Yes this!!! Its also good to "stir the pot" and gather intel. We ran into a Cult and needed info on it. We also had a Noble in a town that was a major turd we had to deal with. We used skywrite above the noble's house to insinuate the Cult's messiah was at the noble's house. After the riot, the Lord's evicted the noble, and we were able to follow some leads on the Cult as the sign drew cultists in. Great shenanigans potential with skywrite.
I love Animal Messenger, just so much. Not for normal communication options, but to taunt enemies. Work with the rogue or bard or what have you, dress the animals up in tiny costumes, and send them to the enemy general, or irritating Waterdeep bureaucrat, or whatever. Same reason I've used Skywrite, though that has the advantage of not being killed by guard dogs, and letting more people see the insults.
The power of having many people see a message is not to be underestimated. What would a modern day commercials company pay for that? Public shaming, creating crowds, warnings, rumours. But mostly public shaming. Because the world does needs to know about Lord Gormalon's erectile dysfunction.
We are so blessed that Chris is releasing multiple video series around the same time: Subclass ranking, Druid spell ranking, and the bits or builds he releases between. This was another great video, some obvious choices for druids at this level with a lot of circumstantial variety.
Spells like Hold Person and Heat Metal really demonstrate how useful it can be for Spell Preparation casters to get advanced intel on what they're up against. If you *know* that you're up against a bunch of wolves, you skip them. If you *know* that you're up against a bunch of armored knights, they become much more worthwhile. Of course, that's what "circumstantial" means, but seriously, scout out your enemy if you can.
I would honestly argue that if the party truly has no idea what they are going up against or what they may find then they have either been thrust into a situation where they know nothing by the DM or they just didn't bother thinking at all. If you are in the forest and you dont believe there is any sort of civilisation nearby, hold person probably wont help, neither will heat metal. But if you are traveling on a pathway or just walking around a town, then the chances that you need these spells increase dramatically. You dont need much information to make that judgment.
My dm would rule if its not wearing metal i could try to lodge a dagger in it and if it has no way of getting the dagger out i could cast heat metal on that
My daughter’s druid used to keep Locate Plants/Animals prepared to find sources of poison for the assassin played by her big sister. So, it was good for that - so long as they weren’t fighting undead, fiends, etc. 🤷♂️
One useful combat application I can think of for Enhance Ability is to cast it on a spellcaster that plans on using Counterspell or Dispel Magic during combat, since that would give them advantage on any rolls they'd need to make for those spells. A situational use obviously, but one with the potential to be clutch in that sort of situation.
It’s also an incredible spell to cast on the stealthy party member who wants to split the party regardless of past experiences. Advantage on stealth helps prevent that character from being discovered. Advantage on acrobatics may help when maneuvering over uneven ground in rooftops or along walls as well as Defending yourself from creatures attempting to grapple you. The slight damage reduction from falling is enough to make sure that most creatures giving chase to you would unwittingly prom themselves if you make use of the vertical drops. Advantage on sleight of hand for lifting objects off or even onto unwary creatures. If you’re caught, you get advantage on your initiative to act before your assailant.
Enhance ability is another major component of getting surprise with Pass without Trace. If you have a paladin or fighter in heavy armour and without stealth. You need to remove their disadvantage to consistently get a high score.
Beast Sense does have one (very niche but very fun) use. Animal Friendship gives you a a willing beast target even if the beast in question is actually not particularly friendly. Speak With Animals allows you to give that friendly Beast instructions: not too complicated, but they don't need to be. Speak With Animals is also a ritual, so if we have the time to invest in this, it takes only a single 1st level spell slot for Animal Friendship. With a willing beast who has been given some basic instructions, what does Beast Sense get you? Well, if the animal you've befriended, convinced to do you a favor, and then turned into a spy camera is, say, Blofield's cat (or at least the D&D equivalent), you have turned an asset with incredible levels of access to some scheming villain into the perfect mole. Bonus points if it is, in fact, a hobgoblin general's pet mole. That's just about the most druid thing I can imagine.
I adore Continual Flame for it's flavor, especially if your DM is more lax with a character's skills at building things or making use of certain magic items. Does a violet, star-filled torch atop my staff of woodlands help my darkvision equipped Circle of Stars druid? Not really. Do I love the thematic flavor it adds and the idea that I could use my power over the staff to have it's leaves "sheathe" the flame on command when I need to? Very much yes. I could see why many druids might never touch it, but as a certified "downtime lover" it's such a fun spell. Artificers make great use of it though, with their tinkering nature it's easier to argue that you can add a little pot of light to the variant human fighter's helmet that can be toggled with an item interaction. As a side note, THANK YOU for making me realize Moonbeam was a 5-foot *radius*, I've been running it as occupying a single square for no good reason
There is one enemy that Earthbind is extremely good against: The Demilich. They have a strength modifier of -5, meaning a high level Druid, and if you're fighting a Demilich, unless your DM is a sadist, you're a high level Druid, you should have a maxed out spellcasting modifier, meaning your DC should be around 16. A Demilich literally cannot resist your Earthbind, it has no walking speed at all. If you hit a Demilich with Earthbind, its only chance of escaping is either burning a Legendary Resistance, or if you're fighting it in its lair, using Anti-Magic Field on you. So, with three second level slots, you can burn all three of its Legendary Resistances if you're not fighting it in its lair. If the rest of your party burns its Legendary Resistances alongside you, then Watery Sphere is pretty much checkmate, as one of the only conditions Demiliches are vulnerable to is Restrained, and like Earthbind, the DC is too high for the Demilich to beat. Highly circumstances, but being that effective against such a high level enemy does score some points in my book.
@@Trenell83 I'm primarily a Cleric guy. Only Druid I played was Spores. Those temp hit points so I could cast spells while "wild shaped' was pretty deece.
Actually Locate Plants and Animals can come in handy for Druids that just got 7th level casting and want to find a suitable tree for Transport Via Plants.
Regarding flaming sphere: I don’t think Chris is giving flaming sphere adequate credit as a control spell. While it is unlikely that anyone is going to end their turn within five feet of the sphere, that in of itself generates value. Use it to make it hard for the enemy to position in places they need to be to attack the party. In cramped dungeon rooms where viable places for monsters to stand is even more limited the spell is even more valuable.
i think you're right. every campaign has dungeons i would think, every dungeon has hallways, every hallway sucks if it has a flaming sphere in it. Every flaming sphere can be upcast to deal 4d6 when it strikes an enemy, and another 4d6 when the creature is stuck by the sphere, and that's for a minute, and a 4th level slot (upcast for that dmg). So it's much better than fireball in those positions for just one slot higher, not a bad trade off... is pretty good!
@@samuelpierce639 This DUNGEONS and Dragons. The PCs are almost constantly in tight corridors and twenty-five by thirty-five foot rooms. Even with no walls or rooms, D&D combats quickly start looking like a rugby scrim as everyone closes to melee. Once that happens, the Flaming Sphere can be used to force monsters to take attacks of opportunity or fire damage from the sphere.
100% agree on Spiked Growth - the fact that the only save is to notice it and there's no way to half it is ridiculously good. And the fact that you can stack this with Plant Growth? Oh man - that's the jam. And heaven help your enemies if you also have a Nature Cleric casting Thorn Whip and using Grasping Vine and pulling people "back to start" through the spike patch.
@@grantgarbour Step 1: put a plant down in the area you're casting in, or target a spot where a plant already is. Step 2: cast Plant Growth. Step 3: cast and concentrate on Spike Growth. A surprisingly high amount of this can be done before combat, and then boom: 25ft of movement to move 5ft, 2d4 piercing for every 5ft they move through the Spike Growth, and if you pair this with Thorn Whip you can trigger even more spike damage each turn.
After all your spell guides, I'd love to see a stupid-druid-tricks video, where you tell of some of the sillier or stranger things druids of varying subclasses can do. It'd help show how seemingly simple spells or abilities, that look ok or pretty good, can make you reasonably competitive in DPR terms early on (even non-moons) and have "expanded utility" on top of your already very utilizable base class.
About Spike Growth, you said the Nature Cleric also gets it but didn't mention the Dao Genie Warlock, which can actually make great use of it with repelling blast + potentially crusher. Just think that's a fun option worth bringing up.
You can use locate plants + goodberry to locate party members. If your DM allows you to choose any small fruit or nut for the goodberry spell, then you can choose extremely rare ones, like cactus fruits, or some other fruits that only grows in other side of the world... Cast goodberry every night before sleep, give 1 fruit to every party member, and you can always locate them.
I've been playing the same wildfire druid for almost one year now (if you don't count the small break where she was kidnapped by the enemies) but have loved using these videos as guidance for myself when preparing spells over the last year. Thank you Chris!
flaming sphere is pretty good if you have someone with sentinel in the party. they have to begin all their turns next to the sphere unless they try to move away, which means taking an AoO which might get them stuck near the sphere anyway
Enlarge/Reduce in combination with Wildshape and Circle Forms is the fastest way to become gargantuan in 5e. That makes it, in and of itself, worth it to me. Being able to threaten 20 squares, at once, is sort of bananas.
the druid in my group actually killed 4 goblins by enlarging our tortle barbarian in a tight dungeon. It was by far the coolest thing that happened until now.
I got to disagree on earthbind being that bad. I feel like I'm the only one who found out how good earthbind is. It's not always useful and I wouldn't always bring it. But when it's good it the best spell in the game and just wins encounters. There are several creatures in the game in the game with a fly speed and no walking speed. Nearly all of these creatures have terrible strength saves. So when you cast it they get one terrible save and then there stuck for a minute and can't move. Ghost, wraith, flameskull, banshee, will-o-wisp pretty much everything that's an Incorporeal Undead instantly loses to this spell. It' also shuts down Demiliches hard and is so so against beholderkin. All of these creature have immunities to at least some movement stopping condition but none are immune to this. This spell has saved my ass multiple times. If you hear anything about a place being haunted pack this spell. If there's something strange In the neighborhood Who you gonna call? (Earthbind)
The biggest problem with it, which wasn't mentioned here, is that Earthbind becomes increasingly redundant as the party starts to fly themselves. Flight only becomes more common, cheaper, and easier as you level up. And having allies with the ability to fly is just better than taking the ability to fly away from your enemies. If you're fighting harpies or something, at the point where you have access to 2nd level spells but not 3rd, yeah, you'll get some use out of it. But it's only going to get worse, very quickly.
Locate plants or animals can be a pretty good tracking spell; druidcraft a little rare flower and slip it into someone's pocket, a crate of weapons, a food tray, etc and then you can find out exactly where it goes without spending a spell slot. What really makes this pay off compared to using locate object or locate creature though is that it has a 5 mile range instead of a 1000 ft range, allowing you to track something across an entire city instead of a block or two.
Thank you so much for the stars! You have no idea how irritating it is in some tier lists where the good and awful spells look the same because I can't tell the difference between blue and purple!!
Last night I used animal messenger in our sea-fairing campaign to contact the captain of a pair of pirate ships about to waylay us. They demanded a toll for sailing their waters. We told them that we had no such coinage to make such a payment and that they could let us pass or we would dismantle their ship board by board. We received a laugh in response, I sent one final message before diving into the sea (Triton druid) "I see you have chosen death then, a pity, may the Bitch Queen feast upon your souls!" and expressed that the bird would promptly vanish after delivering it's message effectively "giving them the bird" as I swam under the waves and climbed the side of their ship to unleash a flaming sphere right in the middle of the deck. Our ships captain, who is also an aquatic race, proceeded to go beneath and tear at the bottom of their ship. She had already disabled the other ships rudder while the rest of that was happening. Having seen a pair of giant sea eels at one of our first destinations in the campaign I was now able to take on their form and did so with the intention of biting at the ship, however when my turn came back around the captain who foolishly laughed at our offer of peace fell into the water trying to escape our Aarakocra paladin. So I did what any giant eel would do and bit him. Our captain unleashed her echo, swam to the captain and mocked him as he sat bleeding in my jaws then swapped places with her echo and opened a sizeable hole in the hull. Next round I bit him again and she grappled him and stopped swimming, her chain mail dragging them both to the depths below. That encounter was apparently supposed to be non-combat, but it's fun to think this was all started because a fool of a pirate didn't take a magical messenger bird seriously.
Since Druids have proficiency with herbalism kits, I would rate locate animals or plants as orange, because it’s a ritual (so it doesn’t cost anything) and you can locate herbs that you know can make healing potions.
I’ve seen gust of wind solve hard encounters. We used it on cliffs, where mobility was constrained to passageways and blew numerous people off the sides of the mountains (several per turn). It’s Incredibly powerful in that context, and so should be orange.
Barkskin works well on a Moon druid depending on which beast you transform into. You wildshape as a bonus action so you can cast the spell as your action. Your tanking form at low levels is the brown bear, which has an AC of 11. 16 is a huge improvement over 11. A quick glance over the CR 2 creatures that a Moon druid gains at level 6 shows that only a couple have an AC of 15. It's not a great spell if you choose one of those 2 or so beasts. It is still a useful spell well into the 2d tier of play for a tanking Moon druid tho but not all that useful for a caster druid for the most part. I think this spell should have been rated Orange**. Useable by 1 druid subclass is kind of the definition of circumstantial.
Or you could go offensive with your concentration and kill them faster, relying on the extra hp of your wildshape. It's just a matter of where you fall on the offensive----defensive spectrum. I like flaming sphere for the free extra damage every turn, and the ability to block off so many more squares. I'm a large bear, plus there's a ball of fire. Pick which one you want to walk near....
In my experience, higher AC made me less likely to draw Aggro which I want as a Moon Druid. Whereas a concentration spell that does good damage like Flaming Sphere. Add in Warcaster and Resilient CON ASAP and you really won't be losing it anytime soon.
ya i think you could have flaming sphere up and still be a bear druid, or fog cloud and be a giant spider with tremor sense/blindsight 10 ft., but i can't say bark + bear is a bad idea. I guess its just that as a moon druid you're already broken, so its hard to discuss value for some one that's already easily beating those encounters. So no extra value is being gained by spending the spell slot. And you could summon beast and be the same beast and possibly be mistaken for the other, as well as a summon being better protection than AC 16 .
Honestly at low levels where you are using the bear shapes, the hp bonus from the shapes is more than enough to survive almost any fight. AC is mostly irrelevant. If Barkskin didn't use your concentration absolutely! But generally your better off concentrating on something else while in WS like flaming sphere or Spike Growth or summon beast.
Then again, you probably don't want to give a dragon a strength saving throw if you can avoid it. Might be better off waiting a couple levels until you have more options to make party members fly themselves.
Web or just getting the fighter/barb in range to grapple is just better than Earthbind. The only time Earthbind is good is against creatures with hover in addition to fly. Creatures with hover also tend to have low Strength. Your looking more at ghosts and things like liches and beholders.
Locate anmals or plants isn't red - you ask for a beast you want see for wild shape - you ask for plants to use your herbelism kit - you ask for batle horses and you know the next army - you ask for cats, dogs or cows and you know the next village - you ask for fishes and you know the next river or sea - you ask for bats at day and you know a cave - and so on for a ritual you can take a lot of usefull informations
Big note to locate plants or animal... you can use as scout.. put some herb in the enemy and use this spells, is better then locate objetc or person and fits the theme of druid
At Levels 3 and 4, my Sea Elf Circle of Stars Druid used Moonbeam (bright starlight!), Spike Growth (multi-colored spiky coral!), Summon Beast (white wolf, snowy owl, dolphin), Enlarge/Reduce (you got this! I saw it in the stars!), and Pass Without Trace (we got this! I saw it in the stars!) very effectively. We're going to reach Level 5 during our next session. I can't wait to hear about 3rd-level spells next week! Perfect timing!
A funny thing about Animal Messenger is that the animal gibs its way to the target. So if you’re looking for a person or need to get to a place, like, outside a maze. Then the animal will guide you there.
I think it would be Nice to see this as a tier list where you can easily overview the rankings of each spell. This would give an idea of how good the second level druid spells are overall :)
One use me and my party's Artificer found is I'm a Shepard Druid and we realized we could enlarge my summons between the two of us. Do this on Giant Constrictor Snake, and you end up with a kaiju that can restrain anything due to nothing being larger. That could be very useful when combined with Mighty Summoner.
Objects have ac and HP and most spells don't let you target objects. Flame blade is situationally useful for targeting objects. Like a wizards spell book or a component pouch. Alot of dms won't expect it but it is possible raw.
The benefit of healing spirit is it's combat use. Consider healing word, a pretty good spell, that takes a bonus action and heals for 1d4+wis modifier once at range. Upcast, this is now 2d4. versus healing spirit, even with only 4 or 5 heals of 1d6, is going to work out to be a lot better. Plus you can move it. The downside of concentration is a big one, but I use it when I've lost concentration on a spell, and seeing as it's only a bonus action, you still have your action to attack or hide, disengage, and heal everyone up, so that next turn you can cast a different spell. Healing spirit is amazing for getting party members up from downed, especially at low levels.
An additional way to use Locate Object can be to plant an object on someone you want to track. You can then use the spell to help hunt them down. This leads to an additional way to use Locate Animals/Plants. In a similar fashion you can plant a plant (ideally an exotic one not found where you are) on someone (or something) and use the spell to track them. The advantage to this method is that the detection range of the spell is much larger and ritual casting it won’t burn spell slots. Very niche/specific, but fun utility to bring to the table.
You said it yourself, Barkskin could have a niche with Moon Druids. Giving a Brown Bear +5 AC is ridiculous at those early levels. I think it oughta be orange for that reason, as even though it's pretty limited to specifically the Moon Druid, it is very good in that specific situation.
a druid couple that send a horse when one wants the other to come hither. You know you're in trouble when the head of the guild sends a riderless carriage for you to be fetched in as his ominous calling card (except you have to drive it back).
Locate Animals or Plant, Quick Story: Playing HotDQ my party was about to follow a caravan that we had access to its manufacturer. I bought a CACTUS on Baldur's Gate that grow on other region and hide it under the caravan Seat. So, there was it... Self made tracking device. Other options are Sleight of Hand the plant on someone pocket(To find it's hideout) or even make you friend carry it for tracking him. Not sure if that is enough to make it Orange(for me it is), but remember maybe the plant isn't the goal but the tool for it.
I've been getting good value from it in the underdark. It has helped us find water by looking for plant life (or fungus, hand waiving that they aren't technically either animals or plants) typically found near water. Also helped find settlements and traveling merchants that we knew had specific domesticated beats. Saved us plenty of time spent fumbling around. Now that I'm level 6 (and a land druid) it feels worth a permanent preparation.
i thought there might be some mention to herbalism but for herbalism and alchemy being in the game, its like they dont exist. There is no system for it (i think) and it doesn't come up. so many nerds heart broken, maybe Treant has herabalism ideas to share with the universe? In which case the spell would be downtime handy.
Hey Chris, love all these videos! Can I make a suggestion? In the cases where you say something like "this feature is bad because of X reason", maybe you could give a suggested "homebrew fix"? Not trying to add extra work for you, but just saying something quick like "so at my table, I would change Barkskin from X to Y so it would be more balanced and attractive to use". Anyway, thanks for your efforts making these videos and going into such great detail about each thing you discuss. Cheers
Generally I don't suggest homebrew fixes for things that are too weak. What happens is once you start compiling a big list of homebrew, you end up looking things up constantly during the game. My suggestion is if something is terrible, just don't use it, there are plenty of other options.
Treantmonk did make an entire series of videos about his home brew fixes that I’m constantly lobbying my group to use, including a fix to barkskin, so I definitely wouldn’t ask him to repeat it in new videos going forward lol.
If you're worried about initiative order with save-to-escape spells like hold person, you could prepare an action to cast the spell once the target has ended its next turn.
I like this video for rangers picking their second level spells. It has the Tasha’s options included where your previous ranger spell video was pre Tasha’s.
Druid at 2nd level has 3 Blue ratings and 2 Green ratings vs Wizard 2nd level got 2 blue and 5 green, so pretty comparable. Though an issue I am seeing as we all know is just how concentration heavy it can be. Whereas Wizards had great defense spells in Mirror Image and Misty Step. Interesting note that Flaming Sphere on the Wizard video was a Green rating but only Purple here. It was justified because Wizards can add up the damage with cantrips and combo with Booming Blade. But wouldn't mind hearing more about this change.
Healing Word, Healing Spirit, Heat Metal, Aura of Vitality (via Tasha’s). Depending on subclass: Misty Step, combat wildshape (& sometimes the wildshape has bonus actions), use balm of summer court or wildfire spirit, summon or move/use starry form or spirit totem. I dunno, maybe my wizard could find a more effective bonus action than the occasional Misty Step, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Gust of Wind is great if you need to lock down a hallway against encroaching enemies. Circumstantial, yes, but that’s the beauty of a Prepared spell list. Push people away, slow them down, and keep doing it for ten rounds while you’re free to pound on the enemies with damage spells.
So, in my party's playthrough of Rime of the Frost Maiden, we did find one use for Skywrite that actually ended up being epic: When we find out about Sunblight's endgame, I used it to warn the entirity of Icewind Dale about it, allowing them to all evacuate in time and let us stop his plan with no one dying.
I think gust of wind is orange. If you're in a corridor or tunnel, which is not an uncommon location for a dnd party, it can be amazing, because a lot of push options don't effect multiple creatures. This can keep whole hordes of enemies back as you beat them down, and it has some other circumstantial uses like you talked about.
locate animals animals and plants can be supper useful because it can be used to detect different types of terrain like detecting cave crickets to find the dragons layer or locating fish to find the river or locating cows to find the nearest farm
Regarding Summon Beast, depending on the campaign you're in the material components are quite costly: (a feather, tuft of fur, and fish tail inside a gilded acorn worth at least 200 gp). Having a value attached means you can't substitute a druidic focus, a gilded acorn is an unlikely find in a dungeon or in the wild, and at level 3 you may not even have the 200 gp to spend. That was definitely the case for my druid in Rime of the Frostmaiden. I got to level 5 and Conjure Animals before being able to cast Summon Beast once, and now I don't need it. To me that makes it worse than Blue.
That's true for all the summoning spells from Tasha's. But hard disagree that conjure animals makes summon beast unnecessary. Being able to summon with second level spell slots is huge. You have 5 chances to summon at level 5 whereas you only have 2 if you're limited to conjure animals. Also, conjure beast can be used to fly yourself places. Just wild shape into a tiny beast and have a flying summoned beast carry you!
If you hold your action, Hold Person can be cast immediately after the target's turn to give the entire party a chance to crit, but save or sucks do feel bad, I agree.
Hold person/monster can be amazing if you know how to pick the right target. One time we where fighting a Werewolf, and some vampires. I cast hold monster on the werewolf figuring he is not the brains of the encounter. I held the werewolf the full encounter till everything was dead. Later on the DM told us that the vampires where spawns, and the Barbarian werewolf was the deadly thing in the room, but it had a low wisdom.
The combo I'm looking at for Wildfire druid is dropping Spike Growth on enemies, then having the spirit teleport around it so that when I cast Thorn whip it pulls the enemies *towards the spirit*, through the spikes. :)
Earthbind can be useful when it comes to fighting beholders, as long as they don't see you tho. Because if they fail their saving throw, they'll be on the ground and the melee fighters and barbarians will have an easier time with them
i had a game where my friend and i were a 2 person party, low/mid level (can't remember) , and to get a roc to land i cast this, it failed, i succeeded, and we jumped on its head and finished it off in a round and a half of beat downs. So i guess sometimes it catches things that don't want to be caught.
as a dm; regarding barkskin: i treat the spell as " base" ac. in stead of the armor you're wearing. that fixes most if not all of the problems of that spell and makes it worth a little more.
I like this spell guide, but I think we can talk about Hold Person in a different way that would be more helpful to starting players (and to some experienced players who've never considered what I'm going to say). I worry that the orange ranking is going to discourage people from taking this who should have taken it - IF - the conditions for taking it exist. Whether or not Hold Person is good totally depends on the context of a campaign - on conditions - because HP is great in some campaigns and lousy in others. You're mainly fighting undead - probably horrible - the only humanoids you fight will be an occasional necromancer or perhaps a charmed ally of a monster. You're up against a cult in a mostly urban campaign - wonderful - because you're often fighting humanoids. So that's the first condition re whether or not HP is a good spell to pick: will you fight enough humanoids (humans, orcs, bugbears, drow and so on) for it to be useful? Campaigns where "it just varies - some days no, no humanoids - other days yes, some humanoids"
For Heat Metal, my DM let me serate some daggers which I could throw as a bonus action. If they struck, the target needed to take an action to remove them, I combo'ed it with Heat Metal and it was nasty.
Genie Warlock: dao gets spike growth and with eldritch blast invocations becomes one of the best forced movement in the game. Variant human, Crusher feat added on top and it really makes Hex look like child's play
Barkskin spell refers to the armour worn only Chris. The clue is “Regardless of what kind of armor it is wearing” You cant wear dex or cover and you also carry not wear a shield. Great video as always fella thank you 😊 Craig. (Oakhaven)
You can use locate animals and plants and search out poisonous plant like night shade venomous animals like snakes and food base plants like apple trees and gather things on your down time
For continual flame i use it quite a bit by having a sheathe/quiver and then sticking a torch in it but instead of lighting it with fire use continual flame then when I need to be stealthy or just in general I stick the torch continual flame side down into the sheathe/quiver then if I need the light I take the torch out of the sheathe and reinsert it so that it's flame side out of the sheathe/quiver and then in combat or when needing to climb or swim I have my hands free.
I've used enhanced ability a few times in combat. Mainly because it gives advantage to roll high on a Counterspell/Dispel Magic. I've actually upcast it on 3 PCs because we had a wizard, warlock, and sorcerer. Worked like a charm.
Remember that Enlarge/Reduce can also be used to embiggen wildshape familiars. If you then wildshape into a tiny creature, you can ride that familiar, for level 3 flight. Especially amusing as a Velociraptor for auto-pack-tactics but virtually zero HP, but good for simple movement as well. An embiggened Deinonychus is a scary steed, and Giant Wolf Spiders can provide plenty of movement options for other party members. Unembiggening some forms is nice as well, for cramped corridors. An enlarged Draft Horse can carry a lot, and may even be able to merge entire treasure hordes into it when necessary. Tasha's gave druids a lot more internal synergy, for any subclass, but with nice little semi-unique caveats for all of them too.
duration 1 minute. So the horse isn't carrying anything very far. If the spell gets something big down one corridor, it should have been left outside, no?. I think 3rd level flight on a little bird or something sounds like a good idea, but your size can only go from medium to small or small to tiny, and even at tiny you're not going to find a medium sized flying creature (correct me if wrong). You would need a medium flying animal to carry the tiny player. I don't know what pack tactics is for in your example, it doesn't sound combat worthy. I think you stand corrected b/c any largening still only adds d4 dmg and no other benefit for being larger, except on PC characters that specialize in grappling, maybe, and that's still hardly happening. It's not mechanically good for combat. Enlarging spiders to carry party members up a steep incline would be neat if the spell affected more than one willing creature. And unwilling creatures have a save for no effect. I don't think it's possible to stretch this spell into anything at all but i'm glad you brought it up b/c i wish the spell was good. If i was your DM i would make at least one of those things work for you.
@@youtubeseagull You Enlarge the Familiar from tiny to small, then wildshape into a Velociraptor (which is tiny) to ride it. You still keep your brains and skills, and a Velociraptor *could* feasibly ride a small sized Owl if it knew how and the bird was happy to do so (and familiars always follow your orders). To ride a creature, they only have to be one size larger, as far as I know (Halflings ride Mastiffs, Humans ride Horses). It doesn't have to be a Velociraptor that you wildshape into, any tiny creature would do, it's just the "most combat worthy" (ie: not very, but a little). And you're riding an ally, that ally is within 5', so any attacks are at advantage due to pack tactics :) The 1min duration is annoying, but flight at lvl3 for two wildshape charges and a level two spell slot is a pretty nice "class ability" for any druid to have in their back pocket. It's fiddly, but it's there if you need it.
Also not a bad trick for a subclass like Dreams or Stars, if your familiar carries over a short rest period. It often can after a few levels. Then you can recharge your wildshape charges and use something like Balm of the Summer Court for healing from the air (you don't actually need WS charges for this), or Archer Constellation for shooting from the familiar's back. I will agree, it's pretty weak-sauce, but sometimes doing fun, unexpected things is optimal, because there's very little way for a DM to plan around all your stupid-druid-tricks, and having an Owl familiar in play and Enlarge/Reduce prepared is useful for many other things as well.
Enhance Ability can be used to gain advantage on stealth check while exploring/infiltrating an area. It can also be used on the rogue to help disarm traps and open locks, etc,. INT can help with investigation checks (to find those traps). Since the druid has Pas Without Trace however, the stealth option isn't the greatest..
While circumstantial, I like finding creative uses for Warding Wind. Few sessions back our Eldritch Knight used it to vacuum our way through a sand-filled tunnel of a desert ruin. I'm also a fan of Enlarge/Reduce beyond the basic "now you can grapple a dragon!" and "reduce the door" uses. The size reduction can be nice if you want to for example send away a big evil object the BBEG is using. Telekinesis it away from them, reduce to a more compact form and use teleport or planeshift etc to send it/you to your allies. Love the idea of doing an in your face heist like that, especially since you can avoid saving throws and legendary resistances with the right combination. Again, circumstantial, but great for creative players.
Animal messager is also a good way to not be lost. Just follow the beast to town. Also, usable with polymorph. And be vary careful wild shaping into a bird when other druids are around.
Barkskin would be totally fine as a spell if all you changed was the duration to 8 hours and remove concentration. Sure it is still limited but at low levels lots of characters don't have AC > 16 yet, and if you need to stealth replacing a PCs heavy armour with Barkskin is viable.
About using the familiar as a scout vs beast sense, do note that you have a limitation of 100 ft on your connection with the familiar, while the same is not true for using beast sense. So, in a way, both actually end up complementing each other: you can use beast sense on your familiar for unlimited range scouting through it. Not that it makes it much better anyway, probably still red in rating.
A lot of animal druid spells like sense beast works better if you already have a animal friend/ally. In that case, sense beast would not be circunstantial, because you would always have a animal around that is used to follow your commands.
I think "Sky Write" could be fun outside of combat, during role play. To scare or influence villagers, for example. Very situational. Or during role play, if your character has a terrible sense of direction and gets lost.
you just made me think of a druid that lives in the nearby mountain, and as a favor predicts the weather for surrounding countryside. "Rain tomorrow", "storm approaching".
the only good beast sense combo i've seen used was step 1: capture/befriend a bat(animal friendship /speak with animals useful here) . Step 2 beast sense now gives you blindsight 60. that actually might be worth concentration.
I'm always looking forward to Druid video's as it's one of my favourite classes and also the class my girlfriend is playing in our several years long campaign. Just want to point out that the description, and thus the timestamp, say that Enhance Ability is orange instead of purple.
I used Moonbeam on a kobold shamen climbing down a ladder and it basically one-shot him with the radiant and fall damage. Situational spell, I agreee, but it's beautiful when it works.
Funny story about find traps. When I first started playing DND I was a druid. I noticed something and asked my dm if traps were considered objects, and he said they were. I then asked if faerie fire's effect that outlines object could be used to find traps, and he thought about it for a while and said yes. So apparently faerie fire is better at finding traps then find traps
Barkskin maybe the biggest miss of all the Druid spells. My fix is upcasting two levels to get +1, 8 hour duration, and no concentration. Even with those fixes it isn't great.
I think it should be a Medium Armor equivalent in the same way as Mage Armor is Light Armor equivalent. I.e. "Your AC equals 16+Dex (max 2) for the duration". Make it stack with any AC bonuses, like any other armor, and yes, 8 hours and no concentration.
my problem with spells like barkskin is a combination of things. A defensive spell, that is concentration, and takes an action. You wont really know you will need the effects of the spell that long in advance, or you are setting up a big ambush. Long duration doesnt help in the first case, and is useless in the second. The worst case scenario is the following: You want to melee. You run in, use action for "defensive concentration spell", so you didnt attack. Incoming enemy attack, it still hits you despite "defensive concentration spell". You lose concentration. You get hit even more. You die. These defensive spells are unreliable, and do not do what they should be doing. Which is allow you to go in, let you attack, protect you in the enemy's turn, and not go away. This is why I dont really like shield of faith as well, because if you get hit it can go away, which is not what it should do. But its a level1 spell AND a bonus action, so Im much less critical of it.
Stoneskin is the absolute worst of these. It only gives you resistance to damage and is concentration. Every time you benefit from the spell you have a chance to lose it. And if you lose it, that's 100gp and a 4th level slot down the drain.
I agree, even my most charitable scenarios for using it are mediocre at best. A Circle of Stars druid can probably make the best use of it, since at low levels starry form dragon will basically guarantee it stays up but even then, as we see with this list there are far better choices for a spell slot even then. If a druid wants to focus on stretching out their spell slot to an hour long spell, summon beast if always my go to. Otherwise if I have absolutely NO spell slots left to concentrate on, I'll cast it onto the poorly optimized bard in my party with Staff of the Woodlands
I disagree that Earthbind deserves red. Just as counterspell has prevented many villains from escaping combat via Teleport or Dimension Door, Earthbind is a great spell for preventing a flying enemy from soaring away or gliding too close. While it's a save-or-suck, its low level spell slot cost and incredible range of 300 feet means you have multiple shots at telling a fleeing creature "oh no, you don't." Earthbind works with all sorts of flying creatures, and there are a lot of them, from a wizard's imp spy, all the way to a wounded dragon that decided to live to see another day. You'll notice that a smart DM will use a flying creature's flying speed to its advantage as much as possible, especially in early levels when most parties are not yet capable of flight. While this spell only reduces flying speed to 0 (not walk speed), flying speed for most creatures is usually much faster than their other means of locomotion; once they're forced to land, they're on even grounds with you, so to speak. You may even have an advantage over them if some of your party members are able to fly while it no longer can. Dragons do have high Strength scores, they usually don't have proficiency in STR saves, meaning your odds aren't that bad. I'm not saying Earthbind is a great spell; far from it. It eats up concentration, only lasts for a minute, and if you're the reason a dragon can't fly, you bet it'll be coming after you until it can again. However, for being circumstantially useful, especially in early levels when access to flight is usually still a dream, I think it deserves at least orange. It is an all-or-nothing spell that you can only use in certain situations, but so is counterspell. P.S. I love your videos and greatly appreciate all the effort you put into them. They've become what I listen to during work commute, and many of them helped me better understand D&D combat both as a player and as a DM. If you bothered to read this far, thank you! And please tell me, if you ever find the time, how you'd rule the seemingly infinite uses of Mirage Arcane, because that spell has given me and my DM quite a few headaches! Edit: Spelling
enlarge/reduce has an *interesting combo with powerful-build-bear-barbarian players: one caster enlarges the barbarian to double their lifting capacity, another player casts reduce on a boulder such that the barbarian can barely lift it. then the barbarian throws the boulder, and the caster who previously casted reduce on that boulder now casts enlarge on it, effectively making it 64x bigger! lob a small island at that dragon for 1d4 improvised damage yaaaaaaaay
About Spike Growth : I don't see why the pircing damage should be considered being magical damage the spikes are summoned magical but are not explicit defined as magical...
I played a druid in a campaign with lots of down time, so I used skywrite to advertise for bunch of different shops and got paid for it
Fantasy capitalism!
Yes this!!!
Its also good to "stir the pot" and gather intel. We ran into a Cult and needed info on it. We also had a Noble in a town that was a major turd we had to deal with. We used skywrite above the noble's house to insinuate the Cult's messiah was at the noble's house. After the riot, the Lord's evicted the noble, and we were able to follow some leads on the Cult as the sign drew cultists in. Great shenanigans potential with skywrite.
Plant growth for the flower shop or farms
I was thinking to use it to trash talk as my Druid bard initiate 😂
I love Animal Messenger, just so much. Not for normal communication options, but to taunt enemies. Work with the rogue or bard or what have you, dress the animals up in tiny costumes, and send them to the enemy general, or irritating Waterdeep bureaucrat, or whatever. Same reason I've used Skywrite, though that has the advantage of not being killed by guard dogs, and letting more people see the insults.
The power of having many people see a message is not to be underestimated. What would a modern day commercials company pay for that?
Public shaming, creating crowds, warnings, rumours. But mostly public shaming. Because the world does needs to know about Lord Gormalon's erectile dysfunction.
We are so blessed that Chris is releasing multiple video series around the same time: Subclass ranking, Druid spell ranking, and the bits or builds he releases between. This was another great video, some obvious choices for druids at this level with a lot of circumstantial variety.
This is so true!
Spells like Hold Person and Heat Metal really demonstrate how useful it can be for Spell Preparation casters to get advanced intel on what they're up against. If you *know* that you're up against a bunch of wolves, you skip them. If you *know* that you're up against a bunch of armored knights, they become much more worthwhile. Of course, that's what "circumstantial" means, but seriously, scout out your enemy if you can.
I would honestly argue that if the party truly has no idea what they are going up against or what they may find then they have either been thrust into a situation where they know nothing by the DM or they just didn't bother thinking at all.
If you are in the forest and you dont believe there is any sort of civilisation nearby, hold person probably wont help, neither will heat metal. But if you are traveling on a pathway or just walking around a town, then the chances that you need these spells increase dramatically. You dont need much information to make that judgment.
My dm would rule if its not wearing metal i could try to lodge a dagger in it and if it has no way of getting the dagger out i could cast heat metal on that
My daughter’s druid used to keep Locate Plants/Animals prepared to find sources of poison for the assassin played by her big sister. So, it was good for that - so long as they weren’t fighting undead, fiends, etc. 🤷♂️
FYI, enhance ability is ranked as orange in the timestamps while it's ranked purple in the video.
thank you
Player of mine actually cast beast sense on a wild shaped druid who morphed into a rat for scouting. It was actually pretty clever
One useful combat application I can think of for Enhance Ability is to cast it on a spellcaster that plans on using Counterspell or Dispel Magic during combat, since that would give them advantage on any rolls they'd need to make for those spells. A situational use obviously, but one with the potential to be clutch in that sort of situation.
It’s also an incredible spell to cast on the stealthy party member who wants to split the party regardless of past experiences.
Advantage on stealth helps prevent that character from being discovered. Advantage on acrobatics may help when maneuvering over uneven ground in rooftops or along walls as well as Defending yourself from creatures attempting to grapple you. The slight damage reduction from falling is enough to make sure that most creatures giving chase to you would unwittingly prom themselves if you make use of the vertical drops. Advantage on sleight of hand for lifting objects off or even onto unwary creatures. If you’re caught, you get advantage on your initiative to act before your assailant.
Enhance ability is another major component of getting surprise with Pass without Trace. If you have a paladin or fighter in heavy armour and without stealth. You need to remove their disadvantage to consistently get a high score.
@@moto2442 And this is why I like Trickery Clerics. Because only they can do both removing disadvantage and PWT at the same time.
Beast Sense does have one (very niche but very fun) use. Animal Friendship gives you a a willing beast target even if the beast in question is actually not particularly friendly. Speak With Animals allows you to give that friendly Beast instructions: not too complicated, but they don't need to be. Speak With Animals is also a ritual, so if we have the time to invest in this, it takes only a single 1st level spell slot for Animal Friendship. With a willing beast who has been given some basic instructions, what does Beast Sense get you? Well, if the animal you've befriended, convinced to do you a favor, and then turned into a spy camera is, say, Blofield's cat (or at least the D&D equivalent), you have turned an asset with incredible levels of access to some scheming villain into the perfect mole. Bonus points if it is, in fact, a hobgoblin general's pet mole. That's just about the most druid thing I can imagine.
I adore Continual Flame for it's flavor, especially if your DM is more lax with a character's skills at building things or making use of certain magic items. Does a violet, star-filled torch atop my staff of woodlands help my darkvision equipped Circle of Stars druid? Not really. Do I love the thematic flavor it adds and the idea that I could use my power over the staff to have it's leaves "sheathe" the flame on command when I need to? Very much yes. I could see why many druids might never touch it, but as a certified "downtime lover" it's such a fun spell. Artificers make great use of it though, with their tinkering nature it's easier to argue that you can add a little pot of light to the variant human fighter's helmet that can be toggled with an item interaction.
As a side note, THANK YOU for making me realize Moonbeam was a 5-foot *radius*, I've been running it as occupying a single square for no good reason
There is one enemy that Earthbind is extremely good against:
The Demilich. They have a strength modifier of -5, meaning a high level Druid, and if you're fighting a Demilich, unless your DM is a sadist, you're a high level Druid, you should have a maxed out spellcasting modifier, meaning your DC should be around 16. A Demilich literally cannot resist your Earthbind, it has no walking speed at all.
If you hit a Demilich with Earthbind, its only chance of escaping is either burning a Legendary Resistance, or if you're fighting it in its lair, using Anti-Magic Field on you.
So, with three second level slots, you can burn all three of its Legendary Resistances if you're not fighting it in its lair. If the rest of your party burns its Legendary Resistances alongside you, then Watery Sphere is pretty much checkmate, as one of the only conditions Demiliches are vulnerable to is Restrained, and like Earthbind, the DC is too high for the Demilich to beat.
Highly circumstances, but being that effective against such a high level enemy does score some points in my book.
Can't wait for this. I'm playing a druid right now so I truly want to learn how to play this class well.
What subclass are you going with?
@@TheHortoncrow wildfire druid. So far it's been fun.
@@Trenell83 I'm primarily a Cleric guy. Only Druid I played was Spores. Those temp hit points so I could cast spells while "wild shaped' was pretty deece.
@@TheHortoncrow ah yes I played a hill dwarf cleric. It was a lot of fun and very durable. Carried me through a lot of levels.
Actually Locate Plants and Animals can come in handy for Druids that just got 7th level casting and want to find a suitable tree for Transport Via Plants.
If you use a herbalism kit... No more guessing where those plants are to make potions for the party (or poisons).
Also useful if playing in games where the DM insists that you see the creature before you can wildshape into it.
Regarding flaming sphere: I don’t think Chris is giving flaming sphere adequate credit as a control spell. While it is unlikely that anyone is going to end their turn within five feet of the sphere, that in of itself generates value. Use it to make it hard for the enemy to position in places they need to be to attack the party. In cramped dungeon rooms where viable places for monsters to stand is even more limited the spell is even more valuable.
I think that may be the reason he did not rate it higher. It’s much less useful in a setting that lacks bottlenecks.
I find the most useful place to put this spell is in front of a door.
i think you're right.
every campaign has dungeons i would think, every dungeon has hallways, every hallway sucks if it has a flaming sphere in it. Every flaming sphere can be upcast to deal 4d6 when it strikes an enemy, and another 4d6 when the creature is stuck by the sphere, and that's for a minute, and a 4th level slot (upcast for that dmg). So it's much better than fireball in those positions for just one slot higher, not a bad trade off... is pretty good!
I've tried it (in my case with a wizard) and yes it does damage but it felt very underwhelming.
@@samuelpierce639 This DUNGEONS and Dragons. The PCs are almost constantly in tight corridors and twenty-five by thirty-five foot rooms. Even with no walls or rooms, D&D combats quickly start looking like a rugby scrim as everyone closes to melee. Once that happens, the Flaming Sphere can be used to force monsters to take attacks of opportunity or fire damage from the sphere.
Good ol Find Traps. Doesn't find all traps, and doesn't find the traps it finds.
100% agree on Spiked Growth - the fact that the only save is to notice it and there's no way to half it is ridiculously good. And the fact that you can stack this with Plant Growth? Oh man - that's the jam.
And heaven help your enemies if you also have a Nature Cleric casting Thorn Whip and using Grasping Vine and pulling people "back to start" through the spike patch.
How does this stack with plant growth? Plant growth only works on normal plants
@@grantgarbour Step 1: put a plant down in the area you're casting in, or target a spot where a plant already is. Step 2: cast Plant Growth. Step 3: cast and concentrate on Spike Growth. A surprisingly high amount of this can be done before combat, and then boom: 25ft of movement to move 5ft, 2d4 piercing for every 5ft they move through the Spike Growth, and if you pair this with Thorn Whip you can trigger even more spike damage each turn.
After all your spell guides, I'd love to see a stupid-druid-tricks video, where you tell of some of the sillier or stranger things druids of varying subclasses can do. It'd help show how seemingly simple spells or abilities, that look ok or pretty good, can make you reasonably competitive in DPR terms early on (even non-moons) and have "expanded utility" on top of your already very utilizable base class.
About Spike Growth, you said the Nature Cleric also gets it but didn't mention the Dao Genie Warlock, which can actually make great use of it with repelling blast + potentially crusher. Just think that's a fun option worth bringing up.
and the swarmkeeper ranger!
@@samuelbroad11 or every ranger for that matter
oh yeah! never played one!@@nicholass5621
You can use locate plants + goodberry to locate party members.
If your DM allows you to choose any small fruit or nut for the goodberry spell, then you can choose extremely rare ones, like cactus fruits, or some other fruits that only grows in other side of the world... Cast goodberry every night before sleep, give 1 fruit to every party member, and you can always locate them.
I've been playing the same wildfire druid for almost one year now (if you don't count the small break where she was kidnapped by the enemies) but have loved using these videos as guidance for myself when preparing spells over the last year. Thank you Chris!
Druid spell list has really nice spells. Dao genie warlock is one of my warlocks because it gets spike growth with a ton of forced movement.
flaming sphere is pretty good if you have someone with sentinel in the party. they have to begin all their turns next to the sphere unless they try to move away, which means taking an AoO which might get them stuck near the sphere anyway
Enlarge/Reduce in combination with Wildshape and Circle Forms is the fastest way to become gargantuan in 5e. That makes it, in and of itself, worth it to me. Being able to threaten 20 squares, at once, is sort of bananas.
the druid in my group actually killed 4 goblins by enlarging our tortle barbarian in a tight dungeon. It was by far the coolest thing that happened until now.
I got to disagree on earthbind being that bad. I feel like I'm the only one who found out how good earthbind is. It's not always useful and I wouldn't always bring it. But when it's good it the best spell in the game and just wins encounters. There are several creatures in the game in the game with a fly speed and no walking speed. Nearly all of these creatures have terrible strength saves. So when you cast it they get one terrible save and then there stuck for a minute and can't move. Ghost, wraith, flameskull, banshee, will-o-wisp pretty much everything that's an Incorporeal Undead instantly loses to this spell. It' also shuts down Demiliches hard and is so so against beholderkin. All of these creature have immunities to at least some movement stopping condition but none are immune to this. This spell has saved my ass multiple times. If you hear anything about a place being haunted pack this spell.
If there's something strange
In the neighborhood
Who you gonna call? (Earthbind)
The biggest problem with it, which wasn't mentioned here, is that Earthbind becomes increasingly redundant as the party starts to fly themselves. Flight only becomes more common, cheaper, and easier as you level up. And having allies with the ability to fly is just better than taking the ability to fly away from your enemies. If you're fighting harpies or something, at the point where you have access to 2nd level spells but not 3rd, yeah, you'll get some use out of it. But it's only going to get worse, very quickly.
Locate plants or animals can be a pretty good tracking spell; druidcraft a little rare flower and slip it into someone's pocket, a crate of weapons, a food tray, etc and then you can find out exactly where it goes without spending a spell slot. What really makes this pay off compared to using locate object or locate creature though is that it has a 5 mile range instead of a 1000 ft range, allowing you to track something across an entire city instead of a block or two.
Thank you so much for the stars! You have no idea how irritating it is in some tier lists where the good and awful spells look the same because I can't tell the difference between blue and purple!!
Thats exactly why he does it! Very inclusive. Hes been doing this since his 3.0 and 3.5 guides
Last night I used animal messenger in our sea-fairing campaign to contact the captain of a pair of pirate ships about to waylay us. They demanded a toll for sailing their waters. We told them that we had no such coinage to make such a payment and that they could let us pass or we would dismantle their ship board by board. We received a laugh in response, I sent one final message before diving into the sea (Triton druid) "I see you have chosen death then, a pity, may the Bitch Queen feast upon your souls!" and expressed that the bird would promptly vanish after delivering it's message effectively "giving them the bird" as I swam under the waves and climbed the side of their ship to unleash a flaming sphere right in the middle of the deck.
Our ships captain, who is also an aquatic race, proceeded to go beneath and tear at the bottom of their ship. She had already disabled the other ships rudder while the rest of that was happening. Having seen a pair of giant sea eels at one of our first destinations in the campaign I was now able to take on their form and did so with the intention of biting at the ship, however when my turn came back around the captain who foolishly laughed at our offer of peace fell into the water trying to escape our Aarakocra paladin. So I did what any giant eel would do and bit him. Our captain unleashed her echo, swam to the captain and mocked him as he sat bleeding in my jaws then swapped places with her echo and opened a sizeable hole in the hull. Next round I bit him again and she grappled him and stopped swimming, her chain mail dragging them both to the depths below.
That encounter was apparently supposed to be non-combat, but it's fun to think this was all started because a fool of a pirate didn't take a magical messenger bird seriously.
That's awesome
Since Druids have proficiency with herbalism kits, I would rate locate animals or plants as orange, because it’s a ritual (so it doesn’t cost anything) and you can locate herbs that you know can make healing potions.
I’ve seen gust of wind solve hard encounters. We used it on cliffs, where mobility was constrained to passageways and blew numerous people off the sides of the mountains (several per turn). It’s Incredibly powerful in that context, and so should be orange.
Barkskin works well on a Moon druid depending on which beast you transform into. You wildshape as a bonus action so you can cast the spell as your action. Your tanking form at low levels is the brown bear, which has an AC of 11. 16 is a huge improvement over 11. A quick glance over the CR 2 creatures that a Moon druid gains at level 6 shows that only a couple have an AC of 15. It's not a great spell if you choose one of those 2 or so beasts. It is still a useful spell well into the 2d tier of play for a tanking Moon druid tho but not all that useful for a caster druid for the most part.
I think this spell should have been rated Orange**. Useable by 1 druid subclass is kind of the definition of circumstantial.
Or you could go offensive with your concentration and kill them faster, relying on the extra hp of your wildshape.
It's just a matter of where you fall on the offensive----defensive spectrum.
I like flaming sphere for the free extra damage every turn, and the ability to block off so many more squares. I'm a large bear, plus there's a ball of fire. Pick which one you want to walk near....
In my experience, higher AC made me less likely to draw Aggro which I want as a Moon Druid. Whereas a concentration spell that does good damage like Flaming Sphere. Add in Warcaster and Resilient CON ASAP and you really won't be losing it anytime soon.
ya i think you could have flaming sphere up and still be a bear druid, or fog cloud and be a giant spider with tremor sense/blindsight 10 ft., but i can't say bark + bear is a bad idea. I guess its just that as a moon druid you're already broken, so its hard to discuss value for some one that's already easily beating those encounters. So no extra value is being gained by spending the spell slot. And you could summon beast and be the same beast and possibly be mistaken for the other, as well as a summon being better protection than AC 16 .
Honestly at low levels where you are using the bear shapes, the hp bonus from the shapes is more than enough to survive almost any fight. AC is mostly irrelevant. If Barkskin didn't use your concentration absolutely! But generally your better off concentrating on something else while in WS like flaming sphere or Spike Growth or summon beast.
When you're fighting a dragon or other flying creature in lower tiers, earthbind is very important for a melee heavy group.
Then again, you probably don't want to give a dragon a strength saving throw if you can avoid it. Might be better off waiting a couple levels until you have more options to make party members fly themselves.
Web or just getting the fighter/barb in range to grapple is just better than Earthbind. The only time Earthbind is good is against creatures with hover in addition to fly. Creatures with hover also tend to have low Strength. Your looking more at ghosts and things like liches and beholders.
Locate anmals or plants isn't red
- you ask for a beast you want see for wild shape
- you ask for plants to use your herbelism kit
- you ask for batle horses and you know the next army
- you ask for cats, dogs or cows and you know the next village
- you ask for fishes and you know the next river or sea
- you ask for bats at day and you know a cave
- and so on
for a ritual you can take a lot of usefull informations
When I make a druid I'm gonna ritual cast locate animal or plants all the time during travel to search for truffles :D
I mixed up stirge with sturgeon and it sounded really impractical until I realized what was meant.
sturgeon are huge and probably dangerous if D&D versions X-) atleast if i was DM i'd say "great call"
Big note to locate plants or animal... you can use as scout.. put some herb in the enemy and use this spells, is better then locate objetc or person and fits the theme of druid
At Levels 3 and 4, my Sea Elf Circle of Stars Druid used Moonbeam (bright starlight!), Spike Growth (multi-colored spiky coral!), Summon Beast (white wolf, snowy owl, dolphin), Enlarge/Reduce (you got this! I saw it in the stars!), and Pass Without Trace (we got this! I saw it in the stars!) very effectively. We're going to reach Level 5 during our next session. I can't wait to hear about 3rd-level spells next week! Perfect timing!
A funny thing about Animal Messenger is that the animal gibs its way to the target. So if you’re looking for a person or need to get to a place, like, outside a maze. Then the animal will guide you there.
These lists are really highlighting the usefulness of Ritual Caster for a druid.
Druid is already a ritual caster
Best use of Skywrite:
"Kilroy was here", "Halfdan wrote these runes", or just trolling the BBEG
I think it would be Nice to see this as a tier list where you can easily overview the rankings of each spell.
This would give an idea of how good the second level druid spells are overall :)
One use me and my party's Artificer found is I'm a Shepard Druid and we realized we could enlarge my summons between the two of us. Do this on Giant Constrictor Snake, and you end up with a kaiju that can restrain anything due to nothing being larger. That could be very useful when combined with Mighty Summoner.
Objects have ac and HP and most spells don't let you target objects. Flame blade is situationally useful for targeting objects. Like a wizards spell book or a component pouch. Alot of dms won't expect it but it is possible raw.
The benefit of healing spirit is it's combat use.
Consider healing word, a pretty good spell, that takes a bonus action and heals for 1d4+wis modifier once at range. Upcast, this is now 2d4.
versus healing spirit, even with only 4 or 5 heals of 1d6, is going to work out to be a lot better. Plus you can move it.
The downside of concentration is a big one, but I use it when I've lost concentration on a spell, and seeing as it's only a bonus action, you still have your action to attack or hide, disengage, and heal everyone up, so that next turn you can cast a different spell.
Healing spirit is amazing for getting party members up from downed, especially at low levels.
An additional way to use Locate Object can be to plant an object on someone you want to track. You can then use the spell to help hunt them down. This leads to an additional way to use Locate Animals/Plants. In a similar fashion you can plant a plant (ideally an exotic one not found where you are) on someone (or something) and use the spell to track them. The advantage to this method is that the detection range of the spell is much larger and ritual casting it won’t burn spell slots. Very niche/specific, but fun utility to bring to the table.
Issue with Summon Beast is the 200 gold material needed. Generally pretty rare to have that much gold at third level, DM dependent of course.
You said it yourself, Barkskin could have a niche with Moon Druids. Giving a Brown Bear +5 AC is ridiculous at those early levels. I think it oughta be orange for that reason, as even though it's pretty limited to specifically the Moon Druid, it is very good in that specific situation.
Off Label use of Animal Messenger:
"I know you're hungry, so here's a nice hare. Bon appetit."
a druid couple that send a horse when one wants the other to come hither. You know you're in trouble when the head of the guild sends a riderless carriage for you to be fetched in as his ominous calling card (except you have to drive it back).
@@youtubeseagull Too bad the spell specifies it has to be a Tiny creature. So no horses.
Locate Animals or Plant, Quick Story:
Playing HotDQ my party was about to follow a caravan that we had access to its manufacturer.
I bought a CACTUS on Baldur's Gate that grow on other region and hide it under the caravan Seat.
So, there was it... Self made tracking device.
Other options are Sleight of Hand the plant on someone pocket(To find it's hideout) or even make you friend carry it for tracking him.
Not sure if that is enough to make it Orange(for me it is), but remember maybe the plant isn't the goal but the tool for it.
I've been getting good value from it in the underdark. It has helped us find water by looking for plant life (or fungus, hand waiving that they aren't technically either animals or plants) typically found near water. Also helped find settlements and traveling merchants that we knew had specific domesticated beats. Saved us plenty of time spent fumbling around. Now that I'm level 6 (and a land druid) it feels worth a permanent preparation.
i thought there might be some mention to herbalism but for herbalism and alchemy being in the game, its like they dont exist. There is no system for it (i think) and it doesn't come up. so many nerds heart broken, maybe Treant has herabalism ideas to share with the universe? In which case the spell would be downtime handy.
Hey Chris, love all these videos! Can I make a suggestion? In the cases where you say something like "this feature is bad because of X reason", maybe you could give a suggested "homebrew fix"? Not trying to add extra work for you, but just saying something quick like "so at my table, I would change Barkskin from X to Y so it would be more balanced and attractive to use". Anyway, thanks for your efforts making these videos and going into such great detail about each thing you discuss. Cheers
Generally I don't suggest homebrew fixes for things that are too weak. What happens is once you start compiling a big list of homebrew, you end up looking things up constantly during the game. My suggestion is if something is terrible, just don't use it, there are plenty of other options.
Treantmonk did make an entire series of videos about his home brew fixes that I’m constantly lobbying my group to use, including a fix to barkskin, so I definitely wouldn’t ask him to repeat it in new videos going forward lol.
@@TreantmonksTemple Ah good points :D yeah too much homebrew can definitely slow things down
The dungeon coach is a go to for home brew stuff for me
If you're worried about initiative order with save-to-escape spells like hold person, you could prepare an action to cast the spell once the target has ended its next turn.
I like this video for rangers picking their second level spells. It has the Tasha’s options included where your previous ranger spell video was pre Tasha’s.
I have never used the spell darkvision. Then I played a Goliath Druid in Icewind Dale. It was prepared and cast every time we travelled.
Druid at 2nd level has 3 Blue ratings and 2 Green ratings vs Wizard 2nd level got 2 blue and 5 green, so pretty comparable. Though an issue I am seeing as we all know is just how concentration heavy it can be. Whereas Wizards had great defense spells in Mirror Image and Misty Step.
Interesting note that Flaming Sphere on the Wizard video was a Green rating but only Purple here. It was justified because Wizards can add up the damage with cantrips and combo with Booming Blade. But wouldn't mind hearing more about this change.
Wizards have less opportunity to use a bonus action.
@@samuelpierce639 Am I missing something good for the Druids to use? I loved Flaming Sphere on my Moon Druid.
Healing Word, Healing Spirit, Heat Metal, Aura of Vitality (via Tasha’s). Depending on subclass: Misty Step, combat wildshape (& sometimes the wildshape has bonus actions), use balm of summer court or wildfire spirit, summon or move/use starry form or spirit totem.
I dunno, maybe my wizard could find a more effective bonus action than the occasional Misty Step, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Gust of Wind is great if you need to lock down a hallway against encroaching enemies. Circumstantial, yes, but that’s the beauty of a Prepared spell list. Push people away, slow them down, and keep doing it for ten rounds while you’re free to pound on the enemies with damage spells.
So, in my party's playthrough of Rime of the Frost Maiden, we did find one use for Skywrite that actually ended up being epic:
When we find out about Sunblight's endgame, I used it to warn the entirity of Icewind Dale about it, allowing them to all evacuate in time and let us stop his plan with no one dying.
I think gust of wind is orange. If you're in a corridor or tunnel, which is not an uncommon location for a dnd party, it can be amazing, because a lot of push options don't effect multiple creatures. This can keep whole hordes of enemies back as you beat them down, and it has some other circumstantial uses like you talked about.
How would it work with difficult terrain
locate animals animals and plants can be supper useful because it can be used to detect different types of terrain like detecting cave crickets to find the dragons layer or locating fish to find the river or locating cows to find the nearest farm
Regarding Summon Beast, depending on the campaign you're in the material components are quite costly: (a feather, tuft of fur, and fish tail inside a gilded acorn worth at least 200 gp). Having a value attached means you can't substitute a druidic focus, a gilded acorn is an unlikely find in a dungeon or in the wild, and at level 3 you may not even have the 200 gp to spend. That was definitely the case for my druid in Rime of the Frostmaiden. I got to level 5 and Conjure Animals before being able to cast Summon Beast once, and now I don't need it. To me that makes it worse than Blue.
That's true for all the summoning spells from Tasha's. But hard disagree that conjure animals makes summon beast unnecessary. Being able to summon with second level spell slots is huge. You have 5 chances to summon at level 5 whereas you only have 2 if you're limited to conjure animals.
Also, conjure beast can be used to fly yourself places. Just wild shape into a tiny beast and have a flying summoned beast carry you!
If you hold your action, Hold Person can be cast immediately after the target's turn to give the entire party a chance to crit, but save or sucks do feel bad, I agree.
Hold person/monster can be amazing if you know how to pick the right target. One time we where fighting a Werewolf, and some vampires. I cast hold monster on the werewolf figuring he is not the brains of the encounter. I held the werewolf the full encounter till everything was dead. Later on the DM told us that the vampires where spawns, and the Barbarian werewolf was the deadly thing in the room, but it had a low wisdom.
Now with wildfire spirit, you can throw your spike growth on allies then teleport them out with fiery teleportation.
The combo I'm looking at for Wildfire druid is dropping Spike Growth on enemies, then having the spirit teleport around it so that when I cast Thorn whip it pulls the enemies *towards the spirit*, through the spikes. :)
Earthbind can be useful when it comes to fighting beholders, as long as they don't see you tho.
Because if they fail their saving throw, they'll be on the ground and the melee fighters and barbarians will have an easier time with them
i had a game where my friend and i were a 2 person party, low/mid level (can't remember) , and to get a roc to land i cast this, it failed, i succeeded, and we jumped on its head and finished it off in a round and a half of beat downs. So i guess sometimes it catches things that don't want to be caught.
as a dm; regarding barkskin: i treat the spell as " base" ac. in stead of the armor you're wearing. that fixes most if not all of the problems of that spell and makes it worth a little more.
I like this spell guide, but I think we can talk about Hold Person in a different way that would be more helpful to starting players (and to some experienced players who've never considered what I'm going to say). I worry that the orange ranking is going to discourage people from taking this who should have taken it - IF - the conditions for taking it exist.
Whether or not Hold Person is good totally depends on the context of a campaign - on conditions - because HP is great in some campaigns and lousy in others. You're mainly fighting undead - probably horrible - the only humanoids you fight will be an occasional necromancer or perhaps a charmed ally of a monster. You're up against a cult in a mostly urban campaign - wonderful - because you're often fighting humanoids. So that's the first condition re whether or not HP is a good spell to pick: will you fight enough humanoids (humans, orcs, bugbears, drow and so on) for it to be useful? Campaigns where "it just varies - some days no, no humanoids - other days yes, some humanoids"
For Heat Metal, my DM let me serate some daggers which I could throw as a bonus action. If they struck, the target needed to take an action to remove them, I combo'ed it with Heat Metal and it was nasty.
I’d call lesser restoration purple for clerics, orange for druids, maybe red for a Druid if there’s also a cleric in the party
Genie Warlock: dao gets spike growth and with eldritch blast invocations becomes one of the best forced movement in the game. Variant human, Crusher feat added on top and it really makes Hex look like child's play
Barkskin spell refers to the armour worn only Chris. The clue is “Regardless of what kind of armor it is wearing” You cant wear dex or cover and you also carry not wear a shield. Great video as always fella thank you 😊 Craig. (Oakhaven)
You can use locate animals and plants and search out poisonous plant like night shade venomous animals like snakes and food base plants like apple trees and gather things on your down time
For continual flame i use it quite a bit by having a sheathe/quiver and then sticking a torch in it but instead of lighting it with fire use continual flame then when I need to be stealthy or just in general I stick the torch continual flame side down into the sheathe/quiver then if I need the light I take the torch out of the sheathe and reinsert it so that it's flame side out of the sheathe/quiver and then in combat or when needing to climb or swim I have my hands free.
I've used enhanced ability a few times in combat. Mainly because it gives advantage to roll high on a Counterspell/Dispel Magic.
I've actually upcast it on 3 PCs because we had a wizard, warlock, and sorcerer. Worked like a charm.
Remember that Enlarge/Reduce can also be used to embiggen wildshape familiars. If you then wildshape into a tiny creature, you can ride that familiar, for level 3 flight. Especially amusing as a Velociraptor for auto-pack-tactics but virtually zero HP, but good for simple movement as well.
An embiggened Deinonychus is a scary steed, and Giant Wolf Spiders can provide plenty of movement options for other party members.
Unembiggening some forms is nice as well, for cramped corridors.
An enlarged Draft Horse can carry a lot, and may even be able to merge entire treasure hordes into it when necessary.
Tasha's gave druids a lot more internal synergy, for any subclass, but with nice little semi-unique caveats for all of them too.
duration 1 minute. So the horse isn't carrying anything very far.
If the spell gets something big down one corridor, it should have been left outside, no?.
I think 3rd level flight on a little bird or something sounds like a good idea, but your size can only go from medium to small or small to tiny, and even at tiny you're not going to find a medium sized flying creature (correct me if wrong). You would need a medium flying animal to carry the tiny player.
I don't know what pack tactics is for in your example, it doesn't sound combat worthy. I think you stand corrected b/c any largening still only adds d4 dmg and no other benefit for being larger, except on PC characters that specialize in grappling, maybe, and that's still hardly happening. It's not mechanically good for combat. Enlarging spiders to carry party members up a steep incline would be neat if the spell affected more than one willing creature. And unwilling creatures have a save for no effect. I don't think it's possible to stretch this spell into anything at all but i'm glad you brought it up b/c i wish the spell was good. If i was your DM i would make at least one of those things work for you.
@@youtubeseagull You Enlarge the Familiar from tiny to small, then wildshape into a Velociraptor (which is tiny) to ride it. You still keep your brains and skills, and a Velociraptor *could* feasibly ride a small sized Owl if it knew how and the bird was happy to do so (and familiars always follow your orders). To ride a creature, they only have to be one size larger, as far as I know (Halflings ride Mastiffs, Humans ride Horses). It doesn't have to be a Velociraptor that you wildshape into, any tiny creature would do, it's just the "most combat worthy" (ie: not very, but a little). And you're riding an ally, that ally is within 5', so any attacks are at advantage due to pack tactics :)
The 1min duration is annoying, but flight at lvl3 for two wildshape charges and a level two spell slot is a pretty nice "class ability" for any druid to have in their back pocket. It's fiddly, but it's there if you need it.
Also not a bad trick for a subclass like Dreams or Stars, if your familiar carries over a short rest period. It often can after a few levels.
Then you can recharge your wildshape charges and use something like Balm of the Summer Court for healing from the air (you don't actually need WS charges for this), or Archer Constellation for shooting from the familiar's back.
I will agree, it's pretty weak-sauce, but sometimes doing fun, unexpected things is optimal, because there's very little way for a DM to plan around all your stupid-druid-tricks, and having an Owl familiar in play and Enlarge/Reduce prepared is useful for many other things as well.
Skywrite is a billboard. The whole city will see it. Maybe a few towns. It's a great spell in the right hands.
Enhance Ability can be used to gain advantage on stealth check while exploring/infiltrating an area. It can also be used on the rogue to help disarm traps and open locks, etc,. INT can help with investigation checks (to find those traps). Since the druid has Pas Without Trace however, the stealth option isn't the greatest..
31:41 "Heat Metal is the reason druids don't wear metal armor"
😲🤣
While circumstantial, I like finding creative uses for Warding Wind. Few sessions back our Eldritch Knight used it to vacuum our way through a sand-filled tunnel of a desert ruin. I'm also a fan of Enlarge/Reduce beyond the basic "now you can grapple a dragon!" and "reduce the door" uses. The size reduction can be nice if you want to for example send away a big evil object the BBEG is using. Telekinesis it away from them, reduce to a more compact form and use teleport or planeshift etc to send it/you to your allies. Love the idea of doing an in your face heist like that, especially since you can avoid saving throws and legendary resistances with the right combination. Again, circumstantial, but great for creative players.
In my current campaign i use animal messenger to scream at a dude i dont like. I only need to sleep 4 hours. So im banking on sleep deprivation
Animal messager is also a good way to not be lost. Just follow the beast to town.
Also, usable with polymorph.
And be vary careful wild shaping into a bird when other druids are around.
Barkskin should have just been the Druid version of Mage Armor, with Wisdom for the modifier
Mage armor doesn't use your int mod for anything.
@@zeedar412 I know it uses dex which I've never understood why
not enough stuff scales with ability mods
@@youtubeseagull yeah true. I'd just like a druid specific spell to increase their ac without it being barkskin
Barkskin would be totally fine as a spell if all you changed was the duration to 8 hours and remove concentration.
Sure it is still limited but at low levels lots of characters don't have AC > 16 yet, and if you need to stealth replacing a PCs heavy armour with Barkskin is viable.
Sky write is a great spell to keep in mind, but as long as you know it’s in your tool box, you know when you need to prepare it, and you usually don’t
Thought you would hate augury, so that was an interesting twist!
About using the familiar as a scout vs beast sense, do note that you have a limitation of 100 ft on your connection with the familiar, while the same is not true for using beast sense.
So, in a way, both actually end up complementing each other: you can use beast sense on your familiar for unlimited range scouting through it. Not that it makes it much better anyway, probably still red in rating.
Beast sense will not work on your familiar since a familiar is not a beast.
I guess Beast Sense is still better if the bad guy talks to his horse?
@@TreantmonksTemple Oh, I overlooked that, good point. Somehow I misremembered the Druid's Wild Companion being a beast, but instead it is Fey only.
i get a little tired of everything being fey so you can't combine anything with anything. Very uncreative.
Treantmonk rates 3-4th level druids as red
if you manage to put shackles, manacles, bolas or a metal net onto a target then heat metal can be bumped up to blue.
A lot of animal druid spells like sense beast works better if you already have a animal friend/ally. In that case, sense beast would not be circunstantial, because you would always have a animal around that is used to follow your commands.
I think "Sky Write" could be fun outside of combat, during role play. To scare or influence villagers, for example. Very situational. Or during role play, if your character has a terrible sense of direction and gets lost.
you just made me think of a druid that lives in the nearby mountain, and as a favor predicts the weather for surrounding countryside. "Rain tomorrow", "storm approaching".
the only good beast sense combo i've seen used was step 1: capture/befriend a bat(animal friendship /speak with animals useful here) . Step 2 beast sense now gives you blindsight 60. that actually might be worth concentration.
though perhaps its most comfortable hanging upside down and that's how you're seeing now. har har
Get a familiar and play the game in 3rd person mode.
I'm always looking forward to Druid video's as it's one of my favourite classes and also the class my girlfriend is playing in our several years long campaign.
Just want to point out that the description, and thus the timestamp, say that Enhance Ability is orange instead of purple.
BLUE💙💙
Pass without trace
Spike Growth
Summon Beast*
GREEN💚💚
Augury*
Heat Metal
PURP💜💜
Enhance Ability
Enlarge/Reduce*
Flaming Sphere
Moonbeam
ORANGE🧡🧡
Animal Messenger
Continual Flame*
Darkvision
Hold Person
Lesser Restoration
Locate Object
Protection from poison
Warding wind
RED💔💔
Barkskin
Beast Sense
Dust Devil
Earthbind
Find Traps
Flame Blade
Gust of wind
Healing Spirit
Locate animals or plants
Skywrite
~
*Expanded list Tasha's
Some monsters are very shut down by warding wind. You should have seen the look on my DMs face when I cast this because he brought out 6 banshees
Find Traps: Chris found that trap.
I used Moonbeam on a kobold shamen climbing down a ladder and it basically one-shot him with the radiant and fall damage. Situational spell, I agreee, but it's beautiful when it works.
Funny story about find traps. When I first started playing DND I was a druid. I noticed something and asked my dm if traps were considered objects, and he said they were. I then asked if faerie fire's effect that outlines object could be used to find traps, and he thought about it for a while and said yes. So apparently faerie fire is better at finding traps then find traps
I feel like I need to send Treatmonk a Thank You gift...but he'd probably rather have a Patreon!!🤣❤💥
Barkskin maybe the biggest miss of all the Druid spells. My fix is upcasting two levels to get +1, 8 hour duration, and no concentration. Even with those fixes it isn't great.
I think it should be a Medium Armor equivalent in the same way as Mage Armor is Light Armor equivalent. I.e. "Your AC equals 16+Dex (max 2) for the duration". Make it stack with any AC bonuses, like any other armor, and yes, 8 hours and no concentration.
my problem with spells like barkskin is a combination of things.
A defensive spell, that is concentration, and takes an action.
You wont really know you will need the effects of the spell that long in advance, or you are setting up a big ambush.
Long duration doesnt help in the first case, and is useless in the second.
The worst case scenario is the following:
You want to melee. You run in, use action for "defensive concentration spell", so you didnt attack.
Incoming enemy attack, it still hits you despite "defensive concentration spell". You lose concentration. You get hit even more. You die.
These defensive spells are unreliable, and do not do what they should be doing.
Which is allow you to go in, let you attack, protect you in the enemy's turn, and not go away.
This is why I dont really like shield of faith as well, because if you get hit it can go away, which is not what it should do. But its a level1 spell AND a bonus action, so Im much less critical of it.
Stoneskin is the absolute worst of these. It only gives you resistance to damage and is concentration. Every time you benefit from the spell you have a chance to lose it. And if you lose it, that's 100gp and a 4th level slot down the drain.
I agree, even my most charitable scenarios for using it are mediocre at best. A Circle of Stars druid can probably make the best use of it, since at low levels starry form dragon will basically guarantee it stays up but even then, as we see with this list there are far better choices for a spell slot even then. If a druid wants to focus on stretching out their spell slot to an hour long spell, summon beast if always my go to. Otherwise if I have absolutely NO spell slots left to concentrate on, I'll cast it onto the poorly optimized bard in my party with Staff of the Woodlands
@@exomancer3632 i completely agree
@@AmorphousUrsine but why would a low level stars druid use dragon stars instead of the other two?
See “The Treankmonk Variant” 2nd lvl spells video for his revision of barkskin you could use at your table
I disagree that Earthbind deserves red.
Just as counterspell has prevented many villains from escaping combat via Teleport or Dimension Door, Earthbind is a great spell for preventing a flying enemy from soaring away or gliding too close. While it's a save-or-suck, its low level spell slot cost and incredible range of 300 feet means you have multiple shots at telling a fleeing creature "oh no, you don't."
Earthbind works with all sorts of flying creatures, and there are a lot of them, from a wizard's imp spy, all the way to a wounded dragon that decided to live to see another day. You'll notice that a smart DM will use a flying creature's flying speed to its advantage as much as possible, especially in early levels when most parties are not yet capable of flight.
While this spell only reduces flying speed to 0 (not walk speed), flying speed for most creatures is usually much faster than their other means of locomotion; once they're forced to land, they're on even grounds with you, so to speak. You may even have an advantage over them if some of your party members are able to fly while it no longer can. Dragons do have high Strength scores, they usually don't have proficiency in STR saves, meaning your odds aren't that bad.
I'm not saying Earthbind is a great spell; far from it. It eats up concentration, only lasts for a minute, and if you're the reason a dragon can't fly, you bet it'll be coming after you until it can again. However, for being circumstantially useful, especially in early levels when access to flight is usually still a dream, I think it deserves at least orange. It is an all-or-nothing spell that you can only use in certain situations, but so is counterspell.
P.S. I love your videos and greatly appreciate all the effort you put into them. They've become what I listen to during work commute, and many of them helped me better understand D&D combat both as a player and as a DM. If you bothered to read this far, thank you! And please tell me, if you ever find the time, how you'd rule the seemingly infinite uses of Mirage Arcane, because that spell has given me and my DM quite a few headaches!
Edit: Spelling
enlarge/reduce has an *interesting combo with powerful-build-bear-barbarian players: one caster enlarges the barbarian to double their lifting capacity, another player casts reduce on a boulder such that the barbarian can barely lift it. then the barbarian throws the boulder, and the caster who previously casted reduce on that boulder now casts enlarge on it, effectively making it 64x bigger!
lob a small island at that dragon for 1d4 improvised damage yaaaaaaaay
Also for heat metal any jewelry theyre wearing, that wizards metal ring or amulet
About Spike Growth : I don't see why the pircing damage should be considered being magical damage the spikes are summoned magical but are not explicit defined as magical...
46:00 Agreed. I've never played Spike Growth as *magical* piercing damage.