Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Moon Druid Subclass Implementation: Discussion & Feedback

Great game, generally a great implementation of the 5e ruleset. Honestly all the positives of this game make it all the more glaring how broken Moon Druids and Wild Shape are in their current form.

Disclaimer: I know coding is not easy. I’m sure Wild Shape presents some very challenging coding issues. And this also isn’t a gripe about min/maxing. This post is about pointing out that Wild Shape simply isn’t functional in its current state, and it breaks immersion over and over again using it.

First, the forms you get vary wildly from source material. This is forgivable, but a bit jarring. A polar bear? No multi attack? But ok, fine, like I said, easily forgivable.

What’s not forgivable is the way magic items and near zero multi class features work while wild shaped. Those issues go beyond simply tweaking the animal stats for balance reasons. These are bugs, straight up. And if they aren’t bugs, then we have diverged from the RAW to the extent that it ruins the class fantasy.

Druids should be able to retain multi class features while wild shaped. If not the active abilities, at least the passives. And the vast majority of passives conflict in some way with wild shape. Magic items simply not working anymore? Ouch. Ouch. Again, at least the passives from magic items should remain functional.

Don’t even get me started on concentration spells not functioning correctly in wild shape. At least that has been clearly identified as a bug - I think?

To put it simply: Wild Shape is immersion breaking, over and over again. And in a game that centers around RPG immersion goodness, playing a class that breaks immersion during its core mechanic is a big no-no.

That’s my gripe list. How to fix it? I’m not a coder, so I hate to complain and not help. One thing they could do is treat the animal forms basically as PCs. My gut says a lot of the issues stem from animal forms being given all sorts of strange abilities and modifiers, instead of just being treated like a Ranger pet or like any other animal with certain ability scores. Make the animal form stats and capabilities based purely on ability scores, with unarmed attacks that have slightly higher values and a different name like “claw” or “bite”. But they are still just unarmed attacks based off of strength.

Make animal AC values based purely on dexterity, with a straight forward “+X” value for Natural Armor. Instead natural armor is being treated AS regular armor instead of a modifier, creating all sort of issues with Unarmored Defense and AC modifying spells.

Like I said, I’m no coder. Maybe my suggestions (I.e. SIMPLIFYING animal stats and attacks instead of treating them as some special category of abilities) wouldn’t help, but that seems like the most intuitive, straight forward, and satisfying way of remedying the current issues with Druids and Wild Shape.

If most other classes can multiclass without an issue, namely because the PC is always treated as a PC, let’s start by treating our wild shape forms as PCs. PCs with regular PC stats and abilities. Not loading them up with unusual modifiers and work arounds that interfere with other game mechanics. Feels like we’ve cut the nose off to spite the face in the name of “balancing” the forms with all sort of strange modifiers that cause conflicts.

In other words: Wild Shape feels broken, from an amateur’s perspective, because they made the animal forms IN REVERSE. They wanted them to have XYZ stats and actions and engineered the forms to fit that vision using all sorts of tweaks and work arounds… instead of simply setting up the ability scores and actions/talents of the animals forms first, then working from that base template to tweak as appropriate. Switch the emphasis from how the end form performs in battle, to making a simple RAW base form functional, and Wild Shape may function a heck of a lot better.

I love this game, and that’s all the more reason I want my favorite class to work correctly. Give Druids some love and attention Larion, because right now Wild Shaping just feels confusing and so so icky to play. I assume most of us Druids would love a multi class dip (who doesn’t?) and multi classing as a Druid is just straight punishment with Wild Shape in current form. Serves almost no purpose besides RP. And I love to RP, except when my RP choices completely break immersion. Besides, even without the multi class issues the concentration bugs and magic items issues make a single class Druid immersion breaking.

A lot of the issues with Wildshape right now feel very counterintuitive too. Apparently Tavern Brawler is the only feat that actually works with Wildshape, so that seems to imply your Wildshape attacks benefit from Unarmed Strike boosts from other sources, but it does not.

In a game, as heavily itemization-focused as BG3 the fact gear doesn't affect your Wildshape forms is a huge problem. It seems like you hit max level long before the game comes to an end, so itemization is supposed to be how you continue progressing character power beyond that point. There's only two items in the game that I can find that boost Wildshape, and one is an 11AC armor, which itself is mind-boggling because at this point most armors are +2. Why is the purple druid Wildshape armor standard leather?

Because wildshape takes the stats of the animal, so the only armor that makes sense is leather?

Wildshape was bad during EA also. That’s why I stay with the spore Druid.

I don't know that "immersion" is the word I would use to describe the issues. But semantics aside, the equipment stats and benefits not transferring to your wild shape are RAW. According to 5e your equipment can either drop to the ground, stay on the animal if it makes sense that the animal could wear it, or merge with the new form. If it merges with the new form, the equipped item has no effect until you leave the form. Obviously Larian has gone with the third option and it makes sense. If you went with the first option you would have to redo your whole inventory every time you used wild shape. The second option would be complicated to visualise and does not make sense for most of the beast forms available - how would a bear wear a pair of boots? Perhaps the amulet slot could arguably still hang around the neck of some of the wild shapes. But the third option seemed the most straightforward approach for the computer game to work, and then it is RAW that you don't get any benefits from your equipped items any more.

Class features however should definitely transfer over according to RAW. So if you have action surge, uncanny dodge, extra attacks, portent or any other features given by your multiclass, they should apply when in wild shape as well.

I don't think Wild Shape is mechanically terrible as it is. The extra hit points pool you receive through a single bonus action is quite substantial. But it's basically what it does, because I am rarely able to maintain wild shape for more than one turn, so it provides a way of soaking up a lot of the damage received so I am still standing the next time my turn comes around. It would be more fun if you could also combine class features with the wild shape in new and interesting ways.

Immersion isn't the word I would use either. It's more immersion breaking that your magic items should somehow still work while you are in animal form, or the abilities of a humanoid form. So I actually like the version where the animal form is just that, a beast. If anything, it's more immersive and cool if the animal "takes over".

I'm playing a barbarian/druid MC right now. I can rage before going into wildshape and keep it going, but I can't initiate a rage once wildshaped. having the extra hp pool is doubly nice when coupled with resistance to all but psychic damage.

and I'm not sure how to quatify this, but on my Tav I have a lot of gear which seems to modify my jump distance. I also have the Athlete feat which impacts jump distance. My bear can virtually fly, leaping across the screen or on top of buildings. I know jumping scales off strength and the bear is strong, but I really believe it is more than that. So my take is the feat and or the gear modifying my jumps is still working. I also do seem to get extra attack in wildshape form (unless all bears get 2 swings).

FYI, reached level 12 and am now a level 6 wildheart barbarian and a level 6 circle of moon druid. I rage in humanoid form and attack twice the first round of combat, and then second round I now go owl bear, keeping the bear totem rage and swinging 3 times for decent damage with resistance to everything but psychic. I generally stay in owl bear form unless knocked out of it (very rare). I find it very enjoyable and the wildheart features and the beast forms to be very on point thematically. I also have the carrying capacity of a mid-sized elephant which is also useful.

I will say I don't have a whole lot of experience with Druids in this game so far; my main playthrough is an Oath of Ancients Paladin and I only recently completed act 2 and got Halsin and as followers and started seeing what this game's version of Druids could do. I just recently started a Moon Druid after a friend of mine (whose favorite class on tabletop is Moon Druid) finally tried out the game, but has been dissatisfied by his own playthrough as Moon Druid so far. In my short time I've noticed some things that bug me,

-Your character cannot talk to NPCs while Wild Shape'd, you have to switch control to one of your other party members in order to initiate dialogue with anyone. Now this makes sense and is accurate to PHB rules, however this wasn't the way I was informed this would work from my other playthrough where I got to play around with Halsin as a party member. If you talk to Halsin while he is in Wild Shape form, he'll revert to his normal form for the conversation and immediately switch back to animal form afterward, without having to expend an additional Wild Shape charge, which is really nice as you only get two Wild Shapes per short rest. I had assumed that player Druids would get this same consideration, but no, you have to prematurely end your Wild Shape and discard the charge if you want to talk to people with your character.

Even worse, encountering some NPCs and activating certain objects that trigger cutscenes can even end your Wild Shape automatically! When I met Astarian as a bear right after fighting the small bunch of Intellect Devourers on the beach, I was forcibly reverted to normal form so that the cutscene could play out, and the same thing happened upon clicking the button that opens Withers' tomb; the same button that immediately triggers a combat encounter. Playing Moon Druid means you'll often have to sacrifice your position as the party face for many dialogues, and you run the risk of the game robbing you of the full use of your already limited Wild Shape charges at unexpected intervals if you happen upon certain things while transformed.

This could be less of an annoyance with more Wild Shape charges becoming available as you level up, but in standard 5e rules, Druid does not get a progression similar to something like Barbarians who gain more Rage uses in a consistent manner, or even Warlocks and their limited spell slots. Druid is stuck with two charges of Wild Shape all the way until level 20 with their capstone ability, Archdruid, and this game's level cap is 12. I think this is an area where people wouldn't mind if Larian deviated from the PHB rules a bit and gave Moon Druids more charges. Alternatively, just let us auto-shift in/out of form for conversations/cutscenes without expending a charge like Halsin can.

-Shapeshifted Druids can't gain the benefits of magical equipment, in a game where the sheer variety of bonuses from magic items are incredibly helpful (and arguably crucial). Again, this is also adherence to PHB Druid rules, however I would argue this should only apply to mundane, non-magical items, because magical items can adjust their size and shape to fit the wearer, which is the same reason why a dragonborn could wear a magic helmet they take from the head of a slain goblin, or a human could put on Slippers of Spider Climb that previously belonged to a gnome. From the DMG, page 140:


Naturally this would still prevent Wild Shape'd Druids from using weapons and shields, as these are held instead of worn, and they can't get any benefit from early game non-magical armor, but it would mean they should be able to gain the benefits of magic armor with passive abilities/stat boosts. At the very least, it would be nice for Wild Shape forms to be able to gain benefits from their equipped jewelry.

-Bear Form can't shove. Why? Bears can absolutely shove things. The shove action seems to be removed from every form, and while that makes perfect sense for the smaller ones, I think it'd make sense for larger, stronger forms like Bear, Owlbear, Panther, Dilophosaurus, etc to be able to use it.

-Druids sometimes instantly die upon getting knocked out Wild Shape. Less to do with intended mechanics, this is a very troublesome bug that both I and my friend have encountered, and I've read that some other players have been having trouble with this as far back as when BG3 was in early access.

The intended mechanic in tabletop and (I assume) in BG3 is that, when a Druid is reduced to zero HP in Wild Shape, they revert back to normal form, with any damage from the attack remaining being subtracted from their true HP pool. A few times though, I've seen Druids instantly die when they get knocked out of Wild Shape, even if their base form was at full health and the remaining attack damage was nowhere near close enough to down them. And I mean DIE, because the Druid doesn't even get to make death saving throws, they're just instantly dead. This is extremely frustrating when it occurs.

The thing is, BG3 is significantly more itemization-focused than RAW 5e is. Gear is how you make unique builds with wacky mechanics and unusual mechanical interactions. It's a huge part of a character's power that didn't exist in 5e. Not being able to engage with that feels terrible and makes the looting experience just feel boring.

On top of that items that literally state they work in Wildshape sometimes don't. I have an amulet that is supposed to give Feather Fall when I am Wildshaped, but it currently gives Feather Fall to my caster form and the effect goes away when I Wildshape. I also have a hat that gives me an extra Wildshape charge that sometimes doesn't work, and my chest piece specifically designed for Moon Druids sometimes doesn't give my Wildshape forms the temp HP or extra AC it's supposed to give when I transform.

Which is perhaps the biggest issue right now. Moon Druid is riddled with bugs. The ability that lets your attacks ignore mundane resistances simply doesn't work, cutting your damage in half against most enemies at later levels. You can't Rage or use Action Surge while in animal form even though you could in 5e and a lot of feats that are supposed to work in Wildshape just don't right now, limiting build options even further.

Moon Druid can't even activate their own concentration spells in Wildshape, which is a core facet of their playstyle in 5e.

I've just renamed this thread so it makes sense to direct all Moon Druid subclass implementation feedback here (the original title specifically mentioned wildshape, but as others have pointed out that's not the only factor affecting moon druids' effectiveness in the game).

And, as I mentioned in one of those other threads, I've not played moon druid in the full release yet, though I did do a playthrough in EA.

My two biggest problems with the class, much as I enjoyed it, were (a) not being able to activate/move concentration spells like heat metal, call lightning & moonbeam when in wildshape and, (b) the ridicuous ease with which concentration is lost in BG3 which affects all classes but moon druids disproportionately given they are more reliant on concentration spells as they can't cast in wildshape. If just those two things were fixed, along with the bug that means you have to re-equip items after wildshaping to regain their benefits, for me the moon druid would be hugely improved.

By level 5, it was also much in need of some better wildshapes, but not having tried what we get in the full release I'm not yet able to comment on how far that's provided.

Btw, in my current playthrough I've just seen some armour that does look tailored for moon druids so I'll be aiming to get that once I get round to replaying my EA moon druid in the full release. For anyone who hasn't come across it, it's in Act 3 and ...

It tilts me so much that I have to preemptively come out of wildshape in an estimation of when I expect an encounter to end because if I'm in wildshape, the dialogue gets directed at a companion instead of me.

I can put up with the class being weak, having 98% of magic items not affect my class because for some reason wildshape turns effects off and attacks don't count for unarmed.

But losing important dialogue because of being wild shape pisses me off so immensely. If I wanted dialogue on companions, I would have rolled an origin character. Talking to a character while wildshaped should have you come out for the scene and then return you to wildshape after the cutscene.

Also, some companions like Halsin don't have the Call Lightning or Healing Word spell bound to their spell book, it's a base spell on the left side of the basic actions bar, which means you can't upscale those spells for him, so he is stuck with a level 3 Call Lightning the entire game. So bad.

Druid class as a whole is so bad. 95% of the spells are concentration with friendly fire aspect. Vines, Plant Growth, etc crowd control spells affect your allies just like you, and on top it requires concentration. Meanwhile hypnotic pattern is way stronger and has no friendly fire.

Putting so many concentration spells on druid is horrible because wild shapes have such low AC, so they get hit easily and even with war caster feat your concentration gets broken in a single turn or two. Not being able to recast Moonbeam/Call Lightning/Sunbeam in form is also pretty bad.

Shillelagh is also a useless spell because literally all legendary items are not druid staves/clubs, so you can't apply shillelagh to the Lathander mace or the Selune spear, and the only legendary staff is actually pretty much a Wizard staff. All those extra weapon proficiencies you have? Useless, Shillelagh won't apply to them.

Doesn't help that since there is no transmog you spend 100+ hours of a game looking like a paladin or warrior because 90% of the gear is fighter or monk gear, and hide armor is so much worse than scale armor in the medium armor category.


That's the single piece of armor which works with moon druid....and it comes by almost the end of the game. So lame! Same for spore druid, the spore druid armor is sold by that same vendor.

The item imbalance in favor of monks and fighters/paladin/barb is crazy, they just have items rained on them while the other classes have like 1-2 pieces of very rare armor in the entire game.

Repost from my other thread:

So, after playing BG 3 as a Moon Druid, I have to ask, what's the point of this subclass? In dnd 5e tabletop Moon Druids are considered one of the strongest subclasses for a reason. You get extra health, damage, etc, while still being a full caster.

In BG 3 though they serve no purpose. Not because their forms are weak, but because both Spore and Land Druid get the same level of power with extra stuff on top of it. Land gets extra spells, Spore gets damage and minions. Both can turn into an owlbear, both get extra hp, both get extra attack.

Moon druids:

Level 6 ignoring magic resistance - magic weapons are everywhere. And most bossess have got resistance/immunity to physical damage in general, meaning its completely pointless feature.

Extra forms:
-Bear is weaker than dire wolf and no pack tactics.
-Dire Raven is a great scout and that's about it.
-Sabretooth Tiger is solid and can knock enemies prone, but only comes online at level 6.

Lunar Mend is Terrible, you're better off using short rest or have somebody else heal you like healing word, etc.

Being able to wildshape as a bonus action is the only good thing, but you could always be in Animal form prior to the fight.

To make matters worse, you cant move concentration spells in any of the wildshapes.
Owlbear rage charges disappear at level 8 I think, due to bug.
Elemental forms come online at level 10, which means Moon Druid is weaker for the vast majority of the first two acts. If you really want them, respecing at level 10 seems like the best solution.
Most feats and features that could work, don’t or are bugged. Like rage from Barbarian + wildshape.

TLDR:

Moon Druid should be the best at using wildshape and have access to most powerful forms and abilities, but come across as weaker than other subclasses, as they get the same powers and then some.

Some ideas:

-Make level 6 feature do something like extra damage, turning immunity into resistance. Or rebalance the bosses. Or just fix it.
-Restrict other circles only to the basic 4 forms you get at the beginning with maybe polar bear and raven added later. Owlbear could come online at level 10 for non Moon Druids.
-Allow only Moon Druids to benefit from magic items in the wildshape, even if only passive components.

What do you think?

Druid in general is a mediocre/weak class, we don't need to nerf the better subclasses just to make the most terrible one look less bad. Wildshape in general is weak and is supposed to be a core of the class. Land druid as a spell caster is just a mediocre wizard/sorc with a worse spellbook and with access to wildshapes, which are weak.

Buff wildshapes, buff Lunar Mending and make woldshapes adopt your native AC or have a moon druid passive that gives advantage and +1/+2 to saves while wildshaped.

Moon druid and Spore druid should have extra melee attacks not just in wildshape but in human form as well, to make the class less dependent on spamming short rests.

Other problem with druid is their cantrips are terrible, they do no damage, so you don't have a source of decent consistent damage outside your wildshape charges. Moon Beam falls off a cliff in scaling in the latter half of the game. Call Lightning is OK but not amazing.

Don’t need to rephrase everything that was already succinctly stated, but I will throw out my agreement.

Druid is just plain weaker than cleric. I prefer druids quite a bit, but that’s the truth of it. Making two subclasses match the weakest third is not a sufficient solution.

Weird take, but okay.

Bear has more HP and a stronger attack than Wolf, so that's just plain wrong.

Comparing Lunar Mend to short resting is ridiculous - one is obviously meant to be used in-combat, while the other is just as obviously out-of-combat. Lunar Mend is pretty decent bonus action healing. Sure, Healing Word with a +5 spellcasting modifier is nice, but Lunar Mend outscales it at higher spell levels. It also maintains nice action economy - in Wildshape, you're not often going to have a bonus action available other than Lunar Mend while your spell slots are just sitting there unused. Might as well be self-sufficient and free up the bonus actions and spell slots of whomever you were counting on to cast that Healing Word.

Being able to Wildshape as a bonus action IS a good thing. If you're low on HP and don't want to eat a spell slot, you can drop your Wildshape as a free action and re-Wildshape, all while staying in the middle of the action with your action ready to use for attacking. That's a FULL HEAL from a bonus action that recharges on short rest. Nobody else does that.

Overall, it sounds like you haven't embraced the bestial Swiss Army Knife. A bit of bugfixing would be nice so that Moon Druids had a few more options with the Moonbeam/Call Lightning spells. If anything, I wish Moon Druids got one more Wildshape charge so that I wasn't using half of my combat resources during exploration tasks, similar to how a number of ritual spells work for out-of-combat usage.

But you do use your bonus action in wildshape. Your strongest forms are owlbear and myrmidons. For owlbear, you should be using crushing leap, a bonus action, before even attacking not only because it's free damage, but a chance to make enemies prone and increase your hit chance while limiting their movement on their turn. On myrmidon, it's the teleport.

Lunar Mend is a horrendously bad skill. It is a waste of a spell slot. You get way more of an action economy using that lv4-5 spell slot on an actual nuke like Ice Storm or Insect Plague or Mass Cure Wound than you get out of a crappy lunar mend. It is an absolute waste of a spell slot since a Life Domain shadowheart will heal more with a lesser spell slot investment if you're desperate to not be knocked out of form and need the healing.

In general, druid healing spells until Mass Cure wounds are horrendously bad and spell slot inefficient to begin with. You want your life domain clerics doing the healing. Hell, with how many health pots the game rains on you, it's actually even better to throw a health potion over using regular healing word/cure wound on a druid since you don't guarantee max and increased healing like a life domain cleric does.

I was about to start a druid, but given the feedback here, I think I'll hold off until I see some patch notes about this stuff. At the moment, it mainly sounds like druid is extremely frustrating to play. Hope Larian chimes in at some point, they seem to have been doing pretty well so far.

Regarding subclass comparison, as it's own thing:

Spore druid is the "Forget about wildshape. I don't care about being an animal, I just want to cast druid spells as a caster character. I'll being in humanoid form at all times, so please give me something else to do with my wildshape charges so they aren't a waste." subclass.
And so it does. Spore druids aren't really meant to use animal forms in the first place, so talking about how effective they are is a bit of a moot point. If you're an animal as a spore, you're doing something wrong. Change subclasses if you're gonna do that.

Moon druid is the "Screw spells. I don't care about being a caster, I just want to be a beast. I'm going to be in animal form at all times, so please give me something else to do with those spell slots so they aren't a waste." subclass.
And so it does. Moonies can use spell slots to heal themselves in beast form so players don't feel like part of their build is being wasted by never being in human form. Not to mention the healing actually keeping them in the animal form instead of getting reverted by enemies. If you're in humanoid form casting spells as a moonie, you're doing something wrong. Change subclasses if you're gonna do that. And appreciate having less competition in your party for the best items I suppose.

I honestly don't remember what Circle of Land gets to differentiate them from other subclasses, but presumably they're the hybrid subclass for actually using both your spells and your wildshape.
So if you intend to use both druid features, to do things with spells before wildshaping, use either at different times, or charge in in animal form until knocked out of it and be a caster after, go land druid. The other subclasses are for picking one of the two, not doing both.

You’re missing out. Druid is weaker but it’s still a lot of fun and completely viable with all subclasses. Just like normal D&D, you don’t need to optimize and min max to have a great time.

Also, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of balance patches. Fixing bugs, yes, but this isn’t some live service game that needs constant tinkering to balance out. Some classes are just stronger than others, and to some extent it’s probably just going yo stay that way.

This is not just balance. During recruiting Minsc, you gotta knock him out with a non-lethal. My character was in wildshape, and the cutscene for knocking him out had a seizure as it couldn't pick me for Jaheira to address. Minsc reappeared just there with a failed cutscene, and another non-lethal attack actually killed him and made her angry at me. Had to restart the whole encounter. This has happened in several encounters, where the game either screws you out of dialogue and addresses your companion, or the scene bugs out altogether and skips.

The biggest problem for me is lack magic items that bloody work for Moon Druid + features + feats.

In RAW 5e, Moon Druid has got spikes of power at levels 2 and 10. They also get access to spells like Conjure Animals, Polymorph (turn ally into a giant APE), etc. Tasha really helped them.

On top of that, itemization is not that important in tabletop. However in BG 3, items are incredibly important. You can do some crazy builds with items, like going full poison with relevant items. In tabletop the best magic items you get are: Moon Sickle for spell DC and spell attack rolls + belt of giant strength, which should carry over to wildshape.

Some combinations in BG 3 are disgusting. I made Laezel into thrower with returning Pike and she deals about 20 damage per hit and it's not even that optimized. She also has got like 90% hit rate, compared to 65% of Moon Druid.

The only things that work are potions, which are everywhere. Moon Druid in particular should be able to benefit from Magic Items in Wildshape, at least some of them. Instead of that we end up with a class that’s great at being a meat shield and average at everything else.

It's an easy solution too. Literally turn magic passive effects on in wildshape like extra saving throws or inability to be crit/paralyzed, you know effect auras, and then for the damage rolls let wild shapes benefit from the monk unarmed bonuses. Just treat wildshaped attacks as unarmed attacks and let them benefit from the monk magic items.

Then let moon druids recast concentration spells in wildshape. Moon druid Wildshape should also have a passive that lets them use oils/venoms.

I'm actually fine with most magical items not working for moon druids, as long as there are some to be found that can be useful. Both finding items that we can use despite the limitations, and working out how to do without them, are things I think that can make the moon druid feel very unique to play. Items that have an effect for a few turns (like the helmet that gives Momentum for a few turns) could come into their own, though it's annoying I think that Wrath doesn't work with wildshape attacks (or at least it didn't in EA).

The problem I had in EA was that there weren't enough such items that a clever moon druid could find ways to use. And as I've not had a moon druid in my party for my first playthrough, I've not been paying attention to whether this has been addressed at all. And the only item that has jumped out at me as being designed specifically for wildshaping druids is the Armour of Moonbasking in act 3.

(And of course the bug that means equipment bonuses are lost until items are unequipped and equipped again after wildshaping definitely needs fixed.)

Oh, and slightly related, the other way to get benefits is from feats, and I wish the game would make much clearer which feats work on wildshapes and which don't. And potentially some feats that don't help wildshapes should, but as it's not clear which do and don't I'm not sure about that.

Btw, one top tip I discovered for an early game moon druid I discovered in my EA run just in case people haven't spotted it, is that - as long as it hasn't been nerfed - the homebrewed Flaming Sphere in BG3 is basically a pretty tanky summon. It's a concentration spell so vulnerable to issues with that, but if sent in ahead of your wildshaped druid can help attract aggro to maintain concentration and also counts as an ally for the Wolf form's Pack Tactics. And it can move by itself on its own turn rather than needing a druid action to move it, so it doesn't have the same problem as Heat Metal, Call Lighting and Moonbeam (other spells that should be useful for Moon Druids but aren't). It doesn't do a massive amount of damage per turn - it's certainly no fireball - but I think used in conjunction with a druid's wildshape and with a bit of luck on the concentration rolls, can help moon druids be much more effective in melee.

Flaming Sphere and Spiritual Weapon work in the same manner, last I checked. Both got initiative, Health, etc. So enemies tend to focus on them. As for the items, RAW 5e most don’t work for Moon Druid, which is fine. However in recent books, many feats and items are added, which work really well, here are some examples from rpgbot.

Link: https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/druid/#magic-items

Magic items:

1. Barrier Tattoo (Uncommon)TCoE: Most druids should stick to studded leather unless you can get a better tattoo, but Circle of the Moon may find that this boosts their AC in certain forms.

2. Barrier Tattoo (Rare)TCoE: AC is among the Druid’s biggest problems, and matching the AC of Half-plate without wearing metal armor is an absolutely massive improvement to the Druid, especially since this works in Wild Shape. It hurts that it costs a Rare item to do it, but it’s hard to argue with how effective this is.

3. Belt of DwarvenkindDMG: Maybe appealing for Circle of the Moon, I think this might still apply during Wild Shape. Adding Darkvision and poison resistence to beasts which don’t normally get it is really nice, though the +2 Constitution won’t have much impact since your beast forms will have few hit dice.

4. Belt of Giant Strength (Hill)DMG: This works while using Wild Shape, which is mechanically amazing and conceptually hilarious. Imagine using Wild Shape to run into a mouse with 21 Strength. Once you’ve had a sensible chuckle about that, consider how many wild shape forms give up some Strength-based attack and damage bonus for durability or special abilities (Pack Tactics, Flyby, etc.).

Feats:

1. Gift of the Chromatic DragonFToD: Chromatic Infusion should be shared with allies unless you’re going for Circle of Spores, and even then your allies with Extra Attack will benefit more. Reactive Resistance is largely redundant with Absorb Elements, but it’s uniquely appealing for Circle of the Moon since you can use it while wild shaped.

2. Gift of the Gem DragonFToD: Great for Circle of the Moon because you can use Telekinetic Reprisal while Wild Shaped. Circle of Spores might also benefit, but you already get a way to use your Reaction every turn so there’s little need for this in your action economy.

3. MobilePHB: All of the effects apply while you’re in Wild Shape. Forms like Goat and Elephant which have a useful Charge or Pounce effect become immensely more useful when you can safely move away and set up for another round of charging. If you just need an escape mechanism, look for Wild Shape forms with Flyby like the Owl and you won’t need to bother with Mobile.

4. TelepathicTCoE: Tempting for Circle of the Moon, this nicely solves the issue of communication while using Wild Shape, and since you still get a Wisdom increase the feat’s cost is reduced.

As you can see, most of the items aren't even that rare. Per rpgbot: "In my opinion, anything which is part of your character’s body like claws, natural armor, or damage resistances doesn’t work while in Wild Shape. Anything your character knows, like proficiency in something, specific training granted by a feat like Mobile or Actor, or something inherent to your character’s personality, culture, or anything else non-physical like the Lucky feat or the halfling Lucky trait should still apply in Wild Shape. But, as in any case where there is a question, your Dungeon Master makes the final decision. Be sure to talk to your DM before making any decisions about your build."

I started the game as Moon druid intending to play around wildshape combat. Here is my feedback after 150 hours (still in act 3) and why I switched away:

- RP downsides: - People in towns will run away from you if you maintain bear form (same goes for summons) which is annoying
- You will lose your wild shape form when entering some scripted dialogue. If that was your last shape charge before a forced combat, that's an oopsie

- Build downsides: You get less spells and slots, but in return your wildshape loses impact in the final stages of act 2. Mobs will make you lose the form rather easily, and most of the times I found myself with 50% chances to hit while in owl bear form (and of course missing the majority of times). Not great. You are basically a glorified meat piñata. Sabertooth feels okayish but you trade too much health away and the regen bonus is not that great, not very relevant when you get it that late.
Most of the feats do not affect Wildshape. I've done my fair share of research and tons of videos and other sources state that Wildshape benefits from Unarmed combat gear/feats. Well that is currently not true, and idk if this is a feature or a bug. Only tavern brawler seems to be half-working (applies to chance to hit but no bonus damage). Also there should be a disclaimer somewhere stating that Claws and such are equivalent to Unarmed combat (or that they are not). I was pretty lost on that matter at the beginning. My druid is half-orc and not only you do not get the benefits from its racial passive, but you do not get ANY bonus since you do not get benefited from Unarmed build-style. This is obviously a problem. Are Claws a Weapon or Unarmed? If they are neither, where is the Claw gear?
My first feat pick as Moondruid was Mobile, and it just does not apply to it. Wildshape plains stats should be way better if you are not getting anything from your feats and gear.

- Gear downsides: You get almost nothing from gear. You can get that shapeshifter ring and that's pretty much it. All that unarmed combat gear does not apply to you in this current version of the game, at least damage-wise

- Tool-box downsides: You are specialized in wildshape but I found myself saving those almost always for combat. Cat is useful for the small holes but otherwise I never used wolf form (its just worse than bear form and on top of that you scare shadowheart with it). Badger? Never used it. Raven only used it once and that's only before i got summon familiar into my party comp. My point is you get all these so-called options and you end up just going Owl-bear every time and even then it's not that good.

In conclusion, this may be one of the best games I ever played, but sadly I picked a rather bad subclass for my first playthrough, please send some love to all the bear fans out there!

The bugs surrounding druids have severely traumatized my first real experience with a D&D like game. I spent many hours picking my race and class to play with a friend, but I have been severely left behind in terms of damage output and role-playing because of the issues with this class. Now that I've done more research into it, I can see why many loyal table top fans are disappointed with this classes implementation. It is so far away from what people would be used to. From the perspective of someone new to the franchise, I just want to give up.

Many of the problems have already been adequately discussed here, but I have to re-emphasize how bad it is. Here are my main gripes:

Druids cannot re-cast their concentration spells in Wild Shape. Spending a spell slot (which are valuable as they can only be recovered during long rest) for it to become really mediocre after I transform is just NOT FUN. Even if it is a spell that I don't even need to move (e.g. Spike Growth) I will most likely just lose it as druid's don't keep their AC when they transform.

Most of the feats simply do not work as advertised during Wild Shape and honestly infuriates me when I spent almost an hour deciding which one I actually wanted.

Some Wild Shapes feel completely useless when you level up higher and it sucks that they don't keep their value for longer than a couple of levels.

The Owlbear Crushing Flight skill is completely inaccessible if you play controller (yep that's me). Imagine my frustration when I discovered this after 20 hours.

I've also since learned that Primal Strike, the ability you get at level 6, is COMPLETELY BUGGED and does not work!

Guidance doesn't work when transformed, so I can't help my party with ability checks.

I was also quite tilted when I tried transforming into a Deep Rothe to break through the boulders to get to didn't work

I really wanted to play Moon Druid, but it clearly feels like an unfinished class and I can't continue to play it it's current state. Doing multiplayer it's rather embarassing how little I contribute to a fight as I've ended up basically playing a more supportive role and not wanting to transform at all and even that feels mediocre at best. Please give Druid the love and support they so desperately need.

I know your pain, it was my first class too.

My advice? Respec to something else. If you are the host, playing as a barbarian is very fun, you yell at people a lot and the texts are pure ham. That or any class with charisma

Alternatively, if you want to deal a lot of damage, take a fighter with tavern brawler and kill people with throwing spears, etc. That or Paladin for those juicy smites.

Spore druid is workable with the armor on Act 3 and the necromancy staff from Mystic Carrion, but that's about it. It's still just a way worse Wizard/Sorc/Warlock.

And Melee classes just blow both casters and druid/rangers away since they get so many power spikes with items and legendary weapons on top of getting so many extra attacks because of the way Haste works on top of it. Paralyze granting autocrit also makes it super easy for melee to do unholy amounts of damage with Crawler Venom or the paralysis grenades.

It's been feedback since EA that Fighters were blowing everything out of the water, and then they brought in monks and paladins to do even more burst while the other classes are a joke and barely have any dedicated legendary gear.

To add one more thing to the discussion, Druids can't use most items when they wildshape, which is fine in tabletop, as the itemization is not that important and some items were introduced by later books.

In Baldur's Gate 3, items are the way your characters can get stronger in the wildshape. Not only the number of items that the druid can use in Wildshape is terrible, you don't get most of them till ACT 3!!! In act 2 you are pretty much swimming in magical swag to gear your entire party, but Moon Druids in particular get nothing to help their forms.

Here are the 3 items, that actually wildshapes can use:

a) Shapeshifter's Boon Ring is an uncommon Ring that grants the wearer +1d4 on all checks made while shapeshifted or disguised.

b) Corvid Token is a very rare Amulet that increases jump distance and flying speed, grants the Polymorph: Dire Raven action, and grants Feather Fall while Polymorphed or Wild Shaped.

c) Armour of Moonbasking is a very rare Light Armour bought from Voiceless Penitent Bareki that bestows Temporary Hit Points and Armour Class to its wielder when they Wild Shape.

2 of these items appear only in ACT 3, at which point the game is already finished. Sure you can get plenty of items for typical caster druid, but Moon Druid? Not really.

And the corvid token is useless anyways, since by the time you get it in Act 3 you are using myrmidons, which have teleport and fly, so extra jump distance is more than worthless. You also don't need featherfall because the boots of mystra from the Underdark arcane tower give featherfall to the whole group with zero cooldown period, and the only time you use Featherfall is outside combat anyways, so you can unequip them after.

Even worse, the armors we do get for druid in Act 3 are TERRIBLE. Moonbasking bugs half the time and gives lower AC, so you gotta re-equip it.

The Spore Druid and Land Druid robes are even worse. The Spore druid one gives a pitiful advantage on necromancy spell, of which you only have Blight, pretty mediocre, since Spore druid was not given Dethrone or Circle of Death. On top of that, the robe gives a pitiful 1 extra damage on necromancy spells. You read that right, 1 extra damage on a necromancy spell, while martials are getting 4-6 extra damage on their gloves and boots left and right. Spores are terrible anyways, druid damage for all specs just doesn't scale past Act 2 at all. Our damage spellbook is terrible, Sunbeam does half the damage of a chain lightning or upcasted magic missiles. Thorn Wall is so bad. We don't get extra spell slots at lv12.

Land druid gets a useless robe that gives +1 spell DC and 4-6 HP healed any turn you are standing in plant growth terrain. What garbage. By act 3, enemies are multiattacking for 20-30 damage. You really think standing in plant growth for 4-6 healing is even noticeable? And that's the entire bonus.

The three single druid centric robes, and they all suck. Lower AC, pitiful and niche effects on a mediocre damage, mediocre utility, mediocre healing/buffing class.

THERE IS NOT A SINGLE DRUID LEGENDARY WEAPON. I REPEAT, NOT A SINGLE DRUID CENTRIC LEGENDARY OR VERY RARE STAFF IN THE GAME.

And while we're at it, Moon druids and Spore druids should get extra attack passives for their humanoid forms as well. They are literal minions outside wildshape, and spore druid doesn't even do any meaningful damage with the spores.

The helm that gives +1 wildshape charge from Act 3 has a worthless +1 Nature on it. WHY? Nature is by far the most useless stat in the game, I think the last check that happened with Nature was in the Myconid colony. There are certainly no Nature checks in the entirety of Act 3, and I can't recall any on Act 2, and you can't even obtain this hat in Act 2 anyways.

By the way, the hat wildshape charge does not work on Halsin. He does not get an extra charge. Just like how he does not get Call Lightning and Healing Word as actual spells in the spellbook, but garbage passive spells on the left pane that can't be upcasted, so healing word stuck as a lv1 spell for a worthless 1-7 healing, and a lv3 Call Lightning passive spell he can't upcast, so enjoy 17 damage Call Lightnings on Act 3 with enemy HP pools ranging from 80-90+ and boss pools at the 225-666 HP range.

EDIT: While we're on the topic of bad druid mechanics and weak class implementation. Spore druid's Symbiotic Entity, which consumes a wildshape charge, DOES NOT STACK WITH OTHER SOURCES OF TEMPORARY HP. That means that if you have the Tharciate Codex buff from Necromancy of Thay giving you 20 temporary HP, your Symbiotic Entity cast sets the bonus HP to 48. They do not stack.

In other words, you are only getting 28 bonus HP from your wildshape charge. Not only was Symbiotic Entity bad already by only giving about half the hp of most lv10+ wildshapes, but it doesn't even stack with other sources of temporary HP and loses value with any other necromantic buffs like False Life or Tharciate Codex.

Temporary HP is not supposed to stack. It's that way in the TT version.

Temporary HP is not supposed to stack. It's that way in the TT version.

This does nothing to address my statement that the way it's design highly devalues the Symbiotic Entity ability. Just because something exists a way in the TT does not make it good. Elves and half orcs borrow their OP racials relative to other races from the TT as well, and monks were garbo in the TT, which is why Larian changed them.

We are not in theology class, the rulebook is not a bible to be followed for a PC game, gameplay balance and design comes first.

Are special abilities gained during wild shape suppose to use the Charisma modifier when calculating the DC?

According to RPG division, it currently does and he recommends buffing charisma in your druid build because of it. Source

From the perspective of a beginner, this seems really unusual and not very intuitive.

I have 14 charisma on my druid mostly because I wanted him to be my face character and knew there was a 17 intellect helm in Act 1, so I could set int to 9 and str to 8 and have maxed wis, and both high dex and charisma. Doesn't surprise me there's yet one more handicap for wildshapes with a stat most druids won't have.

Tiefling racials also still continue to use charisma checks for their spells despite the ASI update, unlike Dragonborn who were updated to use their attack roll and the damage scales with level unlike the tiefling spells. Conjure flame blade is trash anyways since it unequips your main weapon, and that means the special effects from that item are removed, plus the flame blade scales like crap and upcasting seems to have no effect on it.

This sounds very false. Instead of just wildly conjecturing though, I tested it out. This moon druid has 20 WIS and 8 in other mental stats. I checked Dilo and Owlbear abilities, since some of those were explicitly mentioned in the video:

Those DC 17's match the spellcasting DC modified by WIS, definitely not modified by CHA. I checked some of the myrmidon abilities - the more spell-like ones were scaling off of WIS.

I also checked what happened if the druid had 20 CHA and 8 WIS. As expected, all the ability DC's were lower at DC 11. None were using the CHA modifier. That information from that video is definitely false.

Thanks for doing this!

I went back through his video and I think I found the issue. His WIS and CHA modifiers are both set to 16. The game probably selects your highest stat when wild shaped and because they are tied it picked CHA.

Just a guess, but it would be consistent with your findings.

That's why I did the second test with 8 WIS and 20 CHA - the game doesn't do that either. The only possibility I can think of is if he had something else (a class or a race) that used CHA as a spellcasting modifier. This would be weird, but sometimes the game does some weird things.

My first test was Druid 6/Wizard 1 with INT 10, WIS 14, CHA 18. Owlbear's Rupture had a DC of 11. That's right - it's used INT instead of WIS, even though WIS was higher. I have no good explanation for this.

My second test added in a level of Warlock. Now Owlbear's Rupture DC is 16 using CHA.

My third test was Druid 6/Bard 1 with INT 8, WIS 14, CHA 18. This one used CHA right out of the gate for the DC.

My fourth test added a level of Wizard. Back to low Rupture DC using INT.

My conclusion: multi-classing can do some really weird things to wildshape DCs. The order of the multi-class matters, which is bad. A multi-class can lower your wildshape ability DCs, which is bad. If I had to guess, the wildshape is using the last class tab in your spellbook view to determine the DC it's going to use. I don't know if you can have a racial tab in that view, but if so and if it has a spellcasting DC on it, your wildshape might use that one. Just a lot of really weird behavior.

Funny thing is, Mods are already working on fixing the balance, to make three druid subclasses different from one another. Perhaps Larian should take a look at popular mods on Nexus, hmm?

https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1148

Would install that in a heartbeat if installing BG3 mods wasn't so convoluted and likely to corrupt saves or be a pain to update for patch releases/conflicts with other mods.

Larian should just take a look at that mod and implement those changes point for point. The simpler fix would be to allow equipment bonuses to work through wildshape, and make unarmed monk gear attack bonuses apply to wildshapes. Make Wildshapes inherit your saving throws if not AC as well. Owlbear Rage should not fear allies. Make raven/cat/badger forms utility forms that don't eat wildshape charges.

Spore druid symbiotic entity HP bonus needs to stack with other temporary hit point sources, and their spore ability damage needs better scaling and increases, while also not damaging neutral NPC's since you can't turn off the spore clouds at will. Give humanoid moon and spore druids the extra attacks the wildshapes get.

Shillelagh should work with all weapons you have proficiency with. Improve druid cantrip damage, especially Thorn Whip, and give Land druids Chain Lightning, Spore druids Dethrone and Circle of Death, and Moon druids the improve Lunar Mend (it will heal with +WIS modifier and should also cleanse poison/bleeding) and being able to cast and recast concentration spells while wildshaped.

The main things Moon Druid needs to be more competitive with other classes are:

- Concentration spells need to be usable in Wildshape form. This is RAW on the tabletop and a major component in how Moon Druid plays. We should be able to turn into a Dire Raven and fly around dropping lightning on people or blasting them with the Sun.

- Any gear that applies a passive effect (like AC bonuses, To Hit bonuses, etc.) should carry over to Wildshape as it does on the tabletop. Right now apparently the Ring of Protection Mol gives you applies in Wildshape but not the Cloak of Protection, which is just inconsistent and confusing. Additionally, Wildshape claws and teeth should fully count as unarmed strikes so druids and monks can share gear, increasing the pool available to Moon Druids. Gear is just too important in BG3 to leave Moon Druids out of it almost entirely. Similarly, Tavern Brawler should give both benefits to Wildshape, not just half the feat.

- Speaking of feats, a lot more needs to apply in Wildshape. There's no reason feats like Athlete, Charger, Mobile, Sentinel, etc. shouldn't work in Wildshape. They do on the tabletop, and adding more functional feats will let Moon Druids have some level of build diversity.

- Class features also need to be usable in Wildshape. Barbarian Rage is the biggest offender since Bearbarian is such a common multiclass combo. Action Surge, Second Wind, Unarmed Defense, and many other features should be functional in Wildshape.

- Why do druids lose Shove when they Wildshape? Are you telling me a massive owlbear can't push people around?

- The gear that is actually designed for Moon Druid needs to actually work. The Shapeshifter hat only sometimes gives an extra Wildshape use, and the Moonbasking chest piece sometimes doesn't apply its AC or temp HP bonuses either.

True, Druids being able to use concentration spells while wildshaped is a major component of the class, especially since Lunar Mend sucks as healing.

RAW 5e it doesn’t work. Most magic items don’t work in wildshape, because they meld into a new form. However, there are exceptions like Belt of Giant Strength.

Unfortunately BaldursGate3 places a ton of focus on magic items and itemization, which druids suffer from the most. It’s still a powerful class, but it hits it peak soon, while martials get +3 weapons, helmets, rings, etc.


The whole multiclass is broken and many features, race and class dont work, which is a shame. It just means as of right now there is no reason to Multiclass. Druids need a lot of work.


Seems like an oversight to me too. I can grapple as a bear in wildshape or shove, why can't I do so in BG3?


That and more than a grand total of 3 magic items Moon Druid can use.

Compare the amount of equipment that was designed specifically for monks to the amount of equipment designed specifically for druids.

It is pretty obvious one class got a lot more love than the other (with the outcome that monks are OP af).

However I play a multiclass moon druid spellcaster and they can pretty much do everything other spellcasters can, with an added feature that they can quickly transform if something comes in melee range that they need to deal with or get away from. They aren't optimal, but still functional and useful.

Of all the criticisms of moon druid, the lack of itemization is the one that I understand the least.

Shift and in the case of elementals, owlbear and sabretooth, a decently featured form.
Shift out and be dressed as a nearly caster (I usually give Halsin all my cold-related gear to drop some bolstered ice storms.

Yes, our items need to work. Allowing repositioned spells to keep working is needed. But there's a lot you can do with a druid or two, and espeically three (if you're Tav is also a druid)

In normal 5e, that’s not a big problem. All classes, except artificer, can only attune to 3 magic items. It means that a high level fighter In 5e tabletop gets something like this: +3 weapon, +3 armour, +3 shield + 3 attuned items like: belt of giant strength, periapt of wound closure, etc.

In BG3 you get way more magic items than that and no restrictions: 2 rings, cloak, gloves, boots, helmets, etc.

A fully geared up high level fighter, paladin and barbarian can overshadow most classes In damage output, maybe with the exception of sorcerer.

Druids were obviously buffed to compensate, as even Moon Druid progression is way stronger. Owlbear is a monster in combat and Fire Elemental Myrmiddon is something a level 14 moon druid should be able to turn into, not level 10, where they normally get normal fire elemental.

This helps close the gap, but doesn’t fix other inherent issues: broken multiclassing, conversations skipping you due to wildshape, not being able to cast concentration spells you used prior to wildshape, Moon Druid being weaker than other 2 classes, with very few exclusive forms, etc

It's not just that. A core feature of RPG's is feeling the high of gear upgrades. As a moon druid, the gear upgrades will be turned off most of the time, so you basically spend the entire game not benefiting from one of the core pillars of an RPG gameplay, the itemization. Itemization is even build-changing, but this is not the case for moon druids. Their wildshapes play the same no matter what, and since the balance between the wildshapes and their scaling is pretty bad, you'll just sit in Owlbear or Fire Myrmidon the entire game. Panther, Sabertooth, Raptor are all pretty worthless next to an owlbear who can aoe leap and prone targets to increase hit rates on them on top of doing aoe damage. Do you think a measly 2 AC shred single target ability with a 65% hit chance is gonna compete with that? No.

Same goes for Myrmidon. Maybe Earth Myrmidon competes with Fire since its attacks suffer less from resistances on average and it has a knockdown component, but water and air myrmidons are pretty mediocre, especially water with its multimissile splash icicles which do friendly fire damage and have low hit rates for mediocre damage, and air myrmidons just being worse than earth and fire. Earth give durability, fire brings the raw damage. And it's even more important to use the optimal myrmidon because they made myrmidon wildshape for some reason cost DOUBLE the amount of Wildshape charges despite not being double the amount of output of, say, an owlbear.

That's actually part of the class. You use 2 wildshape charges to turn into an elemental, per tabletop. All druids rarely benefit from magic items, while wildshaped. The two I can think of the top of my head are the belt of giant strength and a barrier Tatoo.

Itemization is important in an RPG, not denying that, but dnd 5e places limit on the number of magic items you can use at the same time. Under tabletop rules druids not benefitting from magic items in wildshape is balanced by restrictions and other factors. A level 6 samurai Archer can hit for about 80 damage with Sharpshooter and elven accuracy.

Moon Druid at that level gets CR 2 creatures per short rest, which are weaker but provide good protection for your low AC druid. And at that level you can use spells like conjure animals and get 8 wolves. So druids in 5e are considered one of the strongest classes overall, because they are a full caster that can also go rumble in melee.

However, BG3 tossess it all out of the window. Martials get a load of magic items and some broken interactions like Tawern brawler, while Moon Druids get a grand total of 3 magic items in the whole game, 2 in ACT 3 alone. Sure Myrmiddons are cool, but when a paladin can get a guaranted crit and smite with divine smite and level 3 smite at the same time, you can see the problem.

Yup, it's a PC RPG, the items make for night and day, if it had stuck to tabletop rules it would have been a very boring experience in terms of progression. I sure know I prefer a +2 shield with reflective shell or other skill or a +perception check than a bland +3 shield even if the extra 1 AC will probably be better than those two in terms of raw stats. But the lack of items working for druids really sucks.

And the ones that ARE there are undertuned garbage. Even Moonbasking is overrated, it merely tries to make up for natively low AC on forms by adding +2 AC and saving throws on them, but by that point in Act 3 Helldusk armor is granting other classes 24-25 AC, crit immunities, a scorching ray equivalent, and a misty step with an aoe landing.

Spore druid armor and Land are the worst by far. +1 Spell DC and a pathetic +1 necrotic damage to necromancy spells (for reference, martials get a 1d6 on gloves and other casters with dribbles clown get a 1d8) and some weak once per long rest spore clouds. By Act 3 I'm rolling in speed potions, a Haste spore cloud that only lasts 1 turn and can also benefit any entity entering it is hardly anything to write home about. Land druid is the worst by far, 1 spell DC and plant growth heals you for 4 health per turn in plant growth.

Really? 4 health in act 3? My character HP pool is 100-135+ 30 temp HP, and enemies are multiattacking for 30-40 damage, and you think 4 hp per turn standing on plant growth is an appreciable effect?

Druid armor and weapons are so bad. Same for Faithwarden staff in Act 1. Might be workable if entangling vines wasn't a garbage spell crippled by a concentration requirement with high fail rates due to a STR save, but here we are, it costs a spell slot and is completely underbudget on top of being a concentration spell. People call druids full casters, but their spell book is so bad, in Act 1 and early 2 Moonbeam and Call Lightning may seem decent, but they fall off a cliff in scaling by Act 3 where mobs have 90+ HP and the spells even upcasted are still doing 30 damage at best, on average mostly 24 damage for lv5+ spell slots. Sun Beam is pretty bad, the blind does not make up for it. And since druids have no way to remove friendly fire from aoe spells like wizards and sorcs can, their aoe spells become highly inefficient as you need to affect less targets if you don't want to splash your allies.

Owlbear's amazing until you're in small spaces, which is when I love sabretooth.

I'd like to suggest maybe we're painting is a bit blacker than it is. My "default" playstyle here is three druids (at least one moon, usually one level of wizard, and another or rogue) and a cleric and you've options for days.

My favorite moment is the prison break sequence where the entire toolkit comes in handy (summons, various land druid configurations, utility shifting, longstrider etc.) within six turns. The build diversity is staggering.

That said, I don't miss the elemental forms as I almost never use them -- I'd much more happily have access to fewer forms if they were all fleshed out as well as owlbear and maybe sabretooth. And the shapeshift items working. But I'm getting a big "grass is greener" vibe and it overshadows what druids do so well -- it's easily my favorite version of them short of Pillars of Eternity.

There's a lot of good feedback here, I'd just like to add my perspective on one thing: cutscenes and wildshape.

I'm really glad that Larian realized that it would be very frustrating to lose charges just because you want to talk to an NPC instead of mauling it. Thus, for cutscenes, the player is switched back to humanoid form and then at the end of cutscene back to wildshape free of charge.

The problem is that this isn't consistent at all - sometimes you stay in wildshape form for a very important conversation such as .

It is also frustrating that many times the avatar will be ignored for conversation purposes, while NPCs simply choose to speak to whatever companion is closest.

My suggestion is to try and make a general rule that all discussions are directed towards the Avatar (as they usually do) and that you enter humanoid mode for every dialogue with a non-animal being (is it RAW that bears can talk to snakes? I don't recall it being that way...)

What I did as DM for a player that was a druid and played a Ghostwise Halfling was to allow him to use his telepathy to talk while in wildshape. In the same spirit, another suggestion could be adding a "Potion of Common Speaking"

PS: Tav in humanoid form sometimes has comments about things (most of the times you pass a passive religion / history / investigation check or so on), but they don't happen while wildshape. I can't see why not, really. We'll just pretend it's inner monologue

I think the game should remove wild shape charges entirely from the Moon Druid. Just give them the ability to wild shape at will as an action, that's it.

That's broken. Permament Owlbear, no cooldown, no limits? That's a level 20 feature.

You want a character that basically has got infinite health. TERRIBLE IDEA.

Just do like the mod does and remove the wildshape charge cost off utility forms like raven, cat, and badger. Should also decrease the cost of myrmidons to 1 unless you plan to buff them to be worth 2 wildshape charges.

All combat forms should get proper scaling to lv12 and the difference in choosing each one should be what utility skill from a form you want.

I just recently started playing a druid and ranger combo (two custom characters) as a second play through and ran into the wildshape problem. I was playing on balance difficulty and not sure if it changes for tactician but, these are the things that I ran into so far.

Cleric: War Domain War Priest works!
Life Domain extra passive does not
Light Domain Warding Flare reaction does not
Tempest Domain Wrath of the Storm reactions do not

Barbarian: Unarmored Defense works!
Rage does not

Fighter: Second Wind does not
Fighting Style - Dueling does not
Fighting Style - Defense works!

Feats: Tavern Brawler - Works! But only with attack.
Savage Attacker - Get text that there was a reroll but does not show the actual reroll in combat log (Icon with hover over text that can be opened)

Illithid Powers: Favorable Beginnings - Works!

Halfling: Halfling Luck Works!
Naturally Stealthy Works!

I've read multiple times that rage worked on this thread so I'll repost after doing testing on tactician. Most of my testing was done on a level 3 Dragonborn and did some on my level 7 Halfling also. Other class actions do not show up nor seem to be useable along with reactions getting shut off but still showing on the top right of the actionbar for the icon. Feats are a hit or miss and mostly its just passives from other classes that work for example war priest cleric level 1 passive.

Edit* Couple other things most is tested on bear form, don't know if that makes a difference and off the top of my head I can't remember but level 4 or 5 attacks for wild shape damage goes up but isn't mentioned.

I've tried to check via videos and the wiki but haven't found the answer - do the Myrmidon forms have any resistances and immunities?

Also the normal wildshape forms seem to gain a damage buff at certain levels to their attacks - do the Myrmidons also gain that buff??

Nope, no resistances. the increase of damage rolls for wildshapes are at set levels and since you get myrmidons at 10, by lv12 their damage roll is not upgraded, just their HP.

Although if you're going for HP/tanking, 2 owlbears net you like 180 hp with 2 wildshape charges, whereas the myrmidon only nets you ~98 hp for 2 wildshape charges, and their damage is not that much higher than owlbear, plus owlbear always gets one crushing leap for damage+prone to buff your follow up attack roll hit rates. And when they fix wild strikes to actually work and ignore physical resistances, owlbear will be all the better as myrmidons do hybrid elemental damage and are subject to elemental resistance rules on their elemental damage type.

If they fix Fire Myrmidon haste to not automatically cancel on the same turn it's used and send you into lethargy after 1 attack, fire myrmidon may still be our best damage form, but not by that much, and in terms of crowd control and overall survival contribution owlbear is still the best form by far. Myrmidon only starts to shine when you need a ton of movement beyond crushing leap, as myrmidons have a teleport+ fly so they can cover more ground, but these instances are rare. I would say maybe when killing Aunt Ethel the second time, you use fire myrmidon to take out 2 mushrooms in 1 turn, and maybe trying to save the Gondians in Steelwatch Foundry where you go Air Myrmidon for the extra damage on the Steelwatch Knights since they are vulnerable to lightning. But even there you probably prefer owlbear to aoe prone the enemies so they don't hit the Gondians and just give Gale a potion of speed plus arcane battery from a staff to get off 2 chain lightnings and that's probably enough to fry two groups of adds plus one steelwatch knight, leaving only another steelwatch knight and the group of enemies by the ramp.

I disagree.

Although I would add a *lethargy* effect on the character after being forced out of wildshape by taking too much damage.

It's really a matter of having a little bit of vision and thinking outside of the box for solutions.

Then what's a difference between having limited wildshapes and losing a whole turn like Haste's lethargy?

I agree that Moon Druid should be able to turn into cat and such without using a wildshape charge, but your idea does not seem to consider everything else.

PER BG3.wiki:

Consumed by exhaustion in the aftermath of Haste
Can't move or take Action Icon.png Actions, Bonus Action Icon.png Bonus Actions, or Reaction Icon.png Reactions.
Duration Icons.png Duration: 1 turn

Sure, you can't take reactions, but druids don't get access to spells like Shield Or Absorb Elements in this game, so you are not losing much. To top it off, you can easily get at least 19 AC by that point.

DEX +2, Half Plate, Shield and 19 AC. That's plenty to keep you alive for the majority of acts 1 and 2.

On top of that, a party full of druids could do anything in the game. Need supplies? GOODBERRY (it's also a great healing spell when it comes to early spell slots).

Need to fight? Change into owlbears and murder everyone.

Low on hp? NO PROBLEM. Wildshape back and forth for full hp.

Get knocked out? Someone casts a sanctuary, get a good AC, turn invisible, etc.

However, losing a turn is devestating for anyone, especially for player characters. Don't believe me? Toss Hypnotic Pattern into goblin's camp and watch how they can't do anything, while you slaughter them.

To make matters worse, Larian homebrewed certain rules, so when get get to 0 hp, you lose an entire turn. At least Moon Druids can use Bonus Action to wildshape, everyone else is screwed.

What I would do is give Moon Druids in particular scaling Wildshape, based on your proficiency bonus. So at level 5 it's 3 and at level 9 it's 4. That way you can turn into animals plenty of times, while still letting other druids have their niche.

Unlimited Wildshape is still OP, unless you are level 20.

Tell us you don't know or understand D&D without telling us. But I'm pretty sure unlimited bonus action 120 HP heals are just "visionary" to people nowadays.

Let's not derail the feedback thread with passive aggression over mere disagreements. Just state why you disagree and get on with it. We can all at least agree moon druid needs changes, from quality of life like dialogue selection and face character prioritization/cutscenes to more combat and itemization related ones.

There is feedback to perceived problems and then there is "why not use a chainsaw to get the honey out of the beehive" level of feedback.


As for what they can do to make Moon Druids better - there is a thing called Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition where Circle of the Moon Druids are in the top 5 of classes. Maybe take a look at that one? It's been out for 9 years now and has spent BILLIONS of hours in playtesting.

We could start by fixing ability bugs, adding Attunement, coding Rings and a bunch of other items to work while in Wild Shape and giving Elementals their Resitances back.

Ultimately Larian will sift through here or some community rep compiling feedback for them, and they'll determine unlimited wildshapes may not be what they think of as balanced. But what they will not pick back up is snark. 5e is there, but what's not is the sheer amount of magic powerful items, which drags us behind, and I doubt people would be happy if they stripped those items away instead of more practical solutions like adapting monk gear to work with wildshapes by making our unarmed attacks count for the monk gear that enhances unarmed attacks, allow amulet/ring/armor effects including crit immunity from baldur's helm or adamantine gear to work while wildshaped. Probably would help to remove concentration from half the druid spell book and make recast or spellcasting available while wildshaped.

Healing spells also need to be improved outside life domain, throwing potions should not be more efficient healing.

My suggestion was unlimited wildshapes for the moon druid as an action, followed by a lethargic condition after coming out of the wildshape, or being forced out of the wildshape.

Meaning, if a druid with, say, 50 hp wildshaped into a form with, say, 50 hp, and then that form got bashed in combat and went down to 0 hp, then the druid would go back to regular form, with lethargy. Meaning any attacks coming in against the druid would come out of the druid's personal hit points.

Let's say the druid survives that lethargy round and only loses 20 hit points, leaving them with 30. Then the druid wildshapes again. When the druid comes out of this second wildshape they still only have 30 hit points, which could go lower if attacked, and so on.

There would be no infinite healing.

Just unlimited wildshapes buffered by a pretty rough condition between. The lethargy wouldn't be bad outside of combat, but in combat, it would act as a balance. The unlimited wildshapes would be a big draw to the class, and the lethargy would be a hefty consideration.

It's not a terrible idea. And it also makes the class stand out quite a bit from the Land Druid.

The problem is that even if it's not a heal, it's an infinite stalling shield practically speaking.

I don't want druids to just be damage sponges, which moon druids already are. I want druids to have subspec that let them specialize and excel at their specialized build. Whether as a martial analogue with utility akin to a paladin as a moon druid, to proper casters to compete with wizards and sorcs as spore and land druids.

As the game stand, you don't need huge health sponges anyways, just damage. My Gale did not die a single time in a 140 hour playthrough as a wizard. He just had misty step and mirror images, plus shadowheart heals and warding bond.

And while we're on the topic of quality of life, druid wildshapes should be able to interact with objects, namely the Banite detonation crystals and Gortash's mines. You should be able to throw in wildshapes or just rename the throw ability to Knock, imagine you're batting something at opponents with your paws.

Another interesting option would be unlimited wildshapes, but the particular form of wildshape doesn't heal between wildshapes. Meaning, if you wildshaped into a bear with 30 hit points and lost ten hit points before coming out of wildshape... next time you went into the bear wildshape, it would still only have 20 hit points left, until it healed.

So you could switch between all your wildshapes as much as you wanted to, but none of them would auto-heal between switches. Although, they could get short and long rest benefits.

Hello everyone, please explain why when you multiclass 11 druid/1 monk in wild form -AC and + AC at the same time

Bugs, same with magic items not working after Wildshape. Moon Druid suffers a lot from this, it's especially glaring when your character is skipped in dialogue due to being Wildshaped.


It reminds me a bit of a spell 'Shapechange', here is it's description. Keep in mind, that's a level 9 spell, aka a character needs level 17 to be able to cast it:

"You assume the form of a different creature for the duration. The new form can be of any creature with a challenge rating equal to your level or lower. The creature can't be a construct or an undead, and you must have seen the sort of creature at least once. You transform into an average example of that creature, one without any class levels or the Spellcasting trait.

Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the chosen creature, though you retain your alignment and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. You also retain all of your skill and saving throw proficiencies, in addition to gaining those of the creature. If the creature has the same proficiency as you and the bonus listed in its statistics is higher than yours, use the creature's bonus in place of yours. You can't use any legendary actions or lair actions of the new form.

You assume the hit points and Hit Dice of the new form. When you revert to your normal form, you return to the number of hit points you had before you transformed. If you revert as a result of dropping to 0 hit points, any excess damage carries over to your normal form. As long as the excess damage doesn't reduce your normal form to 0 hit points, you aren't knocked unconscious.

You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them, provided that your new form is physically capable of doing so. You can't use any special senses you have (for example, darkvision) unless your new form also has that sense. You can only speak if the creature can normally speak.

When you transform, you choose whether your equipment falls to the ground, merges into the new form, or is worn by it. Worn equipment functions as normal. The DM determines whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment, based on the creature's shape and size. Your equipment doesn't change shape or size to match the new form, and any equipment that the new form can't wear must either fall to the ground or merge into your new form. Equipment that merges has no effect in that state.

During this spell's duration, you can use your action to assume a different form following the same restrictions and rules for the original form, with one exception: if your new form has more hit points than your current one, your hit points remain at their current value."

And I have to ask what is the point of it? Switching between Wildshapes that is? Worse still sabertooth tiger has got regen, so you could switch between forms all the time and heal of any damage.

Not losing charges in dialogue worked in EA, not sure why it isn't here in the full release.

Got the same with level 1 barb. defense passive if I remember correctly. Which totalled to a +1 to AC for wild shape. Been doing a test to see if there was a dif. between balanced and tactican but doesn't look like it. I'll probably post my findings later.

I just really really really want the Primal Strike bug to be fixed before I make any suggestions for Moon Druid balance. The wild shape forms are largely used for tanking/damage in combat, and having their damage being negatively affected by this bug is very unfortunate.

I suspect it must be a hard bug for Larian to fix, considering how long it has taken them to address it (relative to other issues they have patched thus far).

Monks receive a very similar mechanic at lvl 6 (Ki-Empowered Strikes) where their unarmed attacks will count as magical when attacking enemies with physical damage resistances:

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Ki-Empowered_Strikes

I haven't seen any reports of this mechanic being bugged on Monks?

Otherwise I don't think Moon Druid is really in that bad of a spot.

I tried moon druid and was very disappointed.
My friend went spore druid and it was mostly a gimmick.

But also very disappointed with Druid in general as far as BG3 goes.
In every RPG game i played Druids were always a "problematic" class, especially the shape shifting, but BG3 really takes the throne when it comes to how unimpressive and janky the class is.

Its like every aspect of the class is fighting against itself and trying to limit its own potential.

Another aspect where druid gets screwed in feats is Polearm master. The bonus hit with your quarterstaff neither benefits from Shillelagh nor the extra necrotic damage from symbiotic entity. It's virtually 4 extra damage for a bonus action use as a feat, it's so horrendously bad.

Yes and no. It's true that majority of druid circles are primarily casters, be it land, spore, wildfire, etc.

However, saying that Moon Druid is in animal form all the time is a bit missleading. On levels 2-4 they are probably the strongest class in game, due to having basically tripple hitpoints and spells on top of that. Their spells at that level are pretty bad though (many of which don't work in BG3 like the Moonbeam). And their progression really falls of after level 5 up to 9. At that point martials get double attack, smites, extra feats like Sharpshooter, etc. At that point, casting spells and then maybe thinking of Wild Shape is pretty standard. Case in point, Conjure Animals. It lets you summon 8 wolves, which are far better than wildshaping into a bear or something. Even at level 6 turning into CR 2 creature isn't that important. And since Druids get a ton of concentration spells, they often end up with plenty of spell slots with no way to use them, outside of maybe Lunar Mend, which is objectively worse than healing word or cure wounds. Still conjuring a small army and then running away from enemies is a valid strategy for Moon Druid. And at level 8, you can cast 'Call Lighting' turn into a bird and stay out of enemy's range, dealing damage to them from distance.

In fact, once you reach level 7, you can cast Polymorph at your ally and turn them into a Giant Ape, which is amazing due to high damage, high hitpoints, etc. However, you shouldn't be casting on yourself, as its worse than Wildshape in many ways. Your saving throws, proficiencies, etc don't carry over in polymorph. You can also use spells like Erupting Earth to deal damage and create difficult terrain, etc. As you get more levels, your wildshapes are left behind, while your spellcasting only gets stronger. Of course make no mistake, it still serves purpose, as Wildshaping often allows you to survive major damage, as Druids are known for their less-than-average AC.

That all changes at level 10. You can turn into a CR 5 elemental with resistance to all non-magical damage. That's incredible. To put into perspective out of about 2000 monsters in DND, that are not NPCs, only about 60 of them have got magical weapons, that's about 3% of all the monsters. So you can cast powerful spells, while being incredibly hard to damage and being able to fight in melee.

However, BG 3 doesn't let you do that for several reasons:

-PHB only, for the most part. Druids with only the basic book are really gimped by the lack of good spells. They don't get Absorb Elements, Summons Beasts, Erupting Earth, etc. Most of their spells there are concentrations and regardless of which subclass you take, your basic spells barely matter. That's what makes land, spores, wildfire competitive. They get extra spells Moon Druids don't.
-Primal Strike is bugged. It has been bugged since release and still wasn't fixed. Act 2 really hurts Moon Druids because of that.
-Many interactions, class features, feats don't work in wildshape or weirdly, there is a whole list on reddit.
-Magic weapons are basically everywhere. All gith have got magic weapons, later enemies have got magic weapons, etc.
-ALL Elementals don't have resistance to non-magical damage, which would still suck due to reason above.
-Enemies having immunity/resitance to physical damage in general. There is a boss in Act 2 that is completely immune to ALL physical damage, no exception.
-Due to massive power creep, Larian buffed wildshape to compensate (owlbear at 6, Myrmiddons at 10). However, Moon Druids don't get almost any items that work (as per RAW, with few exceptions), while Martials can hit like 19 times in one turn with fully Min Maxed build.
-Fixing Moon Druid isn't a matter of fixing just 'Primal Strike' the whole game is so full of broken magic items, combinations, etc that makes most casters a bit weak, with the exception of Sorcerers due to their Metamagic.

Overpowered Build number 1

TLDR: Moon Druids need more than just some bug fixes to be competitive.

One thing I would suggest is to also allow a moondruid to wild shape as a reaction when hit points hit zero if wild shape charges are left. With that I think the rest is fine. This is a powerful option to soak up some hit points without taking a knee and if you make it through the turn, you can either turn back or continue in the new form.

So, patch 3 came along, Moon Druids can now fight back from level 6 and beyond! ... And they are still kind of meh, to be perfectly honest.

Glad to see that the issues seems to be fixed, along with the other thing, where item bonuses disappeared after wildshape, forcing you to re-equip the items constantly.

Unfortunately, that's only part of the problem solved. I haven't seen anything regarding being able to cast concentration spells in wildshape, if cast prior to wildshape.

Multiclassing and feats are still a bit broken, which means you are better off going basically full moon druid than multiclassing.

We really need more items for druids, moon especially. Hell, I wouldn't mind tying exclusive wildshapes or stronger forms to magic items!

For example finding legendary ring, that lets you turn you a T-Rex (CR 8 beast), using a single charge of wildshape, which could recharge on short or long rest.

A magical tatoo, like the one's from Tasha, which boost druid's armour and work for forms in wildshape, often improving their AC.

Making Monk Gear actually work for certain wildshapes, not all of them, but maybe some of them, like bracers.

The itemization is way too weak for Moon Druid, who only brings hitpoints to the fight and in later parts of ACT 2 and 3, your HP will be gone quite soon.

There is a reason, why Sorcerer and most martials are top of the game, while Moon Druid and Land to an extent are left behind. At least Spores has got an army full of zombies.

Surprised they fixed something for druids on last patch, must of missed it when i breezed through the notes.

Edit* Holy crap this is my 1k post.

My first play through after full release was a wildheart barbarian and moon druid (Bearbarian). while I would have liked to enter barbarian rage in wildshape, I was happy I could at least maintain one I started before wildshaping. the extra deep hp pool and resistance to all damage but psychic was pretty effective, also effectively doubled the effectiveness of lunar mend (heal for +10 they need to do 20 dmg to get me back to where I was).

Are you guys really getting wrecked as Moon Druids? Is it so weak that it constantly dies in most encounters?

I understand the want for more Moon Druid specific items, and that other classes have ridiculously powerful (frankly OP at times) items. But I have a main Moon Druid and playing on Tactician and I haven't once said to myself that the class is weak. I am in the middle of Act 3, and played through all the annoying bugs (Primal Strike not working, NPCs running away from my Wild Shape or summons, etc). Frankly I never ran into an encounter that was so challenging that I thought the class was weak.

I guess if you compare it to other classes, then yeah the itemization could use some more work to make it more powerful. Plus I would like to see more Moon Druid items earlier in game versus only in Act 3. But I just don't feel like it's in *that* bad of a spot, especially with the recent patch. It's still a very good Jack of All Trades class between tanking and control, even damage with fire Myrmidon form. It call fill a lot of different party slots. It may not be the absolute best choice if you want a 100% steamrolling party, but personally I don't care about that. Maybe you do and that's fine too. For me, it is still viable as a class and more than capable of completing everything the game has thrown at it thus far.

Don't get me wrong--I would be happy to see more improvements, especially being able to use concentration spells after transforming (i.e. moon beam, call lightening, heath metal, etc). AFAIK the only concentration spell you can continue using is flame sphere, but that seems to be because its an actual summon that gets attached to your character's portrait.

Otherwise I think this latest patch put the class in a much better spot.

Now its working at least for me i could hit the werewolfs. Previously I did 0 dmg.
I dont know i think now it's in a really good shape. Items are still working after changing back to humanoid form.
I am suggesting to you to stack ac to the sky I am running around 31 Armour class as a pure druid. Mostly nothing can hit me . After they beated me I just cast spells use the summons. Just ignore the those shape shifter items and no one will beat you. For feats I used tavern brawler + constitution resilient + constitution and medium armor master and I used some helm or shield to protect my self from critical hits. I used the potion what gived me advantage on constitution saves.
I was able to solo with the new patch Act 3.
Before that I could not do it normally. I had a lot of problems. Could not do damage to magic weapon resistant and immune creatures like werewolf. And I died after returning to human form cuz the item what I had equiped was not functioning. So I lost like 4 armor class and immune to critical.

The main problem is that ppl are following youtube guidelines.
And playing with shity armor class. Of course they will die all the time.

I'm not sure AC works that way with wild shape? When I played this morning I checked Halsin's AC in elf form vs wild shape, and they were definitely very different. Since Dex changes according to the animal, it wouldn't be the same. I think his elf AC was 21, and then his sabretooth wild shape was 16? Will need to double check though, as well as see what's contributing to his AC when he's in a particular wild shape.

EDIT: Yup I just checked. The wild shape AC is based solely on the Dex of the wild shape. So even though Hal has 18 Dex as an elf (due to Gloves of Dexterity, which gives him a 21 AC altogether) his Dex drops as a sabre kitty, and so does his AC (resulting in a paltry 13 AC). His armour doesn't impact his AC at all when in wild shape, which includes armour effects. It would be interesting to know whether a Dex elixir would have any effect on his wild shape, but I don't remember coming across one yet. Will have to check with a strength elixir to see if it carries through to the wild shape strength. [Checked: it does carry through.]

EDIT 2: I thought that perhaps I could cast Mage Armour on Hal, since his armour has no effect on his AC when he's in wild shape, but it won't cast because he "Can't have armour equipped". So that's somewhat problematic. Not sure if anyone else has picked up on that before.

I tell you what will improve wild shape if you want.
But you complain was about moon druid and not about wild shape.
So for wildshape this bonuses will work and will ad some endurance. Buffs: haste / shield of faith / warding bond/ mirror image.
Class bonuses : defenseive figthing style (figthers class) / barbarian constitution ( it will use the armor of your animal forms constitution) / monk wisdom bonus but will use wisdom and the wisdom you can push to 22 so that means +6 armor but it also means that you cannot wear any armor or helmet boots gloves shield.
Items there is an armor that gives so called moonbasking +2 armor when you wild shape.
There is a ring that gives you +1 armor if you are in darkness or darker area.

Feats and bonuses : there is a way to get +2 dexterity from a certain mirror that can give +1 to armor class for wildshape, and the dual wield feat gives +1 armor class to wild shape as well.

So the maximum armor class that you can add for short amount of time is if all the buffs are on your self +1 from figther +1 from dual wield + 1 from dexterity ( mirror) +1 from darkness + 2 from moonbasking=6 and on top of this haste + shield of faith +4 and mirror image +9.
If you choose eath myrmidon you can get +2 more. It will net you 39 ac no one can hit that.
I think it's manage for 10 turns around 30 armor class as an earth myrmidon.
I hope this will help you. It's a litte bit messy how I wrote it down.

Look originaly what I wanted to say that ppl what to treat moon druid like diablo 4 druid. And all guides are building on that fantasy. The the wild shape is your main to go.
The way I played was simple I stacked up the most armor class what I could just manage on the druid putted on my self haste or shield spell .
The shield spell I get from shar armor the haste from the bow. Then I shaped I had correct amount of con savings and advantage from the potion.
To maintain my concentration.
I used healing potions and berries to last as long as I just can in bear/ owlbear / and earth myrmidon form. When I got beated down I shaped again. I got beated again I casted darkness and I started to use spells summons.


After the new patch I never had any issues in act 2 and 3.
Act 1 is challenging a little bit but I know when are the easy monster. After reaching lvl 4-5 any enemy is doomed.
The only difficulty you can have if you are not jump attacking Grym.

I had no problem soloing Act 1-2 but before patch I had a huge problem at act 3 because attack as shifted dont counted magical.
There a still 1 bug with moon druid. Owlbear rage is disappears after 1 turn even if you don't get hit.

I have already left a link to a Wildshape mod, but here it is again. You want Moon Druids different and stronger? Use this as a basis: https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1148

Making other druids wildshape basically equal to Moon was a massive mistake, that gutted the subclass, while making others stronger.

Nah I don't like it.
Moon druid dragon form....
I Ike the fix for barbarian multiclassing. But one of the forms are make no sense at all. For example werewolf bulette dragon. Also there is no hope for no pc Mac players.
PS5 cloud gaming dosnt support modds..
I gues after 20 times I played the game I will have most of the achievements except animal abuse and tentacle sex I don't even know why is this an achievement . I whould like to try mods but if it will be not on steam it's hopeless.

By the way I have a theory. What if Halsin isn't a shapeshifter elf druid. What if he is a shapeshifting bear disgused as an elf.
They are a cuppl of reason. If I respected him bear form always stayed. Also he is referring the he likes honey and he know the ihe is unsly jacked.

Um, the vast majority of complaints about Mood Druids are about wild shape, and that's the primary draw of Moon Druids, so it seems a bit obtuse to act as if wild shape wasn't the topic of conversation all along? I really do appreciate the tips you gave for how best to utilise wild shape though - I'm still figuring it out myself. I went Land for my MC, but experimenting with Moon on Hal and trying to monitor any improvements and then I may switch my MC back to Moon. Thanks so much for those tips!

I've been thinking about this again, and I might actually switch Hal out of armour and into one of the clothing items so that Mage Armour will work on him. Since he's almost always wild-shaped for me, it seems more strategic. Not sure if others have experimented with this?

It will not work if then animal shapes armor is bigger then the mage armor. Only the strongest count.

So, when do you think Larian will allow all druids to recast spells prior to wildshaping? Like call lightning and Moonbeam? It really hurts the class to be stuck without any spells, which is a core feature in tabletop.

Myrmidons also don’t benefit from proficiency bonus to attack rolls with their weapons, because Moon Druid doesn’t have proficiency with those weapons.

As for making Moon Druid competitive when compared to Sorlocks, Socradins, Lockadins or Sword Bards, just give them exclusive forms tied to items with variable costs. For example:

-Ring of Draconic Power (legendary, act 3 or late act 2). Allows the user to turn into a young red dragon. Uses 2 charges. Moon Druid exclusive
-Ring of Monstrous powers (Rare, act 2). Allows the user to turn into Bulette. Costs 1 charge for Moon Druid, 2 for non-Moon.
-Ring of corrupted vines (Rare, act 2). Shamblimg mound, look above.

Basically this gives Moon Druids exclusive forms, while giving them extra fluff.

Earth gets tavern brawler and with that the most dmg / attack /ac/ hp. But you are right from 4 myrmidons only 2 are useful water and earth. And from all wildshape is only 2 is good. For rare case panther is goot to escape.
I wish all of them would be lvl up scale up.
For example Beast Master animal companions are stronger then Moon druid wildshape.

I will say the last update did a lot to bring Moon Druids in line imho. I haven't used myrmidons though. Full disclosure I restarted as Bard after level 6 cause I was tired of the druid issues.

Atm moon druid is a bit too carried by 1 or 2 forms while all the others are just lackluster to a fault. It's even worse because the best forms aren't even moon druid exclusive. Wolf and Bear are just mid. Spider at will web shot and super jump is absolutely bonkers. Then it's mid again for a while until Owlbear breaks the game again.

The issue with moon druid isn't one of viability, but of enjoyment. Very easy to dominate if you just stick to the best form for a level range. Of what I've played that was spider and then owlbear. But you can get those as land or spore, and the utility aspect of druid suffers greatly because of this.

Personally, I'd like spider and owlbear nerfed, Bear and dire raven heavily buffed, and wolf form moderately buffed. Not sure what to do with Badger as it feels weak but has neat CC potential through burrow which is kinda cool actually.

Also, badger form should be able to dig up buried chests without a shovel!

Owlbear bearly does the same DPR as any other haphazardly thrown together build with subpar gear.

I don't really think there is any reason to nerf spider and owlbear, just bring the other forms up to that standard.

First of, we need to compile a list of things that should be working in Wild Shape, secondly we should address the terrible stats on most of the wild shapes.