I will say that the Paleoak staff is a lot more viable now that staves are truly versatile and you can have a shield, but this does little for a Moon Druid that expects to be in Wild Shape 6x a day.
Good point, I'd forgotten about Pale Oak, though I agree that a free entangle is not likely to be the concentration spell a moon druid is likely to want to cast when they have other choices, especially as I assume they'd lose the immunity to entanglement it confers as soon as they transformed. And I'd guess that if a moon druid was going to invest in physical stats at all, they'd prioritise DEX and CON over STR, so would need Shillalagh if they ever planned to actually hit anyone with it. But I can see it coming into its own for a moon druid when all other spells and wildshapes are gone, plus once you've had enough of the entangling vines you can set them on fire to create a burning surface. I probably should have played round with it a bit more.
And yes, thank goodness we can now use staffs with shields.
Druid just fell through the cracks in terms of getting unique equips, though there's a whole Druid Grove there. You would think Rath or Nettie or someone would have something to boost a Druid's power but alas...
Yes! I really hope that in the full game we'll find something more useful in the druid's vault for a druid, let alone a moon druid, than a glaive. Perhaps an armour that is actually useful for moon druids, unlike the Oakfather's Embrace!
I feel the best solution would be something more Moon Druid specific that would add maybe a 1d6 or 1d4 to every Lunar Mend. Something that would help sustain a Moon Druid in the frontline. Or something generic that could work in human form, like giving an additional charge of Wild Shape per day. Bard has an item that gives back an additional charge of Inspiration.
Interesting ideas
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An item that gave a wildshape charge a day back, along the lines of the bard inspiration one, could be very good. I wouldn't mind even if it were made usable only outside combat so it wouldn't break the balance of any one encounter but would prevent me from having to rest too often and l'd feel a bit less inclined to hoard wildshape charges for combat and so miss fun opportunities to use them in exploration.
And boosting the healing power of lunar mend would be helpful, though given the benefits of equipment vanish when transformed this would need to be something that persisted over a few turns. A once per long or short rest item that gave a 1d4 boost to Lunar Mend for a few turns would be a good find, or you could even make it boost all healing spells or all healing effects to make it useful to all classes with healing spells or everyone if it helped potions, and as long as it was unique and couldn't be used too often doesn't feel as though it would be balance breaking.
Keeping Concentration on Barkskin is so hard with so many checks due to surfaces.
Yes, the way the game handles concentration checks with surfaces absolutely needs to be revisited, and the fact the moon druid is so reliant on having a concentration spell active to buff, debuff and/or do extra magic damage if they're not just to be a rather underpowered melee fighter, and can't simply recast a spell when concentration is broken, means this has a disproportionate impact on them.
The issue with the Wild Shapes and dialogues is a conundrum that I don't know how to fix. It has deterred me from ever having a Druid as a main character, though.
I recommend giving it a go! The fact moon druids don't have to worry about boring physical stats means they can be extremely useful in dialogue.
The fact my druid couldn't talk in animal form only caused a (small) problem that one time with the Nere encounter. Though admittedly if I knew there was going to be an auto-triggered conversation at the end of a battle I would tend to return to human form when it was nearly over as I didn't trust how it would work. I probably should have tried so I could provide feedback. And I suppose the fact that a druid exploring in wildshape needs to turn back in order to talk to people was one of the things that meant I didn't use my wildshapes as much as I'd have liked outside combat.
I really hope the homebrewed Owlbear form isn't also just another underpowered thing. I also don't get why we don't have access to the Hyena form and other things now, given we see Hyenas in EA.
Yes, I'm hoping that too. I don't blame Larian for keeping it limited for EA but I'd love it in the full game if after encountering the hyenas on the Risen Road, our druids could then learn how to change into one. And if encountering the owlbear in the cave was somehow connected to learning how to turn into an owlbear, though it's probably a bit early to actually do that in chapter 1. Perhaps meeting the owlbear could start quest that requires you to find something else that you don't come across until an appropriate point in the game for you to be able to learn to transform into one?
