D&D General What is Druidism in your game?

[Jackdaw McGraw]

Druid's are pretty much reevaluated every time a player makes one at my table. The player's assumptions and wishes are my guidelines for what druidic culture and tradition is in that campaign.

 

[Voadam]

In my home brew mashup setting the nature of the gods and the ultimate cosmology is a mystery. Divine magic is its own type of magic and divine spellcasters tap into it using divine magic spellcasting traditions, including nontheistic ones. There are multiple pantheons and multiple incompatible views of cosmology in my game drawing on a lot of sources including gaming, fictional, and real world based ones.

I like having multiple sects for various traditions and multiple religions.

I have a bunch of options that are therefore open to druids in my game.

Follower of a nature God.
Follower of a Celtic God.
Follower of a specific pantheon.
Nature worshiper.
Witch.
Old One cult.
Scarred Lands Titan worshiper.
Primal Spirits follower.
Druidism as a nontheistic religion.
Druidism as a secret society.
Druidism as a traditional sage and advisor to kings tradition.
Nature magic caster.
Reincarnating magic user.
Magical tradition taught by fey.
Eberron varieties.
Cerulean Circle tradition of spellcasters I narratively developed for Freeport.
Scarred Lands Sea Witch tradition of spellcasting.
Vanir tradition spellcasting.
Elvish nature magic.
Shamanism.
World of Darkness Werewolf transformation and gift traditions.
Verbena from Mage the Ascension/Sorcerer's Crusade.
Dreamspeaker from Mage the Ascension/Sorcerer's Crusade.
Shadowrun style totem shaman traditions.
Eberron style sects.
Priest.
Divine champion.
Spellcaster (straight Merlin tradition or shapeshifting Merlin and Madame Mim from The Sword in the Stone).
Eco-primacists.
Crusaders against the Unnatural.
Hippy.
Political string pullers.
And others.

I have usually had druidism as a mostly background sort of ancient mystery cult with a lot undefined but a lot of possibilities.

 

[Thunder Brother]

In my game, I conceive of druids as individuals who live on the fringe of society who commune with "small gods" such as fey and other nature spirits (in contrast to clerics, who deal with the "big gods"). Like Rangers, whom they are often akin to, they act as mediators between civilization and the wilderness; members of both, but not completely on either side. They care about the natural (primeval) world, so more "civilized" people might regard them as troublesome weirdos.

They may have loose societies or conclaves, but generally they are solitary individuals following non-dogmatic traditions, so there's plenty of room for uniqueness.

San from Princess Mononoke, if she could transform into a wolf, is a decent reference point to me, as well as Gloranthan shamans.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In my current setting they're animistic religious figures who commune with the nature spirits. When a druid prepares their spells, they conduct small rituals, asking various nature spirits for help, so that's the source of their magic.

 

[Voadam]

In my current 5e campaign one of the players went druid as the chassis for a Werewolf the Apocalypse style werewolf with spirit gifts concept character. He was a young Lupus werewolf (wolf who could change into a human) with a lot of instinctive and past life knowledge. It was great fun to run with the Werewolf Cosmology perspective in a D&D game and overlay a bunch of the WoD concepts to the D&D game. It was too bad he died in the climax fight of the first adventure path module I was running.

 

[Lanefan]

Nature Clerics. We re-named them as such 40+ years ago and never looked back, in lagre part to uncouple them from the Celtic culture and make them equally a part of any culture that wants/supports them.

In play they work just like any other Cleric but with a quite different spell list and a few other abilities e.g. high-level shapeshift.

 

[Voadam]

In 1e Unearthed Arcana druidic hierophants were introduced for druids going past the level cap of Great Druid. They gained more divine nature magic and more power which inspired me to think of druidism as a path to divine magic power and a theory that some of the gods are actually high powered druids on that path.

In my mashup campaign I use the Golarion pantheon as one of the ones in my world but I changed the nature god Gozreh from "The Wind and the Waves" to "The First Druid" and the female wave aspect and the male wind aspect as being two of Gozreh's reincarnated epic lives. Generally a large number of people consider Gozreh the Nature god who existed since time primordial, but that there is a druidic lore tradition that thinks of Gozreh as a druid hierophant.

 

[Irlo]

Druids are intermediaries. They protect civilization and nature from the worst excesses of the other.

That's more how I see Rangers, but that works too.

Right about the rangers! I tend to think of druids as higher-level interventionists. Rangers keep the pilgrims safe from orcs and keep the loggers from killing all the wolves and fend off aberations, but druids keep the gods of nature and primal spirits from bringing down drought, famine, plague, and flood on hapless humanity (humanoidity?). They keep the stars spinning and the sun rising and the crops growing.

In truth, that take on druids has only seriously come into play in one campaign of mine, so it's certainly not my only interpretation. But I do like it.

 

[Bupp]

Arnold K. said it best.

7 Myths Everyone Believes About Druids

Listen, you've got it all wrong. Frequently, the picture you see of a druid is some green-haired boy scout cavorting atop a white wolf,...

goblinpunch.blogspot.com

 

[cbwjm]

I use druids as just a different type of priest. The Wyld Faith (a collection of nature gods) is served exclusively by druids instead of clerics.