DnD 2024 Circle of the Sea Druid Subclass Handbook

Introduction

A new version of the Druid introduced the 2024 rules, the Circle of the Sea looks to break what has previously been a flavor of Circle of the Land and make it a whole separate subclass. What we end up with is a weirdly melee-range Druid with no real defensive capabilities and a primary gimmick that targets the worst save to ask a monster for.

All in all, you end up with something that’s going to feel a whole lot like a Druid with no subclass that sometimes gets lucky and yeets enemies for cold damage. WotC has finally made a nautical themed Druid that’s just as good on land as it is underwater… by making it pretty bad in both places.

With that said, it can absolutely still be optimized, and the flavor of it is definitely very good. If this subclass appeals to you, ask your DM to consider allowing Wrath of the Sea to target Dex saves instead of Con saves. I would say that puts this subclass up to a Blue rating, but not so powerful as to be problematic. The damage of Wrath of the Sea scales very little, so you’re basically a slightly-better Rogue Striker at early levels and then have to figure out other optimization to stay relevant.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Circle of the Sea Features
• Circle of the Sea Backgrounds
• Circle of the Sea Species
• Circle of the Sea Ability Scores
• Circle of the Sea Feats
• Circle of the Sea Weapons
• Circle of the Sea Armor
• Circle of the Sea Multiclassing
• Example Circle of the Sea Build – Circle of the Sea(bass)
  • Ability Scores
  • Background
  • Species
  • Skill and Tool Proficiencies
  • Feats and Ability Score Increases
  • Levels

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

• Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
• Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
• Green: Good options. Useful often.
• Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Circle of the Sea Features

3. Circle of the Sea Spells: Very few reliably good options. You might go your entire career without casting the vast majority of these spells.
   3. Cantrip: Good damage, long range, and a speed debuff. Speed debuffs are abundantly available, so stacking speed debuffs on high-priority enemies is often a winning strategy.
   3. Level 1 Spells: Both spells are only situationally useful.
   3. Level 2 Spells: Gust of Wind is only situationally useful. Shatter isn’t consistently effective since it targets Constitution saves, but it’s passable AOE damage until you can get better options.
   5. Level 3 Spells: Lightning Bolt is fine damage, but line AOE’s make it difficult to hit more than two targets. You may be able to force enemies into position to hit more of them by using Wrath of the Sea’s push effect. Water Breathing is useful in aquatic campaigns, but otherwise useless.
   7. Level 4 Spells: Control Water is extremely situational, and Ice Storm just isn’t very good.
   9. Level 5 Spells: A good summon and a good save-or-suck. Unfortunately, summon spells that monopolize your Bonus Action may see little use thanks to Wrath of the Sea.
3. Wrath of the Sea: Circle of the Sea’s signature feature. The damage is good, especially for a Bonus Action that you can use so frequently, and the push effect is significant. The text says “away” rather than “directly away”, which means that you can use this to launch enemies into the air for easy fall damage. The 10-minute duration means that you can easily use it before jumping into combat, but it’s also a Bonus Action to activate, so you don’t really need to do so until you get Stormborn and get flight and damage resistance while Wrath of the Sea is active.

   However, this does have some challenges. The radius of the emanation is problematically small at this level, forcing you to move into melee to use it until you get Aquatic Affinity at level 6. The Constitution save also means that this won’t work reliably, as Constitution saves are consistently high throughout the CR range. You can’t dive into melee and expect this to always keep you out of trouble.

6. Aquatic Affinity: Increasing the area of Wrath of the Sea means that you no longer need to get into melee to use it unless your target has reach, which makes it a bit more powerful. The swim speed is nice, but in most games it won’t have an impact.
10. Stormborn: Flight and resistance to three damage types. None of them are particularly common, but three damage types is still a lot of protection.
14. Oceanic Gift: Throwing this on your party’s front-line martial characters can give them a huge boost, providing flight, damage resistances, and the Bonus Action damage and push effect. At this level you get 3 Wild Shape uses per Short or Long Rest, so you can frequently afford to put Wrath of the Sea on yourself and on an ally at the same time. It gets even easier when you hit level 7 and get 4 uses per rest.

Circle of the Sea Backgrounds

No different than other Druids.

Circle of the Sea Species

We definitely want to lean into good defensive options like the Tortle or Loxodon so that we don’t immediately die when trying to use our defining feature in melee range.

Circle of the Sea Ability Scores

Str: Dump.

Dex: With our limits on armor proficiencies, this needs to be at least a 14 most of the time and higher is better most of the time.

Con: Useful for maintaining Concentration (and remaining alive).

Int: Dump.

Wis: Druids run on Wisdom.

Cha: Dump.

	Point Buy	Standard Array
Str	8	8
Dex	15	13
Con	15	14
Int	8	12
Wis	15	15
Cha	8	10

Circle of the Sea Feats

Nothing different than most Druids.

Circle of the Sea Weapons

Nothing different than most Druids.

Circle of the Sea Armor

Nothing different than most Druids, though our penchant for getting up into melee almost certainly means we want to use a shield. Consider taking Primal Order (Warden) for proficiency in medium armor and shields.

Circle of the Sea Multiclassing

This section briefly details some obvious and enticing multiclass options, but doesn’t fully explore the broad range of multiclassing combinations. For more on multiclassing, see our Practical Guide to Multiclassing.

Seas would like a level of Cleric or Monk even more than most subclasses because of its need to be up in melee where high AC makes life better.

Example Circle of the Sea Build – Circle of the Sea(bass)

Thus do I humor Tyler’s penchant for puns.

This is not an optimal species, but it sure is what he asked for, so here it is. Please actually do this with Tortle so you can take Primal Order: Magician and start with Guidance and a higher AC too.

Ability Scores

As described above.

	Base	Adjusted	Level 20
Str	8	8	8
Dex	15	15	16
Con	15	16	16
Int	8	8	8
Wis	15	17	21
Cha	8	8	8

Background

Sage gets us some fun tricks and a pair of proficiencies, one of which we’re likely to use.

Species

Locathah is what makes the joke, so we end up with natural armor as if we were wearing studded leather and some skills along with a compulsion to carry a portable hot tub.

Skill and Tool Proficiencies

Sage gets us Arcana and History while we pick up Animal Handling, Survival, and Herbalism Kits from Druid, and we get Athletics and Perception from our Species.

Feats and Ability Score Increases

At level 1 we get Magic Initiate (Wizard) from our Background. We’ll select Booming Blade, True Strike, and Shield as our Wizard spells, and select Wisdom as their spellcasting ability.

At level 4 we’ll take Inspiring Leader.

At level 8 we’ll take an ASI to increase Wisdom to 20, keeping on track with Fundamental Math.

At level 12 we’ll take Rune Carver.

At level 16 we’ll take Skulker.

At level 19, for our Epic Boon we take Boon of the Night Spirit.

Levels

Level	Feat(s) and Features	Notes and Tactics
1	Cantrips Known: – Shillelagh – Booming Blade – Elementalism – True Strike Spells Prepared: – Entangle – Faerie Fire – Shield – Healing Word – Thunderwave Primal Order: – Warden	Like some kind of arcane hierophant, we walk out as a Druid/Wizard hybrid. We’re a pretty basic Druid right now, except we also know True Strike and use it to fire a Light Crossbow, this being the highest DPR Cantrips can provide until level 11 and easily beating anything else we can do until Wrath of the Sea comes online. In melee, combine Booming Blade and Shillelagh. Take package B from Druid and Package B from Sage. Use the money to buy scale mail, a shield, a quarterstaff, the crossbow, and a book on Nature. During character creation, ask your DM if you can show up with a custom bedroll you’ve made using Survival instead of the standard one. Have it basically be a body sock (affiliate link) made of waterproof skins sewn together that’s as close to skin tight as possible. At every rest, get inside the body sock, then use Elementalism to summon 10 cups of water over the course of a minute while laying in the fetal position in your very tight body sock to submerge yourself. I have to say, that is the single dumbest paragraph I’ve written for this site, and those of you who’ve read all my one-off articles like Mage Hand and Contingency will understand what a high bar that is.
2	Wild Shape Wild Companion Spells Prepared: – Protection from Evil and Good	We’re not really here for animal combat, we’re here to spend those resources on wet auras. Wild Companion will soon start competing with Wrath of the Sea for resources, but we don’t have that yet. Summon all the owls. If you want to be a little more defensible and feel absolutely compelled to be an animal at this level, cast Protection from Evil and Good before wading into melee if it will do you any good against your current enemies.
3	Druid Subclass: Circle of the Sea Circle of the Sea Spells Wrath of the Sea Spells Prepared: – Summon Beast	We’re up in melee and would therefore both a) like a distraction and b) like to create a friend with Pack Tactics. Summon Beast neatly handles both tasks at once. Keep in mind that we can punt people straight up and away from us with Wrath of the Sea. 15 feet will cause them to take falling damage, upping your DPR and causing them to fall prone. Why do we care about Prone? Because that Shillelagh you’ve been recasting every 9 rounds when you’re in any situation that might lead to a fight will now let you Booming Blade them and walk away. They’ll make Opportunity Attacks against us at Disadvantage for being Prone, and we’ll have Advantage on the attack roll for the same reason. Plus we have Shield to help keep us safe. If you’re confident they’ll fail the save (maybe you’re fighting something that’s been Baned or hit with Mind Sliver), you can Booming Blade them instead and then punt them away at an angle so that they’re both prone and not next to you, forcing them to take the secondary damage from Booming Blade to so much as attack anyone. Of course, that only works if they fail the Con save. If not, Booming Blade still does a nice extra pile of damage if they move, and hopefully they attack our Beast instead of attacking us.
4	Feat: Inspiring Leader (Wis 17 -> 18) Spells Prepared: – Aid Cantrips Known: – Guidance	Putting a bunch of Temporary Hit Points on before you go wading into melee is a great idea, and your party will benefit greatly, too. Aid will further increase our survivability.
5	Spells Prepared: – Aura of Vitality – Revivify Wild Resurgence	We pay the Revivify tax and grab the spell that lets us burn one spell slot for 20d6 healing. You should never do this in combat, but it’s an incredible replacement for a Short Rest at nearly any level if the only thing the party is low on is health. Wild Resurgence is there in case we’re somehow having more fights than Wrath of the Sea charges. It’s also good for summoning Familiars to be extra targets for enemies. Every hit on a familiar is a hit that’s not on someone who can permanently die, and the familiars are valid targets for Inspiring Leader.
6	Aquatic Affinity Wild Shapes per Rest: 2 -> 3 Spell Prepared: – Any	Aquatic Affinity allows us another option for tactics: we can now safely attempt to punt someone sideways instead of up and then hit them with Ray of Frost if they fail, putting them 25 feet (10 feet of reach, 15 feet of push) away from us and with a reduced chance of making it back due to the speed penalty from Ray of Frost. This is nowhere near as much damage as the other options, but it’s substantially safer.
7	Spells Prepared: – Fire Shield – Summon Elemental Elemental Fury: – Potent Spellcasting	Disappointingly, Potent Spellcasting won’t work on Booming Blade because it’s not a Druid Cantrip. With that said, let’s check the DPR comparison: Assuming the target fails the Con save against Wrath of the Sea and lands next to you, you Booming Blade them with Advantage and walk away, so they’re forced to trigger the rider to move on their next turn: 42.06 and they get one prone Opportunity Attack against us and maybe get one Attack action if they have enough speed to get back into melee. Assuming the target fails the Con save and gets thrown horizontally so that you don’t take Disadvantage for attacking a Prone target at range: 27.05, and the target maybe gets one Attack action if they have enough speed to get back into melee. Both of those are strong assumptions, though, considering that Con is always the best save for monsters, as we called out above. If the target doesn’t fail the Con save, we’re looking at 15.5 vs just 9.5, or the difference between being over target DPR and only being halfway between low and target. That said, we pick up some Fire Shield to keep ourselves safe, and trade the spell we started preparing at level 6 for Summon Elemental to get Earth Elemental Spirits. With resistance to 2/3rds of the physical damage types, a higher AC than ours (when we’re not casting Shield), 2 attacks, and 50hp, they’re nearly as effective as a Barbarian of our level. We hope we can hide behind them.
8	ASI: Wis 18 -> 20 Spells Prepared: – Polymorph	Nothing stops us from turning on Wrath of the Sea and then turning into a T-Rex. Put that Prone Advantage to good use and enjoy the huge pile of THP that keeps us safe. I wouldn’t call this a primary tactic (I still think just upcasting Earth Elementals is better, especially as we scale past the range of usefulness of a T-Rex), but it’s a good thing to have in our back pocket.
9	Spells Prepared: – Greater Restoration – Wall of Fire	Yeeting people through Wall of Fire repeatedly is a hilarious way to make sure they either keep taking the damage to get back to you or they surrender.
10	Stormborn Spell Prepared: – Commune with Nature Cantrips Known: – Druidcraft	Nothing particularly interesting at this level except that we can fly all the time now. This does nearly nothing for our tactics since we want to be in melee anyway and have invested an Origin Feat, a General Feat, and a decent chunk of Con into being pretty sturdy for a Druid. It does mean that flying enemies won’t escape our shenanigans, though.
11	Spells Prepared: – Heal	The only combat healing worth casting that isn’t Healing Word to stabilize someone.
12	Feat: Rune Carver	Things are starting to hit harder and more often against our lack of defensive scaling. What do we do about that? Learn Armor of Agathys, of course, arguably the best defensive spell in the game for melee characters. The temporary hit points won’t stack with Inspiring Leader, but you can cast Armor of Agathys once you’re through Inspiring Leader’s THP if it’s not yet time for another Short Rest. We can also pick up the King rune for Command, easily one of the best low-level save-or-sucks for how well it scales.
13	Spells Known: – Reverse Gravity	It’s still one of the best area control spells in the game.
14	Oceanic Gift	Now you can put Wrath of the Sea on you and your Summoned Earth Elemental which previously had no use for its Bonus Action. This doubles our chances of getting the target to fail the save and doesn’t force someone else in your party who’s probably been optimizing their own Bonus Actions for 14 levels to suddenly have to think about your gift. Of course, they might just want the flight speed.
15	Spells Prepared: – Animal Shapes Improved Elemental Fury	As previously discussed, we’re largely built for melee combat. If we need the extra 300 feet of range from Improved Elemental Fury, something has gone horribly wrong.
16	Feat: Skulker (Dex 15 -> 16)	Slightly better AC and Blindsight so that we can have a friendly arcane caster put Darkness on our quarterstaff and run around bonking people with Advantage all the time. If you don’t have such a willing friend/Simulacrum/hired underling who will follow you around doing this, at this level, we have access to enough resources like spells and money that we can feasibly just ask the DM what it would take to craft an item that had Darkness on it permanently. Wish becomes available at next level, and many campaigns will have long since left the rails.
17	Wild Shapes per Rest 3 -> 4 Spells Prepared: – Shapechange	Sometimes, you just need to be a Death Slaad surrounded by an aura of pounding waves.
18	Spells Prepared: – Foresight	This does nothing to change our tactics, but Advantage on all of our attacks and Disadvantage on attacks against us makes everything that we’re already doing much safer.
19	Spells Prepared: – True Resurrection Epic Boon: Boon of the Night Spirit (Wis 20 -> 21)	Now that Darkness trick gives you Resistance to nearly all damage, too. Put the stat point in Wisdom in case you ever get another Boon.
20	Spells Prepared: – Sunburst Archdruid	With a guarantee that we’ll have one Wild Shape use at the beginning of any fight, it’s now safe to spend our regular uses on other things like Wild Companion. We might still prefer to start Wrath of the Sea before going into combat, but now we can do that, walk into combat with 0 uses, and walk out with 1.