Grim Hollow Druid Subclass Guide | Circle Of Blood, Entropy & Mutation

Deep diving into the circles of blood, entropy and mutation.

The druids of the Grim Hollow setting are not the cultivating kind normally associated with druid-kind. Instead, they tend to be far more violent, offering twisted rites of sacrifice and blood. They live in nature and warp it to their will.

The 2024 version of the Grim Hollow Player’s Handbook has 3 druid subclasses. They are:

Circle of blood – Use sacrificial rites and blood magic to slay their foes and bolster themselves and allies.
Circle of entropy – Wield weapon and powerful defences to bring about inevitable entropy and make way for new life.
Circle of mutation – Use mutations to enhance their wild shape form and the forms of other beasts.

In this article, I’ll analyse each subclass to provide advice as well as analyse how strong they are and which is the most powerful.

Circle of blood

What are they?

Druids of the circle of blood adhere to the old ways of primal magic. They perform sacrificial rites to bolster allies and destroy enemies. Their path is one that is finely balanced between life and death.

Key abilities

Circle of blood spells (lv3)

Circle of blood druids get a bunch of unique blood magic spells. Blood rush is a great way to gain self healing and crimson lash works nicely with rite of the blood moon to help your damage scale with extra attacks. Sense lifeblood is a lot more situational and can occasionally be useful when the party splits up. Sanguine poppet gives you a destructible servant, but it’s a high price (a 3rd level spell slot) for fairly low damage and there are less expensive ways to gain a scout (including just using a familiar which all druids can do).

At higher levels, dark sacrament is really interesting. There’s big damage here and some of the blessings seem permanent/semi-permanent. It wouldn’t be hard to engineer these blessings by just killing a weak enemy which makes me suspect the permanence here wasn’t intentional. Circle of scarlet is an interesting AoE spell. The damage is only OK, but the temporary hit points can be huge if you can affect enough creatures in its area. A great one against a horde of minions. Mortality is an interesting one too. It’s great against creatures with many damage resistances and immunities as well as those that like to heal themselves. You also get some decent damage against them and lots of extra damage if you can focus party damage against a single target. Overall, there’s a strong bunch of spells here with lots of interesting utility.

Rite of the blood moon (lv3)

This has a 10 minute duration so you can cast it ahead of combat. The temporary hit points and increased damage work to benefit you in weapon attacks rather than from spells.

At these early levels, your weapon attacks will be better than your cantrip attacks (if you have the strength or dexterity for them). This is even more the case with violent strikes in place. I’d consider activating shillelagh in the first round of combat to complement this and then using true strike for your attacks (you may need to grab magic initiate to make this work). Alternatively, you can cast crimson lash instead which will give you improved attacks and, at higher levels, more attacks allowing blood boon to increase damage on multiple attacks.

Without true strike or crimson lash, this circle will need to build into dexterity or strength (probably dexterity for the AC boost). If you use true strike or crimson lash, then you can rely on wisdom instead.

Blood boon (lv6)

Temporary hit points and recovered hit dice when a nearby creature is reduced to 0HP is decent. You’ll want a high wisdom early on to get plenty of uses of this.

It doesn’t matter whether the creature being reduced to 0HP is an ally or not so either can work, but if you’re in a tight spot and allies need some extra HP, you can just kill a low level minion for a bit of aid.

It’s worth being aware that the blood magic you possess is often fueled in part by hit points dice making the recovery of these very useful.

Blood lust (Lv10)

Improved blood moon now grants even more damage and resistance to some of the more common damage types will make you quite a lot more resilient. You should have plenty of uses of wild shape too so should be able to use this for most major encounters.

Exsanguinate (Lv14)

One use of blood boon each long rest gets buffed up double temporary hit points, more hit dice recovered and more creatures affected.

What are they good at?

Blood druids are a form of melee druid, but require spells to really make this work. Specifically, crimson whip and/or true strike and maybe shillelagh too. They’re essentially weapon damage dealers with buffs through temporary hit points and the spellcasting capabilities of a full caster.

How effective are they?

Blood druids have a solid set of fairly unique spells with a decent range of options and the capability to become a decent melee option. Between plenty of temporary hit points, self healing spells for fairly substantial bonus action healing and extra damage, including multiple attacks through crimson whip, blood druids are able to survive longer and hit harder than most druids in melee.

Its not straightforward though. They have to constantly balance spell slots, wild shape uses AND hit point dice, which is a fair bit of resource management.

Overall, they’re a good option for more aggressive druids that are happy with a more complex kind of druid.

Score: 4/5

Circle of entropy

What are they?

Fatalistic druids that see the end in all things. People die, civilisations fall and within this constant decline towards ruin, is the opportunity for new things to emerge from the old.

Key abilities

Catastrophic power (lv3)

You can expend spell slots for some smite damage, to impose damage vulnerabilities or you can take a weapon mastery option.

Elemental cataclysm is one you’ll need to heavily engineer. It’s unlikely to work well with your attacks as the damage vulnerabilities are all elemental damage types (even crimson lash uses necrotic damage) until you hit level 6 when you can change the damage type. Until then, you’ll want to focus on spells and work with allies to do so. The damage isn’t much at all so you really do need to take advantage of those damage vulnerabilities.

Theoretically, I think this can override a resistance or an immunity, though this isn’t definitively clear. As a DM, I’d probably rule that it brings these things down a level, so immunity becomes resistance, resistance becomes no change and no change becomes vulnerability, but the lack of clarity means your DM may be more generous.

Ruinous smite is a good option if you expect to mostly make weapon attacks, it still allows you to make use of your spell slots for some extra damage. It’s also better than a paladin’s divine smite as it doesn’t require a bonus action or casting a spell to activate (so you can still cast a levelled spell with your bonus action).

If you intend on making plenty of weapon attacks, but don’t want to expend spell slots, then you can just grab a weapon mastery option instead.

Ruin incarnate (lv3)

Make a use of wild shape and a bonus action to have 10 minutes of enhanced combat abilities. You get advantage on attack rolls against bloodied creatures, an extra attack and 17 + wisdom modifier AC.

This shouldn’t be hard to use for tricky encounters and an extra attack at level 3 is big (means you can outperform martials at this level). It balances out from level 5, but it’s still a big deal.

The AC is a huge boost and means you can largely not worry about dexterity and focus on strength for higher damage weapons. It also means you’re likely to have 20-22 AC without a shield which is really high! Based on the wording, I don’t think you can stack anything else, like a shield, on top of that. I think it’s your AC from other things or this new AC, not a combination of both. Essentially, a high wisdom build is important for an entropy druid.

Advantage on attacks against bloodied creatures just means you’ll want to be the one finishing enemies off.

The extra attack here does make things like true strike and crimson lash less viable (unless you want to cast a 5th level spell for crimson lash). Shillelagh does work though, and perhaps slightly better. There’s also less need for a spare hand for a shield, so dual wielding can be a good option too.

Many roads to ruin (lv6)

Elemental cataclysm will work with your attacks now making it much more worthwhile for double attack damage on some targets. Strength and dexterity saving throws are reasonably common so enhancing these with wisdom is handy, especially as you should be aiming for a high wisdom.

Shake the earth (lv10)

Essentially, you get bigger, add d4 to your attacks and potentially knock enemies prone. Prone likely won’t help you much as you’ll have used your action to get big, but it will help allies out. Just be aware that it knocks allies prone too making it an awkward one.

D4 extra damage is fine, but will need a few turns to make up for the lost damage from 2 attacks this turn so you need to consider this in your decision-making. I’d maybe use this primarily to knock enemies prone and view the damage as a bonus.

Entropy’s apex (Lv14)

Another attack when using ruin incarnate, more uses of shake the earth and smites now cause critical hits on a 19-20 for a round.

Those improved criticals will be a lot to keep track of, but 3 attacks is your most useful part of this. It kicks in later than a fighter’s 3rd attack (level 11) but it’s better than what most classes get, even if theoretically, it’s an expendable resource.

What are they good at?

Weapon damage is an entropy druid’s forte, but this relies on expendable resources. This means that entropy druid’s are best in big encounters, but fade in effectiveness in smaller encounters or in long adventuring days when they run out of these things. I expect this will be rare, meaning you can consistently rely on this being a solid martial druid with spellcasting as a backup.

How effective are they?

Entropy druid’s are a tad uneven. They outperform most martials at level 3, but tend to fade in effectiveness, or require setup to maintain parity. I’d say they still compare quite well as a martial subclass, and on top of this, you have standard spellcasting to fall back on.

Realistically, I think this makes entropy druids quite good, if a tad fiddly. Add to this a very high AC and the ability to combine spells with attacks with smites and the entropy druid is quite a strong option for martial druids.

Score: 4/5

Circle of mutation

What are they?

Druids of the circle of mutation work to alter and improve nature by adapting and mutating it. They do this in order to keep up with the unnatural world, allowing nature to defend itself from the encroaching threat of civilization and technology. Other druids consider this form of druidcraft as unnatural and harmful towards the natural order.

Key abilities

Circle forms (Lv3)

Like the circle of the moon, mutation druids get higher CR creatures to transform into. Rather than getting a boost to AC and temporary hit points though, you get a bit more damage and more utility with your bonus action. I’d say the the lack of improved AC will likely leave you a bit vulnerable in wild shape form, especially as this is geared towards combat. Because of this, you may want to invest in the natural armor mutation to compensate.

Mutate shape (lv3)

You can expend spell slots to gain mutation points equal to that spell’s level. This lets you gain extra abilities in the form of mutations.

There’s lots of great utility here but many of these capabilities are possessed by your different wild shape options, but not combined. For example, there are no good combat options for a flying beast while some creatures with multi-attack may lack a decent AC. Mutations let you build up the wild shape form you want.

There are some good combinations here with multi-attack a great option for hard hitting single attack beasts (like a rhinoceros which deals 2d8 + 5 damage plus another 2d8 if it moved a bit, doubling this high damage attack). Conversely, multiattack beasts will benefit from venomous attacks, adding 2d6 damage and the potential to cause the poisoned condition. Multiattack then doubles this impact.

It’s also worth noting that you’ll get flight in wild shape quicker than other druids as the flight mutation can be used as early as level 5.

Unnatural and unnerving (lv6)

Expended spell slots for mutations become less impactful as you regain a lower level spell slot in its place. You can also make your wild shape attacks cause force damage (which is very rarely resisted) and have advantage on deception, intimidation and animal handling checks while in wild shape form.

Endless evolution (lv10)

Converting spell slots into mutation points will bag you even more mutation points (equal to your wisdom modifier) so make sure you invest in wisdom for plenty of mutations.

You also gain a bunch of enhanced mutations like damage resistances, wild shape spellcasting, regeneration and improved attacks.

Grab resistances and regeneration if you want to be more resilient. A burrow speed can be very effective for hit and run techniques mystic monster is a great way to combine spellcasting with wild shape. You can also grab a flying form for very safe casting from distance

Apex predator (lv14)

Improved damage is universally useful, and this is a fairly hefty damage buff. Enhancing another beast with mutations can be strong if they’re an ally, but getting an ally requires some setup. Summon beast is probably the easiest way to do this for a decent creature, but find familiar can bring you a beast too. As can something like the beast master ranger’s animal companion.

What are they good at?

Mutation druids make great melee combatants and an adaptable utility subclass with loads of utility mutations available on any of your wild shape forms.

How effective are they?

Mutation druids are really good. Despite a bit less natural durability from the heightened AC moon druids might get, mutation druids can hold their own with better damage, easier utility and still better durability than most druids.

The highly adaptable nature of mutation druids, their competence in combat, adaptability and their spellcasting all combine to make them a really strong druid subclass. Especially if you choose your mutations carefully.

Score: 5/5

Which Grim Hollow druid subclass is best?

All the druid subclasses in the Grim Hollow Player’s Handbook are quite good. They all offer a more combative take on druids which differs from more typical druids (though melee druids can be found in official subclasses too).

Having said that, I think the mutation druid is the strongest of the 3. It has a huge amount of flexibility as well as the potential to be quite a heavy hitting melee combatant and possessing the spellcasting of a full caster.

Fortunately, while there’s powerful potential, none of this feels over-powered and could easily be used in your campaigns without unbalancing the game.

What do you think of Grim Hollow’s druid subclasses? Let me know in the comments below.