Pathfinder 1E What class fits the things from my dream?

[Puxido]

I had this dream last night, but I'm going to cut to the chase. Druids all over were being hunted down because of this new sect of druids. Unlike the previous Druids, they were not neutral, not did they care about balance. They desired the complete dominance of nature, and their goal was to kill all sapient life and destroy all civilization, and replace it nature. They were of course saving themselves for last, but that's not so important. They also seemed to care very little about animal life, their main priority was plant life, and its complete and utter dominance in the world. Now, they of course can't be core pathfinder druids for all these reasons, so what should they be? Is there a third party class that can fit them? Or can anyone think anything up? I find it interesting.

 

[Redthistle]

Intriguing concept, and not just because I sometimes day-dream about idiot-slapping the entire human race, y'know, just because.

Your concept strikes me as being a Cthulu-esque villain (I can't see this as someone other PCs would want to adventure with; it makes an assassin look nice by comparison), so this is what comes to mind:

Multi-class this as a Druid/Sorcerer, Neutral Evil alignment.

For the Druid's Nature Bond, I'd home-rule that the NPC take the Cleric's Madness Domain. The character should take a minimum of 4 levels of Druid in order to gain the Resist Nature's Lure and Wild Shape class features.

Aberrant Bloodline for the Sorcerer.

The 6th-level spell Flesh-to-Ooze, a type of Baleful Polymorph, seems like a natural for this villain, so I'd make that available once either the Druid or Sorcerer class reaches 11th level; see link:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/flesh-to-ooze

Perhaps this could be worked up as a Prestige Class (name it Baleful Druid?), in which case Flesh-to-Ooze could be attached to character level 11 rather than one of the classes.

Would this work for you?

 

[Puxido]

I appreciate this, very helpful, just a few things about the things from my dream I want to mention. Though I am aware that they are druids, and have to follow a neutral alignment, in my dream they were clearly chaotic evil. Hard to claim somethings neutral evil when their hacking down people and burning villages just to make room for a few trees. Though, you did suggest they could be their own prestige class, so I could homebrew this prestige class as being chaotic evil without losing their powers, we can all assume they get their druidic powers from the aberrant mentioned for the Sorcerer bloodline, which gives it that dark feeling they had in the dream. I really like the Madness domain idea, fits them well. One of the only other problems I have is by what we have mentioned, I assume they would still be able to morph into animals. I suppose it's fine, but in the dream I had, they had little interest in animal life, they focused solely on plant life. So I was wondering if I should replace wild shape with something else (Maybe rage, it would go well along with their madness, at least to a degree), or should I assume they just use it as a means to an end?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They don't need to be Druids...at least, not all of them. They just need to prioritize plant life above all others. Easiest way to do that? Have them be plants. So, if you want unrest in your forest and double with your trees, Awaken some of them. From the campaign ideas link in my sig:

Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners. One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.

That inspired this:

No Man's Land:

5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space. At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life! He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own. He trained it in the ways of the druids.

Eventually, death found the druid, but his greatest student lived on. Eventually, the Aspen grew enough in power that it began to experiment with Awaken itself. First, it made other Aspen and a few other mighty trees as self aware as it was, forming the Green Council, each a druid, cleric or mage in its own right. They, in time and in turn, granted awareness to some of the animals of the forest...bringing them into a society ruled by the Green Council, each day's food created by powerful magics.

As decades passed, the island became a great druidic haven, but still unknown to man.

1000 years ago, Man came...and he was not ready for what he found. The animals and trees welcomed those who resembled the one who had made their haven possible, but the ignorant sailors who found the island hunted for food for their journeys, and were driven back by the island inhabitants. The sailors returned to civilization to tell tales of the mysterious island to the East, where both animals and trees thought and fought as if men.

The Counci's research of the civilized world (directly and through its awakened, shapechanged agents) has brought them much information about the destructiveness of man...and also solutions as to how to fight back. Those shapechanged agents often lived lives among the so called civilized men, bringing their children, natural shapeshifters, back to the island. The Council did much the same.

Now, the island is inhabited by more than trees and awakened animals. Alongside them now live natural shapechangers and other curious hybrids of man and beast or beast and plant...all members of an insular society on the island.

And they are leery of Mankind's intent.

(In game terms, the island is inhabited by Awakened Trees of the Green Council (each with 20 levels of some combination of Druid, Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer, some with Epic levels); Awakened animals (any class, Rangers and Druids most common); Anthropomorphic Animals (see WOTC's Savage Species); Shapeshifters (see WOTC's Eberron, but instead of being linked to Lycanthropes, they are linked to Druids); and Woodlings (see WOTC's Monster Manual III).

A tweak here and there, like with their alignments & such, and you're golden.

For your world, perhaps only the first Awakened were Druids, and the rest, younger trees, closer to civilization, broke away because of their anger. They saw with their own eyes what their isolated elders could not see and became militant and anti-humanoid.

 

[Redthistle]

... I assume they would still be able to morph into animals. I suppose it's fine, but in the dream I had, they had little interest in animal life, they focused solely on plant life. So I was wondering if I should replace wild shape with something else (Maybe rage, it would go well along with their madness, at least to a degree), or should I assume they just use it as a means to an end?

Here's a link with information about polymorphing in Pathfinder, including morphing into a plant:

https://www.seebs.net/log/articles/784/pathfinder-s-polymorph-rules-presented-in-a-usable-format

 

[Redthistle]

Dannyalcatraz, Awakened animals could also include Pathfinder's version of Kitsune.

 

[Redthistle]

Another thought in re alignment: nature itself is chaotic without being evil, and not just the weather.

Neutrality, like a pendulum, encompasses swings from one set of circumstances to another, and something that appears chaotic may simply be operating under controlling factors unknown to the observer.

As an example, once upon a time, most of life on earth was anaerobic. Oxygen was poisonous to many of those karyotic and eukaryotic single-cell life-forms. With the evolution of photosynthesis in single-cell organisms, oxygen, as a waste product, began slowly building up. When oxygen levels surpassed a certain threshold, those anaerobic susceptible to oxygen poisoning withdrew to niches in the environment where oxygen levels remained low.

There was a massive die-off of many single-celled species, but it helped open up ways for multicellular organisms to evolve.

The point is that destroying the world around you doesn't even require sentience.

One idea: perhaps these cultists have been infected with a type of bacteria or virus that hijacks part of the brain that has altered their behavior, like that disease that causes rats to stop running away from the smell of cat urine and no longer view cats as a threat.

This would allow your "evil" druids to be as terribly destructive as in your dream, seemingly chaotic, but really just suffering from a parasitic hijacking.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

This sounds like it could be justified under a Chaotic Neutral alignment.

I get how the killing of all sapient life is Evil. surely the sapient life would agree.

However, good creatures get to kill abominations, undead, demons, monsterous humanoids and so on without there being moral issues, because those creatures are "monsters". If this Druid sect is valuing animal and plant life to the degree that commonplace heroes value humanoid life, it's relatively the same thing.

Still seems evil, but that's because I'm a humanoid. If I were a squirrel, no doubt this would all sound good to me.