Innate Spellcasting. The dryad’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 14). The dryad can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
At will: druidcraft
3/day each: entangle, goodberry
1/day each: barkskin, pass without trace, shillelagh
Magic Resistance. The dryad has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Speak with Beasts and Plants. The dryad can communicate with beasts and plants as if they shared a language.
Tree Stride. Once on her turn, the dryad can use 10 feet of her movement to step magically into one living tree within her reach and emerge from a second living tree within 60 feet of the first tree, appearing in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the second tree. Both trees must be Large or bigger.
Club. Melee Weapon Attack: +2 to hit (+6 to hit with shillelagh), reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d4) bludgeoning damage, or 8 (1d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage with shillelagh.
Fey Charm. The dryad targets one humanoid or beast that she can see within 30 feet of her. If the target can see the dryad, it must succeed on a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw or be magically charmed. The charmed creature regards the dryad as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn’t under the dryad’s control, it takes the dryad’s requests or actions in the most favorable way it can.
Each time the dryad or her allies do anything harmful to the target, it can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on itself on a success. Otherwise, the effect lasts 24 hours or until the dryad dies, is on a different plane of existence from the target, or ends the effect as a bonus action. If a target’s saving throw is successful, the target is immune to the dryad’s Fey Charm for the next 24 hours.
The dryad can have no more than one humanoid and up to three beasts charmed at a time.
Well I don't know what your gonna use it on but if for defense, you can try and convince a dryad to move along with it's tree and protect a location though idk how your going to convince it to do that. There's no spell or magic item or stuff that I know of that can turn dryads into a familiar unless you count the spell Conjure Fey, Summon fey, or the Summon Fey Spirit from Unearth Arcane but there's always home brew. Like maybe a +2 wood staff that have a dryad inside or a spell that create higher CR find familiar or spells that forcefully or unforcefully bond another creature with you. Perhaps.
Yes. Cast "Awaken" on her tree home.
Shillelagh is a duration spell. It lasts for one minute which means that most dryads will only cast it once at the start of the encounter.
I think they made shillelagh a once-a-day to signify it's a spell of last resort. As people have noted, dryads aren't really the type to be right at the front of the fight; they're set up for support and evasion. Considering it's only a bonus action to cast, I'd save it for if the dryad had been pinned down in melee, not an opener.
Would a Dryad be able to take objects or Tiny / small creatures/ humanoids into a tree when using tree stride?
My only critique is, if she IS the ship, she ought to be the captain herself! I mean, the only other way that dynamic works is if she just really likes all the people and/or the Captain in particular. But that just feels weird and wrong, the ship is almost like an extension of her body, and yet she's taking orders on board it? Pfff...
(Or I guess, she could've been tricked and is in sort of an abusive relationship with the crew, if played for drama.)
Or it could be the "Captain" is just a face role, but in practice functions more like her first officer: She's in charge, but the "Captain" advises and manages the execution of most plans, etc.
The Feylost background from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight seems like a perfect fit!
I'm running a game now where the group are sailing on an animated tree with a Dryad bonded to it. The tree is dying and has chosen to spend its last few months seeing the world with a bunch of adventurers. It's set in a greek era setting, so everyone sails in sight of land and drag the boats ashore at night. So the tree gets to plant its roots to get nutrients every night. The dryad acts as the tree's translator, as well as enjoying the trips to theatres, debates and wine bars etc.
Would like to reply to this just in case anyone reads it and thinks the CR is wrong. I recalculated the CR both with and without shillelagh and it's actually the opposite. If you don't have barkskin cast on the creature and don't use shillelagh a Dryad is a CR 1/8 creature. With both barkskin and shillelagh cast it becomes a CR 1 creature. So WoTC calculated the correct CR of the creature.
Especially since you can literally recreate a dryad almost exactly with a level 3 circle of the land druid (minus tree stride but you can get everything else)
3 words... high charisma bard
.
kind of related, does anyone know where to find stats for oreads?
What a great painting.
I'm helping my DM with creating some newbie-friendly PCs based on the five "showcase" Strixhaven students from the MTG expansion. Any suggestions for what race/species to use for a Dryad PC? So far we're considering Eladrin, a homebrew-tweaked Earth Genasi, Firbolg, or the revised Hobgoblin.
I'd suggest a half-elf paladin of the ancients to approximate her. (I just realized you can make her a Circle of the Land(Forest) Druid and get all the spells dryads can cast at a lower level. I've already been writing the perfect minmaxed paladin for 30 minutes though, so I'm just gonna ignore that.) There might be a more fitting combination of race and class but I wouldn't know because I don't have a bunch of fancy sourcebooks. So the Player's Handbook is really all I got for this.
This allows you to take full advantage of the half-elf's increase to charisma, whilst also allowing you access to approximations of the dryad's abilities through her paladin oath, granted not all at third level when you choose it. I'm sure your DM will make at least some accommodations considering you're roleplaying a dryad and not actually a half-elf, but now we're edging into the territory of homebrew and DM intuition, so let's go back to RAW. Half-elves have darkvision of 60 ft, and dryads do too, so that's a nice bonus. I suggest using the half-elf's Ability Score Increase on Strength and Constitution. Dexterity might be a good choice too, depending on how you want to play your paladin. But with plate armor, you get no bonus to AC from it and an automatic disadvantage to stealth, the most useful Dexterity skill, so it's not a great idea for the typical paladin.
From the paladin proficiency list select insight and persuasion, and from the half-elf's skill versatility select perception and arcana. Those are all fairly useful skills for any character, especially perception and arcana. Granted you can somewhat simulate a high arcana score by just memorizing the Monster Manual like I do, but that's only gonna take you so far, especially when your campaign takes place outside of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk where there are going to be many, many creatures running around that are absent from the Monster Manual. Heck even within those worlds you're not gonna find the BBEG's stat block in the Monster Manual unless the module designers were very very lazy. So basically, arcana's always a good idea in case you manage to encounter something you haven't before, or just don't quite remember an aspect of something you have.
I'd suggest outlander for the background, since that would be reasonable for a fey creature, and athletics is a nice proficiency to get for free. Oh, and survival's good too I suppose. Though I think outlander was meant for rangers, so you might wanna select soldier instead, if only for that sweet sweet intimidation proficiency. It doesn't really matter all that much though since backgrounds don't really affect your character much stat-wise, classes do that infinitely more. Infinitely and a half.
I don't really know how to end this post, I've been writing for over 30 minutes now so I'm just gonna stop.
You like Dryads? Check out this
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/176270-trostani
How can you unblock being able tocreate a Homebrew Dryad playable character?
Am i the only one annoyed by them being Neutral and not Chaotic Good? If they are Neutral why would they care about overhunting? or Woodcutting? and if Dryads are imprisoned fey, why would they move a finger against someone killing their tree? as far as they understand they frees them, either from a miseerable life or from imprisonment
Does Tree Stride trigger opportunity attacks if it is adjacent to the tree and an enemy?