DEEP DIVE in the REMASTERED DRUID in Pathfinder 2e (feats, primal spell changes!) 

ADDITIONS/ERRATA: -The Untamed Order "bonus focus point" also makes it an alluring candidate to take up via Order Explorer, as a 2nd druidic order! (One can get a 2nd focus point with a 2nd level druid feat this way) -Summoning spells already limit you to common creatures. So the change makes summon spells a bit MORE flexible if the GM agrees! -Some have pointed out that Floral Restoration lets you recover a Focus Point with a single action, for that battle you want to have an extra Focus Point. But that is also true with the current champion's Desperate Prayer feat, which is only a Level 1 feat and is a free action AND doesn't require qualifying plant life to be nearby. Floral Restoration is a Level 8 feat. (Sure, it also heals you 4d8 but I don't see that as sufficiently explaining the huge jump in level.) And Desperate Prayer is a Level 1 feat under the CURRENT rule of Refocusing. What counts is the extra marginal benefit of aomething. Under the Remaster, an adventuring day has 5 encounters, having +1 focus spell casting in a day gives much less marginal benefit, when you can cast your focus spells 10 or 15 times now in that day. For comparison, under current rules there is a Level 12 feat that lets you restore 1 extra Focus Point EACH time you get to recover between combats. Floral Restoration's level is much closer to that than to Desperate Prayer, however. (Someone brought up the Familiar Focus familiar ability which actually supports my argument: that's one of 2 abilities you can get from a Level 2 feat.)

The restriction to Metal Armor and not Metal weapons always seemed to be caused by the fact Wood or Stone was never mentioned as a material to make weapons out of. The Removal of it makes sense with Metal being an Elemental Plane, and the Primal List being tied to them thematically.

All summoning spells specifically pointed out that you can only summon a common creature. Now it seems they put that in the summoned trait.

Insect Form (Spider) still references 'entanglement', which continues to not be a status. It's kinda funny that it stayed that way :D

In my mind the wild shape Druid is the one that deserves to start with two focus points because that's your main combat ability. And that also gives players the option to use it for environmental like climb swim whatever but then if they need to switch forms or anything like that they still have that option

I think druids get shield block because the primal list doesn't get the shield cantrip, so it's a way to still have that style of defensive option.

For Floral Restoration and other 1/day Regain A Focus Point abilities, the power of them is that they only take a single action or free action instead of 10 minutes. They're for emergency situations where you're out of Focus points in combat and need one right now.

Untamed has 2 focus points, so you can transform to scout, and still have a transformation for combat

Combining the Greek and Chinese classical elements was previously done by Jim Butcher in his Codex Alera series. In it, there is a culture similar to ancient Rome, members of which can summon and command elementals they call Furies. There are six elemental types: the Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Wood, and Metal furies, and there are six books in the series. The series started as a bit of a dare; people gave him a couple of random prompts from which he was to write a story, and what he got was the ‘lost Roman legion’ trope, and Pokémon. He was able to craft a pretty compelling story around those elements (ha), and even brought in more disparate media influences, like the Zerg from StarCraft.

More interesting is that the nourishment rules for goodberry have changed. And I approve! Especially since there is now an order that automatically gains access to this uncommon spell. If I want to host a game where scavenging food is a major part of the mechanics, I don't want a druid that can just bypass the mechanic (at very low costs) be a player option, neither do I want to have to know that up front as a GM so I can ban it from the table!

Feats like Floral recovery let you recover a focsl point mid battle. So if you use up your current pool you can recover then use another focus point. A Gnone druid with the right feats can ,by using 2 different once a day recovery feats, use 5 focus points during a single battle.

I'm super excited for the change in goodberry. Because the previous spell required you to target a ripe berry which meant your GM could ask where did you get a ripe berry? And you can't buy ripe berries as equipment so your GM could at any time decide no you don't get your focus spell

It's official Druid is now _METAL!_

Loving your dedication to these.

Animal Order can always take Order explorer to instantly gain another Focus point and maybe even more utility with its Focus points.

I believe spells automatically having auditory trait cannot be true because that would mean that targets of your spells would be immune to your spells if they are deafened and cannot hear the magical words, which clearly cannot be true. Auditory means there are sounds being made for this effect/action (not necessarily speech or magical words) and that in order for them to work, the target needs to hear them.

Now every time I cast cornucopia I'll scream at the top of my lungs SENZU BEAN

So much work! Well done!

Druid has always been rock solid (heehee), and it still looks very fun. I’ve played druids in a couple short adventures but I really want to play one in a longer campaign.

These videos have been great! Thanks!

Thanks for all your hard work Ronald.

Thank you for your great coverage!

New subscriber - really loving your tone and content, finding this all very helpful. I was one of those people that has been in the PF2e since the playtesting in 2018 and I love seeing how this game develops and continues to improve! Keep up the good lawyering!

For Forest Passage, it does just say that any difficult terrain caused by plants and fungi is ignored, which I as a GM would interpret to include magical terrain anyway without the follow-up sentence.

Floral Restoration is probably fine. You regain 1 focus point as a single action, allowing you to use it mid-combat, which in turn enables you to use up to 4 focus spells in the same encounter, much like anyone with a familiar with Familiar Focus.

I'm disappointed there's no real changes to Wild Order druid. First of all they didn't fix the problem where +2 Status bonus to hit from Wild Shape doesn't actually trigger on a druid on most forms/levels, when in return a martial who took Druid archetype would be rocking that bonus for quite a while. Additionally: The ambiguity you have to deal with when polymorphing ( what works and what doesn't ) is extremely frustrating. I'm not sure, maybe Ronald haven't covered any changes to Polymorph/Battleform wording in rules due to time restraints, maybe there's still hope that they cleared up on how battleforms work, but if not I'm kind of dissapointed that Paizo left out such vague ruling disaster and haven't fixed it.

Howling Blizzard easily became one of my favorite attack spells in the remaster. The versatility, utility, and the fact it's a basic save made it a core attack spell for my wizard. For once, I don't cast fireball. The druid changes look interesting!

Thanks! Thanks!! THANKS!!! These videos are excellent!!

It is a shame Leaf and Storm Druids no longer get a second starting focus point but the new rules do make it much simpler for everyone to work out the size of a focus pool. Amusing to see a Wild Druid starts with 2 Focus however other Druids can take Order Explorer at level 2 to get Wild Shape and a second focus point, and if they really want Order Magic at level 4 for the third focus point. They can then retrain Order Magic later once they get another Focus spell. A Wild Druid could have Blessed One at level 2 for a third Focus point which seems a great way to build a party healer who can turn into a beast when the chips are down! Cornucopia is wonderful as well. I am so glad to see the removal of the need to have a ripe berry. I am really looking forward to playing Druid after this comes out.

Thanks for the great video!

Love these update videos

I normally don't comment, but I need to thank you for your meticulous work. I follow several Pathfinder 2e content creators, and you are by far the best. Thanks!

I was really hoping form spells (animal form, insect form, Dinosaur form etc.) got more heightened stats, even if they weren't as powerful as the higher level forms baseline. I get that they don't want fighter dipping druids for shapeshifting to overshadow druids, but to not be able to just use animal form at high levels without trashing your AC and damage is really disappointing. In fact, I think everything else about the forms is pretty balanced as is, but the AC (and to a lesser extent, damage) thing is just frustrating, and if all heightening animal form past spell rank 5 did was increase AC and maybe a small damage increase, I think it would still be balanced and allow Druid to shine. MAYBE increase attack modifier appropriately too to keep that form more comparable to martials using that form.

Are you keeping the witch for the last one because of alphabet or because you know that everyone wants to know it first and will watch everything waiting for it? XD Anyway, love your work

Druids have always been one of my favorites ! This is going to be very fun!

Regarding the metal armor/weapons anathema, the original (D&D) lore reason is that worked metal disrupted their connection to nature. So wearing worked metal armor was a no-no because it encased your body and made it hard to feel your connection to the natural. Metal weapons were held in the hand and so didn't block you off. It wasn't a matter of metal being taboo exactly, but that worked metal made it hard for them to make their natural connection. Whether that is a good explanation or not is up for debate, but that was the lore behind it. Though the lore seems to have been lost with recent additions and evolutions.

My players used Howling Blizzard twice during my last game, the like the change.

Thank you Ronald. Great coverage as always. I must say I am dissapointed. Not by your content. But by how they did the wild/untamed druids dirty. Again. No changes at all, that seems like a bad joke. I play TTRPGs for over 20 years. I have never played DnD 5e. From what I have gathered, the shapeshifting druid in 5e is moon druid and a lot of people think that moon druids are overpowered. So Paizo tried to prevent that. So they tried to balance their game in comparison with another game. But in this case I kinda feel that they forgot to balance their game within. Wild druid seems like a jack of some trades but master of none. They were so focused on nerfing wild druids, that they forgot that some other classes are allowed to do the same thing without the nerfs or with much lighter nerfs. I currently play in 3 campaigns. In one as a GM and in other 2 as a player. In one as a wild shape druid. I like druids and I like shapeshifters. And I must say Paizo's take on wild shape druids does not feel powerful nor fun to play. I was wondering Ronald if you would be down to talk with an average player to share some opinions or perspectives. You could record it for content. Maybee you could be na advocate for untamed druids and show me how they are not weak and unfun. Or we could come up with some ideas to fix them a bit. Anyway, thanks for your content and keep up the good work.

The real strength of Floral Restoration is that it is only a single action; regaining 4d8 hit points is basically a single action heal spell, and you get a focus point back on top of that. Given the propensity of druids for spamming focus point spells, this is really quite good, not underpowered at all; being able to, in the hardest encounter of the day, cast a focus spell for a fourth time while also healing you, is quite good.

Absolutely love your breakdowns! Can't help but notice in the spells you showed that the elemental traits don't seem to make much of an appearance, which is really disappointing for Kineticists with Kinetic Activation. Things like Thunderstrike not having the Air trait is just disappointing and makes me sad :(. Really hope other spells get things like the Air and Water traits.

I'm simultaneously relieved and disappointed that Wildmorph wasn't renamed Animorph

One of the easiest fix for "Tailwind" is simply add the line, "This movement only applies in Exploration Mode."

Cool video

Don't know if anybody has mentioned it yet, or if I misinterpreted what was said, but Harm is Divine only, not on the Primal list. Love you videos!

Surprised you glossed over the Acid Grip spell, the replacement for Acid Arrow. Lost 1d8 base acid damage, but in exchange it is now a reflex save instead of a spell attack, anything from a successful save to a critical failure also allows you to forcefully reposition your target between 5 and 20ft in any direction, and if the target suffers from the persistent acid damage from the spell, they also take a -10 status bonus to their speeds until the persistent damage is gone. For a loss of 1 overall damage dice, I think that's a pretty killer 2nd level spell for arcane and primal casters! It even scales at the same rate that Acid Arrow did when heightened. As for lightning strike, given taking any damage at all from it causes the target to be clumsy 1 for a turn, and it's great reach, I would say losing the base 1d12 damage and persistent damage on a crit isn't the biggest loss from Shocking Grasp. Let alone it technically scales better in higher level spell slots given that the sonic damage increases by 1d4, compared to the persistent damage applied by shocking grasp only increasing by 1 per spell level, you did not double the persistent damage on a critical hit with Shocking Grasp.

I mean Floral Restoration is a single action and it can be used in combat while 4d8 at lvl 8 isn't much it isn't little as well as regaining a focus point though I believe that cool down could have been lowered to once per hour, since regaining a Focus point in combat for single action could be useful if you have good focus spells

Dope

Ranger and Barbarian traditionally have had an aggressive image, dual wield and great weapons being iconic styles respectively. Druids were casters and defensively focused when not transformed. The shield block makes sense from a flavor perspective.

Was that comedy?... I like it, keep it up. :3

I don't have the Remaster in front of me yet, does Wildshape (or whatever it's called now) still work like before? It used to let you polymorph into a pest, or animal ar 2nd tier. Did they add elemental to 5th tier like they did to the similar Spell to animists in the playtest?

26:16 - A spell is ‘cool’ when it ends the world? If, for example, the Sun hit Earth, it would be like a basketball smashing a cherry.

I don't think deafened stops casting. There is a difference between not being able to hear and not being able to speak.

Seems like many spells switched from attack rolls to saving throw, Maguses (Magi ?) will have to use the pre-remaster versions or otherwise will find themselves with far less options. Unless they remaster the class to somehow allow it in summer.

I think Polar Ray was better than Artic Rift. Drained 2 is more damage than 2 extra D8, and it gives -2 to FOR in addition. It was single target and attack spell, but the big thing was the -2 to FOR.

I wonder if they will give spell rogues any love

There's one change to the familiar ability valet, that explicitly mentions it doesn't work with the independent trait.

I'm impatiently waiting for your Witch Deep Dive (there are some feats that I think are plainly bad). Will you make a Ancestry Deep Dive?

Did they go back on the change to focus points? Druids still have the talent that boosts refocus.

I interpret it as though the fruit can be spilled into an ally's hand, so it's actually a lot more convenient now, since the berry is not needed, you just cast it and someone gets it.

Regarding summon spells, do you think it would be too much to allow the max level of the summons to be 2 below the casting level of the spell’s rank? Ex: A Rank 3 summon spell summons a level 3 creature, Rank 4 summons level 5, etc.

I think floral restoration is not that bad, considering you only need one action to use it, and it's probably meant to be primarily an in-encounter thing, imagine casting 6 focus spells in an encounter.

The restriction of druids to use metal armor was a holdover and relic from D&D where druids still have this restriction even in the D&Done remake. The same restriction also applies to monks and rogues in D&D, but instead of an outright ban, they receive a hevy penalty if they use them.

3:00 Druid also has Armor Proficiency. They are kinda like a Warpriest for defenses. Shield Block makes sense in that context. And they were like that in DnD 3E. And now that Metal Anathema is gone and Sturdy runes are there, you actually get to _use_ that feat for once. 10:50 Note that it is 1 Action. So this is a _combat_ refocus + heal. Comparing it to refocussing is a mistake.

And Form Control no longer has a Strength prerequisite :)

My reading of Forest Passage, since it doesn't specify Natural phenomena, then travel through magical fungi is included in just 'fungi'. Perhaps thats why the extra language was removed?

What's your favorite new feat for Druids?

with out taking in account that old spells still here (e.g. shocking graps)... is a indirect nerf to the magus and his spell strike (if you don't take expansive spellstrike)

I think Magus is going to need some updates, if a lot of its bread and butter is being outclassed by newer spells. Expansive Spellstrike is quickly becoming a must-have feat for that class, so it would make sense to make it an early to mid level class feature, should they decide to do a remastered iteration of the class.

At 19:02 Ron mentions something about a PFS ruling that affects the damage of Electric Arc. Does anyone have the details on that rule?

I am interested in how Pathbuilder will handle legacy and remaster feats that were not renamed.. (eg Will there be a toggle so you can find Woodland Stride if you don't want to use Forest Passage?) Especially if they are both PF Society legal for now.

I have a question. Pre-remaster, the druidic order section of the druid class states that you begin with 1 focus point. Some orders grants a second one, like storm and leaf. In the remaster, each focus spell you know increases your pool by 1 point (up to a max of 3). But do they remove that line about beginning with one focus point regardless of order? If they do not, then storm and leaf start with 2 and wild starts with 3. That seems... not intended. If they do remove it, though, then storm and leaf would actually start with only 1 (so less than pre-remaster) and wild would start with 2. Ultimately, that's probably the better balanced option.

Untamed Shift needs more love.

Comment for the algorithm

Do ANY spells have the attack trait anymore? My magus is looking deader and deader by the second.

Thanks for the vid. I must say I’m kinda disappointed that seemingly nothing was done to help animal companions in the latter half of the game.

I still hate the name change for Burning Hands. There are now two spells where you Breathe Fire, the other one allows you a choice of Damage and Breath Shape.

How many spells a druid can get on He level up?

Did he ever make the planned "Strongest Feat" video?

Isnt it kinda weird that druids can get leshy familiars when leshy is an actual core race in the game Imagine the animal order druid getting an actual human baby familiar

For Forest Passage, I'm assuming they removed the final sentence from WS because it's unnecessary. No part of the feat mentions "mundane" or "natural" difficult terrain (DT), as is the case with most features that let you ignore DT. I'm pretty sure they removed that sentence for word count reasons as the default assumption would be "all" plant or fungi related DT.

I don't think regaining a focus point as an action is underpowered. It will give you an extra casting of a focus spell on an encounter per day. Even if now you get all the focus points back between encounters, you will be limited to cast your max per encounter. If you can get one back with an action, it means instead of casting 1/2/3 focus spells on an encounter, you will be able to, one per day, cast 2/3/4 focus spells on an encounter.

Druids of the Secrets of Magic Orders are now not eating so well lol... I really hope those get buffed in an Errata.

Do you think all of these cantrips going from attack rolls to saving throws is going to be for the Magus in the future?

Overall, it looks like Druids remain arguably the strongest class in the game. The focus spell change is very friendly to them, given the enormous power of their focus spells, and the overall changes have made them very modestly stronger; the only way they got weaker, really, was that electric arc got nerfed, but the reality is, with the new focus spell rules, you're barely going to be using electric arc past the early levels.

Left out fire, water, Earth orders from secrets of magic?

Do the other orders still exist? Flame, Stone, Wave

Honestly I wish they were clear about deafened because they weren't really clear about it in the previous edition when it comes to deafened. Because you need to be able to hear but you're speaking. And you're speaking words that you are trained in or expert in or master or legendary deaf people can talk

What did i miss with Tailwind that makes it a bad idea as written?

Is Paizo going to deprecate the renamed things like spells and feats? Seems like it defeats the point if all the non-remastered core things are still legal (in addition to the remastered) because they changed the name instead of updating under the old name.

Well to each his own. Caustic Blast no thanks.I prefer the spell attack and a chance for ongoing damage. DOT is my thing. Also is stone Druid still a thing ?

I suspect Shield Block is there because druids were dying too easily during playtest. Whether that's because of an early or traditional "no metal armor" or some other thing is beyond my ken. Is this REALLY going to be the case that people who are deaf will be unable to cast spells? Because I know a number of their deaf customers are going to be unhappily with this. And there likely will and should be some push-back on that.

Arctic Rift is cool, sure.. but I REALLY prefer Polar Ray tbh. It's so hard to inflict the Drained Condition :(

Primal Howl. Why does it say familiar when it’s for animal companions? XD

Since you are a layer - what's your speciality? My mom is real estate layer, and if it's not a secret i would love to know more about you.

Man I wish I liked the idea of druids. For me they just seem like primal clerics often given more than that class. I understand the class is popular, but... the distaste remains.

Um, akshually, looking through the rules is the job of a paralegal.

16:00 I can't see this being a typo. Having a level 4 class feat completely negate a whole bunch of spells it way too powerful. That being said, without that bonus, the feat is absolute garbage, so it definitely needs a rework either way. Yet another example of why Paizo should have released the books to the public early so the community could check them for mistakes. Paizo's completely unnecessary secrecy always hurts everyone in the end.

Floral restoration requires "15 square feet" so........one square? Less than one square, actually

It looks like you're doing these in alphabetical order. Did I miss Bard?

Combat cantrips have been overall weakened. 2d4 is a lower floor with the same ceiling and lower averages. They devs just seem to hate casters that want to blast.