Something that has stumped me is what are druids' armor made of. The class proficiencies call out that druids don't wear metal armor... do what do they wear? Leather is the default here in dndbeyond but a vegan druid may not be comfortable wearing armor made from a dead animal.
My druid doesn't have an issue with this because she grew up in a native American type culture (respect nature, if you kill an animal, make the most of the kill, etc) but she also doesn't have issues with cannibalism either unlike her city-gnome cousin... because the shapeshifting druid has taken a bite out of a human or two while in wolf or lion form. She's very circle-of-life-ish.
I imagine if you want to play a vegan druid you might make it difficult but your character might struggle when it kills in self defense but it would make things interesting if you love drama. But hey my druid felt bad for killing a wyvern to defend her horses so not just beasts. (She even tried scaring the wyvern away with some call- lightning to say we weren't worth the fight. )
I would think the dm and player should work out the background for the druid before imposing expectations or restrictions. Maybe the druid harnesses the power of nature and actively uses it to kill animals for sport (while backwards to me i don't think it should be counted out unless you've established that nature magic doesn't work that way in your world. )
Something that has stumped me is what are druids' armor made of. The class proficiencies call out that druids don't wear metal armor... do what do they wear? Leather is the default here in dndbeyond but a vegan druid may not be comfortable wearing armor made from a dead animal.
My druid doesn't have an issue with this because she grew up in a native American type culture (respect nature, if you kill an animal, make the most of the kill, etc) but she also doesn't have issues with cannibalism either unlike her city-gnome cousin... because the shapeshifting druid has taken a bite out of a human or two while in wolf or lion form. She's very circle-of-life-ish.
I imagine if you want to play a vegan druid you might make it difficult but your character might struggle when it kills in self defense but it would make things interesting if you love drama. But hey my druid felt bad for killing a wyvern to defend her horses so not just beasts. (She even tried scaring the wyvern away with some call- lightning to say we weren't worth the fight. )
I would think the dm and player should work out the background for the druid before imposing expectations or restrictions. Maybe the druid harnesses the power of nature and actively uses it to kill animals for sport (while backwards to me i don't think it should be counted out unless you've established that nature magic doesn't work that way in your world. )
Armour can be made of wood (bark sheets, shoots, small planks wrapped together).
To be honest even if a druid would never choose to kill/eat an animal, if an animal has died from other means like natural causes or accident, there is no reason they could not use the animal.
Finally, if all else is done, the druid could get Mage Armour from a Magic Initiate feat or use the Barkskin spell.
I just use the variant rule for "exotic materials" that ups the cost of armor made from non-standard materials. (I don't have my PHB with me right now - can't seem to find the right search phrase on DDB.)
Anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem to get, say, wyvern-scale mail for your druid. You might run into problems if your druid is more of a "vegan granola hippie" kind of druid - I tend to run them much more Native American. Life is a cycle. Everything is born, everything dies. If you're going to kill an animal you respect it and make as much use of it as you can.
And really, for that reason, the only in-game reason my druids give to explain the "no metal armor" thing is usually "well, have you seen what mining does to the environment? I mean, if we find some armor somewhere I'm happy to repurpose it - that's just trying not to be wasteful. But I don't want to encourage environmental destruction by running out and buying shiny new metal armor."
I just kicked off a campaign last night with a small group of all-new players to D&D. This is my first time to DM the game in probably 30 years. So we're all pretty green.
My advice would be to not worry about it. If you had fun, and he had fun and your party had fun, he was not doing it wrong. You were all doing it right. I tend to view classes as nothing more than a chassis to provide game play mechanics and style that I like. For example if you want to play a shape shifter, druid is really your only choice. Why should you have to do the hippy thing to play your character according to your vision just because tradition says so?
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
My first D&D character was a true neutral Druid in 3.5, but I interpreted true neutral to be true balance and therefore for every good or lawful action I made I would have to balance that with an equal evil or chaotic action and vice versa. My GM never dealt with a true neutral character before and just went along with my explanation. We also viewed it as my druid didn't follow a deity but had a similar relationship with nature itself, we actually pulled some inspiration from Swamp Thing comics with the idea being that my druid served a non-specific concept of nature, with Swamp Thing essentially being an avatar of that non-specific concept similar to how various deities might have avatars. So the idea I went with was that life and death are both a part of nature, and to keep with that true balance motif, for every action in support of life my druid made (such as healing or helping a village) MUST be balanced with an equal action in support of death (such as dealing damage to ANY creature or harming a village).
I had a lot of fun with this viewpoint and as a result always had a positive view of Druids, and a number of shenanigans were caused that also made my group think it was fun. Certain members of my group would also remind me of just how many times we and specifically my druid performed good or helpful actions just to see how I would try to balance them out with evil or harmful actions. One time we stopped a goblin invasion of a farming village and helped them bring in the harvest just in time before winter for extra gold. As we left I set fire to the village, and burned just about all of it down along with killing over half the villagers who were drunkenly celebrating the victory over the goblins in a barn. Turns out both alcohol and barns are highly flammable.
eh I see what your saying. . . love how when you ask something on these forums about 95% of the people are 100% just being contrarian. Me personally I like to compare the natural edicts of a druid to the natural edicts of animals. Some beasts naturally turn feral and nasty, and some are born that way. . . for instance the mountain lion, you can find them lying in a clearing with a dozen dead deer in the area it will never eat. Mountain lion see, mountain lion attack, simple as that. Then there's the sheep, it eats grass, wont ever fight back, and after running for awhile will jus lie down and wait to be eaten. Wolves never fight fair always choosing to hit dishonorably form behind, while sharks always kill the youngest weakest looking prey. Most of there reason are based on survival, but again lets go back to the mountain lion. Nature is crazy bro. Imagine the druid with a wolf companion. Wolves eat and attack just about anything smaller then them and have huge appetites, and they will literally eat themselves out of a food source with zero care for nature or ecology. The stigma that druids should be one way or the other needs to be squashed. I would emphasize that hey if you want your druid to be a mindless killer, animals likely wont respond well to him/her, if the druids god that it must have to prey for divine magic dosn't agree with the chosen life of bloodlust it may stop granting spells all together. Another avenue for adjusting the mentality of your druids behavior is make druids of the peta world unite!! As many as need be to allow the whole party to understand this could get us all killed. . . or turned into newts!
Came upon this thread after a Druid of the Circle of the Moon stood by while another character killed one of the party's horses in an attempt to provide a food source to placate a hungry Wyvern in a recent adventure. It seemed to go against everything the Circle of the Moon stood for, and got me wondering about whether Druids would be OK with the killing of an animals in this situation. The thread seems generally split between those who believe Classes should provide some guidance/restrictions for beliefs and behaviour, and those leaning towards "freedom of choice".
My own sense is that the problem with the latter comes from players who simply want to act as they wish, making choices that result in "success" in a narrow way - that is, without considering backstory, roleplaying and storytelling, and more in terms of killing creatures, finding treasures, levelling up. Not that anyone in the thread is suggesting that, but in a way that's the straw man that everyone fears - so it seems the key would be to ensure that a Druid player thinks deeply about their choices, their character motivations and histories -they can be whatever they wish to be, but would need to tell an interesting story with it, and the archetypes provide a baseline and touchstone with which to work from, however closely or distantly they end up from them.
Perhaps: It's not that they can't take animal life - but that should not do so casually?
Came upon this thread after a Druid of the Circle of the Moon stood by while another character killed one of the party's horses in an attempt to provide a food source to placate a hungry Wyvern in a recent adventure. It seemed to go against everything the Circle of the Moon stood for, and got me wondering about whether Druids would be OK with the killing of an animals in this situation. The thread seems generally split between those who believe Classes should provide some guidance/restrictions for beliefs and behaviour, and those leaning towards "freedom of choice".
My own sense is that the problem with the latter comes from players who simply want to act as they wish, making choices that result in "success" in a narrow way - that is, without considering backstory, roleplaying and storytelling, and more in terms of killing creatures, finding treasures, levelling up. Not that anyone in the thread is suggesting that, but in a way that's the straw man that everyone fears - so it seems the key would be to ensure that a Druid player thinks deeply about their choices, their character motivations and histories -they can be whatever they wish to be, but would need to tell an interesting story with it, and the archetypes provide a baseline and touchstone with which to work from, however closely or distantly they end up from them.
Perhaps: It's not that they can't take animal life - but that should not do so casually?
All depends on the character. Had this druid been against killing animals before? Maybe this druid worships "nature" as in the pure, primal, elemental forces, and living beings mean nothing compared to earth, air, or water.
Even so, in the situation given, who knows what their character would do better than the player? That's what I take from a ton of this discussion -- DMs and people on a message board dictating what a PC would do rather than the player who has been living in that PC's shoes for however many sessions. Sure, you can second guess it, and if it really feels too meta-gamey, then it's fine to ask the player OOC or in between sessions if they really feel that their PC would react in that way, or if it was simply convenience. Even so, if their answer is "it was convenience" ... maybe the druid lacks confidence! maybe they just want balance in the party and won't ruffle feathers!
No one in real life acts exactly according to their overriding philosophy 24/7. Sometimes people slip up momentarily. Sometimes someone strives to be a certain way but can't achieve that paragon for one reason or another. PCs are the same way.
Came upon this thread after a Druid of the Circle of the Moon stood by while another character killed one of the party's horses in an attempt to provide a food source to placate a hungry Wyvern in a recent adventure. It seemed to go against everything the Circle of the Moon stood for, and got me wondering about whether Druids would be OK with the killing of an animals in this situation. The thread seems generally split between those who believe Classes should provide some guidance/restrictions for beliefs and behaviour, and those leaning towards "freedom of choice".
My own sense is that the problem with the latter comes from players who simply want to act as they wish, making choices that result in "success" in a narrow way - that is, without considering backstory, roleplaying and storytelling, and more in terms of killing creatures, finding treasures, levelling up. Not that anyone in the thread is suggesting that, but in a way that's the straw man that everyone fears - so it seems the key would be to ensure that a Druid player thinks deeply about their choices, their character motivations and histories -they can be whatever they wish to be, but would need to tell an interesting story with it, and the archetypes provide a baseline and touchstone with which to work from, however closely or distantly they end up from them.
Perhaps: It's not that they can't take animal life - but that should not do so casually?
All depends on the character. Had this druid been against killing animals before? Maybe this druid worships "nature" as in the pure, primal, elemental forces, and living beings mean nothing compared to earth, air, or water.
Even so, in the situation given, who knows what their character would do better than the player? That's what I take from a ton of this discussion -- DMs and people on a message board dictating what a PC would do rather than the player who has been living in that PC's shoes for however many sessions. Sure, you can second guess it, and if it really feels too meta-gamey, then it's fine to ask the player OOC or in between sessions if they really feel that their PC would react in that way, or if it was simply convenience. Even so, if their answer is "it was convenience" ... maybe the druid lacks confidence! maybe they just want balance in the party and won't ruffle feathers!
No one in real life acts exactly according to their overriding philosophy 24/7. Sometimes people slip up momentarily. Sometimes someone strives to be a certain way but can't achieve that paragon for one reason or another. PCs are the same way.
For something like this you might want to consider the "animals" involved as well. If your going to feed a Wyvern it probably doesn't want your dead horse. It probably wants a live horse to eat and/or kill at it's preference. It's something that is used to catching and eating other animals afterall. So the druid may not have an issue with the horse. but may have an issue with how your going about feeding the wyvern instead depending on various factors.
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Preach brother.
Something that has stumped me is what are druids' armor made of. The class proficiencies call out that druids don't wear metal armor... do what do they wear? Leather is the default here in dndbeyond but a vegan druid may not be comfortable wearing armor made from a dead animal.
My druid doesn't have an issue with this because she grew up in a native American type culture (respect nature, if you kill an animal, make the most of the kill, etc) but she also doesn't have issues with cannibalism either unlike her city-gnome cousin... because the shapeshifting druid has taken a bite out of a human or two while in wolf or lion form. She's very circle-of-life-ish.
I imagine if you want to play a vegan druid you might make it difficult but your character might struggle when it kills in self defense but it would make things interesting if you love drama. But hey my druid felt bad for killing a wyvern to defend her horses so not just beasts. (She even tried scaring the wyvern away with some call- lightning to say we weren't worth the fight. )
I would think the dm and player should work out the background for the druid before imposing expectations or restrictions. Maybe the druid harnesses the power of nature and actively uses it to kill animals for sport (while backwards to me i don't think it should be counted out unless you've established that nature magic doesn't work that way in your world. )
Armour can be made of wood (bark sheets, shoots, small planks wrapped together).
To be honest even if a druid would never choose to kill/eat an animal, if an animal has died from other means like natural causes or accident, there is no reason they could not use the animal.
Finally, if all else is done, the druid could get Mage Armour from a Magic Initiate feat or use the Barkskin spell.
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I just use the variant rule for "exotic materials" that ups the cost of armor made from non-standard materials. (I don't have my PHB with me right now - can't seem to find the right search phrase on DDB.)
Anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem to get, say, wyvern-scale mail for your druid. You might run into problems if your druid is more of a "vegan granola hippie" kind of druid - I tend to run them much more Native American. Life is a cycle. Everything is born, everything dies. If you're going to kill an animal you respect it and make as much use of it as you can.
And really, for that reason, the only in-game reason my druids give to explain the "no metal armor" thing is usually "well, have you seen what mining does to the environment? I mean, if we find some armor somewhere I'm happy to repurpose it - that's just trying not to be wasteful. But I don't want to encourage environmental destruction by running out and buying shiny new metal armor."
My advice would be to not worry about it. If you had fun, and he had fun and your party had fun, he was not doing it wrong. You were all doing it right. I tend to view classes as nothing more than a chassis to provide game play mechanics and style that I like. For example if you want to play a shape shifter, druid is really your only choice. Why should you have to do the hippy thing to play your character according to your vision just because tradition says so?
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
My first D&D character was a true neutral Druid in 3.5, but I interpreted true neutral to be true balance and therefore for every good or lawful action I made I would have to balance that with an equal evil or chaotic action and vice versa. My GM never dealt with a true neutral character before and just went along with my explanation. We also viewed it as my druid didn't follow a deity but had a similar relationship with nature itself, we actually pulled some inspiration from Swamp Thing comics with the idea being that my druid served a non-specific concept of nature, with Swamp Thing essentially being an avatar of that non-specific concept similar to how various deities might have avatars. So the idea I went with was that life and death are both a part of nature, and to keep with that true balance motif, for every action in support of life my druid made (such as healing or helping a village) MUST be balanced with an equal action in support of death (such as dealing damage to ANY creature or harming a village).
I had a lot of fun with this viewpoint and as a result always had a positive view of Druids, and a number of shenanigans were caused that also made my group think it was fun. Certain members of my group would also remind me of just how many times we and specifically my druid performed good or helpful actions just to see how I would try to balance them out with evil or harmful actions. One time we stopped a goblin invasion of a farming village and helped them bring in the harvest just in time before winter for extra gold. As we left I set fire to the village, and burned just about all of it down along with killing over half the villagers who were drunkenly celebrating the victory over the goblins in a barn. Turns out both alcohol and barns are highly flammable.
eh I see what your saying. . . love how when you ask something on these forums about 95% of the people are 100% just being contrarian. Me personally I like to compare the natural edicts of a druid to the natural edicts of animals. Some beasts naturally turn feral and nasty, and some are born that way. . . for instance the mountain lion, you can find them lying in a clearing with a dozen dead deer in the area it will never eat. Mountain lion see, mountain lion attack, simple as that. Then there's the sheep, it eats grass, wont ever fight back, and after running for awhile will jus lie down and wait to be eaten. Wolves never fight fair always choosing to hit dishonorably form behind, while sharks always kill the youngest weakest looking prey. Most of there reason are based on survival, but again lets go back to the mountain lion. Nature is crazy bro. Imagine the druid with a wolf companion. Wolves eat and attack just about anything smaller then them and have huge appetites, and they will literally eat themselves out of a food source with zero care for nature or ecology. The stigma that druids should be one way or the other needs to be squashed. I would emphasize that hey if you want your druid to be a mindless killer, animals likely wont respond well to him/her, if the druids god that it must have to prey for divine magic dosn't agree with the chosen life of bloodlust it may stop granting spells all together. Another avenue for adjusting the mentality of your druids behavior is make druids of the peta world unite!! As many as need be to allow the whole party to understand this could get us all killed. . . or turned into newts!
Came upon this thread after a Druid of the Circle of the Moon stood by while another character killed one of the party's horses in an attempt to provide a food source to placate a hungry Wyvern in a recent adventure. It seemed to go against everything the Circle of the Moon stood for, and got me wondering about whether Druids would be OK with the killing of an animals in this situation. The thread seems generally split between those who believe Classes should provide some guidance/restrictions for beliefs and behaviour, and those leaning towards "freedom of choice".
My own sense is that the problem with the latter comes from players who simply want to act as they wish, making choices that result in "success" in a narrow way - that is, without considering backstory, roleplaying and storytelling, and more in terms of killing creatures, finding treasures, levelling up. Not that anyone in the thread is suggesting that, but in a way that's the straw man that everyone fears - so it seems the key would be to ensure that a Druid player thinks deeply about their choices, their character motivations and histories -they can be whatever they wish to be, but would need to tell an interesting story with it, and the archetypes provide a baseline and touchstone with which to work from, however closely or distantly they end up from them.
Perhaps: It's not that they can't take animal life - but that should not do so casually?
All depends on the character. Had this druid been against killing animals before? Maybe this druid worships "nature" as in the pure, primal, elemental forces, and living beings mean nothing compared to earth, air, or water.
Even so, in the situation given, who knows what their character would do better than the player? That's what I take from a ton of this discussion -- DMs and people on a message board dictating what a PC would do rather than the player who has been living in that PC's shoes for however many sessions. Sure, you can second guess it, and if it really feels too meta-gamey, then it's fine to ask the player OOC or in between sessions if they really feel that their PC would react in that way, or if it was simply convenience. Even so, if their answer is "it was convenience" ... maybe the druid lacks confidence! maybe they just want balance in the party and won't ruffle feathers!
No one in real life acts exactly according to their overriding philosophy 24/7. Sometimes people slip up momentarily. Sometimes someone strives to be a certain way but can't achieve that paragon for one reason or another. PCs are the same way.
For something like this you might want to consider the "animals" involved as well. If your going to feed a Wyvern it probably doesn't want your dead horse. It probably wants a live horse to eat and/or kill at it's preference. It's something that is used to catching and eating other animals afterall. So the druid may not have an issue with the horse. but may have an issue with how your going about feeding the wyvern instead depending on various factors.