Circle of Eclipse Features

Speech of the Woods

2nd-level Circle of Eclipse feature

Starting at 2nd level when you join this circle, you gain the ability to converse with beasts and many fey. You can speak, read, and write Sylvan, if you do not know the language already.

Additionally, beasts can understand your speech, and you gain the ability to decipher their noises and motions. Most beasts lack the intelligence to convey or understand sophisticated concepts, but a friendly beast could relay what it has seen or heard in the recent past.

This ability does not grant you any special friendship with beasts, though you can combine this ability with gifts to curry favor with them as you would with any non-player character.

Eclipse Shape

2nd-level Circle of Eclipse feature

Also starting at 2nd level, when you use your Wild Shape, you can assume the form of a half-humanoid monstrosity, which is hereafter referred as your eclipse shape. Your eclipse shape takes the form of a hybrid of an animal, plant, or mineral of your choice.

While you are in the eclipse shape, you retain all your normal statistics, as well as benefits of any features from your class, race, or other sources, except for the following rules:

• Your physical build is heightened by a stream of unstable mystic energy flowing throughout your body. You gain advantage in Strength ability checks and saving throws, and you add your proficiency bonus to the damage roll when making a melee weapon attack using Strength.
• You grow claws, fangs, spines, or any different natural weapon of your choice. Your unarmed strike deals 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, as appropriate to the natural weapon you chose, and you add your proficiency bonus to the damage roll.
• You grow fur, hide, bark, or thick skin, as appropriate to your appearance. While you are not wearing armor, your Armor Class equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus.
• You cannot cast spells, and you can only speak in Sylvan. Transforming into the eclipse shape does not break your concentration on a spell you have already cast, however, or prevent you from taking actions that are part of a spell that you have already cast.
  When you reach 18th level and gain the Beast Spells feature, you can cast druid spells while you are in the eclipse shape.

Additionally, when you assume your eclipse form, choose two of the following benefits, as appropriate to your new shape. You gain the chosen benefits until your eclipse shape ends.

• Amphibious. You can breathe both air and water.
• Darkvision. You gain darkvision out to a range of 60 feet. If you already have darkvision, the range of your darkvision increases by 30 feet.
• Nimble Foot. As long as you are not wearing medium or heavy armor, your walking speed increases by 5 feet.
• Keen Sight. You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
• Keen Smell. You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.
• Natural Camouflage. While you stay motionless, you have advantage on Charisma (Deception) checks made to disguise yourself as a plant or inanimate object, such as a tree or a rock.
• Swimming. As long as you are not wearing medium or heavy armor, you gain swimming speed equal to your walking speed.

When you transform into the Eclipse Shape, you choose whether your equipment falls into the ground in your space, merges into your new form, or is worn by it. Worn equipment functions as normal, but it does not change size or shape to match your new form, and any equipment that the new form cannot wear must either fall to the ground or merge with it. Equipment that merges with the form has no effect until you leave the form.

Your eclipse shape is unstable and considerably harder to maintain than your normal wild shape. Your eclipse shape lasts for 1 minute, or until you dismiss it on your turn (no action required).

Circle of Totems Features

Totemic Call

2nd-level Circle of Totems feature

Starting at 2nd level when you join this circle, you can summon a totem that symbolizes the entities of the wilderness. At 2nd level, you know two totems of your choice from the list at the end of the subclass description. You learn one additional totem of your choice when you reach 6th level, and again at 10th and 14th level.

As a bonus action on your turn, you can expend one use of your Wild Shape to summon a totem in an unoccupied space you can see within 10 feet of you. The summoned totem lasts for 1o minutes or until you dismiss it on your turn (no action required). You can also use a bonus action on your turn to choose a totem you can see within 10 feet of you, and make it teleport into an unoccupied space you can see within 10 feet of you.

A totem is a Medium construct that has 10 AC and hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier + twice your druid level (minimum of 1). A totem cannot move or take any action, but it grants benefits to you and friendly creatures within its proximity. Each totem provides different benefits, as described in the list at the end of the subclass description. A totem dissipates into thin air when it drops to 0 hit points or is otherwise destroyed.

You can have up to two totems summoned at the same time, and each totem must be different from one another. If you summon the third totem when you already have two totems summoned, the first totem dissipates into thin air.

Totemic Resolve

2nd-level Circle of Totems feature

Also starting at 2nd level, whenever you finish a short rest or long rest, you gain two additional uses of your Wild Shape. You can use this use only for the purpose of using your Totemic Call feature. You lose any unspent uses gained this way when you start a short rest or long rest.

Defensive Totem

6th-level Circle of Totems feature

At 6th level, you can use your totems for your defense. When a creature that you can see targets you with an attack, you can use a reaction to summon a totem of your choice in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you, and make the attack targets the summoned totem instead. Once you do so, you must finish a short rest or long rest before you can do so again.

Relaying Totem

By 10th level, you can use your totem to relay your mystic magic to a distant target. When you cast a druid spell that does not have the range of self, the spell can originate from either you or one of the totem, provided that the totem is also within the spell's range.

Additionally, when you cast a druid spell with a range of touch against a willing creature, your totem can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your totem must be within 30 feet of you, and the target must use its reaction to touch the totem to receive the spell's effects.

Totem Mastery

When you reach 14th level, the range that you can summon or teleport a totem increases to 30 feet.

Druidic Totems

Some of the totem's effect requires the target to make a saving throw. You use your druid spell save DC when a totem's effect requires a saving throw.

Circle of Wastelands

Druids who belong to the Circle of Wastelands do not necessarily hail from the eponymous wastelands; more often, they seek the barren realms, formerly lusty and flourished, but now stricken with a calamitous event such as forest fire, plague, magical anomaly, or civilization. The druids settle in the nearly uninhabited land, scavenging the abandoned land for what food and water is scarcely left for them.

Often, druids of the Circle of Wastelands are shunned from civilization and even from other druids for their esoteric practices, which involves study on the matter of death and even undeath. However, these druids consider that death is but a natural course of life, not as a final destination, but as a foundation for a new life that will one day flourish from the dead soils and revitalize the world.

Circle Spells

Your mystical connection to the wasteland grants you ability to cast certain spells. At 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th level, you gain access to the circle spells, as described on the table below.

Once you gain access to a circle spell, you always have it prepared, and it does not count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. if you gain access to a spell that does not appear on the druid spell list, the spell is nonetheless a druid spell for you.

Undead Thralls

When you reach 6th level, when you cast a druid spell that creates an undead from a corpse or a pile of bones, you can target one additional corpse or pile of bones, creating another skeleton or zombie as appropriate.

Additionally, whenever you create an undead using a druid spell or your Envoy of the Wasteland feature, it has additional benefits:

• The undead's hit point maximum is increased by an amount equal to your druid level.
• The undead adds your proficiency bonus to its weapon damage rolls.

Barren Servants

Starting at 10th level, when you transform with your Wild Shape, you can choose up to three piles of bones or corpses you can see within 30 feet of you and reanimate them into a skeleton or a zombie. These undeads count against the number of undeads you can maintain control with your Envoy of the Wastelands feature.

Once you use this feature, you must finish a short rest or long rest before you can use it again.

Herald of the Wasteland

At 14th level, when you would create an undead with your Envoy of the Wasteland feature, you can choose to create a wraith instead of a skeleton or a zombie. Creating a wraith destroys the pile of bones or a corpse.

The wraith created this way uses the statistics as shown in the stat block, with the following exceptions:

• The wraith loses the Create Specter feature.
• When the wraith takes the Life Drain feature, its uses your druid spell save DC instead of what is shown in the feature description.
• The wraith can use an action to reanimate up to two piles of bone or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within 10 feet of it into a skeleton or a zombie. The undead reanimated this way counts against the number of undeads you can control with your Envoy of the Wasteland feature, and gains the benefits of your Undead Thralls feature.

Once you create a wraith with this feature, you must finish a long rest before you can do so again.

Credits

All contents are created by Weirdo Whoever unless noted otherwise. Special thanks to D&D Wiki, NaturalCrit Homebrewery tool, and GM Binder for providing the templates for my imaginations.

All druid subclass options except Circle of Totems were revised from the previous version of assorted druid subclass homebrew. (Many thanks to u/pygmybatrider for critique and suggestions.)

Circle of Eclipse. Circle of the Shepherd from Xanathar's Guide to Everything gave me some inspirations on the rework. Now it's got a slight boost on magic and utility (but still most of them are combat).

Circle of Totems. A revision from the previous version. This time I did look up the Shepherd druid from Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but I was more inclined to check Rehgar from Heroes of the Storm and shaman cards from Hearthstones. Hell, even the Totemic Call feature name is directly taken from the shaman Hero Power.

I must admit, I was watching The Tuxedo rerun when the idea of using Mr. Walter Strider as an available totem option slapped me in the face.

Circle of Wastelands. I really, really must thank u/pygmybatrider for the phrase "Mad Max zombie druid" on his review on this subclass.

Did a slight rework on this one. Now you don't need to directly kill a humanoid to reanimate them, but you have to perform a ritual (or expend a Wild Shape use) to raise them under your control.