Druidic Warrior 5e
You learn two cantrips of your choice from the Druid spell list. They count as ranger spells for you, and Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for them. Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one of these cantrips with another cantrip from the Druid spell list.
Druidic Warrior 5e: Fighting Style Review
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Rangers, oh rangers. Rangers suffer from being a class aimed at solving the problems of a dying form of gameplay, a tool attempting to bring the hexcrawl style exploration to the table in a system whose whole objective was streamlining the experience to be more open to a variety of players who tend to lean away from crunchy, number and table based natural exploration on a grid. This leaves them, at least the one used from the Player’s Handbook, feeling lackluster in the utility department. They’ll see their fighter and rogue allies out damaging them in combat and doing more weapon based stuff, and their bard, druid, warlock, and wizard companions bringing as much if not more exploration and stealth utility to the party. Druidic Warrior is a Fighting Style offering some bonus out of combat utility to the exploration based class, which is much needed, but when it's at the expense of their Fighting Style doesn’t really solve any of their problems without making more elsewhere.
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Druids do have some bangers on their cantrip list. They get fun cosmetic options like Control Flames, Druidcraft, Gust, and Shape Water. Guidance is a great boon to yourself and allies in almost all forms of slow exploration, and can lead to you feeling like an actual guide, a scout-like character who lends their knowledge and intuition to empower investigation, survival, and similar slow checks. Thorn Whip is a lot more interesting on an class that has better frontline capability, making it a neat engagement option to consider, and Mending, Mold Earth, and other cosmetic cantrips offer some meaningful utility in exploring the world on their own and contributing to adventuring.
Any two of these will be a boon to the ranger, but the cost is quite high.
If you want to be a hunter, a long ranged stalker, ambushing enemies from the shadows and dodging out before they have a chance to shoot back, you want Archery. Blind Fighting is a similar tool for utility, giving you a blindsight, while also empowering you in fights, especially when paired with Fog Cloud and other effects you can bring to the table. Two-Weapon Fighting can be a great early game option to hit multiple times. All of these set you up to get more out of your average action taken in combat, all make all of your combats throughout the game better. If you’ve got other characters with cantrip access, having a tiny more magic coming specifically from you just won’t often feel worth it.
Druidic Warrior is a neat consideration I’m glad they added. Alongside the Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything update to the core ranger, I think it's probably a reasonable choice for playing a ranger actually dedicated to exploration and survival. If you’re more dedicated towards killing things efficiently or finding a consistent stream of badass moments in combat, you probably can’t pick this up, as you only ever are getting one Fighting Style, and it probably should be one that empowers 90% of your in combat actions.
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