D&D 5E Druids + necromancy: Help me make it make sense!

[Ahrimon]

I know it is pathfinder. Ive made my group destroy one of those creatures and its plant zombies. It may however originate from 2e, but pathfinder definately has its own version of it.

I don't doubt that pathfinder has their own, either directy from the SRD or re-created from the original concept. I was just commenting that the yellow musk creeper and zombie were originally from DnD and not Pathfinder. While it was in the Monstrous Manual 2nd Edition, where I first saw it and mis-remembered it from, the zombie was actually first released in the 1981 module Dwellers in the Forbidden City and the creeper was in the fiend folio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_musk_creeper

 

[TerraDave]

Without death, there is no life.

Touched by lots of posters already, and deeply rooted in mythology around the world. Including myth and lore of druids.

As for life after death, these are the people that invented halloween...More focused on spirits then raising the dead, but something is likely to come out those wicker-man ashes, right?

 

[PnPgamer]

Either way, I suggest doing something similar that yellow musk creeper does. Killing people and reanimating them with plants or something.

 

[Mephista]

The 5e D&D druid has a very strong tie to not just Nature anymore, but also the Feywild now. Control of beasts and fey creatures, which is the opposite of the Shadow Realm, the land of undead. Such a druid does take a pretty sharp turn. Evil druids tend to take the form of the dark fae creatures. Think ancient hags, dark elves, the twisted fungus monsters in the DMG.

If you absolutely wanted to put the druids as a necromancer thing, then I recommend actually start by thinking of them as "custodians of the Shadow World." Imagine a druid trapped in that shadowy world, stuck there. What would they grow, raise, train. What floral and fauna they would encounter, and call upon with their magic.

Think vampire. Vampires are renown for twisted forests, control over nocturnal animals, mastery of the world around them. Dracula turned into bats and wolves.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Both druids and necromancers are recyclers, in their own ways. Each class could see graveyards as a waste of resources in different ways. Druid, you are not returning the body to nature; Necromancer, you're letting perfectly serviceable bones go to waste because of some weird idea that the person is the flesh? The soul has left, why waste the body.