D&D 5E Druid/Warlocks Against Hunger

[Riley37]

1 level in Druid
1 level in Warlock

Use 2 Druid first level spell slots casting Goodberry
Use Warlock spell slot to cast Goodberry
Use pile of 30 Goodberries to give 30 people one day's worth of food

Take Short Rest, renew spell slots, repeat process. How many times per day? 8? 10?

A level 2 character can keep 240-300 people adequately fed!

What other spells would have such impact, if cast many times daily?

What good-aligned druid wouldn't take a level of Warlock (archfey patron) just to do this?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

A druid who believes that feeding people upsets the balance of Nature, and that people are meant to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. In other words, a libertarian druid.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What good-aligned druid wouldn't take a level of Warlock (archfey patron) just to do this?

If your question is about why a character wouldn't do it, there's infinite answers. Starvation in general isn't a major risk in most D&D-lands, generally farmers adequately feed most people (much like in the real world, shortages are more an issue of system failure than of lack of productivity). A good druid has more pressing concerns than mouths to feed. Archfey don't care about the natural balance of things, they just want to eat and drink and be merry so why would a druid want to be sworn and beholden to their agenda?

If your question is about why an NPC wouldn't do it (and thus solve hunger problems), well, maybe some did. But also this relies on class levels and such being things NPC's can get, which isn't always going to be the case - a veteran isn't a fighter.

If your question is about why a player wouldn't do it, well, players are generally not motivated to play a food distribution minigame. Even if they had the capacity, there's little point to actually doing that in most cases.

 

[Mephista]

There's a level 3 druid spell that promises good harvests. Why the need to multi-class? Why spend all that time traveling on a daily basis if you don't have to?

Who says you can find a locally helpful* fey? The vast majority of characters won't have access to someone to teach them witchcraft. Warlock-hood also comes with the expectation of bargains being fulfilled - who says you'll get the time to feed the hungry if your matron decides to send you elsewhere. Does pact magic work by tapping into the power of a powerful being? Because, if yes, I'm sure that your fey matron won't like you draining her power for something that can be acomplished another way. What about dwarves, gnomes, dragonborn, and other non-fey friendly races? Sure, it'll work for the occasional human, but many others are questionable.

It makes sense from a PC standpoint, since they can basically do whatever they want, but generally, there's a lot of dubious aspects to this.

* Most fey that teach warlocks are either bad, or powerful and uncaring of the lives of their non-subjects, so the willingness to give you power in order to help others is a bit questionable.

 

[bganon]

1/day, a caster can use Plant Growth to double the productivity of over 500 acres for one year. This is crazy good, in a "real" world this ability would dominate the economy (at least, it would if it weren't for even more ridiculous spells).

Even Produce Water could be used to ruin entire economic systems, and cantrips like Produce Flame are pretty abusable too, depending on what your DM lets you do. D&D's never really been much of an economic simulator.

 

[Riley37]

Yep. I ran the math with rough estimates, based on how many bushels of wheat per acre in Roman Empire records, multipled by the price of wheat in the PHB. Each casting is worth a few hundred GP in increased production... subject to local supply and demand, taxation, not all crops are wheat, etc.

 

[Riley37]

Archfey don't care about the natural balance of things, they just want to eat and drink and be merry so why would a druid want to be sworn and beholden to their agenda?

Okay, so as long as you don't interfere with your patron's eating, drinking and merriment, then you're not in conflict with their agenda. As "sworn and beholden goes", that seems like no restriction at all.