Ultimate Druid Class Guide | Baldur's Gate 3

the Guardians of The Grove the nurturers of nature the wardens of the wild there's certainly no question about where the loyalties of a druid lie if you are the type of player who wants to turn the very forces of nature against your foes or if you just want to turn into a cat then the Druid class is right for you welcome back Travelers I'm glad to see you made it I'm Colo and today we're going to be taking a look at the druid glass and balers Gate 3 we will go over all of the skills and abilities that every druid's going to get as you level from first level to 12th level and then after that we'll take an indepth look into each of the druid's sub classes that way you know what each one of those has to offer for you before we get started I want to shout out the curators of the balers Gate 3 Wiki at bg3 dwiki they do a really good job of gathering and organizing their data on this Wiki and I used it for a lot of the information and IM in this video so be sure to check them out and now that that's out of the way let's talk about what the heck of Druid even is Druids are nature-based spellcasters that can pretty much fill any role in a party to just depending on how you decide to build your Druid before we get started discussing anything else I want to go over The Druids class mechanic which is wild shape first up what the heck is wild shape this is your shape-shifting abilities you're going to have the little wild shape icon you'll click on this and it'll open up a menu where you can choose what shape you want to turn into each one of them has benefits and drawbacks and we're going to go over each one of these forms in depth that way you know what each one of them does because the tool tips don't really do a great job of explaining everything that they have to offer so we're going to take a look at them you're going to be given two wild shaped charges this is what you have to use to shape shift into these forms most of the forms cost one wild shaped charge but later on there's a few notable exceptions to that we'll go over those when we get to them it is worth mentioning that each wild shaped form has its own unique health and buil-in physical stats and when I say physical stats I mean strength dexterity and Constitution so your Druids actual strength dexterity and Constitution don't matter at all while you're shape-shifted into these wild shaped forms what form you've shapes shifted into is what's going to determine what those three stats are however your intell Ence Charisma and wisdom do transfer over to when your shape shifted so basically all the mental stuff you keep the physical stuff changes which makes sense cuz you're turning into a damn tiger or a bear or whatever so your physical stats are going to change you still have your druid's brain inside that head though that's important to remember and while all Druids are going to gain access to various wild shaped forms not all Druids are necessarily specialized in shape shift each of the three sub classes is actually going to feel extremely different from the other two in both utility and lore and how it actually feels to play the options you're going to have are the spellcasting focused circle of the land Druids the wild shaping Experts of the circle of the moon and the rotten Decay loving circle of the spores Druids like I said before once we go over what every Druid gets we're going to go in depth into each one of these sub classes I just wanted to let you know the idea behind each one of the sub classes for now but we'll cover them all later but now that we all know what a drew it is why don't we go and uh create one shall we see you there on first choosing the class you will be immediately granted several proficiencies these are clubs daggers javelins maces quarter staffs scimitars sickles Spears light armor medium armor and shields he this is actually a really good starting set of gear proficiencies you're going to start off with the ability to be pretty tanky right off the bat and a bunch of weapons are opened up for you to use and then depending on what race you choose you can supplement some of the proficiencies with race proficiencies and stuff like that too take a look at what each race has to offer you and you can pick based on that or you're fully capable of just building whatever you want and you're going to be perfectly fine it's not going to keep you from beating this game I promise the druid's three main stats are wisdom dexterity and Constitution wisdom is your spell casting stat this is going to increase the damage and effectiveness of spells that you're casting as a druid dexterity is going to determine your initiative roles in combat your armor class and your damage with various types of finesse weapons and Constitution is going to determine how much health your character has as well as how hard they are to interrupt when they're concentrating on spells which is going to be very important you will most likely want different amounts of these stats depending very heavily on what subass you're planning on rolling your Druid as so if you're going to be one of the more spellcasting focused subclasses you might lean more heavily into Constitution and wisdom whereas if you're going for the shape shifting Druid it actually might be in your best interest to just not put any points into your physical stats since you're going to spend most of the time in Wild shaped form and you can just bump your other stats pretty high but we'll go over that a little bit more later on you will also get to choose two can trips from your Druid spell list which has some pretty solid options produce flame is very useful when you use it your hand basically sets on fire and it'll just stay on fire generating a little bit of light around your character while it's on fire like that while your hand is on fire you can throw the fire at somebody as an attack but you don't have to you can just carry it around all day as a light source and of course you get access to the single best spell in the entirety of balers Gate 3 guidance and if you don't think guidance is the best spell in the game you've probably never used it you need to take this can trip it's the best one in the list there's no question about that at least one person in your part needs to have guidance any of you who think I'm exaggerating go ahead and pick this come back to this video after a few play sessions rewatch the whole video again so that I get more ad revenue and then tell me in the comments about how many times you've used guidance and the answer is like 5,000 so just trust me it's good for anybody who doesn't know what guidance does it's a c trip that you can cast on your party members and it's usable even while they're right in the middle of a conversation it adds a plus 1 D4 bonus to all ability check for 10 turns or as long as the Caster maintains concentration so basically if you have someone in your party that has this can trip and you guys are all traveling together and someone gets into conversation that has a dialogue check that they have to roll this person will be able to add 1 D4 to any dialogue checks that they're going to roll while they're in that conversation there are no drawbacks whatsoever and it's a can trip so it's free to use this is Absol absolutely going to add up to being one of the most beneficial spells you have in your entire Arsenal so definitely don't sleep on this one on top of the two canant trips you're going to choose you will be granted all of your Druids level one spells with the ability to prepare two of them right away for use since the Druid is a prepared spellcaster anytime you unlock a level of spells so your level two spells your level three spells you get all of them your Druid learns all of them them at the same time you can't prepare and unprepared spells in combat but in between combat encounters you can just swap these spells in and out on your prepared list however you see fit so if you need to give somebody long Strider in your party and you don't have long Strider prepared and you're not in combat you can go ahead and just unprepared on them and then you can just take it back off the bar a lot of the things that you do you don't even have to keep the Spells prepared somebody even mentioned in one of my comments I believe that if you summon a minion and then unprepared minion summoning spell from your bar that you can replace it with something else and you still get to keep the minion that's probably a bug it's probably not intended but that's ridiculously powerful though something to keep in mind but all of this preparing and unprepared combat leads to Druids being very good for party utility they can cover a lot of the gaps in what your party doesn't have your Druid can just learn and unlearn things in between combat and and help you out there's a lot of really strong options here like long stri Rider ice knife fairy fire ton of good choices so now that you know what these Tree Huggers are all about and we've got our Druid created let's go talk about what you're going to get as you're leveling one up when you reach second level you will be granted a third level one spell slot and will have more slots to prepare your spells into so pick what you need and remember that this can be Chang at any time as long as you're not in combat more importantly though second level is where you gain your two wild shaped charges that we mentioned before and your first four wild shaped forms like I said before the tool tip descriptions of some of these forms are not great so we're going to go over each one individually so you know exactly what they have to offer you first up Badger form this one grants access to the bite ability which does piercing damage the claws ability which does slashing damage so that's already nice you got two different damage types built in and Claw also has a chance to push targets away from you when you hit them which is not nice and you also have the burrow ability this one will allow you to go underground you target the area that you're going to pop out of the ground from and you will burrow underground where you're at go underneath your enemy's feet it will ignore opportunity attacks this is a safe way to move from one place to another and when you pop out of the ground you will potentially knock nearby creatures prone which is a really good way to set up other attacks or other party members to be able to capitalize on your enemies laying prone also look at this freaking Badger is this what you were imagining when you read the skill name no this is a freaking black and white bear okay if I R into a badger that was this size in real life it's over I'm done super fast burrowing Bears no thank you I don't think so secondly cat form this one is much weaker than the badger bear we just talked about and more importantly much smaller this wild shaped form isn't necessarily intended to be used in combat situations though you can you can use it to sneak around or whatever but it is still absurdly useful for other things like traveling around in the open world you see the cat is small enough to fit into the small cracks and holes and walls that you find that you have to be really small to get through well Druids at this super early point in the game are one of the classes that can just Breeze right through that stuff you turn into a cat you sneak right through the hole you're good to go cats are also very light and you can have a party member throw your Druid somewhere I've seen videos of people getting thrown up over gates and stuff like that it might do damage to you and it might knock you out of cat form when you get over there but who cares if you're on the other side of the gate and you can unlock it for your party your cat form does have the claws attack which will do embarrassingly low damage um and the meow ability which is actually really good you can use this to have your cat sneak off over in the distance and meow and it will distract enemies they'll go over there to investigate and you can use that to sneak around past them on somebody else whatever it can open up some possibilities that aren't normally there by distracting somebody I'm going to go ahead and give a freaking Arachnophobia warning for this next one if you don't like spiders the next thing that we're going to talk about is a big ass spider so if you don't want to see this look away I don't like spiders either but you know what the spider form is freaking awesome so we're going to talk about it first of all you can jump super far you can bite enemies which deals piercing damage and possibly poisons them and you have the web ability when you're in combat this will allow you to shoot a ground targeted area of webs onto the ground anybody walking through the webs will have to succeed a dexterity saving throw or they will become in webbed which means all attacks against them will have Advantage their own attacks and dexterity saving throws will have disadvantage and the webs count as difficult terrain to everybody that's in them which will reduce your movement speed by half so even even if you pass that dexterity saving throw your movement speed still gets cut in half while you're standing in this thing next up we've got Yugo the wolf anybody who hasn't played bloody Roar you're missing out when I thought of this Yugo the wolf reference I had a ridiculous wave of nostalgia that hit me thinking about this game those games were freaking awesome anyway wolf form will grant your Druid various benefits as well bite is a standard piercing damage attack just like normal exposing bite will deal will dear if I can learn how to talk that'd be great exposing bite will deal piercing damage as well but it will also distract the target if it lands which will cause the next attack made from within 5 ft of that Target to be a guaranteed critical hit so that's really good you can use that to set up another party member to deal out a ton of damage all at once a bunch of good options are available to you you will also get the inciting howl ability which is a howl your wolf form will let out that will increase the movement speed of any allies that hear it within 30 ft it'll give them 10 ft of additional movement speed on their next turn this is amazing as well because it Stacks with long Strider so your Druid can already be increasing everybody's movement speed and then this is another movement speed on top of it and I tested it out they stack for sure wol form also has the pack tactics ability which is a passive ability that grants them advantage on attacks against any Targets that are within 10 ft of one of their allies this is really good also just another situation where passively you're going to be dealing a ton more damage you will also be tasked with selecting your subass at second level but like I said before we're going to cover all those at the end so I'm not going to talk about it right now with all that said let's go ahead and continue on to third level you will get another level one spell slot two level two spell slots and access to your druid's level two spells but that's not all two of the sub classes will receive a bonus at this level but you won't know which two until later on the suspense is killing you I know fourth level will grant you another can trip another level two spell slot and your druid's first beat as always look through the list of Feats see if there's anything that sounds like it would be useful or interesting for you to try out for your party if not there is a feat called ability Improvement that will allow you to boost your main stats and this is always is a viable option just make sure that you're boosting the stats that are important to your character so wisdom Constitution and dexterity as I said or if you're going to be a moon Druid and you're going to be spending most of your time in Wild shaped forms you'll have to decide how you want to divvy your stats up if you want to be on the safe side and have some Constitution and dexterity for when you're outside a wild shaped form just in case something goes wrong just know that it's going to be up to you to tweak okay I might want a little bit of extra dexterity just in case I get knocked out of Al bear form and I'm standing there in Caster form getting slapped by four enemies and I have zero Constitution and zero dexterity you're dead you wouldn't be able to survive something like that so you got to be careful and build your character the way your party needs them to be built if you pick something and you end up not liking it or you want to try something else out you can go talk to Withers pay him some gold and he will allow you to Respec your character you know you can actually pick a different class if you want you can reallocate your stats pick different Feats whenever you get to those levels no big deal then you can go ahead and Rob Withers get your money back from him and there's no consequences whatsoever even if he catches you a million times he doesn't care so respect your character get your money back no problem he's basically like a walking piggy bank just waiting to be busted open every Druid will also receive the Deep Ro wild shaped form at fourth level as well this form will allow you to cast the dancing lights C trip which can be used to illuminate a targeted area as well as the gore ability which will do decent piercing damage to your target but interestingly it also does additional Force damage to any Targets that have lesser medium or greater toughness so this makes the Deep Ro a good way to break down brittle walls or some doors have toughness that you can bust through and basically this big old goat's going to ram his head into it and bust it open for you so it's nice to have if you have a warlock in your party you can also use eldrich blast which deals Force damage to get through a lot of these things or you can just set a freaking explosive Barrel next to that thing and set it on fire and set off a big go boom and blast the wall off the foundations but that's the cool thing it's up to you how you want to do that the Deep Ro also has the charge ability which combines Mobility damage and the chance to knock your targets prone so it's the trifecta basically and interestingly it also doesn't provoke opportunity attacks so you can actually use this to get out of a bad situation if you want to charge away from your enemies a lot of times you'll still hit most of them and you'll get yourself out of danger and across the room so what more can you ask for it's great this is an awesome ability to have Moon Druids also get an additional bonus at this level but as I said before we're going to talk about these subass things later so I'm actually not going to keep saying that every time uh just know that there are more subass bonuses and there will be bonuses at every level until 11th and 12th and now we've arrived at fifth level almost every subclass in the game gets massive upgrades at fifth level in the form of extra attack for Marshall classes which allows them to attack twice per action or in the form of level three spells for the casters which has some of the most powerful spells in the game like Fireball and lightning bolt and haste are all level three spells ridiculously good spells start becoming available at these levels well Druids are unique because they don't get either one of those bonuses they get both both of them the small caveat with this is that The Druids version of extra attack only works while they're in Wild shape form so your Druid is going to get access to the level three Druid spells and wild strike your damaging can trips will also have an additional damage die added to their damage roll so this is going to help your can trips stay relevant throughout the game they're going to scale up one more time later on this is nice to have sixth l level will grant all Druids another level three spell slot and two new wild shaped forms Panther form will be extremely useful for sneaking around using its prow ability this will make you invisible and cause your first attack while you're invisible to deal an additional 1d8 damage then along with bite for normal piercing damage the panther also has pounce and jugular strike which work very well together pounce leaps at a Target and causes piercing damage with a chance to knock the target prone then jugular strike is a piercing damage attack that will deal extra damage against targets that are prone so you know Synergy and all that and along with the panther form you also get this cute little guy Al bear form this one is a freaking monster in melee combat you're super tanky you're strong as hell knocking people around the battlefield like crazy you'll have access to claws which will deal slashing damage crushing flight which is a leap attack that deals bludgeoning damage and can knock your targets prone and this move has been used in multiple meme videos for the AL bear off the top rope meme where people put their Al bear way up high on like a stack of boxes and then drop down and this ability deals more damage the further you travel with it it uses what people are calling laran gravity so if you're way way high up in the air you can drop super far down onto somebody with this thing and just onot certain bosses people oneshotted Grim with it and just totally trivialized entire fights that normally cause people a lot of problems if you're having trouble on a fight and you're willing to cheese something like this you might be able to just throw a damn ow bear into the mix and one-hot the boss and carry on while this ow bear stuff is definitely hilarious and ridiculous it is 100% viable and very effective the AL bear also has rupture which is an AOE slam that you can use to send chunks of Earth blasting up out of the ground causing bludgeoning damage to nearby objects and creatures as well as potentially knocking them backwards having access to a powerful AOE ability like this is always good and this looks badass so that's obviously worth a few extra DPS right off the bat right and lastly the AL bear will grant you the enrage ability and this what we need to talk about on paper this sounds very good it enrages you increases your strength by two and possibly makes nearby creatures fearful and note that I said creatures and not enemies and that's because it can fear your teammates too and I actually almost lost my honor onto this because I didn't read it properly and my guys were all standing on top of each other and then my owl bear used en rage because I thought it was just like Barbarian rage and I didn't bother to read it cuz I'm a dumb Dum and I clicked it and feared two of my own party members and all almost lost my honor run at the very very end of act one even with that being said even if you end up not being able to use the enrage effect at all in combat if you just decide not to click it Al bear form is still amazing it's still one of the best wild shaped forms you're going to have especially this early on in the game it's amazing to have upon reaching seventh level you will receive a level four spell slot and access to your level four Druid spells and there's a few really really good options at this level too including AOE damage spells various forms of crowd control spells and two different forms of summons both of which can be summoned at the same time which is really strong at eighth level you will receive your second level four spell slot and your second feat same deal as before if there's a feat that you want to try out or that sounds like it would be good try it out if not bump your character's main stats and let's move on Ninth level will grant you another level four spell slot a level five spell slot and access to your Druids level five spells 10th level is another biggan you will gain another level five spell slot another can trip your cantrips are going to scale up again for the final time at 10th level and everybody receives the dilophosaurus wild shaped form at 10th level you might recognize this little guy as the spitty boy from Jurassic Park and you'd be right that's totally 100% accurate to real life these dinosaurs are capable of spitting highly corrosive acid across long distances to melt and dissolve their foes just like in real life acids spitting Raptors running around doing flaring that thing spitting acid all up in your face from across the room totally true in real life it was a horrifying time back then when dinosaurs were around in balers Gate 3 this corrosive acid comes in the form of the corrosive spit ability this will hawk a giant acid lugie right on your enemy which will begin dissolving their armor reducing their armor class by one per turn up to a maximum reduction of minus5 this effect will be instantly removed if the target gets doused with water from any source so if your party is based on getting people wet and using cold or lightning damage spells to capitalize on their vulnerability while they're wet then Dilophosaurus form is probably not the best choice for you to use because you're going to be washing the acid right off these people however if your party is set up in such a way that you can capitalize on this this corrosive spit ability is ridiculously strong to have access to giving somebody a minus five to their Armor class especially if this is like a big boss that's a huge deal you're going to end up doing a ton of extra damage because of this the old spitty boy bite ability deals piercing damage as well as acid damage and the pounce ability will allow you to LEAP a decent distance and deal piercing damage to the Target as well as potentially knocking them prone just like with the panther this is another good mobility and damage combo which can chain into greater damage by your group by knocking the enemy prone you can definitely capitalize on that with other characters lastly and certainly not leastly the improved wild strike ability will increase your druid's attacks per action to three from this point forward while they're in Wild shaped form this is a very big deal and if you're making use of your wild shape form forms in combat you will be extremely happy to have this you are going to be frakin stoked more attacks is almost always better to have access to I literally right now can't think of a time when it's not you don't have to do all three of them but you have three that you can do now so that's good at 11th level you receive a level six spell slot it's the only one you're going to get and your druid's level six spells all of these are powerful but I want to shout out Heroes Feast specifically this is a great spell that can grant your party an absolutely ridiculous amount of bonus Health especially if you're running a party with a ton of extra summons because all of them will benefit from this spell wall of thorns is pretty nasty too definitely give it a shot in combat and see how you like it you can ruin somebody's day with this fraking spell it's crazy and finally ladies and gents we made it to 12th level where you will receive your third and final feat as before pick what you need here or bump your main stats which is always a strong choice and with that being said we have covered every bonus and ability that every Druid is going to unlock between first level and 12th level so now we're going to head back to second level where you had to choose your subass and we're going to talk about the first one the circle of the land Druids of this circle connect to power ful magic that flows through the Earth and binds all living things together these Druids are the true tree hugging nature Specialists they harness their powers of nature to cast powerful damaging spells as well as to heal and support their allies and they also have access to various forms of party utility you'll end up with a much larger selection of spells than either of the other two subclasses which for any new players that have never done anything with DND before or this is their first crpg game the amount of spells that the circle of the landroid gets access to can actually be super intimidating I know this because when I first started playing the game and I saw the list of spells that they got access to when they leveled up I was like uh what the hell was this so don't worry about that we're going to take some of the uncertainty out of that decision it's really it's not that complicated immediately upon choosing circle of the land you will get to choose another can trip and you will be granted the natural recovery ability at third level you'll get to witness your first WTF level up screen that we described before where you will be offered eight pairs of spells and you will have to choose one of those eight pairs of spells to learn this seems a lot more intimidating than it is just know that the land location names don't matter at all don't pay any attention to that those are just giving you kind of an idea lorewise of where where they got those two spells from in that pair so ignore the land names just look at each one of the pairs of spells and decide what your character or party needs often you're going to end up choosing a pair just for one of the Spells you might not ever use the second spell that was given to you in that pair but that doesn't matter if you got a really good spell out of the other one who cares that you never use the second one but that's what you need to look at is what spell on this list do I need and then if you get lucky and you can get two good spells in a single pair go for it by all means but don't feel sad if you choose one of these pairs just for a single one of the Spells and then trash the other one who cares about that you got what you needed still a few notable spells to pay attention to here are Misty step Darkness silence hold person and Spike growth all of those are really good this is not an exhaustive list there are definitely other good ones on this list but those are just ones that I'm comfortable pointing out to pretty much anybody because of how good they are in almost any situation so if you get stuck with your analysis paralysis there's too many choices for you to choose just think about these spells Misty step Darkness silence hold person Spike growth those are great choices and once again as we said before at the feet levels if you mess up and choose something you end up not wanting go talk to Withers fifth level is going to be your next bonus and once again it is a giant list of pairs of spells same thing here as last time don't let it overwhelm you just take it one by one and figure out what you need some of the notable options at this level are sleet storm haste lightning bolt and hypnotic pattern once again it's not an exhaustive list but those are some good ones that I'm comfortable recommending at sixth level circle of the land Druids receive land stride difficult terrain as a passive ability this is a permanent passive buff that makes your Druid immune to difficult terrains movement impairing effects so essentially you're super good at running around in the woods so you don't get slowed by plants and Roots anymore which makes sense seventh and Ninth levels will offer you two more lists of land spell pairs to choose from seventh level has a few good ones like ice storm wall of fire freedom of movement polymorph greater invisibility there's some really good choices here what your party needs once again is going to determine which one you need to choose ninth level will offer you cone of cold conjure Elemental wall of stone Cloud kill among others there a ton of strong choices here especially for damaging spells there's really good damaging spell options here pick what you need and then let's take a look at the circle of the land's last subass bonus at 10th level Nature's Ward is another permanent passive buff your Druid will gain because of their extreme closeness to Nature this will make the Druid immune to charm and frighten effects that are being cast by a fay or Elemental enemy so basically enemies from nature can't charm or frighten you anymore because you understand them the buff also passively makes your Druid immune to poison and disease of any kind so resistances and immunities in this game are very strong and this passive ability just gives you like four of them right off the bat it's this is a super strong thing to have because of the crazy amount of spells that you get access to as a circle of the land Druid which as we said before a lot of people consider that to be a negative but if you know what you're looking at it's actually a really good thing because they offer you a ton of different options you can build this character in a bunch of different ways you can be a straight up healer you can be a full DPS Caster you can be half shape-shifting half casting hybrid kind of thing it's going to be up to you there's a lot of options you'll have access to and with all that being covered let's go ahead and circle back the second level and take a look at the druid's second subass the circle of the [Music] Moon Druids sworn to the Moon draw on its Mercurial nature to transform into massive creatures and Primal Elementals Moon Druids are the shape shifters if you want to play a druid because you love the idea of wild shaping into various different animals and other creatures and you just want to spend every second of your playtime in those forms circle of the moon is your choice because of the fact that it is primarily focused on wild shaping into these various forms the Mund Druid gain a few other tools that the other two subclasses don't get to make this easier and more effective the lunar mend ability will allow you to spend your Druid spell slots while you're in Wild shaped form to perform a self-heal with those spell slots and the self-heal will heal you more depending on what level of spell slot you're using so this is really powerful it only cost a bonus action too bonus action and a spell slot and bonus action heals are very powerful in this game because you can do your attacks multiple attacks per turn in Wild shaped form and then also heal yourself on top of it that's super strong speaking of excellent bonus action abilities the combat wild shaped passive allows Moon Druids to do their wild shapes for a bonus action instead of an action like the other two sub classes I don't think I need to explain how ridiculously powerful that can be but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway that can be ridiculously powerful and important and going to be stoked to have this on top of these shapeshifting Buffs you're also going to gain access to a moon Druid exclusive wild shaped form the bear this will turn you into a big old polar bear and Grant you the claws and goating Roar abilities as well as a good chunk of strength and Constitution this is a very tanky strong wild shaped form for how ridiculously early in the game you get it claws is a basic slashing damage attack nothing fancy goting Roar will allow you to taunt nearby enemies into attacking your bare form instead of your allies so because you're tanky you can force people to attack you and soak up some of that damage for your teammates it's nice fourth level will grant you the dire Raven form this one has the beak attack and ren Vision abilities both of which deal piercing damage and the lad of which can also inflict blindness on its Target for two turns the damage is not bad on either ability and being able to Blind your enemies this early on in the game is very strong so the dire Raven is not anything to be embarrassed about in combat it's not like super weak but combat is not where it shines once again just like cat form dire Raven form shines in the fact that you get it at fourth level and this lets your Druid fly it is very very rare that a character gets access to this easily usable of a flight mechanic this early on being able to W wild shape into a raven form and just fly whenever you want that's awesome it's amazing to have that at this level you're going to love it this is also going to open up a bunch of potential shortcuts around quests and stuff like that loot that you wouldn't have necessarily been able to find otherwise being able to fly this early in the game is a super strong thing to have you're going to love it the six level bonus Primal strike sounds kind of confusing at first but let's take a closer look while in Beast form your attacks count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and Immunity to non-magical damage let's take a look at the resistance section on the wiki real quick and talk about what these symbols mean when you're examining an enemy and you have a gray Arrow above a damage symbol on your screen that means that they are resistant to nonmagical forms of that damage type in this picture this icon represents resistance to non-magical fire damage the blue up Arrow indicates resistance to magical fire damage and a symbol with both a gray and blue arrow would indicate resistance to both magical and non-magical forms of fire damage during your adventures you will meet plenty of enemies with resistance to non-magical forms of piercing slashing and bludgeoning damage and the Primal strike passive we were talking about 200 years ago will prevent your Druid from becoming completely useless against those type of enemies in combat your claws and things are imbued with the magic of the Wilds Enchanted by Nature itself and now they count as magical weapons noise next up at eighth level you receive another wild shaped form and this one is pretty badass the saber-tooth tiger is a form that combines aspects from a few of the other wild shape forms into something that's just cooler it has bite as a basic piercing damage attack enhanced jump allows you to reposition yourself in combat easily or just for exploration purposes you can jump really far with this thing and the Sabertooth has a ridiculously powerful built-in health regen effect this will heal you for 2 d8 hit points every turn while you're in this form you will also still have access to your normal lunar mend healing ability like all the rest of your wild shaped forms so this adds up to a ton of additional survivability you keep throwing yourself heels and you have that built-in health regen you can recover a ton of Health per turn so you might remember when we were talking about the Panther and we mentioned the jugular strike ability well the saber-tooth tiger has that as well and it's the same effect if the target's prone it deals additional damage but uniquely saber-tooth tiger also gets the shred armor ability this one allows you to rip and tear the target dealing piercing damage and also reducing their Armor class by two for two turns or until they receive any form of healing any anything you can do to set up additional damage for your other characters will always be powerful and reducing an enemy's AC by two is absolutely nothing to sneeze at and you know what they say there's no kill like Overkill at 10th level for their final bonus Moon Druids will gain access to four very powerful Elemental wild shaped forms the air Earth fire and water meridon it is important to me I up front all four of these forms cost two wild shaped charges each so one meridon per short rest or long rest each of these meridon has similarities but they are each specialized for different situations as well so let's take a look at them and figure out which one is good for what job the air meridon is a lightning focused Elemental that comes equipped with a flail of the vortex which deals bludgeoning and lightning damage on hit the Electrify flail ability is an empowered flail strike which deals a bit of additional lightning damage and has a chance to stun your target which is very strong this another great option for setting up burst damage because the crowd control enemy is going to be easier for your allies to hit and deal damage to the elemental warp ability is one that each of the meridon will get and this is half of the reason why each of them has ridiculously good Mobility the other half of that equation is the fly ability which will obviously allow you to fly but the in same thing is how far you are allowed to fly per turn with each one of these things if you use fly and Elemental warp to the maximum of their capabilities you can pretty much clear the entire Battlefield in a single turn the air madon can also turn invisible which will allow you to sneak around undetected and lastly it can cast the Raging Vortex ability this is a swirling circle of intense wind which will damage and silence all creatures that are caught inside this is ability can easily be one of the most powerful on the list depending on who your enemies are and how they're positioned just remember that the air meridon can shut down a group of casters singlehandedly this might save your fraking life you can absolutely shut down a room full of casters if they're positioned properly if you have anybody that has tadpole powers and you have the black hole ability that you can pull people into stuff you pull those dudes into this freaking silence oh my God things can get gross quick moving right along we've got the Earth meridon next this form is the only one of the four without the ability to fly because you're the Earth merodon you're bound to the Earth so instead of fly the Earth madon gets access to the burrow ability and just like the badger from before this will allow you to Target an area you burrow underground travel very very quickly to where you're going and then you bust up out of the ground underneath your enemy's feet so this has just object effectively worse Mobility than the three that can fly but burrow is also connected to a built-in attack so it can potentially deal damage on top of Mobility so that's nice your basic attack grounded thunder strike deals both bludgeoning and thunder damage and has a chance to knock your target prone sludgy sling will cause a circular C circular a circular blast that's going to blast a whole circl anyway sludgy sling will cause the C circular blast of thick mud in a 10t radius around your Druid any creatures hit by the blast will take a bit of bludgeoning damage and the area will also become difficult terrain so anyone inside of the terrain's movement speed is cut in half including your Druids unfortunately which I think is stupid because that's an earth meridon they should be immune to that but you're not it reduces your movement speed by half muck to metal this is actually a really cool unique ability and I love laran for the way that they animated this because it looks absolutely awesome your Earth meridon turns into a metal meridon it looks freaking badass look at this thing ladies and gents this allows you to trade your Mobility for further defense your AC is going to increase by two while this is active which is good but your movement speed will be reduced by 20 ft per turn which is not great if you use this ability you really really need to make sure that you're positioned properly or that your proper position is within an elemental warp of where you're at now which is great you can still Elemental warp while you're using this so you can teleport a good distance away just know that you're losing a ton of Mobility by doing this next up on the list a fan favorite the fire meridon this one is all about speed and damage you're going to get the scorching strike ability which will deal additional fire damage and has a chance to burn your Target the cindus swipe is a frontal cleave which will deal additional fire damage to All Creatures unlucky enough to get caught in the cone you also have hellish rebuke built into this form so if you get struck in combat you can as a reaction Blast Your attacker back with a fire damage spell this is really nice because it allows you to get some retaliation damage on somebody that hits you even if they're across the room when they do it so that's very very good and lastly but certainly not leastly the meridon emulation ability is a self-cast only version of haste as long as you can maintain concentration while you have this active it essentially doubles the effectiveness of your fire meridon for those three turns but Beware of the lethargic debuff you get when those three turns run out or if your concentration is broken by any means at all getting hit with lethargy at the wrong time can cause combat to go south very very quickly just ask this guy this was devastating to watch by the way I just wanted to give him a hug and I bet he needed it and as for the fourth and final Elemental form the Moon druid's Final subclass bonus the water meridon this one comes equipped with a trident that deals piercing and cold damage HL strike deals even more additional cold damage and has a chance to chill the target chilled targets take half damage from fire but double damage from cold so this ability synergizes well with most of the water meron's other abilities including itself also interestingly if you have a Target chilled and then they get wet they'll freeze solid it has to happen in that order if they're wet and get chilled nothing happens if they're chilled and then they get wet it instantly flash freezes them explosive icicle will allow you to sling three ice Trident at individual targets which will explode dealing a good amount of cold damage to any creatures in the area as well as forming slippery ice surfaces under each one of the explosion areas and now for what I personally think is the water merdon most interesting piece of Kit the healing Vapor ability you're probably sitting there thinking how in the hell is a healing ability the most interesting ability that this freaking wild shaped form has well the thing is healing Vapors does a few things besides just being a healing ability firstly it's important to know that the heal will heal all creatures in its area including your enemies it will also give every creature in the area the wet condition so basically you're splashing everybody in the area with healing water so you can probably see where this is a good setup to use with the other ability we described earlier himl strike you get up to three attacks per turn while you're in water meridon form so if you can give your water meridon haste you drink a potion of speed or give them haste in some other way you can attack three people in a single turn and potentially chill all three of them and then use healing Vapors and boom freeze all three of them solid it's possible it's not going to work every time not exactly worth it every time either but it is possible so keep this in mind one more thing that makes this healing vapor ability even more interesting is that as a water meridon your entire body is made out of water you're an elemental from the plane of water basically if the water that your body is made out of gets poisoned and by that I mean if your Druid gets poisoned while you're in water merodon form then the healing Vapor's ability instead of healing all creatures in its area will deal the same amount of damage in Poison form as it would have healed and it still gets the targets wet so in instead of running in and healing your whole group of enemies by blasting them in that situation you can run up and chill a bunch of dudes and poison the hell out of everybody in that area while you're freezing them solid it's crazy how well this works together if you can set it up they basically turn into a giant walking poison Nova and I love it so that right there covers all the subass specific bonuses and abilities that you earn as a circle of the Moon Druid also keep in mind if you're planning on going Moon Druid that the tavern bra ER feet and a few of the game's Elixir work really well with improving wild shaped damage so definitely look into some of those things K brawler especially is really good laran apparently buffed the wild shapes viability in balers Gate 3 I'm not sure but I've read that they buffed them by quite a bit and I'm glad they did because being able to turn into a freaking owl bear a damn spitty dinosaur's badass and I would be sad if it wasn't worth doing that with that being said let's go ahead and head back to second level and we're going to cover the final subass yes the circle of the spores viewing death necrosis fungal growth and sporulation as just another part of life you can manipulate such spores to augment yourself and harm your foes so that description tells a story about death being a part of life and all that and you know who likes to talk like that a freaking Necromancer likes to talk like that but these Druids are not just any necromancers oh no ladies and gents no sir these guys were ripped Straight Out of The Last of Us with these freaking creepy ass mushroom zombies that they can raise so if the Decay and rot portion of life is something that you hold dear the spor Druid might just be your best bet immediately upon choosing the subass you're going to be granted the bone chill can trip which is a can trip that a lot of people Overlook but I'm here today to tell you that this is a fantastic tool to have in your Arsenal and it absolutely saved my honor mode run on a certain boss fight because of what it does it first of all it deals a little bit of necrotic damage when you cast it on somebody but more importantly it will prevent the target from regaining hit points by any means until your next turn this was invaluable in my fight against the final boss in Act 2 on honor mode he was able to summon Minions that he could then consume to get back a bunch of health and give him a buff so I slapped his Bones full of the old chill and he was still consuming his minions and he was still getting a buff from it but it wasn't healing him anymore and because of that fact I was able to outpace his healing with my damage and I just barely squeeze through that freaking fight also if the target of bone chill is Undead they will have disadvantage on attack rolls while they have the debuff as well Halo of spores is a reaction ability that will cause one def four necrotic damage to your target with this amount increasing at levels 6 and 10 it doesn't actually trigger like a reaction instead requiring you to cast it like a normal spell from your action bar but it only costs your reaction to use so this is really cool and if you don't need your reaction for anything else that turn you can use it to squeeze out a little bit of extra damage building on this idea even further is the symbiotic entity ability this one will grant your Druid a good chunk of temporary hit points when you cast it and as long as you have those temporary hit points it will bestow a few other cool effects on you firstly while this effect lasts your Halo of sports ability that we just discussed yeah you can just go ahead and double the damage while you have these hit points Halo of spores does double damage on top of that your melee weapon strikes and unarmed attack strikes will deal additional necrotic damage while the shield holds using symbiotic enity will cost you a wild shaped charge so just know that if you're deciding to go the circle of spores route you're pretty much giving up wild shaping a little bit you have to make a trade-off either symbiotic entity or wild shape you don't count as though you are wild shaped for the purposes of having three attacks per action as a Spore Druid you don't get that unless you wild shaped if you actually go into a wild shape form you do but not because of symbiotic entity that would be super badass but it would be ridiculously op and like everybody would be a spor with monk hybrid or some something like that it'd be ridiculous similarly to circle of the land spor DRS get a a ton of additional spells as you're leveling up but unlike circle of the land you won't have to dig through a massive pile of choices to decide what you want you're just going to be given to Spells at third level you're going to get blindness and detect thoughts both of these are very powerful blindness for effectively removing somebody from the fight and detect thoughts for avoiding combat altogether which is definitely safer at fifth level you're going to get two more spells animate dead which will allow you to summon an undead Minion from a suitable corpse that wasn't destroyed in combat this obviously further leans into the Necromancer side of the Spore Druid and it's a very welcome spell to have just making your Undead ho a little bit bigger the second spell is gaseous form which will allow you to transform yourself or an ally into a cloud of mist this will allow them to squeezing tiny cracks and holes that normal siiz characters couldn't get through as well as drastically increasing their defenses while pretty much completely doing away with all offensive capability you have until you leave this misted form this one is great to have because of its travel abilities and you know potential to squeeze through tiny holes and stuff but you've had cat form for a long time now and you can use that for most of the same stuff so not amazing but it's not bad by any means and plus it's badass as hell to turn into a cloud of mist like a vampire and just casually excuse yourself from danger while you're in combat it's ridiculous as I mentioned earlier at six level you will get Halo of spores upgraded but much more importantly you'll get the fungal infestation ability and four fungal infestation charges per long rest these charges will each allow you to raise One Last of Us cep zombie so your horde grows even stronger and zombies have a knack for infecting targets with the zombie virus so if they die while they have this infection on them it'll raise as another weaker zombie that will also Aid you so things can quick get out of hand when you're running a summoning build with the zombies in it one of my viewers mentioned a build that they had messed around with where they ended up with like 18 or 19 summons following them around at once I dug through my comments and I'm sure that I'm just overlooking it but I could not find this comment to save my life because I'm bad at my job but just know that there are some insane summoning builds out there that you can make that will absolutely wreak havoc on your enemies action economy barely even letting them have a turn cuz you have so so many summons out also thank you very much to whoever had suggested that and I apologize for losing your comment because I'm an imbecile so next time sorry at seventh level your spor Druid will receive the blight and confusion spells blight is a necrotic damage spell that will always deal maximum damage to plant type enemies the issue with that is that while there are tons of plant type enemies in this game most of them are resistant to necrotic damage because of where they are so the damage gets cut in half anyway this is not worthless by any means but I think personally that confusion is a way better spell than this this one is an AOE crowd control ability which will cause all affected creatures to become confused this will lead them to attack targets at random during their turn wander around randomly or even potentially just skip their entire turn altogether this thing is ridiculously strong strong and can definitely save your life if used in the right situation if you're in a fight that's going south and you can get your enemies to just skip their whole turn or even better attack each other for a few seconds that can change the tie of a fight in no time at Ninth level you will get the cloud kill and contagion spells Cloud kill is a targeted AOE damage and area denial spell that does a few things it deals poison damage to any creatures that are inside it each turn it heavily obscures everything that's inside it and this spell can actually be recast each turn as a can trip as long as you maintain concentration on it so if the targets move out a cloud kill you can just move it to where they went next turn hit them with it again it's really nice Contagion on the other hand is a terrible spell because it requires you to get into melee range to use it and it requires the target to fail three saving throws before it goes into effect fully this is the train of thought that I had when I first saw this spell and I don't blame anybody for feeling this way way when you first read what contagion says but please listen to me while I explain what contagion does because this is probably this is easily the spell that I personally underrated the hardest and this might be one of the best spells in the game after you hear what I have to say about it firstly yes it does require you to basically walk up and touch the person to cast this disease on them so in most combat situations that's automatically worse than a lot of other options you have and that's why I thought man this spell sucks the massive ridiculously op strength of the spell comes in when you find out that casting it on somebody doesn't count as a hostile action so this spell is not good to use when you're already in combat this spell is amazing to use when you think you're about to be in combat and you want to set yourself up with a really good situation before fight starts you can walk up to a Target pick one of these freaking poisons to hit them with and hit him with it and then just walk away casually so lorewise what this would essentially look like is you walk up to someone and you brush up against them just ever so slightly brush up against them and then all of a sudden boom that person is sick they're poisoned gives them disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws and this is where the timer starts after you inflict this poison on the target if they are able to succeed three Constitution saving throws before they fail three then they'll be cured however if they fail three before they succeed three they get struck with a permanent disease that you chose when you cast the spell so the poison that you hit them with turns into this permanent disease so that already sounds crazy you did all this without even entering combat that person doesn't even know you did this to them and they're not hostile with you however they are struck with a very powerful permanent debuff the debuffs can be removed if they have a way to cleanse disease but if they don't they're stuck with it two notable options out of the six are flesh rot and mind fire flesh rot will give the target disadvantage on Charisma checks and make them vulnerable to all forms of damage what permanently unless they have a way to cleanse the disease like we discussed before you walk up you touch this person that you know you're about to be in combat with hey bro what's up ha hey oh is that a new jacket oh yeah man that what is that made out of suede fleece what is that all of a sudden they have an incurable super disease that they can't get rid of and they don't even know where it came from mind fire will give the target this advantage on intelligence checks and they will be permanently inflicted with confusion mind fire is the one of the six that will actually make the target hostile when the poison turns into the disease mire however if you kill somebody that was affected this way and became hostile it doesn't even count as a crime I tested this and it worked a few times what I will say is be careful doing this in honor mode just in case this is a bug and it gets patched or something I don't want to be the guy that was like oh yeah you can just mine fire everybody and then kill everybody in balder's gate and it's not a crime and then all of a sudden Withers is coming after you because you killed everybody in the city you don't want that dude on your bad side the description of these diseases is horrifying too affected entity's brain is cooking in a stew of hot blood and you're passing these things out like Marty grow beads also even more ridiculously I tested this so that you don't have to you can absolutely get these diseases on somebody and then go take a long rest and come back and put more diseases on them I had all six diseases on this dwarf this guy was the most diseased individual in all of fyon he had every freaking disadvantage on every check vulnerability to every damage anytime he got hit he was stunned until his next turn it was horrible for this dude there was nothing he could do in a fight he's got blood and oil spewing out of his pores his eyes were stabbed out by spikes of pain his body is rotting away inside its own skin and his brain is boiling in its own blood you know just a walk in the freaking Park this guy has now that we've covered the these ridiculous scenarios imagine a situation where you have multiple companions that have access to these contag in abilities and you send them into the room before you bring your main party in there just to start touching people left and right spreading diseases around then your party walks in and everybody's hacking up a freaking lung and you just chop them all down no problem and for your final subclass bonus we're back at 10th level where your Halo of spores reaction ability is going to get upgraded for for the final time to a total of 1 d8 necrotic damage which is doubled while you have symbiotic entity as we said before the 2 d8 is not bad at this level once again for a reaction it's not terrible and over the course of your playthrough you are definitely going to be causing hundreds of damage with Halo of spores so it's definitely a great ability to have almost for free so yeah spreading spores is a new ability you get at 10th level also it requires you to have symbiotic entity active and it will allow you to Target an area causing a cloud of spores to burst forth in that area these will choke your enemies and cause their throats to swell shut from how dry the spores are to the tune of 2 d8 necrotic damage so it's basically like AOE Halo of spores unless the creatures pass a constitution saving throw and note that spreading spores specifically says in its tool tip that it does not affect you or your allies and also note that NPCs that have a yellow outline around them are not your allies when it comes to the purposes of targeting spells like this they count as neutral not Allied just ask preach he'll tell you oh and I get it I understand the thought process just know if an enemy is yellow they're not your friend they're just not your enemy I said if an enem is yellow if an NPC is yellow if an enem is yellow then they're this guy from Sin City also note that these spores from spreading spores will immediately disappear if you lose the temporary hit points from symbiotic entity it's still an amazing ability to have though especially since it only costs a bonus action to use so on your turns you can do a heavy hitting spell for a regular action spreading spores for a bonus action and then Halo of spores for a reaction to deal damage in three separate ways in a single turn and that's on top of the fact that you can have a ton of minions running around dealing damage every turn also there's a lot of things that this Druid can do it's not necessarily the flashiest or the most fun subass to play in the game but spores Druids are not bad at all and you can do a ton of stuff with it one thing to note if you don't limit yourself to Undead summons and you summon everything that you're Druid has available you can get meths you can get a dryad wood WS Elemental obviously your zombies and skeletons and stuff from animate dead ghouls from animate Dead uh your four fungus zombies dance maab for good measure so you can summon a ton more zombies you can have a freaking ridiculous amount of summons and let me be the first to tell you if you haven't heard anybody say this when you have that many summons on the field and you enter combat it can take a long time to get through a fight so just know that it some of your fights are going to take forever because you have like 15 20 turns to go through per round it can really be slow but the odds are stacked firmly in your favor when it comes to action economy because you have every minion in the world standing in between you and your enemies they're not just there for damage you can put them in between you and archers to have them eat the arrows instead of you you can uh have them eat opportunity attacks by moving in close to enemies and then moving away the person swings at them that wastes their reaction and now if your other character moves away they don't have an opportunity attack to use against you so you can bait out attacks like that you can use them to reposition enemies or even just distract them you put a zombie right up in your enemy's face is a good chance that the enem is going to sit there and swing at that zombie at least one time even if it kills the zombie in one hit that's one hit that you're Caster didn't just take to the face it's ridiculously powerful and zombies like we said before where they spread their zombie disease they have a knack for making even more minions for you to use in the fight so things can seriously snowball and ladies and gents that's it this sums up the entire circle of the spores Druid there is life and there's death and then there's you firmly in the balance you leave a trail of rot and decay in your wake in your pursuit of defending the sanctity of life and you also have an army of minions following you around doing your bidding like I said before definitely not the most fun play style in the game but spor Druids are not bad by any means so now that we know what the Druid in balers Gate 3 has to offer I want to talk to you guys about a couple of nond DnD related characters that I think might be Druids and we're definitely going to be diving back into comic book characters again because I love them first up I want to talk about the guardian of the green Alec Holland Swamp Thing I'm using the DC Universe fan random page for this info by the way so check him out also I want you guys to see this freaking powers and abilities list first off his body is made entirely of sentient plant matter he survives through photosynthesis and composting because he's a plant his strength level is incalculable when he's tapped into the green which is essentially DC universe's version of the source of all nature magic he can talk to and control all all forms of plant life up to and including rapidly growing the microscopic Flora inside a person's body causing it to burst out from their body killing them instantly from the inside out he can also astral project his Essence into any plant anywhere in the world forming a new body out of the plant matter in that area so he can teleport anywhere there's plant life almost instantly he freaking grew a giant model of an actual brain out of plant matter with working neurons and everything connected it to his own brain and it massively increased his intelligence while he was connected to it so it rooted him in place but he was ridiculously smart while he was connected to this super brain so honestly Travelers I don't think we can safely sit here and call the Swamp Thing a druid honestly I don't know what he would be classified as if someone forced me to make a decision I would probably put him closer to being an arch Fay than a druid I think he is so powerful in nature magic he's almost like the he's like the embodiment of nature he's like Mother Nature's wrath basically so I would put him at Arch Fay if you guys know a better way to classify him let me know down in the comments I would love to hear even more lore stuff that I don't know about but either way he's a freaking absolute unit of a character he's very nature related definitely fits in with the theme of Druids anyway every time this guy gets called into a fight to help he freaking wrecks somebody it's awesome and here to Showcase a few similar Powers we have Dr Pamela Isley Poison Ivy ivy gained her powers through an experiment gone wrong which turned her into like a half human half plant hybrid kind of thing so she might not even really fit with the Druid classification either but too bad she's definitely closer than Swamp Thing he's just too much of a for nature itself don't mistake that for me calling Ivy weak though cuz she's definitely not you don't get to be a Batman main villain by being weak like the Swamp Thing she can control plants that are in her vicinity she can cause them to grow and attack her foes and Tangle them and snare them you know whatever she can control it like it's part of her body her body generates various different poisons and she herself is completely immune to almost all toxins back Bia and viruses she can produce pheromones that basically mind control people into doing her bidding by making them so attracted to her and even when she doesn't have access to her pheromones obviously she's still attractive so that works in her favor too she can regenerate lost limbs like a plant regrows its branches or stem or whatever so she's very very powerful she's essentially like a Spore Druid in a lot of ways but also maybe like a nature-based warlock kind of character she gets her powers from the green also anyway if there's a better way you guys think to categorize poison ivy let me know once again I just wanted to nerd out about some damn druish druish druidic Druid like characters that I knew of and that's it that's the whole thing ladies and gents thank you for watching the video if you did if you enjoyed yourself be sure to like the video that really helps me out for sure subscribe to the channel if you want to see more content like this or various other RPG content I'm going to be covering other games coming up soon soon as well come to the Discord if you want to hang out nerd out about video games and comic books or anything like that we're a bunch of like-minded nerds talking about RPG stuff or comic books or whatever you got if you want to support the channel further there's a link to my patreon in the video description and I think there's some way to do it through YouTube but I don't know I'm going to have to look into this more because I'm bad at this anyway I do appreciate all the support you guys have given me but as always I am glad you got to see me do your best to stay alive until next time see you and keep still devil Tila is restless

Channel: Panic Rolling

Views: 16,372

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Id: eONor_xRfL8

Length: 71min 34sec (4294 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024