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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 428946" data-attributes="member: 6533">Druidy GoodnessI 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.</blockquote>

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