‘One D&D’s New Druid Rules Take the Wild Out of Wild Shape
The newest One D&D Druid rules are poised to tame Wild Shape. With the wild gone, what’s left for Druids?
The latest One D&D Druid rules bring heavy nerfs to the Druids. It’s a sort of stealth nerf, because, on the one hand, Druids are given some quality-of-life upgrades—which, let’s be clear, they needed. According to data from D&D, Druids are the least-played class in 5th Edition. But on the other hand, it takes a lot of the flavor out of the class and seems to leave it bereft of a clear identity or playstyle.
But it’s not all nerfs for Druids. They get some fun tools in the new to playtest rules too. Presumably, this is why the rules are being playtested, to see what works and what doesn’t. Take a look for yourself, and see what you think.
One D&D New Druid Rules Take the Wild and Life Out of Being a Druid
Now, depending on how optimized a Druid player you have at your table/are, the Druid might feel like it was in need of a tweak or two. After all, in 5th Edition, they’re certainly extremely powerful from about 2nd-4th levels on paper. Which is… fine? I guess? The biggest complaint most people have all centers around Wild Shape. Which, according to the WotC videos accompanying this release had been the core identity of the Druid and that was something they were hoping to fix.
This is why the new One D&D Druid features pretty much only Wild Shape.
And a heavily nerfed Wild Shape at that. To the point where it almost feels unplayable. To illustrate why let’s look at Wild Shape as it stands in 5E.
5th Edition’s Wild Shape
- At 2nd level, you can transform into any beast you’ve seen of CR 1/4 or lower, with limitations being no flying or swimming speed
- Your stats are replaced by the beast’s stats, but you keep your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores, as well as your personality and alignment
- You use whichever stat block’s proficiency bonus is higher
- When you transform, you assume the beast’s hit points and hit dice
- When you revert back to your normal form you return to the number of hit points you had before your transformed
- You retain any benefits of any features from your class, species, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so (meaning if you have darkvision, so does your animal form)
- Any extra damage spills over
There are some other restrictions that are pretty much unchanged. But these are the important ones.
One D&D’s Wild Shape
One D&D‘s new Wild Shape appears at 1st level instead of waiting until 2nd, now. And at first, you’re actually getting slightly more of it. The typical Wild Shape is an ability you get twice per day and that’s it (with some extra uses filtering in at higher levels).
But One D&D‘s Wild Shape is different. Now it’s a part of Channel Nature, which works a lot like Channel Divinity but it’s for Druids. But unlike the Cleric subclasses, which add new uses to Channel Divinity, the Druid subclasses don’t. The playtest subclass only doubles down on the Wild Shape feature. This is like what if Cleric made your Turn Undead bigger and better and did literally nothing else?
Of course, that may be just because it’s the Circle of the Moon.
But the new One D&D Druid Wild Shape is so underwhelming. Take a look at the new version:
As a Magic action, you transform into a form that you have learned for this feature. You start knowing one form, Animal of the Land. […] While in a form its game statistics replace yours, and your ability to handle objects is determined by the form’s limbs, rather han your own. You retain your personality, memories, ability to speak, and Wild Shape. You LOSE ACCESS TO ALL YOUR OTHER FEATURES
So right there we hit big nerf number one. Sure, this is primarily held up as preventing people from casting spells while transformed into a bear or something. But 5E’s Druid already does that. You just can’t cast spells exclusively though. You can still, for instance, if you’re a Fighter, make use of your Battlemaster maneuvers. Or if you’re a Rogue you can still deal Sneak Attack damage.
That is absolutely not the case in One D&D. Sure, it’s a rare corner case, but that means you lose access to literally everything else about being a Druid. Including being able to use one of your other Channel Nature options. You can’t even be a magic bear who can heal people or summon another, smaller, Fey Bear.
But multiclassing is on the chopping block for 5.5E D&D anyway. No more building your own class out of what the game gives you. You’ll take what WotC gives you and play with their toys the way they intended.
Leaving that aside we must turn to the Wild Shapes section to dig in deeper as to why the One D&D Druid’s Wild Shape is lacking so much flavor.
Wild Shapes? More Like Mild Shapes
Just like all the more recent summon spells and even the animal companion of the new One D&D Ranger, the Druid’s ability to Wild Shape is clearly delineated. Instead of picking from the full catalog of beasts in the Monster Manual, you get exactly three options. Animal of the Land, of the Sea, and of the Sky.
And you can kind of see why WotC would make this move. This way you don’t have to sift through the Monster Manual or any other index looking through all the “beast” options for the best ones. It makes the Druid easier to play. But it also severely cramps a Druid’s options. Because the new Wild Shape gives you only exactly what’s in one of the three approved stat blocks. You no longer gain the qualities that make the beasts feel distinct.
You get a land speed of 40 ft. and if you make it to 5th level you can gain a climbing speed. Which is just a pointless nerf.
Honestly, when was the last time having a climb speed at 1st level made any kind of difference? Especially since there are PC options out there that can start with Fly or Climb or Swim speeds.
You can determine the appearance of your Animal of the Land, so you can transform into an animal that looks like a Riding Horse. You just can’t run as fast as one.
And if that wasn’t enough, depending on your stats and equipment, your combat stats get actively worse. Look at the stat block snippet again. Your AC gets restricted to 10 + Wisdom modifier.
More importantly, you continue to use your Hit Points and Hit Dice. It’s one thing for Druids to not have a floating pool of quantum hit points. But it’s entirely another to ask the class that has all of its eggs put into the “transform into an animal” basket to actively be worse when wading into melee combat.
A Druid with a 14 Dex and even a hint of armor will do much better than the Animal of the Land’s AC. And they can use a shield. It’s one thing when you transform into a Bear and have 34 extra hit points all of a sudden. But when your armor class is lower, your hit point total is lower (8 + con modifier) and you don’t heal up to full when your Animal of the Land form gets dropped, what’s the point?
Sure, you get “extra attack” at 5th level, but to what end? Advantage on Perception checks is nice, but that feels like hardly any of the uses you’d get. And that’s not even touching on the other big nerf.
Your size is restricted to Small, Medium, or Large. This means no more Wild Shaping into an insect or tiny bird to be unobtrusive. Your bird will be at least halfling-sized. You can’t turn into a Tiny creature until you hit 11th level. And even then, you can only accomplish that feat for 10 minutes.
Why wait? Why be able to do it at all?
Druids Get Spells and “Better” Wild Shape and That’s It
The rest of the Druid class is pretty much as it ever was. You gain spells like a full spellcaster, at 2nd level, you can Find Familiar using one of your Channel Nature uses, or you can create a pool of (wisdom modifier)d4 hit points that you can distribute to creatures within a 10-foot-radius sphere.
At 5th level, you finally gain the ability to have climb speed and make a multiattack while in a worse combat form than a Paladin or Fighter. Which again, is fine, if you’re meant to be a Spellcaster, but parceling the Wild Shape features out like they’re some kind of reward feels pointless. At 7th level you can become an Animal of the Sea:
At 9th level you can become an Animal of the Sky:
And at 11th level, you can become a Tiny creature. At 13th level you can switch back and forth between Wild Shape and your normal Shape as a bonus action, and, as long as you shape back within the next minute, you don’t expend a use of Wild Shape (pretty sure they meant Channel Nature).
At 15th level, you heal for an inconsequential 5d4 hit points whenever you Wild Shape. And at 17th level, you can cast spells in any Wild Shape form. It’s nothing but Wild Shape improvements, but the core feature feels pretty rotten.
The Moon Druid Isn’t Any Better
You might be thinking, sure, Druids are getting kind of hosed with their Wild Shape ability. But Wild Shape has always been the purview of the Moon Druid. And you’d be right. But the Moon Druid is in many ways even worse for the changes. Now they no longer have ablative hit points to make them anywhere close to as resilient as the Fighter, Paladin, or Barbarian classes.
But when you look at what Moon Druids get (nothing but melee options) the question remains, where are they supposed to stand in the fight? Are they meant to be skirmishers? If so they’re outdamaged by Rogues, handily.
At 3rd level, Moon Druids gain the ability to cast Abjuration spells while Wild Shape, which is very cool. But! Only if the spell doesn’t require a material component. They can also make an Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action, giving them an extra attack that’s kind of just okay. Remember it’s only ever going to just be 1d8 + Wisdom modifier per hit. The damage doesn’t scale like a cantrip’s. It never gets any better than doing 1d8 + Wisdom modifier per single melee attack until you hit 10th level and even then, only if you’re a Moon Druid.
And it only gets worse, damagewise, when you shape into an Animal of the Sea or Sky.
6th level Moon Druids gain the ability to assume an Elemental Wild Shape. But all that does is grant resistance to a chosen type of damage. You have to wait until 10th level to deal an extra 1d6 points of elemental damage when you make an attack with a Bestial Strike.
Finally, at 14th level, you can just always cast Alter Self.
For the subclass whose core identity is shapechanging into animals to do combat, and make no mistake, that’s what the Circle of the Moon is all about. It gains nothing but Combat Wild Shape-type features, it feels like you’d be better off playing a Fighter and just pretending you’re a bear.
Maybe this is all an overreaction, and the ‘One D&D Druid’ is fine. What do you think? Do you see something here that’s workable? Put it in the comments!
