Druids from the Underdark

[GakToid]

Obviously, the Underdark isn't the first place you'd think of when considering a druid's home. However, I assume there are different ... 'flavors' ... of druid for every type of environment/ecosystem. A druid from a desert would be different than a druid from a rainforest would be different than a druid from underground.

My question to this font of knowledge is:
What flavor would you give to a druid from the Underdark (or any permanent resident of an underground environment)?
Animal companion? Spell selection? Would you modify the class from the way it's presented in the Player's Handbook?

-Gak Toid

 

[Li Shenron]

Without going into HR modifications, I think that you can start by using burrowing animals as Animal Companion. This may not be easy however, because they are few on the list, and a burrowing animal is not exactly an underdark animal :\ On the top of my hat I remember only (dire) badgers and dire rats.
You should look around for feats in accessory books that let you take alternative Animal Companions, perhaps even vermins, or otherwise discuss with your DM about other animals that were not included on the list (bats, moles, giant lizards?). A dire mole...

In the same way, try to look for feats to extend the use of Wild Shape to vermins, oozes or even magical beasts. The only real underground creature that a Druid can wildshape into is the violet fungus

For spells I guess you can easily modify the flavor to suit an underground druid, such as entangling with roots or passing goodtruffles to the party?

 

[Liquidsabre]

You can prob keep the class the same just have it apply to the underground. Woodland stride for example wouldn't be for bushes but rocky and boulder strewn cavern floors would not impede the Druid. Trackless Step would be the same, shucks about everything else should work fine as is.

Animal companion would be an underdark creature naturally, maybe a cave bat to start. Later wildshape forms are only what Druid is familiar with in his terrain, so only underdark creatures there at first.

 

[the Jester]

The 2ed Complete Book o' Druids was excellent and addressed this topic in some detail. It's over there on the shelf and I'm lazy, however, so here's my take on 'em, prolly substantially influenced by tCBoD.

Grey druids don't really need variant abilities, they need variant animals. Underdarks are usually full of various animal creatures- lizard things, bat things, rat things, etc. Perhaps there are dinosaurs hidden underground? As a dm you might wanna stat up some new underdark denizens appropriate to the 'Grey Druids' and work up some of the details- dire moles or whatever.

As to plant issues, keep in mind that dnd universes typically have lots of cave fungi of various sort. Image being entangled by sticky molds and mushrooms, or a druid using tree step to go from one large mushroom to another miles away. Especially if you limit teleportation and such in the Underdark, this can be a really good ability.

 

[Dimwhit]

This is where Masters of the Wild really dropped the ball. They had a great opportunity to include variant versions of the Druid, and they didn't.

One player in one of our campaigns had a Drow Druid from the underdark. For a variation, the DM let him replace the animal features with vermin. So when wildshaping, he could turn into any vermin. His campanions were vermin, etc. It worked out really well.

 

[Li Shenron]

By chance I looked into the Underdark book yesterday and I noticed there is a prestige class for druids which are oriented to vermins instead of animals. The class grants full spellcasting progression, expands the use of Handle Animal, Animal Empathy and Animal Companion to vermins, and gives a more or less equivalent Wild Shape with vermin forms.

 

[Tatsukun]

The Quintessential Dwarf has the Deeping Driud, which is pretty cool.
I think it's limited to dwarves, but you can change that.

-Tatsu