The Battle Tactics of an Archdruid 

> comes in charging with a band of elephants; > tanks a fighter hitting him for several turns; > casually fries the party's cleric into a crisp; > refuses to elaborate further; > leaves.

The biggest flex that a 20 level druid can make is wild shape into a squirrel and look inocent while summoning an incendiary cloud

I like how this was explicitly NOT an archdruid played with every possible trick of the trade and he still casually bodied a 4 man party and only let the fighter live because meh. Smartly played encounters are SCARY. I know I say it each time, but its a real good demonstration of dm skill that they can write encounters that dont end in constant tpk or casual party stomps.

My party: *casts fireball in an explicitly dry and woody forest and doesn't stamp out any of the little fires that start, spawning a forest fire that destroys massive swathes of the forest * Runesmith, only a few days later: So there's a pretty strong chance that your players have messed with an ecosystem...

Druids and Bards are the two main classes that I feel need WAY more antagonist roles in a D&D game. I'd love to see one of these tactics videos using Bards next time.

A nice, light hearted filler session... *Kills half the party*

"I am the lorax, I speak for the trees. ... They tell me to *break your fucking knees*."

I picked druid as my first ever class cause “we needed a healer” (none of us knew how to play at the time so we made our party around generic team comps ie: tank,dps,heals) so as it was explained to me “well you can be basically a preacher or a crazy forest man” so I choose crazy forest man and now druid is my favorite class and I plan on tryin all the subclasses as we continue to play

Man Grumbo really pulled his weight during that fight.

"Very few animals are vengeful" me "You haven't me my cat" "No animal is vengeful to the point of self hinderance" me: "Again, my cat."

"This round won't function as a surprise round, since they're elephants." Actually, real life elephants are surprisingly quiet creatures, and would indeed be able to sneak up on the party due to padding they have on their feet.

The Battle Tactics series is definitely my most favorite!

That Sasquatche story still gets me in the heart every time i see it! "We eat berries and mushrooms" "Go ahead and end my suffering, there's no point anymore"

DM Steve: uhh, did I forget to mention he casted foresight right before the battle? And uh uh uh he can fly and shoot lasers! LvL 1 party in the first random encounter: The fuck Steve?

This is literally “Finding Bigfoot” if Bigfoot was an immortal nature magician

Our Firbolg Druid just turned evil from accepting one too many gifts from the Amber Temple. This'll help me torture them with the consequences of their actions once he finaly catches back up to them

Druid grove is the perfect boss arena

I am very amused because I'm playing a vengeful druid right now, and I suppose their "arc" is going to be learning to forgive. Still, I'll make a mental note, I like the idea that a druid wouldn't pursue an enemy who seems like they've learned their lesson.

ooh, haven't watched yet, but this might be useful. Druids in my worlds are quite sharply divided between those that are friendly (the type to live alon in some woods and make friends with everyone who comes by, human or animal, or the people that'll help farms out occasionally) and those that are brutal people living in an almost kill of be killed way of life. Might take some of the stuff in here for the more violent druid people.

God I love these, Logan. I got audibly excited when I saw the title because intelligent enemies with ‘utility belt’ skill sets are super interesting and you really know how to utilize their diverse moves, without playing all their cards, to make an interesting (and in this case *terrifying* ) encounter.

That was incredible, and I'd love to see more tactical videos! Could we get one about dragons?

This is a dream compared to the druids of my homebrew world, with large, vengeful barometz created specifically to guard a set area by its druidic creator for as far as its umbilical vine stretches. Of course you’d still have this sort of thing, but elephants would be the least of their worries.

Give an angry but patient Archdruid a Staff of the Woodlands, an untraveled/unpopulated forest, and a few years of solitude, and they'll have a full army of CR 4 Awakened Trees at their disposal.

man if I hadn't already played this card by temporarily having one player character marked the enemy of all fey I would love to have done this with druids instead.

I've been using these and surprising my players, they're very well crafted, adaptable and effective. This is A+ quality content, man. Loving this channel.

Well, given that a goblin village reveres one of my party's PCs as a fire god, this will likely come in _very_ handy.

Can you do battle tactics of soldiers? Its could be a long video or some 2 or 3 short ones explaining how a poor conscript, a professional soldier and spec ops like some royal guards would fight

Fastest I've ever clicked, I'm buffing the hell out of Ravisin from Icewind Dale and making her a bigger deal in the plot. Want her tactics to be brutal.

Druid's point: Don't fuck with the woods. Players reaction: He thinks he can come and beat us, we'll hunt him down!

While I really enjoyed the concept of the video, the way that you ran the whole combat encounter left a lot to be desired. Because I'm the type of guy who loves to talk semantics, I'm gonna leave a list of all the mistakes I spotted in this encounter (for the sake of my own sanity if nothing else). Round 1 The archdruid uses his action to cast the spell Animal Shapes, which states that you transform the targets into Large or smaller beasts with a CR of 4 or lower. Elephants are Huge creatures (although they are shown to be the size of large creatures in the video), so the animals can't be transformed into them with this spell. The archdruid then uses his action to use his Change Shape ability. Both the Animal Shapes spell and this ability cost an action to use, so he can't do both of these on the same turn. Pyronius casts Fireball, which has a 20 foot radius. Unless he's trying to purposefully avoid hitting some of the elephants, this would easily hit all of them, including the archdruid who would need to make a concentration save to keep up Animal Shapes. Pyronius also takes no other actions on his turn. He could have easily hid behind his much more durable teammates, or if we assume he's a draconic bloodline sorcerer (which as a pyromancer themed character, he probably would be) he could use his bonus action to sprout wings and fly up out of reach of the elephants. The elephants surround and trample Pyronius dealing ~85 damage. The average level 16 sorcerer would have about 87 hit points, assuming he has 12 Constitution. If he's a draconic bloodline sorcerer he would have ~103 hit points, or more if he has at least 14 Constitution, which would be very reasonable at that level. While it's not unreasonable that Pyronius would go down, he would have better than even odds of enduring the elephant onslaught (at least for this round). The archdruid uses his prepared action to turn his elephant army into stegosauruses, which are also huge creatures. Round 2 Cheesus walks up to Pyronius and uses his action to heal him, presumably using Cure Wounds. As a level 16 cleric, he has access to 8th level spells. Even if he was saving these spells for some reason, the least he could do is cast Healing Word as a bonus action instead, letting him attack on the same turn. A couple of extra hit points from Cure Wounds isn't going to make much of a difference when your enemies are dealing this much damage. Gluttonius attacks the druid. As a level 16 fighter, he gets to make up to 3 attacks on his turn (or 6 if he uses his action surge). Elephants have an AC of 12, and assuming the fighter has 20 Strength, Gluttonius would be getting at least +10 to hit (more if he had a magical weapon). Its safe to assume that he hits every attack, which means the druid needs to roll a concentration save for every hit. The archdruid only gets a +1 to Constitution saves, so it is likely that he would fail at least one of these, reverting his stegosauri back into tiny woodland creatures. There is also a pretty good chance that the archdruid would take enough damage to be reverted back into human form from these attacks, considering he was able to kill the last elephant he hit. Also, before he makes the attack he runs out of range of one of the stegos for some reason, which is completely unnecessary and would provoke an attack of opportunity. Round 3 Runesmith mentions that the archdruid has had Foresight active for this fight. This likely wouldn't change much, since Gluttonius is still very likely to hit all his attacks, but it would make the archdruid more likely to have succeeded on his concentration saves. At this point the archdruid is almost certainly back to a human, which is probably a good thing because he's much harder to hit in that form. This doesn't change much though, since the archdruid ends up deciding to change back on his own later anyway. Round 4 The party happens to be standing in a line, which makes little sense. Earlier in the fight Gluttonius purposefully runs all the way around the archdruid instead of just hitting him from the north, and Cheesus could have easily cast a ranged healing spell on Pyronius instead of running into touch range. Even if he did want to cast a close-range healing spell, why would he run to the west of Pyronius rather than healing him from the north? There are probably a few things I missed, but these are the main problems I spotted. Again, I think that the idea of running an archdruid in an encounter like this is a fun idea, it's pretty clear that you don't do a very thorough job of reading the rules or ability descriptions before making these types of videos.

Yeah this series again

Step 1: Make leaf (big) Step 2: Throw leaf, make it spiky maybe Step 3: become a beaver Step 4: Stop being a beaver (optional) Step 5: Profit

I'm a bit confused, how were you able to turn them into Stegosaurus? Aren't they Huge sized beasts? Animal Shapes: Your magic turns others into beasts. Choose any number of willing creatures that you can see within range. You transform each target into the form of a large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower.

Fun fact: elefants have very soft feet and can be surprisingly sneaky, especially in a forest setting

Unfortunately, Animal Shapes cannot create an elephant or a stegosaurus, as those are Huge and it specifies "a Large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower." However, it can totally make an arbitrarily large number of, say, dire wolves or giant scorpions, so this doesn't change the equation too much. EDIT: ok looks like a bunch of other people already pointed this out oops

I thought this said "Arachnodruid" for a second.

I like how he’s just “imma come in here, beat the crap out of any killers of nature, and leave.”

This series is awesome Logan! You explain in depth the tactics of enemies in a fun, entertaining and informative way.

I love these mock encounters! Really good for inspiration, and also just fun to watch!

Knowing my oath of conquest paladin if he survives he will come back to fuck up nature even harder once he becomes higher level.

Just be thankful it wasn't an elemental arch druid, and yes technically their HP restore after every shape change. Its broken. As one famous arch druid said, they are basically gods. Then she immediately jumped off a cliff and died (she got better)

*OKAY I PULL UP, HOP OUT AT THE AFTER PARTY-* 3:53

*So we gonna ignore how some innocent little forest critters got their early deaths after being swayed by the ArchDruid*

Nice tactic, probably will adapt in my game someday. Just one point, Elephants and Stegos are Huge and animal shapes allow to choose beasts of size up to Large only ;)

Gotta say, I love these tactics videos you do. Very cool.

I've got to say these tactics videos are my favorite type It really helps me get into the mind of my monsters and helps me challenge even high level parties. Even better that in this video it ended in a draw, making it a very scary encounter but also one that the party is expected to survive (which for deadly encounters is what you go for 90 percent of the time, obviously you want medium and easy fights in there too, but that's an entirely different animal (ba dum tiss)

Damn that sounds scary. I like how you plan these fights they are great inspiration.

At least the Goblin Gal survived

Hey look, its MY turn to leave one of those "was just trying to figure out how to run this, thanks Runesmith!"

I'm in love with that party comp

This would be a fantastic and threatening encounter! Props to editor for the map. Minor change from elephants as they are Huge sizes, not large sized, but still giant spiders would be terrifying

Thanks for the heads up.

I really love the Battle tactics videos, I wanna see what battle tactics a high cleric would have.

Please do more of these

Love this series!

It's a murder... a group of crows is called a murder...

Love these videos. One on the beholder would be really helpful

So I've gotten the seekers guide and finished reading it today and I just gotta say it was great but runesmith I do both love and hate you (mostly love) for what that poem did to me these last few hours it was a fun ride unless the stien flips the script entirely I'm pretty sure I've got it

I enjoy this series.

Love how you used Malfurion stormrage as the archdruid example

MAKE MORE OF THESE VIDEOS LOGAN PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!!!!

Runesmith - Inside this forest are two scout druids and an ancient archdruid. Me - watching the fight and waiting for the scout druids to show up

Elephants have padded feet and effectively walk on tip-toes (they walk on their nails), surprisingly in a jungle an elephant can walk up behind you and you wouldn't notice. An elephant can surprise people, so long as they're walking and not running

The animal shapes spell says that the new form has to be size large or smaller. Elephants and Stegos are size huge and wouldn't be able to be used in this spell.

I love how this was presented as a filler episode and potentially half of the party is dead

Of course, knowing most groups, you've now completely lost whatever campaign you had for them to come back and burn the forest to the ground before torturing the archdruid to death...most groups that I know tend to turn into vengeful sadists with that sort of thing.

I saw the thumbnail and knew it was one of your videos. Good branding.

>Druid is angry about the party cutting down trees for a massive bonfire. >Casts firestorm >wat

For Halloween you can do The Battle Tactics of The Undead or Dracolich just for fun.

Love the playtest battles

And we're back!

Love it!

Love to see the technically-not-bears mama bears of nature get their own (amazing) video

I take that offer to see you at Gen Con seriously, I'm going to be there Saturday and Sunday.

Another idea: wild shape into a bug and while the party fights the elephants the Druid pelts them with spells from every direction

3:14. My dude has never heard of what tigers can get up to when you piss one off.

For future reference, the tail spikes of a stegosaur are officially known as its thagomizer.

Love this idea, however there is one glaring issue, Animal Shapes explicitly says "You transform each target into the form of a Large or smaller beast with a challenge rating of 4 or lower." Elephants and stegosaurus are CR4, but they are huge creatures, therefore you can't change your squirrel army into elephants RAW. A fix I would use is to transform your animal army into armored saber-toothed tigers from Curse of Strahd. They have pounce, which offers similar effects than an elephants charge. Normal saber-toothed tigers would work too, they'll just have slightly worse stats. For the second transformation, I'd use giant snapping turtles from Tomb of Annihilation.

bro crows are vengeful as heck they remember you and literally go tell other crows you've been a dick to them and they all drop whatever theyre doin just to find you and peck your eyes out

This is awesome content

Great vid

Angering a Druid circle = Quickest way to being fertilizer.

Fun fact about level 20 durids: unless the spell requires a material component with a cost, they can't be counter spelled. Why you may ask? Because they ignore spellcasting components, in order to cast counter spell you need to see someone cast the spell, because durids can ignore components they can cast most of there spells while standing still saying NOTHING so you don't actually see them cast any spells

I'm planning out a game where the Emerald Enclave has a serious presence so this is sure to be useful.

You had me at Cheesus

I like this video because there are lots of elephants in it.

Or you could go a much simpler route, have the druid cast shape change and turn into something really powerful, and archdruids live a long time, so they've most likely seen many powerful creatures.

Perfect timing! I'm DMing a new campaign that has an archdruid as a potential bad guy

My dyslexia read the thumbnail as *"THE BATTLE TACTICS OF AN ANGRY ORCHARD"* like the cider XD

Ok this was REALLY good and now I'm REALLY worried about my party meeting Wyllow on Level 5 of Undermountain.

The druid could also turn into a lil spider and cast storm of vengence. Dont worry! Its ok when the druid is causing the ecological devestation.

Sure hope that Firestorm spell didn't kill the unconscious critters the druid was using to punish the adventurers for damaging the ecosystem. Might also start a pretty apocalyptic fire in the woods the archdruid was protecting. I'unno, man... Sounds like a not-great druid to me.

If you mess with the squirrel, you get the trunks

The centipede in the room. You know the not problem everyone is making into one.

Dnd video idea: Oath of the Watchers paladin. It’s one of my favorite oaths simply because of its unique style and roleplay ability.

Can you do a video on how to run naval/ ocean encounters? That seems like a pretty important topic and I never see anyone covering it.

"Savior of elephants..." *proceeds to stab an elephant as one of the first ones in the party to attack*

Animal Shapes limits the transformation to beasts Large or smaller, so both elephants and stegosauri are off limits.

Today I learned Animal Shapes is the strongest druid healing spell. I mean sure it turns off class features and such, but if there is some reason your party needs to tank waves and waves of damage, Animal Shapes will just keep topping up the temporary HP.

This Video came In just in time. My players were not very respectful while traveling through the woods.