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

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.