There are lots of classes in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, and lots of reasons to pick them. You might choose a class that you most relate to in real life, or that most suits your style of gameplay. If you like to solve problems by smashing things, congratulations, you are a Barbarian. Live free and barb hard. Conversely, you might be drawn by the opposite, choosing a character who is completely different from you to lose yourself in the fantasy. You might consider what spells your class has access to (if any), what feats they have, how they work in the specific story you're playing in, how they mesh with the team, and what backstory you can concoct for them. All of these thoughts and more go into selecting the perfect character for you. Unless you're a Druid, in which case it's all about Wild Shape.
Druids are an interesting class with various strengths and weakn- yadda yadda yadda. When you're a Druid you get to turn into an animal using an ability called Wild Shape. That's its whole deal. Can you over-intellectualise it and position it against other magical classes and use it as creative support that also works as an effective party leader in a roleplay-heavy story? Sure. But you're picking Druid so you can turn into animals. That's the whole point of it. However, Dungeons & Dragons' latest update is causing controversy as it messes with the core reason anyone would be a Druid in the first place.
The first update was playtested in February, which some argued restricted Wild Shape mechanically, while others liked the simplification which kept the spirit of Wild Shape alive. Another playtest has now tweaked Wild Shape again, but the core idea of the original chan🦄ge has remained, suggesting it is here to stay.ౠ So what does that mean?
I'm not a hardcore D&D player. I have two friend groups who play, and in both, we play to have fun. I find it odd when you read Reddit posts that are 'Hey my DM did this thing that confused me, what did they mean?' and all of the answers are 'If you don't get it, leave! That isn't the table for you! No D&D is better than bad D&D!'. Maybe for those people who need every inch to be perfect, there are issues with 5e that I'm not seeing. I have been experimenting with homebrew to give encounters a little more razzledazzle, but this is the rules I learned with and it seems fine. Others may have a laundry list of required changes, but I'm not one of them, which is why the Druid change surprises me. However, I'm not necessarily against it.
How Wild Shape works right now is that your Druid level determines which animals you can transform into, so from level two you can become weaker animals like a boar, and then as you level up, you can become a giant shark or a brontosaurus. Each of these animals already has a stat block in the game, so while you're in combat, those are your stats. On the one hand it's a simple system - you become X thing. On the other, it means you need to constantly look through the monster manual for your stats, which can be complicated and time consuming.
For Circle of the Moon Druids specifically, they’re granted access to more powerful creatures far earlier, and with that also could boost their hit points to tank it out when their character otherwise might not have. I've never really viewed D&D as a Players Versus DM scenario though, so the fact one character had the potential to be powerful matters to each table differently. In our 'let's have fun' table, we ban Silvery Barbs, because it's overpowered and makes the game less fun. Anyone was free to do that with Druids, so the update doesn't seem that necessary. Then again, I do like the simplicity of it and it seems like only players who leaned heavily on these advantages are the most annoyed by it.
The new system splits it into just three stat blocks: animals of land, animals of sea, and animals of sky. So if you Wild Shape into a bird, you would have the same stats whether you were a robin or a falcon. It's easier to keep up with and maintains the flexibility of appearance afforded to Wild Shaping Druids, but means there are a maximum of three stat blocks you'd need to be aware of. It takes away the conundrum of 'shark or crocodile' while poring over their stats, because they now behave the same way. By the time you can become powerful creatures, you're at such a high level that these beasts rarely do enough damage to be combat powerhouses anyway.
This might come back to a divide between players who play for fun and hardcore players who know every rule, stipulation, counterpoint, and realm in their heads, and will challenge even the most minor of infractions to the rules as written because no D&D is better than bad D&D. In my experience though, Wild Shape tends to get far more use in roleplay scenarios (at TheGamer, the party recently wagered the Druid, disguised as a baboon, in a bar bet) than in combat itself. If you do use it for combat, you tend to stick with the same creature until you level up, or until you're put in a drastically different situation, like a fight near or in water calling for a shark attack.
The February playtest debuted this major change in direction (which had been trialled as early as 2021), and May's most recent version iterates on the idea rather than changing it completely. Lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford appeared in an official video - the one above - from Wizards of the Coast where he claims some have reported this being their favourite interpretation of Wild Shape (I believe it) while others have said they never, ever want this to become the official rules (I also believe it). Ultimately, I like the simplicity and doubt it will impact roleplay-heavy tables at all, but there was always going to be a danger in fundamentally changing the most basic reason people play this class. 'It ain't broke, but let's fix it anyway' seems to be the motto, and the results have not been popular so far.