Tasha's, Class by Class - Druids

 Druids are a highly versatile class with a lot of spells unique to them. While in they're generally not thought of as quite as powerful healers as Clerics, they are a rather unique and powerful type of spellcaster, and also get the iconic Wild Shape feature, which in Tasha's new subclasses, can be used for other purposes as a kind of new resource. But let's get into class features first!

New Spells:

Druids get some new spells from Tasha's (three of the new Summon spells) as well as some additional spells from the PHB (and Xanathar's? The wording is a little confusing, and I don't recall which spells are PHB versus Xanathar's). Anyway, Druids can now also prepare/cast: Protection from Good and Evil, Augury, Continual Flame, Enlarge/Reduce, Aura of Vitality, Elemental Weapon, Revivify, Divination, Fire Shield, Cone of Cold, Flesh to Stone, Symbol, and Incendiary Cloud.

Wild Companion (2nd level): You can now expend a use of Wild Shape to cast Find Familiar without needing components. The familiar is fey instead of a beast (which I thought was default for the spell, but ok) and in this case only lasts a number of hours equal to half your druid level.

    It makes a ton of sense that a Druid should be able to call on little nature spirits in the form of animals to assist them.

Cantrip Versatility (4th level):

Whenever you get the ability score improvement feature, you can swap out one of your druid cantrips for a different one.

    Quality of Life, always good.

Subclasses:

Circle of Spores:

This is a reprint from the popular Spore Druid from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. In addition to being able to damage nearby foes with your cloud of spores, you can also use it to gain a massive number of temp hit points (4 times your level) and you also get a bit of necromancy, including Animate Dead as a circle spell and also letting you use your reaction to turn a beast or humanoid that dies within 10 feet of you into a zombie with 1 hit point under your command for the next hour.

Basically, it's the ultimate creepy druid subclass. While it was clearly designed very specifically to fit with Ravnica's Golgari Swarm, it's easily translatable to other settings.

Circle of Stars:

The Circle of Stars focuses a lot on divination - a druid who's deeply connected not just to terrestrial nature, but also the kind of hum of the universe. As such, there's a strong focus on divination magic - you actually don't get any circle spells, except kind of guidance and guiding bolt. But you do get three special forms you can spend your Wild Shape charges on - these are all starry constellations which either give you extra magical attacks, boosting your healing, or improving your ability to maintain concentration on spells.

There's definitely an otherworldly vibe to this subclass, which is a real change of pace for Druids, who are usually very decidedly of this world (well, except I guess Circle of Dreams).

Circle of Wildfire:

Wildfire has two major focuses - fire damage and healing. While I'd be very tempted to play this as a sinister, Wickerman-style druid, the general idea behind it is fire as a source of renewal. You do get circle spells here, which are nearly all some form of healing or fire damage (sadly you don't get fireball, as you did in UA). This subclass' alternate use of Wild Shape lets you summon a Wildfire Spirit, which has one of those scaling stat blocks similar to the Battle-Smith's Steel Defender, and which you can command with a bonus action.

The spirit fights alongside you, but also buffs your fire damage and healing, and can help friendly creatures get out of a jam if they're in trouble with a teleport ability.

    So, to review, I really love the flavor of these Druids - each of which is, again, doing something pretty unusual and unique among Druid subclasses. Circle of Spores is already a very popular subclass to come out of GGtR, and it's nice to see it here in an AL-legal printing.

    I think a good sign for any subclass is that you can really conjure a unique visual for each of them, and all three of these look very different in my head. Also, if my Ranger dies in Tomb of Annihilation, I'm totally rolling a Wildfire Druid whose solution to finding Omu is to just burn down all of Chult (it could really use it.)