In a world where gods are not abstract concepts, but real beings capable of intervening in everyday lives, and having very real power over life and death, I doubt there would be any religious vacuums. Sounds like wishful thinking to me, but YMMV.
In a world where gods are not abstract concepts, but real beings capable of intervening in everyday lives, and having very real power over life and death, I doubt there would be any religious vacuums. Sounds like wishful thinking to me, but YMMV.
1. That isn't true of every game world.
2. While there may not be atheists per se, acknowledging the existence of a god doesn't mandate that you care about them. I used to know the word for that, but I've forgotten it.
3. A class is just a mechanical framework, a collection of abilities gathered under a catchy name. Everything else is flavor text and, thus, completely mutable. The PC can come up with just about whatever reason he likes to have the abilities he has. Maybe he's more like a nature sorcerer ... he doesn't 'worship' nature, he COMMANDS it. I'm sure there's dozens of other ways to reinterpret the class as well.
3a. Classes don't come with attached personalities. Barbarians don't have to be unwashed savage brutes, and you can be of class Assassin without being a concept Assassin (killer for money). Similarly, druids don't have to be nature-worshiping hippies.
I disagree. I treat classes as nothing more than "what you can do" and impose nothing more on it. I am fine with Athiest Clerics: the power may not be a "God" it could just be a concept they follow so strongly that it might as well be one and their power isn't a being giving it, just them accessing the weave of magic - like how any wizard can use magic, nobody gave them that ability and they are not "born" with the power, they just learn to use it as a mental exercise, and so clerics could just learn how to do magic as a result of their strong belief in that concept: it's still a mental exercise, just it happens by developed instinct (Wis) instead of active thought (Int).
Anyone who lives in nature and connects with it enough can be a druid: they need not be special protectors, they just understand nature (and nature is anywhere, even buildings and such as still part of the natural world: natural materials/atoms constructed by natural beings) enough that they instinctively (hence Wis) learn to manipulate the weave and do magic.
The class is "what you can do" not "who you are". I would rather characters be unique, not "just another tree-huggin' druid" or "just another priest with spells".
While I mostly agree that a class should not define "who you are," it Should have some kind of influence. Think about occupations in real life. A judge examines and weighs evidence, procedures, etc. for hours on end. While in their spare time, a particular judge might enjoy skiing while another might enjoy getting high with a spliff after boxing in a ring, becoming a judge in the first place requires many hours dedicated to study. The very act of discipline necessary for that means that a judge is very unlikely to be the kind of person who, as an adult, gets drunk in a bar and engages in fisticuffs over some perceived sleight. So there is a relationship between the class of the character and the type of actions that the character would be inclined to take. Note that I'm not saying that all judges avoid physical combat or avoid altercations, but that the occuption (a real word analogue for class in D&D) influences who the vast majority of people who make a career out of being a judge become. If your character chooses to go against that, then there should be a believable reason why, at least.
On a related note, If Clerics relied not on any kind of devotion or faith for their power, but gained powers based on mental exercises alone, why should their spell list be any different from that of a Wizard? "Mental exercise" is very much associated with how Wizards make magic happen. By changing how a class gets its powers, you are also changing the lore and opening up room for more disputes and arguments for why ANY class has ANY spell list restrictions whatsoever. It's fine if you want to do that in your homebrew world or homebrew campaign, but I just want to warn you that there are consequences to advocating for this kind of decoupling between class mechanics and class lore.
Instinct and Thought are very different "things." Instinct is for base survival. Instinct is a Response to stimuli - be it internal or external. Hungry? Eat. Horny? Look for someone to have sex with (this occasionally has a reproductive function for the species). Sleepy? Sleep. Afraid? Run, hide, or get ready to fight. This is very different from mental discipline and logical planning implied by the Wizard class. (And why Arcana is an Intelligence-based skill rather than a Wisdom-based one.) Thinking involves concepts and manipulating or re-arranging those concepts. Reading is not an instinct of any kind. It requires gradual, incremental dedication to abstractions (written language) in order to progress towards being able to read more complex material. This is part of why programming is difficult for many people. It requires dedication to learning and practicing a new language that has an internal logic. Nobody can learn programming via instinct b/c the rewards for being able to effectively program require wading through and absorbing a lot of abstract concepts and plotting out/testing the consequences of putting together those abstractions in particular sequences. This is not something that yields instantaneous rewards and is thus not something manageable through instinct or intuition.
"Some influence", yes. "Completely define you", no. Asking 'would class X do Y' is a meaningless question that cannot be answered because classes don't do things, people do.
I agree with your main point, but it's not a meaningless question. Saying that devalues the question in the first place. The forums are a place for people to learn and share. We don't need to agree on everything (or even much of anything) to contribute and add a bit to the sum of individual, and therefore societal, knowledge. So I don't think it was a "meaningless" question. The OP asked something with the intent of getting an honest answer and deserves an honest response, which many people, including yourself, have provided.
There are no meaningless questions. There are only the questions we risk embarrassment to ask and those we don't. The other side of backing down from that risk is never getting the opportunity to learn because we allow other people's opinions of us to control whether we allow ourselves to grow.
The biggest problem Druids have, And have almost always have, Is that Druids are looked at from an incorrect angle. People see tree hugger a lot of the time. But Druids used to be neutral restricted for a reason. They can do good and bad actions. They are not restrained to a single completely positive or negative outlook.
Once you consider that for a moment. Take into the equation several things said about nature. "Survival of the fittest", "Predator and Prey", "Aggression VS. Protection" "Invasive species" "Cycle of Life" "Ecosystem" "Life finds a way"
Some of these can give inspiring mental images and positive outlooks. Some of them are quite harsh. What might actually define the druid attacking the Stryge's may not be killing them. It may be how he treats the bodies afterwards. But it's only a druids own natural outlook that would drive him to specifically protect those Stryge's. Even if he leaves them alone that does not mean he would step in at all to stop his party from attacking them. That can be seen as a part of the natural cycle. If they ate the Stryge's for their meal after killing them that could easily be seen as the cycle of life or predator and prey behavior. Can the Stryge's be a threat to the camp at night? That might be a reason to drive them away or kill them or to relocate the camp depending on ones viewpoint.
Once you look at these basic points then you can start to realize that Druids are actually really complex and can have a lot of varying influences and emotions that come into play so that with the right Justification a Druid might slay packs of wolves or other hunters to save humans one day and then join in a devastating raid of Ents and other Nature Creatures to decimate the village those humans sought refuge in the next day. And while those contradictory behaviors shouldn't be made at whim. They certainly can happen and I have seen them happen in play by extremely good Role Players.
Elf Players tend to fall into the same trap as druids. They read that Elves live in harmony with nature and forget that harmony doesn't have to always mean nice things. Much of why they do that is from a practicality standpoint. Nature gives them many benefits but it can also be a bit harsh. Growing their buildings is just putting the materials that they tend to have massively available on hand to use much as carving their homes out of the caves and tunnels they live in is a most practical thing for dwarves to do. Subsisting on Sustainable crops and keeping the area they live in can be a highly practical method of settling down because they have really long lives they have to think ahead to supply for considering their children don't even grow up for the first 100 years. But this does not necessarily mean they are tree-huggingly nice to nature where ever they encounter it. they will still drive out pest species if they can. They have no problem eradicating termites or worse that infest their homes that would destroy them. And if an Animal attacks they might just put it down if they consider it a major threat rather than simply non-violently turn it away to strike at them again some time in the future. Investigating and not killing a mother boar and driving it off with it's children can be as much a matter of practicality as it can be nature loving. If you drive that mother boar and it's children far enough away that it can eat and survive and your people are safe. In several months you can hunt some of those offspring for food. Or even the mother once she's getting past he prime and ensured the safety of the next generation at their most vulnerable.
Druids and elves both should have a lot of consideration put into such things and not just do things from a blindly compassionate stand point. That can do as much harm as it can do good.
I think some of you need to reread the Druid class again. This is where the RP stereotype comes from. Even though it is more flavor text than mechanics, it is still part of the rules that govern the class. If you pick the Druid class and read the segments "Power of Nature " or "Preserving the Balance" and go: No thank you; why are you even playing the class? As was pointed out earlier, sure you CAN just ignore the intended point of the class but, that would be just as much house ruling as changing the mechanics.
If you are just into class, race, multiclass optimization, more power to you but, I think many people like playing to the expected archetype . Most classes have a sub that is diametrically opposed to most of the other subs, maybe someone should make one for the Druid.
I think some of you need to reread the Druid class again. This is where the RP stereotype comes from. Even though it is more flavor text than mechanics, it is still part of the rules that govern the class. If you pick the Druid class and read the segments "Power of Nature " or "Preserving the Balance" and go: No thank you; why are you even playing the class? As was pointed out earlier, sure you CAN just ignore the intended point of the class but, that would be just as much house ruling as changing the mechanics.
If you are just into class, race, multiclass optimization, more power to you but, I think many people like playing to the expected archetype . Most classes have a sub that is diametrically opposed to most of the other subs, maybe someone should make one for the Druid.
And that's perfectly fine too, no one said you HAD to ignore that stuff, what we're saying is that if someone wants to do something different, the rules ALSO support that.
The biggest problem Druids have, And have almost always have, Is that Druids are looked at from an incorrect angle. People see tree hugger a lot of the time. But Druids used to be neutral restricted for a reason. They can do good and bad actions. They are not restrained to a single completely positive or negative outlook.
Once you consider that for a moment. Take into the equation several things said about nature. "Survival of the fittest", "Predator and Prey", "Aggression VS. Protection" "Invasive species" "Cycle of Life" "Ecosystem" "Life finds a way"
I don't want to make too many assumptions, however it would seem to me that the lack of Druid popularity is tied in with misunderstanding/ignorance of ecological and biological processes in the population as a whole and the state of a country's educational institutions.
Also, to be clear to all the readers, "survival of the fittest" is not an idea that came directly from evolutionary biology, but from the social scientist/philosopher Herbert Spencer.
I think some of you need to reread the Druid class again. This is where the RP stereotype comes from. Even though it is more flavor text than mechanics, it is still part of the rules that govern the class. If you pick the Druid class and read the segments "Power of Nature " or "Preserving the Balance" and go: No thank you; why are you even playing the class? As was pointed out earlier, sure you CAN just ignore the intended point of the class but, that would be just as much house ruling as changing the mechanics.
No. Altering the flavor is not, at all, changing mechanics or any kind of house rule. A class is nothing more than a collection of abilities gained in a pre-determined order and gathered under a catchy name. Everything else is flavor, and thus non-binding, and thus mutable.
I think some of you need to reread the Druid class again. This is where the RP stereotype comes from. Even though it is more flavor text than mechanics, it is still part of the rules that govern the class. If you pick the Druid class and read the segments "Power of Nature " or "Preserving the Balance" and go: No thank you; why are you even playing the class? As was pointed out earlier, sure you CAN just ignore the intended point of the class but, that would be just as much house ruling as changing the mechanics.
No. Altering the flavor is not, at all, changing mechanics or any kind of house rule. A class is nothing more than a collection of abilities gained in a pre-determined order and gathered under a catchy name. Everything else is flavor, and thus non-binding, and thus mutable.
According to you. I am willing to believe the majority of the people playing follow the basic concepts of both class and subclass as described in the rules. If YOU or anyone else wants to use a class as a framework to min max abilities for mechanical optimization only, more power to you if your DM allows it. I totally disagree that a class is nothing more than the sum of it's abilities. I think great care and consideration was taken to provide interesting and unique classes that emphasise a way of life or thinking.
If someone made an Oath of Redemption Paladin and went around stealth attack murdering people, I really wouldn't want to play with them. This is really a problem that goes beyond freedom of choice into narcissism. If you chose to do something purely because you can at the expense of the other players enjoyment, you are selfish. If you take a class and sub and use it's mechanics but, none of it's story, yes, you are home brewing or house ruling in my opinion.
I think some of you need to reread the Druid class again. This is where the RP stereotype comes from. Even though it is more flavor text than mechanics, it is still part of the rules that govern the class. If you pick the Druid class and read the segments "Power of Nature " or "Preserving the Balance" and go: No thank you; why are you even playing the class? As was pointed out earlier, sure you CAN just ignore the intended point of the class but, that would be just as much house ruling as changing the mechanics.
No. Altering the flavor is not, at all, changing mechanics or any kind of house rule. A class is nothing more than a collection of abilities gained in a pre-determined order and gathered under a catchy name. Everything else is flavor, and thus non-binding, and thus mutable.
Sure, you could, for instance, make a Druid who is all about using spells to lure and kill beasts as a spectator sport and pure profit if the DM allows that. Certainly there are self-serving individuals in any occupation. However, if this is a world where other Druids exist and those Druids take the secrecy of Druid practices and the preservation of natural order seriously, some would certainly seek to punish the druid that is flagrantly using his/her powers for means that would give other Druids a bad name.
Also, as I've previously noted, if there is no lore to tie together the mechanics with the restrictions of being a Druid, who is to say that a Druid couldn't just take Ranger spells or Wizard spells? If there is no thematic reason for the separation of class spells, more players will argue in favor of doing just that because it increases their character's powers.
I think some of you need to reread the Druid class again. This is where the RP stereotype comes from. Even though it is more flavor text than mechanics, it is still part of the rules that govern the class. If you pick the Druid class and read the segments "Power of Nature " or "Preserving the Balance" and go: No thank you; why are you even playing the class? As was pointed out earlier, sure you CAN just ignore the intended point of the class but, that would be just as much house ruling as changing the mechanics.
No. Altering the flavor is not, at all, changing mechanics or any kind of house rule. A class is nothing more than a collection of abilities gained in a pre-determined order and gathered under a catchy name. Everything else is flavor, and thus non-binding, and thus mutable.
According to you. I am willing to believe the majority of the people playing follow the basic concepts of both class and subclass as described in the rules. If YOU or anyone else wants to use a class as a framework to min max abilities for mechanical optimization only, more power to you if your DM allows it. I totally disagree that a class is nothing more than the sum of it's abilities. I think great care and consideration was taken to provide interesting and unique classes that emphasise a way of life or thinking.
If someone made an Oath of Redemption Paladin and went around stealth attack murdering people, I really wouldn't want to play with them. This is really a problem that goes beyond freedom of choice into narcissism. If you chose to do something purely because you can at the expense of the other players enjoyment, you are selfish. If you take a class and sub and use it's mechanics but, none of it's story, yes, you are home brewing or house ruling in my opinion.
Your assumption that the only reason someone would want to play a different flavor of the class in order to min max is frustrating. What if I wanted to play a Vengence Paladin who had sworn an oath against the gods of the realm? Can't really do that if my paladin has to have their powers granted to them from a god, yeah? Going back to druids, most of the standard druid gods are about fighting off civilization in order preserve the wildness of nature. What if I wanted to play a druid that decided that idea was old and outdated and that the best possible solution is to acknowledge that society and civilizations are new organisms within the natural world and the best route is to find a balance with nature. Oops nope, all the existing gods say that you have to be against civilization, so no druid powers for you.
It's important to allow players the ability to choose how to play their characters without the rigid input from existing constructs. Part of the fun of the game is changing the world in which it is set. I believe this is why they've made the power source for druids and paladins independent of a sentien being, to give more players the option of playing a class that like, but still give them the ability to set up a wider set of goals.
That said, that doesn't free a player from consequence. I wouldn't expect my example of a vengeance paladin who wants to kill off all the gods of a realm to meet with much success and my druid would probably not get much support from other druids, and may in fact become their enemy, but they're still both playable characters, within the rules.
You at least acknowledge the backgrounds provided by each class and a level of their merit. I am not totally against a player who strives for a different story, I am against the idea that the story behind the class is not an integral part of it just as much as the powers they wield.
Ck, if your warrior wants to wage war on the gods then just have them as a fighter, or a warlock hexblade, or if they were a holy (wo)man and were betrayed by the holies they worked for then they could fall, becoming an oathbreaker paladin. (DMG)
Ck, again with druids - if you want a druid to be from a circle of reformation and harmony then look to the forgotten realms as an example - Chauntea the harvest, Diety and often druid patron should assist you with gathering the background you might want for the strictures they would operate under, or if you really want to play a natural order type who is prepared to let rapacious civilisation expand and strip-mine the world in 20 generations then, Chauntea or similar again but be a cleric of nature. All the natural flavour, many of the nice druid spells and wears heavy metal armour which druids dearly wish they could wear. You could call yourself a druid if you wanted to?
These are possible examples of how to incorporate without simply ignoring the culture. You dont have to use them, unless your DM /gameworld demands it, but regardless enjoy your play.
*Ignoring backgrounds is a danger especially to new DM's - inform them if you want try any fundamental changes in advance especially as: It leads to Warforged, ravnica background Golgari warlocks with 64 undead at level 5. All armed with Bioweapons. Thats a problem for most gaming groups, There isnt much the rest of the party can do when the answer to any problem is 'volley fire!' outside and inside its poison clouds that linger for centuries. Not a lot of fun to be had (unless your group is the kind regularly combining skills to kill Krakens and other similar challenges at level 7). And it couldnt happen if the backgrounds keeping the two source books separate, is respected.
The Deadlands D20 supplement had a campaign villain called Stone. It had no stats because 'If it is statted it can be killed, Stone kills players.' Each DM needs to determine what will suit the game and the story they are trying to tell. if you want to level up by throwing oil into a rat farm for 10xp per rat your DM may not acquiesce to your desire. In this druid case some appear to want / require the freedom to ignore, bend or modify classes information. How many would be happy to allow this as a DM who can say? But if not the DM they may discover that the DM may not acquiesce to that desire.
Many of the nature gods that are written up aren't actually against civilization. That's a trope that has been forced onto things and given rise to some problematic ideas along with the rise of the whole "have to be a peace loving tree hugging hippie" type to be a Druid.
What several of the Nature gods actually warn and fight against is the destructive nonsensical spread of civilization. There have been city versions of druids before. Adapting to the ecosystems found within cities including their people and some of their powers reflected such. There are some that even embrace the idea of the civilization Biome as being a part of nature as well. One of the gnomish gods I want to say embraces that and I know a couple elven ones have as well.
There are also nature gods that don't give a damn either way about civilization such as Umberlee and Talos which do represent aspects of nature in their own ways and can be worshipped by druids. And even are willing to allow their followers to exploit civilization if they so desire.
So there is a lot of variety in the way you can serve the gods and the areas that druids protect and how they view the cycle of things and their place in nature as well as guarding it. It's not as one sided as some are trying to paint it to be. not even in the gods that oversee it. And Druids have never been forced to serve a particular god to serve nature to begin with. They were one of the first to be able to serve a concept or force so to speak rather than an outright deity. Even if some diety attached to that force technically supplied those powers. And the same goes for the Oath of Vengeance against the Gods Paladin that got used to try to argue against everything. Just because they have sworn Vengeance against the Gods and wants to destroy them does not mean there is not a god or Like being that Isn't willing to supply that person power. Several God's ultimate goal is complete annhiliation of the Prime plane and the forces that hold it together and make it function (i.e. the gods) that they exist within. And they wouldn't necessarily have to tell you they are supplying the divine power that your using. In fact different ones(both good and evil) might actually be answering your call at different times as you do different acts for different reasons or against Different Gods that they are opposed to.
Sure! Here is how I justify it with my druid: I am one with nature and understand that there is a natural cycle of things. In nature, there are predators and there are prey. Natural predators almost never kill for fun - they have a purpose, which is food or protection. If I view myself in line with this line of thought, I won't just go around slaying animals for no reason. When I do it, I have good justification and appreciate the gravity of what I'm doing.
I'm kind of a real life druid without all the magic. I work in conservation. One of the primary ways we keep the balance in our ecosystems is to actively work to remove that which threatens them. Sometimes, that means removing a problem species so that others can thrive. Perhaps it means culling deer to prevent herds from succumbing to disease. Regardless, it doesn't have to mean we protect all life equally in an ecosystem. It's pigeonholing to confine your players to your idea of what their class means. Ask them questions about their actions and see if they can give you a good answer. If not, maybe they will at least have something to consider for next time. If they're slaughtering nature wholesale and laughing then maybe they've chose the wrong class...
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In a world where gods are not abstract concepts, but real beings capable of intervening in everyday lives, and having very real power over life and death, I doubt there would be any religious vacuums. Sounds like wishful thinking to me, but YMMV.
And yet we have anti-vaxxers and flat earthers in our own world.
Belief is not always based on reason or observation.
1. That isn't true of every game world.
2. While there may not be atheists per se, acknowledging the existence of a god doesn't mandate that you care about them. I used to know the word for that, but I've forgotten it.
3. A class is just a mechanical framework, a collection of abilities gathered under a catchy name. Everything else is flavor text and, thus, completely mutable. The PC can come up with just about whatever reason he likes to have the abilities he has. Maybe he's more like a nature sorcerer ... he doesn't 'worship' nature, he COMMANDS it. I'm sure there's dozens of other ways to reinterpret the class as well.
3a. Classes don't come with attached personalities. Barbarians don't have to be unwashed savage brutes, and you can be of class Assassin without being a concept Assassin (killer for money). Similarly, druids don't have to be nature-worshiping hippies.
While I mostly agree that a class should not define "who you are," it Should have some kind of influence. Think about occupations in real life. A judge examines and weighs evidence, procedures, etc. for hours on end. While in their spare time, a particular judge might enjoy skiing while another might enjoy getting high with a spliff after boxing in a ring, becoming a judge in the first place requires many hours dedicated to study. The very act of discipline necessary for that means that a judge is very unlikely to be the kind of person who, as an adult, gets drunk in a bar and engages in fisticuffs over some perceived sleight. So there is a relationship between the class of the character and the type of actions that the character would be inclined to take. Note that I'm not saying that all judges avoid physical combat or avoid altercations, but that the occuption (a real word analogue for class in D&D) influences who the vast majority of people who make a career out of being a judge become. If your character chooses to go against that, then there should be a believable reason why, at least.
On a related note, If Clerics relied not on any kind of devotion or faith for their power, but gained powers based on mental exercises alone, why should their spell list be any different from that of a Wizard? "Mental exercise" is very much associated with how Wizards make magic happen. By changing how a class gets its powers, you are also changing the lore and opening up room for more disputes and arguments for why ANY class has ANY spell list restrictions whatsoever. It's fine if you want to do that in your homebrew world or homebrew campaign, but I just want to warn you that there are consequences to advocating for this kind of decoupling between class mechanics and class lore.
Instinct and Thought are very different "things." Instinct is for base survival. Instinct is a Response to stimuli - be it internal or external. Hungry? Eat. Horny? Look for someone to have sex with (this occasionally has a reproductive function for the species). Sleepy? Sleep. Afraid? Run, hide, or get ready to fight. This is very different from mental discipline and logical planning implied by the Wizard class. (And why Arcana is an Intelligence-based skill rather than a Wisdom-based one.) Thinking involves concepts and manipulating or re-arranging those concepts. Reading is not an instinct of any kind. It requires gradual, incremental dedication to abstractions (written language) in order to progress towards being able to read more complex material. This is part of why programming is difficult for many people. It requires dedication to learning and practicing a new language that has an internal logic. Nobody can learn programming via instinct b/c the rewards for being able to effectively program require wading through and absorbing a lot of abstract concepts and plotting out/testing the consequences of putting together those abstractions in particular sequences. This is not something that yields instantaneous rewards and is thus not something manageable through instinct or intuition.
"Some influence", yes. "Completely define you", no. Asking 'would class X do Y' is a meaningless question that cannot be answered because classes don't do things, people do.
I agree with your main point, but it's not a meaningless question. Saying that devalues the question in the first place. The forums are a place for people to learn and share. We don't need to agree on everything (or even much of anything) to contribute and add a bit to the sum of individual, and therefore societal, knowledge. So I don't think it was a "meaningless" question. The OP asked something with the intent of getting an honest answer and deserves an honest response, which many people, including yourself, have provided.
There are no meaningless questions. There are only the questions we risk embarrassment to ask and those we don't. The other side of backing down from that risk is never getting the opportunity to learn because we allow other people's opinions of us to control whether we allow ourselves to grow.
The biggest problem Druids have, And have almost always have, Is that Druids are looked at from an incorrect angle. People see tree hugger a lot of the time. But Druids used to be neutral restricted for a reason. They can do good and bad actions. They are not restrained to a single completely positive or negative outlook.
Once you consider that for a moment. Take into the equation several things said about nature. "Survival of the fittest", "Predator and Prey", "Aggression VS. Protection" "Invasive species" "Cycle of Life" "Ecosystem" "Life finds a way"
Some of these can give inspiring mental images and positive outlooks. Some of them are quite harsh. What might actually define the druid attacking the Stryge's may not be killing them. It may be how he treats the bodies afterwards. But it's only a druids own natural outlook that would drive him to specifically protect those Stryge's. Even if he leaves them alone that does not mean he would step in at all to stop his party from attacking them. That can be seen as a part of the natural cycle. If they ate the Stryge's for their meal after killing them that could easily be seen as the cycle of life or predator and prey behavior. Can the Stryge's be a threat to the camp at night? That might be a reason to drive them away or kill them or to relocate the camp depending on ones viewpoint.
Once you look at these basic points then you can start to realize that Druids are actually really complex and can have a lot of varying influences and emotions that come into play so that with the right Justification a Druid might slay packs of wolves or other hunters to save humans one day and then join in a devastating raid of Ents and other Nature Creatures to decimate the village those humans sought refuge in the next day. And while those contradictory behaviors shouldn't be made at whim. They certainly can happen and I have seen them happen in play by extremely good Role Players.
Elf Players tend to fall into the same trap as druids. They read that Elves live in harmony with nature and forget that harmony doesn't have to always mean nice things. Much of why they do that is from a practicality standpoint. Nature gives them many benefits but it can also be a bit harsh. Growing their buildings is just putting the materials that they tend to have massively available on hand to use much as carving their homes out of the caves and tunnels they live in is a most practical thing for dwarves to do. Subsisting on Sustainable crops and keeping the area they live in can be a highly practical method of settling down because they have really long lives they have to think ahead to supply for considering their children don't even grow up for the first 100 years. But this does not necessarily mean they are tree-huggingly nice to nature where ever they encounter it. they will still drive out pest species if they can. They have no problem eradicating termites or worse that infest their homes that would destroy them. And if an Animal attacks they might just put it down if they consider it a major threat rather than simply non-violently turn it away to strike at them again some time in the future. Investigating and not killing a mother boar and driving it off with it's children can be as much a matter of practicality as it can be nature loving. If you drive that mother boar and it's children far enough away that it can eat and survive and your people are safe. In several months you can hunt some of those offspring for food. Or even the mother once she's getting past he prime and ensured the safety of the next generation at their most vulnerable.
Druids and elves both should have a lot of consideration put into such things and not just do things from a blindly compassionate stand point. That can do as much harm as it can do good.
I think some of you need to reread the Druid class again. This is where the RP stereotype comes from. Even though it is more flavor text than mechanics, it is still part of the rules that govern the class. If you pick the Druid class and read the segments "Power of Nature " or "Preserving the Balance" and go: No thank you; why are you even playing the class? As was pointed out earlier, sure you CAN just ignore the intended point of the class but, that would be just as much house ruling as changing the mechanics.
If you are just into class, race, multiclass optimization, more power to you but, I think many people like playing to the expected archetype . Most classes have a sub that is diametrically opposed to most of the other subs, maybe someone should make one for the Druid.
And that's perfectly fine too, no one said you HAD to ignore that stuff, what we're saying is that if someone wants to do something different, the rules ALSO support that.
I don't want to make too many assumptions, however it would seem to me that the lack of Druid popularity is tied in with misunderstanding/ignorance of ecological and biological processes in the population as a whole and the state of a country's educational institutions.
Also, to be clear to all the readers, "survival of the fittest" is not an idea that came directly from evolutionary biology, but from the social scientist/philosopher Herbert Spencer.
No. Altering the flavor is not, at all, changing mechanics or any kind of house rule. A class is nothing more than a collection of abilities gained in a pre-determined order and gathered under a catchy name. Everything else is flavor, and thus non-binding, and thus mutable.
According to you. I am willing to believe the majority of the people playing follow the basic concepts of both class and subclass as described in the rules. If YOU or anyone else wants to use a class as a framework to min max abilities for mechanical optimization only, more power to you if your DM allows it. I totally disagree that a class is nothing more than the sum of it's abilities. I think great care and consideration was taken to provide interesting and unique classes that emphasise a way of life or thinking.
If someone made an Oath of Redemption Paladin and went around stealth attack murdering people, I really wouldn't want to play with them. This is really a problem that goes beyond freedom of choice into narcissism. If you chose to do something purely because you can at the expense of the other players enjoyment, you are selfish. If you take a class and sub and use it's mechanics but, none of it's story, yes, you are home brewing or house ruling in my opinion.
Sure, you could, for instance, make a Druid who is all about using spells to lure and kill beasts as a spectator sport and pure profit if the DM allows that. Certainly there are self-serving individuals in any occupation. However, if this is a world where other Druids exist and those Druids take the secrecy of Druid practices and the preservation of natural order seriously, some would certainly seek to punish the druid that is flagrantly using his/her powers for means that would give other Druids a bad name.
Also, as I've previously noted, if there is no lore to tie together the mechanics with the restrictions of being a Druid, who is to say that a Druid couldn't just take Ranger spells or Wizard spells? If there is no thematic reason for the separation of class spells, more players will argue in favor of doing just that because it increases their character's powers.
Your assumption that the only reason someone would want to play a different flavor of the class in order to min max is frustrating. What if I wanted to play a Vengence Paladin who had sworn an oath against the gods of the realm? Can't really do that if my paladin has to have their powers granted to them from a god, yeah? Going back to druids, most of the standard druid gods are about fighting off civilization in order preserve the wildness of nature. What if I wanted to play a druid that decided that idea was old and outdated and that the best possible solution is to acknowledge that society and civilizations are new organisms within the natural world and the best route is to find a balance with nature. Oops nope, all the existing gods say that you have to be against civilization, so no druid powers for you.
It's important to allow players the ability to choose how to play their characters without the rigid input from existing constructs. Part of the fun of the game is changing the world in which it is set. I believe this is why they've made the power source for druids and paladins independent of a sentien being, to give more players the option of playing a class that like, but still give them the ability to set up a wider set of goals.
That said, that doesn't free a player from consequence. I wouldn't expect my example of a vengeance paladin who wants to kill off all the gods of a realm to meet with much success and my druid would probably not get much support from other druids, and may in fact become their enemy, but they're still both playable characters, within the rules.
You at least acknowledge the backgrounds provided by each class and a level of their merit. I am not totally against a player who strives for a different story, I am against the idea that the story behind the class is not an integral part of it just as much as the powers they wield.
Ck, if your warrior wants to wage war on the gods then just have them as a fighter, or a warlock hexblade, or if they were a holy (wo)man and were betrayed by the holies they worked for then they could fall, becoming an oathbreaker paladin. (DMG)
Ck, again with druids - if you want a druid to be from a circle of reformation and harmony then look to the forgotten realms as an example - Chauntea the harvest, Diety and often druid patron should assist you with gathering the background you might want for the strictures they would operate under, or if you really want to play a natural order type who is prepared to let rapacious civilisation expand and strip-mine the world in 20 generations then, Chauntea or similar again but be a cleric of nature. All the natural flavour, many of the nice druid spells and wears heavy metal armour which druids dearly wish they could wear. You could call yourself a druid if you wanted to?
These are possible examples of how to incorporate without simply ignoring the culture. You dont have to use them, unless your DM /gameworld demands it, but regardless enjoy your play.
*Ignoring backgrounds is a danger especially to new DM's - inform them if you want try any fundamental changes in advance especially as: It leads to Warforged, ravnica background Golgari warlocks with 64 undead at level 5. All armed with Bioweapons. Thats a problem for most gaming groups, There isnt much the rest of the party can do when the answer to any problem is 'volley fire!' outside and inside its poison clouds that linger for centuries. Not a lot of fun to be had (unless your group is the kind regularly combining skills to kill Krakens and other similar challenges at level 7). And it couldnt happen if the backgrounds keeping the two source books separate, is respected.
The Deadlands D20 supplement had a campaign villain called Stone. It had no stats because 'If it is statted it can be killed, Stone kills players.' Each DM needs to determine what will suit the game and the story they are trying to tell. if you want to level up by throwing oil into a rat farm for 10xp per rat your DM may not acquiesce to your desire. In this druid case some appear to want / require the freedom to ignore, bend or modify classes information. How many would be happy to allow this as a DM who can say? But if not the DM they may discover that the DM may not acquiesce to that desire.
Many of the nature gods that are written up aren't actually against civilization. That's a trope that has been forced onto things and given rise to some problematic ideas along with the rise of the whole "have to be a peace loving tree hugging hippie" type to be a Druid.
What several of the Nature gods actually warn and fight against is the destructive nonsensical spread of civilization. There have been city versions of druids before. Adapting to the ecosystems found within cities including their people and some of their powers reflected such. There are some that even embrace the idea of the civilization Biome as being a part of nature as well. One of the gnomish gods I want to say embraces that and I know a couple elven ones have as well.
There are also nature gods that don't give a damn either way about civilization such as Umberlee and Talos which do represent aspects of nature in their own ways and can be worshipped by druids. And even are willing to allow their followers to exploit civilization if they so desire.
So there is a lot of variety in the way you can serve the gods and the areas that druids protect and how they view the cycle of things and their place in nature as well as guarding it. It's not as one sided as some are trying to paint it to be. not even in the gods that oversee it. And Druids have never been forced to serve a particular god to serve nature to begin with. They were one of the first to be able to serve a concept or force so to speak rather than an outright deity. Even if some diety attached to that force technically supplied those powers. And the same goes for the Oath of Vengeance against the Gods Paladin that got used to try to argue against everything. Just because they have sworn Vengeance against the Gods and wants to destroy them does not mean there is not a god or Like being that Isn't willing to supply that person power. Several God's ultimate goal is complete annhiliation of the Prime plane and the forces that hold it together and make it function (i.e. the gods) that they exist within. And they wouldn't necessarily have to tell you they are supplying the divine power that your using. In fact different ones(both good and evil) might actually be answering your call at different times as you do different acts for different reasons or against Different Gods that they are opposed to.
It's kind of hilarious that we started from "Do Druids attack animals?" and now we're at "Puppetmaster: D&D Deities".
Sure! Here is how I justify it with my druid: I am one with nature and understand that there is a natural cycle of things. In nature, there are predators and there are prey. Natural predators almost never kill for fun - they have a purpose, which is food or protection. If I view myself in line with this line of thought, I won't just go around slaying animals for no reason. When I do it, I have good justification and appreciate the gravity of what I'm doing.
I'm kind of a real life druid without all the magic. I work in conservation. One of the primary ways we keep the balance in our ecosystems is to actively work to remove that which threatens them. Sometimes, that means removing a problem species so that others can thrive. Perhaps it means culling deer to prevent herds from succumbing to disease. Regardless, it doesn't have to mean we protect all life equally in an ecosystem. It's pigeonholing to confine your players to your idea of what their class means. Ask them questions about their actions and see if they can give you a good answer. If not, maybe they will at least have something to consider for next time. If they're slaughtering nature wholesale and laughing then maybe they've chose the wrong class...