Homebrew Dryad Species Details
Origins: Powerful fey will sometimes bind lesser fey spirits to trees, transforming them into dryads.
Treebound: A dryad can emerge from the tree and travel the lands around it, but the tree remains their home and roots them to the world. As long as the tree remains healthy and unharmed, the dryad stays forever youthful. If the tree is harmed, they suffer. If the tree is ever destroyed, the dryad descends into madness.
Reclusive Fey. Dryads act as guardians of their woodland demesnes. Shy and reclusive, they watch interlopers from the trees. A dryad struck by the beauty of a stranger might investigate more closely, perhaps even try to lure the individual away to be charmed.
Woodland Magic. Dryads can speak with plants and animals. They can teleport from one tree to another, luring interlopers away from their groves. If pressed, a dryad can beguile humanoids with their enchantments, turning enemies into friends. They also know a handful of useful spells.
Dryad Traits
Dryads can speak with plants and animals. They can teleport from one tree to another, luring interlopers away from their groves. If pressed, a dryad can beguile humanoids with their enchantments, turning enemies into friends. They also know a handful of useful spells.Ability Score Increase
Your Charisma score goes up by two and your Intelligence by one.
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
Dryads have advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Speak with Beasts and Plants
Dryads can communicate with beasts and plants as if they shared a language.
Tree Stride
Once per long rest, a dryad can use 10 feet of their movement to step magically into one living tree within their 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.
Fey Charm
The dryad targets one humanoid or beast that they can see within 30 feet of themselves. 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 its 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.
Skills, Senses, and Languages
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Posted Jul 13, 2021I tried to replicate the Dryad as accurately as possible here. The only changes I knowingly made was two nerfs:
The dryad is quite powerful in its magic, and its innate spellcasting already gives it a huge boost. On top of that, its Fey Charm and Tree Stride abilities are extremely good. To balance it a bit, I limited Tree Stride to one use per long rest, and Fey charm to three.
Even with these nerfs, it is still waaay too powerful, but I felt that these were all I could really change while still keeping it as close to being a vanilla dryad as possible. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or changes I should make!