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Good, Evil, Nature, and Druids
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7598316" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>This is one of the reasons why I've kicked Druids to the curb and replaced the class entirely with Shaman (the Green Ronin one specifically). </p><p></p><p>Druid is the closest core D&D comes to having an animist spell-caster, and therefore typically gets roped into duty as the animist spellcaster regardless of its suitability for the job. Aside from the fact that in 3.5 it was one of the worst balanced classes in the game, the problems with Druid that just have to do with fluff rather than crunch are manifold. First, it isn't a generic animist spell-caster at all, but thematically tied just to a certain Northern European culture. Secondly, since the Romans wiped out the Druidic religion to the man in essentially pre-history, there is absolutely no record of what the Druidic religion was like. Everything we think we know about it was invented in one of the later romantic periods when much later cultures tried to reinvent them as a symbol for their own (totally invented) enlightened past, first in the 16th century and then again in the 19th century. Finally, the Druid has become almost entirely self-referential, with the D&D class now basically being the trope definer on what it means to be a Druid.</p><p></p><p>Almost all the problems people are having in this thread go away if you replace this notion of "druid" with a generic animistic spellcaster. Using a generic animistic spellcaster, and a suitable toolbox class, you can have the same class represent a nature worshipping shaman or a person that dabbles in the esoteric mysteries of beings from beyond space and time. You can have witches, witch doctors, shamans, voodoo priests, oracles, diabolists, and yes druids all be represented by different variants of the same class, just as clerics can worship a variety of different deific powers with different portfolios.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7598316, member: 4937"] This is one of the reasons why I've kicked Druids to the curb and replaced the class entirely with Shaman (the Green Ronin one specifically). Druid is the closest core D&D comes to having an animist spell-caster, and therefore typically gets roped into duty as the animist spellcaster regardless of its suitability for the job. Aside from the fact that in 3.5 it was one of the worst balanced classes in the game, the problems with Druid that just have to do with fluff rather than crunch are manifold. First, it isn't a generic animist spell-caster at all, but thematically tied just to a certain Northern European culture. Secondly, since the Romans wiped out the Druidic religion to the man in essentially pre-history, there is absolutely no record of what the Druidic religion was like. Everything we think we know about it was invented in one of the later romantic periods when much later cultures tried to reinvent them as a symbol for their own (totally invented) enlightened past, first in the 16th century and then again in the 19th century. Finally, the Druid has become almost entirely self-referential, with the D&D class now basically being the trope definer on what it means to be a Druid. Almost all the problems people are having in this thread go away if you replace this notion of "druid" with a generic animistic spellcaster. Using a generic animistic spellcaster, and a suitable toolbox class, you can have the same class represent a nature worshipping shaman or a person that dabbles in the esoteric mysteries of beings from beyond space and time. You can have witches, witch doctors, shamans, voodoo priests, oracles, diabolists, and yes druids all be represented by different variants of the same class, just as clerics can worship a variety of different deific powers with different portfolios. [/QUOTE]
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