Circle of the Shepherd Druid Guide to Fuzzy Fury

[Nhym]

About Warcaster / Resilient: sorry, but if there is only one to pick, Resilient is DEFINITELY THE BEST by FAR.

I refer to the statistics from this link: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questi...the-chances-of

The author states "tl;dr: Advantage roughly equals a bonus of +5.
Hence, until you're level 13 and your proficiency bonus increases to +5, War Caster will be more useful. If the ability score increase also raises your CON modifier, you reach the tipping point 4 levels earlier, at level 9."

Practical application, the majority of games happen before level 13 (Unless you have uneven Con) where Warcaster is statistically better. Therefore, I rate Warcaster as higher as it is better in the majority of games. But as Con is a Shepherd Druid's most important stat, I suggest getting both War Caster and Res [Con]. Preferably Warcaster at 4 and res con at 8. There is no need to rush res con because warcaster is better at early levels and the con increase from res con is retroactive.

About Stealth: true, but it's easy enough to get with a background. Important for any Druid unless sneaking is really not your thing.

I only listed skills that the druid can be natively proficient with, for simplicity. I added stealth at the bottom then.

About CHA

About STR

From levels 1 to 20 you only get 5 ASI's. Feats are important to a Shepherd Druid so even if they don't take both War Caster and Res [Con], most Shepherds will take 2 feats. Most never see third tier play for the level 19 ASI which means most people will get 2 ASI's worth of ability scores. Con is so important that it is #1 and Wis is #2 obviously, so there is absolutely no room for stat distribution post character creation.
For character creation, assuming you are doing point buy with a race that (ideally) gives you +2 in Wis or Con and +1 in the other, you can spend 23/27 points to get +3 in both Wis and Con and +2 in Dex (Which I would suggest as necessary). Charisma helps with social interactions, so it's better than Str or Int so that would be at least 10 for +0. That leaves either getting Cha to +1 or Str or Int to 10. When I say something like Charisma doesn’t benefit it in any mechanical way or that Strength isn’t good, it is through the lens of what one person can accomplish with their character. Yes there are a lot of things you COULD do with Charisma or ways that Strength COULD be useful to you, but to a Shepherd Druid, Wisdom is their spellcasting ability, Constitution is for HP and maintaining concentration and Dexterity is for AC and initiative (Mostly). Therefore compared to those stats, Cha Str and Int are dump stats. It’s not that they cant be useful, they just straight up aren’t the priority.

About Healing Spirit: yeah, no. You didn't get my point. There are situations where Conjured Animals will be simply mediocre, because powerful enemy has too much AC / HP / or other feature that means it's a PC (or a few) that need(s) to hold the line (and I really mean hold, as in staying immobile as much as possible). In those situations, there is nothing best than Healing Spirit: it doesn't require you to be close, it doesn't even usually require you to be in the right order or Initiative to do something (unless you need to move the beam), it just guarantees your Paladin/Fighter/Monk/Rogue pal always gets his full turn to act.

I'm still not convinced. Upcasting to 3rd level provides 2d6 hp to anyone in the area per turn. Considering your stipulation of a PC holding the line (I read that as staying in the same spot) and with Healing Spirit's area only being a 5ft cube (Only enough for one person), that's only 2d6 hp per turn. Compare that to the possibilities out of combat with the Healing Spirit conga-line, you could heal for a total of 20d6 over the spells duration for the whole party.
Now about in-combat utility compared to Conjure Animals. Very true that higher AC/HP enemies won't be affected much by enemies but they are meat shields. No matter what you conjure, those 8 CR 1/4 creatures essentially mean 8 hits your PCs aren't taking (Not including AoE). For enemies that strong, one hit is most likely a hell of a lot more than the 2d6 hp per turn healing of the healing spirit. That basically means the effectiveness of Conjure Animals is to healing spirit in combat is equal to the amount of damage the summons can mitigate by being targets against the enemy over the PCs versus the 2d6 per turn on one PC. AND that isn't even taking into account the fact that the Conjures still do attack and even with a terrible + to hit and high enemy AC, they will provide at least something more than just being meat shields.

About Ring of Spell Storing: I was'nt saying "change owner every day", not at all. I was simply saying that whatever kind of Shepherd you play, whatever party you're in, that item is the one you can maximize every day (i just didn't want to annoy everyone by making a list spell by spell Xd). So it should be in the top three. :)

Fair Enough >.<