Recyclable
Druids have an image problem. Sure you can run ’em in a thousand-and-one different ways, same as any class. But if you tell your table you’re bringing a druid, they’re going to assume it’s a tree-hugging hippy. We’ll talking full-on crunchy granola. Birkenstocks in the inventory. A single tear rolls down their cheek when you have to fight bears or dire water buffalo or whatever. And in my mind, this makes an excellent opportunity for subversion.
Happily, this kind of thing tends to be supported already. We’re talking Circle of Spores. We’re talking Blight Druids. We’re talking rot and decay and mushrooms growing out of skulls. And if you want to run with the whole death-is-a-part-of-life theme, one of my favorite shticks is the Darwinian druid.
This was one of Laurel’s characters back in the day, and I remain very much a fan. A cold-hearted desert elf, the druid in question was all about survival of the fittest. And that made quest hooks particularly hard on the DM of that campaign.
“As you scout ahead in eagle form, you spot a merchant caravan on the road. You also spot the bandits about to ambush them.”
“Do the merchants look capable of defending themselves?”
“It will be a bloodbath.”
“Then the weak will perish, and the desert will feed upon their blood.”
Pretty friggin’ metal IMHO. So in the same vein, what do you say we do a bit of group brainstorming for today’s discussion? Pitch us on a non-cute-and-cuddly druid concept. Are we looking at death cultist druids? Cannibalistic scavengers with vulture animal companions? Fungal weirdos brewing up exotic poisons? Give us all your Golgari task mages and Witherbloom graduates down in the comments!
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In one of the T.H. Lain books, there was an arctic druid in the party when they went into a zone of unnatural winter, caused by a widening rift to the Plane of Ice. Supplies started to dwindle, and the druid cast a spell that called forth a cute little rabbit, that hopped up to her full of trust — and she snapped its neck.
When her teammates looked at her in horror, she said: “You are hungry, no?”
Ah… Animal Messenger. Or how I like to call it: “Summon Live Rations.”
Wasn’t that strategy mentioned in Wizard of Earthsea?
Druids I tend to use them in either of two main roles: the fantasy one of protectors of the wilderness, who defend some areas against encroachment by the sapient races and their industry; and a more historical one of basically priests with a slightly different flavor, where they generally serve as advisors/councilors to town chieftains and use their magic to help with crops, ward off dangerous creatures, heal the townsfolk, etc.
In neither case are they hippy.
I’ve done that latter flavor quite a bit, usually emphasizing using magic to help with crops – and then their adventuring days come when they have to or get to use spells practiced for that use for other uses, particularly on the road or in dungeons. A spell that makes crops grow a whole season in a minute can turn some moss between bricks into a wall, or expand that moss to push apart those bricks. Irrigation is your basic “shape earth” and maybe “shape water”. And even without magic, a bag of sufficiently finely ground grain dust just needs proper dispersal and a spark to become a thermobaric fireball, in an inversion of a safety measure that might be practiced in any grain silo.
You mean to tell me your local hippies don’t heal townsfolk with medicinal herbs?
They use herbs to cure the townsfolk of their affliction of monsters, and to remedy the monsters into fine pastes and alchemical ingredients, putting permanent ends to whatever suffering the monsters were experiencing. Close enough?
I used to play with a person who reqularry chose Druids and went less on I love nature and more on I will use nagure to hurt you, especially by using the shape changing spell, she really liked crocodile, especially if there was water nearby.
Closest to a hippy was a 5th edition paladin with oath of ancients, I think, the one with nature powers. That player spend a session in trying to get a pet snake.
Remember, fire is a natural part of the world… it destroys, and in doing so, creates opportunities for new things to arise. A druid of that school *will* burn the forest down if the situation calls for it.
I played a duergar druid who was circle of land – forest because she escaped her home in the underdark found her way to the surface, and nearly dead, was raised by gnomes until she started out in her adventuring life.
She was pretty typical druid in most ways. Wore leaves and wood and natural bits, used bone and wood weapons, and had a squirrel companion. She smoked the pipeweed, ate the shrooms, and was every bit what you would expect of a typical druid in most of the typical ways you’d expect a druid to be.
Except she was a killer and her views on killing were both tainted by her life as a duergar in the underdark, and by her opinion that nature is a cruel mistress sometimes, and a druids gotta eat.
Sure, she had her goodberries like any druid, but you know what is better than a goodberry? MEAT! She would help in the hunting of food on travels and dine on the hearty stews of the inns, and found a love of variety in her diet as much as the next person.
She was also a killer of people. Bandits, goblins, giants, dragons… she wore the skull of a small dragon we killed in one of our first encounters and troll teeth as earrings. And again, she didn’t think anything unnatural about it. The ones she killed were the predators that were preying on the weak and the ones she saved were those weak ones that couldn’t protect themselves.
But if she couldn’t get to some group or other in time, or just didn’t even know about it and came across something she might have been able to help with, but she wasn’t there… she didn’t weep and wail about woe is my timing, she just shrugged and said, “Sucks to be them.”
I loved that druid and unfortunately never got to play her out. Would love to return to her one day 🙂
I have a Dinobarian Moon Druid who comes from a tribe that are pacifistic… in the sense that he doesn’t kill anything that he doesn’t intend to eat.
That is not to say he doesn’t kill humanoids.
“You kill things you don’t intend to eat? That is disgusting. You are all barbarians.”
As a compromise, he is willing to wait until he’s wildshaped before eating what has been killed, and in cases of expediency, he may only grab a small nibble.
Doctor Despair and myself have a handbook for this: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?663907-Creeping-Undeath-a-Handbook-to-Necromancy-on-a-Budget
Imagine using a parasitic brain-eating fungus as a vector for a supernatural plague that rots the infected to death and beyond. Because that’s exactly what it is. (You, too, can bring this to the table, if you play the wondrous game that is D&D 3.5.)
One odd duck that is being written now is the Downtown Druid on RR. Its a city druid who basically started a rogue and is working with city animals to take down their old thieving party that betrayed them.
A fun concept I ran back in the day was the Grim Reaper Druid. Leaned heavily into the scythe and harvest motif. Winter and fall themed spells. Forsook shapechanging for a heavier spell focus and some other divination-esque nature powers. The premise was that he was an embodiment of all things must end and part of his adventuring purpose was seeking out those who had lived beyond their time and settling accounts. This made him an interesting adventuring buddy as he would occasionally have to slip off from the party to take care of matters that they might ordinarily object to as not all those who gave Death the slip where nefarious naer-do-wells. I tried to play him as very close to true neutral and essentially nothing personal, it’s just your time.
Then the two are gonna get a drink together and talk about their boytoys.
Had one group of PCs laughingly ignore an NPC druid/cleric they encountered as an absent-minded hippie (I repurposed some of Ophelia’s lines about the language of flowers), only to discover during the adventure’s 3rd act that she was a “death is just part of the cycle” druid and cleric of Nerull the reaper. The role of BBEG had been divided between the EG they had just defeated and the *REAL* threat, the white-haired hippie lady who could amass an army undead and a squad of sentient trees to ruin their day.
My second favorite build was my own druid back in the day. If anyone questioned my decidedly pyromaniac tendencies, I’d begin to recite statistics and facts about the regenerative role of wildland and rural wildfires, especially in pine forests.
I once had an idea for a necromatic elephant graveyard for a setting. Sadly the campaign didn’t continue past the first elephant skeleton encounter but its something I definitely want to revisit.
I love non-cute-and-cuddly druid/nature-oriented class character concepts.
You know the Greek God Pan? How a mysterious being proclaimed “Tell them the great lord Pan is dead.”? Well many satyrs believe he’s merely dying do to ecological destruction by humans but he can still be saved.
Others know he is truly dead, and seek to bring him back.
This was inspired by art some satyr rot Druid art I found once.
Also there was a grecian dhampir druid flat out called Persephone which was pretty cool.
Both I’d use a reworked Zuggtmoy as a stand in for the deity Pan/Persephone.
One more greek god druid; Dionysus has great potential. First the creation of wine does involve decay and yeast and such, plus can utilize animal savagery in their methodology. I had all this in mind when designing a nature-themed bloodrager.
Autumn is my favourite season and great inspiration for druids (especially tied with the fey). Both the bountiful harvest and the reaping frost.
“What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison.” The philosopher Paracelsus said this and its and idea best showcased with the MtG deity Pharika.
Oceanic campaigns are ripe with shark druids and the like. Predatory, but not monstrous.
And one idea I really want to develop is druidic mindflayers. They master and exploit all other forms of magic so why not druidism? Plus given their parasitic nature they could reinterpret their existence through the lens of our own parasites.
A character concept I’m fiddling with that utilizes mindflayers is based off the tongue-eating louse. Imagine a druid whose tongue has been replaced by a mindflayer tadpole, giving their druid abilities psionic enhancements.
Decades ago, I played a druid who specialized in swarms. My swarm of choice? Spiders! I described my character as wearing a tattered hooded cloak. And he was covered in cobwebs.
I still play unusual druids from time to time. But now days they’re less creepy. One of my more recent druids was an educated halfling naturalist (think young Charles Darwin). And one day I would like to play a dwarven druid with a passion for volcanoes (inspired by trip to Hawaii a few years back).
I have an asocial changeling moon druid urchin/thief (5e) in the Descent into Avernus adventure who isn’t even a druid really, they just can go beyond the normal limits of changeling shapeshifting. DM even let me trade out the druidic language for thieves’ cant.
Playing a druid who isn’t a druid will always have a special place in my heart. In a Grimhollow campaign, I played a human rogue who was specced entirely into “Actor.” We were in the north, which was ruled by an evil druidic circle. Early on, the party killed one, my rogue then took his clothes and spent the rest of the campaign masquerading as a “drooid” and coming up with excuses as to why he couldn’t cast spells. Rogues make good “druids” confirmed.
Golgari is what I would propose. They accept life, death and the cycle of them as a thing. Most druids, the tree hugging, one’s focus on life, nature and wild places. The Golgari grow things, but not like the Selenya on pretty squares or the Simi on a lab, they grow among rot, they create life from death, rot and decay. They don’t focus on life, not even on death but on their endless cycle. Death is as much part of life as life itself.
If not that what about hive druid? One that focuses on swarms and insects. Perhaps even using his own body as a hive. That is called symbiosis. For most people it would be ugly bugs crawling inside him, for him they are his precious children that grow, live and die inside him. Kinda like the Naruto bug kid 😀
Got an idea, diesel-punk smoke druid taking care of battlefields, industrial cities and toxic fumes 😀
Avatar of the Parliment of Gears.
Nothing I do could top these Druids.
https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/7-myths-everyone-believes-about-druids.html
I’m using a circle of druids inspired by that post as an antagonist faction in my current campaign. The PCs were suitably unnerved when they were attacked by one, as he completely refused to speak. He just snarled like a coyote.
I have a druid on The List(tm). She was raised by crocodiles. Partly in reference to that comic about the ugly duckling being raised in a similar way, partly because there is no sight more terrifying/funny than an 5 foot nothing elf, deathrolling an orc’s arm off. She doesn’t give a shit about killing animals.
I might have already told this story, but one time I was playing a druid with a deinonychus companion. The druid as a person very much gave off granola girl vibes – bubbly, friendly, etc. So it was easy to assume she was the stereotypical tree-hugger.
So when we had to fight and kill a wild boar, everyone was a little nervous about how she would take it, and someone cautiously asked if they could skin and butcher it.
She looks at them, baffled, and says “I run with a pack-hunting carnivorous dinosaur. Where do you think she gets her meals?” and she just starts butchering the corpse herself.
And that’s how the rest of the party learned that having a naturally chirpy personality and understanding the value of bonding in social species does not preclude understanding that nature is fundamentally red in tooth and claw.
1) Alien druid. Basically warforged (perhaps: same stats, different flavor). Comes from (perhaps displaced from) a high tech urbanized place. Forests are to this druid what cities are to “normal” druids. Can be seen as nearly omnicidal, with the significant exception of most civilized life (including, perhaps begrudgingly, farm life).
1.5) Druid from the elemental planes. Keeps trying to make elementally accented areas and otherwise “terraform” (or pyreform, aquaform, et cetera) to make the world a better place for the form of “nature” the druid grew up with.
2) Harvester druid. Drains forests to make healing potions. Goodberry might involve draining a tree.
Whenever I am invited to a “You guys are in prison but you have to come up with the reason you’re there” I always bring a druid and her only explanation is:
“It should be legal to eat what you kill”
And then proceed to refuse to elaborate any further
One of my favorite characters I’ve ever played was Damien Danse, ‘Hoss Merchant’. Part of a major ranching family that sold hosses all across the region, to everyone but the armies, cuz they was proud, maJEStic creatures who deserve better than to die in someone’s wah.
…and because that was the terms the local druid circle made with their family in ages long past to keep teachin them the The Arts.
I made him with two goals in mind: To do the good ol ‘Southern Gentleman’ accent for a character, and to make a Druid who was very pro-human-progress, because I exactly wanted to avoid the standard assumption.
…and because I wanted to Conjure a herd of horses to trample Barovia with.
A bug focused druid almost in line with the Zerg. Giant, man-eating, insects. Awaken a giant ant/wasp queen that’s the druid’s friend with their hundreds to thousands of progeny.
Have the PCs defend a town from a giant ant invasion, where they charge above ground and burrow into the middle of town etc.
I once played a druid that was essentially the fantasy counterpart of a crazy survivalist/doomsday prepper. The best way to describe her was a small tieffling Old Man Henderson riding a stegosaurus. (cause if I’m playing druid, I refuse to miss the chance to ride my favorite dino)
Non cuddly Druid i gotcha.
I once played a Moon Druid incredibly old – even for an Elf. He always wore a Stagskull Mask with antlers and was dressed in a half rotten off Robe that covered most of his body.
He also had a Servere Case of schizophrenia as well as Delusions of Grandeur. He was convinced that he saw the Future, in which a terrible Evil would happen, and that one of the other Player was the “Chosen one” who needed to prevent that.
He was basically a Mad Prophet.
He would do Stuff like:
– Talk to Animals without the talk to Animals Spell, and be convinced they unterstood him
– Talk to Stones, and other Inanimate Objects
– Interpret what was said to him very freely or Disregard it entirely if it didn’t fit his Delusions.
– He would phrase stuff extremly madly:
Other Player: We must sneak past these Guards
Crazy Druid: YES, i agree sneakily sneakliy, like shadows must shadow behind the watchfull Watchers, for if we are caught blood will be spilled as the Walls will run red with Fluid of Death!
– Summon a Hag for Fights whom he was convinced was his loving Wife. The Hag in Question was very frustrated because he was far too Crazy too fall for any of her Schemes, and woulnd’t Stop Summoning her.
I never made the other Players laugh as much as I did with this Character.
I’m currently in a epic level 5e campaign that is heavily homebrewed. But, for my base class, I wanted to go with a moon druid. Mostly because I knew I would get to play a 20th level moon druid, which is a rare treat. But, it also occurred to me that a high level moon druid kind of looks like an eldritch monstrosity. Their 14 level ability is called “thousand forms” for crying out loud. Thus was born Akenhotep, the moon druid who was low key one of the incarnations of Nylarthotep. He’s not not even outwardly that evil, just super manipulative and power hungry. He also takes advantage of spells like antipathy/sympathy and control gravity to really lean into the otherworldly monstrosity angle. The delightful part is that he has become the group’s defacto healer. This is because there are few things more ominous than being healed by an unholy abomination who tells you you’re “being saved for later.”
I haven’t had a chance to play her yet but I have a druid that’s a bit similar to that. She is ruthless and will cut you down with her scythe without a moment’s hesitation. And then her dino will eat you.
Fun fact: While metal recycling is actually good, most of the rest of it is useless greenwashing designed to make you feel better and not call for legislation.
Back when I was teaching 3.5 D&D in youth centers.
Inspired by the short story ‘Sand Magic’ I allowed the players to pick a variant ‘Sand druid’ as a class. It was a Darwinian themed class with the extra aspiration – the goal of allowing the world’s Deserts to encroach and engulf the land. I changed their ability to replace their spells with summon nature ally with an ability to shoot hot air & sand rays to sandblast their target (deal more damage as per spell slot used).
One player took that class and it went pretty much as planned to effect the party’s general alignment.
Later on they had got into a time warp incident that sent them further into the future, I had informed him upon arrival that for some reason he felt extremely empowered. And he found out that while there his sand blast became extra large waves instead of tiny rays. when they investigated more about where and when they were they learned that 99% of the world was now one big desert.
It was meant to bring up a party debate as to, when we go back, are we going to try and stop this from happening or not?
One of my campaigns has an NPC druid elf who effectively controls a certain set of woods that the PCs go through because there’s an intercontinental portal there. She’s friendly, but her moral system is a bit… peculiar.
Years ago, the woods were terrorized by a gang of bandits. The druid defeated them and transformed them all into goats that she added to her herd of actual goats. Unlike Circe, she explained to them that if they were good goats for 8 years or so, she’d transform them back. The goatified bandit leader tried to kill her in her sleep, thinking that would break the curse. He failed, she wild shaped into an anaconda and ate him in front of the others. Most of the rest ended up serving their sentences, being turned back to humanoid and then reforming or at least doing their crime somewhere else.
This druid will do mid-level spellcasting services like Reincarnate for outsiders like the PCs, but her prices (in addition to material components) can be… strange. Sometimes she wants a cutting of a particular type of flower that can only be found in a certain region. Sometimes she’ll transform you for a few years so you can work off the debt. Sometimes she’ll just make you tend the goats. The somewhat sympathetic vampire antagonist the PCs repeatedly defeated is currently a goatherd there, in exchange for the resurrection of her just-a-really-good-friend-who-is-a-girl who the PCs didn’t technically kill (another villain killed her) but did re-kill because she’d been zombified. It’s fun to just have her in the background whenever the PCs go through there.
In summary, this druid isn’t exactly misanthropic, but she sees humanoids as animals (spell effect rules be damned) and therefore able to be improved and trained through domestication.
What about a druid scientist and investor ? Typical reaction could be, for example, “The local frog population has been in decline, I should go talk to them”, “The road has collapsed ? Have you tried hiring earth elemental to fix it ?” or “Oh no, the forest burned down. This will be terrible for the economy and long-term sustainability of the woodcutting business.”
Just because you are a druid, doesn’t mean people need to recognize you as one automatically. So for example, acting like a typical wizard having nature magic is perfectly fine !
The philosophy of Trinity, a tiefling druid: Nature is made of three voids, a making void, a hungering void, and a transforming void. All voids must be filled, this is the law of nature. To fill the making void, one must create. It is to fill this void that civilization and it’s gods began, alongside the denizens of hell. To fill the hungering void, one must destroy. It is for this purpose that the gods of orcs and goblins came into being, as well as the twisted horrors called demons. The third void is filled by change, and for this void did the beasts, monsters, and aberrant beings come into existence. The servants of both the hungering and making voids have gained supremacy, creation and destruction superseding transformation. This is why disasters happen almost annually. I will restore the balance, tearing apart civilization and replacing it with the evolving and aberrant, taking the demons and brutes and building a citadel of wrath.
I kind of have this image of a Druid that respects nature, and wants to preserve nature within civilization, not the Druid vs. society tropey thing. A Druid who is fine with fighting animals, after all, it’s natural. A Druid who is perfectly fine living in a city, though she’d rather be in nature. But if you mess with her, her friends, her family, or nature, she will call upon the powers of nature to destroy you. Also she’s gay.
Alternatively, a Druid who uses her powers to be an assassin.
I made a changeling moon druid as a fledgling trickster god, inspired by how the one thing trickster entities from mythologies all over the world most have in common is the ability to shapeshift
Always dig the idea of adventurers as fledgling gods.
Never got to take the ol’ test of the starstone myself, but it seemed like a fun campaign premise to me.
A Druid who reveres the more primal, survival aspects of the wild. We’re talking kill or be killed, predator and prey, survival of the fittest aspects. She doesn’t avoid meat, have a peaceful nature. She merely takes what she needs, and lets the wild recuperate. Sure, she’ll protect nature from people seeking to destroy it, but wildfires are also a part of nature, and they serve a role. She’s one of my ideas that I have waiting to be played.
Extreme Darwin is a cool idea. But to be clear, it makes a better character than a Mountain Dew flavor.