Druid Circle: Circle of Souls

by RiskyRedds

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Preface

This document provides a subclass option for the druid: The Circle of Souls, a druidic community who specializes in fostering creatures and bonding with powerful companions, and who's expertise lends them to being responsible for extraplanar threats.

This Is Playtest Material

The material in this article is presented for playtesting and to spark your imagination. These game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not refined by full game design and editing. They aren’t officially part of the game and aren’t permitted in D&D Adventurers League events.

If I decide to make this material official, it will be refined based on your feedback.

Changelog

  • Version 0.0.1: Creation date: 17 October 2021 (Initial creation of document)

Credits

Images:

  • LatDe (https://www.artstation.com/latde)
  • Wizards of the Coast (https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=447073)

Credit: Marusia Dogaru (https://m_a_d_design_art.artstation.com/)

Circle of Souls

The druids of the Circle of Souls spend their time bonding to a particular animal or woodland being, communing with it in a manner that goes far deeper than regular instincts and intuition. These druids are often called Wardens due to the connection with their creature, and the power they possess when working alongside it. Said creatures end up as paragons of their kind, serving as guardians of a region, or vanguards of nature, devoted to protecting the Material Plane from outside threats.

Druid Level Class Features
1st Soul Bond, Soul Healing
6th Soul Shock
10th Enhanced Bond
14th Soul Mastery

Soul Bond

Beginning at 2nd level when you take this subclass, you learn to use your connection to nature to call upon a powerful ward. When you complete a long rest, you can call forth an animal companion from the wilds to serve as a faithful companion to assist in your travels.

The creature you summon can be any beast of a challenge rating you can assume the form of with your Wild Shape feature (such as a wolf), with the following changes to its stat block:

  • The creature's Intelligence score increases by an amount equal to your Wisdom modifier + your proficiency bonus. This increase in Intelligence allows the creature to gain proficiency in two skills of your choice from Insight, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.
  • The creature's hit point maximum equals the hit point number in its stat block, or an amount equal to the creature's Constitution modifier + your Wisdom modifier + five times your druid level, whichever is higher. For the creature's hit dice, it has a number of d8s equal to your druid level. Like any creature, it can spend Hit Dice during a short rest to regain hit points, and gains the full benefits of a long rest when it completes one.
  • The creature uses your proficiency bonus, rather than its own, for any attack roll, ability check, or saving throw it has. In addition to the normal applications of your proficiency bonus, the creature also adds your proficiency bonus to its AC.

The creature is friendly to you and your companions. In combat, it shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes on its turn is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action.

The creature remains by your side until slain, or until you use a bonus action to dismiss it to the wilds. If the creature dies, you can spend 1 minute and expend one use of your Wild Shape to revive it with full hit points, provided its soul is free and willing.

Once you summon a creature companion using this ability, you cannot do so again until you complete a short or long rest. You can only have one creature companion at your side at a time. If you attempt to use this feature to summon a second creature companion, the first companion is dismissed at the end of your next turn.

Soul Healing

Also at 2nd level, your connection to the wilds allows you to understand the magics needed to maintain and protect nature's inhabitants who have come to your aid. When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that restores hit points to a friendly creature you have summoned (such as the creature companion you can summon using the Soul Bond class feature), you restore an additional 1d4 hit points to that creature. This bonus increases to 1d6 at 6th level, 1d8 at 10th level, and 1d10 at 14th level.

Soul Shock

Also at 6th level, you discover an incantation that allows you to reverse arcane energies.

When a creature other than yourself attempts to cast a spell or activate a magical effect, you can use your reaction to force that creature to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature's magic fails and is wasted, and the creature is stunned until the start of your next turn. If a spell was going to be cast before being wasted by this feature, the spell fails and any spell slot or innate use is expended.

Once a creature fails their saving throw against this feature, you cannot do so again until you complete a long rest, unless you expend a spell slot of 3rd level or higher to use this feature again.

Enhanced Bond

At 10th level, you can impart a portion of your power into your creature companion. Your creature companion is considered a fey, instead of a beast. This change makes the creature immune to magical effects that would put it to sleep, and it can no longer be charmed.

Additionaly, your creature companion's attacks are considered magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Soul Mastery

At 14th level, you and your creature companion become cosmologically bonded. Any spell, of 5th level or lower, cast on you by a friendly creature (including yourself or your creature companion) affects your creature companion, and vice versa, provded the creature companion is within 30 feet of you.

Credit: Wizards of the Coast (https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=447073)

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