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

Okay, the only good thing about having laryngitis over the holiday period has been that I've managed to finish my moon druid playthrough.

I've found that I have a lot of thoughts about the class, which so nearly could have been great but wasn't, though I still had great fun trying to work out how to make the best of it.

I hope you'll all forgive me for starting yet another druid thread, but I wanted to give my feedback in one place as I believe the issues with the class become clearer when you consider it as a whole and I didn't want to derail any other thread.

And also because this is going to be a massive screed, and I want people to be able to easily ignore it if they want

As someone who has played cRPGs but not PnP, and whose first exposure to 5e was with BG3, I'm also starting from a different point than some of the more experienced TTRPG druids who have already commented on the class, though I often in a roundabout way came to the same conclusions. But I hope the following might help Larian see how someone coming to the game with no preconceptions of how it "should" be played in 5e will nevertheless run into many of the same issues as were quickly identified by those more expert in the ruleset.

Though I'm sure more expert D&Ders will find my thinking naive or wrongheaded on many points, it's hopefully still useful as an example of a newcomer's impressions of the class. And if you can be bothered to read, I am more than happy to be corrected on any point I've got wrong!

Before I get going, though, as there will be overlap with issues mentioned in other threads, here are some links in case you'd prefer to stick with those instead:

Circle of the Moon, wildshape bear: My feedback and suggestions
Multiplayer Report - People are not loving Druid.
The Deeper Rothe, or, a new suggestion for Moon druids.
Patch 9 druid bugs list
Intentional or a mistake that you can't move moonbeam and use heat armor in beast form?

Plus focused feedback on all spells up to level 2 by Niara

Now, I'm going to post my feedback in chunks, broken down by topic, in the hope that might make it slightly easier to digest ...

Context - build and party
For this run I went all in to force myself to really play as the BG3 vision of a moon druid. I picked a human, so she had no fancy racial weapon proficiencies or inbuilt feats or resistances, but could get any stat up to 16 at level 1. I then neglected the physical stats (who needs those when you're in animal form?!) and gave her STR 9, DEX 12, CON 10, INT 16, WIS 16, CHA 14. She struggled if she ran out of wild shapes and spells (well, duh!) but this worked far better than I feared in combat, meant she was handy with pretty much all skills except four which is satisfying in the BG3 single player game given I like using my PC as a face, and also felt quite authentic from an RP perspective.

I played the whole EA campaign with Astarion, Gale and Wyll, so my druid was the only possible tank and divine caster. I'm pretty sure it would have been easier with Lae'zel to help soak up some heat on the front line and free me occasionally from tank duty. And we'd not have relied so heavily on potions for healing had Shadowheart in the party, whose Bless would also have probably been a useful buff to my druid's animal forms' attack rolls and concentration saving throws. But as I said, I wanted to go all in and test the capabilities of the class, so the boys it was!

And just because it doesn't fit neatly into any of the other categories I'm planning to cover, I'll say that I found the RP for the class reasonably satisfying. There didn't seem to be as many class-specific lines as other classes, but I couldn't point to an occasion when I thought there should be one and there wasn't. And things like wildshaping and talking to animals (which I don't do with most classes), along with the totally different combat experience, made her feel different and interesting.

Druid Progression
Lots of people have mentioned the moon druid progression is jumpy, and I can see why.

• Level 1 was embarrassingly poor given my druid's terrible physical stats, not many spells and no access to Wild Shape, but fortunately didn't last long.
• Level 2 she got her initial wildshapes and was a power house with her stronger animal forms able to soak up damage and deal it in return.
• Level 3 saw harder enemies that gave her beasts more trouble but was balanced by getting access to useful level 2 spells like Barkskin and the amazing Flaming Sphere.
• Level 4 was the hardest level for me, as with harder enemies her beasts were struggling more to survive or do useful damage, and while the new Deep Rothe and Dire Raven shapes are useful in their own ways they didn't address this problem. Plus the level 1 and 2 spells suitable for a moon druid were no longer cutting it.
• Level 5 felt like it balanced out again with improved cantrips, new level 3 spells, and upcast level 2 spells (ie the even *more* amazing Flaming Sphere).

In summary, progression wasn't too bad except Level 4, but I definitely found this playthrough harder than my previous paladin one. This was not just because I had to learn new and different ways of using spells and equipment for the class, but because I kept finding things that I thought should work but didn't. Personally, I think the biggest problem is in the spells and if they were fixed then progression up to level 5 would be okay, as long as we get some decent new forms at level 6 and ideally some tweaks to existing ones to keep them relevant in addition to their attacks becoming magical (which latter I think is what we'd expect per RAW). Not that I'd object to some earlier improvements to my animals like those the ranger companions got with patch 9 at level 5, but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

Spells
As a moon druid who cannot cast while in animal form, I enjoyed that I had to think very differently about spells. Spells that I could cast and would continue to be useful while in animal form suddenly came into their own, when I'd previously overlooked them in favour of flashier, often higher damage, one-off spells.

Concentration suddenly became a whole lot more important too, as if I lost concentration on a spell in beast form I couldn't just recast something. And its additional importance to moon druids means that issues with the concentration mechanic, which have been discussed in other threads, disproportionately affect them. I hope Larian will consider how breaking concentration incorrectly can also nerf this class when they prioritise any fixes.

Spells I found particularly useful for my moon druid, or just more useful for her than I've found them for other characters, or which felt like they *should* be useful but for one reason or another weren't as good as they could be are as follows.

Cantrips

• Produce Flame is a handy, no concentration light source for a moon druid, whose animal forms might not have darkvision even if they themselves do, though the animation of our beasts with blue fire stuck to their paws/mandibles/wings/bellies is a bit odd. That Produce Flame doubles as a 9m ranged damage cantrip is helpful in a pinch (particularly with its level 5 boost) but is a pain to use it as this, as you need to click twice to produce the flame then twice again to throw it. I'd prefer it if I could just choose the spell then click on a creature, item or surface to throw a flame at them, or my character to create and keep hold of the flame for light. I do like the fact the cantrip can be used to target items and surfaces, so hope this will be kept despite the fact that I think 5e RAW might say its target should be a creature,
• Thorn Whip only does 1d6 damage (2d6 at level 5) damage, but it works at melee range and up to 9m which can be helpful if you're out of wild shape charges and spells and can't get range from your enemies or are at a distance and they're resistant to fire. Plus it's worth it for the odd occasion you manage to pull an enemy off a ledge to your feet, turn into your beast and clobber them. I'd like to see Shillalgh do that! *And* it's got a cool animation (fingers crossed for whip as a weapon in the full release!). Seriously, Shillalagh probably would have been a better melee backup cantrip, if less flexible, but with my druid's CON she wasn't going to be staying in melee range in human form if she could help it, so I'm happy I chose style over substance.

My level 1 druid basically used these cantrips all the time at level 1 as weapons, and then frequently after that once she'd run out of spells and wildshapes which, given I intentionally don't spam rest, happened a fair bit. For example, I always try to complete the goblin camp and shattered sanctum without long resting which I did do with my druid though it took some rationing and so a fair bit of thorn whipping and flame hurling, not always to great effect!

Level 1 Spells

• Longstrider and Jump I've only very occasionally used before, probably as I've played more ranged than melee characters, but found them handy this run when I remembered to cast them, either to get my druid's beast forms to her enemies or her human form away from them!
• Cure Wounds and Healing Word I found I had a different attitude to these with this playthrough. Whereas I've generally just picked Healing Word for my clerics, as it "only" takes a bonus action and can be done from a distance, my moon druid sometimes wanted a way to heal using an action when she'd taken a bit of a beating and wanted to top up her health before using her bonus action to turn back into a beast. She was rarely in a position to heal anyone else as she was usually either an animal or injured herself, so the distance feature of Cure Wounds wasn't helpful and I made a lot more use of potions for her and the rest of my party this playthrough. I still never had to actually buy any healing potions, though I did run quite low a few times and for the first time didn't end up with piles of unused healing potions at the end of the game. I'm not particularly conscientous about looting, so I'm not sure if this shows the number of potions to be found in the world is about right, or if it were too many and when you're using potions as the principle means of healing for three of your party you should expect to be buying them.
• Faerie Fire is a spell I've only tended to use situationally before, but a 10 turn advantage on attack rolls against enemies is a pretty good effective buff in the early game for the druid's beast form ... if they can maintain concentration.
• Entangle Entangle like Faerie Fire is a 10 round concentration spell which gives advantage on attacks, but also gives enemies a disadvantage. However, my druid couldn't get within clawing distance of affected enemies without being caught herself, so I didn't really use it. I suppose it would be helpful if fighting larger groups to keep some of them at a distance and pick them off with ranged party members while the druid dealt with any enemies at close range, or if all wildshape charges and level 2 spells have been used to try to keep enemies at bay while finishing them off with cantrips.
• Speak with Animals felt like an RP necessity for my moon druid, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that while I know some people hate it I appreciate the effort Larian have gone to to give animals dialogue content and secrets they can share. It was also interesting how speaking to animals *felt* different to me when I was RP-ing as a character that spent so much time in animal form, though of course there was no difference in the actual conversations at all!

I didn't find any of the other spells at level 1 worth keeping in my spell book. Well, I suppose Thunderwave was helpful at level 1 to push enemies away and do some damage, but once I had my wildshapes I had better uses for my spell slots as I couldn't make use of it in beast form.

Level 2 Spells

• Barkskin is handy to cast before turning into most animals, and gives them a boost to 16 AC unless they already have 16 AC or higher, which I think only the Dire Raven does of the EA beasts. It's particularly useful for the bear form which only has a natural 12 AC so Barkskin is going to help it perform it's most useful role as a tank, and for the Deep Rothe which can be a bit of a combo tank/damage dealer if you raise its AC from it's base 10. But I soon found out that in a fight where a moon druid goes this route, they're going to struggle to do any real damage, so it's only really useful when using other party members for DPS.
• Flaming Sphere along with my wolf form was my go to when I wanted to try to do some damage, particularly at level 3, though the fact Flaming Sphere can be upcast at level 5 to double damage dice kept it up at the top of my list throughout the game. I've cast Flaming Sphere a couple of times with Gale in previous playthroughs and not known what the hell to do with it. I had been trying to use it as a damage spell and thought it was terrible. How wrong I was! Send Flaming Sphere into a knot of enemies before joining it in my wolf form and it's basically a summon that draws aggro with 50 HP and a ton of resistances, is immune to fire damage (so v useful in the fight against Grym), acts as a light source to make sure my party can see the enemies, is an ally for the purposes of my wolf's Pack Tactics which gives the wolf advantage on attack rolls, can block a chokepoint, can inflict multiple enemies with burning status doing 1d6 (2d6 if upcast) damage unless they run away (which is also good if it reduces melee pressure on my wolf), can ram a specific enemy for 1d6 (2d6 if upcast) fire damage per turn, and can move around setting stuff alight on its own turn without using my action or bonus action. Plus, I can cast it and turn into wildshape before going into battle, getting my meatshield benefit plus a useful offensive spell from the start, effectively saving a whole combat turn. Okay, I did get burned myself more than once and I learned to be *very* quick to cancel the spell or at least turn off its flame at the end of the fight before it came following me burning everything in its wake ... including my party. But it was a price worth paying, and to be honest it wasn't that often the sphere survived until the bitter end (or to its max 10 turns) given it requires concentration. But it was great while it lasted! Admittedly, the damage it does to enemies isn't huge given its AoE damage isn't applied until the end of enemies' turns. But in addition to my melee damage it's not to be sneezed at and the spell is also so much more than a damage dealer. Of course, most of this is not by any stretch RAW so Larian would be justified in nerfing it, though I think they'd need to think hard about balance for moon druids if they did. Introducing Summon Beast as an alternative to its aggro/per turn additional damage/pack tactics benefits would perhaps help.
• Moonbeam is overpowered on its first round given it does damage both when it's cast on enemies and on their turn, rather than just the latter as per RAW and because of this was still occasionally helpful. But I largely found it a waste of concentration for my moon druid as you can't move the Moonbeam in beast form, so enemies just moved out of its way and I couldn't do anything about it until I returned to human. There aren't enough combat areas with unavoidable choke points where I found I could make good use of a static Moonbeam, especially given its small AoE, though I did manage to trap enemies in it it would do its damage each turn which is at least better than Call Lightning and Heat Metal. Of course, even if it were moveable, that would use an action that could otherwise be used for melee attacks, but it wouldn't necessarily need moving every turn, there's the option of Haste to get an attack along with a moonbeam move, and even if my druid was not attacking she might be better in wildshape anyway for the extra HP. All in all, wouldn't be a bad spell for moon druids if fixed.
• Heat Metal is another concentration based, multi-turn damage and debuff spell that can be upcast and could theoretically be useful for a moon druid to use for tougher heavily armoured enemies like Bernard and co., especially as its damage is reapplied by bonus action leaving the action free for biting and clawing (and can be applied twice if you have two bonus actions - not sure that's per RAW, but great if so!). But again reapplication of damage is blocked in beast form so the spell is nerfed for moon druids. The actual debuff only lasts one turn so the spell requires reapplication to justify its spell slot.
• Spike Growth as a long lasting concentration spell that can help control the battlefield while doing some minor damage sounds as though it could potentially be useful but I'll be honest I was having so much fun playing with my pet Flaming Sphere that I didn't really try out its potential, so just read Niara's focused spells comment and suspect I made the right choice given she says the way the spell is implemented means it does very little damage and fails to slow enemies for long, which will make this
• Flame Sword was pointless for my moon druid, and anyway what self-respecting moon druid would be using a *sword*? But can I just ask, is it right that it is light but not finesse? It says it looks like a scimitar, and scimitars are finesse but I suppose it is called a sword.

In summary, level 2 spells include one buff (Barkskin) that I found useful for tanking as long as concentration could be maintained, but required the sacrifice of my druid's ability to supplement her fairly low beast form damage with spells. It could still be the right choice sometimes, but generally I found a more aggressive approach bettter. There are no useful damage spells that can be used in animal form at level 1 so it was exciting to see three (possibly four, if Spike Growth is included) at level 2. But Moonbeam and particularly Heat Metal are nerfed for moon druids due to non-RAW restrictions on their beasts' abilities and Spike Growth is apparently just generally nerfed. Flaming Sphere really came into its own and for the first time I enjoyed playing with it, but it really *isn't* RAW and is a bit mad. Much as I grew to love my pet rock, I think it probably should be reduced to RAW, AS LONG AS the other spells are fixed and can be manipulated in beast form, and we get an alternative summon (I think Summon Beast is a level 2 druid spell).

Level 3 Spells

• Sleet Storm is a 10 turn concentration spell that could be really helpful for controlling the battlefield when there were lots of enemies on open, flat ground BUT it is terrible at coping with different levels. Eg, when I cast it on the big "steps" down to the Sussur Tree and the Hook Horrors from the Myconid Village, its ice surface coated only a single step and though the Horrors were forced to make saving throws each turn they didn't fall prone if they failed. And when I tried to cast it on the duergar boat on the way to Grymforge, goodness knows where the surface ended up. On the water we left behind us, perhaps? This issue must be addressed if it's to be of any use in the many battlefields that use the maps' verticality.
• Call Lightning is another 10 turn concentration spell, and it can do 3d10 lightning damage per turn, but it requires expenditure of an action to activate, and again that can't be done in beast form. If it could, then this could situationally be useful for moon druids who could make use of their animal HP shield while casting it, or use Haste to call lighting and melee attack each round. I wish!
• Daylight lasts for 100 turns and casts bright light over a wide area, so great for helping beast forms see what they're doing. No concentration required either and can be cast at a static location or on a member of my party to act as a super strong moveable light source. I learned the hard way, though, that if cast on a party member it had better not be my druid. Like Light it affects the equipped weapon so as soon as my druid changed shape and lost her weapons, it went dark just as she needed light most. Gah! Not sure the spell needs to change to address this, possibly just something I need to be careful of.
• Plant Growth as a non-concentration, 10 turn spell that slows enemy movement speed has potential to help control the field of combat, but with only two level 3 spell slots it had no look-in compared to upcast Flaming Sphere or (in the right environment) Sleet Storm. At higher levels, I can see this being something that might be helpful to cast and forget on the first round to delay more distant enemies moving towards your party, then cast a concentration spell of choice on the next round before transforming.

In summary, while level 3 introduced some more potentially interesting spells for my moon druid, the way the two that would have been the most useful for combat were implemented in a way that made them far less so than they should have been. Still, at least I could upcast Flaming Sphere!

Overall, once I worked out what I wanted from spells as a moon druid, I found the selection offered was what I needed ... if only they'd worked as they should. Except for Flaming Sphere which worked far better than it should, and for which thank goodness in the circumstances. As mentioned, a summon would have been nice (and necessary without Flaming Sphere) and I felt the lack of a decent buffing spell that would help my druid's attack and concentration saves. Obviously, Shadowheart with Bless would have been good there, and helped my druid while also letting her concentrate on her own damage spell. But I was surprised there was nothing in my druid's spellbook itself that would have a similar effect. Not sure if this is due to 5e, or the fact not all druid spells have been implemented.

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.

Feats
Obviously a WIS ASI wouldn't go amiss for a druid, but I actually took Skilled given that my druid was decent with all non-physical stats, to boost her still further. Given she was the one usually talking to NPCs, this definitely helped in conversation though obviously not combat.

I was disappointed not to see any feats that looked as though they might boost my beasts. I thought Toughness might give them extra HP, but it doesn't look like it.

If there had been a wildshape boosting feat at level 4 I'd have been very tempted. I'm not sure if there are such things in the full 5e ruleset.

EDIT: After a comment from @Silver/ in this thread, I have confirmed that the Heavily Armoured feat gives your wildshapes, as well as your druid, +1 STR. This benefits the bear and wolf, raising their STR to 20 and 18 respectively with a resultant +1 to attack and damage. There is no non-metal armour in EA (though I assume that, as with medium armour, the game currently doesn't prevent druids using metal armour if they want), but with the right armour this feat could also provide survivability in non-animal form so may be a good choice. It is not clear whether the +1 STR to wildshapes is intended or a bug. If intended, then it would be good if the description made this effect of the feat clear.

EDIT2: Someone has also posted on the BG3 reddit that some other feats do have an affect - see https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat..._testing_of_wildshapes_figured_id_share/

Wildshapes
I'm not going to go into the details of the different wildshapes and their shortcomings in combat, given that's already been done elsewhere far better than I could manage it.

But I'll give some general observations about my experience with wildshaping as a learner druid.

• While I can't see any way to change this that isn't cheesable to break balance, I didn't really feel like the mutable, shapechanging druid I expected to be with only two wildshape charges per short rest. I found myself hoarding my charges for combat, while a land druid would probably be more willing to spend them on exploration. Of course this was a self imposed limitation as there's no true restriction on resting.
• Encumbrance was a pain. I loved turning into a Dire Raven and swooping down by the big mushrooms (?) behind Yrre's forge through the dark and silent Underdark, then transforming into a sneaky cat to squeeze through the pipe into the basement to activate the tower and let in my party. But the experience was rather marred by the fact that what actually happened was that I turned into a Raven, spent a minute shuffling things out of my inventory so I wasn't encumbered, swooped down through the Underdark, turned into a cat, then spent another minute lightening the load still further before I could sneak into the tower. I don't know how 5e handles this, but I found myself wishing my human weight allowance was used for wildshapes too (or at least a minimum of my human weight allowance, as I can sort of understand wanting to load down a bear to lug something heavy). Or perhaps I just need to learn to travel lighter.
• I also loved swooping (swooping is good!) down into the decrepit village in raven form from up on the ridge along from Myrna's grave to scout for the duergar raiders, and landing behind Gekh Kohl ready to give him what for with a Deep Rothe in the back. But again the drama turned to farce when Glut came galumphing into the village in search of my druid to whom he was attached as a sort of summon. We really need to be able to select characters separately from their summons/tagalongs, or am I just missing something obvious here?
• There were only three times the game forced me back into human form in my playthrough. The first was when I was sneaking into the goblin camp in raven form, and I was a bit worried when the game turned me into a human for the voice of the Absolute cutscene, but it correctly turned me back into a raven at the end without costing me any wildshape charges. The next time was after using my Deep Rothe form to clear the cave-in to free Nere, and this time the game just turned me human and left me with one less wildshape charge without even triggering a cutscene. It could have just left me as a Rothe and let me decide whether to turn back and speak to him or get one of my companions to do it. The next time was once Nere and his allies were dead, and I'd allied with Elder Brithvar so he wanted to speak with me. This time dialogue did auto trigger after I transformed, and fortunately I persuaded him to leave without the gnomes. My wildshape charges weren't refunded, so had it come to a fight I'd have been going into it with no wildshape charges. This needs to change either to leave my druid in wildshape and let me to trigger the conversation with my chosen party member, auto transform my character for the cutscene then turn them back afterwards like the Absolute scene, or just refund me the wildshape charge if the game forces me to turn human when I don't need to.
• And speaking of the fight with Nere, the fact that the gnomes and my duergar allies would turn hostile at the drop of a hat really scuppered my usual battlefield tactics. Not that it's not fun to turn into a Deep Rothe and just try to charge folk into lava every now and again.
• When you click on the wildshape charge paw icon next to the bonus action triangle, it filters for actions that use these charges and just gives ... wildshape. Unless there are going to be more abilities using these charges later that have a different class action, it would be better if it just listed the forms I could turn into and saved me a click.

Conclusion
First, my apologies to anyone who read even a quarter of that!

And, at long last and in conclusion ... I found the moon druid a fascinating class to play and loved working out spells, items and strategies that would work with my character. I'm sure I didn't find the best ones, but I had great fun trying. But there's no getting round the fact that moon druids need to be able to activate or manipulate the concentration spells that they should be able to, in order to balance the relative weakness of their animal forms compared to other melee classes. If moon druid is going to be a satisfying class to play in the full release, and it really really should be, then either the spells I've mentioned need to be fixed or the wildshape creatures need to be improved by (I'd say) level 4. Or perhaps a bit of both


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I have like 3 problem with druids lack of spelsl that have no concetartion... Some of them could be tweaked...


The spell casting version of it and how it has the same problem as the wizzard with arcane recovery.

It is useless due to how rest works in game they really need to make those two skills useble in combat. Or they need to fixing rest... and yes recasting moonbeam in animal form would be nice but i can play around it as well...

This is great stuff. And yes, Druid didn't seem to get many items for it upon rollout.

Barb and Barbarian got a lot of stuff specifically created for it, and the items cover both current subclass options. Paladin got a few items, but they are uniquely beneficial to Paladin.

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. 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...

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.

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Moving on, yes the Wild Shapes are unpowered and keeping Concentration on Barkskin is so hard with so many checks due to surfaces. 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 don't think Larian has a perfect solution for this either. 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.

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My Druids I have made have all been low maintenance in terms of items because nothing is truly beneficial. It helps with focusing on buying other members' their preferred items, but playing a Druid feels so bare bones.

Thank you for that great review. I prefer land druid myself, but wanted to do at least one moon druid run along the road.

The feat that allows you to wear heavy armour transferred it's +1 to strenght to your wildform in patch 8. So your bearform would max at 20 strenght. With the right armour (17) and shield (3), you would also have 20 AC unboosted.

I didn't know flaming sphere wasn't just a really bad fireball, though, so that's really good to have handy in patch 9!

Oh! It never even occurred to me to try Heavily Armoured as all the EA heavy armours are metal and except for a bit of experimentation I was trying to be good . But I had a save just before level 4 and yes Heavily Armoured still boosts your wildshape strength in patch 9, giving your bear 20 and your wolf 18, with benefits to attack and damage (other animals have even STR stats to start, and some of course use DEX anyway). Plus as you say the extra AC of heavy armour would be handy for my druid in her squishy human form, even though I'd feel bad about using it unless we get some Ankheg Plate or similar. That makes this a potentially very attractive feat for moon druids, though I wish the description would make it clear the strength boost affected wildshapes too.

Assuming it is meant to? Do you know if this reflects how it works in 5e RAW?


I know! It felt like such a revelation.

Unfortunately, I have no Idea If it's even an intended result and not a bug. It's possible for a druid to hit 19 AC at level 2, day 0 when entering the grove. If you're willing to cheat by wearing the mixed armour, that is.

It's been a useless feat for human shape, but Larian has yet to begrudge us the permanent +1 strenght.

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.


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!


Interesting ideas .

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.

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.


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.


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?

Yes, it hadn't really occurred to me in this run as I actively wanted spells with concentration that would confer benefits over a number of rounds while in wildshape. Well, spells that confer benefits over a number of rounds without taking concentration would be good too, but I don't expect many of them as one of the points of concentration is to make sure we don't break balance by having too many longer duration spells running at once.

But I imagine I would have noticed the lack of non-concentration spells more if I'd been a land druid.


The way I played my moon druid I didn't find myself running out of spell slots as quickly as a land druid presumably would, as they basically cast a concentration spell, transformed, then didn't use any spell slots unless they needed to lunar mend until they were human again. It actually felt reasonably balanced in the sense that I tended to run out of wildshapes and spell slots at roughly the same rate so tended to need to rest anyway, though obviously with only two level 3 slots at level 5 I had to save those for what I expected to be the bigger battles.

Though the ability to regain a spell slot or two as per arcane recovery wouldn't go amiss, and an item that granted a version of something like it for druids (or just everyone who used spell slots including wizards for an extra boost) sounds like a good idea as long as it came at a point where it wouldn't break balance. And now I'm thinking I'll want to experiment with Spellthief when I get round to the wood elf land druid run I have in mind!

I'm not sure about using arcane recovery or any equivalent in combat though. That does sound balance breaking.

My original post from a few days ago is no longer editable, but I just wanted to add that I tried numerous times during my initial playthrough to use the Linebreaker Boots to get Wrath and (very slightly) boost my animal form's melee attack, and could never get them to work. But I've just tried again in order to create a savegame to attach to a bug report to Larian and they worked fine! Could just have been user error before of course, but alternatively be an intermittent bug.

Has anyone else had any problems getting the Linebreaker Boots to apply Wrath when worn when dashing in combat?

EDIT: But then when I tried to attack an enemy when my druid was in wolf form with the Wrath condition applied, the game did not appear to be adding +1 Wrath damage to her melee attacks. There's no mention in the Wrath tooltip that it only applies to melee weapon damage, so I've reported this apparent bug to Larian support instead.