Baldur's Gate 3: Druid Class Overview

foreign [Music] what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you my class overview for the Druid in balder's Gate 3 just ahead of its launch where we'll be going over things like the class fantasy of a druid on top of its class mechanics and specifically how it is in Baldur's Gate 3. so with that in mind there has been some changes to this class mostly around wild shape in particular which sees us transforming into a variety of animals but nonetheless as I'm sure many people know Druids are a defender of nature they upkeep a balance of many elements that keeps the world from being drawn into one of the elemental planes and they keep this balance via their full spell casting ability on top of their many obviously nature-based Powers so with that in mind let's talk about the class fantasy of a druid in many ways I would say it speaks for itself but there are some intricacies I think that are worth mentioning at a very simple level Druids are as I mentioned protectors of nature they seek to uphold the balance between the natural world and its elements but also keeping people from just outright destroying what is left of natural areas as well in many early editions of DnD it was actually required for Druids to be of a neutral alignment and this class along with all of the others in 5th edition DND have largely moved away from alignment systems but that neutral alignment was intended to reflect a druid's preservation of balance as mostly a druid will do what is required of them to maintain that balance and that doesn't necessarily have anything evil or good or lawful or chaotic associated with it it's simply a representation of how the natural Order of Things works so to speak that said Druids are ultimately people which means they have their own inclinations and can choose to interpret how best to protect nature in many different ways we actually see an example of this in Baldur's Gate 3 with the two groups of Druids we encounter so when it comes to playing a druid I think one of the main things to keep in mind is your approach to preserving said balance does have some room for interpretation that doesn't always equate itself with simply being polite and in harmony with everyone around you but some other aspects of a Druids who consider are where their power comes from Druids tap into the divine power of nature itself this can be reflected by nature and its surroundings literally giving them their power or it can manifest itself as power from a nature deity but it's important to remember that much like a paladin in that way a druid's Devotion to any individual God isn't necessarily a requirement of their powers that is left open for you to role play a little bit but it's very possible for a druid to have access to all their spells and everything without actually worshiping any particular deity it is very possible for the land itself to grant them this power and while many Druids work loan it's also not uncommon for them to come together and form Druid circles and generally members of these circles will have similar perspectives on how best to approach protecting their land which can usually manifest Itself by going all in on their nature-based magic as they are full spell casters after all or they can take a more aggressive approach and transform themselves into various animals to take on problems more directly be it as a Hermit living in the Wilds or a more sociable member of a druidic circle seeking to protect sacred grounds Druids ultimately strive to uphold and protect the natural order and your interpretation of that and how you approach that sacred Duty might even lead you to an adventuring life and even into more populated areas like a city where you might try to help a city cope without decimating the land around it but from there let's actually dive into the mechanics of a druid starting with some general information first of all their primary ability score is wisdom this is used for their casting ability alongside several other things you have a good bit of leeway in what you do with all of your other ability scores however especially if you are planning on wild shaping because turning into other animals will actually replace your base ability scores with the new animal versions so if you're planning on engaging in martial combat via wild shape having a high strength or dexterity score isn't necessarily important but if you're planning on playing a more Caster focused role you might want to go into constitution for the extra life as that is pretty much universally useful or something like dexterity for the extra Armor class as that and your medium armor can make you a little bit tankier so you do have a good bit of leeway in the stats but wisdom is definitely the most important then we have our proficiencies a druid is proficient with light and medium armor as well as a shield but for their weapons instead of being proficient with simple or martial weapons they are proficient with a lot of things individually clubs daggers javelins maces Quarter Staff scimitars sickles and Spears it was also important at one time for Druids not to use metal armor in particular and while the ttrpg still technically has a rule for it in Baldur's Gate 3 in particular it is not an issue it's not something you have to pay attention to and in the tabletop version it was kind of play it by ear at this point anyway with that being a rule many people ignored that said another thing to keep in mind here is that if you are wild shaping as a druid your armor isn't super important as your AC is going to be using whatever the animal you wild shaped into's AC or their natural AC I should say as they are unarmored so exactly how important these proficiencies are can vary a little bit from there let's talk spell casting as I mentioned Druids are full spell casters which means they will get 9th level spells and they have a pretty extensive spell list then is capable of being both offensive defensive in nature or utility based they can really do a lot with their casting as is the case with most full spell casters however because their magic is ultimately Divine in nature pun very much so intended they are prepared casters meaning that when they reach an appropriate level to learn new spells they get all of their new spells for that level of spell right away however they can only prepare so many of these at a time which makes up the Spells available for us to actually use as you might imagine though the big focus with their spell casting is Elemental Magic and things that interact with nature in some way this can see us Conjuring animals using Vines to ensnare our enemies calling insects to help us out at higher levels Druids are even capable of doing things like causing an earthquake however with the limit of six level spells that will be in Baldur's Gate 3 as our level 12 cap is imposed we can still do things such as conjure Elementals spread diseases via contagion call down lightning from the heavens which numbers just a few of their abilities however while some of these spells are even directly related to our melee abilities such as shalali giving us a magical club or staff that we can do pretty decent damage with at low levels this ultimately comes at a cost because like most full spell casters we do not get an extra attack like a martially focused class would however we'll talk a little bit more about that as part of wild shape which naturally brings me to Wild shape sort of the Cornerstone I would say of druidic abilities and the thing they are most known for Druids have the ability to transform into various animals in the tabletop version this is pretty wide open there's a limit on the strength of a creature you could actually transform into which starts at second level when you actually get wild shape and then at Fourth and eighth level the strength of what you can turn into increases however as we are ultimately playing video game here it's a little more limited than that as we have our choice from a variety of forms and what is available in Early Access is certainly not everything by any means as we know there will be Transformations outside of what you can see here but another thing to keep in mind is that they've actually changed what these animals are capable of as well for instance none of them have access to multi-attack at level 2 which would allow them to attack more than once this is probably for balancing reasons however as we're going to get into here in a minute one of the ways you can play a druid via a subclass is to focus on wild shaping which is more involved in close quarters combat where an extra attack is very important so it's likely they will add that portion of what these animals can do later on down the road as opposed to their strict implementation in the ttrpg so my point being what these animals are capable of and how they're implemented is going to be a bit different nonetheless though turning into various animals has its perks with bears being able to think Badgers being able to burrow wolves being able to inspire your party to move a little farther on their turn or distract enemies even but we also have the option of a cat which will allow us to stealth into places we likely shouldn't be so much like the tcrpg the wild shaping gives us options for a variety of situations that will likely only become more useful as the game progresses that said believe it or not spell casting and wild shape make up the bulk of a druid's class features and class mechanics what we have left to talk about is the subclasses because outside of just wild shaping and spell casting in general every other class mechanic we're gonna get as a druid comes directly from our subclass which is one of our druidic circles there are ultimately going to be three of these in the game which are the circle of land the circle of the moon or a Spore Druid now land and Moon are pretty straightforward circle of the land focuses in on spell casting this is going to give you an extra can trip it's going to give you natural recovery right when you pick a druidic circle at level 2 which is unusual normally you get a subclass right away at level one or level three but Druids get theirs at two natural recovery will allow you to recover some of your spell slots which will keep you casting that much longer now in the ttrpg you are supposed to pick a type of land like a desert or a forest grassland that type of thing and then you would get spells associated with that as you leveled up that wouldn't count against the number of your prepared spells it looks like that's been done away with in Baldur's Gate 3 at least in Early Access because when you hit Level 3 when that's supposed to start it doesn't come up so if they actually wind up adding that I guess we shall see but beyond that a circle of the land Druid will still at level six get land stride which makes them immune to difficult terrain provided it's non-magical alongside passing through non-magical plants without a hassle such as if they're poi poison is have thorns Etc and then we have advantage on saving throws against plants that are magically created such as the entangle spell at 10th level we should become immune to poison and disease and be unable to be Charmed or frightened by Elementals or Fae and with our level 12 cap that's the important stuff to know that brings us to Circle Of The Moon though circle of the Moon focuses more on the wild shaping aspect of a druid so if you wanted to be a druid that engages in close quarters combat as an animal this would be the way to go right upon picking circle of the Moon they pick up combat wild shape which allows us to use our wild shape as a bonus action rather than a full action so we could potentially turn into something and then also attack in the same round in addition to that though while in Wild shape we can consume our spell slots that we would not otherwise be able to use to instead recover health at a rate of 1d8 per level of spell that you consume another part of Circle of the moon is that it's supposed to let you transform into stronger versions of various creatures that is to say creatures with higher challenge ratings but it's hard to say exactly how this is going to be implemented in Baldur's Gate 3 so we shall see in that regard but overall they get stronger wild shape forms and then at level 6 are attacks in Beast form count as magical when it comes to overcoming resistances or immunity to regular weapons and then at 10th level we can actually expend two uses of wild shape to transform instead into an elemental of some kind an important note there is that typically your wild shaping is limited to two times per day so whether or not we see an increase to that number in Baldur's Gate 3 also remains to be seen but either way the uses are replenished on a short or long rest which makes them pretty easy to recharge and as I mentioned earlier it's good to remember that your ability scores will change based on what you transform into which includes things like your AC so the difference between that and your human form while spell casting is going to wind up being important especially because you can't actually talk while you are an animal that's something you'll have to revert out of Beast form to do and in many cases if you are in Beast form other members of your party will instead be called to speak into a conversation in your absence that though does bring us to our final subclass which is the Spore Druid Spore Druids are fairly interesting mostly because the circle of spores is about finding Beauty and Decay because ultimately things like mold and fungi have a purpose in the natural order we don't know exactly how this is going to be implemented as it is not in Early Access but some of their Chief abilities in the ttrpg are the Halo of spores ability they'll get right at second level which surrounds you with invisible necrotics fours that are harmless until you make use of them when a creature that you can see moves within 10 feet of you or starts your turn next to you you can use your reaction to deal a small amount of necrotic damage to them against their constitution safe versus your spell Save which will give you a nice bit of extra damage this will actually increase as you level up which makes it a nice way to get some extra damage also at second level though they pick up symbiotic entity this allows you to expend uses of your wild shape to awaken the spores around you to instead give you temporary hit points for each level you have as a druid while this ability is active your Halo of spores actually gets to roll a second die of damage effectively doubling it and your melee weapon will deal extra necrotic damage if you happen to hit anything with it as well this lasts until you use wild shape lose all your temporary hit points or 10 minutes have passed at sixth level though they get fungal infestation this gives them the ability to reanimate corpses basically when anything dies within 10 feet of you you can use your reaction to animate it with a single hit point at which point it becomes essentially a zombie and is capable only of attacking your enemies mindlessly but it's one hit point makes it a very squishy enemy now if Baldur's Gate 3 adjusts that to make those zombies stronger than just say one hit point that could be a lot of fun to mess around with but even without that it's still a pretty cool ability lastly at 10th level they get spreading spores which allows them to instead of using Halo of spores create a field or cube of them in a roughly 10 foot radius which will then deal your Halo of spores damage to anything that moves into it or starts its turn inside of it this is however exclusive with Halo of spores you can either do this or use regular Halo of spores so potentially useful if there is a large group of enemies that way you can hit them all that said that pretty much does it for class mechanics as far as Druids go so now let's talk a little bit about playing a druid playing a druid is for the most part a pretty good time they have a very strong class fantasy they have things that are unique to them and that ultimately gives this class a very strong identity and makes other classes want to multi-class into them to get various features from them but when it comes to playing a druid the first thing you want to ask yourself really is do you want to focus on the casting or the wild shaping because your sub Clash Choice here is largely going to make this decision for you because while you can do both it's definitely a situation where it's better to focus though having the options will give you some versatility because even as a circle of the Moon Druid focusing on wild shape you're still going to be a full spell Caster so you can still make use of all of your spells before combat even because the Druid spell list is very strong even without the circle of land at extra benefits and while you can't cast spells in Wild shape what you will be able to do is use some spells to buff your party members before combat starts for instance with things like bark skin potentially or some of your own healing magic and if you instead choose to go the circle of land route you'll still occasionally have uses for wild shapes such as turning into a cat to sneak into something and that bit of Versatility really adds a lot to what a druid can do both on and off the battlefield even if generally speaking you're going to specialize in either casting or wild shape and being able to do all those things and adjust your wild shape on the fly to any given situation that you might need is a pretty big Boon to just about any party but another thing to keep in mind about Druids is that they make for a few popular multi-classing options a very popular one is to mix them with a barbarian because a barbarian's rage mechanic will actually work work with wild shape and that combined with the temporary hit points of a wild shape and you've got a great tank capable of dealing some real damage another option is to mix them with a cleric as they are both wisdom-based spell casters and taking a small zip into cleric to grab something from a domain that you might want could be really useful such as Tempest cleric is always a popular choice and then as always Fighters remain useful for everyone because two levels of fighter will give you action surge But ultimately no matter how you do it there's a lot of ways to play a druid they are a class with a very strong identity and class fantasy that can do a great deal from offensive spell casting to support spell casting transforming into all sorts of animals to either perform in combat or simply a non-combat role such as sneaking into places Druids have a lot to offer a party which is why they are a fairly popular class and I very much so expect that to continue being the case in Baldur's Gate 3. all of that said though that has been our class overview for the Druid I hope you enjoyed it if you did like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

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Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Baldurs Gate, BG3, BG2, BG1, Baldur's Gate, Connections, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3, bg3 story, baldurs gate 1 & 2 before 3, bg3 multiplayer, bg3 gameplay, bg3 panel from hell, bg3 panel from hell recap, bg3 final panel from hell, bg3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 panel from hell, bg3 multiclassing, baldurs gate 3 multiclassing, bg3 classes, bg3 druid, bg3 druid overview, bg3 druid guide, bg3 druid class

Id: NBvDXDG5Q8Q

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023