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The 14th level Circle of Wildfire ability reads:

If the spirit is within 120 feet of you when you are reduced to 0 hit points and thereby fall unconscious, you can cause the spirit to drop to 0 hit points. You then regain half your hit points and immediately rise to your feet.

Does the Druid actually fall unconscious first, or does triggering Blazing Revival prevent that?

If the Druid does fall unconscious first, that means they lose concentration on any active spell, drop anything they were holding, and potentially shift out of wild shape (if they were wild shaping while they had the spirit active)

In our last play session we played it as preventing the druid from actually falling unconscious because that was more fun (and kept a Wall of Thorns in front of an enemy Gate spell that had giants running through it active), but I didn't see any existing discussion about this class feature and thought it was worth discussion. Maybe this is best handled as Rule 0 / DM discretion?

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The rules are pretty clear here. The trigger is "when you are reduced to 0 hit points and thereby fall unconscious." Therefore, in order for the ability to fire the druid must have fallen unconscious.

Further in the ability, where it states that you "rise to your feet" backs this up. If you hadn't fallen unconscious, you wouldn't be on the ground.

If they had wanted to avoid unconsciousness entirely, they would have needed to add the word "instead" to the ability, instead of "you then...".

All effects of falling unconscious (notably losing concentration) would apply, if only briefly.

That said, there's nothing wrong with the DM bending the rules in favor of the players if it makes the game more fun.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ What is not clear to me is that if you are unconscious, how "you can cause the spirit to drop to 0 hit points"? \$\endgroup\$
    – Eddymage
    Jun 7 at 17:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Eddymage ✧˖°.*Magic*✧˖°. Really though, this may be one of the only cases where a specific case overrides something in the unconscious condition. \$\endgroup\$
    – TheLittlePeace
    Jun 7 at 17:57
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Eddymage You can because the ability says right there, ahem, “you can”. \$\endgroup\$
    – Thomas Markov
    Jun 7 at 18:02
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Eddymage: That's a good point. It might be a "you can" from the player's perspective. In-world, in the narrative, it might be the wildfire spirit deciding to sacrifice the rest of its HP / duration to revive its master, or it's magic. But the rules explicitly hand this decision to the player, unlike when the druid is incapacitated in general or at lower leves: If you are incapacitated, the spirit can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge. - that leaves it up to the DM how the spirit chooses an action; they could still delegate it to the player so their turn is less boring. \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Cordes
    Jun 8 at 1:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Eddymage An unconscious character can also do ("real") things when targeted by the Dream spell. \$\endgroup\$
    – aschepler
    Jun 8 at 14:02

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