Druid Circle: Circle of the Shell
For being totally awesome and helping on this week's D&D Hermit's Guide to Cypher System by making the time for an interview to share her thoughts, today's homebrew goes to Darcy Ross (@DarcyLRoss). Darcy's love of snails is notorious and seemed perfect for a new Druid Circle! The artwork you see here, was done by my awesome wife and ally of the Mage College, Kannah Casler (@knnhcslr) as an additional thank you to Darcy. You can find the PDF down below. Without further ado, the Circle of the Shell!
Circle of the Shell
Some druidic circles study and learn from the mightiest creatures in the animal kingdom, but others find greater wisdom in the smallest and simplest creatures. Druids of the Circle of the Shell are no different. Through their fascination of meekness of mollusks, they bend their magic to create brilliant defenses that snails would be proud of.
Shell Defense
At 2nd level, you may use a bonus action to create a shell of force to protect yourself, mimicking a snail’s primary defense. While you maintain concentration on this shell, as though you were concentrating on a spell, you gain a +4 bonus to your AC and your speed is reduced by half. While your shell is active, at the start of your turn, you may reduce your movement speed to 0 to gain an additional +2 to your AC and resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage until the start of your next turn. You may also use this feature while you are using Wild Shape.
Molluskan Movement
At 6th level, you incorporate the benefits of a snail’s method sticky locomotion into your magic. When your shell defense is active, you gain the benefit of the spider climb spell.
Additionally, until the start of your next turn, if a creature enters a space that you moved through on your turn, it must make a Dexterity saving throw, on a failure it is restrained until the start of your next turn. On a successful saving throw, that space counts as difficult terrain until the end of its turn.
Retributive Gypsobelum
Though you may blush to explain it, you have created a new defense based on a snail’s courting habits. At 10th level, when a creature hits you with a melee attack, you may expend a spell slot as a reaction to deal the attacking creature 2d4 piercing damage + an additional 1d4 for every spell slot above 1st-level. That creature then must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or charmed by you for a minute.
At the end of each of its turns it may repeat its Wisdom saving throw, ending this effect on a successful save.
Antimagic Shell
At 14th level, the shell you project becomes impervious to magic like that of the magnificent flail snail. While you concentrate on your shell, you have advantage on saving throws against spells, and any creature making a spell attack against you has disadvantage on the attack roll. If you succeed on your saving throw against a spell or a spell attack misses you, an additional effect might occur, as determined by rolling a d6:
1-2. If the spell affects an area or has multiple targets, it fails and has no effect. If the spell targets only you, it has no effect on you and is reflected back at the caster, using the spell slot level, spell save DC, attack bonus, and spellcasting ability of the caster.
3-4. No additional effect.
5-6. Your shell converts some of the spell's energy into a burst of destructive force. Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you must make a Constitution saving throw against, taking 1d6 force damage per level of the spell on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.