Create effigies of wicker to hinder enemies and help allies.
Druids of the circle of wicker form crude effigies of straw and twigs, infused with magic to ward off intruders and grant aid to allies. It’s through these that they create spell-like effects without consuming spell slots or concentration to give themselves even more ongoing, magical effects.
Where the circle of the old ways focuses on brute force and melee resilience, the circle of wicker focuses on healing and buffing at a safe distance.
I picked up the 2024 version of Legends of Avantris’ Crooked Moon supplement for D&D 5e. In this article, I’m taking a deep dive into how good this 3rd party subclass is, and how you can optimise for it.
At a glance
- Full Spellcaster adept at healing and battlefield control
- Spellcasting and wild shape grant lots of utility
- Support build that helps buff and heal
3/5 – The circle of wicker has some good ideas, but could easily be foiled simply by keeping combat dynamic and moving or in a more awkward environment like underwater or in flight. This is a shame as it could be quite a solid subclass. I also fear that the flexibility of choosing your effigy’s benefits comes too late. Good in the right circumstances, but poor in the wrong ones makes this quite a middling, backline healer with plenty of buffing and debuffing.
Circle of wicker features
Bewitched effigy (Lv3) – 3/5
Create an immobile effigy that causes an aura of protection or healing to allies or damage to enemies. The AC is flat and a solid buff. The damage and healing are more limited, but your spellcasting ability modifier should be +3 or more. Double that should last almost every encounter so the limitations here are minor. The damage occupies your reaction, but druids don’t tend to be hugely busy with their reaction.
I’d probably favour the AC boost as it requires no action economy, though using your reaction for damage isn’t a big expense for a druid. The healing is fine but at the expense of a bonus action, is the most expensive on your action economy.
The main issue you’ve got is the fact that it needs to be close to the action and there’s no way to reposition it after creating it and that it can just be destroyed. At worst, that still means an enemy must spend attacks destroying it, but could mean a limited period of effect. Because wild shape uses are fairly common, you should be able to use this for most major encounters.
Fortunately, future features will help this get more powerful with levels.
Circle of wicker spells (Lv3) – 3/5
| Druid Level | Prepared Spells |
|---|---|
| 3 | Bane, bless, summer winds, zone of truth |
| 5 | Bestow curse, tiny hut |
| 7 | Death ward, sanctum of the shepherd |
| 9 | Hold monster, lucky charm |
Bane and bless are great buffs and debuffs. Zone of truth can be useful for the occasional social encounter and hold monster is a good save or suck spell. Concentration-less +1 to AC from sanctum of the shepherd is excellent and it stacks with your effigy too.
Lucky charm is an interesting option as in theory, the wicker druid can avoid making as many d20 tests as others if careful about their spell usage. It’s still a rough trade off. Summer winds can be solid for healing too.
I’m not really a fan of bestow curse though, but most of the rest of the list is solid.
Wicker token (Lv3) – 3/5
You have to review the spell list to see how this can be useful. For a druid, primarily, that means casting cure wounds and lesser restoration on allies no matter where they are (other than another plane). Decent for a healer focused druid and a few other things and means you can steer clear of the melee while still healing.
Wicker rising (Lv6) – 4/5
An improved effigy is decent and helps it scale with your levels. You can adapt your effigy more to the enemies you face too. For instance, facing vampires, you can cure from charmed with the soothe effigy. Facing creatures with loads of the same damage type, use ward and so on. It still suffers from the same issues as before in terms of mobility and vulnerability, but is maybe a little less vulnerable by this level with more HP.
I’d perhaps suggest that soothe becomes very strong in certain combat encounters with some of the most common conditions covered off and cured with a bonus action.
Soulbound poppet (Lv10) – 3/5
This druid is designed to steer clear of combat. That hopefully means you won’t be the target of attacks too much and you may not find yourself causing damage each turn as that isn’t a druid’s forte. Instead, I’d suggest handing it to a martial ally and have them focus fire on the target of the poppet.
It’s going to work best against really tough enemies. Especially those making lots of attacks.
One problem is it will compete for wild shape uses with your bewitched effigy. Because of how wild shape uses regenerate, this likely means one combat each short rest when you can use both, but not 2 (until you level up more). It’s also a use of your action to activate and will need to be handed over.
Wicker zenith (Lv14) – 4/5
Some solid improvements to each effigy option and you can change these each turn making it way more adaptable. Suddenly need to end a condition, switch to soothe, need more resilience, change to ward, need more damage, go for sacrifice.
Again, the drawbacks remain and enemies can avoid this or destroy it. But by this stage, that may be a fair bit of effort (though a fireball will be a big problem).
How good is the circle of wicker subclass?
The wicker druid is very much built around its bewitched effigy. It kind of lives and dies on this. Problem is it could become a little restrictive in terms of location. The emanation is fairly big, but enemies move or can simply destroy it. This is fine and it gets more resilient and better with levels, but requires 3 features to accomplish this.
You do get a poppet and wicker tokens to spread around, though this becomes a lot of sets of hit points to manage and lose track of. The effects are quite good, but I just worry that it’s too easy for some combats to become ineffectual with this. Especially in less standard environments like underwater, in flight or where there’s a lot of movement.
It’s good under the right circumstances, ineffectual if your DM plans around it and I think this leaves it a bit middling. I feel like this could have been much better simply by having a moving effigy (kind of like an artillerist’s eldritch cannon).
3/5
Building a circle of wicker druid
Largely, a wicker druid can be optimised in the same ways as other druids, with a strong emphasis on spellcasting and keeping out of melee. 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 Crooked Moon subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in the Crooked Moon book and given advice on which work well for this druid subclass.
Species/race
I’d consider the following species from Crooked Moon for the circle of wicker:
- Azureborn: Gain flight without having to wild shape and while being able to cast spells. You can be a decent scout with high wisdom and high dexterity. A couple of spells and enhanced initiative are good too.
- Stoneborn: Flight will keep you a bit safer from melee attacks. Bonus action bless is quite a nice buff and you can repeat cast it. Grab perception proficiency to enhance your scouting and a bit of resilience is nice for anyone.
Backgrounds
Unlike the Player’s Handbook, Crooked Moon backgrounds give you a choice of any ability scores to increase. Based primarily on the origin feats and proficiencies, I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a wicker druid:
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crimson aspirant | Any | Crimson ritualist | Arcana, medicine | Herbalism kit |
| Druskenvald dweller | Any | Any | Survival and one other | Choose one |
| Experiment | Any | Altered | Intimidation, medicine | Alchemist’s supplies |
The skills and feats don’t generally synergise well for a wicker druid so I’d probably recommend going for a Druskenvald dweller with options you can choose.
Feats
Not many of the Crooked Moon feats work well for a wicker druid, but a few options I’d recommend include:
- Altered: For better AC than studded leather will give and if you’re not going to be using weapons (which you rarely should) it will let you focus on constitution instead as that can be used for your AC. The other options probably aren’t worth bothering with.
- Crimson ritualist: The healing boost in combat may be quite useful, especially as you can hand it to allies that will take more of a beating than you. 2-6d8 healing as a bonus action is decent and enough to keep someone on their feet for another hit or 2. Blood bolt is decent as a ranged option, especially as it’ll grant you some temporary hit points too.
- Swift witchcraft: A 1 minute casting time spell with an action won’t help many spells as many 1 minute spells are designed for out of combat, but there are a few interesting interactions at later levels. Geas is probably the lowest level option here and means you can order someone to attack your enemy during combat and if they don’t, force damage on them. Regenerate will ensure a creature can’t be kept down in combat and give an initial healing boost and symbol can be setup without preparation time.
More from Crooked Moon
Interested in what else is available from The Crooked Moon? Why not check out some of our other guides?
