The Circle of Stars Druid: D&D

hey up demancers chris here so i want to talk now about the new druid stuff that's in tasha's cauldron of everything we've got two new subclasses and we've got some optional class features so i want to go over the features first quickly and i'm going to go over today the circle of stars druid and then in the next video i'm going to go over the wildfire druid i think both of these are pretty good subclasses i got to say and so i want to go through the features kind of one by one in detail and analyze them but before we do that i want to thank some of my top level patrons the support of these patrons is vital for me to take the time to go through these analyses as i do and today i want to thank specifically james sprague james thomas j mcavenue john matera jonathan haynes kurt g lyric and matt thank you all so much for your support it is truly appreciated so let's talk to druid let's get started so in tasha's cauldron of everything they have added three optional class features for the druid now it is important to remember as with all the optional class features in tasha's culture and of everything these are up to your dm to allow so make sure to check with them first the first thing that the druid gets is an expanded spell list so they add a bunch of spells a lot of them from the player's handbook so these aren't just new spells from this book altogether there are 16 spells added from first level through eighth level now there are some of these spells that i don't think are big additions i think incendiary cloud adding flesh to stone i don't think these are spells that you're likely to take or cast but there are a lot of spells here that i definitely would consider taking or even definitely take now we see three spells from tasha's cauldron have everything added and they are all summoning spells and the big thing here is druids already have a really good summoning spell available at level three but we actually get a summoning spell available at second level that's the summon beast spell so giving druids access to summoning at level three instead of level five is a significant change and there are some non-summoning spells here i think are pretty solid too enlarge reduce can be very useful revivify is a great spell fire shield is a good spell corn of cold i don't think is a super powerful spell but i do think it does give at least the druid some more non-concentration blasting options one spell i definitely like seeing on here is aura vitality healing spirit has been eradic so it is not nearly as good as it used to be so aura vitality once again puts the druid back in a pretty strong healing position we also get two new rituals augury and divination and these can be very useful rituals they're not ones i would necessarily have prepared all the time but having them there available to add to your list because remember druids can change their spell list after every long rest is still really good so overall this list definitely increases the power of druids now is this list appropriate for druids yeah i don't think there's anything really out of line here uh this all kind of fits fairly well within what we think of a druid so i'm not sure why spells like fire shield i'm not sure why spells like revivify weren't always on the druid spell list so them being there now i think makes a lot of sense the second optional class feature that we get is the wild companion this will come at second level and it is a new way to use your wild shape feature so instead of using your wild shape feature on wild shaping you can use it to cast the fine familiar spell and there's no material component so you don't need the brazier or the special incense now there's a couple changes from the find familiar spell the first is that you don't get to choose the type of spirit it's automatically a fake spirit that really makes no mechanical difference at all and the second thing is that the familiar is going to disappear after a number of hours equal to half your druid level so that's the same duration that you would get from a wild shape so normally familiars when you cast find familiar they last indefinitely this one is going to last when you get this at second level for one hour is a familiar good for one hour absolutely but if you want to have a familiar pretty much consistently as a druid you will be using your wild shapes on this rather than wild shape now if you have very short durations between your short rests and your familiars tend not to die you may be able to do both wild shape and familiar for most that time but i think in most cases you're probably going to be choosing one or the other but of course you can make different decisions at different times extra options for wild shape is something i'm always in favor of when you are playing a moon druid of course you're going to be wild shaping but when you are playing any other kind of druid sometimes you just don't use your wild shape so having some options for that so that you can use it is something i'm always going to be in favor of the final optional class feature is kantrip versatility this will come at fourth level and it will allow you to change out your can trips now you can't change out your cantrips without limitations they are limited to the levels where you gain an ability score improvement so that's like 4th 8th 12th 16th 19th level and also each time you can only change one can trip now i've always been in favor of the idea that kantrip should be able to be changed at some point and for druids i really like it i think it is better for druids than it is for maybe any other spellcasting class and the reason for that is that druids number one they only have two cantrips to start out with that's half what a sorcerer has when you are a first level druid picking your cantrips is hard because with only two cantrips and a pretty good cantrip list it is not easy to come up with which options you want to take and then we have cantrips like shaley and when you are playing a druid shalalee is really attractive if you end up in combat you want to be able to participate in some kind of meaningful way and chileli is a way you can do that at low levels because with a d8 plus your ability score modifier which is your wisdom a druid can be doing damage similar to the martial characters but i'm always hesitant to take chile because then level five happens and at level five all the attack hand trips are scaling and the marshals are getting extra attack and shilling does not change so suddenly making an attack with a chaleli at level five and above is not really worthwhile so when we have this option what we could do is we could take shelly at level one and maybe at level four now it's time to switch it out maybe you switch it out for primal savagery maybe you switch it out for thorn whip there's not really a wrong answer because all the attack hand trips that are scaling are eventually going to be better than chilele so kantrip versatility for me is a big win for druids so let's get into the actual druid subclasses we actually have three subclasses printed in tasha's cauldron of everything but only two of them are new circle of spores is a reprint and i have actually gone over a circle spores before so if you are interested in what i would do with a circle of spores druid and how i think about the features i'll link a video in the video description and you can go there and check that out because my opinions on it have not changed at all but today i want to go over the circle of stars druid and a lot of people have asked me for my opinion on this because there are a lot of features on this subclass that really jump out and as i said at the beginning of this video i think this is a very good subclass now i'm not convinced that it is significantly better than the wildfire druid in fact i think they are actually in pretty close competition and i'll probably go over that more in detail on my next video when i talk about the wildfire druid because i think that a lot of people are looking at that as the weaker option i'm not necessarily seeing that what i'm seeing are two druid subclasses that are both very good now neither of them are as mechanically powerful as a moon druid at second level because the moon druid has a very strange power curve and you're going to see at second level the moon druid just skyrocket to becoming the most powerful member of the party and then that power wanes as you go up and level and that is not a mark i think we should be using to compare subclasses because the moon druid is a unique case if we look at the subclasses that already exist for druid i would say the best subclass overall is the shepherd druid which also is not nearly as powerful as the moon druid at second level but as levels increase the shepherd druid does better and better and the power curve for a shepherd druid is far more in line with what we would expect from a d d character but i think the circle of stars the shepherd druid the wildfire druid those three subclasses are now actually really well balanced against each other and i like that because when we have a campaign and we want to play a druid and we're not looking for that weird moon druid power curve then we now have three very solid options for our druid so the circle of stars druid the idea of them the theme of them is that they are druid that are getting their power from the stars and from constellations and when you take this subclass at second level you're going to get two primary features the first is your star map and the second is your starry form both available right away at second level and these are both very good features first let's talk about the star map and they give you some examples of what form your star map might take in the subclass description but you can of course make it whatever is thematically appropriate for your character and i will mention you can use your star map as a spellcasting focus if we wanted to look at how it might be a mechanical benefit the one thing about the star map is it is replaceable with a one-hour ritual so if for some reason you lost all your equipment then you are not going to have a spell casting focus or spell casting components you could use a one-hour ritual get your star map and now you have a focus but the three mechanical benefits that are i think going to see game play in most campaigns are number one you're going to get the guidance cantrip i think this is great because the guidance kandra is usually my first pick for druids and again at second level you have two choices so with guidance that's half of them right there now you have one choice by getting the guidance can trip automatically now we have two choices on that great druid spell list this is a fifty percent increase on our total cantrip stone and it is a cantrip that we were absolutely 100 going to take so that is fantastic the second is that we are going to have the guiding bolt spell prepared and it's going to count as a druid spell for us but it's not going to count against our number of spells prepared now guiding bolt is a spell that requires a hit roll on a single target to do damage and generally speaking i am not a fan of these kinds of spells that is an expensive cost for an attack that might miss and even if it hits it's going to do a single target do a decent amount of damage but not an overwhelming amount of damage that said guiding bolt is the best of those kinds of spells at first level first off it does a super reliable kind of damage radiant damage is as reliable as any kind of damage you can do with a chromatic orb secondly it's going to do more damage than a chromatic orb and thirdly you're going to get the rider on it and the rider is that if you hit with it the next attack against that creature will have advantage now guiding bolt is still not a spell i would choose to prepare with a druid even if it was on the druid spell list so getting it prepared for you would be a moderate benefit at best if it weren't for the third thing we got and that is that we can cast guiding bolt without expending a spell slot and we can do it a number of times per day equal to our proficiency bonus so at second level you're going to be able to cast guiding bolt without expending a spell slot twice per long rest now when we are talking about a character that is going to have three first level spells at second level getting two additional first level spells is a big increase but you are limited to casting guiding bolt with those and as i mentioned guiding bolt is not the kind of spell that i would normally pick so this isn't as good as just getting two additional spell slots still getting guiding bolt twice per long rest is a good feature for her second level character now as we move up in levels it's going to become less and less relevant even though we're getting more castings of it eventually guiding bolt will be marginally better than a can trip so at a certain point i don't care how many times you give it to me per day it's not that great a benefit but at second level i think it is a decent benefit so star map is giving us some nice features and again star map is only one of two nice features we're getting at second level the second feature we're gonna get is called starry form and starry form is an option that we can use with our wild shape feature instead of doing wild shape and again as i mentioned previously in this video i'm always in favor of new ways to use wild shape this seems to be kind of the standard now with new druid subclasses we saw it with circle spores we see it with the wildfire druid we see it with the circle of stars druid is that we're getting new ways to use wild shape now if you are one of the older styles of druid like a land druid for example you still at least now have the find familiar option with your wild shape but with the new subclasses we're going to have now multiple options we might do wild shape we might summon a familiar or we might use our subclass option which in this case for the circle of stars is the starry form so starry form doesn't change our character like wild shape does we are only enhancing our current form so when in story form you can still cast spells you can still speak you can still do all the things you could normally do you just get some additional things on top of it first thing you're going to shed bright light 10 feet around you and then dim light for an additional 10 feet though i think if you do have dark vision other than perception checks at short range it's not really going to be a benefit in fact it might even be a penalty because it's going to be really difficult to use things like stealth the gloom stalker ranger might not be able to be near you or they're going to become visible to the enemies so this one is kind of a mixed bag another thing to note is that the starry form only lasts for 10 minutes that is a very short duration compared to while shape because while shape lasts a number of hours equal to half your druid level so there is no guarantee this is going to get you to your next short rest when we use our story form we're going to choose one of three options and we're going to get three very different benefits depending which option we take and i like this i like having options and none of these options are bad as far as i'm concerned and i might choose different ones depending on the situation our first option is the archer and so when we activate this form which takes a bonus action to set up but it doesn't use up our bonus action because we can still do the special attack on that turn we can make a range spell attack and that range spell attack has a 60 foot range and does one d8 plus our wisdom modifier in radian damage this is a spell attack so it is based off our wisdom and so if we are in the back and we are hurling cantrips archer is going to more than double the damage we do before level 5. now i will say that i think the archer is going to lose some luster at level 5 because it doesn't scale at level 5. but if we're looking for doing damage the archer is probably going to do as much damage as say doing a flaming sphere and it's not going to use a spell slot and it's not going to use our concentration now we can't do it with a flaming sphere because both of them would require our bonus actions but if we're just looking to do damage i think archer is a good choice for us we are not going to do the kind of damage that a true ranged combatant could do you get a marshall with crossbow expert and sharpshooter they're definitely out damaging the druid by a long degree even if you have the archer starry form but if you want to be relevant can trips do crappy damage but you do some crappy canter of damage and then you add the archer damage on top of it now you're into at least moderate levels of damage especially at those lower levels the chalice is a nice option for us if we want to do some healing whenever we use a spell using a spell slot that restores hit points to a creature doesn't necessarily have to be a druid spell so if we're multi-classed we can still take advantage of this with the spells from our other classes we can heal either ourselves or another creature within 30 feet so that same range as a healing word and they regain 1d8 plus our wisdom modifier in hit points now can't be the initial creature so if i cast healing word on one character they can't also benefit from the chalice it has to be somebody else but if i am going to cast a healing word on somebody then the chalice is actually going to heal somebody else even more because it's adding a d8 instead of a d4 and it has the same range so if we're wanting to heal multiple party members i think the chalice is a nice option for us now again like with the archer i don't think this scales all that well but i think it's second level it's pretty potent the one that does scale well as far as i'm concerned and i think probably the best form as far as i'm concerned is the dragon when you take the dragon form you get three benefits whenever we make an intelligence check a wisdom check or a constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell we can treat any role of nine or lower on the d20 as 10. this means as long as we don't have a negative modifier to our constitution saving throw most concentration saves are automatic now because you have to take 22 points of damage or more before you have to make a constitution save of dc 11 or higher and i think it is a safe bet that most druids are probably going to have a positive constitution modifier certainly any druid i make will but i will say that that's a really nice ability i mean normally we have to consider taking feats in order to maintain concentration and the dragon form is better than any of the feats as far as i'm concerned and getting the automatic 10 or higher on intelligence or wisdom checks that just is nice fuel to the fire it makes this a little bit better form though i think the main feature here is that our concentration saves are going to be very nicely protected and when you are a druid your spell list is largely centered on concentration spells and so protecting your concentration is going to be very important and the dragon is going to do that and it's going to continue to do that at higher levels as well and when i get this feature at second level i would probably take archer some of the time i'd probably take chalice some of the time but as i get into higher levels i think more and more i'm likely to go for the dragon now at six level we get cosmic omen and what cosmic omen does is it gives us a special reaction we can use a number of times equal to our proficiency bonus per long rest so at six level we're going to be able to do this three times and it's eventually going to scale to six times but for most of your adventuring career you're probably looking at three what you do is at the beginning of the day you're going to roll a die if you roll even you get the wheel ability and if you roll odd you get the bow ability the wheel ability is going to allow you to add d6 to somebody's attack roll saving throw or ability check if they're within 30 feet of you using your reaction and the low ability you can subtract the d6 from somebody's attack role saving throw or ability check within 30 feet of you now when it comes to abilities like this there's three different types we see we see the ones where we add the benefit or subtract the penalty before the rule is made we see the ones where the die roll is made and then we add the modifier or subtract the modifier but before the results are determined and then the ones that we determine the results and then we apply the modifier and it might change those results now of those three the first is the weakest because we don't know what that die roll is going to be so we don't even know if that modifier is needed still i don't want to despair on subtracting a d6 from somebody's saving throw that is a big deal but of all the uses of this that's the one that kind of stands out to me the rest of them i think there's a lot of chance involved d6 to an initiative role i could see being really good but i mean if somebody's going to make a saving throw you don't know if they need that d6 maybe they're going to roll well and then they didn't need it in the first place or maybe they're going to roll so poorly that the d6 couldn't possibly help and because we have to apply this before the roll is made we don't know so i think quite often this ability is going to be used and have no impact still i like abilities that add dice or subtract dice from attack rules saving throws and ability checks and this is one of them and so i do still think this is a decent ability wish it was after the role was made i still think it's okay then a tenth level we get twinkling constellations this just improves our starry form feature the d8 from the archer and the chalice become 2d8 and while the dragon is active we have a flying speed of 20 feet and can hover now the d8 for archer and chalice i think this is a little late to the game at 10th level both these forms have already become largely irrelevant adding 1d8 at this point i don't think really saves them if it was added at level 5 that would be interesting level 10 is pretty late candidates are about to scale again in one more level so i don't see using archer's house a lot at level 10 even with this increase but the nice thing is that dragon form that i am using gets significantly better flying speed of 20 feet isn't a lot but it's fly and with hover that's great and remember this is concentration free flight best kind of flight most characters even in the magic heavy campaign are either using concentration or an attunement slot to get these kinds of benefits so we've taken our best starry form and we've made it significantly better so that is fantastic but this feature is absolutely not going to change which starry form i'm going to be taking all the time which is probably going to be dragon and in fact this makes it even more likely that i'm going to take the dragon so i go from 99 percent of the time to 100 of the time and then we get a 14th level feature which again improves our starry form we're going to get resistance to bludgeoning piercing and slashing damage while we're in our starry form most damage we take in this game is one of those types so overall i think circle stars gets a lot of great stuff now the only thing that kind of concerns me about this subclass is so much of it is jammed into the starry form which is probably going to be our only use of wild shape we're going to want to be in our starry form pretty much all the time and the issue that is the duration the duration of 10 minutes could be a problem now there are some campaigns where that 10 minutes is going to be plenty and remember it's technically 20 minutes per short rest because we can use it twice but i've absolutely played in campaigns where the length of time between short rests is significantly more than 20 minutes especially when we get into situations where some characters might want to be casting rituals after combat that's 10 minutes alone and it is pretty vital for this character to remain in their starry form because honestly this druid when they're not in their starry form is going to feel a lot like playing a druid without a subclass at all so that's my only concern with this subclass is i wish that duration on starry forum was a little bit longer i'd feel a lot more comfortable with that do i do think in a lot of campaigns you're going to be able to maintain your starter form pretty much indefinitely when you're talking about actually being in combat but i don't think that's universal so that's something to consider before you consider this subclass but as far as the features go i think we get a lot of good stuff here at low levels that extra cantrip is really nice i like the ability to be able to cast guiding bolt a couple times in combat at low levels at high levels i still might cast it some of the time instead of a can trip it's probably always going to be as good as it can drip and the star reform ability is really good and at low levels i think we have three valid options i think at high levels we have one valid option cosmic omen is a nice add-on and one of the things i do like about it is that we can actually use it when we're not in our starry form it's really the only thing we get other than our star map that we can use outside of our starry form and so i think that is a nice addition though again i wish it was something that we could add after die rolls were made now why would i play a circle of stars druid the main reason i would do it is for a starry form and specifically for the dragon form once i get into those levels where spells get really good when you get to level five and you're getting third level spells or level seven and you're getting fourth level spells you're going to get some very very powerful spells and if you are looking at the druid spell list they are going to very very likely have concentration and so in order to be a super effective spell caster you are going to need to maintain that concentration and with this starry form we have a pretty foolproof way of doing so it also gives us the ability that you know when we get to fourth level or eighth level we don't necessarily have to take a feet to boost our concentration we could potentially increase our wisdom which would be great or maybe we take another feat altogether and that is the kind of freedom that spellcasters usually don't get so that is definitely an attractive feature for me so in our next video i am going to go over the circle of wildfire that i also think is a really strong addition to druids so i hope you'll join me for that until then i'm going to sit back relax and have some fun dnds for everyone thanks everyone talk to you next week [Music] you

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

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Id: 6mPGlpGNpIE

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020