Best Feats for Stars Druid 5e
As with the majority of the subclasses introduced in Tasha’s, the Stars Druid shines brightly amongst its piers as a brilliant example of powerful and flavorful subclass design. The big draw of the subclass is the three options for bonus action transformations that replace a use of Wildshape. Our choices are a bonus action attack, a bit more healing for our healing spells, and never losing concentration, ever. Yeah I think you know which one I’ll be picking the majority of the time.
Granted, the Archer form can have use in large battle maps where we can reliably protect our concentration just by being far enough away from our enemies, but the majority of fights will favor the Dragon form. This security of concentration actually opens up a lot of freedom in feat selection for this subclass, as most Druids need both War Caster and Resilient Constitution to ensure they don’t drop concentration all the way through the campaign. There’s still an argument for Resilient at higher levels, but we’ll get to that. It does also put this Druid in a weird spot however, as Druids have very few feats that synergize with their playstyle, leaving us with a rare build that actually doesn’t need many feats at all. Take this as a boon rather than a detriment.
Best Feats for Stars Druid 5e
Telekinetic (Lv 4): So if you’re wanting to put out as much damage as possible, Archer is an easy option will be taking up your bonus action every turn, meaning you may not be in the market for any feats that are providing a bonus action. I propose however, that through a combination of area of effect spells and clever tactics, the push of Telekinetic can be used to deal even more damage than the Archer attack provides. Take, for example, the simple Moonbeam spell. This is a second level spell that deals 2d10 damage on a failed save, half on success, which equates to roughly the same average damage as the Archer attack. Telekinetic allows us to push a creature into the area, forcing them to take the damage twice in one round. This basically means that when we just have 2nd level spells, there’s not a huge difference between the two, but using Telekinetic allows us to take the Dragon form instead and have advantage on maintaining concentration on that Moonbeam spell. The parity doesn’t last either, the Telekinetic strategy becomes much stronger as we get stronger spells, while Archery only adds an extra d8 at 10th level. We really don’t want to be using anything other than Dragon past 10th level, as a flying speed is miles better than anything the other options are providing unless you already have permanent flight.
Fey Touched (Lv 4): This subclass lacks an expanded spell list, and both Misty Step and Silvery Barbs fill holes in the Druid list. Short range teleportation is basically non-existent and the only reaction spell you’ll be normally casting is Absorb Elements, which will only come up rarely (I hope, goodness if you’re needing to cast it every round then maybe you need to talk to your DM about toning the Fireballs down).
Alert (Lv 4): All Druids love to go first in combat because of the fact that control spells are best used as early as possible. Activating our Starry Form as early as possible is also very important at later levels, as we’ll want to be taking to the skies with our dragon form early so we are out of range of incoming melee attacks. The other benefits are just gravy, we’re here for the +5 to initiative checks.
Resilient Constitution (Lv 8): Dragon form guarantees success on any concentration check we make for damage less than 20+2 per Constitution modifier (plus 2 more because we pass a save when we meet it). If you rolled really good stats and have a 16 Con, that means you’ll need to take 28 damage before even having the chance to fail that save. Granted, as we reach the higher levels, that becomes more and more frequent. If we have that same 16 Con and this feat at this level, we would need to take a whopping 34 damage from a single source to not automatically succeed, improving to 36 at our next level. This continues to scale as we level, and I do think it’s worth the feat if you notice your DM likes to throw big, splashy damage at the party.
Tough (Lv 12): I don’t usually talk about generically good feats like this, because of just that, they are generically good for everyone. However, our 14th level feature gives us resistance to the most common damage types in the game, meaning the extra HP from Tough will go further for us than it will for most characters. Not an exciting pick, but a synergy worth noting at least.
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