Circle Of Stars Druid: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Call down the power of the stars with this spell-focused druidic subclass.

What is the circle of stars?

Circle of stars druids channel the natural magic that comes from the stars and their celestial movements. Similar in essence to astrology, star druids will use the very constellations to draw upon various powers related to the cosmos.

In fact, your wild shape can transform you into a star-powered version of yourself, enhancing your abilities and emitting a starlit radiance. Star druids study their star maps for cosmic secrets and omens of the future allowing them to influence predicted outcomes.

In many respects, star and moon druids are opposite sides of the cosmic druid coin. While moon druids focus on the melee aspects of being a druid through their enhanced wild shape, star druids are a more spell-focused subclass of druid.

The star druid was first introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and has been brought over to the 2024 Player’s Handbook in a practically unchanged state. However, the way this druid operates is very much altered due to the big changes to the core druid class. I’ve put together everything you need to know about these druids, including how to optimise and build your star druid.

At a glance

Gain star-fuelled powers and spells
Use your wildshape to enhance yourself with the powers of the constellations
Read signs of the future to influence outcomes
A good option for spell focused druids

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Circle of stars features

Star druids use their wildshape to fill themselves with starry powers, enhancing their abilities. They also study the cosmic movements and constellations to seek signs of the future. So how does that work in practice? Read on and I’ll explain:

How has wild shape changed?

D&D 2024 has brought with it a bunch of changes to how wild shape works. In some ways, this has made the ability less powerful, in other ways, has made the ability more powerful. In reality, I feel it balances the ability nicely. Below are the changes you can expect to wild shape:

Now only requires a bonus action to activate (allowing you to get stuck straight into the action)
You get more uses as you level up
You regain less uses on a short rest, but have more ways to regain uses such as expending a spell slot
You don’t assume the hit points from your wild shape from anymore. Instead you gain a number of temporary hit points equal to your druid level (and more for a moon druid)
But this also means you can remain in your wild shape until your full raft of hit points reaches 0 rather than reverting to your humanoid form when your wild shape form’s hit points are all lost
You now have a set number of wild shape forms known
You can speak while in your wild shape form
Damage in your wild shape form can scale with your levels
You can summon a wild companion using the find familiar spell by using a spell slot or a wild shape use

Star map – Level 3

How it works

You have a star map and while you hold it, know the guidance and guiding bolt spells. You have a number of free uses of guiding bolt each day equal to your proficiency bonus.

Tactics

Guidance is a great utility spell for skill checks. Make sure you enhance your party before they make any skill checks.
Guiding bolt is a solid spell with decent damage and grants advantage on the next attack against the target. Use it against priority targets, and if you can, coordinate with allies with high importance attacks like a rogue trying to land their sneak attack.

Starry form – Level 3

How it works

Use a bonus action and a use of your wild shape to transform into a starry version of yourself. For 10 minutes you can become luminous and take one of the following star forms:

Archer: When you activate starry form you can make a ranged spell attack with a range of 60ft that causes radiant damage equal to 1d8 + your wisdom modifier. You can also activate this on subsequent turns for the duration by using your bonus action.
Chalice: When you cast a healing spell, you can cause additional healing effects to nearby creatures equal to 1d8 + your wisdom modifier.
Dragon: Treat checks of 9 or lower as a 10 when making an intelligence, wisdom or concentration saving throw.

Tactics

For a star druid to be truly effective, remember to maximise your wisdom. This will increase your healing and your damage.
While not a huge amount of damage, remember that archer provides consistent bonus action damage that you can pair with other spell attacks too. Damage also scales a little as you gain levels.
If you plan to play a healer that consistently pushes out healing spells, chalice is definitely a good option. Handily, it will allow you to heal multiple targets at once too so you can bring back into play 2 unconscious allies at a time or just heal 2 of them. There are no action limits on this ability so you can cast healing word as a bonus action to get double healing and still use your action to launch a cantrip at your enemies.
Dragon unfortunately is a tad situational. Keeping your concentration is important, but it’s hard to know how much that will need to come into play.

Cosmic omen – Level 6

How it works

Once a day, you can use your reaction for one of 2 things (randomly determined by a dice roll). You can do this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus:

Weal: Add a d6 to a d20 roll.
Woe: Subtract a d6 from a d20 roll.

Tactics

Great for influencing crucial d20 rolls. D6 can easily be the difference between a pass and a fail. Coordinate with your allies to have them cast save or suck spells on enemies. I’d also keep uses of this for similarly nasty spells against your party if you end up with weal to protect yourselves.

Twinkling constellations – Level 10

How it works

Starry form is enhanced. Add an extra 1d8 to archer and chalice. Dragon gives you a slow flying speed.

Tactics

Dragon now gets useful at properly keeping you safe by allowing you to fly. While you can do this with wild shape at level 8 anyway, this will allow you to fly and cast spells which is a powerful way to stay safe and remain deadly.
Archer and chalice tactically remain the same, but with greater power to aid you at higher levels and make these abilities more worthwhile.

Full of stars – Level 14

How it works

You gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage by becoming partially incorporeal.

Tactics

You’re more resilient which is always useful. As a typically ranged Spellcaster, you’re less likely to need this as much, but resilience is always welcome.

Building a circle of stars druid

Star druids are dedicated Spellcasters that will typically want to operate at range. It’s easy to operate in a number of spellcasting roles though, with enhancements to damage, healing and your ability to maintain concentration spells.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Wisdom: The most important star druid ability as not only is spell casting tied to this, but also your damage/healing from starry form which you’ll want to be using as much as possible.
Dexterity: You’ll also want to maintain a decent AC, though how much you focus on this will mainly depend on your primal order. If you take warden, you get medium armor proficiency and can afford to stick to 14 dexterity.
Constitution: You’ll need this for your hit points and maintaining spell concentration.

Options to avoid

Strength: Not important for a star druid.
Intelligence: Only important for knowledge skills, not important enough to invest in heavily.
Charisma: Only important for face skills but there should be others in the party better placed to invest in this, you have other priorities.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	8
Dexterity	15	14
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	12
Wisdom	15	15
Charisma	8	10

Skills

Recommended options

Perception: Important for anyone in the party and highly used.
Insight: Important face skill.
Nature: Decent knowledge skill.
Arcana: Decent knowledge skill.
Religion: Decent knowledge skill.

Options to avoid

Medicine: Magic is a much more effective form of healing, especially for a star druid.
Survival: Used far too little to be of much use.
Animal handling: Used far too little to be of much use.

Species/race

There are a few things to consider when choosing a species for a circle of stars druid:

Innate spellcasting: Druids can repeat cast innate spells and have the wisdom to backup casting these competently.
Utility features: Druids are a utility class, but you may want to be careful with certain species traits as they may overlap with things your wild shape, features or spells can easily do, like flight.
Bonus action: If you intend on using archer a lot for your starry form, your bonus action will almost always be occupied with this. Any traits requiring your bonus action will therefore need a really compelling reason to use it over this feature. Though it’s easy enough to use another starry form to keep your bonus action free.

Recommended options

Elf (2024): Grab some innate spells and an extra skill, plus you’re hard to charm.
Gnome (2024): Out of combat utility through spells is handy. Advantage on wisdom, intelligence and charisma saving throws is powerful for some extra resilience.
Tielfing (2024): Lots of innate spells to repeat cast and a resistance for extra durability.

Options to avoid

Aasimar (2024): Celestial revelation could compete with the starry form archer for your bonus action, which could make it somewhat redundant. On top of this, it tends to rely on you being close to the action which star druids should avoid. You also have no use for temporary flight other than at early levels as you can gain this both from wild shape and twinkling constellations at level 8 and 10. You’re already one of the best healing classes around meaning that the best thing you get is a couple of damage resistances, which isn’t enough.
Dragonborn (2024): Dragonborn traits are largely redundant on a star druid. You can use AoE spells anyway and only get one attack so can’t stack your dragon breath with other attacks. You also won’t want to get close enough to the action to use the better cone form of your breath weapon. You can also fly and although you’d get this a few levels early, it’s probably not worth it considering it will become redundant at level 8. You do get a resistance, but it’s not enough really.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. Remember that you can either choose to increase one of the ability score options from a background by 2 and the other by 1, or you can choose to increase all 3 ability scores by 1.

You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

For a star druid, you need to make sure you prioritise wisdom for your ability score increase and all the spells you can expect to launch, including for the cantrip damage boost from elemental fury and the extra damage and healing from starry form. Any background without this isn’t worth taking.

Of these backgrounds, the ones with the best other features for a star druid are:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Guide	Dexterity, constitution, wisdom	Magic initiate (druid)	Stealth, survival	Cartographer’s tools
Sage	Constitution, intelligence, wisdom	Magic initiate (wizard)	Arcana, history	Calligrapher’s tools
Sailor	Strength, dexterity, wisdom	Tavern brawler	Acrobatics, perception	Navigator’s tools
Scribe	Dexterity, intelligence, wisdom	Skilled	Investigation, perception	Calligrapher’s supplies
Wayfarer	Dexterity, wisdom, charisma	Lucky	Insight, stealth	Thieves’ tools

Scribe and wayfarer are probably your best options here with great feats and both wisdom and dexterity increases available.

Weapons

Weapons aren’t overly important for a star druid. You’ll want to be focusing on spellcasting and starry form. Your spells and cantrips will do more damage than any weapons, even with primal strikes from elemental fury (on that note, you should almost certainly take potent spellcasting for your level 7 druid feature of elemental fury).

You might consider a quarterstaff or club to pair with shillelagh for the occasional times you need to perform some weapon fighting (ranged attacks should use your cantrips).

Armor

Use studded leather armor and a shield. A shield is definitely worth taking as you’ll rarely need both hands for something more useful.

If you take the warden primal order, half plate might be your best option for medium armor. Keep in mind that there’s no longer a restriction on the use of metal armor for druids.