Is Circle of Spores Druid a Good Subclass? | Tashas Cauldron of Everything | Subclass Tier List 

The reprint makes the extra damage on melee hits necrotic now instead of poison. Much more useful and less likely to be resisted.

I just finished a one shot with this class and can I just say in a low level campaign setting this class is terrifying. It also was just so much fun to play, the flavour of this class just gave so much in the way of funny dialogue with our DM and actually led a lot of my party to question their opinion of the druid class. I recommend it BIG TIME. Thanks for making this video btw

I enjoyed how you explained how to make this subclass viable, because on first glance, it seems very limiting and weak, but with smart tactics, it can be a good subclass.

I believe most interested people know this by now, but tasha's new book changed the symbiotic entity damage type from poison to necrotic. It's the only change I saw from the ravnica one to the new printed tasha's cauldron version.

🍄Are you questioning the power of Magic Mushrooms?🍄

That idea for using your Spores with Gaseous Form was a great idea since the attack originates from the spores and not you so you can attack with them

I love this subclass. I am a devotee of Moonshine Cybin. Plus I want to play a necromancer without calling myself a necromancer.

One issue no one mentions is that the halo of spores and fungal infestation both use a reaction. Since you get one reaction per round it really limits them

I'm subclassing this with an Undead Patron Warlock!

You're wrong about raising a friendly zombie that has just gone down. Zombies are not humanoids nor are they beasts - they are undead. The text says beast or humanoid that is medium or smaller. Also, zomboys and skelegirls don't need to be any particular shape; You can have your pet zombie look like a shambling mushroom, a boar with no mouth, 9 arms doing a continuous cartwheel, and other unimaginable body-horrors. You can charm a pack of wolves to fight for you using level one slots, and then animate them into unlife - until the pack no longer needs them. Then finally let them rot away and grow new life. TLDR: You can't use your Fungal Infestation reaction to bring back already animated zombies from their recent demise.

Beast attacks in wildshape are considered melee weapon attacks so the damage from symbiotic entity increases your giant eagle damage, also, yes you can use symbiotic entity while wildshaped and give your 1hp rat a boatload of temp hp, unfortunately it’s a bit resource heavy (short rest recharge though, so that’s nice), only lasts 10 minutes, and takes some time to set up, so activate your abilities before starting up combat it you can.

I'm currently designing my own Dungeons & Dragons compatible subclass book, check out the behind the scenes video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AMvQNtJZM9w.html Check out some of my other subclass reviews in this playlist ru-vid.com/group/PLcJxbxz7P6i3sM5I2igJJTH1D7RivAto4 Addendum: the symbiotic entity damage is now necrotic instead of poison, giving the Spore Druid a better match up against a lot of the creatures resistant to poison at later levels.

Thanks for the nice overview! I give Spore Druid a C+ mechanically, but A+ for flavor.

Played this kind of druid and had him flavored as swamp thing. Was tons of fun

From my experience any boss mooks are your mooks. Assuming prep time after level 6 go in to a den with 4 zombies from animate dead to gang up on a guy and drag him to to wake him a s send him back out and repeat useing you first 4 to drag the goons and your spore zombies to go out and beat the hell out of them. At that level you could also meat shield with conjure animals lol still works with no prep just slower

Using Fungal Infestation to keep your zombies alive is brilliant! Thanks for the tip.

Really helpful video!

chill touch for life also i would go Shillelagh and never look back with my wooden 'longsword' perhaps a ranger 5 would be good for this?

I found that Guardian of Nature is a fantastic spell to pair with this class. YOu can turn into either the Primal beast (primal fungus?) form to gain +10 ft movement, stack Longstrider with that and you get =20 ft movement to keep creatures within your halo of spores. You can also change itno the Great tree (Great mushroom) form and it turns 15 ft around you into difficult terrain, and you can still have the extra 10ft move with longstrider, so you can control a nice area and slow down enemies, and you gain bonuses on concentration and other saving throws. Then there are the zombies. :) they only have 1 HP, but it can force a fighter who doesn't have area of effect to be harrassed by 4 to 5 zombies, who culd grapple and bit him. The Temp HP are Temp, but are nice. Mechanically is one of the weaker druid classes, BUT, druids are strong, the extra spells are nice, and at the table, if you deep dive into the RP aspect of this, change spells names like Faerie Fire to Fungal Fire or maybe explain that Longstrider are the spores enabling you to move 10 ft. faster, or healing, etc, its very, VERY fun at the table !!!

Uh! Nice audio quality, like and sub!

Keep up the good content

what if u use a myconid homebrew /other maker race and spores druid.

I have a question, the CloudKill and others that cause poison damage can affect me?? If yes, even if I have poison immunity?

I am startin to play a campaing with a Deep Gnome Druid of Sphoros, lets see...

Imma reflavor him as a dessert mummie type mage and add earth spells. Spores will be sandstorm

I love how you incorporate strategy into these guides. Unfortunately your idea of giving zombies 'orcish resilience' doesn't work, the feature requires the target to be a beast or humanoid, it can't be undead. The thing I love about this class is that most of its features don't have a hard limit. Besides Symbiotic Entity (and by extension Spreading spores) being tied to wildshape, all of it's features only require a reaction or bonus action, no 'until next long rest' in it

How can one combine gaseous form and cloudkill if they're both concentration spells?

Circle of Spores sounds like fun. I hadn't really thought of crossing the natural order of things with undeath, but it works for this class. By the way, where is your accent from?

Running point buy with a Hill Dwarf I end up at 8/14/20/10/20/10 with 263 Hit Points (+4 Con, +4 Wis, Tough feat & average HP) or a Tortle with 16/8/20/8/18/10 & 243 Hit Points (+4 Con, +2 Wis, Durable & Tough feats & once again average HP). In either case I play the character as a perpetually high AF hippie with a strong Canadian accent (including excessive use of the word "Hozer") who's very kind, supportive & encouraging but makes Grog from Critical Role look like Einstein (even though Grog has, like, 6 Int). The figurine I use is a druid with mushrooms growing all over him (Tortle & Dwarf each) with the entire thing painted black (no special color detail) as he channels a black, magical "fungus" or "mold" through his entire body. Whenever I turn a humanoid into a zombie I use a solid black Myconid figurine, as I'm flooding the entire body with mold & animating their remains. Once the zombies die, they "melt" into a puddle of black goo that immediately grows various plants & fungus. I even have names for all 3 of them: Dave, Davin, Dylan & Dale. Party leader gives a speech on what to do next, why it's so important & then asks for team input--but I just slowly look at him and go "Uh... huh?"

Sadly vine whip is not a melee weapon attack

Don’t cloud form make you supper slow with only ten feet of movement or am I wrong

I'ma be honest with you, I've been looking at circle of spores druid since it came out during guildmaster's guide to ravnica. It's sad to see that they haven't changed anything about the class, additionally, I believe the class is underpowered, the poison damage bonus you get is resisted or does nothing against most creatures. The necrotic damage is followed by a con save (an ability modifier that most creatures have a higher stat in), and none of the abilties really spike up the power at all. The biggest bonus to circle of spores, is the temp hp you get from using symbiotic entity, the issue with that however, is you can achieve that, in a better way, by utilizing moon druid. I would rate circle of spores as one of the worst druid subclasses because of that.

I am wondering, how Blindness/Deafness will hurt spellcasters? Also, are falling asleep while making your comments? xd

One thing I never liked was that the symbiotic entity is tied to the temporary hit points. Say you activate this feature and then take a massive hit. Your temp hit points are now gone and you wasted that turn.

Sounds like a botinst

There’s too little synergy with this subclass. The level 6 feature is a waste of a reaction that is not only trash, but stops you from using your other reaction feature. The level 6 feature should have been extra attack like the bladesinger, swordbard, or valor bard. Maybe a defensive reaction ability like defensive duelist too. Shouldn’t have to work so hard to figure out how to use a subclass.

This subclass doesn't seem to know what it wants to do. Most of the features encourages you do go into melee, with Halo of spores and Fungal Infestation only having 10 range and Symbiotic entity increasing melee damage.. Doesn't help that Halo of spores deals incredibly small amounts of damage AND competes with the Fungal Infestation feature.. Ontop of that the Symbiotic entity takes an action to activate.. It's very poorly thought out and seems very underpowered. I You lose the entity by taking damage, and the subclass doesn't get extra attack.. It's very much telling me that it wants to be a melee druid, but the lacks the fundamental support features for that kinda playstyle.. The concept is amazing but the executing is a huge let down.