Druids

[LostSoul]

Tree hugging, man hating protector of nature?

By "man hating", do you men or humans? because a female misanthropist would make a good NPC. The druid class can have a lot of symbolism that connects with female sexuality.

 

[Kilmore]

The "Defenders of Neutrality" aspect that some people associated with the old school druids is one of the silliest meta-game concepts I remember about the old days. I always thought that idea that when the forces of good were whooping up on the humanoids, when the gobbers were almost completely down, the druids would come in and help them out "to preserve the balance" was completely out of touch of how rational people really think. The only thing that remotely suggests that rationale is the "Neutral" spot in the direct center of the alignment chart.

Maybe a crackpot cult might think that way, but the campaign's main sect of nature priests? I always thought of them as being more concerned with nature than with ethics.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Druidy Goodness

I think the original druid was an interesting character concept. In the 1e and 2e games it seemed to be the only character with a really philosophical bent.

I remember the Complete Priest's Handbook actually decribing them as the ultimate priests of a philisophy or ideology. Made them great NPCs. And as PC the druid was often the most flexible member of the party. I mean noone could trust a 2e druid, but noone knew they should instantly fear him either. Neutral characters can talk to monsters, berate crusaders, and would poison their weapons only when necessary. The problem, in my mind, was that that flexibility of action came with a set structure on your character, one that made even the commitment to an adventuring party seem iffy.

What I appreciate about the 3e druid is that it makes that flexibility much more integral to how the player crafts the druids personality and politics. Plus, where the original druid was defined by his or her philosophy the new druid is defined by her or his special relationship with nature.

So that where a prior druid seemed to have an outside perspective of the individual druid interacting wiht nature as a whole. The new druid with a non N alignment has the potential to see his or her personal form of druidness as working within one aspect of a larger view of nature. So that that NG druid might see her relationship with nature as focusing on the nuturing aspects, but she still recognizes that the nurturing isn't even handed and that those who benefit from it shouldn't try to force it, lawful, or use it without sharing it, chaotic.

I play a druid of the dwarf gawd Tharrd Harr in FR. He is probably NG, I reevaluate alignemnt a lot, and his relationship to a deity of nature forces him to focus on the hunt as an aspect of nature. As a philosophy he sees hunting as a means for a community to feed itself and a way of creating long term stability, the dwarf thing, through short term violence, the feral dwarf thing, by making certain every creature has limits enforced on the way it enacts violence on the life around it.

This plays out in a number of ways. He generally refuses to wipe out an entire community of orcs. Thinks guerilla tactics are the best way to fight a war. Loves to provide food for the party, and really enjoys chasing someone down or ambushing them cleverly.
He is a rabid opponent of Shar, who he and Tharrd Harr feel was greedy in her absorption of small gawds during the time of troubles.

 

[jgbrowning]

Re: Re: Druids

By "man hating", do you men or humans? because a female misanthropist would make a good NPC. The druid class can have a lot of symbolism that connects with female sexuality.

I meant Human hating.

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

No I've never heard of Lawful Stupid but I get it. If you want to learn more about how D&D druids are then may I suggest that you talk to Gygax about this? He has a thread here at En World and I'm sure he would be happy to make sense of it for you. I understand it. It makes perfect sense to me. Nobody is going to hunt down the druids. I don't think they could find them. People are largly ignorant of the druids main aim when it comes to the world at large and they definately don't advertise anything.

well it would depend when you asked gygax....

if im remembering properly (looking at my newly arrived dragon archives here ) the original druids were portrayed in greyhawk as human sacraficing hiding-in-the-forest types.

later they morphed into the type of druids you spoke of from the players handbook.

There's also two "histories" of the druids.. the stuff we have from the romans and the newly created stuff from the 19th century revitaliztion. add a heavy dose of wicca (currently if i understand properly wicca is moon based nature worship and druidism is sun based nature worship) a serious helping of modern environmentalism and you have the druid. voila!

Here's the take i'm getting from all of yall's comments.
Druids will have many different agendas, mostly based upon alignment. This of course, doesn't terribly jive with what the PHB says about a single society (to me that would have to be lawful or else it would have splintered a long long time ago)

What do yall think about the single society proposed in the PHB? How on earth do LN and CN druids and NG and NE druids get along. Sure they agree that nature is important, but they would completely disagree about what to do about it....

republicans--democrats anyone?

Hrm... trying to get my head around this.

joe b.

 

[MGibster]

Cultivated areas are NOT a viable ecosystem, therefore they are NOT part of nature in the traditional sense. So destroying a forest(nature) to plant crops(not nature) would be a bad thing to a D&D druid (and probably to a "real" one as well, to a point).

The Celts between 1200 BC and 1 AD managed to spread far and wide throughout western Europe. Given that they were an agricultural based society with iron age technology I have no doubt that they cut down a great many trees to support their lifestyle. They'd have to have cleared land for their farms and they'd need fuel for their metal working, to keep warm, and to cook with.

Also like Native Americans, the Celts had a low-impact lifestyle until Christianity arrived. Emphasis on low-yield crops, gathering, and hunting.

Unlike Native Americans the Celts made it out of the stone age and well into the iron age. You don't typically get to the iron age by placing to much emphasis on hunting and gathering. I'd also be a bit leery of comparing them to Native Americans because which tribes do you want to compare them to?

At any rate, large scale agriculture is only necessary once you start to encourage clustering of people into large populations. The Celts did not. They tended to be spread out over large areas, as was necessary for their low-impact lifestyle.

They had farm plots for individual families, community plots, and plots dedicated to supporting the ruling class. I don't know what you classify as large scale agriculture but for 300 BC they'd probably come close to qualifying.

Of course, unlike the people who did the writing (Romans & Christians), they understood that protecting nature was part of protecting their way of life. And since nature was the abode of "barbarians" and"pagans", labeling the druids as such was convenient.

Given how heavily forested western Europe was during the age of the Celts I wouldn't doubt it if they viewed lumber as an infinite resource.

Marc

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

The Celts between 1200 BC and 1 AD managed to spread far and wide throughout western Europe. Given that they were an agricultural based society with iron age technology I have no doubt that they cut down a great many trees to support their lifestyle. They'd have to have cleared land for their farms and they'd need fuel for their metal working, to keep warm, and to cook with.

Unlike Native Americans the Celts made it out of the stone age and well into the iron age. You don't typically get to the iron age by placing to much emphasis on hunting and gathering. I'd also be a bit leery of comparing them to Native Americans because which tribes do you want to compare them to?

They had farm plots for individual families, community plots, and plots dedicated to supporting the ruling class. I don't know what you classify as large scale agriculture but for 300 BC they'd probably come close to qualifying.

Given how heavily forested western Europe was during the age of the Celts I wouldn't doubt it if they viewed lumber as an infinite resource.

Marc [/B]

Specifically, I was dealing with the Celts later, when they were largely overrun, and from which time we actually have some historic data on them. They were not practicing the large scale, land depleting, monoculture cultivation that, for example, the Romans were.

They did cut down plenty of trees, but they didn't take out entire forests in order to plant grain, as far as I know. Lumber may have been an infinite resource, because their population density was so low. And they also did not tend their crops to the extent that others did. It was often- plant, leave it alone to grow for a few months while we beat up the neighboring clan and steal cattle, come back and harvest.

A lot of their tech was liberated from other sources, by the way. They became incredibly gifted craftsmen, but the fact remains that they didn't really have any cultural need for, for example, metallurgy. They made great refinements in working with gold, but they didn't originate the practice.

I was comparing their agricultural practices and reverence for nature, favorably, to that of some Native American groups. Notably the more settled ones in the Mississippi Valley. Of course, it's hard to make solid comparisons, because we know so little about both groups. The Celts weren't recording history until after they were conquered (and then it was deliberately skewed), and that particular Native American civilization was destroyed by disease before Europeans got to the area.