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fiachairecht) wrote2018-12-15 03:53 pm
fiachairecht) wrote2018-12-15 03:53 pm
Entry tags:
druids do cool things other than beast shape
I re-spec'd Ireena Kolyana as a druid-rogue multiclass for the Ravenloft campaign I run a while ago and may have got a bit shouty re: People On The Internet Being Boring About Druids. ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
tranxio, asker of excellent questions, wanted to know: "What do you think druids should be? What should they not be? What is boring and what is fun?"
Okay with the caveat that I have never played a druid so these are more thematic complaints rather than game/rules complaints:
Druids are incredibly versatile, and imo this leads to people talking about them a lot more mechanically than they do other classes, a lot of the time in ways that ironically leads to them limiting what druids can do. There’s also a tendency to conflate ‘druid’ with ‘circle of the moon druid’, and while heavy reliance on wild shape is certainly an option, the druid spell list is ridiculous and I wish more people would take advantage of it. But even within circle of the moon there is? so much more to do besides melee tank as a bear or an earth elemental?
I wish there was more consideration of what, precisely, a druid’s connection to nature is besides ‘can be an animal a lot of the time’ (this, too, is maybe a case where over-focus on circle of the moon is harmful – land’s additional circle-specific spells pushes a lot harder on that). I have also, over the past couple hours, decided that there should be much more consideration of multiclassing into druid, rather than multiclassing into something from druid – people seem to dislike druid + multiclass because you lose access to more powerful wildshapes, but, again: druids do other things too!
I, unsurprisingly, like more fey takes on druids, especially those that are friends with #trees that probably want to eat you (like … druid-fey pact warlock multiclass? hamadryad druid? druids that would like to eat their party because they love them.). I think their obsession with the balance of nature should extend to one with balance more generally – more neutral characters in all parties 2kforever. I wish there was more attention paid in campaign designs to the amount of worldbuilding potential druids bring to the table.
A year later I have still not played a druid but I have some thinky thoughts about a neutral-evil hamadryad druid who lives in the Feydark and Fucks Shit Up, so.
Okay with the caveat that I have never played a druid so these are more thematic complaints rather than game/rules complaints:
Druids are incredibly versatile, and imo this leads to people talking about them a lot more mechanically than they do other classes, a lot of the time in ways that ironically leads to them limiting what druids can do. There’s also a tendency to conflate ‘druid’ with ‘circle of the moon druid’, and while heavy reliance on wild shape is certainly an option, the druid spell list is ridiculous and I wish more people would take advantage of it. But even within circle of the moon there is? so much more to do besides melee tank as a bear or an earth elemental?
I wish there was more consideration of what, precisely, a druid’s connection to nature is besides ‘can be an animal a lot of the time’ (this, too, is maybe a case where over-focus on circle of the moon is harmful – land’s additional circle-specific spells pushes a lot harder on that). I have also, over the past couple hours, decided that there should be much more consideration of multiclassing into druid, rather than multiclassing into something from druid – people seem to dislike druid + multiclass because you lose access to more powerful wildshapes, but, again: druids do other things too!
I, unsurprisingly, like more fey takes on druids, especially those that are friends with #trees that probably want to eat you (like … druid-fey pact warlock multiclass? hamadryad druid? druids that would like to eat their party because they love them.). I think their obsession with the balance of nature should extend to one with balance more generally – more neutral characters in all parties 2kforever. I wish there was more attention paid in campaign designs to the amount of worldbuilding potential druids bring to the table.
A year later I have still not played a druid but I have some thinky thoughts about a neutral-evil hamadryad druid who lives in the Feydark and Fucks Shit Up, so.