Torrents and tempest. Bring the sea’s wrath to your opponents with this spell-focused, druidic subclass.
What is the circle of the sea?
Druids draw upon the powers of nature to channel their magic and bend it to their will. Some receive their magic from celestial bodies like the circle of the moon and circle of the stars druids. Others gain their powers from terrestrial sources like the circle of the land and the circle of the sea.
The terrestrial source of a sea druid’s power is (yep, you guessed it) the sea. Harnessing tempests and waves into tremendous torrents, these druids utilise aquatic spells far more than their other druidic counterparts.
The sea druid is a brand new subclass for D&D 2024 acting as an opposite to the land druid. I’ve put together everything you need to know about these druids, including how to optimise and build your sea druid.
At a glance
- Emanate tempestuous, deadly auras about yourself
- Harness the powers of water for powerful, magical effects
- Gain a swim and a fly speed
- Aid your friends by bestowing your wrath of the sea powers on an ally
- A good option for spells focused druids
Circle of the sea features
Circle of the sea druids primarily gain the use of a powerful emanation that gains power and utility as you grow in levels:
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
Wrath of the sea – Level 3
How it works
Use your bonus action and a use of wild shape to create an emanation around you with a 5ft radius that can last 10mins. When you first create this, and when you use a bonus action on subsequent turns, you can choose a creature within the area of effect who must make a constitution saving throw.
If the creature fails their saving throw, they take a number of d6s equal to your wisdom modifier of cold damage and are pushed back 15ft (if the creature is large or smaller).
Tactics
- This trait scales with your wisdom modifier, so the big thing here is to make sure you keep your wisdom as high as possible (which you should anyway as a druid).
- At the cost of a use of wild shape, you have a whole combat (and longer) use of an ability that causes a lot of damage for a bonus action, especially at low levels. It’s not a spell and doesn’t require concentration either so it’s worth switching this on early in combat so you can buffet your enemies with your bonus action.
- Its not got a big range though, so you’re going to need to get in close in combat. That means toughening up with high dexterity and constitution or even taking the warden primal order so you can use medium armor if you don’t want to invest heavily in dexterity. I’d also grab a shield as you’re not likely to be the toughest of classes and don’t need anything in that spare hand.
Circle of the sea spells – Level 3
How it works
At level 3 and beyond, you gain access to some additional spells known as part of your circle of the sea subclass. These are:
| Druid level | Spell level | Spells |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Cantrip | Ray of frost |
| 3 | 1 | Fog cloud, thunderwave |
| 3 | 2 | Gust of wind, shatter |
| 5 | 3 | Lightning bolt, water breathing |
| 7 | 4 | Control water, ice storm |
| 9 | 5 | Conjure elemental, hold monster |
Tactics
- You’re likely to be getting close to the action so some battlefield control spells are important for maintaining some safety. Combine wrath of the sea with thunderwave to push enemies away from you (you can even follow one up with a move and then activate the other to push enemies off ledges and into AoE spells effects). Or use fog cloud to obscure visibility for your enemies. You can also use hold monster if you need to take an enemy out of the battle.
- Handle crowds with AoE spells like shatter and ice storm.
- You also get some utility outside of combat with the likes of control water and water breathing. Water breathing can combine nicely with your swim speed to not only let you explore underwater, but also cast verbal spells underwater too. You can even cast it as a ritual and aid your allies at the same time.
Aquatic infinity – Level 6
How it works
Not only does wrath of the sea expand to 10ft, but you’re also granted a swim speed now.
Tactics
- Use your wrath of the sea features to push enemies into water (if it’s available) and then fight them on your own turf when you can fight more adeptly with your swim speed.
- Use the extra range on wrath of the sea to avoid getting into melee range of enemies to protect yourself a little more.
- Sadly, swimming is often a situational ability, but when the chance arises, you should use it as much as possible.
Stormborn – Level 10
How it works
You can now fly when wrath of the sea is active. You also get resistance to cold, lightning and thunder damage.
Tactics
- Fly to your enemies, activate wrath of the sea near them, then fly back up to relative safety and launch deadly spells on them.
- But if you do need it, you have a bunch of resistances to make you a bit more durable too.
Oceanic gift – Level 14
How it works
Pass your wrath of the sea emanation onto an ally to use on them. If you expend 2 uses of wrath of the sea, you and your ally can both benefit from it.
Tactics
- Remember that this includes all the features of wrath of the sea you’ve accumulated by this level. Hand it to a martial ally for greater damage and durability. Or hand it to a more vulnerable Spellcaster so they can fly to safety and rain down hails of spells.
Building a circle of the sea druid
Sea druids occupy an odd middle-ground between getting in close to the combat, but also not being particularly effective melee combatants.
That’s not to say you can’t fashion an OK enough melee warrior for a sea druid. Between taking warden and primal strike options, you do have improved melee options, but they don’t scale as much as your cantrip damage which you can enhance with potential spellcasting from elemental fury instead.
That means that despite being a subclass built to be in the thick of combat, you probably want to still focus on spellcasting over melee combat.
I would also expect to be using most of your wild shape uses on wrath of the sea with wild shape primarily being a utility option for this druid.
Ability scores
Recommended options
- Wisdom: The most important sea druid ability as not only is spell casting tied to this, but also your damage from wrath of the sea which you’ll want to be using as much as possible.
- Dexterity: You’re going to be close to the combat so you’ll need to keep this high to stay protected in your light armor.
- Constitution: You’ll need this for your hit points and maintaining spell concentration.
Options to avoid
- Strength: Not important for a sea 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
- 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 couple of things to consider when choosing a species for a circle of the sea druid:
- Resilience: Sea druids get quite close to the action for a non-martial subclass so it’s worth having some extra resilience available.
- 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, wrath of the sea or spells can easily do, like flight.
- Bonus action: Your bonus action will almost always be occupied with wrath of the sea. Any traits requiring your bonus action will therefore need a really compelling reason to use it over this sea druid feature. This is part of the reason it’s hard to recommend an Orc for a sea druid.
Recommended options
- Dwarf (2024): An extra hit point per level will toughen you up nicely.
- 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. You also get advantage on wisdom, intelligence and charisma saving throws which 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 competes with wrath of the sea for your bonus action, and it’s inferior, making it somewhat redundant, even if it will stack with other damage dealing things you do. You also have no use for temporary flight other than at early levels as you can gain this both from wild shape and wrath of the sea 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 sea druid. You can use AoE spells anyway and only get one attack so can’t stack your dragon breath with other attacks. 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 sea 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. Any background without this isn’t worth taking.
Of these backgrounds, the ones with the best other features for a sea 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 sea druid. You’ll want to be focusing on wrath of the sea and, as discussed before, spellcasting is optimal as your cantrips (and many levelled spells) will do more damage than your melee attacks, even with primal strike (which is primarily for druids that use their wild shape in combat which sea druids should rarely do).
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.
Other class guides
Not sure a circle of the sea druid is for you. Not to worry. Why not check out one of our other D&D 2024 class and subclass guides.
