Druids

>>49805827
They should all be banned and arrested. Nothing but a bunch of rebellious ring leaders and practitioners of human sacrifice who don't deserve a place in my empire.

>>49805827
Their powers are cool but it can be difficult to come up with reasons why they'd care to get involved with adventures that don't directly or indirectly involve sacred groves being threatened and whatnot.

Eh, never really got interested in the concept.

>>49805967

Also this.

>>49805872
>ring leaders
heh

>>49805967
Yeah, Druids seem to me not to be the adventuring type, Don't they have bigger responsibilities at home doing druid stuff, Burning criminals in effigies or being all mysterious.

I think a disgraced Druid could work, he is no longer welcome back home.

>>49805872
Druids are good Christian men in a long tradition of British Christianity extending all the way back to Joseph of Arimathea who witnessed the sacrifice of Jesus on the True Cross and caught his blood in the Holy Grail.

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>>49806161
>Druids are good Christian men
That doesn't help them.

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I love Druids mechanically, but hate them thematically. If I could play an arcane themed Mage with the abilities of a Druid, I would play it all the time. A decent mix of attack, defense, and healing magic while overcoming physical weakness with transformations. But to do that normally I have to hug trees, maintain the "balance" of nature, slum about in the wilderness, and generally be an uncivilized lice-ridden hippy. Divine magic in general gives me a bad taste in my mouth even without the threat of getting your power cut off for offending some esoteric entity (DM included).

>>49806570

I Think Animistic belief systems fit druids well, studying nature to learn how to interact with the spirits within it. But a druid may still have any of the selfish motivations of any human. And no reason they necessarily have to be uncivilized.

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>>49805827
I like Druids as hardcore motherfuckers who respect and protect the natural cycle.

And if that means culling a populous species, eating animals to survive, or fighting some villagers, that's what they're going to fucking do.

Not these namby pamby fucking gardeners and weather witches.

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>>49806694
Well too bad my group is the super-traditional, trope adhering, Forgotten Realms wanking type. The closest I got to the Druid-in-all-but-theme character was a Psion and only after convincing the DM that psionics wouldn't destroy his campaign.

>>49805827
They are the reason no one ever go into the woods in my setting. Even elves.

Motherfuckers behave like they are apex predators who can control weather and environment. And they are, and they can.

Fuck druids.

Do you guys think the idea of a villain druid is good? Basically i have a druid who dispises humanity to its fullest and wants to destroy humanity and its structuer for >muh chaos

What I like is the idea of a magical enforcer of the natural order of things struggling to keep life and death working in a universe where magic, eldricht gribblies and bullshit of all kinds can cock up the ever important way-of-things.
That means There can and in fact SHOULD be druids who are all about rot, detriovores, scavengers and carrion eaters.

What I DISLIKE Is the boring bog-standard druid. You know the kind.
"My name is falathalaralethenriyelian Treehumper and I fight for NATURE! and by nature I mean anything that has four legs, fur, is cute and also treeeeeees!"

>>49805967
>DMing a new campaign
>Me: "ok I thought it would be cool if you guys played a team of treasure hunters, that gives us a flexible hook for a bunch of different adventures"
>One player makes a druid
>"Well, she's not really interested in money so..."

>>49806951
>Even elves
What about Elf druids?

This really helped me step up my druid game. But it makes them harder to be viable PC's

http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/7-myths-everyone-believes-about-druids.html

I think you can solve a lot of the motivational issues by just stapling on historical stuff, right?

You guys are all talking about druids not having much reason to adventure but if you roll into Celtic mythology, druids are priests and prophets and judges and knowledge-seekers and questers and tutors and warriors. They're not inactive in the legends they represent.

Cathbad is a druid, but he's also the leader of a band of warriors and tries to force a royal marriage for himself. Bodhmall is a druid, but she's also the aunt of Finn MacCool and a great warrior and with her companion Liath Luachra she steals him away as an infant and protects him. Mug Ruith and his daughter Tlachtga are druids but they're also engaged on a world-spanning quest for knowledge and are politically involved; Mug Ruith fights a contest of magic to claim some land for himself. Be Chuille is a druid who in a very RPG-ish quest joins up with a warrior and two bards to defeat an evil witch.

I think the main thing is the political dimension, right? D&D encourages a kind of materially separatist druid, almost like a Buddhist belief, but even in the mythology (to say nothing of the reality) they can be venal and self-interested and very politically motivated. I think your druid should definitely have a different moral compass to more conventional party members, but not one that's completely removed from life.

>Be Druid
>Live in a house in the woods
>Eat fruit and hunt game
>Be wise in the lore of the forest, know its magical denizens
>Give shelter to travelers
>Join the witches to call upon the old gods every new moon
>Smoke a pipe, drink beer, have a fat wife

>Be Druid
>Be elf
>Live in a city in a King's household
>Dress in fine clothes and jewelry
>Advise the nobility on local ecosystems, manage hunting/fishing licensees, be Minister of Agriculture

>Be Druid
>Be naked man covered in mud and leaves
>Live the life of a bear and a hawk and a carp for so long I forget if I was born bear, or hawk, or carp, or man.
>Sleep in caves and holes in the earth, eat berries, and shit in the woods
>Scare away travelers who dare enter the forest.
>Go on a grand adventure when your old friend, a powerful Wizard comes to you seeking your aid against unnatural forces rising in the Badlands.

There's ways of making them fun.

>>49808254
I mean, the Gygaxian druid who has to kill his immediate superior in a fucking antler-wielding duel or whatever is waaay better for games than some guy who sits on a rock, pets it, and says why adventure when this nice rock is here right?

The reason druids have a separate language is because historically it was supposed to be an oral tradition: druids didn't write things down, they memorized a religious, social and legal canon over decades. Historically, you learn to be a druid to serve in a position of power and authority for your people, who venerate gods of nature. You arbitrate for them and you arbitrate nature for them through religious rituals and sacrifices. Your sole purpose isn't to prevent people burning down trees.

>>49805827
The main class that absolutely no one has any clue how to roleplay in the slightest

No longer allowed at my table as a consequence.

Regardless of origin or motive all my druids inevitably work on developing metal eating virus because fuck the civilized world.

>>49809296
>It eats the iron in their blood

>>49807790
I mean there's more than one kind of treasure. And maybe she wants to buy land back from the kingdom to expand her sacred grove-that costs money. Or a cruel noble has tricked her OUT of her land-she needs money to buy it back. Or she's looking for lore of her order's past, secrets to increase her power and communion with the primal spirits, or her mentor demands she travel the world to test herself before she settle down.

Or maybe a personal reason like revenge or something to tie her to these wandering mercenaries.

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>>49808281
The third one is the best one.

>>49809296
>Developing an iron-eating virus that is likely to just eat them instead.
>Not breeding an army of rust monsters.
Full plebian.

>>49805967
I played a NE pseudo-hedonist, erotist and alcoholic druid who was just "following his istincts and nature, man", and started adventuring to get more money to support his lifestyle.
He was a huge dick but took his druidic vows seriously, expecially since they gave him the chance to punch peasants in the gut for every "offense to nature". His animal companion was a huge slug.
Also, fuck "le ebin vegan druid" meme. Druids should stab deers and eat them as much as they want. Rules of nature, you know.

>>49806763
This. Being one with the nature is not the same as being a lame-ass hippes. Nature is many things, but it's not particularly nice.
As maintainers in balance in nature, it would be the duty of druids to also do things like light controlled forest fires to clear ground for new growth, or cull the deer population because the amount of wilves has been reduced due to hunting (or just cull the villagers who've been hunting your wolves: the whole mess is their fault anyway). They're like game wardens that can turn into bears and maul the fuck out of you.

As a servant of nature, a druid also should not be bound by conventional morality and worldview. Those are purely human diversions, and not in them his honour dwells. Individual life is meaningless in nature, and instead you should look at the big picture over a large time scale. Plants and animals are born and die, but the forest remains. Small changes in environment may have huge effects over a time scale of thousands of years. Even a good druid would probably be very aloof by standars of most people, as things like material wealth and accomplishments, or the deaths of individual people, are irrelevant details to him.

I dislike the idea of messing concepts of "ecoterrorist grandpa living in the woods" with "priest of celtic polytheism" together.
Both are OK, but somewhat joining them is just another example of D&D stealing words and twisting their meanings.
Tolkien never felt urge to call Radagast the Brown a "druid". Because this wouldn't make sense, really, and doesn't make in modern fantasy either. Same basically goes for Paladin, Barbarian, Longsword and fuckton of other words Gygax/Monte/etc got wrong

>>49805967
The problem with the Druids is that Druid as an Adventurer is either:
1. Get experience
2. Farsight
Now, 90% of adventurers in D&D will be type 1, so that includes Druid.
But occasionally somebody will have a backstory where its like "you want to do this thing", and most of it is extremely shortsighted.

For the Druid, where the short term goal is basically living in communion with The Grove, you need farsight, and farsight is hard.

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I've wanted to try a druid for awhile, but I consistently end up with clerics instead, because supergods are cool.

>>49809484
>enlisting the aid of trustworthy wizard comrade to awaken large numbers of rust monsters, and shepherd them towards civilized living
>create a race of conquering metal-eaters

Glorious

>>49809966
I mean the wolves who got killed by peasents were probably weak and slow anyway. Better for the pack in the long term.

Seriously stop killing the townsfolk Farlyandyn they'll burn our whole damn grove down.

>>49810655

Maybe develop a spell at summons a swam of magical rust locusts?

>>49810217
"Something happened with the Grove. I need to fix that shit."

There you go, short term goal.

>>49805827
I like them, though I'm a Wildlife Biology/Management major, so I have a bias.
I just wish they didn't have alignment restrictions in 3.PF. I'd love to play an LG Druid based off of Aldo Leopold, Gifford Pinchot, C. Hart Merriam, or Frederic Clements.

Also, quick reminder for all Americans in the thread, 13% of all your spending on Guns, Ammunition, and similar hunting supplies, as well as most all of the expense of hunting liscenses, goes to your state's wildlife fun.

Protect the wilderness, buy more bullets. Be a /k/onservationist

>>49806570
>I want to have themes of nature and Animalism
>Without anything to do with nature or Animalism

Calm down there mr fedora.

>>49810937
>Buy ammunition to support conservation
>Shoot Fascists to protect environmental regulatory law

The perfect combination!

>>49810805
>Not ruling the villages and towns of the region under your oaken fist
>Bounty and prosperity as you live in your great mortarless tower.
>Men and Beast bow before you.
>Call a Wild Hunt on your political enemies

It's like you don't want to be a Poet-King.

>>49810969
>removing laws in Fascism

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>>49810937
Of course I forget my pic

>>49810982
You clearly haven't met our Fascists. They're all about moneymaking, and blame the "Climate Change Myth" on the Yellow Peril, so naturally they're not down with protecting fuzzy bears and shit.

They only understand force, and thus the only recourse of the righteous will be violence.

It is known.

>>49810999
>everyone I don't like is a Fascist

I actually hope whatever country you're in actually becomes a Fascist state and puts one behind your ear at 3 in the morning.

I dislike that they're so often played as tree hugging hippies instead of cold hearted survival of the fittest types who sit down with their lion friends and eat the entrails of a recently killed antelope. Basically too much 'mother nature' crap and not enough 'oh god that bear is eating my kidneys'

>>49810969
Well, most of the modern wildlife conservatory regulation laws we have this day, especially the Lacy Act, we're proposed by hunters who were worried about the loss of wildlife due to people coming from cities to shoot up the forest and sell pigeon meat and feathers at markets in NY or Baltimore. Plus most people who go I to Wildlife and Conservation fields tend to have hunter/outdoorsy backgrounds, especially since the hippies tend to get wrung out hard by the programs telling them everything they believed was actually wrong.
I love watching hippies get booty bothered when a Fire Ecologist tells and explains to them how the modern ecosystem of NA and Australia arose due to humans burning and killing everything in the path since the end of the last glaciation, and that natives are one of the most annoying things to deal with when managing species in Madagascar. You can just see the granola leak from their ears in fury.

>>49810999
Fuck bears, they're assholes. What's really need is to protect and reintroduce wolves while culling coyotes back to their natural ranges.
Coyotes should not be in NYC and Chicago

A player in an upcoming campaign is going to be playing a very interesting Druid.
Basically he was playing as a child, and was stung all over by a bunch of bees because he fucked with their nest or something. I can't remember all the details, it's his backstory.
Anyways, he views this as some kind of curse from nature, and becomes a druid mostly out of defense. His paranoia behind to drive him just a little crazy, but not overly so. His goal as a druid is to protect people from nature, and warn them of its dangers. One of his pass times is to prepare Animal Messenger, grab a rodent or a bird, and shout "DO NOT FUCK WITH ME" at it, and release it into the wild, as a warning to not fuck with nature.

>>49811051
I kind of want to hear more about your training. It gives me an idea for a nature priest schism to use in a campaign. And yeah a lot of hunters get a bad rep because of the assholes-I don't hunt but most of you guys give plenty back.

>>49811154
That is an awesome concept.

>>49811032
The two don't have to be seen in opposition either.

>>49806951
Same for my setting. My players learned fairly early on that they can't just walk into any old forest and stay doing whatever they want (like setting it on fire). Druids aren't aggressive unless provoked, and messing with their forest certainly provokes them.
And on the note of it being difficult to come up for adventuring reasons for druids, in my setting it is common for young druids to take a pilgrimage to learn about the forces of nature outside of their forest. This may include visiting other tribes, or just hitting up a bunch of local ecosystems. Druids want to know about every facet of nature like a wizard wants to know about magic or a cleric their god.
Druids are rarely vegetarian treehuggers either. They have a great respect for nature, but they understand their place in it, and that means being near the top of the food chain. They are as likely to shun meat eating as a pack of wolves is.

>>49811424
I'm curious to know more about this, since I have a similar thing in my home setting.

>>49811689
What specifically? The pilgrimage or the territorial nature of druids? Or just my druids in general?

>>49811184
>I kind of want to hear more about your training
I'm still an undergrad, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. Suffice to say it's generally around 5 years of college study, involving hands in field analysis and capture techniques, waking up before dawn to setup nets and traps to band and tag birds and small mammals, learning basic historical policy and conservation practice, learning field experimental design and how to do and write research proposals, learning about the available literature, learning how to memorize certain plants and animals, and knowing the basics if population dynamics and the importance of maintaing healthy predator populations and the like. Also, anyway where I'm at, it's required you spend a whole semester in a field internship getting practical experience in an ecological field, like deer management or similar.

The training isn't completely homogeneous. What you get will depend greatly on where you live since education will be geared more towards what's best for the local ecosystems of your state, such as how here in Texas I have to learn Rangeland Ecology and Fire Ecology and most of the species we focus on tend to be prairie and Savannah adapted.

After-hours get your undergrad, it's expected that you go for a master's study, often apprenticing yourself to an older and more experienced ecologist, usually a university professor, and then after you get your Masters you either work for a Park, become a Ranger, get a job as a private land manager, or work for a University and gradually get your PhD.

Also, it's expected that you eventually specialize in particular sub field and, even as a professor, you still actively work on some ecological project, like how my Analysis professor works of tracking Sand hill Crane populations as they travel between Texas and Siberia.
>1/2

>>49811811
>2/2
It's a field that emphasises having a good grasp of macrosystems, knowing when to ask questions and how to apply adaptive management, and learning how to observe patterns in nature and how to notice and correct problems. Plus, pending on your training and specialization, you can really take that training and go most anywhere in the world with it. If you love to travel, explore and learn about new places, and experience nature firsthand while also being able to observe your surroundings with a subconscious scientific scan feature, this is a good field.
You also learn that the answer to everything is usually "it depends", and that you should usually change your strategies actively as nature and your surroundings change. Nature isn't static, and neither should you be.

It should also be noted that, if you pursue it, most universities lump you in with the Agri-Science deparments, often as a specialization of Natural Resource Management, and most of your colleagues will be some flavor of redneck

>>49811841
That's really interesting, anon. I like my chosen field of study, but, if I had to pick an alternative, I feel like I'd really enjoy ecology and the like.

>>49811880
>I like my chosen field of study,
I'm curious as to what it is.

>>49811742
The territorial nature, and how the large number of druids effects nomadic/tribal people's in the wild.

>>49811926
It's English and Professional Communication. It's writing that doesn't require creativity or much skill at all, since it's pretty formulaic (not as formulaic as Technical Communication, but pretty close). I enjoy it, but pretty much everyone else finds it to be boring.

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>>49805827

It'll be cool if there were more types of druids besides "forest dude". I wanna sea a type of druid that is basically a beach hobo, or someone who lives underground, or in a giant bug nest, or even a volcanic area.

>>49812240
5th edition DnD added different druid circles for different environment (forest, fields, sea, mountains, etc.), although they only really differ for getting a few different spells.

>>49812259

That's still pretty cool, but I want some druids that might work well both mechanically and thematically in stranger environments. I'd ask my dm if I could modify and replace some spells, but for me most part he likes to stick by the rules and only allows flexibility if he's sure there won't be mechanical or balancing issues.

>tfw can't be a beekeeper druid that can transform into a swarm of bees

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I've always disliked the focus on shapeshifting. I want to commune with nature and sling around nature spells, not slap people with bear paws. I wish there were a shapeshifter class and a druid class.

>>49812282
You could probably do a whole homebrew "supplement" for different druid types, by tuning the different environment choises into full-blown druid circles (ie. specialisations). I did that for the sea when I wrote an aquatic-themed homebrew thing, although that was pretty simple (mostly I gave them bonus to swim speed and letting them to transform into higher CR aquatic creatures. Effectively it was a more specialized version of the shapeshifting-focused druid circle).

>>49812240
I played a Drow druid once. Came to the surface for shits and giggles, ignores all the bigots. I only wildshaped him into Underdark creatures. Underdark? Whatever it's called. Instead of being all about trees he was super into stone and minerals. I convinced my gm to give me Speak with Stone and gemcutting proficiency instead of an instrument.

>>49812292
Such a cute couple.
I wonder how they met.

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>>49812404

That's hella rad. See, that's a cool idea. It'd be cool to have some sort of half-orc that never felt like he was fiting into society going to live on a beach and becoming proficient in druid abilities and then living inside some sort of huge Portuguese man-o-war with other gross and undesireable creatures like blobfish.

>>49811967
The territorial nature varies from tribe to tribe. Entering a forest controlled by druids typically won't lead to combat, most will just tell you to leave since they're pretty untrusting of outsiders. Some may welcome you and just keep a close eye on you. Doing anything to upset the balance they are trying to maintain (burning a tree or hunting the forest creatures) will usually lead to being forcibly removed or outright attacked. I try to help players understand that the druids need to be respected and not feared. If you show them respect and keep your distance then they won't bother you. Druids are pretty much snakes.

The other tribal cultures typically don't interact with the druids too much. There really aren't that many druids. Like 5 big tribes on the whole continent, with small family groups of druids occasionally living outside of tribal units.

Perfect example of why dnd's classes are shit.

Druids are just mages who dont bathe. Should be a subclass at best. 70% of the character concept comes lumped in mandatorily with the class.

Same way that barbarians are warriors who dont wear shirts and bards are rogues with unusually high sex drives.

>>49805827

Finnicky, gimmicky, terrible as PCs. Inevitably one will engage in bestiality.

They do, however, make great villains.

>>49812474
I don't think druids and wizards, as defined in DnD have all that much in common aside from using magic and often having long beards. Druids have more in common with clerics (both use divine magic, but druids worship nature while clerics worship a god). You could feasibly do them as a variant cleric dedicated to a nature god, though. There already is a cleric domain like that, and druids are just taking the same thing a bit further. Mechanically, a life/nature domain cleric that loses ability to wear metal armour but gains wildshape would be a decent replication of the druid class.

>>49812657
They are magic users. They are mages.

Clerics too.

The only difference between a cleric, wizard and a druid (and warlock and sorcerer and maybe a few others) is some fluff shit, how they can access their spells and what spells they get.

It's literally just shit that would work as class specialisation options.

>>49806570
Sort of the same, I like their skills but I'm not a huge fan of the priest of nature aspect.

I just like the idea of a character class that can change form into animals or monsters and change their stats around while having access to the skills and abilities of said monster.

Seems like it would be fun to take on a flying form, aquatic form, fire breathing form etc. in a melee type class. But you have to be super nature loving neo hippy caster that can lose powers if you dare use a straight sword or pick up a shield.

>>49812474
This is ending with how we should all be playing GURPS isn't it

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Great concept, but in no way should be a class. No need for a "nature priest" class when you can just be a Priest and take the Nature/Wilderness/Beasts path and the Animal Companion feat.

>>49807083
Might work. You might also put a kneejerk rebels against this guy, some sect of druids claiming humanity and civilisation as continuation of nature, a new level, an aromorphosis, like dwelling on land was a new level for fish

>>49812473
Thank you, I think I'll use pieces of this.
In my setting there is a particular human subrace that respects and reveres their ancestry, and rejects living in cities. They have a bad reputation for being raiders, but there's are outliers. Basically, this subrace would inevitably end up leaving a mark on the land around them, and I wasn't sure how I wanted the increased Druid presence in my setting to effect them. Whether they would be considered a part of the land, as a wolf eating it's prey or a giant toppling a tree, or if there would be tension there, or an open rivalry.

>>49812703
>The only difference is everything else
okay

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>>49812847
Which comes back to what these guys said

>>49812726
>>49812292
>>49812474

Just make a nature Cleric subtype that does the commune with animals, plant magic casting stuff. And a shapeshifting bear warrior types for the melee lovers.

>>49813075
The only difference is three things.

One of which isn't mechanical.

>>49807083
"Survival of the fittest" mentality is also a good way to go. They don't so much hate humanity than believe that civilization is making humanity weak by allowing the unfit to survive and breed. All the things that allow for such weakness should be torn down, and let humanity claw its way back to its former position. Most people would die, but the survivors would rebuild humanity stronger than before, as all the weak elements have been purged.

>>49805827
They are only good if they're warforged.

I love the thematic flavor and the mechanics of 3.5s druid when compared to other classes but I think as many do that there's much more potential to the class than "the hippie". I guess it's sort of a love-hate relationship because the 3.5 class is op as fuck, but it's really hard to not be op and retain the whole "mage that's a literal force of nature" feel, so that's a double edged elven thinblade.

In the current game I'm running, there's a high level Druid NPC helping out (it's an almost-epic level campaign currently.) He began as sort of a talking head because the last game centered very heavily around the planet itself as a force-of-nature villain. Now they're on a new planet and he's becoming a lifeline of sorts, surveying and scouting to warn of new dangers. Plus the group is about to enter a meat jungle populated by druid nagas that have been corrupting everything with a twisted form of druidic blood magic, so that will be fun.

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>>49805827
The furfag class, they always magical realm up my games.

>>49806763
The natural cycle can't be harmed. If a species overpopulates, it brings about it's own demise. The cycle will always stabilize, you just might be dead whenbit does. There is no need for druids; their existence is an interference if anything

>>49805827
I like being a nature priest, but I don't like turning into animals. I want to be swamp thing, not animal man.

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>>49805827
They're a little more interesting for me now since Fey Warlocks are a thing - there can be more of a focus on the natural vs. the unnatural in terms of nature itself.

But when I've seen them played, they're pretty much hippy clerics or less snooty wizards. And it's frustrating how they focus so much on plants, rather than anything else to do with nature. Why not sling rocks around? Why not control the weather?

>>49817164
>focus on plants
>primary class feature is turning into animals
>spells are largely about throwing around the elements
U wot m8

>>49805827
As a dedicated Celtfag in my teenage years, I was very quickly miffed at the historically inaccurate portrayal of Druids in fantasy, although I later would come to understand that "These guys are basically scholars but they have no combat quality of their own apart from that" is a very shitty premise for a player class in systems that appeal to murderhoboism (i.e. The vast and uncontested majority of tabletop players), so I came to at least accept that they could become shapeshifting spellcasters. Considering ancient Celts were just as animistically inspired as any culture back then, magically assuming the shapes of beasts actually sounds pretty fitting to what's essentially a religious figure of a pre-christian culture.

But always will fucking upset me is that Druids are supposed to be this elusive third party of eternally passive hippies whose neutrality is only surpassed by their sheer faggotry.

We recently ran into a goblin druid in a swamp. He was trying to breed giant murderslugs to get back at the tribe that drove him out, and we ended up allying with him.

>>49805827
FORGIVE ME FOR I HAVE FORGOTTEN what is a druid

>>49817317
>"These guys are basically scholars but they have no combat quality of their own apart from that"
But that's complete bullshit.

>>49817317
So how would you tastefully portray a Druid according to their historic roots?

>>49817568
naked wizards that eat people

>>49817568
It's weird because most of the evidence we have about druids come from the Romans, so I wouldn't particularly trust it.

>>49805967
The Druid class was originally an example of custom Priests tailored to a specific mythos.
It's no harder to explain why a Druid would go adventuring than it is to explain any other adventurer Priest.
Though in all fairness, explaining even that can take some serious ass-pulling.

>>49817745
>God says so
>worried about the party's spiritual health, considering what they do and go up against
>getting paid a shit-ton to be a healer, which is more profitable if more risky than caring for a backwoods parish

And my personal favorite, that can work for just about any character ever:

>Wanderlust

Druid necromancer, could it work?

>>49819178
Golgari rot farmers mate.

>>49805827

I like how flexible they are as a concept. They can be anything from Treebeard-esque wise old men in the woods, to Saint Francis, to Beastmaster, to old Not!Celtic wood-wizards, to evil demon-worshiping fantasy pagans.

I can't even figure out which of those I like the most.

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I'm a real big fan of the monk/Druid hybrid. That needs to be made into a class if people hate Druids being the animal shifter types. Just make a 72 transformations monk a la Son Wukong and go with that already.

>>49817052
Humankind and Magic are fantastic at upsetting the natural order.

>>49810639
Is this someone's mythology or someone's fetish art?

>A vengeful woodsman studies Druidism to take the form a of a bear and terrorizes a small village
>A rogue druid teaches the secrets of Wild Shape to a bandit clan
:>The Green Knight

>>49820790
http://molgh.tumblr.com/

>>49821086
>http://molgh.tumblr.com/
Jesus Christ

>>49806763
I'd prefer a druid who understands that nature is unbalanced and competitive. If a species is too successful and out competes similar animals, he applauds it. If an invasive species starts to spread, he encourages it. If humans cut down a forest, he does nothing but wait for the wild to push back.

>>49821086
God. I love how fucked up tumblr can be sometimes.

>>49821115
It's a art, anon.

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>>49821086
I don't...HATE it.

But I'm pretty sure I don't like it.

>>49821206
I mean, I guess.

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>>49821086

Druids run the gauntlet in my setting
Some are stoic protectors of their forest, they found nature magic through trial and pain living in the wilderness
Some communicate with the forces through hallucinogens and are essentially dirty hippies, communing with nature stoned off their ass half the time.
Some druids live in large societies in the mega forest of the realm, they are well organized and then double themselves with maintaining the balance of nature in the world. Actively trying to impede the progress of technology due to visions of what industrialization would do to the planet.
I fucking love druids.

I don't really get the Druid's aversion to metal armor when they can wield metal weapons. Metal is a naturally occurring resource dug up from the earth. It's not like plastic or something. Numerous trace metals are essential to life too.

>>49821701
Extracting metal from the surrounding rock and ore, and refining it, is a process that inevitably negatively impacts "nature". It burns fuel, it leaves a carbon footprint, and mines marr the earth.

>>49821701
Ore is a natural substance, once it's been processed it's tied to Gaia have been severed, they draw their power from being near nature.

>>49821722
>>49821732
Yeah, I would be absolutely fine with this reasoning if it was kept consistent and druids were forbidden from using metal weapons as well as armor.

>>49821837
I wouldn't say it's forbidden or even taboo, it just fucks with them. Everything processed or unnatural takes them a step away from their connection with nature. Most weapons have wooden handles, it requires direct skin contact.
But as always the saying goes
>Depends on the setting
My druids just find processed shit taboo, they fear industrialization like it's nature's apocalypse and few smelting as one of the signs of it.

>>49821837
Well, when I play Druids I prefer a very traditional kind of playstyle. I don't even let him carry coins, and if non-metal armor has any studs or buckles I also don't wear that.

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>>49805827
I've done a BSc in biology, and my go-to archetype used to be a druid-y character. Druids have something for everyone! Traditionalist vs hedonist, liberal-minded vs more conservative in outlook, all the different takes on 'naturalist' characters throughout history and fiction etc.
I loved the conflict between the drive to punish unsustainability now, when nascent industrial societies are happy and growing, or later when they've spiralled out of control like a cancer?
Likes:
- exploring what exactly the 'natural' order is. Many different people have many different ideas about what this is heh.
- GoT wargs. Rather well written, to fantasize about the recorded experiences of an animal without language.
- The Ethik Nôl from Pillars of Eternity (fanatic collectivists who channel voluntary self-sacrifice into a physical item for the protection of the whole). I didn't really love the game overall, but it had some fantastic writing and worldbuilding.

Dislikes:
>hug the trees to life
>pacifistic druids
>U kill tree I kill you, 'snap one bone for every twig broken' etcetc

>>49807898
had a good read, thanks anon.

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>>49822249
posting more screenshots from Ethik Nol

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>>49822264

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>>49822274

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>>49822287

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>>49822298
and done.

>>49821891
>I wouldn't say it's forbidden or even taboo
Well the game does

>>49822249
>'snap one bone for every twig broken
That's not a druid thing, that's an MtG elves "get the fuck out of our forest" thing.

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>>49821086

>>49821690
>Druids run the gauntlet in my setting
>run the gauntlet

I think you mean "run the gamut", anon, which means any and all possible forms of a thing.

To "run the gauntlet" is a trial of sorts where a person has to run down a line with people on both sides beating them mercilessly along the way. The person might survive or might not.

I'm not usually a grammar Nazi or anything but it's not a terribly common phrase so wasn't sure if that was what you meant to write or an autocorrect.

>>49812703
>They all use magic
>Theyre all the same
You must be fun at the table

>>49813183
This is an interesting campaign idea. Every thousand years a druid society wages jihad against everyone. Only the groups who defend themselves well enough are left, all the weak are destroyed. For the campaign it's time for another purge. There could be a couple games played from this scenario.
-Stop the purge.
-Destroy the druid coven.
-Prepare defenses.
-Unite kingdoms against this threat.

There are interesting options.