Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Multiplayer Report - People are not loving Druid.

As self-appointed King of all multiplayer (kidding) I just wanted to forward some feedback on a class issue that I have seen repeated by others. People are unhappy with the Druid right now and it comes off as underwhelming.
issues I have heard mentioned:

Shapechanging:
-Animal forms are underpowered -

Polar bear/Bear form is an awful tank as it has no AC, damage mitigation or ability to impose disadvantage on attack roles. It is a giant meat cushion, with a low chance to hit that ends up dying round 1 due to being focused down.
it also does poor DPS. Giving Polar Bear a limited RAGE ability would really help here and would help distinguish it as an Tank form, just a single 10 round charge would fix the problem here.


Wolf is underwhelming as a DPS form, high miss chance and again has little in the way of survivability.
The other forms are mostly utility except for Deep Roth which is also fairly mediocre - it has a charge but doesn't DPS or Tank very well.

Basically the forms need more to differentiate themselves and to be beefed up a bit. As has been pointed out the Ranger Companions are stronger.

Spellcasting:

Heat Metal tends to target the weapon instead of the armor which the target will drop as a free action henceforth preventing future damage from Heat Metal as a BA

Moon Beam is fine, don't change anything.

The Druid suffers from mostly DOT based spells and no frontloaded direct damage spells. Depending on Race you may have no consistent way to deal ranged damage as Druids don't get any Bow proficiency naturally and slings are not in game.

I have dabbled with a Druid build that uses a Dual wield Flaming Scimitar/shillelagh and mirror image but it is a tricky build to get right and utilize because Mirror Image is unreliable. Druids can have decent AC with medium Armor but its frowned upon sometimes for roleplay purposes.

Elite Build - The Brand - Druid DPS Striker
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=804171#Post804171
(Its a bit outdated but still viable)

Anyway, just some thoughts.

+1 to buffing Druids. The animal forms are really fun, and I can’t wait for owlbear! Making them a bit more powerful would be perfect!

Moonbeam needs to be fixed so that it doesn't deal damage twice, initially. Same with Cloud of Daggers and probably every other persistent AoE like that. They only deal damage when you move / get pushed into them or start your turn in them.

+1 Moonbeam is busted. You get an instant 2d10 and then another 2d10 when their turn starts.

And yes, Circle of the Moon is overpowered and the way to be most effective is actually not using Wild Shape. It's quite sad. And the fact Land gets access to so many of the Moon shapes.

Druid has so few animals shapes, and the ones that it does have seem to have not been implemented properly? They are either weaker than their PnP counterparts, or are missing features that they should have. And there seems to be a certain amount of disregard for the max CR rules for wildshape. Land Druids should definitely not have Dire Wolf as an available shape at this level.

Yeah, Moonbeam is pretty OP right now, it's better than Call Lightning as it stands. Of course, I don't use the 'Wet' condition, to make Call Lightning OP either.

Please fix moonbeam and other similar spells (cloud of daggers) dealing damage on cast and on start of turn. There's literally no reason to use any other damaging spell. Even better than call lightning if you upcast it, dealing 6d10 per turn

This! Don’t nerf moonbeam! Druids need buffs not nerfs!

Sorry, Icelyn, I’m with the Moonbeam being OP folks. Getting two chances per round to deal its damage is too much. In my view, it either needs to do its damage only on the Druid’s turn OR only on the turn of the enemy standing in it OR, if it’s going to have two goes, it should do less damage each time.

I agree druids could do with improvements and I’m doing another druid run now and will give my thoughts when done. But I’d want those improvements to be honest ones improving the overall effectiveness and balance of the class, not come from a few OP spells or abilities.

The topic of the thread is that some feel Druids are underwhelming and underpowered. How would nerfing Druids help address that issue? I like having fun spells to cast and see no reason to nerf.

I don’t want to nerf druids! I want to nerf Moonbeam but improve other things, with the net effect that druids are better overall.

I appreciate you enjoy Moonbeam as is, and of course your preference is just as valid as anyone else’s, but for me the fact that Moonbeam is in my view too powerful makes it less fun to use. To me, it feels like cheating and devalues the other stuff my druid can do, but on the other hand it’s a valid spell for druids in principle so I wouldn’t want to just not use it.

The way I see it, if they nerf Moonbeam, they should nerf Fireball. Both are OP in RAW form. Well, not everyone would even call Moonbeam OP, actually. But Fireball is known to be OP.

However, I don't want them to do that because...welll, these spells are fun ^^

And Moonbeam seems to work as RAW in this case.

Also, Moonbeam isn't that OP:
- it requires concentration
- it requires the target to do a Constitution saving throw to do its full damage (which creatures tend to frequently resist)
- it's a very small aoe
- it costs a full action to relocate

That being said, I heard that some damage spells do automatically hit the max amount of damage this patch? Could that be the case here and why it feels OP to some? Because that's wouldn't normal indeed 😅

Also, AI should be smart enough to try to get out of the aoe or try to stop the spell from happening.

Well, perhaps my view was soured to some extent because the first time I used it was in the necromancer alchemist’s basement where something had gone wrong with the skeletons that had come out of the coffins and five of them had clustered around one coffin and got stuck. One Moonbeam and they were all dead in seconds. Admittedly that was an unusual case.

If it is RAW, then given that in general I argue that we should only diverge from RAW when there’s an exceedingly good reason, I guess I’ll have to try to keep an open mind and see if I still think it’s OP by the end of my playthrough.


Yes, I’ve think I’ve seen this mentioned. Did someone say Fire Bolt is doing max damage on all critical hits? Not sure I’ve remembered that correctly, but Gale has managed far more 20 damage hits than I would expect. I’ve not seen anything obvious with other spells, but possibly it is affecting ones other than Fire Bolt.

EDIT I’ve just seen your edit to clarify you were talking about Fireball rather than Fire Bolt! Agreed, Fireball is OP but it feels as though that’s kind of the point of it, and given wizards are all about the magic whereas druids have other options it somehow seems fairer. Not sure I could make the argument stick, but Fireball bothers me less for some reason. Though again if it’s so OP that it becomes the only sensible option too often (as it probably did in BG1&2) then it probably should be tweaked. I’ve not used it enough yet to come to a settled view.

Hmmm... 6d10 for moonbeam if upcast to level 3 vs 8d6 fireball one time...

I'm failing to see how moonbeam isn't OP in its current state. The issue with moonbeam is that it hits targets twice, once when cast on your turn and again on the targets turn. It should not do this. There's no way they don't fix it on release. It's brokenly OP.

I don't think you're using wolf correctly. Wolf isn't so much a dps form as it is a melee support form. It's best used alongside another melee character. It's pack tactics give it a great chance to hit, guarantee a crit for an ally via exposing bite, and inciting howl for extra movement. It fills this role pretty well imo.

Using it just to bite stuff without an ally nearby to take advantage of pack tactics is not the way.

Yes, I'm still struggling to avoid this conclusion too.

I've found some info from 2016 suggesting Moonbeam should only do damage at the start of the enemies' turns. p15 of the WotC Sage Advice at https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SA-Compendium.pdf says "Does moonbeam deal damage when you cast it? What about when its effect moves onto a creature? The answer to both questions is no". It goes on to explain why and lists some other spells including Cloud of Daggers that should work the same way. But that's quite a long time ago now, so perhaps there's some more recent guidance that says otherwise? If not, then Moonbeam in BG3 isn't currently working as per RAW, but even if the guidance has been updated I think I'd prefer that 2016 version .

You know what, I realize now that I didn't properly read the issue stated above. Mea culpa!

However, I've read the rules gain and took into consideration the explanation given in the Sage Advice article and you guys are correct, the spell shouldn't do damage when creating the AOE on top of the creatures or moving it onto them.

Meaning, BG3 doesn't follow the RAW for Moonbeam.

So, yes, this should indeed be corrected and is currently OP because of it!

Again, my apologies, I didn't pay attention enough.

No worries! I only went looking for the additional guidance because you could take the RAW two ways, and obviously it’s caused confusion in more people than us otherwise there’d have been no need for the clarification in the Sage Advice column

Moonbeam is broken. Moreover, Moonbeam getting a free 2d10 + 2d10 before the character(s) under the effect can react only further promotes non-Wild Shape combat.

Because:

You cannot cast Moonbeam while in Wild Shape (correctly implemented)
You cannot move Moonbeam in Wild Shape (missing implementation)
The damage output while in non-Wild Shape simply cannot compete with 2d10 + 2d10 burst with those puny animals Moon gets

So by adjusting Moonbeam, this also indirectly helps level out proper Moon Druid play. Hopefully, along with Wild Shape re-balancing as well.

Not sure I’m reading this correctly, but it looks as though you’re saying that you can move moonbeam in wild shape? I tried this with my Moon Druid casting moonbeam then transforming into bear form but couldn’t then see any way to move the beam. The icon to move moonbeam that she got as a human was replaced by the one to dismiss the wild shape. Is there some way to move the beam that I missed or did I just misunderstand your post?

EDIT: Ah! Pretty sure now I’ve read the next couple of posts that I did misunderstand and that you meant that you can’t move moonbeam currently but you should be able to! I was reading the two lines as though they followed the same pattern, ie that the first bit gave the RAW behaviour and the bit in brackets said whether or not it had been implemented