Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General hows everones druid playthroughs going?

One hand club? Where! I need to rise the AC of my half high elf so a shield would be a nice upgrade.

By the way, how does shillelagh function? I understand that it adds 1d8 damage, what confuses me is the "spell slot" as action O.o

I had a wood woad in the swamp drop a twisting branch that counted as a one handed club (and a neat looking natural wood shield). Others have dropped since then.

Shillelagh is a bonus action cantrip, won't cost you a slot or an action. It sets the damage to 1d8, but more importantly it lets you use Wisdom instead of strength for your to hit and damage modifiers, so you don't have to boost strength or use a finesse weapon.

I was excited to play a new class and the druid looked pretty fun. However I've never played a druid in D&D and while I have nothing against them they have never looked that appealing to me either. I like the idea that they can switch up their animal form to sort of meet their needs. I wish I could change more often, like once a turn or something. I realize that's probably a little busted, but changing from a tanky bear to a swift raven to get across the battle field, then changing into a charging rothé is kinda how I wanted to play. My actual experience is like cast barkskin on myself (out of combat), change to bear, get critically hit and lose concentration, spend the rest of the fight swatting down dudes with bear. A lot of the druid spells look really cool, but I feel obligated to play the animal forms.

Animal forms
Cat: I really like the sneakiness of the cat. I wish it had darkvision or low light vision.
Bear: Sorta tanky, but lacks AC and utility.
Dire Wolf: I quite like the wolf overall. I wish it walked a little faster though. Would be cool if it had like high perception or nature
Spider: I think the spider is also quite good. Kinda gives me the creeps though
Rothé: I love the charge attack, but it has surprisingly short range
Dire Raven: Fly is great except that i have to click it ever turn. It should be default. Also, I'm not sure if they are affected by ground affects, but it looks like they will take burning damage if they fly over burning terrain
Badger: Haven't tried, looks cute though

I am really loving druid so far. Playing a gold dwarf land druid. Grasslands gives invisibility which is such a great extra tool. Though I haven't been able to use Pass Without a Trace effectively at all yet. We'll see.

Loving all the druid dialogue especially. It changes up the grove so much when you know exactly what the Rite of Thorns is and why it is such a big deal that Kagha is using it. This is also the first time I've uncovered Kagha's secret because this is the first character who, through knowledge checks, had suspicions about Kagha's intentions toward her own druids. The whole situation is way more interesting now.

Agreed, I'm hoping there will be similar questlines for each class further in the plot.

Do they treat you as a fellow Druid or are the references just sort of "oh hey, a druid..anyways 'generic quest text here' "?

It's a bit of a mixed bag, most of the NPCs notice it in passing but Khaga actually has a few lengthy talks about it (granted, a couple are obtainable by Wood Elves too). Dunno about Halsin, not yet saved him.

Having said that though, i've been playing with a tielfing druid though (made a custom companion), and i've been getting more reactions for that combo than i though i would.

The only iffy thing that i can think about, really, is that some of the druid dialogue options are a bit snobbish but i guess that's druids for ya.

Most are pretty welcoming but you do still get called an outsider by a few of them. Which is fair. You're all druids but you're not a druid specifically from their grove. The druid trader gives you a discount as an example of a positive interaction. The elf woman with the bird looking for Halsin can also be persuaded by pointing out you're a fellow druid.

There is a LOT of druid specific dialogue you can say to them too. Especially Kagha. There's like three different druid responses to her when you first meet her and see what she is doing. Almost every exchange with her had more druid dialogue for you to choose, and when you're talking her down just before the Shadow Druid fight you get two different druid options to try and persuade her to turn against them.

It is by far the most class or race specific flavor I've seen in a video game. I really hope the other classes get something similar later on.

Interesting, that's good to know. I've only played a fighter so far and there's been some, but it's fairly generic fightery kind of stuff.

The pessimistic side of me is thinking that we only got all this content because one of the future origin characters will be a druid - it's basically aimed at people who will be playing that character, not at those who make custom druids, and we can't expect non-origin classes to get anything like the same treatment.

The optimistic side of me is thinking, "WOOT!! MAJOR CLASS CONTENT FOR EVERYONE, BRING IT ON!"

I dunno which way to go. At least I did really, really enjoy playing as a druid.

I am not much of a find of druid in general myself

You might enjoy trying one as an Elf. I don't usually rep Elves, but with the racial proficiency in Swords and Bows, the Druid feels a bit like a ranger with better spells going that route. Bows I think are more helpful than the swords, and they already got a slick flameblade, but its still fun to see a druid rep a long sword in one hand, something you couldn't do in BG2.

Land circle coast is pretty fun at the lower side of the leveling spectrum, since you can do a bit more stuff early on, like misty step and then thunderwave or whip the shit out of a goblin. Lets be honest, half of this game is just trying to rocket launch gobbos during combos, and the druid does well at that. I don't find myself shifting all that much, since I like the spells slinger vibe and went for Land over Moon this run.

ps. kinda funny that I would find the Elf druid build more in line with classic ranger vibes to me than the regular 5e ranger hehe. But the misty step combined with other druid abilities and a elf cantrip is pretty slick. 2e didn't have Elf druids, it was just Half-Elves and Humans, so I have some buy in for the build as a new thing. Seeing a druid with two short swords going Drizzt mode is also amusing. Even if not a martial class, priests still hold up alright. I just went 14 in strength, cause why not. I also like the intelligence circlet as an item, since its always nice to feel like the MC has an intellect haha. Though I sort of wish they had set it to 17 rather than 18. If just to leave more room like that for the Superior items staged in later. Or a reason to onto companions later on if you get a better circlet later. I always thought BG1 would have been cool with more items that set stuff to 17 instead of 18 along the way. But I couldn't justify dropping the base state Int stat for the last char under 10. When playing caster types I always kinda like the idea of pushing WIS and INT as related together, instead of dumping one for the other. Though the circlet certainly allows for OP builds which could be more fun. Priest mage was always a fun idea I thought, but it wasn't an option in BG2 or ever suss'd out in much detail if that was ever a thing for a druid. Druid weapons also struck me as kind of wonky at inception, allowing for the scimitars and daggers, but not other swords. Seems a bit of an odd choice, but probably just to make the druid seem more exotic in the 80s lol

I probably play mine a bit oddly (as in I forget to use Wild Shape most of the time) but it is interesting. I have used the spider mostly for the Web function. Tried the badger but aside from being creepily oversized it didn't seem to do what I wanted it to do, will try this again after reading here it is supposed to act like Misty Step. Will definitely try the Intellect Devourer, that one looks fun. I like having the extra dialogues in the grove, although being a Tiefling druid, Kagha still managed to piss me off. I would like to have a way to cancel concentration spells and also to have maybe an extra locked section on the bar for this and the throw function from Produce Flame. Keep losing that and having to rearrange the bar in the middle of a fight.
I love this spell too. Combining it with Web and a fire spell in the same area is really fun. The AI should be using a perception check to detect it according to base rules, but it is entirely possible that if they don't think there would be anything in the area that this may not apply.


I have notices a strange thing though, on the level up page, apparently everyone worships Shar now.

Just finished my Moon Druid playthrough today (a 100% run of at least all the quests/areas I know).

Really enjoyed this playthrough. Not sure if it's just because it's been a while since I played, but the graphical improvements stood out. There were tons of other subtle improvements all around and it overall feels much more polished.

I think despite some worry in earlier discussions, I found the Druid class to be very strong, but balanced. Though I wasn't really trying to break the game in any way. In fact, I played pretty sub optimally in terms of set-ups and pre-fight preps, and still breezed through it all. This being a 6th or 7th playthrough, I was just too lazy to care and mostly walked right into every bad situation rolling initiative straight. I think at this point meta knowledge of Act 1 is definitely affecting the difficulty for me.

Towards the end, I did find myself leaning on spells quite a bit more than wildshape in combat. My party was Gale, Lae'zel, and Shadowheart, and it felt like everyone was contributing pretty equally.

I just restarted my playthrough with a coastal land druid instead of moon druid. And, as you say, meta knowledge of whats coming made me better prepared for what was coming. Also i better utilized my assets because i now know what works. Breezing through it. Mirror image, and a shield make my druid very survivable.
Build so far:
High half-elf
Took blade ward cantrip as high elf ability
Took produce flame and shelleilegh
Later took thorn whip
Coast as my land specialty
Took guild artisan backround for persuasion and insight


16dex 14con, 18 int (circlet), 16 wis, and 12 cha

Use shadow heart for enhance ability cha and you can breeze through social interactions.


Mirror image and blade ward really help you survive.
Moonlight spell is crazy awesome, especially when positioned right.
Misty step helps alot.

Gale being able to learn every spell from scrolls is broken.

I focused shadowheart on tanking, cures, and inflict wounds. She actually has a tendency to hit with that. And it does a buttload of damage. I think 2nd level cast is 4d10 necrotic. Not sure if larian is using her dex to attack or spell attack. Either way, its working really good to drop those dangerous baddies right now. She hit that "enlightened ogre" for 37 dam yesterday.

Wyll is just good. He also has mirror image after i swapped a spell iut at lvl 3. Having every character with mirror image is crazy op.

It is, but it doesn't go that way till mid level. Not lvl 4. Atleast not on pnp

I like the druid class a lot! Maybe because it is new after four months of play testing the other available classes, but also am enjoying it for some spells that have been around but that I've not used like Speak With Animals. Talking to the various critters is proving quite entertaining. And also, I am back in the game after a short break following the carnage that the previous patch left me with on Stadia. Patch #4 restored broken aspects of character creation that the last patch fouled up and even more beneficial my characters have gone back to leveling up.

Patch #3 stuck me with level one characters ever since and that was annoying!

Lackluster. It's essentially just a weaker Wizard who can turn into a Familiar.

To your point..wizard is waaaay more powerful then its supposed to be. They are definitely NOT supposed to be learning cantrips and cleric spells from scrolls.

Other then that id say they are actually pretty equal if you go circle of the land. Just waaaay more survivability as the druid since you can essentially have something like 60hp to burn through

I did a Wizard playthrough without the omniscient scroll cheese and they were still extremely powerful.