Druid 5e - D&D Class Optimisation Guide

Channel natural magics to bring protection and destruction with this spellcasting class for D&D 5e

What are druids in D&D 5e?

Druids are wielders of ancient magics arising from nature itself. They show devotion to nature and have the ability to shapeshift into animal forms. It’s their ability to shapeshift and to cast spells that makes them one of the more versatile classes in D&D 5e.

Druids may not have the martial prowess of a fighter or a ranger, the destructive magics of wizards and sorcerers or quite the healing capabilities of a cleric. However, they are able, with various builds, to fulfil these roles and more through their various abilities.

You may have seen druids in popular media (though they are some of the rarer spellcasters outside of D&D). Radagast from Lord of the Rings embodies a fairly typical druid while Poison Ivy from Batman weaponises nature in less typical ways. Harry Potter includes some shapeshifters and while Professor Lupin is a more typical lycanthrope with little control over his shapeshifting, Sirius Black, as an animagus, has the kind of shapeshifting control you’d expect from a druid.

If you want to be really radical, you could take a Warforged or Autognome druid and wild shape into a velociraptor, turning you into a dinobot. Does that mean dinobots are druids? Possibly! Lasers look like sunbeam and grimlock breathes fire making him a wildfire druid perhaps…

Regardless, druids come in all shapes and sizes and can be surprisingly varied in their approach. In my guide below, I’ve explained how you can optimise your druid and really maximise on their abilities.

At a glance

Choose a druid if you want…

To play a full spellcaster
Want lots of versatility in spellcasting
Want to be able to shapeshift
Love nature
Want to play a spellcasting tank

A druid might not be for you if…

You don’t want to cast spells
Prefer just to deal damage with your spells
Aren’t bothered about shapeshifting

For a more detailed look at a druid’s capabilities, I’ve put together the scoring matrix below. This rates druids on different features and abilities to give you a clear idea of where their strengths and weaknesses lie. For a full comparison of all classes and their capabilities, check out our class guide:

Class ratings (out of 5)

Combat

Armor class: 3
Weapon damage: 2
Durability: 4
Mobility: 4
Combat abilities: 2

Spellcasting

Spells known: 5
Spell slots: 4
Spell damage: 3
Spell buffs: 5
Spell debuffs: 4
Spell healing: 5
Battlefield control spells: 4
Out of combat spells: 3

Out of combat

Face abilities: 2
Skills: 2
Out of combat abilities: 3

How have we worked out these scores?

We’ve reviewed and played all the officially released D&D 5e classes and looked at a typical build for these class types. Because subclasses offer a lot of variety, we’ve had to exclude these from our considerations.

There is an exception here as the artificer is shaped hugely by their subclass. When it comes to something like weapon damage, we’ve had to take into consideration the fact that most artificers are decent with weapons, but an alchemist would probably only score a 2, even if the other artificer subclasses would score a 3.

We’ve scored each attribute out of 5 with a score of 5 reserved for classes that are the very best at that attribute. There’s some judgement required here. For example, a druid is typically a 3 in mobility (average mobility), but with wildshape, they can fly and swim quicker (and just travel faster). This elevates their score in our minds, even if they don’t consistently have these levels of mobility.

It’s important to understand though, that these scores are not hard and fast. Obtaining feats and pumping more into certain ability scores can turn any class into a decent face, for example. Different subclasses will also make a class better at different things (like an eldritch knight gaining spellcasting) but we feel that these scores represent most typical versions of their class.

Druid Strengths

Druids are very versatile, but there is a lot of nuance to how they work too which can make them a challenge to play. With this though, comes a broad range of strengths including:

Wild shape: Initially a great scouting option (by transforming into a small and/or manoeuvrable beasty), your wild shape form can later become something that can fly, swim fast and fight capably (though combat wild shaping is primarily for the circle of the moon). In particular, the HP of your wild shape stacks with your standard HP making you extremely durable (even if your wild shape likely has a low AC these essentially remain free hit points).
Healer: Like clerics, druids are blessed with a range of healing spells that can help keep your party in the fight for longer. Not the most exciting function, but your party will thank you for spending your effort keeping their HP topped up and rescuing them from the clutches of death.
Utility spellcasters: While druids can fit a broad range of spellcasting functions, they tend to excel in utility spells. The likes of guidance, entangle, detect magic, shape water, augury and more, all offer a great range of functions and fulfil many party needs.

Druid Weaknesses

Druids have to compensate for their huge versatility with a bunch of weaknesses to balance the scales of competence which include:

No metal armor – That’s right, no metal armor at all meaning you’ll likely need to invest heavily in dexterity. This isn’t a major limitation and it’s easy enough to make a dexterity build, but one to be aware of.
Lower damage spells – To be clear, druids are capable of dealing out damage with their spells and are not quite as restricted on this front as a bard might be for instance. But compared to the likes of sorcerers and clerics, the damage is certainly less. As an example, at 3rd level, a wizard will get fireball. The closest equivalent to this for a druid is erupting earth which is a decent option, but only does 2/3 of the damage a fireball does.
Low AC – While the extra HP from wild shape is a big bonus, this is compensated for partially by a pretty low AC meaning most attacks made against a wild shape druid will land, diminishing the extra HP you have. On top of this, druids generally aren’t blessed with a high AC in their humanoid form either.

Getting the most out of a druid’s features

sea druid DnD 2024 — Druid: Wizards of the Coast

Party Role	Utility, Support Caster, Control, Healer
Main Ability	Wisdom
Saving Throws	Intelligence, Wisdom
Hit Dice	1d8 + Consitution modifier per level
HP at 1st Level	8 + Constitution Modifier
Spell Casting Ability	Wisdom
Armour Proficiency	Light armour, medium armour, shields (druids will not wear armour made of metal)
Weapon Proficiency	Clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears

The main features for a druid are their spellcasting and wild shape abilities. Both are powerful with a load of ways to use them. Below I’ve outlined some ways you can really maximise these features and the few others a druid gets:

Druidic – Level 1

A hugely situational ability that does little anyway, especially as most DMs won’t tailor their campaigns around something so trivial. There’s not much else to say on this really.

Spellcasting – Level 1

Thankfully, the meat of a druid’s features comes from their spellcasting which is nicely varied and utilitarian in nature (if not quite as devastating as some other spellcasters, though druids can still pack a punch).

There are a lot of spells to choose from so to help you out a bit, I’ve picked out some of the best options a druid can choose below:

Cantrips

Guidance – Just chuck out guidance for buffed skill checks all over the place.
Primal savagery – Your highest damage cantrip available. A good option for melee druids looking to scale up their damage with levels and far better than weapon attacks.
Produce flame – Your best damage dealing option for ranged spell attack cantrips. Can also be used as a light.
Shape water – Hugely versatile spell if you can be a bit creative.
Thunderclap – Solid spell for dealing with multiple enemies all around you.

Level 1

Absorb elements – Great defensive spell, and it’s a reaction so works nicely into your action economy.
Detect magic – Important utility spell for any party.
Entangle – Great crowd control spell and saving throws are for an ability that’s typically low. Just be aware it requires concentration.
Faerie fire – Your earliest way for dealing with invisibility.
Goodberry – A good healing option if you can be prepared in advance.
Healing word – Your go to healing option for recovering allies from getting knocked to 0HP. As the designated healer, you’ll want to keep at least 1 or 2 slots available for this.

Level 2

Enhance ability – Very versatile buff that can help with social encounters, grappling tactics, endurance and a bunch of other things too.
Augury – Excellent fact finding spell.
Lesser restoration – Not always needed, but when it is, vital for recovering from conditions.
Pass without trace – Excellent full party stealth option.
Summon beast – The lowest level summon available and a solid option for this.

Level 3

Conjure creatures – Another good option for a low level summon.
Dispel magic – Crucial for any party.
Revivify – Revive someone that’s died. A super important healing spell to have in every party.
Elemental weapon – Good if you desperately need a magic weapon but the trade off is on concentration so unless you need this to overcome resistances, the extra damage won’t be strong enough.
Erupting earth – Your best option for AoE damage at this level. Not as good as fireball, but still a decent option.

Level 4

Dominate beast – Great for bringing on board a beastly ally.
Fire shield – Great protective spell and if it doesn’t discourage melee attacks, at least they’ll get hurt a bit.
Polymorph – Fantastic as a buff or debuff. Just make sure you read exactly how it works, it can be complicated!
Stone shape – Stone is everywhere! So being able to shape it to pass through walls, block enemies etc can be hugely useful.
Wall of fire – Great option for some battlefield control and dealing damage.

Level 5

Cone of cold – Solid AoE damage spell.
Greater restoration – Good to be ready with this spell to tackle nasty effects that might incapacitate your party.
Maelstrom – Great for getting your enemies stuck in a nasty AoE spell and causing damage each turn.

Level 6

Heal – Top healing spell and good for a main healer class.
Heroes’ feast – Great all day buff to enhance your whole party.
Investiture of wind – Flight and ranged attacks against you have disadvantage plus you can do some damage too.
Sunbeam – Good source of consistent damage without constantly using spells slots.

Level 7

Draconic transformation – Flight and fireball level damage each turn as a bonus action is very powerful.
Reverse gravity – Very problematic spell for groups of enemies.
Plane shift – Travel to another plane with the casting of a spell.

Level 8

Incendiary cloud – Nasty AoE spell with big damage.
Sunburst – Giant AoE damage spell that can blind your opponents too making their impact severely reduced.

Level 9

Foresight – A fantastic buff that makes an ally incredibly effective and difficult to harm.
Shapechange – The best shape changing ability available with creatures of very high challenge ratings now available to you.

Wild Shape – Level 2

Wild shape is a fantastically versatile feature allowing you to transform into a beast.

There are some limitations meaning at low levels, your best options are for scouting or sneaking by becoming a tiny creature and or a creature adept at climbing (like a cat).

As you increase in levels, you can take on forms with swim and fly speeds. Swimming tends to be highly situational, but is very useful when you do need to deal with water. Flight is often useful, but only comes into play at level 8.

You can also use your wild shape in combat. This is more useful for a moon druid, but even a standard druid can stack a bunch of hit points and even deal extra damage if you pick the right creature.

The balancing act here is whether your wild shape can do more damage than a cantrip like primal savagery. This takes a bit of maths I’m afraid. For instance, an ape will do 2d6 + 6 damage with it’s 2 attacks. An average of 13 damage. You can wild shape into an ape at 4th level which will beat out the 1d10 of primal savagery (average of 5.5 damage). Primal savagery becomes 2d10 at level 5 which still only averages at 11 damage making an ape still more effective until level 11 when primal savagery becomes 3d10.

However, once you hit level 8, you can become a brown bear which will average 19.5 damage per turn and help you stay ahead of primal savagery in damage output (plus there are even more hit points you can absorb).

The tradeoff here though, is that an ape only gets +5 to hit which may be lower than your spell attack modifier (proficiency bonus + spell ability score modifier). This will likely be similar at level 4 but may fall a little short from level 5 onwards depending on how much you’ve invested in wisdom (and as a druid, you should definitely invest in wisdom).

Despite all this, when combined with the extra hit points, this does feel like a worthwhile exchange. That is as long as you can wild shape before combat starts as the expense of an action is quite high. You’ll also need to keep in mind that you can’t cast spells in your wild shape (at least until later levels) so this aspect of your class will be temporarily nullified.

The best way to approach this is to ensure you have capabilities outside of your wild shape, so you can attack in your wild shape, absorb some damage, then strike with primal savagery in your humanoid form.

Timeless Body – Level 18

Not many campaigns are likely to last long enough for this to matter, and in a land of Elves and Dwarves that live for hundreds of years anyway, it matters even less. Even if a campaign went on this long, causing other party members to age, feeling the effects of this in a mechanical way is problematic. Essentially a mechanically pointless feature.

Beast Spells – Level 18

On the other hand, beast spells is extremely interesting. Now you can cast spells while in wild shape which is excellent. Launch a barrage of spells from the skies as an eagle or spout cantrips underwater as a shark. There are some great uses for this feature.

Archdruid – Level 20

Unlimited wild shapes is alright, but you probably didn’t need them all that often anyway, especially with recovery after short and long rests. It’s more effective though for subclasses with uses for your wild shape slots.

Removing verbal, somatic and many material components is discreetly useful as it lets you cast more spells in your wild shape. It’s got more situational uses too like being able to cast spells when restrained or under the effects of silence.

How to play as a druid

Circle of stars druid — Stars druid: Wizards of the Coast

Druids can be played in a variety of ways and can easily adapt to many situations. Below are a few ways you can approach playing your druid:

Healer

Good for: Healing. It’s highly practical and your allies will love you.

Creating a healer: Wisdom is the most important ability score for a healer. Mainly this build comes down to the spells you take. Ensure you pick up some healing spells like healing word and goodberries. You’ll also want spells that can tackle conditions too. You can be proactive about this with something like heroes’ feast or reactive with things like lesser restoration (or both if you can).

Don’t just go for healing/buff spells though. Allies don’t always need healing and you may find the best way to protect your buddies is to take out a few enemies. In fact, with something like healing word, you can cast it as a bonus action and use cantrips like primal savagery with your action.

How it works: Healers sacrifice doing the fun stuff for the really important, practical stuff. You’re there to keep your allies in combat so they can effectively dealing out damage. The main challenge with this build is knowing when to use and when to preserve spell slots for more crucial moments. The most crucial being an ally falling to 0HP. Always make sure you have a few healing spells like healing word available to recover allies before they die. And remember that sometimes the best protection you can give is to kill your enemies quickly, so don’t leave all the fun to your allies.

Tank

Good for: Absorbing lots of damage

Creating a tank: Tanky druids are built differently to other tanks. You won’t reach the highest echelons of AC or hit points, instead you rely on your wild shape to take a beating for you. Of course, beef out your dexterity and constitution to up those stats as much as you can (taking a feat like tough can help here or a race like a Warforged or Autognome for extra AC and resistances, as odd as a robotic druid that can wild shape might be). Wisdom remains important, but less so for this build.

How it works: You’ll want to get on the front lines of combat. Make sure you wild shape before you get into combat to preserve that action. You’ll also want to make sure you have spells available for melee combat. Primal savagery works really well for consistent damage that scales upwards with your levels. You’ll also want a contingency plan for getting out of combat quickly when your vitality starts to fail you. Something like thunderwave can push enemies back giving you space to escape.

Battlefield controller

Good for: Controlling the battlefield by reducing the effectiveness of enemies or funnelling them into the right places.

Creating a battlefield controller: The effectiveness of your controlling will come down to your spells so this kind of build needs to invest heavily in wisdom. You’ll want spells that can help manage your enemies so the likes of entangle and wall of fire are the way to go.

How it works: Use your spells to nullify the effectiveness of your enemies. Things like entangle can restrict movement while wall of fire can block off enemies or cause damage. Supplement these spells with ranged attacks for when you’re enemies are stuck. Even the likes of polymorph are good at getting one tough enemy out of the battle.

Druid subclasses in D&D 5e

Druid casting a spell DnD 2024 — Druid casting a spell: Wizards of the Coast

At level 2, druids get their subclass. These are known as druid circles. Much of these subclasses are related to the source from which the druid focuses and gains their powers. The circle of the moon gains greater shape changing abilities from the moon for instance, spore druids work to utilise fungus for their abilities and so on.

Druid Subclass	Source Book	Description
Circle of the Land	Player’s Handbook	Your power is derived from a specific location in nature. The druid to play if you’re looking for enhanced spellcasting capabilities.
Circle of the Moon	Player’s Handbook	Have powers that come from changing forms. These druids can shapechange into combat-focused forms making them great melee warriors and even tanks.
Circle of Dreams	Xanathar’s Guide to Everything	Blessed with the powers of the Feywilds, these druids have improved healing and utility.
Circle of the Shepherd	Xanathar’s Guide to Everything	A carertaker of the animal kingdom, these druids focus on summoning and spellcasting support for a party.
Circle of Spores	Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything	Uses mycelium for their many powers and abilities, these druids are adept at operating in melee combat.
Circle of Stars	Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything	Look to the stars for power and guidance, gaining greater healing and damage dealing capabilties.
Circle of Wildfire	Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything	View wildfire as a catalyst to change and even enhancement. These druids wield fiery powers to devastating effect. From the ashes of the old comes a stronger new as they might say.

How to optimise a druid

Creating a great druid build isn’t always easy. They fulfil a lot of roles and have a lot of utility elements to consider. You also have the usual complications of spellcasting (made more complicated by the utility nature of many of their spells) combined with the added complexity of wild shape.

To help you out, I’ve provided some guidance on different aspects of character creation.

Ability score

Wisdom: Druids use wisdom as their spellcasting ability so you’ll want to make sure this is maximised.
Dexterity: You’ll need this for a decent AC outside of your wild shape. While druids can use medium armor and shields, they are restricted to non-metal forms of armor making dexterity even more crucial. Dexterity shouldn’t be needed much for weapon attacks as you’re better off relying on spells and wild shape for this.
Constitution: Constitution is important for giving you the extra durability you’ll need, especially if you’re on the frontlines.
Charisma: You’ve got little need for this unless you’re needed to be the face of the party. Druids aren’t really built to be a party face but some charisma skills from your background and some investment here could make you passable if required.
Intelligence: This can be dumped, you don’t need it other than for skills.
Strength: This can be dumped. As above, you should be using cantrips or wild shape for standard damage attacks.

Skills

Druids get 2 skills out of a bunch of options. As a general rule though, druids are not going to be your skill masters (rogues and bards do this better).

I’d generally prioritise them in the following order of importance, but this may change depending on your role in the party:

Perception: Really important and highly used skill, and you have the wisdom to back it up.
Insight: Really useful, especially in social encounters. You may be unlikely to be the face of the party, but everyone can chip in on many social encounters.
Arcana: Important knowledge skill.
Nature: Decent knowledge skill, and if someone’s going to be good at it, it’s probably you.
Religion: Important knowledge skill.
Survival: Very situational and often of little use.
Animal Handling: Almost never needed even if thematically, it works well.
Medicine: Basically useless. Just use a healing spell.

Best druid races

When picking a race for your druid, I’d keep the following considerations in mind:

Ability score: Wisdom is usually the most important ability score for a druid with dexterity coming second. constitution is also often a good option too. As such, you’ll want to prioritise races with the right ability score improvements (though many recent race releases let you choose anyway).
Innate spellcasting: Druids have plenty of spell slots and are great at casting spells so innate spellcasting gives you a chance to grab some spells from other class lists that you can repeat use effectively.
Increased resilience: Druids can be used as tanks and melee combatants, but aren’t as naturally suited to durability as the likes of barbarians and paladins are. This means that any resistances, AC increases or other durability features you can pick up with a race, the better!

With that in mind, the following races make great options for a druid:

Aasimar: Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage for extra durability, some extra healing and extra damage or temporary flight with celestial revelation are all really helpful for druids that get close to the action.
Autognome: Lots of extra durability from armored casing and mechanical nature and built for success is great at making you more likely to succeed on important rolls.
Hill Dwarf: Front line druids will gain a lot from the Hill Dwarf’s durability with extra HP and resistances.
Eladrin: Teleportation works great for frontline warrior that might urgently need to get into and out of combat. You can add some damage into the mix from this too. Fey step might even be the kind of thing you can use with your wild shape.
Fairy: Works well for a spellcasting focused druid to keep out of danger (and there’s barely a crossover with wild shape spellcasting as an eagle as this only comes into play late in your progression with restrictions). A couple of decent innate spells to add to the mix too.
Goliath: Reduce the damage you take and resistance to cold damage work great at making your druid more durable.
Shadar-Kai: Teleportation as a bonus action without having to use spell slots is excellent plus a turn of damage resistance. Resistance to necrotic damage makes you more durable and proficiency in perception and advantage against charmed are both great extras.
Warforged: +1 AC that stacks with your armor makes you more durable. Poison resistance, advantage against the poisoned condition and disease immunity are all great durability options too.
Yuan-Ti: Lots of great durability options for a frontline druid. Magic resistance is excellent and poison damage comes up often enough that resistance to it and advantage against the poisoned condition are great options.

Backgrounds

Druids aren’t particularly skill dependant so your background isn’t going to be overly important here. I’d aim for skills that lean into your capabilities, especially those skills that you can’t naturally gain from your class like stealth or acrobatics.

The following make good options:

Acolyte
Cloistered scholar
Criminal/spy
Faction agent
Sage
Urban bounty hunter
Urchin

Feats

Recommended options: Fey touched, gift of the chromatic dragon, gift of the gem dragon, gift of the metallic dragon, lucky, metamagic adept, mobile, observant, resilient, shadow touched, telepathic, war caster

Options to avoid: Athlete, crossbow expert, defensive duelist, dual wielder, great weapon master, healer, heavily armored, medium armor master, savage attacker, sharpshooter, shield master, tavern brawler, weapon master

Considerations: The main thing to be aware of is that feats dealing with weapons tend to be sub-optimal for a druid. As you’ll see in the weapons section, weapons are usually the worst way for a druid to cause damage.

Better options involve those that enhance your spellcasting like war caster (for better concentration) or metamagic adept (for enhanced spellcasting). Mobile is an interesting option for hit and run tactics. Telepathic solves a wild shape communication challenge while fey touched and shadow touched are great safety options with good escape mechanics.

Weapons

Druids have much better options than weapons in almost every situation. Here’s a few alternatives you should be using instead of weapons:

Wild shape: Even if you’re not a circle of the moon druid, there are wild shape options that are better than weapon attacks, like an ape or a brown bear.
Primal savagery: 1d10 melee damage as standard that scales with level, using a damage type that is rarely resisted and uses your wisdom for the ability score is far better than using a weapon. And it’s a cantrip.
Shillelagh: Grab a club or quarterstaff and this will be better than your standard attacks.
Produce flame: Your best damage dealing cantrip for ranged combat that beats any ranged weapons you could use.

Armor

You are proficient with medium armor but it’s basically pointless as you can only use hide armor and that’s as good as studded leather but restricts your dexterity bonus to +2.

As such, your best option is to beef up your dexterity, take studded leather armor and a shield (you don’t need two handed weapons or even two weapon fighting for the reasons explained in the weapons section). It’s hard to prioritise dexterity for most builds as wisdom is more important and constitution competes for the place of runner up, but it remains important for frontline druids.

Multiclassing

Recommended options: Barbarian, cleric and monk

Options to avoid: Artificer, wizard

Considerations: Unarmoured defense from a barbarian or monk can work better than light armor though a monk’s version is likely going to be better for you with it’s reliance on wisdom over constitution.

A barbarian’s rage can enhance your damage if you intend to be more of a melee druid than a spellcaster. Just remember that while raging, you can’t cast spells (or concentrate on them). But rage should work alongside your wild shape.

A monk’s martial arts will give extra attacks to a martial druid outside of wild shape which could be a good option.

Clerics crossover in their use of wisdom for spellcasting so can be a good choice for grabbing some spells you wouldn’t normally have access to. The likes of shield of faith, guiding bolt, toll the dead and word of radiance are all great, low levels options for a druid.

Artificers and wizards are challenging to make work with a druid mainly because they rely on intelligence which druids typically dump.

Roleplaying a druid

Druids are very much one with nature, but how this manifests can be quite different. If you’re stuck for ideas on how to play your druid, below are a few you can use:

Aspiring archdruid: Raised in the druidic ways from a young age, you were born to lead. Perhaps you feel your grove lacks vision or adequate leadership, maybe you simply have high ambitions for yourself. Either way, you have that vision for leading your grove. But first, you must prove yourself as a champion of nature and a master of your abilities.

Hermit: Society has never agreed with you, but you have always loved animals and wildlife. This has turned you a little eccentric, having little to do with the wider world and concentrating on nurturing the creatures around you.

You may display eccentricities like a lack of awareness for norms around clothing, the uses of bad smelling salves or poor social skills.

Of course, you’re in an adventuring party, so something must have led you away from your comfortable life of obscurity. Perhaps an evil threatens your home that you seek to end.

Shadow druid: You seek to protect nature by any means necessary. Those that disregard the rights of nature to grow and flourish deserve nothing better than aggression and a swift death. You are quick to mete out judgement and punishment upon your enemies.