Druid

Basics

Hit Dice: 1d8 (5)

Proficiencies

Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom

Skills: Choose two from

Equipment

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

Table: Druid

Spellcasting

Drawing on the divine essence of nature itself, you can cast spells to shape that essence to your will. See the general rules of spellcasting and the druid spell list.

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 Cantrips Known column of the Druid table.

Preparing and Casting Spells

The table above shows how many spell slots you have to cast your druid spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these 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 available 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 (minimum of one spell). 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 your list of prepared spells.

You can 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.

Spellcasting Ability

Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your druid spells. You use your Wisdom whenever a druid spell refers 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.

Ritual Casting

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

Spellcasting Focus

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

Sacred Plants and Wood

A druid holds certain plants to be sacred, particularly alder, ash, birch, elder, hazel, holly, juniper, mistletoe, oak, rowan, willow, and yew. Druids often use such plants as part of a spellcasting focus, incorporating lengths of oak or yew or sprigs of mistletoe.

Similarly, a druid uses such woods to make other objects, such as weapons and shields. Yew is associated with death and rebirth, so weapon handles for scimitars or sickles might be 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 weapons, such as darts or javelins.

Druids from regions that lack the 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.

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 a message. Others spot the message’s presence with a successful DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check but can’t decipher it without magic.

Wild Shape

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before (check with DM for ones the druid has seen). You can use this feature twice. You regain expended uses when you finish a short or long rest.

Your druid level determines the beasts you can transform into, as shown in the Beast Shapes 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 (Suggestions)

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 you fall unconscious, drop to 0 hit points, or die.

While you are transformed, the following rules apply:

Druid Circle

At 2nd level, you choose to identify with a circle of druids: 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 o f 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. Here is a list of spells that can be cast during wild shape.

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 m embers 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 Dreams (XG)

Druids who are members of the Circle of Dreams hail from regions that have strong ties to the Feywild and its dreamlike realms. The druids' guardianship of the natural world makes for a natural alliance between them and good-aligned fey. These druids seek to fill the world with dreamy wonder. Their magic mends wounds and brings joy to downcast hearts, and the realms they protect are gleaming, fruitful places, where dream and reality blur together and where the weary can find rest.

Balm of the Summer Court

At 2nd level, you become imbued with the blessings of the Summer Court. You are a font of energy that offers respite from injuries. You have a pool of fey energy represented by a number of d6s equal to your druid level.

As a bonus action, you can choose one creature you can see within 120 feet of you and spend a number of those dice equal to half your druid level or less. Roll the spent dice and add them together. The target regains a number of hit points equal to the total. The target also gains 1 temporary hit point per die spent.

You regain all expended dice when you finish a long rest.

Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow

At 6th level, home can be wherever you are. During a short or long rest, you can invoke the shadowy power of the Gloaming Court to help guard your respite. At the start of the rest, you touch a point in space, and an invisible, 30-foot-radius sphere of magic appears, centered on that point. Total cover blocks the sphere.

While within the sphere, you and your allies gain a +5 bonus to Stealth and Perception checks, and any light from open flames in the sphere (a campfire, torches, or the like) isn't visible outside it.

The sphere vanishes at the end of the rest or when you leave the sphere.

Hidden Paths

Starting at 10th level, you can use the hidden, magical pathways that some fey use to traverse space in the blink of an eye. As a bonus action on your turn, you can teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. Alternatively, you can use your action to teleport one willing creature you touch up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.

Walker in Dreams

At 14th level, the magic of the Feywild grants you the ability to travel mentally or physically through dreamlands.

When you finish a short rest, you can cast one of the following spells, without expending a spell slot or requiring material components: dream (with you as the messenger), scrying, or teleportation circle. This use of teleportation circle is special. Rather than opening a portal to a permanent teleportation circle, it opens a portal to the last location where you finished a long rest on your current plane of existence. If you haven't taken a long rest on your current plane, the spell fails but isn't wasted.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

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

Coast

Desert

Forest

Grassland

Mountain

Swamp

Underdark

Land’s Stride

Starting at 6th level, moving through nonmagical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement. You can also pass through nonmagical plants without being slowed by them and without taking damage from them if they have thorns, spines, or a similar hazard.

In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against 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 frightened by elementals or fey, and you are immune to poison and disease.

Nature’s Sanctuary

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 attacks you, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against your druid spell save DC. On a failed save, the creature 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 o f 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 paths 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 eagle the next day, and crash through the undergrowth in bear form to drive off a trespassing 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 Wild Shape, you can use a bonus action to expend one spell slot to regain 1d8 hit points per level of the spell slot expended.

Circle Forms

The rites of your circle grant you the ability to transform 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 Shapes 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 your 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 nonmagical attacks 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 Forms

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.

Circle of the Shepherd (XG)

Druids of the Circle of the Shepherd commune with the spirits of nature, especially the spirits of beasts and the fey, and call to those spirits for aid. These druids recognize that all living things play a role in the natural world, yet they focus on protecting animals and fey creatures that have difficulty defending themselves. Shepherds, as they are known, see such creatures as their charges. They ward off monsters that threaten them, rebuke hunters who kill more prey than necessary, and prevent civilization from encroaching on rare animal habitats and on sites sacred to the fey. Many of these druids are happiest far from cities and towns, content to spend their days in the company of animals and the fey creatures of the wilds. 

Members of this circle become adventurers to oppose forces that threaten their charges or to seek knowledge and power that will help them safeguard their charges better. Wherever these druids go, the spirits of the wilderness are with them.

Speech of the Woods

At 2nd level, you gain the ability to converse with beasts and many fey.

You learn to speak, read, and write Sylvan. In addition, beasts can understand your speech, and you gain the ability to decipher their noises and motions. Most beasts lack the intelligence to convey or understand sophisticated concepts, but a friendly beast could relay what it has seen or heard in the recent past. This ability doesn't grant you friendship with beasts, though you can combine this ability with gifts to curry favor with them as you would with any non-player character.

Spirit Totem

Starting at 2nd level, you can call forth nature spirits to influence the world around you. As a bonus action, you can magically summon an incorporeal spirit to a point you can see within 60 feet of you. The spirit creates an aura in a 30-foot radius around that point. It counts as neither a creature nor an object, though it has the spectral appearance of the creature it represents.

As a bonus action, you can move the spirit up to 60 feet to a point you can see.

The spirit persists for 1 minute or until you're incapacitated. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

The effect of the spirit's aura depends on the type of spirit you summon from the options below.

Mighty Summoner

Starting at 6th level, beasts and fey that you conjure are more resilient than normal. Any beast or fey summoned or created by a spell that you cast gains the following benefits:

Guardian Spirit

Beginning at 10th level, your Spirit Totem safeguards the beasts and fey that you call forth with your magic. When a beast or fey that you summoned or created with a spell ends its turn in your Spirit Totem aura, that creature regains a number of hit points equal to half your druid level.

Faithful Summons

Starting at 14th level, the nature spirits you commune with protect you when you are the most defenseless. If you are reduced to 0 hit points or are incapacitated against your will , you can immediately gain the benefits of conjure animals as if it were cast using a 9th-level spell s lot. It summons four beasts of your choice that are challenge rating 2 or lower. The conjured beasts appear within 20 feet of you. If they receive no commands from you, they protect you from harm and attack your foes. The spell lasts for 1 hour, requiring no concentration, or until you dismiss it (no action required).

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Class Description

The druids of the Realms venerate nature in all its forms, as well as the gods of the First Circle, those deities closest to the power and majesty of the natural world. That group of gods includes Chauntea, Eldath, Mielikki, Silvanus, as well as Auril, Matar, Talos, and Umberlee, for nature is many-sided and not always kind.

Unlike clerics, who typically serve a single deity, druids revere all the gods of the First Circle in their turn, and see them as embodiments of the natural world, which moves in cycles: creation and destruction, waxing and withering, life and death. Thus, Grumbar isn't just god of the earth to a druid; he is the fertile soil and the rolling hills themselves. Malar isn't just the Beastlord, but the hunger and the hunting instinct of a predatory beast.

Although they are most strongly associated with sylvan forests, druids care for all aspects of the land, including frozen mountains, burning deserts, rolling hills, and rough coasts.

Druid Circles

Druidic ways are ancient and largely practiced in secret, away from the eyes of the uninitiated. In many lands, the Old Ways of the First Circle have given way to new churches and temples, but druids and their followers still gather to honor the cycles of nature and to ensure the natural balance isn't threatened. People who dwell in or near wild lands do well to learn if a druid circle operates nearby, seeking the circle's blessing before hunting or farming on the lands they protect.

The druid habit of gathering in clearings, wooded groves, or around sacred pools gave rise to the tradition of circles. In a circle, all are equal, and while respect is given to age and accomplishment, the circle reaches decisions as a whole. Those who disagree are free to argue their point, or even to leave the circle, if they wish, but the circle acts as one for the good of all. Druid circles often include non-druid allies, such as rangers, wood elves, and the fey creatures of the lands where the circle meets, all given equal voice.

Numerous circles are found across Faerun, usually made up of no more than a dozen or so druids, plus their allies. They include the High Dance, guarding the Dancing Place in the high valleys of the Thunder Peaks, alongside their fey allies. The Watchers of Sevreld meet in Old Mushroom Grove in the High Forest, northeast of Secomber, and the Starwater Circle gathers around their namesake pool in the northern forest of Mir.

The Circle of Swords

Protectors of the Neverwinter Wood, the Circle of Swords drives destructive humanoids like hobgoblins, bugbears, and their kin from the wood, while also safeguarding it against exploitation at the hands of civilized folk and protecting the wood's ancient ruins and sacred sites from looters.

The Circle of the Moon is common for Circle of Swords druids, although some belong to the Circle of the Land (Forest).

The Emerald Enclave

Less a druid circle and more a loose confederation of circles and their allies, the Emerald Enclave is devoted to protecting the redoubt of civilization in the North from destruction. Elsewhere in the world, the Emerald Enclave must pursue a more balanced path, but the vast wilderness of the North holds far more danger to people than they pose to it.

Founded in the Vilhon Reach over a thousand years ago, the Emerald Enclave has spread across much of Faerun. Its members include druids, rangers, barbarians, and others who live in the wilderness and know and respect its ways. They wear an article of emerald green clothing as a symbol of their membership, often bearing the emblem of a stag's head.

Emerald Enclave druids belong to the Circle of the Land and Circle of the Moon in equal measure.

The Moonshea Circles

The Ffolk of the Moonshea Isles venerate the land as the great goddess they call the Earthmother. Their circles gather around sacred pools known as moonwells, their link between the natural world and the goddess, ringed by standing stone circles, raised by their ancient ancestors.

Moonshea druids most often belong to the Circle of the Land (Coast, Forest, and Mountain).

Moonwells

The water of a moonwell, drunk directly from cupped hands, restores ld8 hit points, plus the drinker's Wisdom bonus, if any .. If the drinker has threatened the balance of nature since the last full moon, the water instead deals ld8 poison damage to the drinker. This damage is also dealt by a corrupted moonwell. Either effect occurs once only per day per drinker. On the nights of the full moon, drinking the water of a moonwell can, at the DM's discretion, have additional effects, such as conferring the benefits of a lesser restoration spell.

Moonwell water placed in a container or taken more than 30 feet away from the well no longer has any of these properties; it is simply water.

On the three nights of the full moon, three or more druids gathered around a moonwell can cast commune and scrying once each without expending spell slots and without material components, provided that one of the druids is at least 9th level and the rest are at least 4th level. At the DM's option, the druids can use a moonwell on such nights to cast different spells.

The Harpers and Druids

Druid circles in the North are often allied with the Harpers, as they have common purpose, with bards and rangers serving as go-betweens. Individual Harpers can usually expect a circle to at least grant them food and shelter, and an opportunity to attend a gathering and speak, if they wish.

Still , the Harpers aren 't a druidic organization and, despite what some common folk might believe, not every druid or dru id circle is allied with, or even friendly toward, the Harpers and their cause. Indeed, some druids consider the Harpers busybodies who threaten the natural balance almost as much as the evils that they fight against.

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 clerics 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 worship 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 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 the harsh 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.

Druid Guide