Graft the limbs and body parts of animals to yourself to become one with nature and gain symbiotic powers.
Druids of the circle of symbiosis seek to literally become one with nature. They severe body parts and graft on those of animals to replace them. This might include replacing limbs or even their own head.
The desire is for all to become assimilated into nature in these twisted malformations. They impose it upon their children and those they abduct, despite the dangers and fatalities that often accompany such procedures.
However, these procedures do grant power, transforming these druids into resilient melee warriors with animalistic traits. This accompanies their already significant nature magic and the osteomancy they possess.
Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt is a 3rd party book released for D&D 5e and 5.5e. A part of the book was recently launched on D&D Beyond as a player pack. This guide tackles the 5.5e version of the symbiosis druid.
At a glance
- Full Spellcaster adept at healing and battlefield control
- Become a tanky melee warrior with a wickerbone transformation
- Can easily weave spells with attacks
5/5 – A strong and gruesome melee druid that can take a decent beating and deal one back. There’s some interesting options for how you can combine tactics through things like grappling, emanation spells and osteomancy that make this a thoroughly interesting and unique subclass as well as one that’s quite strong.
Circle of symbiosis features
Circle of symbiosis spells (Lv3) – 4/5
| Druid Level | Prepared Spells |
|---|---|
| 3 | Arm cannon, calcified memories, fractured shell, phalangeal shot, shillelagh |
| 5 | Displacing maw, osseous impalement |
| 7 | Dread scarecrow, maiden of bones |
| 9 | Forest of dread, tree stride |
The majority of the symbiosis druid’s spells are brand new ones from Steinhardt’s guide and most of them deal with osteomancy. This is handy for level 14 when you can cast osteomancy spells that normally require an action, with a bonus action instead.
Largely, these are quite good spells too. For instance, arm cannon is a slightly weaker scorching ray with only 1 target, but it can push and potentially restrain too. Displacing maw is like a vortex warp that also causes damage (teleporting an enemy somewhere else). Osseous impalement can be used to impale 4 creatures with bones, lofting them into the air, dealing damage and restraining them.
There are a bunch of strong spells in this list, especially for damage dealing and nullifying enemies. The only blemish is shillelagh which is pointless when your club hands already benefit from this spell. There may be a case for using this when you’ve run out of uses of wickerbone behemoth, but when that happens, you probably just want to cast spells rather than attempt melee combat.
Grafted powers (Lv3) – 3/5
There’s a few nice little buffs in here. Bear back makes you better at strength checks and will let you grapple bigger creatures. The circle of symbiosis relies on being a strength build so this becomes useful for athletics checks and escaping grapples (it won’t enhance your ability to grapple though as this is a saving throw from the target in the 2024 rules).
Deer head gives advantage on perception checks which is always useful. Symbiosis druids should mostly dump dexterity so aren’t necessarily the best scouts, but with wild shape, that changes anyway depending on the creature you are so you can still make a solid scout despite this.
Prone is pretty common now and a climb speed while redundant through wild shape, can preserve wild shape uses for wickerbone behemoth and can be used in combat (this subclass will rarely wild shape in combat).
Picking one is tricky, but for a ribbon feature, this happens to be quite good.
Wickerbone behemoth (Lv3) – 5/5
This feature completely changes how you play and build this druid.
The most important part of this feature is that you’re becoming the kind of character that wants to be drawing attacks as you’re turning into a tank. You’ll heal half the damage you take and deal damage when hit by melee attacks.
There are a couple of caveats to this tankiness. The first is that the healing, while it affects all damage types, isn’t as good as resistance as you have to survive the damage you take in a round. The higher the hit points the better here so high constitution, the tough feat and being a dwarf are all good here.
There is a bit of a workaround here. The healing doesn’t work if you’re unconscious at the start of your turn, but if you’re downed and revived, say by healing word, then you’ll still get the regeneration so the party healer may want to prioritise you as the target of their healing.
You’re also mostly limited to 17AC (you can’t use shield or armor to enhance this). I’m not even sure being a Warforged changes this as barkskin replaces your actual AC with 17. 17 isn’t low, but it’s not high either so you’ll be reasonably easy to hit. Be aware that you can’t wear armor or use shields, even when this form isn’t active so are vulnerable in round 1 or whenever you don’t have this active, especially because the symbiosis druid tends not to be built for dexterity.
The other thing is you become built for weapon attacks with a pair of clubs under the effects of the shillelagh spell. Because clubs are light weapons, you can make offhand attacks with them with your bonus action too so a pair of d8 damage attacks that increases with your levels.
Shillelagh means you can make attacks with your wisdom, but parts of the symbiosis druid lean towards a grapple build too. Your hands are free meaning you can both dual wield and grapple. You can also take bear back to grapple larger creatures and eventually become large yourself. For this reason, it’s possible you may want to build for strength anyway, but it’s not necessary and you may want to prioritise wisdom and constitution first.
One option here is to take a multiclass dip into fighter for the two weapon fighting fighting style to improve this further.
Extra attack (Lv6) – 5/5
This will push you more towards making more attacks and up your damage output when you do so. Especially as your shillelagh club hands are getting a damage boost at level 5 already.
It’s also worth pointing out that cantrips will often scale better for damage than a single attack. It may be worth using one of these in place of an attack. Your only melee cantrips (other than shillelagh) are thunderclap and thorn whip. You could grab thorn whip to bring enemies in close and thunderclap for dealing with crowds.
Nature’s wrath (Lv10) – 4/5
17AC all the time is useful considering you might be stuck at 10-12 when wickerbone behemoth isn’t active.
That size increase is great for a couple of things. If you plan on grappling it means you can now grapple huge creatures (or even gargantuan creatures if you’ve taken bear skin). This is probably only important if you’ve invested in strength.
The other thing it does is expand the number of spaces your emanation affects so spells like thunderclap become a bit better.
The resistances will also help you last a decent bit longer with 3 common damage types. Just be careful of fire damage.
Briarheart (Lv14) – 5/5
Basically now you’re getting 3 attacks per action (your bonus action potentially being spared) with one of those as a cantrip and the others using shillelagh (1d12-2d6 damage for each of those). This is even better if you have a level dip in fighter for two weapon fighting and you could even grab the dual wielder feat for a 4th attack with your bonus action.
However, that might be a bit wasted as you can now cast osteomancy spells that normally require an action, with your bonus action. There aren’t a lot of spells that fit the criteria here (osteomancy spells that symbiosis druids have that are cast with an action), but there are a few good options like arm cannon, osseous cage and marrow transplant. All of these are more worthwhile using than an offhand attack assuming you’ve got the spell slots (which you should considering you’re often so attack focused and are a full caster).
How good is the circle of symbiosis subclass?
The circle of symbiosis is really strong with some serious resilience and the capacity for plenty of damage without even casting a levelled spells. Even then, they can weave cantrips and later levelled spells in amongst attacks making for a really strong subclass.
Thankfully, it’s not too strong. It is sensibly limited, particularly with a less than stellar AC. It’s also worth noting that even among these strong attacks, spells could often be more potent anyway. But if you’re looking for a tough, melee druid with a really gnarly and even gruesome approach to transformation, then the symbiosis druid is about as gnarly as they get and a load of fun too (they can even grapple a tarrasque)!
5/5
Building a circle of symbiosis druid
For the most part, a symbiosis druid can be built in a similar way to other druids. You’ll want to go with a melee build so investing in more resilience, especially through increased hit points and improved concentration is a good idea. You may also want to build for strength if you want a grapple build. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my druid optimisation guide.
As this is a Steinhardt’s Guide subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt book in my build advice below and shared which work well for this druid subclass.
Species/race
I’d consider the following species from Steinhardt’s Guide for the circle of symbiosis:
- Demidritch: Resilience against the blinded condition and cold damage. You also get a damage boost with a bonus action damaging emanation (which will spread even further once large) or the ability to tackle invisibility. Either way, this is a good option for a melee tank build.
- Deep One Dwarf: Some resilience through cold resistance and against the poisoned condition are good for a tank. I’d go for the coiling arm for bonus action grapple attempts, especially if you’ve invested a bit in strength.
Backgrounds
For a symbiosis druid, you’ll want to prioritise ability score increases for wisdom and then constitution. Some symbiosis druids that want to build for grappling might want to prioritise strength too.
Grizzled is perhaps the only origin feat that’s really good for a symbiosis druid but faithful works alright too.
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amnesiac | Constitution, intelligence, wisdom | Curious | Insight and investigation | One kind of artisan’s tools |
| Beast hunter | Strength, dexterity, wisdom | Grizzled | Athletics and survival | Herbalism kit |
| Cult initiate | Constitution, wisdom, charisma | Faithful | Arcana and persuasion | One kind of artisan’s tools or musical instrument |
| Inquisitor | Strength, wisdom, charisma | Faithful | Intimidation and religion | Torture tools |
| Marked for death | Strength, dexterity, constitution | Grizzled | Arcana and survival | None |
Only one of the backgrounds really delivers all round for a symbiosis druid; the beast hunter. The rest all have trade offs. However, you may want to consider grabbing a background from the Player’s Handbook for the tough origin feat.
Feats
There aren’t loads of feats to choose from in Steinhardt’s guide, but the following are good options:
- Grizzled: You should become bloodied often as a party tank, especially as you take full damage and then recover some of it later. That means even more heroic inspiration for you. Better saving throws against frightened is handy too.
- Osteomantic adept: The symbiosis druid should be casting plenty of osteomancy spells and the upcasting will be useful. As far as I can tell, despite the damage not being reduced, a symbiosis druid would still heal from damage caused by this feat on their next turn through wickerbone behemoth.
Weapons
Steinhardt’s guide has a bunch of new weapons to play with, but the symbiosis druid already has what it needs through shillelagh clubs and cantrips and wouldn’t really benefit from investing in weapons.
More from Steinhardt’s Guide
Interested in what else is available from Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt? Why not check out some of our other guides?
