As much as he was happy to help the starving family of wild boars, he sure wished they had picked a different orchard to steal from.
Lucky sits at the number 10 spot not because it’s the least useful, but instead because it’s not Druid specific. Lucky is, almost unarguably, the best feat in D&D 5e. Being given 3 luck points a day which gives you the option to reroll dice for attack rolls, saving throws and ability checks is like having three points of inspiration every in-game day, which can often be multiple times in a play session!
And because this effect can be used after rolling but before you learn if the roll succeeds, you can save your points until you know if you need it, unlike some abilities or spells needing to be cast before you roll, potentially wasting the spell if you roll high anyways.
Add to this the ability to reroll your opponent's dice and potentially making them miss, or even cancelling a critical attack altogether, and this feat is a great tool in any character’s tool belt, regardless of class!
9. Chef
Image
Everyone thinks that all druids are vegetarian, but anyone who frequently transforms into large carnivores will at some point crave a bite of fresh meat.
Everyone loves a good home-cooked meal, and while the chef’s kit item was always in the game, it wasn’t until Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything that the equipment became useful for more than just character backstory.
Upon taking the feat you gain proficiency with chef’s tools (if you didn’t already have it) and the option to increase either your Constitution or Wisdom score, which is great for Druids as both skills are incredibly useful. But the feat truly shines after your party settles down for a rest.
As part of a short rest, meaning over the course of an hour, your character now can cook up a hearty snack for up to 4 + your proficiency bonus people. After eating the snack and finishing the short rest, any players who roll any number of hit die to recover health get to add an additional 1d8 to this roll.
The second big effect the Chef feat grants is the ability for the player to, after they complete a long rest, bake up some magically delicious treats that last up to 8 hours, with the number of treats being equal to your proficiency bonus. Then, if a creature eats one of these treats with a bonus action, they gain temporary hit points equal to your character’s proficiency bonus!
This is another feat that can sound less impressive than other feats, but when you consider the fact that you now have access to both increased short rest healing and up to 6 free healing items every 8 hours, as well as giving a formerly fairly useless item like the chef’s kit some much-needed love, this is a really fun feat to grab.
8. Fey Touched
Image
The hummingbirds are cute and all, but the mosquitoes as big as dogs definitely puts a damper on any vacation in the fey-wilds.
This is a feat that will be more situational depending on how you build your character, but since it fits in with a lot of nature-based backgrounds and can make for some really unique role-play scenarios I think it’s a fun inclusion.
Right off the bat, your character receives a +1 bonus to Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma, potentially bumping your modifier up 1, but the real bonus is in the spells it gives you access to.
You get the “Misty Step” spell, an incredible tool to have if you need to escape, reach an item or catch up to a fleeing target. You also get to choose one 1st level spell of your choice, the only caveat being that it has to be from the Divination or Enchantment schools of magic.
While this sounds fairly limiting, when we consider that the spell can come from any class’s spell list, this means that your character will have options like “Charm Person”, “Detect Magic” or “Speak With Animals”, some pretty solid options!
Add in the fact that you can cast both of these spells once per day without a spell slot and the option to cast them again if your druid has a spell slot of a high enough level and you’ve effectively added two great spells to your already expansive list of spell options. And if you are a die-hard role-player, then an encounter with a fey being that results in you getting some new abilities is a great plot point!
7. Savage Attacker
Image
Despite the beating, Yo'Gee had no regrets for taking the ranger-barbarians picnic basket.
Another great feat to pair with your wildshape ability, this feat has the simple yet effective bonus of letting you reroll any damage rolls for melee attack weapons once per turn, and pick which of the two results you prefer.
With all of your wildshaped creatures having melee weapons built in, this feat means that once per turn you have the chance to increase your damage output, even when you can’t use spells or items that you could when in your original form.
But even when you are back to your normal character, this feat carries over into your sickles, daggers or whatever other magic weapons you can get your hands on. Savage Attacker definitely isn’t the most complicated or adaptive feat, but it’s hard to deny that any ability that increases your attack is a bad one.
6. Grappler
Image
The bandit quickly regretted his choice of words when he called the druid he thought had cheated at cards a snake.
Grappling in 5e is an underutilized mechanic, and it makes sense. Requiring one of your precious attacks, a free hand and then succeeding at a strength contest, you can grab an opponent and make their movement speed 0.
This is an okay option situationally, but simply reducing a monster's speed to zero while they still have their attacks and spells (at disadvantage against you at least) means it’s often a better option to just attack and get some more damage in.
However, when we use this feat with the Druid’s wild shape, it can make grappling a game-changer! The feat has two main effects, granting advantage on attacks targeting creatures grappled by you, and being able to attempt to pin a creature you have grappled, restraining both you and them.
The grappled condition is often confused with the restrained condition; where grappled simply stops the enemy from moving, the restrained condition makes their speed zero, gives attackers advantage against them, gives them disadvantage for attacking back, and any attacks that do hit are automatically critical hits.
This makes the Grappler feat awesome for strength-based characters, but it also makes wildshapes like bears, gorillas and even things like the giant octopus incredibly useful for controlling your enemy’s movements and attack options.
Even the only real downside of giving your enemies advantage and auto-crits is offset by your wildshape soaking up most of the damage and returning you to normal after you hit zero!
This feat isn’t for every build, but if you’re looking for a way to make your wildshapes more helpful to the team than being directly offensive, Grappler is a fun choice to use.
5. Shield Master
Image
Every good druid knows that you can never have too many things between yourself and a volley of arrows.
Often underrated, shields are an incredible option for spellcasters who need one hand for their spell focus or material spell components but don’t want to jump into the fight with a melee weapon and potentially hurt their odds with concentration spells.
With their flat +2 bonus to AC and the druid starting with both light and medium armour proficiencies, shields can give any spell-focused bushmage a huge buff. The Shield Master feat takes this benefit to another level and can be a massive buff for any kind of Druid build.
The feat’s first effect is decent, giving the player the option to add a bonus action shove to their regular attack roll. This shove, upon a successful strength contest, can send an opponent sliding 5 feet, which isn’t much in most scenarios, but it can move an enemy into an environmental hazard, a fellow adventurer’s spell, or even tumbling down a chasm they got too close to.
The next two effects are where the real meat is though; as long as they’re not incapacitated, your character can add their shield’s AC bonus to any saving throws that target only you and require a Dexterity saving throw. Now even if your character doesn’t have a great Dexterity bonus,, this makes it easier for players to evade spells like “Grasping Vine”, “Ice Knife”, and even the dreaded “Disintegrate” spell.
But the feat keeps getting better; If you ever make a Dexterity saving throw and succeed, if the effect you are attempting to dodge would normally make you still take half damage, you can use a reaction to take no damage instead. For the low low price of a single reaction, you gain access to one of the Rogue’s most useful class abilities, the 7th-level Evasion skill.
So after taking the Shield Master feat, equipping a shield now grants you +2 (or more) bonus AC, a new attack option for battlefield control, a good bonus to help in dodging spells or traps, and the ability to entirely shrug off potentially huge damage like a dragon’s breath attack. This elevates the shield from good to great, especially if your druid is going to be spell-casting focused!
4. Mobile
Image
"Ryan, I swear to god if you crack those reigns one more time I'll buck you off and let you deal with this yourself, I'm going as fast as I can!"
One of the greatest benefits of your wildshape ability is taking on the form of creatures with different movement styles. Be it swimming under through the city sewers, climbing the side of a fortress or simply flying to get a lay of the land, movement is often a huge part of your wildshape choices.
So when we add on the Mobile feat, this movement boost is made even better! With this feat you gain three bonuses, the first being a flat 10ft speed increase. Note how this says speed, not walking speed. This means that it increases your walking, climbing, burrowing, flying and swimming speed as well, something that a lot of creatures can use to great effect!
The second effect is that upon using the dash action, difficult terrain doesn’t reduce your movement by half like normal, so if you’re chasing a poacher through the bramble as a panther, not only are you doubling your movement, but their movement is still halved, meaning that in any scenario, you’re almost definitely going to catch up to whoever or whatever you’re after!
The third and final bonus is making any enemy you attack, even if you miss, unable to take opportunity attacks against you. This is a huge advantage, making it so that as any highly mobile creature like a hawk or a giant elk, you can get in, take a swing, and then retreat to safety again.
While this feat helps your base form quite a bit, your options for using it with your wildshape make it twice as helpful, and that’s not considering its use if you were to multiclass into something like Monk or Rogue as well…
3. Healer
Image
Thankfully no one was conscious to see this, they'd probably freak out if they saw him reading from a "Healing Mortal Wounds for Dummies Out of Spellslots" scroll.
Besides Clerics and Bards, Druids are one of the few classes that have access to healing spells, making them invaluable for a party lacking other healers. However, Druids also have some of the best offensive and utility spells in the game, so finding the balance of healing and other spells can be tricky.
That’s where the Healer feat comes in and gives the druid some options to support the team without sacrificing spell slots. Actually putting the healer’s kit item to good use, this feat lets you use an action to tend to an unconscious player and not only stabilize them like the kit normally does but bring them back up to 1 hp.
This means that for the same action cost of the “cure wounds” spell, you can get a player back on their feet and potentially back in the fight, all while not using a spell slot.
Making this even better, using an action and a charge of your healer’s kit (which has 10 uses and only costs 5th for a new one), you can heal a friend for 1d6+4 hit points, plus even more hit points equal to the affected characters number of hit die.
This means that at level 4, you’re healing a friend for a minimum of 9 hit points, and as high as 14 if the patient rolls well! When we compare this to the “cure wounds” spell, which uses a 1st level spell slot to do 1d8 + your spell-casting modifier, the amount healed is close enough to make this feat more than worth it.
Having 10 charges of effectively a 1st level spell that can be used whenever is a pretty wicked deal, and it gives you more spell slots to cast better offensive or utility spells which is always great!
2. Telepathic
Image
When talking about the power to read minds, no one mentions having to deal with people making fun of your tattoos behind your back.
Telepathy is the ability to speak with your mind and to read other's thoughts, and the telepathy feat grants your character this incredible power, plus some extra goodies that include a +1 increase to your choice of Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma score, potentially bumping up one of your ability modifiers by 1.
The first and most obvious ability is being able to speak to any creature, like a fellow party member or an unassuming guard, within 60 feet of you using only your mind! This communication is sent in a language that you can speak, however, the ability doesn’t give the recipient the ability to respond to you.
While a minor setback, when we pair this mental calling with a spell like “Speak With Animals” or a druid’s wildshape class feature however we open up a whole new world of possibilities. Asking a nearby rat for help to escape while avoiding the guard over-hearing, tricking an elusive fish into surfacing, and even using your telepathy to speak with your party while in a bestial wildshape form are only a few of the potential uses!
Secondly, the feat gives you access to the “Detect Thoughts” spell, a second-level spell that is great for interrogations, discovering someone’s true intentions and potentially even allowing your target to speak back to you. While the spell has several great uses, being able to cast it once per long rest for free or using a spell slot of second level or higher means you’ve just added a whole new spell to your spell list permanently!
1. War Caster
Image
Nobody had mentioned anything about it, but David still felt silly for forgetting his ritual curve-bladed harvesting tool at home.
The Druid’s Wildshape ability is an incredibly fun gameplay mechanic, but in exchange for transforming into a beast of your choosing, players will have to give up their ability to cast spells until they return to their normal form.
However, according to the class’s PHB description, any spells cast before the wildshape that require concentration are still able to be used, including spells like “Call Lightning” that use an action to activate the spell’s ability. So with a bit of planning ahead, you can set up some pretty crazy combo’s with concentration spells in beast form!
That’s where Warcaster comes in; with this feat, your character has advantage on Consitution saving throws to maintain concentration on a spell after getting hit. So even if you choose a creature that isn’t very hardy, your odds of maintaining a spell are still pretty high with the added advantage.
And this effect has another great benefit when your character isn’t wildshaped, as it lets the user cast a spell when taking an opportunity attack, instead of simply a regular melee attack. This means that you can use spells like Poison Spray, Thorn Whip, Heat Metal and even support spells like Elemental Bane to bring down or help control your enemy’s movements and actions in between turns!
From the dark void of space to the vast plains of medieval kingdoms, Braedyn has travelled the worlds of gaming far and wide to collect tales he can't wait to share!
