Hey fellow travelers.  Like many, I am doing a worldbuilding project to support my campaign.  My current focus is how druids can help a country and are therefore encouraged to immigrate to help.

My country is called Calanthi.  It is a feudal monarchy.  The nobles that founded Calanthi broke off from their mother country, so many of their traditions and world views are tied to these old ways.  That's why, as nobles, they believe a feudal monarchy is clearly a proper way to run a country.  In their previous country, they were mid level nobles, and now they are Kings, Dukes, Marquis and Counts.  Of the knights that joined their expedition, many of them became Barons.

But another thing they learned in their mother country is that farmers are essential to growing a big country, because you still have to feed your subjects.

The nobility discuss farm output by region regularly when they get together.  A noble with connections to some druids mentioned that with the druids help his farmers produce vast quantities of food and they have to compel their people to help the farmers bring in the harvest.  The discussion of Plant Growth began to dominate the room and one of the more mathematically inclined figured out how many druids it would take to cast Plant Growth over the whole country as a ritual spell.  Then, knowing the druids wouldn't allow themselves to be compelled to do this constantly year around, they settled on how many it would take if this were to take only one month.  It required 21 druids per Barony to cast Plant Growth over the whole kingdom in one month, and these druids had to be level 5 or higher.  So the Barony would need more that 21 druids because some druids would be training to achieve level 5.

Based on this, the Barons were asked to recruit the druids and work out the particulars to have this done each year.  The consensus was that granting the druids a Forest Reserve of 2000 acres would be their compensation for performing this service.  They could bring their families and build a village in their forest reserve and be exempt from further taxes.

So the kingdom now has about 150 Druidic Forest Reserves spread out everywhere.  The druids manage their reserve and nobody is allowed in without permission except government messengers.

The druids grow some trees to be harvested in exchange for the food they need that they can't get in their forest.  This area of the forest is located close to a hamlet where wood-cutters can come harvest the trees.

Now the King has come to the druids with a request.  He is frustrated by bandits capturing some of the grain that is being shipped to the cities after the harvest.  The druids work on a new ritual spell where an upgraded Tree Stride is cast as a ritual opening a dimension door from one pair of trees to another pair of trees a mile further ahead.  So a wagon load of grain jumps ahead one mile in only an instant, wagon, grain, horses, driver and all.  Twenty of these portals allow grain to jump from one city to the next in just a day.  Performing this service after the harvest takes about two weeks for the druids.

Now the king has the druids paid in grain, mutton, wool and lumber once a year for this service.

They do this because using teleportation circles opens vulnerable points in the kingdom for invasion.  Every teleportation circle can be accessed by any magic user that knows the special code to access the circle, and these codes are not secure.  So the kingdom has limited the number of teleportation circles, and they are under heavy guard.  The druids Tree Portal Spell is secure because it only operates between the trees that are up to a mile apart.  Once the ritual stops, the gate closes.

Now I am trying to build out these druids even further.  They voluntarily join the group and may leave based on their own rules.  The group is called, by the kingdom, The Druidic Order of Calanthi, The Druidic Order for short.  The live independently on their Forest Reservations and may do pretty near anything they want on the Reservation.  Of course, there are occasions where normal commoners follow game onto the reserve, and then there are consequences.  But the nation understands the benefit of the Plant Growth so the druids are left alone.

The Plant Growth Rituals happen in the early spring and last all year.  The harvest season rituals happen in the mid fall and last only as long as they are performed.

The families of the druids learn trades if they don't wish to be druids.  This provides enough tradesmen for the druidic villages.  Their homes are better built than the average common's home in Calanthi.  Their clothing is better made because of the community serving itself.  In short, the druids and their families know they have a good thing.  But this doesn't stop some from leaving the community because they think it is beneath them to be under obligation to the king.

Another thing ... It takes almost 3,800 druids to do this across the whole nation.  That is about 3,800 families, and that is a lot of people.  to find this many druids, the country had to allow more than half of them to immigrate from their own countries.  So a significant number of them are not humans.  In many cases, for social harmony, it was necessary to have whole Forest Reserves populated with druids of one race or another.  So there are one or two Forest Reserves that are controlled by a group of Dragonborn, another three or four controlled by Elves, another two or three by Half-Elves, and seven or eight controlled by Dwarves, and so on.  Only about half of these druids trace their lineage back to Calanthi, and another sizeable portion trace their lineage back to the mother country.  So, there will be some commoners and nobles that don't trust the foreign groups of druids.  This will create its own story.

So, if you made it this far, Wow!  If you have some good druid worldbuilding ideas, I would appreciate it if you shared.  I am enjoying building my world even though I know may players won't see more than 10% of it.

So think about other spells that druid can use to help the population.  For example at level 5 Druids have 4 1st, 3 Second level spells in addition to the two thirds for Plant Growth. That is 7 potential casting of goodberry or 8 with Wild Resurgence meaning that druid can feed 80 people a day if necessary.  If you have 3800 Druids thats potentially over 300,000 people which could help mitigate droughts and famine.

Spells like Create or Destroy Water may have some application.

Not sure if Circle Magic might help in some cases.

About half of those druids are under 5th level.  So the number of Goodberries isn't going to be quite so high.  But, in a country of over a million people, a bunch of Goodberries isn't going to make much difference.  Each Barony has about 400 sq miles (256,000 acres) and the population is somewhere around 120 per sq mile because of the benefit of Plant Growth.

Create Water, Purify Food and Drink, Cure Wounds and stuff like that would make a big difference.  By not dying of simple infections or bad water, infant mortality would have a dramatic change.  The problem in the case of these druids is they would be pretty remote to deliver those services.  If there were some sort of outbreak, they might be mobilized to help for a few days, but they also have families to look after and protect.

Lesser Restoration will help from many serious ailments, but in most cases I expect Clerics nearer to the infirmed would cast it before they could be brought to the druids.  Healing Spirit could heal a good deal more than Cure Light Wounds.

After that there isn't much on the list that would matter to commoners in their day-to-day living.  So the higher level spell slots would probably be used to upcast some spells if the situation warranted it.

I'm still looking for ideas on natural effects that could be enhanced by modifying a druidic spell.