I had a request to add to this discussion the social role and status of 'druids' in my world. I'll oblige as best as possible, but the question is actually a bit harder to answer than the asker may suspect because... there are no druids in my world if by 'druids' you mean the D&D class 'druid'.
However, if by druid you mean animistic priest conforming the characteristics and beliefs in our imaginations attribute to pre-Roman northern Europe, well, then there are still no 'druids' in my world because there is no Rome nor Northern Europe.
What there are in my world are shamans. And by that I mean 'shaman' in the usual loose sense the term is used, rather than specifically the animistic nature priests of Siberia. Mechanically, shamans use a very minor variation on Green Ronin's Shaman class (from the Shaman's Handbok an excellent work that I highly recommend).
The minor changes I've made to the RAW Shaman basically revolve around two things. First, as written the Shaman is a 'barbarian priest'. I generally reject the ethnocentric assumptions around 'barbarian', and just as my 'barbarian' is replaced with the non-baggage carrying 'fanatic', my shaman carries no cultural assumptions. I reject that a technologically primitive tribe is some how less inherently lawful than a technologically advanced one on the grounds that this misunderstands the core ideas of law and chaos. It's entirely possible that the technologically primitive tribe has greater respect for law and tradition, and values the group over the individual, to a far greater extent than their technologically more advanced city dwelling neighbors. As such, I similarly impose no alignment restrictions. The other major change is that since I don't have Druids, I don't have to go as far as the writers at Green Ronin had to in order to protect the Druid's unique shtick. I basically killed the Druid and gave the Shaman his stuff. So much of the Druid's spell list is now on the Shaman's spell list, and some of the Shaman's spell list that was replacing the Druid's spell list is no longer needed. There are also now considerably more spells that are only on your spell list if you have the actual domain, which in turn makes clerics a little more like the old 'specialist priests'. It's now possible to play a Druid in my game using the Shaman class as a base, albeit, you'll probably lose a tier in the conversion (since among other things, animal companions are weaker, wildshape is a spell not a class ability, and natural spell doesn't exist).
Conceptually, 'Shaman' is used to donate any mystical practice that primarily involves communing with, controlling, and bargaining with various spirit creatures and thereby gaining magical prowess either by bestowed power or by having the spirit act on your behalf. This particular notion of a spell-caster actually has far more basis in history than the D&D notion of a 'Wizard', which is almost purely a D&Dism. The D&D 'Wizard' as it has developed is basically a scientist or natural scholar which has been largely sanitized of the occult, and whose source of power is almost entirely his own self by way of long training and knowledge. This sort of magical tradition is almost entirely unknown to the ancient world and has very few sources, most of which are modern media of various sorts where there was a wizard which for whatever reason needed to be sanitized of the occult. Far more typically in real world magical traditions, the source of a wizards power (here wizard in the sense of someone performing magic, not in the D&D) was (more reasonably) said to be something actually magical in a way that humans self-evidently are not. Combined with the extreme flexibility of the mechanics in the Green Ronin, I used it for a very broad range of pastiches - witch, bard (the actual Finnish bard, not the D&Dism - remember that the 1e version was actually a Druid), shaman, warlock, diabolist, adepts, druid, witch-doctor, and well pretty much any sort of traditional priest or wizard. Indeed, pretty much any spell-casting class in D&D that has ever been imagined and designed to be specific to a particular culture - from Al Qadim's Sha'ir to Oriental Adventures Wu Jen - is basically assumed in my game to be a Shaman (if it's not a Wizard).
So, with that in mind, for most of the human world the Shaman is considered a monster and must in some way hide or subordinate themselves in order to avoid being executed. This is because the Shamanic tradition is a rival to both socially approved spell-casters, the clerics and the wizards. The cleric is a necessary intermediary with the true powers of the universe - the gods. The wizard is a controllable, understandable, figure who can be neutered by removing his books and implements, who is constrained by long social convention, whose knowledge is inherently reviewable, and whose role is understood and defined in both directions. The Shaman however is unpredictable, unreviewable, and suspect. You can't easily review the compact that the shaman has with the spirit world, since it is a verbal agreement with the unseen. The spirits have inhuman motivations and make inhuman demands on those that bargain with them. The Shaman detracts from the proper worship of the gods and loyalty to them, by offering an independent (albeit) weaker alternative source of power and magic. The Shaman is seen as an inherently subversive character prone to witchcraft such a diablerie (communing with or summoning fiends), mind control, necromancy and other illegal, immoral and forbidden lore. The Shaman is seen as potentially undermining the social order. Thus, at least on paper, shamanism carries the death penalty through probably 80-90% of my campaign world. And that's on top of the fact that casting something like 'charm person' also generally carries the death penalty - it's considered violent rape. For that matter, monster summoning I - if used to conjure a fiendish rat - also carries a death penalty.
The practice though is a bit different. While the law might consider the practice to carry the penalty of death, most people in the campaign world are a bit more pragmatically minded (neutral) and generally feel the best policy is to provoke dangerous things if and only if they are immediate threats. This allows shamans to practice locally so long as they stick to the fringes of society, don't cause trouble, and avoid drawing attention to themselves. Most villages have some sort of 'wise woman' or 'doctor' living on the social edge of society with a social status roughly similar to that of a known prostitute or bootlegger - or at least a known prostitute that can probably kill you if you attract her attention. So in practice, rural societies tend to have a de facto truce with shamans, and in more urban settings a shaman is effectively a member of the black market - selling unregulated or contraband magic. As such, they live lives similar to black market alchemists that deal in poisons, narcotics, love potions and other unsavory materials. Many will have ties to local thieves guilds, particularly in cities where there isn't a temple that is sympathetic to the thieves and their associates. This truce of course can break down, particularly in situations where mysterious things are happening that can be blamed on the shaman. The law enforcers themselves might observe the truce, wielding the actual letter of the law only if they believe the person to be a considerable threat but otherwise tolerating low level law breaking as a superior outcome than outright war.
The fact that the shaman is a marginal figure in the society probably contributes to the fact that most shamans tend to live up to the stereotype as practitioners of black magic. Probably 80% of the NPC shamans in my game are in fact evil, and almost none that aren't evil aren't chaotic, just because the sort of person attracted to the 'career' tends to be a less savory, antisocial, or more rebellious sort.
However, it's a big world and there are always exceptions. Individual cultures tend to be quite welcoming of shamans, and in a few isolated cultures shamanistic traditions are more important than clerical ones (and in those, clerics tend to be the marginalized figures). The Mokoheen are one such culture - many of their tribes execute any one of their own that begins worshipping the gods, and even the ones that don't treat clerics and shamans as being the same thing. Many of the Orine have similar beliefs. The elves by virtue of being inherently in greater communion with the natural world than the other races have considerable tolerance for shamans, as they view shamanistic magic as just an extension of their own natural abilities to communicate with animal spirits. Fey are even more tolerant, since they are themselves actually 'small gods', and certain powerful fey might well be themselves a shaman's spirit guide. And to the extent that a culture openly tolerates fey in their midst (most do), a fey shaman would not be recognized as such and would basically be judged by the same standards as any fey (ei, is it eating babies? Is it otherwise gross? If not, it's probably ok or at least, best not to inquire...). Some particular deities are more open to the idea of shamans, and it is believed that certain deities actually organize and use various 'small gods' as their intermediaries. Where such deities hold sway, shamans have less marginal social roles.
But where a Wizard is treading dangerous to not let it be known he's a wizard, a shaman is living dangerously to let it be publically known he's a shaman. If you can't actually hide the fact that you are a magician, then its probably best to at least pretend you are a wizard and make a show of it by owning some spellbooks and appropriate robes. This is actually pretty dangerous though, because while your average commoner can't tell wizardry from witchcraft, the same is not true of your average wizard so you better hope the local hedge mage is a tolerant sort.
There is currently a PC shaman in my group. And I have to say that the PC is currently finding it really hard to not get pushed down the path to evil within the social and magical constraints of being a shaman. The character started out with all sorts of noble intentions, but with each passing session is increasingly 'witchy' and frankly scary - not the sort of person you'd normally want to have walking around and which you'd have every sympathy for a town wanting to kill. (For example, she recently threatened to bind the souls of children in her servitude if the minion of the BBEG didn't cooperate with her. She's also weaponized the ghost of a murdered domestic servant, and has been relying heavily on an almost certainly evil magical fetish in combat. And it isn't helping that most of the magic items she can use that she finds are trinkets own by evil shamans, and that the spirits that invest those items with power don't have noble inclinations. I'm going to be offering her the XP for alignment change to evil bargain pretty soon...) If she wasn't in Talernga and didn't have some social standing conferred on to her by being the companion of figures that are socially acceptable, she'd almost certainly be looking at a stake and a bonfire in her future. As it is, it would be something of a tight race between whether the priestess and the knight can keep her out of trouble, and whether she will ultimately pull down their social standing. For that matter, it's going to be something of a tight race between her wild power hungry descent and whether the knight and priestess decide maybe a stake and bonfire is the best solution...
