Celebrim
Legend
Yes. They are probably the most anachronistic class in the game. And that's only one of the many reasons that I dropped them out of my game years ago.
Driuds: Too Much Metal
- Thread starter R-Hero
- Start date
Yes. They are probably the most anachronistic class in the game. And that's only one of the many reasons that I dropped them out of my game years ago.
prosfilaes
Adventurer
If your definition of nature is the wild, possibly with nomadic tribes of humanoids, then metal comes from the earth in no process you're familiar with. Mining and then forging an iron weapon takes a permanent settlement of people, which is something I think the D&D druids oppose and consider unnatural.
Which is I am pretty sure is a fairly modern conception of nature probably originating with the Romantics at the earliest.
prosfilaes
Adventurer
I'm sure most of it came that way. But I'm sure where ever nomads have been pushed aside by settlers, especially in places like the Amazon, where they were being pushed aside by massively advanced technology and manpower, I suspect the word unnatural or some equivalent came up.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
The native Indians use to kill animals. Some tribes were wasteful, some went out of their way to ensure they kept the balance. In the latter case, tribes tried to use all of the animal.
If a druid kills a buffalo because he wants leather armor, he's also going to eat it, and probably make something of its hooves, make waterskins out of its stomach, etc. A druid wouldn't cut down a tree for a staff, he'd cut off a branch, since a tree can spare it (well, a healthy tree anyway).
As for metal weapons, druids used to do human sacrifice. They would stab a human high in the chest and watch as they died. The twitching let them see the future (well, so they believed). They could crush his head with a rock and so not use metal, but then there's less twitching. That's something the rules don't explain.
Because D&D druids are an incredibly bizarre and rather sad mix of post-WWI naturalistic and rustic romanticism and late 20th century radical environmentalist movements.
TheAuldGrump
First Post
Nar mate - that's a follower of Mithras - displayin' the bull's horns, he is.Are you sure? Because this smiley is clearly a bald druid:
The Auld Grump
Celebrim
Legend
- emphasis added
I thought I'd emphasis the above to point out how a modern perspective can slip into our thinking without us realizing it.
There isn't alot of evidence that prior to the 20th century that Native American religions were all that concerned with concepts like 'balance' much less 'balance' as used to mean 'living sustainably in the environment'. For stone age peoples, the notion that man might have the strength to overthrow nature seems laughable. Stone age peoples don't use 'all of the animal' for aesthetic reasons or because they can concieve of humanity exterminating a species. They use all of the animal because hunter-gather peoples are acquainted with hunger and deprivation and if you don't use every resource in your environment you will starve or die of exposure or in some other highly painful way. Stone Age peoples, like any group of successful impoverished humans, are thrifty by necessity.
Stone Age peoples are concerned with mollifying the spirits not because of what they fear to do to nature, but because of what they fear nature will do to them. It's a way of exerting some control in a world that seems and often is entirely beyond their control.
European philosophers have been romanticizing this way of life for millenia. It's quintesentially European to look at some stone age culture and say, "They are better than we are.", while ignoring the fact that the admired culture was basically the same as they were only with less stuff. Roman orators said the same sort of things basically about the Germans. You can find Roman orators proclaiming that German barbarians were universally brave, that they didn't know how to lie, that their women were always modest, and that adultery was unknown. Of course, that is all obviously nonsense, and its pretty clear that what said Roman orators were really doing was projecting all the virtues that they found lacking in their own society on to some distant barbarians that no one in his audience would be closely acquainted with. The idea is boiled down to its essentials basically some old fart (or sometimes young fart) saying, "Back in the good old days, youngin' respected their elders..."
In the 1960's, a number of these white Philosophers invented indigenous environmentalism. The most famous of these is the Chief Seattle hoax, but there were all sorts of things that basically amounted to some white guy hijacking native beliefs for his own purposes. If you actually go do the archaelogy though, you find all sorts of evidence of slow motion environmental degradation from river bank erosion, to crop failures, to desertification in pre-Columbian North America to say nothing of the extent that human hunting habits may have contributed to the extinction of large mega-fauna in North America.
When the North American priestly class asks the spirits of the world to live in peace with them, they aren't thinking about 'environmental balance'. They are thinking that nature is going to capriciously wipe them off the face of the earth. When they utilize every part of a buffalo, they aren't thinking, "I have to maintain a low carbon footprint." They are thinking, "Can I get enough food off this to last the winter?" If it was an aesthetic and moral choice on their part to be 'poor' (like say with the Amish), when white guys showed up and gave them guns, they wouldn't have gleefully helped exterminate the buffalo to sell buffalo hides.
I just want to add a rider to Celebrim's comments above. he is corrent as far as I know in the general thrust of his comment but there are some societies that did have a notion of balance. The ones that I have read about were Pacific island societies that suffered an environmental crisis but managed to correct themsevles and change enouugh to maintain a better lifestyle that some of their neighbours that did not change.
There are also cases like Germany in I think the 1700 and Japan (not sure when) where stuff like re-afforestation became a priority of the rulers but this is in all cases spurred by a relisation of over-exploitation of vital resources not by any philosiphical desire to live as one with nature or anything like that.
There are also cases like Germany in I think the 1700 and Japan (not sure when) where stuff like re-afforestation became a priority of the rulers but this is in all cases spurred by a relisation of over-exploitation of vital resources not by any philosiphical desire to live as one with nature or anything like that.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
I read about a native tribe that used "bone maps" to hunt.
Instead of hunting normally (eg go where the animals are, figure out where they'd go) which are efficient, they drew a map on a piece of bone and tossed it into a fire. They would then hunt where a random crack appeared... which could mean a feast, or a famine.
Another tribe used the image of a hand with a hole in it (eg let some escape). And no, I can't recall where I heard those two stories. Take lots of salt!
On the other hand, buffalo jumps were incredibly wasteful. You run dozens of buffalo off a cliff... won't most of that meat go to waste? All signs point to yes!
Instead of hunting normally (eg go where the animals are, figure out where they'd go) which are efficient, they drew a map on a piece of bone and tossed it into a fire. They would then hunt where a random crack appeared... which could mean a feast, or a famine.
Another tribe used the image of a hand with a hole in it (eg let some escape). And no, I can't recall where I heard those two stories. Take lots of salt!
On the other hand, buffalo jumps were incredibly wasteful. You run dozens of buffalo off a cliff... won't most of that meat go to waste? All signs point to yes!
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