Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Unfocused Feedback! Moon Druid in patch 9

Equipment and items
As with spells, I found myself thinking very differently about equipment with my moon druid. As her beast forms don't get any benefit from armour, accessories, weapons, etc, the main priority for them became helping her survive if she suddenly found herself human with 10 CON in the midst of melee. But some of Larian's weird homebrew items that I'd previously dismissed also suddenly became more attractive, or would have if I could have got them to work properly!

Weapons
A moon druid with Shillalagh might want a staff or club with an interesting on-hit property like Nature's Snare, but the only thing my druid could usefully get would be a helpful passive effect or an extra spell she wouldn't have had anyway. I didn't find anything particularly amazing for my moon druid, though this may be par for the course for a class that makes so little real use of weapons rather than a lack in BG3 items.

• Staff of Arcane Blessing gives one use of Bless per day so is only useful in one fight and the fact that Bless cast by my druid had a boost over "normal" bless for spell attack rolls was mainly only of use to other party members given if she was in beast form she couldn't cast spells, and couldn't reactivate previously cast spells even if that were fixed given Bless uses concentration. So, really only situationally useful for the druid, and probably another party member could make better use of it to buff themselves and my druid, in my case Gale as I mainly had him casting non-concentration spells for offence.
• Speedy Reply scimitar was what I generally had my Druid hold, as it gives Momentum for 2 turns on hit, which is an additional 3m of movement speed. So possibly useful for hit and run if my druid finds herself out of beast form, but given that I needed to hit with a 12 DEX druid to get the benefit, Disengage was generally a better use of an action. Unless I happened to be hasted, in which case it was sometimes worth a punt (though the 3m extra doesn't get doubled by Haste - not sure if that's right).
• Pale Oak (with thanks to @gaymer for the reminder about this) is a quarterstaff with a free once per rest Entangle along with immunity to "druidic vines". A moon druid wouldn't usually want to waste concentration on entangle and would presumably lose the immunity on transformation. But in the absence of any really good alternative option, it could be helpful for those occasions when they've run out of wildshapes and other spells, and want some help holding the enemy in place while finishing them off with cantrips, or even (if, unlike my druid, they have Shillelagh) by hitting them with the staff.

There are no ranged weapons that druids are proficient in as darts and slings aren't (yet?) in the game, and with 9 STR my druid wasn't going to be usefully hurling spears or javelins, plus using Thrown weapons is a pain. Not that she'd be using ranged weapons over cantrips in any case unless she found herself unable to use magic, which doesn't happen anywhere in EA where you can't quickly escape the effect, but it would have been nice to have something she could use as backup just in case.

It would also be great to find a melee weapon with an effect more useful to moon druids, but given the focus of the class on unarmed combat in wild shape, I don't think this is a must. Something that gave a bump to initiative (eg advantage on initiative rolls) might be a nice idea for one druid item as low dex means low initiative, and my druid wanted to be able to fire off her concentration spell and transform asap. If it went on a weapon whose attacking stats weren't desirable for other classes it could potentially help moon druids a little while not unbalancing other classes.

Armour
The main purpose of this was to keep my druid alive if things went pearshaped so generally the higher the AC the better, but it felt like cheating to have my druid in half plate (per 5e, my understanding is that druids shouldn't be able to wear metal armour), so I played around with some other options to see if I could get useful effects.

• The Oak Father's Embrace (13 AC) was the best AC authentically druid-y looking armour I found. I don't know if the game has a concept of armour material, but it at least looks like hide. But while a land druid might make use of the additional +1d8 radiant damage to undead by the wearer, and they might be able to stay back from beasts to avoid beasts doing the additional +1d8 damage *to* the wearer, a moon druid fighting in beast form would get no benefit against undead and the penalty when fighting beasts is potentially fatal, given they'd only likely be in human form when said beasts had already wiped out their wildshape's HP and would tend to be in melee range. My druid wore the armour for a while anyway, given that it looks right (obviously priority one ) and there aren't many beasts to fight, but standard Hide Armour +1 would have been better if I could have found any in game (or Studded Leather +1 if that's conceded to be non-metal).
• Spidersilk Armour (12 AC) is light non-metal armour so druid-appropriate but its advantage on constitution throws doesn't help my druid in beast form which is when she needs it most. +1 on stealth isn't really helpful either given that if my druid is scouting in stealth she'll be in animal form. Still, if fighting beasts it would probably be a safer choice than The Oak Father's Embrace despite its lower AC.
• Bloodguzzler Garb (10 AC) gives wrath for one turn if its wearer has less than 50% HP at the start of the turn, so I did try it on my druid who could feasibly find herself knocked to <50% HP, gain wrath, turn into a beast and get the +1 additional melee attack damage. But it's really not viable given the low AC which might be okay for a barbarian with Unarmoured Defence but not my 10 CON moon druid. Plus whereas a barbarian using the garb and living dangerously could potentially get the benefit each turn, my druid only got one or potentially two attacks with Wrath, once per wildshape. A higher AC leather or hide armour with a longer lasting Wrath effect might have been tempting, though.
• Slippery Chain Shirt (14 AC) can be worn by BG3 druids despite its material and gives a disengage on heal effect. This might have been handy when my druid had been hammered and wanted to heal themself and run away without triggering attacks of opportunity. But despite the description not making this clear, the disengage effect doesn't seem to work on the caster, so even if I'd felt right using it it would mainly only have benefitted my moon druid for its AC.
• Adamantine Scale Mail (14 AC) sends attackers reeling if they hit my druid while she's in human form, which gives them -1 to attack rolls for 2 turns. So at least its effect did potentially benefit my moon druid when attacked in human form as enemies would find their next two attacks harder, whether she'd stayed human or turned to an animal. But ... metal.

In short, no fantastic armour choices for moon druids in the early game with the armour that looks specifically designed druids being actively bad, which while they rely on armour less than most classes still feels like a gap. Especially for players who feel honour-bound to apply the no metal armour rule to their druids, even if the game doesn't enforce it.

Shields
Surely all moon druids want a shield to boost AC when not in beast form, but there was no shield I found with any effect that was likely to be useful to druids other than an adamantine shield which can send an enemy reeling for one turn when they miss, but again ... metal. I didn't hang onto the Absolute's Warboard, though, as my party weren't branded, so can't recall whether the Word of the Absolute ability might have been helpful for druids willing to go that way.

A good non-metal shield with an effect helpful for moon druids, such as a non-concentration buff ability to CON saves for a few turns, or a debuff to enemies something like the adamantine shield would be nice in the full game.

Items
Again, my druid could only make use of these in human form so I found myself approaching item selection differently. I'm going to list the items I liked for my druid, along with some that didn't quite work, to help show what sort of thing I found useful.

• Haste Helm gives momentum for 3 turns at the start of combat, and stacks with other movement speed increases like Crusher's Ring, so is helpful for getting to where the fight is, or away from it if things go very wrong very quickly.
• Helmet of Grit was my headwear of choice though. If (when) my druid found herself suddenly human and getting a hammering, she got an extra bonus action once she got below 50% and the effect lasted until Long Rest. At least when it worked which it didn't always for reasons I couldn't work out. An extra bonus action to heal and turn back into an animal, or heal and misty step, can come in handy. If Heat Metal and Flaming Sphere worked as RAW this could be even more useful, as my druid could wildshape or lunar mend on her turn, in addition to activating Heat Metal or moving her Flaming Sphere.
• Gloves of Flint and Steel sounded as though they might help my druid do a bit of extra damage when she was reduced to chucking flame cantrips at enemies but while this did work the burning effect hardly ever happened. At first I thought it wasn't working at all, but actually it just seems that the CON saving throw against burning doesn't appear in the combat log so you ony see the effect if they fail. And as a result I can't diagnose why they were succeeding so much. It would be helpful to add saving throws against Hot Little Hands to the combat log.
• Fleetfingers give a jump without using a bonus action if you dash, so could be useful for combat mobility in human form (eg being able to get to the battle and still use bonus action for wildshape, or just healing and running further away). If the Linebreaker Boots had worked I might have given this a try, though a rogue or warrior would probably get more benefit from them.
• Linebreaker Boots give 3 turns of +1 to melee damage on dash. Unless a druid is hasted, then that's only going to give two effective turns as they'd need to dash to combat and then turn beast, but still is a minor buff to the beast's melee damage. Or would be if they worked, but they never seemed to. Are they broken?
• Springstep Boots give momentum for 3 turns on dash, so can help mobility for both the druid and their animal form, but given they only benefit when dashing in my druid's human form this wouldn't trigger all that often in the natural course of events.
• Amulet of Misty Step/Disintegrating Nightwalkers give Misty Step as a bonus action. Very helpful for getting out of trouble quickly, or getting to a hard to reach enemy. My druid ended up wearing both for two misty steps per short rest.
• Moondrop Pendant is another potentially useful amulet, at least before getting Misty Step, though I'd put it on Astarion and forgotten about it so didn't try this out! But preventing attacks of opportunity when HP is <50% could help a druid get out of trouble if they found themselves out of wildshapes and still have an action left for a spell, Dash or whatever.
• Crusher's Ring gives 3m extra movement, and may be more useful for a character that stays human and needs to get around the battlefield, but if it's not in demand by someone else in the party a moon druid can make use of it when charging into (and charging out of) the fight.
• Mage's Friend with +1 to Arcana and Religion leaned into my druid's strength on skill checks.
• Potion of Speed clearly useful for all characters so I mention here only because it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise I could drink a potion in my animal form. I somehow just assumed it wouldn't be able to sort through the inventory. But once I realised, this was really helpful for boosting damage during tougher fights and would have been better still if I'd been able to use an action to activate call lighting or move moonbeam and attack in the same round.

Items that give benefits on healing I found pretty much useless for my moon druid as they mainly required healing others - not my job! - though I can see them being helpful for a land druid as well as clerics. And I can't work out any useful way for a druid to make good use of the Lightning themed items either.

But while some of the items in EA were only of limited use to my druid, by the end of it she was fully accessorised with items that had at least some small marginal benefits. From my experience, I'd say that Larian need to give some careful thought to the sort of item likely to be useful to moon druids given their special requirements, and make sure there are more of them in the full game in later chapters at least. There also seems to be the potential to design items that would be useful to both barbarians and moon druids, though it might be tricky to find a balance that would be useful to druids without being OP for barbarians.

Items that give a bonus to or advantage on initiative rolls could be useful for moon druids (and heavily armoured fighters!). My druid with her poor dex often ended up late in the queue potentially getting clobbered in human form. Of course, she could have entered the combat in wildshape, but she wanted to be human first to cast her chosen concentration spell before turning.