Druid Class Guide for D&D 5th Edition

Hello readers, in this post we are going to discuss about the Class Druid. This is most intresting topic on dnd, so this post we briefly discuss their all type of featurs, ability score, & skills, so let’s start the post.

Holding high a gnarled staff wreathed with holly, an elf summons the fury of the storm and calls down explosive bolts of lightning to smite the torch-carrying orcs who threaten her forest.

Crouching out of sight on a high tree branch in the form of a leopard, a human peers out of the jungle at the strange construction of a temple of Evil Elemental Air, keeping a close eye on the culists’ activities.

Swinging a blade formed of pure fire, a half-elf charge into a mass of skeletal soldiers, sundering the unnatural magic that give the foul creatures the mocking sem blance of life.

Whether calling on the elemental forces of nature or emulating the creatures of the animal world, druids are an embodiment of nature’s resilience, cunning, and fury.

They claim no mastery over nature. Instead, they see themselves as extensions of nature’s indiomitable will.

Power of Nature

Druids rever nature above all, gaining their spells and other magical power either from the force of nature itself or from nature deity.

Many druids pursue a mystic spirituality of transcendent union with nature rather than devotion to a divine entity, while others serves gods of wild nature, animals, or elemental forces.

The ancient druidic traditions are sometimes called the Old Faith, in contrast to the worship of gods in temples and shrines.

Druid spells are oriented toward nature and animals-the power of tooth and claw, of sun and moon, of fire and storm.

Druids also gain the ability to take on animal forms, and some druids make a particular study of this practice, even to the point where they prefer animal form to their natural form.

Preserve the Balance

For druids, nature exists in a precarious balance. The four elements that make up a world-air, earth, fire, and water-must remain in equilibrium.

If one elements were to gains power over the other, the world could be destroyed, drawn in one of elemental planes and broken apart into its component elements.

Thus, druids oppose cults of Elemental Evil and other who promote one element to the exclusion of others.

Druids are also concerned with the delicate ecological balance that sustains plant and animal life, and the need for civilized folk to live in hormony with nature, not in opposition to it.

Druids accept that which is cruel in nature, and they hate that which is unnatural, including aberrations (such as beholders and mind flayers) and undead (such as zombies and vampires).

Druids sometimes lead raids against such creatures, especially when the monsters encroach on the druids’s territory.

Druids are often found guarding sacred sites or watching over regions of unspoiled nature. But when a significant danger arises, threatening nature’s balance or the lands they protect, druids take on a more active role in combating the threat, as adventurers.

Creating a Druid

When making a druid, consider why your character has such a close bond with nature. Perhaps your character lives in a society where the Old Faith still thrives, or was raised by a druid after being abandoened in the depths of a forest.

Perhaps your character had a dramatic encounter with the spirits of nature, coming face to face with a giant eagle or dire wolf and surviving the experience.

Maybe your character was born during an epic storm or a volcanic eruption, which was interpreted as a sign that becoming a druid was part of your character’s destiny.

Have you always been an adventurer as part of your druidic calling, or did you first spend time as a caretaker of a sacred grove or spring Perhaps your homeland was befouled by evil, and you took up an adventuring life in hopes of finding a new home or purpose.

SpellSlotsPerSpellLevel
LevelProficiency
Bonus
FeaturesCantrips
Known
1st2nd3rd4th5th6th7th8th9th
1st+2Druidic, Spellcasting22
2nd+2Wild Shape, Druid Circle23
3rd+2242
4th+2Wild Shape improvement,
Ability Score Improvement
34
5th+33432
6th+3Druid Circle feature3433
7th+334331
8th+3Wild Shape improvement,
Ability Score Improvement
34332
9th+4343331
10th+4Druid Circle feature443332
11th+44433321
12th+4Ability Score Improvement4433321
13th+544333211
14th+5Druid Circle feature44333211
15th+5443332111
16th+5Ability Score Improvement443332111
17th+64433321111
18th+6Timeless Body, Beast Spells4433331111
19th+6Ability Score Improvement4433332111
20th+6Archdruid4433332211

Quick Build

You can make a druid quickly by following these suggestions. First, Wisdom should be your highest ability score, followed by Constitution. Second, choose the hermit background.

Class Feature

As a druid, you gain the following class features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d8 per druid level

Hit Points at 1st level: 8 + your Consitution modifier

Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or5) + your Constitution modifier per druid level after 1st.

Proficiencies

Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields (druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal)

Weapons: Clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, stickles, slings, spears

Tool: Herbalism kit

Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom

Skills: Choose two from Arcana, Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Nature, Perception, Religion, and Survival

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

  • (a) a wooden shield or (b) any simple weapon
  • (a) a scimitar or (b) any simple melee weapon
  • Leather armor, an explorer’s pack, and a druidic focus

Druidic

You know Druidic, the secret language of druids. You can speak the language and use it to leave hidden messages.

You and others who know this language automatically spot such as message. Other spot the message’s presence with a successful DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check but can’t decipher it without magic.

Spell casting

Drawing on the divine essence of nature itself, You can cast spells to shape that essence to your will.

Cantrips

At 1st level, you know two cantrips of your choice from the druid spell list. You learn additional druid Cantrips of your choice at higher levels, as shown in the Camtrips Known column of the Druid table.

Preparing and Casting Spells

The Druid table shown how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st level and higher.

To cast one of these druid spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

You prepare the list of druid spells that are avilable for you to cast, choosing from the druid spell list. When you do so choose a number of druid spells equal to your Wisdom modifier + your druid level.

Sacred Plants and Wood

A druid holds certain plants to be sacred, particularly alder, ash, birch, elder, hazal, holly, juniper, mistletoe, oke, rowan, willow, and yew.

Druids often use such plants as part of as Spellcasting focus, incorporating lengths od oak or yew or sprigs of mistletoe.

Similarly, a druid uses such woods to make other objests, such as weapons and shields. Yew is associated with death and rebirth, so weapon handles for scimitar or sickles might fashioned from it.

Ash is associated with life and oak with strength. These woods make excellent hafts or whole weapons, such as clubs or quarterstaffs, as well as shields.

Alder is associated with air, and it might be used for thrown weapon, such as darts or javelins.

Druids from regions that lack that plants described here have chosen other plants to take on similar uses. For instance, a druid of a desert region might value the yucca tree and cactus plants.

The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

For example, if you are a 3rd-level druid, you have four 1st-level and two 2nd-level spell slots.

With a Wisdom of 16, your list of prepared spells can include six spells of 1st or 2nd level, in any combination.

If you prepare the 1st-level spell cure wounds, you can cast it using a 1st-level or 2nd-level slot. Casting the spell doesn’t remove it from you list of prepared spells.

You can also change your list of prepared spells when you finish a long rest. Preparing a new list of druid spells requires time spent in prayer and meditation: at least 1 minute per spell level for each spell on your list.

Spell Casting Ability

Wisdom is your Spellcasting ability for your druid spells, since your magic draws upon your devotion and attunement to nature. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refer to your Spellcasting ability.

In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a druid spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier.

Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifiers

Ritual Casting

You can cast a druid spell as a ritual if that spell has the ritual tag and you have the spell prepared.

Spell casting Focus

You can use a druidic focus as a Spellcasting focus for your druid spells.

Wild Shape

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before.

You can use this feature twice. You tegain expended use when you finish a short or long rest.

You druid level determInes the beasts you can transform into, as shown in the Beast Shape table.

At 2nd level, for example, you can transform into any beast that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower that doesn’t have a flying or swimming speed.

Beast Shapes

Level Max CR Limitations Example 2nd 1/4 No flying or swimming speed Wolf 4th 1/2 No flying speed Crocodile
8th 1 – Giant eagle.

You can stay in a beast shape for a number of hours equal to half your druid level (rounded down).

You then revert to your normal form unless you expend another use of this feature. You can revert to your normal form earlier by using a bonus action on your turn. You automatically revert if l you fall unconscious, drop to 0 hit points, or die.

While you are tranformed, the following rules apply:

  • Your game ststistics are replaced by the statistics of the beast, but you retain your alignment, personality, and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma score.

    You aslo 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 in its stat block is higher than yours, use the creature’s bonus instead of yours. If the creature has any legendary or lair actions, you can’t use them.

  • When you transform, you assume the beast’s hit points and Hit Dice. When you revert to your normal form, you return to the number of hit points you had before you transformed.

    However, if you revert as a result of dropping to 0 hit points, any excess damage carries over to your normal form.

    For example, if you take 10 damage in animal form and have only 1 hit points left, you revert and take 9 damage. As long as the excess damage doesn’t reduce your normal form to 0 hit points, you aren’t knocked unconscious.

  • You can’t cast spells, and your ability to speak or take any action that requires hand is limited to the capabilities of your beast form.

    Transforming doewsn’t break your concentration on a spell you’ve already cast, however, or prevent you from taking action that are part of a spell, such as call lightning, that you’ve already cast.

  • You retain the benifit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new from is physically capable of doing so.

    However, you can’t use any of your special senses, such as Darkvision unless your new form also has that sense.

  • You choose whether your equipment fall to the ground in your space, merges into your new form, or is worn by it.

    Worn equipment function as normal, but the DM decide whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment, based on the creature’s shape and size.

  • You equipment doesn’t change size or shape to match the new form, and any equipment that the new form can’t wear must either fall to the ground or merge with it. Equipment that merges with the form has no effect until you leave the form.

Druid Circle

At 2nd level, you choose to identify with a circle of druids: the Circle of the Land or the Circle of the Moon, both detailed at the end of the class description. Your choice grants you features at 2nd level and again at 6th, 10th, and 14th level.

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Timeless body

Starting at 18th level, the primal magic that you wield causes you to age more slowly. For every 10 years that pass, your body ages only 1 year.

Beast Spells

Beginning at 18th level, you can cast many of your druid spells in any shape you assume using Wild Shape.

You can perform the somatic and verbal components of a druid spell while in a beast shape, but you aren’t able to provide material components.

Archdruid

At 20th level, you can use your Wild Shape an unlimited number of times. Additionally, you can ignore the verbal and somatic components of your druid spells, as well as any material components that lack a cost and aren’t consumed by a spell. You gain this benefit in both your normal shape and your beast shape from Wild Shape.

Druid Circles

Though their organization is invisible to most outsiders, druids are part of a society that spans the land, ignoring political borders.

All druids are nominally members of this druidic society, though some individuals are so isolated that they have never seen any high-ranking members of the society or participated in druidic gatherings.

Druids recognize each other as brothers and sisters. Like creatures of the wilderness, however, druids sometimes compete with or even prey on each other.

At a local scale, druids are organized into circles that share certain perspectives on nature, balance, and the way of the druid.

Circle of the Land

The Circle of the Land is made up of mystics and sages who safeguard ancient knowledge and rites through a vast oral tradition. These druids meet within sacred circles of trees or standing stones to whisper primal secrets in Druidic.

The circle’s wisest members preside as the chief priests of communities that hold to the Old Faith and serve as advisors to the rulers of those folk.

As a member of this circle, your magic is influenced by the land where you were initiated into the circle’s mysterious rites.

Bonus Cantrip

When you choose this circle at 2nd level, you learn one additional druid cantrip of your choice.

Natural Recovery

Starting at 2nd level, you can regain some of your magical energy by sitting in meditation and communing with nature.

During a short rest, you choose expended spell slots to recover. The spell slots can have a combined level that is equal to or less than half your druid level (rounded up), and none of the slots can be 6th level or higher.

You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest For example, when you are a 4th-level druid, you can recover up to two levels worth of spell slots. You can recover either a 2nd level slot or two 1st-level slots.

Circle Spells

Your mystical connection to the land infuses you with the ability to cast certain spells. At 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th level you gain access to circle spells connected to the land where you became a druid.

Choose that land-arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, or Underdark—and consult the associated list of spells.

Once you gain access to a circle spell, you always have it prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.

If you gain access to a spell that doesn’t appear on the druid spell list, the spell, is nonetheless a druid spell for you.

Arctic

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rdhold person, spike growth
5thsleet storm, slow
7thfreedom of movement, ice storm
9thcommune with nature, cone of cold

Coast

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rdmirror image, misty step
5thwater breathing, water walk
7thcontrol water, freedom o f movement
9thconjure elemental, scrying

Desert

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rdblur, silence
5thcreate food and water, protection from energy
7thblight, hallucinatory terrain
9thinsect plague, wall o f stone

Forest

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rdbarkskin, spider climb
5thcall lightning, plant growth
7thdivination, freedom of movement
9thcommune with nature, tree stride

Grassland

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rdinvisibility, pass without trace
5thdaylight, haste
7thdivination, freedom o f movement
9thdream, insect plague

Mountain

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rdspider climb, spike growth
5thlightning bolt, meld into stone
7thstone shape, stoneskin
9thpasswall, wall of stone

Swamp

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rddarkness, Melf ’s acid arrow
5thwater walk, stinking cloud
7thfreedom of movement, locate creature
9thinsect plague, scrying

Underdark

Druid LevelCircle Spells
3rdspider climb, web
5thgaseous form, stinking cloud
7thgreater invisibility, stone shape
9thcloudkill, insect plague

Lands’s Stride

Starting at 6th level, moving through non-magical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement.

You can also pass through non-magical plants withut being slowed by them and without taking damage from them if they have torns, spines, or a similar hazard.

In addition, you have adventage on saving throws agianst plants that are magically created or manipulated to impede movement, such those created by the entangle spell.

Nature’s Ward

When you reach 10th level, you can’t be charmed or frightended by elementals or fey, and you are immune to poison and disease.

Nature’s Sancturay

When you reach 14th level, creatures of the natural world sense your connection to nature and become hesitant to attack you. When a beast or plant creature attack you, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against you druid spell save DC.

On a failed save, the creatures must choose a different target, or the attack automatically misses.

On a successful save, the creature is immune to this effect for 24 hours. The creature is aware of this effect before it makes its attack against you.

Circle of the Moon

Druids of the Circle of the Moon are fierce guardians of the wilds. Their order gathers under the full moon to share news and trade warnings.

They haunt the deepest parts of the wilderness, where they might go for weeks on end before crossing path with another humanoid creature, let alone another druid.

Changeable as the moon, a druid of this circle might prowl as a great cat one night, soar over the treetops as an e agle the next day, and crash through the undergrowth in bear, form to drive off a trespaasing monster. The wild is in the druid’s blood.

Combat Wild Shape

When you choose this circle at 2nd level, you ,gain the ability to use Wild Shape on your turn as a bonus action, rather than as an action.

Additionally, while you are transformed by While Shape, you can use a bonus action to expend on spell slot to regain 1 d8 hit points per level of the spell slot expended.

Circle Forms

The rites of your circle grant you the ability to tranform into more dangerous animal forms. Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Wild Shape to transform into a beast with a challenge rating as high as 1 (you ignore the Max. CR column of the Beast shape table, but must abide by the other limitations there).

Starting at 6th level, you can transform into a beast with a challenge rating as high as you druid level divided by 3 rounded down.

Primal Strike

Starting at 6th level, your attacks in beast form count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to non-magical attack and damage.

Elemental Wild Shape

At 10th level, you can expend two uses of Wild Shape at the same time to transform into an air elemental, an earth elemental, a fire elemental, or a water elemental.

Thousand Foms

By 14th level, you have learned to use magic to alter your physical form in more subtle ways. You can cast the alter self spell at will.

Druids and the Gods

Some druids venerate the forces of nature themselves, but most druids are devoted to one of the many nature deities worshiped in the multiverse ( the lists of gods in appendix B include many such deities).

The worship of these deities is often considered a more ancient tradition than the faiths of cleric and urbanized peoples.

In fact, in the world of Greyhawk, the druidic faith is called the Old Faith, and it claims many adherents among farmers, foresters, fishers, and others who live closely with nature.

This tradition includes the workship of Nature as a primal force beyond personification, but also encompasses the worship of Beory, the Oerth Mother, as well as devotees of Obad-Hai, Ehlonna, and Ulaa.

In the worlds of Greyhawk and the l Forgotten Realms, druidic circles are not usually connected to the faith of a single nature deity. Any given circle in the Forgotten Realms.

For example, might include druids who revere Silvanus, Mielikki, Eldath, Chauntea, or even th hars Gods of Fury: Talos, Malar, Auril, and Umberlee.

These nature gods are often called the First Circle, the first among the druids, and most druids count them all (even the violent ones) as worthy of veneration.

The druids of Eberron hold animistic beliefs completely unconnected to the Sovereign Host, the Dark Six, or any of the other religions of the world.

They believe that every living thing and every natural phenomenon-sun, moon, wind, fire and the world itself-has a spirit. Their spells, then, are a means to communicate With and command these spirits.

Different druidic sects, though, hold different philosophies about the proper relationship of these spirits to each other and to the forces of civilization.

The Ashbound, for example, believe that arcane magic is an abomination against nature, the Children of Winter venerate the forces of death, and the Gatekeepers preserve ancient traditions meant to protect the world from the incursion of aberrations.