Moving on with our subclass review, we come next to the Druid. Here, we have the Circle of the Blighted. While the Circle of Spores is an example of a "darker" druid subclass, the Blighted explicitly has the druid now been corrupted as well by the corruption to the land to which they are connected.
Thus, this is a dark and even potentially villainous, or at the least tragic subclass for the Druid.
At 2nd level, you get Defile Ground. This allows you to use a bonus action to corrupt a 10-ft radius circle of land centered on a point within 60 feet of you for 1 minute. It's difficult terrain for creatures hostile to you, and when a creature in the area takes damage from an attack or spell for the first time on a turn, it takes an extra 1d4 necrotic damage. You can move the circle of corruption up to 30 feet as a bonus action. Flying creatures are unaffected. And you can use this once per short rest.
So, the big downside I see here is that, while the difficult terrain bit only affects enemies, the 1d4 damage will hit your friends as well. It's not a huge amount, but that also means it's not a great benefit either. We'll check back in with this feature as we get to higher levels.
Also at 2nd level, you get Blighted Shape. First off, you get some cosmetic changes like blackened veins, gnarled, bony protrusions, etc. Basically, feel free to think of creepy ways your corruption manifests. Either way, you get proficiency in Intimidation (interestingly, it says you gain proficiency in specifically Charisma (Intimidation,) which would seem to imply that it wouldn't work for alternative forms of intimidation (like the classic Strength (Intimidation,)) but I assume this was just a bit of overenthusiastic writing, and that it just means you get proficiency in Intimidation.
Furthermore, you get a buff to your Wild Shape feature, gaining +2 to AC thanks to gnarled spines that protrude from your body, as well as 60-ft darkvision, or an extra 60 feet if your form already has it.
This I find really intriguing, as it's really the first subclass since Circle of the Moon that actually encourages you to use your Wild Shape as it is in the base class, unlike the recent subclasses like Spores, Stars, or Wildfire, that give you simply different features that use your Wild Shape charges. The benefits here are nice (especially given how most beasts have pretty terrible AC) but I don't know if it'll beat being able to use it as a bonus action.
At 6th level, you get Call of the Shadowseeds. If a creature that is not undead or a construct takes damage within your Defile Ground feature, you can use a reaction to summon a Blighted Sapling in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the creature, and you can have the sapling attack any creature within 5 feet of it as a reaction. Subsequently, the sapling acts on your initiative, obeying your verbal commands.
The sapling's stat block scales somewhat with your level - its AC is 10 plus your proficiency bonus, and its HP is twice your druid level. It makes a single Claws attack using your spell attack modifier as its attack bonus, doing 2d4+PB piercing damage, and then gets to attack twice at level 14. The sapling has vulnerability to fire damage, but resistance to necrotic and poison damage, which becomes immunity at level 10 (along with immunity to the poisoned condition).
The sapling persists until it's reduced to 0 hit points, or until the end of your next long rest, or until you summon another sapling. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.
Now, that PB per long rest feature could be a bit misleading, as you'll only be able to summon your Defiled Ground once per short rest. That said, these things don't have a ton of HP, so you might summon multiple of them per fight. What I find interesting is that, unlike most subclass pets, this one doesn't require a bonus action to command. Also of note is that there's no "magical attack" element to the sapling's attacks, meaning that this becomes far less powerful when facing monsters that require magic weapons to kill.
At 10th level, your Defiled Ground gets upgraded to a 20-ft radius, and the bonus damage goes up to 1d6. Again, I think the feature on its own is not all that amazing (though 20 ft radius is a huge improvement over 10 ft) but the blighted saplings you make with it are probably a bigger deal.
Also at 10th, you get Foul Conjuration. Any beast, fey, or plant you summon (which includes your blighted sapling or creatures conjured via Conjure Woodland Creatures or Summon Fey) get the following benefits:
They're immune to necrotic and poison damage, and the poisoned condition (which is the source of the aforementioned bonus to the sapling at level 10). Additionally, they get "Toxic Demise," which causes them to explode when they hit 0 hit points. Any creature within 5 feet of the creature has to make a Con save or take damage based on the exploding creature's CR. 1/4 or lower does 1d4 necrotic, 1/2 does 1d6. 1 or higher does a number of d8s of necrotic damage equal to the creature's CR, and if the summoned creature doesn't have a CR, it's a number of d6s equal to your proficiency bonus.
As an action, you can cause a summoned creature to explode prematurely, which kills it but also triggers this damage.
So, let me tell you a story about World of Warcraft. Back in the day, Death Knights had an ability called Corpse Explosion. Back then, there was a kind of theme with the class where you'd want to make use of corpses on the battlefield. This one caused a nearby one to explode and do damage to enemies. It was gross and nasty, and I loved it because it fully fit the flavor. This very much has that feel.
Is it good? Well, it certainly adds a little functionality to the Blighted Sapling, and even makes its low HP more of a feature than a liability.
I will say that the immunity to necrotic damage is actually pretty clutch, as it will make them immune to the effects of your Defiled Ground.
Finally, at level 14, your Defiled Ground's damage increases to 1d8 - which by this level I think is even less relevant.
However, also at level 14, you get Incarnation of Corruption. Much like your Blighted Shape, you now gain that +2 bonus to AC while in your normal form, and you also gain resistance to necrotic damage. This is represented through those spines and jagged spurs emerging from your body. Additionally, while within your Defiled Ground, you can use a bonus action to gain temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.
So, let's skip ahead to the overall thoughts on this: I think this subclass has excellent flavor, and I'd be tempted to play one simply to live out that dark druid vibe. Again, I'm reminded of World of Warcraft (the game that was partially responsible for getting me to check out Critical Role, as I knew it as "that D&D stream that the actress who voices Jaina Proudmoore is on,") which has, as part of its lore, the Emerald Nightmare - a corruption within the Emerald Dream, which is kind of inner plane that represents pristine nature and balance. Nightmare corruption tends to manifest as thorns and spines and such protruding from creatures, and this would seem to be a perfect subclass for a Nightmare-corrupted druid.
Mechanically, I think the subclass is a bit overstuffed (true for a lot of the subclasses from this book,) and more importantly it feels like there's a bit of a mechanical mismatch. Defiled Ground can only happen once per short rest, which in practice means about twice a day usually. But Call of the Shadowseeds can be done more often - yet still requires you to use Defiled Ground. Thus you're sort of relying on the DM killing your minions in order to make full use of the feature, which you can still only practically use in two fights per day.
I want to love this subclass, but I have to wonder if it might have needed a bit more revision.
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