Circle of Wildfire Druid 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@Crier Kobold

For all my reviews, I’ve seen most of these options played at one of my tables. Circle of Wildfire is the rare option I’ve had the pleasure to play myself, and I can’t recommend it enough.

The fantasy of a druid in tune with the natural burning and regrowth cycles of life appeals to me, and mixing that with the Wildfire Spirit and its Fiery Teleportation and expanded spell list leads to a slippery character running next to their raging spirit, slinging out fire spells with exploding seeds. Everything this option does in the early game is incredibly powerful, rich in thematics, and a blast to explore the world with.

2nd Level: Circle Spells and Summon Wildfire Spirit

Circle Spells offer you some flavorful additions to your sheet for free that aren’t ones I’d always prepare, but am regularly glad to have. Revivify stands out as something that makes druids fill the role of clerics in keeping a party from ever dying, and Fire Shield, Scorching Ray, and Burning Hands all open up routes to explore with different ranged Wildfire Druids. You can play the evoker blasting from a safe distance, or an eager and reckless arsonist getting in creatures' faces for maximum damage.

Fireball is a sad exclusion and would be stellar on this circle, but Plant Growth and Revivify are both excellent spells in their own right, so I can’t be that upset.

Summon Wildfire Spirit defines this option. Not only does it come with a 10 ft. radius 2d6 fire damage on spawn, but it is also a fully summoned companion you can direct for a bonus action for an hour. This can stack with Summon Beast at 3rd level, giving you three characters to play with at once, as summoned creatures from the Summon spells don’t even take actions to order around.

The Spirit has a 30 ft. fly hover speed, 60 ft. ranged d6 + proficiency bonus attack and Fiery Teleportation.

Fiery Teleportation is what sets this option apart from basically every other summon option, as it's an unlimited-use 15 ft. teleport that deals damage from where you left. It can bring any number of willing creatures around it, too, making it a tool for getting allies out of danger and you and the party across gaps leading to amazing moments of leaping off cliffs and teleporting to the other side just before the fall. The distance is just short enough you’re encouraged to get creative with ways to get a bit more distance out of it, and its unlimited usage makes it a default tool for exploration your DM just has to start accounting for.

6th Level: Enhanced Bond

Enhanced Bond empowers your spells with your companion out. The bonus only applies to one roll; this makes Scorching Ray get only one attack with a bonus d8, where Burning Hands and Flame Strike both deal the bonus d8 damage to any creatures affected, as they’re all affected by the same damage roll. It reads a bit better than it is, but bonus dice are usually great, and having the incentive to keep casting fire-damaging spells helps sell the fantasy.

On top of the dice, this lets you cast spells from your Wildfire Spirits space, which is a neat trick to have. This particularly works great alongside Burning Hands, letting your Wildfire Spirit feel like a dragon with a cone breath attack that costs you spell slots and no actions from it.

10th Level: Cauterizing Flames

Cauterizing Flames is a freaking SWEET ability. It's a reaction, something druids are majorly lacking, and gives a decent chunk of hit points to creatures as you kill others, or just acts as an explosive trap. It mirrors the death/rebirth cycle Wildfire druids embody.

Healing, when done without action costs, tends to be a great boon to aiding in action economy. Keeping allies up through more attacks can be the difference between victory and defeat, and is especially beneficial when it's free. The damage is going to be harder to pull off, as getting an enemy to walk on their ally's corpse is far from given, but when it does happen, 2d10+ Wisdom modifier bonus damage, no save, is super.

14th Level: Blazing Revival

Blazing Revival lets you use your Wildfire Spirit as a bunch of extra hit points when you’re in the danger zone. These kinds of features are challenging to make meaningful, as when you’re not going to 0, this does nothing. That’s not where I want my abilities to be; proactive abilities that you can choose when to use are way better typically. There will be some windows where you can “cash in” your Wildfire Spirit for hit points when you’re under half by deliberately dropping yourself to 0 to heal before summoning another spirit with your other Wild Shape, but that’s crazy niche and not particularly powerful.

All the features can’t be winners, I guess.

All Together

The Wildfire Spirit in the low tiers is an incredible tool to have access to, namely with its ranged weapon attack and Fiery Teleportation abilities raw utility and free damage. Enhanced Bond is a fine improvement to your casting that gives you reasons to consider various positions for your Wildfire Spirit, and Cauterizing Flames provides a new toy to use your reaction a bunch of times for little explosive or soothing flames when things die. All of these features are supported by an excellent always prepared group of Circle Spells that give you a unique angle to take your druid. There is room to play a melee ranged druid fighting back to back with your allies with a flying spirit raining hell from above and getting you out when things go south, and a backline tactical fire caster throwing blasts of flame from a safe distance away.

Its abilities don’t scale particularly well, which is a bit of a bummer, but upper-tier druid spells can do a lot of heavy lifting in the upper tiers to make it feel better.

I can’t recommend Circle of Wildfire enough; it’s easily my favorite druid option, and what I’d recommend to anyone wanting a ton of options and summonable allies.

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