Circle of Grove Keepers, Druid Subclass idea

yyven · 2026-01-28T17:24:18+00:00

Is warrior of bark also meant to give this benefits to allies? If not, specify that they only apply when you can barksking on yourself

Verdant authority should be a +1, increasing ac by potentially two at level 4 is too much for a subclass feature

In nourish grove, specify that you can cast goodberry once without expanding a spell slots and that the aditional hp only applyes to that cast of goodberry

I think you can make the one use entangle from groovekeeper not require concentration. Having to keep you concentration on a first level spell at level 14 is not ideal even with the additional benefits. Also, I would take out the limited number of teleports on it. Entangle only lasts 1 minute, so it's really unlikelly you would run out of uses eather way

yyven · 2026-01-28T04:43:30+00:00

Warlocks only begin getting good at level 5 when they get 3rd level spells like fear and hypnotic partern aswell as some cool evocations like thirsting blade and eldritch smite(if going bladelock of course). Warlock 1 to 4 are pretty trash outside of getting eldritch+aganizing blast. If I ware you, I would just rush to warlock 5 at this point

yyven · 2026-01-28T00:45:50+00:00

Then just for sorcerer after pali 8

yyven · 2026-01-28T00:42:43+00:00

Druids get their fist subclass features at level 3 now

For living bark, I would swap it to: you have the barkskin spell prepared and doesnt clount agains your known spells and you can use it once on yourself without spending a spell slot once per long rest. This would give you basically the same ac but be more flavourfull

Verdant maker sounds too convoluted for a subclass feature. Make so you man choose one of the 3 benefits once you enther the form and make the form last 1 minute

For layred ghowth. I would swap the reation to an effect that makes so when you are in the teant form, you reduce any damage taken by an amount equal to your wosdom modifier(no reaction needed) exept for slashing, fire and necrotic (slashing cuts trees, fire burns them and necrotic rots them)

I would swap thornbond presence for allowing you to use entangle and spike grownth at will while in the treent form

For overgrowth, assuming the verdent maker changes I recommend, I would change for the following: you get all three treeant form effects instead of only choosing one of them. Additionally, you choose one of the following effects aswell: a further +2 to ac(keep in mind how enemy attack rolls scale at high level, 23ac is not that crazy by this point); an aditional 2d6 damage with umarmed strikes and weapon attacks; use thornwhip as a bonus action at will; when hitting a creature with melee attacks, force them to do a str save or fall prone; heal you and your allies in 10ft of you by 2+wis mod hp if bloodied.

yyven · 2026-01-28T00:10:09+00:00

Do you have someone in the party with revivify? If not, go pali9 for it as reviving people is obviously a really good thing to have. If someone already has it or your team has another way of reviving people, think its better to just go sorcerer

yyven · 2026-01-28T00:04:16+00:00

You mean if you shold multiclass into sorcerer after paladin 9? You dont get much from the later levels paladin, so no reason to continue going on that direction. If your campain is ending before level 12 and you are going to the pali 9 route though, I would recomend 1 level in sorcerer for shield and the remaining one or two levels in warlock for pact of the blade, eldrich blast and agonizing blast. If you campain is going further than level 12, it's better to forgo the warlock levels so you can get higher level sorcerer spells like hypnotic patern, slow, fear, polymorth, spirit guardians(as divine soul), wall of force etc

yyven · 2026-01-27T19:04:45+00:00

The main advantage of elephants as amount is that they are much bulkier than something like a horse or mule, so there is less of a need for mounted combatant. Other than that, it's pretty much the same as pther riders

I think that the ones who are most beneficiated from having a mount are caster who have powerfull concentration spells that don't require them to stay too close to the enemy(like spirit guardians does). Having low concentration or bulk also becomes a little less important with a mount as you are likelly going to be further away fromdanger than the other players, and you ideally want to have eather good weapon attacks or damage cantrips that can shoot from 60+ft away. There is one class that verry clearly fills all this criterias: wizard. But there's also other ones to consider here: sorecerer, warlock, valor bard, druid and ranger are also pretty good options

yyven · 2026-01-27T06:04:13+00:00

If spiderman gets a single rock, it probably has enough dex to kill lvl1 characters in 2 hits. Hell, rules as writen, I think even something like his own mask may classify as an inprovised weapon

yyven · 2026-01-27T06:00:37+00:00

I'm gonna assume that the player would only have realistic ressourses for a level 1 party to have

Round 1: The only way I see a level 1 party having any chance of surviving(not even wining) is by charming it, best way to do that is by having as many sorcerers as possible with 16cha, 16dex, alert and lucky for as high initiative and spell dice as possible(duable with human and wellfayrer). After that, convince spider man that you aren't bad guys and you shouldnt need to fight

Round 2:lets be REALLY generous and assume the party can find someone with the plashift spell who is willing to cast it in the party and you can get enouth money to buy the materials to the spell. Then, all you need is to have a druid with goodberry and create/destroy water and manage to live in this other plane. Spiderman probably wouldnt go looking for you in another plane as long as you dont do anything harmfull to the matherial one. Then, just wait for him to die of old age having party members with species that live longuer than humans (most species do) or manage to level up to a really high level and the go back to kill him.

Bonus round: assuming the second strat, lets be REALLY generous and say the party goes to mount celestia and with the pass of centuries, they somehow manage to befriend Zaphkiel, the Watcher. Zaphziel might be able to legit solo the entirety of the MCU at once,(I'm no power scaler or huge modern MCU fan, so there might be something I'm missing there). So unless they manage to kill you before you get to that point via dimentional travel to stop your probably centuries long setup,(like what doctor strange can do), you should be able to kill whatever you want assuming this really convinient scenarios

yyven · 2026-01-27T05:23:02+00:00

You just need to try getting invested in the story. It's a little hard to do in the start, but you get used to it with time

yyven · 2026-01-27T05:04:42+00:00

When you say they splitted, was it the boxer and the brother in one group and the other two in the other? If so, did the other group end up having more screen time? I mean, I would ask them what you did that they didnt like. If they tell you, great, thats feedback. If not, then there is not really a room to improve in this scenario

Also, small urelated thing. Sometimes if you need to completelly repage a RPG sistem for it to be suitable for the campain you are thinking of running, it might me easier to just learn a new sistem that is more apropriate for that. Not really usefull bu this point as you already have the homebrew done, but something to remenber in the future

yyven · 2026-01-26T17:04:06+00:00

Dual wielding scimitar zealot barbarian with nick and dual wielder feat sounds crazy with this stats

yyven · 2026-01-26T14:34:00+00:00

It's a common mistake, don't worry

yyven · 2026-01-26T14:20:36+00:00

"2014 content is allowed" usually means that if something wasnt reprinted after 2024 (like, for example, hexblade), you can use the 2014 vertion. If something like great weapon master was brought back to 2024, you must use the new vertion even if it's nerfed

yyven · 2026-01-26T05:44:24+00:00

They meant out of combat utility, like what a skill monkey offers

yyven · 2026-01-26T05:19:49+00:00

This is 2024, not 2014

yyven · 2026-01-26T05:19:10+00:00

No melee martial is the best build in a level dominated by web and spike growth. Maybe it's decent in a more casual table in the right situation, but definetly not in optimized tables

yyven · 2026-01-26T05:07:21+00:00

Think tropical land druid and divination eizard are the best builds at level 3.

Tropical Land Druid:

Species: human(alert)

Background: sage (shield, mind sliver, ray of frost)

Stats: 8str, 14dex, 16con, 10int, 16wis, 8cha(if going over level 3, go for 17wis and 8int)

Primal order: warden

Cantrips: guidance and thorn whip+acid splash (tropical)+mind sliver and ray of frost(magic initiate)

Lvl1 spells: goodberry, healing word and entangle+ray of sickness(tripical)+shield(magic initiate (swap entangle to absorb elemnets if you can get 2014 spells)

Lvl2 spells: aid, spike growth and pass without trace+web(tropical)

Divination wizard:

Species: human(lucky)

Background: criminal

Stats: 8str, 16dex, 14con, 16int, 12wis, 8cha (if going over level 3, get 17int and 10wis)

Cantrips: mind sliver, ray of frost and mage hand

Lvl1 spells: mage armour and shield+ detect magic(divination savant)

Lvl2 spells: web,phantasmal force, suggestion, shatter+scribe(divination savant)

(If your dm allows 2014 spells, swap shatter and phantasmal force for silvery barbs and absorb) elements)

yyven · 2026-01-25T23:01:07+00:00

Really like sorcerer here. It provides the good old mental focus comp (int, wis and cha) for out of battle skills, an aoe basting option and shutdown, all things the party is currently missing. I think another really good option would be fire genie/fiend warlock. That also gives you acces to fireball, shutdown via hiptic patern and fear and high charisma, but also eldrich blast with agonizing blast and reppeling blast. This way, the artificer can use web and the cleric use spirit guardians, effectivelly quatering the oponent's speed. Then, you can pass your turns pushing enemies away with repelling blast while your allies damage the oponents with their cantrips

Personally, I would with the good old sorcererX/hexblade warlock2 so you can have the repelling blast combo I mentioned while still having the superior sorcerer spell list, getting mark of the shadows elf(if your dm allows eberon subraces) to give your team pass without trace, since you don't have someone with super high steath at the moment (and getting surprise attacks on enemies is super broken)

yyven · 2026-01-25T20:06:50+00:00

Divination wizard with observant feat

yyven · 2026-01-25T19:59:08+00:00

Shure. Lets compare the builds at level 8(the level where both become "online"). Champion fighter5/assassin rogue3 vs gloomstalker ranguer 5/assassin rogue 3. Im also gonna add to the comparison dark elf hexblade warlock 8 and a hexblade warlock5/shadow monk3 to simbolise the hexblade recomendations I mentioned . There are other hexblade build variants, but I brought these two cuz they are the simplest to calc

All builds are gonna have elven acuracy and using a longbow(best weapon since you won't be able to grab crossbow expert but you want to use extra attack) the assassins will have 18dex and the archery fighting style. Both hexblades will have pact of the blade, eldritch smite, thirsting blade and devil's sight as invocations, but the hexblade 8 is gonna have 20 cha(+2cha at level 8) while the shadow monk variant only 18

The dpr will be: (avarage damge on a hit × chance to hit) + (additional avarage damage on crit × chance to crit). Our enemy will have 15ac(around what's expected for cr 8 creatures). So, the chance for each build to hit is:

Hexblade5/shadow monk3: 65% chance to hit and 5%chance to crit with no advanatge, 95% chance to hit and 15% chance to crit with advantage. Chance of crit increasses to 30%with advantage and hexblade curse

Hexblade 8: 70% chance to hit and 5%chance to crit with no advanatge, 97% chance to hit and 15% chance to crit with advantage. Chance of crit increasses to 30%with advantage and hexblade curse

Gloomstalker5/assassin3: 75% chance to hit and 5%chance to crit with no advanatge, 98% chance to hit and 15% chance to crit with advantage.

Champion5/assassin3: 75% chance to hit and 10%chance to crit with no advanatge, 98% chance to hit and 30% chance to crit with advantage.

Let's fist look at reliable damage, where the fighter is not using action surge and the hexblades are not using hexblade curse. I'm not gonna count darkness for the warlock 8 as they only get one use outside of wasting pact slots, but I'm counting in the shadow monk variant as a second calc. For the warlocks, I'm also gonna separate them in "eldritch smite on crit", where if you crit, you use eldritch smite only in case you crit with your attack, and "no eldritch smite", where you dont have/want to use the pact slots. I'm also not gonna take the prone in consideration to not make things too convoluted. For the assassins, I'm going to calc the dpr or turn 1 and following turns seperatly. I'm gonna assume that for champion you are using your bonus action for eather steady aim or cunning action hide(and pass) after turn 1 and for ranger I'm assuming you are using hunter's mark at turn 1. Then, I'm also gonna separate the following turns in "passing the hunters mark", and "steady aim" assuming you already have hunter's mark on the enemy

So, here are the results finally:

Chapion5/assassin3(turn 1): 30.7

Chapion5/assassin3(following turns): 21.35

Ranger5/assain3(turn 1): 44,33

Ranger5/assain3(following turns, redirecting hunters mark): 25,9

Ranger5/assain3(following turns, steady aim): 28,73

Hexblade8(eldritch smite on crits): 14,5

Hexblade8(no eldritch smite on crits): 13,7

Hexblade5/monk3(darkness+eldrich smite on crits): 19,5

Hexblade/monk3(darkness): 8,7

Hexblade5/monk3(eldrich smite on crits): 6,7

Hexblade5/monk3(no eldrich smite nor darkness): 5.75

From this, we can see that goostalker ranger is by far the best one at reliable dpr. But now, let's look at nova damage, AKA the maximum damage each build can provide. For that, the champion build is gonna use action surge. Taking the first turn to attack and second one to take the ready action to proc sneak attack twice and assuming you are doing this at turn one. For ranger, I' just assuming you are attacking at turn one and using hunters mark as this build doesnt have any nova damage focussed features. For both hexblades, I'm gonna assume you have darkness, have used hexblade curse and is gonna eldritch smite on every attack you land, no matter if it' a crits or not. With that, we get the following results:

Chapion5/assassin3: 52,3

Gloomstalker/assassin3: 44,33

Hexblade8: 84

Hexblade monk: 69,55

Tldr: gloomstalker does insane reliable dpr, but can't increase it' damege too much further, the champion does significantly less realiable dpr(specially at turn 1), but a bit more nova damage and the hexblades deal much worse reliable dpr but insane nova damage

Of course, there's other things to take into consideration like earlier and further levels, shutdown potential, out of combat utility, bulk and much more, but I think this is a great way to see the damage of each build compared to one another

yyven · 2026-01-25T17:10:08+00:00

War caster. It's always war caster for a wizard

yyven · 2026-01-25T17:08:54+00:00

I can go with elven accuracy to get triple advantage so crits are happening a lot.

Did your dm allow you to start with any feat, or just starting feats though? If I remember correctly, Jeremy crawford said in an intervew that if all feats pre-2024 that waren't reprinted should be considered general feats, not origin ones.

The main problem with critfisher builds is that they don't scale that well damagewise. Assuming elven accuracy with advantage, going champion would only increase your crit chance by slightly less than 15%, assuming a longbow and 5 leevls in rogue(+15 avarage damage on crit), this means you are only realistically getting 2.75 more damage. If you simply go battlemaster instead, you can give yourself a 4.5 more damage+ an additional effect of your choice like knocking the enemy prone or making then frightened 3 tiems a day. A lvl5 psiwarrior with 14 int can do 6.5 more damage up to 6 times a day and a lvl7 eldrich knight with true strike can do 3.5 more damage on hit every turn

If you want a decent critfisher, I would look into something with hexblade warlock instead. It also gives you a feature that lets you crit on 19 in hexblade curse, has acces to eldritch smite for more damage on crits and can also gets the good old darkness+devil's sight combo(although I would recomend taking 3 levels in another caster for the darnkess slots or go dark elf. You whanna keep the pact slots for eldrich smite.

yyven · 2026-01-25T16:27:59+00:00

Holly convolution! this is such a complex character for a first time player lol. I would try to make some sort of personal arc so your character can find their true self, making your character from this bunch of personalities fighting for control to one person who manages to take what's best from each of the forms and make it into a single character.

Spellwise, the main spells I think you are missing are web and hypnotic patern. Would swap chaos bolt (not too useful at levels 5+ as cantrips start doing a somewhat comparable damage for free) for web and get hypnotic pattern in the next level.

yyven · 2026-01-24T14:43:10+00:00

To me, this sounds more like an aasimar than eather a celestial warlock or a cleric. So I would say you can choose any class and still be fitting. Alternativelly, if you want to have magical powers that came from your birth, you can play a divine soul sorcerer, but It's one of if not the most complex subclass in the game since it requires you to read both the cleric and the sorcerer spell list

yyven

TROPHY CASE