D&D General How do you make your nature-aligned characters more compelling than “Radagast, but with a bow?”

[5ekyu]

I've got a longer write up about my difficulties with nature-themed characters over here, but this has been a struggle with me for some time. Nature tends to be portrayed as "gray-side," meaning that there's no easy good/evil or law/chaos dichotomy to fuel conflict. That in turns means that it's hard for me to roll up a nature-themed protagonist: What exactly am I supposed to be struggling against?

So help me out here. How do you go about making a ranger or a druid with meaty plot hooks? And from the GM's side, how do you allow such a character to become central to a campaign's conflict?

First I ditch alignment. Trying to develop more robust portrayal or persona within that seems pointless.

Second dont try to fo "nature" but choose an aspect or two of nature and emphasize those while honoring the others more as a foundation.

Once you have one or two aspects, go for it.

Look st the various divines and myths that were about natural aspects - build on them.

Persephone and the turn of seasons, dark and light, embracing opposites, etc etc gives you one definitely fertile ground to plant a character in.

Chauntea vs Silvanus - nurturing teaching agriculture sharing vs defending the wild side and hunt- and thry were an item in their day. (The Morrigan and the Daghdah as well.)

Or maybe your aspects are more centered on making sure the rarer beauties of nature like ssy elemental hot spots or fae sites or the paragon animal spirits etc.

Pick a few things, find dome relevant sources and fiction if needed and go from there.

I think of it like this, I font design a charscter to be good. I design a character who cares about and tries to do things and those things are good - leading to the character being good.

 

[Seramus]

The easiest plot hook is Druids vs Other Planes. Fire Elementals busting into the world? Not on my watch. Demons? Those need to go as well. Angels? Less violent, but still get off my lawn please. Modrons? 01001110 01101111.

 

[MarkB]

You can have your good/evil dichotomy still. Good people don't mess with the natural order except through accident or ignorance - educate them on the consequences of their actions and they'll do the right thing. Evil people won't care about the consequences so long as they can avoid being personally affected by them.

That may or may not be strictly true in your campaign world, but if your character believes it, that's reason enough to fight for the good guys.

 

[delphonso]

Sticking inside the category of Nature - your druid could be some sort of embodiment of an area. Perhaps you're a dense forest druid.

Your conflict can come from you trying to expand this area at all times. Planting trees, burning brush to set the land for forestation, feeding birds lots of seeds to spread the plants you are dedicated to.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What exactly am I supposed to be struggling against?

Do you need to be struggling against something in order to be interesting? Couldn't you just be in favour of a quiet life? I expect the DM will introduce conflict soon enough.

 

[generic]

I've got a longer write up about my difficulties with nature-themed characters over here, but this has been a struggle with me for some time. Nature tends to be portrayed as "gray-side," meaning that there's no easy good/evil or law/chaos dichotomy to fuel conflict. That in turns means that it's hard for me to roll up a nature-themed protagonist: What exactly am I supposed to be struggling against?

So help me out here. How do you go about making a ranger or a druid with meaty plot hooks? And from the GM's side, how do you allow such a character to become central to a campaign's conflict?

Well, you see, it's rather simple.

I make FEMALE Radagast, but with a bow.

Also, an Elf.

 

[Coroc]

Please not post-modern save-the-environment stuff!

Seriously, though, in a mostly-good campaign, PCs may well be struggling against some greater Evil - maybe the same one the whole campaign, maybe a variety, maybe just an overwhelming darkness surrounding their 'Points of Light' (yeah, or not, whatever). Point is, it's likely, for the heroes to be really heroic, that said Evil very much as the upper hand. The old-school protect-the-balance True Neutral types shouldn't stand for Evil Ascendant. For now - like, the whole campaign - siding with good will restore the balance.

Well according to the alarmist problems like jobs, energy, food, healthcare, oh I meant to write goblins, orcs, dragons, owlbears, do not matter because the air is so polluted with carbondioxide that the whole prime material plane will surely slowly drift into the elemental plane of fire within the next ten years.

You are an aspiring druid of the green circle when somewhere else on Toril a Halfling girl finds the ring that makes her visible


Sorry you REALLY ASKED for it, I am not responsible for the sarcasm you triggered in me

duck and cover ...

 

[Neonchameleon]

Nature tends to be portrayed as "gray-side," meaning that there's no easy good/evil or law/chaos dichotomy to fuel conflict. That in turns means that it's hard for me to roll up a nature-themed protagonist: What exactly am I supposed to be struggling against?

Civilization! Roads! Buildings! Laws! Toxic waste! Nature is neutral on the good/evil axis, but whoever decided it was TN rather than CN wasn't thinking at all. (And no, civilisation isn't either good or evil either).

 

[Umbran]

Keep in mind that a character's story doesn't necessarily have to be tied to their class.

I think this is important. I mean, imagine a fighter. Their class is about sticking swords in things - it says very little about what the character should care about. The fighter resolves conflicts by fighting, but that doesn't determine what conflicts they get into.

A cleric of Pelor follows a Sun god. This informs their choices and powers. But, those powers aren't responsible for their personal conflicts. Maybe they just happen to really love their community, and there's a Hatfields-McCoy style feud between two local Barons, that is harming their community. And, (gasp) maybe neither Baron is particularly themed to the night or undead or the like...

A druid will have some beliefs about the position of nature in the cosmos and their spiritual life. Their powers are connected to nature, so the tools they have to resolve conflicts come from nature. But, what are their conflicts?

The conflicts for a character are from 1) things they care about, and 2) threats to those things. So, what does the character care about?

 

[Coroc]

....

The conflicts for a character are from 1) things they care about, and 2) threats to those things. So, what does the character care about?

This

A druid sees threats to his woods as evil, no matter if the threat arises from a marauding orc horde burning down his trees or from loggers cutting down to many of the trees for cleared areas and building material to expand the city.

The whole D&D alignment system is to be viewed as abstract as the attributes when flipping between player knowledge and ethics and character knowledge and ethics.

The lawful good! baron might have the robbers who caused much trouble executed in a gruesome way to scare of copycats, a thing which does not change his abstract in game alignment the slightest, because his and his folks ethics say that is a good thing punishing those who break the law in a way that prevents repetition of the crime.
Modern people, aka the players, would eventually condemn such a punishment to be on the verge of evil and eventually breaking universal human laws, when, for example the robbers did never kill someone.