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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 4768129" data-attributes="member: 8863">Well, my concept isn't going that far with it to where it's almost a new class.  It's more a matter of trying to use the traditional D&D druid in cities in a way that makes sense.  The 3e rules for generating NPCs for communities includes druids in cities, and as I was working on campaign development, I felt that this was a result that I needed to make some sense of, because often the D&D druid and cities don't tend to mix.  The same could be said of rangers to some extent as well, but I'm a bit less worried about them, since it's just easier to assume that instead of a traditional forest protector that the class was back before 2e, a ranger in an urban setting could be something like a bounty hunter.  The last "wild" race, the barbarian, needed no such thought, since the archtypical barbarian, Conan, spent plenty of time causing trouble in cities.The superorganism is only a small part of my concept.  It's more a matter of the druid recognizing that technology and city building is natural to humans as eusocial behavior is to bees, ants, termites, and mole rats, except that humans also exihibit far more individuality.  Instead of fighting the city, seeing it as an enemy to be destroyed with storms, earthquakes, and swarms of elementals, the druid tries to minimize the destructive impact of a city on the rest of the natural world.  The druid needs a reason to actually exist in the city long enough to be considered a permanent resident.Well, even Greyhawk and Waterdeep are constructed on the model of the medieval European city, and I'm trying to move away from closely adhering to a medieval Europe archetype in my campaigns.  For one, I felt it restrictive, and creating a world were the cultures are have distinct and seperate analogue to real world cultures like the Realms do (I think early D&D worlds were emulating Howard's Hyborean Age here), is something I want to avoid.  For one, it makes it harder to use ideas from books like Oriental Adventures in the main campaign when stuff is split up.  I don't want to end up running seperate campaigns to use the stuff or never use it at all.  Secondly, historic and low-magic analogues just don't make sense in D&D to me any more.  There's too much magic in the game to not take any of it into account.  I'm not even talking some Monty Haul high-magic munchkin fest here, even a low-key campaign uses enough magic that campaign development should take it into account.  When players put together a D&D party, they try to make sure there's at least one cleric and one wizard.  The party will probably find at least a half-dozen magic weapons of at least +1. There'll be plenty of potions and scrolls lying around.  And then there's whatever random magic items turn up.  That's not even counting whether or not there are magic stores.  There's no way that very basic stuff can exist like it does in a normal campaign if magic is supposed to be special and rare.So I came up with these ideas on the udrban druid as a way of trying to make sense of the magic.  Just as Eberron (or the various) homebrews take into account that continual flame should logically replace torches in a fantasy city, I'm thinking of how a druid's spells could change the ecological impact of a city on the natural world.You know, I'm probably channeling some of my views on environmental issues here too.  I've seen players do that from time to time with druids, often they have some <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/152266-druids-not-hippies.html" target="_blank">crazy radical environmentalist druid</a> who goes berserk at the sign of civilization.  Here though I'm thinking up a druid that's into conservation and sustainability instead.</blockquote>

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