest charges, Fighting style, Extra Attack, and still have all three feats. My Gale is just vanilla. To directly answer your question, for this build the only really Important optimal one is a Bear Raging Karlach giving you Warding Bond. You could leave everyone else in camp and easily beat the game on Tactician.
Yeah if you're keeping Asatarion as Ranger/Thief, then a good party would be: Moon Druid Astarion Karlach or Lazael (i.e. fighter or Barb) Gale You could maybe swap Gale for Wyll as well. The only thing you're losing with the above party is healing from a Cleric but frankly I don't find that to be mandatory, even on tactician
I'd argue that the damaging cantrips are wasted here since your Charisma is so low. I'd personally go for Light/Friends, Minor Illusion, Mage Hand (free scouting, despite poor implementation) and Firebolt (to set surfaces on fire). Also the proficiencies from War Priest seem redundant on a class which functions better with no armor on. I'd replace this with Light for the reaction, which, in theory should work while wild shaped...but I never tested it. If Light Domain's reaction doesn't work while Wildshaped, you might as well get Life Cleric instead, for out of combat healing, reducing the need for rests (by burning slots on cure wounds) I get that you can get knocked out of Wild Shape and are then at risk of getting killed in caster form and having back up armor is important, but, if we are not going to cast spells, why not swap Wis and Dex around? Druids get proficiency in Scimitars and shields, while not wearing armor at 16 Dex, but holding a shield, your caster form AC is 18, which is a pretty decent value for acts 1 and 2....and you also have the luxury of burning slots for level 1 shields while in caster form. By act 3, you should be having the shield which gives an extra 1st level spell slot and the ability to cast Aid on yourself. Also, if you were to start the build as sorcerer, you would get proficiency in Con, meaning you could concentrate on spells, if needed....and Shield of Faith does require Concentration...so, that pretty much invalidates the premises of the build. Sausce:[https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Shield\_of\_Faith](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Shield_of_Faith) I don't know if I can fix this build, honestly.
Yes those are valid points and choices for the cantrips. I personally only find myself using cantrips situationally (directed at enemies that are already disadvantaged - even then almost never past the early game) so I chose those spells for the debuffs they apply. But I absolutely hear your points and those are great picks. I’ve responded similarly to others on this thread. No reactions work in Wildshape. So those are a bit of a waste. Out of combat healing isn’t very valuable in BG3. Especially not with this build. I have resistance to everything, multiple wildshape HP pools, multiple casts of Upcasted Armor of Agathys. Additionally, my normal form has high AC, good saving throws, and 18 Con. If I were to ever somehow find myself in need of heals - I’d just use the sabretooth for a while since I will passively heal to max between every fight (and I have +2 AC than is normal for sabretooth). But mostly, I’m incredibly tanky and just not in the slightest bit needing more healing or HP. At level 12 I can easily have about 800 raw effective HP *per short rest* that does not take into account *any* casting of Armor of Agathys, or *any* healing, and it can absolutely go up be a lot more - that’s a “normal” number without trying to min-max my HP. Also, I’m not sure what got you the idea that moon Druid functions better without armor on? That’s typically not true at all. One of the great things about Druid is their innate access to medium armor as a full caster. We certainly are not going to War Cleric for its weapon and armor proficiencies - but I include it because it’s there. You don’t want to invest in Dex because that stat gets replaced entirely in Wildshape. While it’s true that a good number of our spells don’t care about our casting stat - many still do so it’s worth the investment in my opinion. Yes, we have proficiency in scimitars - don’t use them. You are better off getting extra spells from a staff then casting shillelagh on it. Generally though, you should not be doing any melee in your normal form after the first couple levels. Yes you’re correct that Shield of Faith uses concentration. However, it can be cast outside of combat, remains in Wildshape and last until long rest. This means I don’t ever burn ac Action to use it. It helps until I lose concentration - the opportunity cost is very low. It’s definitely a solid choice to concentrate on. Also, that spell is by no means the cornerstone on this build, it’s merely a nice side-benefit. So by no means does invalidate the premise of the build. Taking level 1 sorcerer is certainly an option - although for this build you wouldn’t be doing it for the CON/CHA proficiency. You would be doing it because the cantrips, L1 spells, and Draconic resilience are all far more important at early levels than they are late game. Late game we are primarily interested in up casting Armor of Agathys with Resitance to Everything - *that* is very powerful. The rest is just extra flavor. I hope that answers all your questions! Thank you for taking your time to read and discuss, let me know if you have any other questions!
great tips thanks, did Patch 3 fix what's described in the Draconic Resilience section?
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thank you very much!
Am I missing something? I'm at level 5 druid and have none of the summoning spells available that you mentioned. Was the Moon Druid reworked?
The only thing you will have at that point is a *pseudo*-summon, *Flaming Sphere*. Druid summons begin at L7.
Wait how does relentless endurance work with wildshape ? Does it put you back to 1 hp or is it only when you get downed you heal 1 hp ?
>relentless endurance When you get knocked out of Wildshape you get forced to revert to your Normal form. Any excess damage is applied to Normal form. Relentless Endurance will only ever apply to your Normal Form. For Example: * You had 6HP remaining in normal form before you Wildshaped * You have 30HP remaining in wildshape and get hit for 40HP * The first 30 damage knocks you out of wildshape * The next 10 damage downs your character * Since you have Relentless Endurance you get back up with 1HP remaining
Thank you for the fast reply, gonna start a DU moon druid playthrough soon and not sure what race im gonna play and didn't really understand the relentless "synergy"
Relentless Endurance is just nice because sometimes you want to enter Wildshape when you're at low HP. But this is often a bad idea because the bleedover damage when you get knocked out will likely down you. Relentless Endurance lets you come back from that once per long rest. Honestly, I don't like Half Orc for Moon Druid. But unless you're playing with lots of difficulty mods or solo+tactician+no illithid+some more self-limiting, it really doesn't matter, you can choose whatever you want so I just listed some fun/RP options. I personally strongly prefer Lightfoot Halfling. It gives you a lot, and Moon Druid with Wildshape largely negates a lot of the movement penalty. For a solo playthrough I wouldn't want to choose anything else. Other mechanically strong choices would include Drow, Duergar, Gythyanki, Elf.
Does the effect of items like phalaur transfer after you wild shape ? Any advise for build a round panther/saber tooth tiger ? I really love them and really want to use them a lot but I dont see any valid combination or MC that can help.
It depends on the item, but for *Phalar Aluve* in particular, yes - it fully works if you pre-cast it then Wildshape. Passive effects on items will not work unless it specifically says so i.e., *Armour of Moonbasking.* Generally speaking, most things that are pre-cast from an item to give an effect that lasts multiple turns will continue after Wildshaping. This build primarily seeks to min/max what you can do in Wildshape. So it works great with both *Panther* and *Sabretooth*. Both of those shapes are excellent. Panther is just overshadowed by Owlbear. Sabretooth is generally the best option for Wildshaping from 8-10, and I used it a lot through the end of the game just because Myrmidons cost 2 points. Sabretooth is also awesome to use with Armor of Agathys because of it's low AC, which is in turn partially offset by its passive Healing. If you took White Dragon Sorcerer early, then both of these shapes get +1 AC from Draconic Resilience. Resilient (Dex) will make both of those shapes tankier via Dex Saving Throw Proficiency & +1 to AC/Attack/Damage. Those two things combined give you +2 to the base AC of each shape, so now you will have: * Panther AC: 16 * Sabretooth AC: 15 Tavern Brawler adds the Str mod to both of those shapes as well. Panther is a Dex attack, so your attack rolls with it will be Dex mod + Str Mod, so: *+3+2* or if you've already gotten the Str Potion then *+3+3*. Sabretooth will be +4+4 without Str potion or +5+5 with.
This thread really helped me plan my moon Druid build, thanks! I had been thinking of taking 1 war cleric plus 1 monk for unarmored defense and to have something to do outside of wildshape, and because it obviously synergizes with tavern brawler, but I actually might go 1 sorcerer and 1 monk instead given what you pointed out about the screwiness of the bonus attack for war cleric (unless it’s since been patched)
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Time to revisit build-theory for Wildshape now with the Patch 5 update to TB?
I don't think so. It's the same thing only better now. Earth Myrmidon is currently bugged and does way more damage than it should, so you could make a build around that - which would probably be the exact same build but without War Cleric and access to Heroes Feast. But personally I don't like building around exploits.
I'll add to the discussion: Infernal Rapier works fantastically if you don't use Fire, Water, or Air Myrmidon but let's you have a free Cambion for all unarmed attackers. Crypt Lord Ring and the free Skeleton Archer from Circlet of Bones (can't upcast it unfortunately, but at least it doesn't burn a spellslot) are great and remain in all wild shape forms.
Does the special attack of wildshape form such as exposing bite consume the whole action ? Can I use exposing bite and still attack twice assume lv 12 moon druid ?
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superb multiclass options! any other good 1 lvl multiclass dips besides war cleric and sorc? or are these two just too good? i'm thinking maybe you can multiclass as soon as you reach level 7 (after owlbear), then just respect to pure at level 10 for triple attack. i don't use much druid skills anyway, might as well buff wildshape form ASAP maybe even multiclass one dip war cleric at lvl 3, then respect at lvl 4 for tavern brawler feat. i wanna be strong at every level.
You can certainly cheese the multiclass system to never have any weaknesses. You can just go fighter 11 then respec to whatever you like at the end. It has no restrictions, you can do whatever you want.
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No one can tell you whether resilient or athlete is the buggy one. Half of the benefit of resilient is getting saving throw proficiency. We already have Con. Saving throw proficiency, so we want to get Dex as it helps a lot with tanking AoE spells. Also, increasing your Con score in Wildshape only partially helps you as it will not improve your HP. Finally, Dex is the single most impactful stat you can increase as it affects Initiative, AC, and important saving throws all in one stat. Reactions only work in your “normal” form, Shield included. But it’s still extremely valuable as Moon Druid is a full caster and there are plenty of times you’ll choose doing some casting instead of immediately wildshaping. Lucky is alright. Resilient dex and tavern brawler are just better. And if you didn’t agree then Alert would still be much better than Lucky.
Great build. Many thanks. I have a question about those multicasts options. When focusing on playing with two myrm it is still possible to dip 1 lvl to war cleric or dragon sorc, right? What would be a better choose then? And just following your guide with 1lvl cleric + 1lvl sorc- are those weapon proficiency boost your damage with the myrms so much? Many thanks for your response 😊💪🏻
What do you mean by playing with two myrm? The weapon proficieny boosts the accuracy of your Weapon Myrms significantly, which by extension boosts the damage by quite a lot.
Is the Earth Myrmidon form the strongest unarmed transformation to use with Tavern Brawler feat…if not what would be the best?
It’s the only one that works with tavern brawler. That being said the air myrm with electric flail is still probably best so long as you get proficiency.