Circle Of The Land Druid: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Draw upon the powers of the land to become a potent, spellcasting force.

What is the circle of the land?

Protectors of nature on land, these druids form a deep connection with the world and its varying biomes and landscapes. These druids form circles that perform ancient rites and rituals and protect secret knowledge of the natural magics of the land. They typically commune in stone circles and groves of trees.

Land druids are perhaps the most changeable of the 2024 druid subclasses with spell lists that can be altered each long rest (unlike their 2014 contemporaries). These can change to reflect the party’s needs any given day, but also the deep connection you feel with the land at any given time. Perhaps you might opt to channel the power of arid deserts or the chill of polar wastelands. Whatever biome you choose to channel, will enrich your spellcasting to reflect the powers inherent there.

In fact, land druids are very spell-focused druids, somewhat in opposition to sea druids who tend to get closer to the action (even if they’re not exactly melee druids like the circle of the moon either).

D&D 2024 completely alters the land druid so substantially, that you may actually not recognise this subclass much at all. The improvements are large and my guide is here to not only tell you about these improvements, but also to show you how to optimise this completely changed subclass.

At a glance

A highly spell-focused druid subclass
Have access to more spells and more castings than any other druid
Provide protection for allies
Use your wild shape to cause harm and healing with land’s aid instead

How have land druids changed in D&D 2024?

This is a major overhaul to the subclass and the changes include:

All subclasses now kick in at level 3 (druids previously had this at level 2)
Their additional spells lists have been reduced to 4 biomes (previously there were 8) but these cover a larger range of biome types
You are not fixed to a single biome anymore. You can channel the powers of any biome, changing your additional spells lists every long rest if you want
Spells in your additional list have been completely overhauled and while some look a little similar, most look completely different
You can now expend uses of wild shape to cast an ability called land’s aid that can both harm and heal simultaneously
Natural recovery now also lets you make a free use of one of your circle spells
Nature’s ward has changed a little too. You’re no longer immune to being charmed or frightened by fey and elementals (this was far too situational anyway). Instead, you get a damage resistance related to your land type of the day
Nature’s sanctuary also completely changes as being reliant on attacks from plants and beasts made this another very situational feature. Instead, it now allows you to create plant growth that gives you and allies half cover and shares the resistance from nature’s ward with your allies.

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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

Circle of the land features

Land druids are highly spell-focused, operating at range to both harm, heal and control the battlefield. Below I’ve outlined their features and how you can use them tactically.

Circle of the land spells – Level 3

How it works

Each time you take a long rest, you can choose a land type to focus on. You gain spells for your spell list from the list for that land type, these are:

Druid level	Arid land	Polar land	Temperate land	Tropical land
3	Blur (2nd), burning hands (1st), fire bolt (cantrip)	Fog cloud (1st), hold person (2nd), ray of frost (cantrip)	Misty step (2nd), shocking grasp (cantrip), sleep (1st)	Acid splash (cantrip), ray of sickness (1st), web (2nd)
5	Fireball (3rd)	Sleet storm (3rd)	Lightning bolt (3rd)	Stinking cloud (3rd)
7	Blight (4th)	Ice storm (4th)	Freedom of movement (4th)	Polymorph (4th)
9	Wall of stone (5th)	Cone of cold (5th)	Tree stride (5th)	Insect plague (5th)

Tactics

Knowing which spells you’ll need the next day isn’t always easy so you might often find yourself picking land types based on your play style more than anything. Each list has a bit of variety, but you will find that certain land types suit certain play styles
- Arid land: Lots of high damage spells here. Fireball is a staple high damage spell for dealing with crowds. You also get blur as a strong defensive spell while wall of stone is really effective at some battlefield control.
- Polar land: These spells are more about battlefield control, whether you want to obscure vision with fog cloud, make terrain difficult to traverse with sleet and ice storm or targeting an individual with hold person. There’s some damage dealing mixed in there too with the likes of cone of cold and ray of frost.
- Temperate land: These spells are more about enhancing movement whether that be through easy escapes like through misty step, preventing restricted movement with freedom of movement or some tactical forest combat safety tactics with tree stride. Your highest level spells can be quite effective, but do suffer from being very situational. Freedom of movement is hard to anticipate as an issue so is best used reactively while tree stride is great for hit and run tactics if you’re in a forest, for some major safety, but if you’re in a dungeon (or many other places), you’re going to struggle to get much use here.
- Tropical land: These spells are focused on battlefield control as well. The likes of web and stinking cloud affect groups while polymorph can be used to make a single target ineffective.
Each spell list has its own benefits, so you’ll want to choose them based on the way you want to play your druid. If you want to go all out on direct damage, arid land is your best option. If you prefer to control the battlefield, I’d choose tropical land. The other spell lists are OK, but temperate land has too many situational high level spells to be consistently useful. Polar land is decent but less effective at battlefield control than tropical land, even if the damage spells are better options.

Land’s aid – Level 3

How it works

Expend a use of wild shape to cause a 10ft sphere of flower and thorn growth to appear. This causes 2d6 necrotic damage on a failed saving throw (half as much on a successful one) to creatures you choose in the area and 2d6 healing to one creature you choose in the area. You add a d6 to your damage and healing at levels 10 and 14.

Tactics

You can choose your targets with this AoE spell making it ideal for crowds where you’ve also got allies fighting. Even better, you could heal an ally to bring them back from 0hp while harming their aggressors.
However, it’s not as powerful as other AoE spells so there’s a bit of maths to do to work out how effective it really is:
- Firstly, it expends a use of wild shape, not a spell slot, and you’re unlikely to use your wild shape in combat anyway so spell slots aren’t being wasted here.
- Wild resurgence (the druid feature) gives us an indication of the value of a wild shape use. You can trade a wild shape use for a level 1 spell slot so we should look to level 1 spells to understand it’s effectiveness.
- Your most comparable spell option at level 1 is thunderwave which deals 2d8 damage in a 15ft radius from yourself and pushes enemies back. That’s an average of 9 damage per enemy. Land’s aid will cause an average of 7 damage at level 3, 10.5 at level 10 and 13.5 at level 14. This means it’s weaker at lower levels but stronger at higher levels.
- There are a few key differences here though. Thunderwave relies on getting into danger to use whereas land’s aid can be used from relative safety. Thunderwave has a slightly larger radius but less versatility in where it can be cast. Thunderwave will also harm nearby allies, land’s aid won’t (unless you want it to) and will heal too.
So while not as powerful as some higher levels spells, as an easy source of additional 1st level spells that will easily outperform cantrips for groups of enemies, land’s aid is a pretty good option and better than most level 1 spell options especially for tackling crowds around your martial allies).

Natural recovery – Level 6

How it works

You can cast one of your land druids spells for free each long rest. You can also recover a number of spells slots combined, equal to half your druid level (but can’t recover a level 6+ spell slot). This means that a level 6 druid could recover a level 3 spells or a level 1 and 2 spell or 3 level 1 spells.

Tactics

This makes land druids the wizards of druid subclasses with a lot more spells castings than other druids. Just make sure you recover your spell slots and make use of your free castings.

Nature’s ward – Level 10

How it works

You’re immune to the poisoned condition and gain a damage resistance according to the type of land spells you’ve taken as in the below table:

Land type	Resistance
Arid	Fire
Polar	Cold
Temperate	Lightning
Tropical	Poison

Tactics

Some damage types are more common than others making some resistances better than others. Fortunately, this coincides with the best land type spell lists with the poison and fire damage being 2 of the most common types of damage and lightning and cold being 2 of the least common according to our damage type research. This coincides with the 2 best spell lists coming from arid and tropical land.
Still, if you know you’ll be facing off against monsters in Icewind Dale, cold resistance may not be a bad idea to grab for the day. So it’s worth choosing your type according to the enemies you might be facing (as well as the spells you want available).

Nature’s sanctuary – Level 14

How it works

Create a 15ft cube of plant growth that provides yourself and allies half cover and the resistance associated with your current land type. You can also move this plant growth with a bonus action on subsequent turns.

Tactics

Try and get as many allies in this area as possible as +2 AC is a great boon (plus a damage resistance). Be wary of AoE spells though that aren’t affected by your AC (especially as you’re trying to squeeze everyone in together).
Aim to protect characters that are likely to be hit by the majority of attacks (often frontline martials). You can benefit from cover, even in melee range. As this growth is able to affect allies only, it’s reasonable to assume that the plant growth appears in such a way as to block you wherever melee attacks come while providing little protection for allies. So the best place for it is likely on the front lines with your martials.
This effect will last a combat but isn’t a concentration spells so it won’t interfere with concentration spells and can be maintained even when you’re getting hit.

Building a circle of the land druid

Land druids are the most magic-focused of all druids, so you should look to enhance this side of their capabilities most of all. Below is some advice on how you can do this:

Ability scores

Recommended options

Wisdom: The most important land druid ability as your spellcasting ability is tied to this.
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, otherwise, you’ll want to go high on dexterity.
Constitution: You’ll need this for your hit points and maintaining spell concentration.

Options to avoid

Strength: Not important for a land druid.
Intelligence: Only important for knowledge skills, not important enough to invest in much at all.
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 few things to consider when choosing a species for a land 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.

Recommended options

Elf (2024): Grab some innate spells and an extra skill, plus you’re hard to charm.
Tielfing (2024): Lots of innate spells to repeat cast and a resistance for extra durability.

Options to avoid

Aasimar (2024): Celestial revelation tends to rely on you being close to the action which land druids should avoid. You also have little use for temporary flight other than at early levels as you can gain this from wild shape. 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 land 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 land 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 land 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

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

Weapons

Weapons aren’t overly important for a land druid. You’ll want to be focusing on spellcasting. 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.