Druids and Nature in D&D

[Beldar]

Here are some thoughts, in case it is useful to any of you, on Druids and Nature in D&D.

In the modern world, when we want to clear and plant a field, we have bulldozers & similar earth-moving equipment that can form it to our will, and do so in a hurry.
Similarly farmers have tractors, combination harvesters, and crop-dusting airplanes spraying tons of chemicals to help them.
We have a lot of tools with which to subdue nature: so much so, that we can, in our exuberance to farm & build, actually run out of nature entirely, almost by accident, if we're not careful.

If nature has any way to fight back, it's by lions, tigers, & bears, or by slow growth things like mold. We can readily defeat those with guns and chemicals.

In such a situation, nature needs some additional protection. And conservationists and environmentalists have exuberantly leapt to address that.

But in a D&D world, the situation is very different.
The common man has no mechanization, no vats of chemicals, no guns. He has to clear a field with an axe. He plows it with a wooden plow (with a metal blade if he is lucky) pulled by an ox. That's if he is lucky. Many have had to plow fields with plows that are little more than a pointed stick with handles, guided by the wife while the husband pulls it.

Nature, on the other hand, is a lot more able to defend itself, in a D&D world.
It has intelligent denizens like Treants and Dryads and many more, all very willing to protect that part of nature they call home. And it has many unintelligent, but very potent, denizens effectively guarding it, such as Shambling Mounds, Assassin Vines, Needlefolk, Phantom Fungus and on & on & on.

Indeed, the denizens of nature are so many, varied, and potent that it is amazing any common men at all have survived being farmers, right out there on the edge of nature. The only reason I can see why any farmers have successfully farmed at all is that the rare group of adventurers passes through every so often and reduces the number of horribly deadly things living in the woods, such that those things are less likely to pop out of the woods and snack on the occasional, comparatively helpless, farmer.

But even then, a farmer is literally taking his life in his hands when he decides he needs a new field and undertakes to clear the trees in it.

In such a situation, it is the humans, not nature, that needs a little extra protection.

The writers of the D&D books did not think this through. So they assumed that Druids would have the same focus on protecting nature that modern environmentalists have.
But when you think about the above, and other arguments below, it is clear that that's absurd.
A Druid would no more be concerned with protecting nature, than he would think that a wolf needs protection from a squirrel. The wolf is far more powerful than the squirrel & needs no protection. Such a thought is likely to have never entered into his mind. It is that absurd.

Nature, in D&D, is far more powerful than men & needs no protection.

Even in the vanishingly few campaign settings where high level people with character classes are common, Nature still needs no protection from humans, because there are So Many threats out there keeping such characters busy. They have no spare time to subdue any more of Nature than is necessary, since they are busy battling undead apocalypses, demon invasions, & plentiful other catastrophic threats all the time. If they get a breather in-between armies of 10 million goblins (fast-breeding races are like that) coming from the hinterlands, they often end up fighting each-other. They have no spare time to push back nature any more than is necessary for the citizens to do some farming.

So, Druids are not environmentalists, concerned about protecting nature & ready to chain themselves to a tree to prevent it from being cut down.
Rather, just as Clerics reverence the various gods, respect their power, form a connection with them and gain power from doing so, Druids do the same with nature. They recognize that nature has great power and by forming a connection with it, they gain some power as well.

But they can't form such a connection with nature without realizing something that is central to nature - a core feature, inseparable from nature:
That is this: almost all of nature spends almost all of its time either trying to eat each-other or not be eaten.

It has been said that "Nature is red in tooth and claw", which is a reference to natural creatures spending so much time & effort trying to shed one-another's blood in an attempt to feed themselves.

A lion, given a chance, would be happy to eat a wolf, which would be happy to eat a badger, which would be happy to eat a chicken, which would be happy to eat a mouse, which would be happy to eat a grasshopper, and so on.
Beavers and woodpeckers kill trees for their own purposes. And plants of all types are a primary food source for inconceivably vast numbers of animals.

Nature spends a lot of time eating other nature.
Man is no different. He is part of that.

So while it is absurd to go protect rabbits from wolves, or trees from beavers, or berries from bears, it is also absurd to protect, from man, the trees he wants to cut down, or the 'weeds' he wants to pull, in his attempts to farm.
That's because this is just another instance of some part of nature feeding on some other part of nature.

A Druid would have no qualms at all about chopping a limb off a tree for his use or convenience. A beaver would do the same.
A Druid would have no qualms about killing and eating a plant or animal, either for himself or for others, since all of nature does that routinely, and he recognizes that he is part of nature too.

[Blackhawk748]

did you play a game with a super environmentalist druid? lol

[BWR]

Except there are examples of mass destruction of nature in pre-industrial societies. Just look at the Mayans (at least according to the current hypotheses). With magic and the sort of monsters you get this will be even easier to accomplish.

[Blackhawk748]

Have you seen what a Unicorn can do? Also the Fey, who needs a druid when the Fey are running around, they happen to LIKE that forest over there and have no qualms about ripping you apart, using your ribcage as a footstool and drinking wine from your skull.

[Beldar]

Yes, the Mayans managed to subdue nature reasonably well using stone axes, a lot of time, & animal muscle to assist them.

But you miss the point:
A) They had no Shambling Mounds, Fey etc to oppose them &
B) To our knowledge, even their efforts did not inspire a bunch of environmentalists & conservationists to try to defend nature from them.

The Real world stuff is just to give context.
The point is that nature, in D&D, needs no defense from humanoids - it is perfectly capable of defending itself.

And whatever amount of nature-subjugation you could achieve with magic etc also misses my point.
Magic is not generally available in most campaign settings. You don't read a lot of campaign settings where common average farmers use Unseen Servants to pick their fruit, Dire Badgers to plow their fields, & weather manipulation spells to guarantee rain.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen anything along those lines.

No, the campaign settings I've seen, where they mention farming etc at all, still have it very much as medieval farmers were: an axe, a wooden plow (with a metal blade if you're lucky), an domesticated ox etc.

Nature needs no defense, in a D&D world, against that common farmer.

So, in D&D, if environmentalists etc exist at all, they only bother opposing the efforts of very powerful spellcasters (who are the only ones really capable of drastic effects on their environment). But they are few enough, and powerful enough, that that seems silly.

[Urpriest]

Magic is not generally available in most campaign settings. You don't read a lot of campaign settings where common average farmers use Unseen Servants to pick their fruit, Dire Badgers to plow their fields, & weather manipulation spells to guarantee rain.

You also don't read a lot of campaign settings where Druids care about average farmers picking fruit and plowing their fields.

Druids are there for when a Bligher or Dark Sun Defiler runs around destroying swaths of wilderness at-will, or when a den of Grells hunts a forest to near extinction, or when agents of Thay sent an army of axe-wielding constructs to gather raw materials. The only Druids who mess with random farmers are parodies and predation-venerating villains.

[Scow2]

If nature has any way to fight back, it's by lions, tigers, & bears, or by slow growth things like mold. We can readily defeat those with guns and chemicals.No acknowledgement of fires, severe storms, meteorites, earthquakes, volcanoes, and sinkholes?

Nature is about power. A human city concerns it about as much as an antihill or beehive.

[AuraTwilight]

Humans have spellcasters. "Yo urban wizard I'll hire you to disintegrate this whole forest to make my <Whatever.> "Lol okay."

[Rising Phoenix]

If you bring intelligence into the equation than anything may need defense from something based on the opinion and point of view of the creature that has a thought process.

Yes, to a farmer felling a single tree may not matter, but to the local trent that may be completely unacceptable for any number of reasons.

But really it all depends on the campaign world. In some civil races live in fear of the natural world, in some in peaceful mutually beneficial relationships; and in others yet the natural world has been plundered and is near non existent leaving the civil races to starve/resort to magic/technology.

[Tommy2255]

I think that ultimately falls more into the purview of the Ranger, doesn't it? Protecting the innocent villagers from the horrible monsters that roam the edges of civilization? I mean, the only distinguishing feature things like shambling mounds and treants have from orcs, trolls, and goblins is the [plant] type, and rangers can deal with those just as effectively as with anything else.

[Afgncaap5]

The spellcaster who is in tune with nature is kind of a modern idea that comes to us from around World War One, and became more popular between the late 1950s and 1970s. Historical druids didn't exactly act like we see them in D&D (and in fact, a historical druid who used magic might have looked more like what we would think of as a wizard.)

Having said that, I think the thing about druids in D&D is that they don't necessarily have to protect nature so much as they represent nature, in a way similar to how clerics represent deities. In my campaign world, magic comes from a lot of different sources ('Arcane' magic existing as more of an umbrella term for a lot of different magics that certain casters can focus on.) Magic of the Dead gives us Necromancy, magic of art and music gives us Bards, and nature gives us druidic magic (Nature itself seeming to be much stronger than necromancy or bardic magic, with two entire classes dedicated to understanding it if you count Rangers.)

Still, the idea that druids might do more to protect the people from nature than the other way around is a fun one that might have the seeds for a fun campaign setting. Perhaps the druids live in nature and learn how to appease it and live within it, communicating their teachings to the rangers who live in tiny islands of civilization. I imagine that a setting like this might wind up looking something like the Eyerwood that The Lookouts (from Penny Arcade) takes place in.

[Beldar]

If your campaign setting has average folk who can afford to hire the high-level spellcasters/disintegrators standing on street corners looking for work, then obviously my argument does not apply there.

[Beldar]

Sorry.
On looking this over it is clear that I was unable to effectively communicate my point.
It is obviously getting lost somewhere in my Great Wall of Text, Uh I mean, supporting arguments.

The point was that in D&D, Nature is very capable of defending itself, and does not need anybody to step up to the cause.
And that therefore that attitude (of defending nature) would be rare, or even unknown.

But rather than try to clarify a bunch of misunderstandings (and probably thereby create more misunderstandings), I will just say "nevermind" and bow out.

[Phelix-Mu]

*cracks knuckles*

Alright, here's my take on it. Druids are primarily about protecting the existing balance in the world. Nature has its place, but so does civilization. The druids only really care one way or another when one of them starts running amok.

Turns out that "natural" forces, such as wolves, trees, and molds, don't often threaten civilization. On the odd plague or famine, it is certainly acceptable that a druid may visit local farms and towns, curing disease or blessing crops. In fact, many druids of the NG or LN ilk may use plant growth specifically for the purpose of preventing farmers from plowing new fields, famine notwithstanding. The key is to preserve the status quo.

Civilization, however, is a much more nebulous force to contain. Wolves are fairly predictable; man is much less so. Even in the above example where the druid uses plant growth to allow farmers to provide for themselves without cutting down the forest, some farmers may eventually get greedy and cut down the forest anyway. The same can be said of the military ambitions of that city over there and how they may or may not involve large-scale logging to build a navy, or major fortifications along the ocean that will destroy sensitive environments.

It's not that a druid must fight every small change, but the bigger the change, the more unforeseen the consequences. Druids look at the big picture (or at least the more effective ones do), and aim to keep that city over there as a city, not as a regional dictatorship using force to demand quotas from every town and village nearby.

Moreover, I am opposed to the idea that treants, nymphs, dryads, and other such creatures are "defenders of nature." Some of them may tend to behave as such, but they are generally free-willed creatures. Particularly, fey really can't be relied on for much of anything. They are often ignorant of their own welfare (chaotic in the extreme occasionally gets them in over their heads), let alone capable of consistently defending others. In some instances, of course, a single fey may champion a cause. But they are almost always isolated cases.

Really, it's "nature" that the druids are looking to protect. Sentient, supernatural creatures can generally take care of themselves. It's the animals, plants, and natural cycles that underpin non-magical life on the Prime that druids want to protect.

That said, it is entirely true that most druids aren't taking out lumberjacks, but instead looking for Blighters, necromancers, and Cancer Mages, among all manner of aberrations that explicitly are looking to twist and pervert nature (aboleths, mind flayers, beholders, etc...anything looking to remake reality in their own image), and other major despoilers.

That said, any druid is well within rights to chart their own course; barring the intervention from any shadowy druid organization, most druids rule themselves all or most of the time, and they are damn well strong enough to do whatever they want. If that's hug trees and knock over charcoal salesmen, good for them.

[Duke of Urrel]

Druids can be any kind of Neutral: purely Neutral, LN, CN, NG, and NE. So I agree with Beldar that druids can use their concept of "nature" to excuse just about any kind of behavior, both in themselves and about other individuals. They are not concerned so much about individual behavior as they are in corporate or collective behavior. In particular, they object when any one species takes over and dominates the biosphere, displacing all the others. Biological diversity is something that they are keen to preserve, regardless of their alignment, because this is the source of their power.

Even the Evilest of druids rely upon diverse flora and fauna from which to draw their power, and they will kill mercilessly to defend this biological diversity, even if they have no respect for individual organisms and indeed openly despise those whom they consider to be weak and unfit. Evil druids have perhaps the simplest solution to population growth in any species, particularly the human species: Increase the death rate until it overtakes the birth rate. Good druids, in contrast, prefer more Diplomacy and less killing; they preach family planning, recycling agricultural wastes, and using renewable organic materials rather than non-renewable minerals – though a little metal is okay, even for druids. For their part, Lawful and Chaotic druids have their own ways of striking the right balance, but all druids are concerned with balance, whereby "balance" means that no species threatens any other with total extinction, regardless of what individuals may do, either as carnivores, herbivores, scavengers, parasites, or what have you.

Druids do not object to most of humanity's activities as such – humans must live according to their own nature – but they are of necessity concerned with the expansion of humankind at the expense of all other living things. They don't like the clearing of whole forests for farmland, and they dislike the expansion of cities even more strongly. Druids don't object to farms and towns on a small scale, but they believe that there are limits, and they seek to guard these limits.

It is not the quality of human activity that druids object to; it is the quantity. Human civilization, pushed past a certain limit, goes too far for druids and provokes their aggression.

Why don't druids and their allies beat civilization back to the primitive state of hunter-gatherers?


Maybe it's because among humans, not many still have either the talent for or the knowledge of druidism, and of those that do, few actually choose to become druids. There are so many other ways to become powerful that are much more appealing to modern tastes. Not every human wants to live in smelly animal skins and sleep in the rain. Most modern humans, given the choice, would rather become clerics who favor some concept of civilization, or arcane spellcasters who seek the very latest in modern comfort. We mustn't think that most people who actually have to live in our fantasy world, rather than merely visit it for a few thrill-packed hours every week, particularly wish to live like druids. For them, life isn't about optimization and power; it's about surviving and living comfortably.


Maybe it's because the druids and their allies are rare. After all, their love of nature means that they don't expand their own population at the expense of their environment. Maybe Feys simply don't reproduce enough to make their forest overcrowded, and neither do treants, unicorns, etc. Those with the highest birth rate probably keep their numbers down by hurling themselves into battle against deadly foes, which causes enough of them to die to keep their population stable. And this puts them at a disadvantage when they come in conflict with humans and other Humanoid species whose populations are expanding, because they believe that the more there is of their own kind, the better.

Consequently, the defenders of the remaining wilderness in our fantasy world should be only just powerful enough to beat civilization back to a perpetual standoff, punctuated by conflict and war. They shouldn't be any more powerful than this.

[Phelix-Mu]

...snip...

All of that is quite good. I would be interested, however, in hearing how we all think druids would be inclined to act given that the RAW implications of magic are decidedly not going to keep the standard faux-medieval setting in play absent some additional powerful force/DM fiat.

In particular, it's commonly portrayed that any singular wizard could revolutionize the face of reality at high-levels. Does this mean that druids actively attempt to assassinate anyone above level X, before they become a threat that can't be countered? Or are druids accepting of the advanced nature of magic in the world, and willing to watch a kind of Tippyverse-level of civilization/wilderness balance take hold? Or do they even have a choice?

[Duke of Urrel]

All of that is quite good.

Thank you kindly.


I would be interested, however, in hearing how we all think druids would be inclined to act given that the RAW implications of magic are decidedly not going to keep the standard faux-medieval setting in play absent some additional powerful force/DM fiat.

In particular, it's commonly portrayed that any singular wizard could revolutionize the face of reality at high-levels. Does this mean that druids actively attempt to assassinate anyone above level X, before they become a threat that can't be countered? Or are druids accepting of the advanced nature of magic in the world, and willing to watch a kind of Tippyverse-level of civilization/wilderness balance take hold? Or do they even have a choice?

I don't want to derail this thread with yet another excursion into the intractable problem of Tiers, but…

I think the first answer I give to the question of why no particular class dominates the whole world of D&D, despite the obvious power differences between the various classes, is that no class co-operates with itself. So Good druids are opposed by Evil druids, Lawful ones by Chaotic ones. And it is the same with wizards, whose class-internal conflict may be even worse, because wizards don't gravitate toward pure Neutrality as much as druids do and therefore have much less class cohesion. The greatest threat in the world that wizards face is other wizards. This is what stops wizards from ruling the whole world.

And of course, I think you're absolutely right that on occasion, druids will identify certain powerful wizards – think of Saruman in the second LOTR movie – as the greatest enemies of nature, and they will use all their own considerable power to bring these wizards down.

[Ravens_cry]

I wish there was a counterpart to the Cloistered Cleric for Druids. Just like the Core Cleric is a battle priest, trained as much for war as for priestly duties, if not more so on the former, the Core Druid is a pretty much made for their own war.

[Phelix-Mu]

And of course, I think you're absolutely right that on occasion, druids will identify certain powerful wizards – think of Saruman in the second LOTR movie – as the greatest enemies of nature, and they will use all their own considerable power to bring these wizards down.

Ah, yes, Saruman. If only Gandalf had confirmed his kills been less merciful. That whole bit with the Shire at the end of the story really killed me inside. They were dreaming of a return to their happy homeland, only to realize that the crappiness of life can't all be blamed on Sauron (at least without playing Six Degrees of Sauron).

I'm personally working on a green slime-inspired Big Red Button for druids to push if the wizard 20 gets out of control.:smallwink:

[Deophaun]

Nature spends a lot of time eating other nature.
Man is no different. He is part of that.
Which is why I hate D&D's fluff for druids. Druids should, in general, be about protecting man from nature, not protecting nature from man. Druids are intercessors. The good ones are the people you call when the locusts are devouring the fields. Evil druids are the ones you call when you want to starve the peasantry of the neighboring kingdom.

The History Channel's Vikings series had a character that I think represented druids better than D&D's attempts; He was a boat builder that let the trees tell him which ones wanted to be turned into ships.

[Phelix-Mu]

Which is why I hate D&D's fluff for druids. Druids should, in general, be about protecting man from nature, not protecting nature from man. Druids are intercessors. The good ones are the people you call when the locusts are devouring the fields. Evil druids are the ones you call when you want to starve the peasantry of the neighboring kingdom.

The History Channel's Vikings series had a character that I think represented druids better than D&D's attempts; He was a boat builder that let the trees tell him which ones wanted to be turned into ships.

But that is kind of a more historical basis for calling something a "druid." D&D really made up it's own definition for the term, based loosely on some kind of prejudicial propaganda or other from way back.

[Slipperychicken]

@OP: That is a valid interpretation of druidism. There are a lot of them, if you take the time to look.


I imagine that more peaceful Druids might allow civilized peoples to exist and maintain their farmlands and such if they use sustainable practices like only cutting down so many trees each year (so that nature has time to replenish the wood), or only fishing in certain areas for so long (so they don't drive the fish to extinction), and disposing of harmful wastes responsibly (i.e. don't dump poison into the river without somehow treating it first).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Ravens_cry
I wish there was a counterpart to the Cloistered Cleric for Druids.

In fact, I had a notion for a "Cloistered Druid" a couple of months ago; it came to me while I was out in the woods one morning. I know I've got those notes somewhere....


Originally Posted by Phelix-Mu
D&D really made up it's own definition for the term....

The historical druids really were nothing like the game version. I'd love to know where the original game concept came from, and where they pulled all the elements from.

For that matter, I wonder if there was any influence from the druid in Asterix? (His name is "Getafix" in the English translations, not sure what the original French name was.)

As for the blurring of lines between druid and wizard, this always reminds me of Merlin in The Once and Future King, who shapechanges and speaks freely with the animals.

[Phelix-Mu]

As for the blurring of lines between druid and wizard, this always reminds me of Merlin in The Once and Future King, who shapechanges and speaks freely with the animals.

There is huge overlap, but I always thought that the game Druid was a combination of superstitions assigned to irl druid-type organizations that lived variously among the Gauls and other Western European tribes waaaaay back during Roman times. The Romans associated their resistance to Roman civilization with their living in nature/comparatively primitive practices, which gives us the whole backwards-tendency that druids are often given (living in the rough, refusing to use advanced armour and weapons).

Witchcraft and that kind of fear among irl monotheist religions probably also fed into these inaccurate views on more native religions that had ties to the land.

D&D just threw together these superstitions and plastered them with the nature priest archetype, with a bit of the antihero thrown in (insofar as druids aren't motivated by good v evil, necessarily).

[Naanomi]

As much as Nature in D&Dverse has things to protect it, it has threats our world doesn't have to face... when fire elementals boil out of the local Volcano and burn everything to ashes; when a local Ice Spirit decides eternal winter might be fun; when a Demon-Possessed Treant starts tainting the wood; when a portal to the Far Plane opened by some cultists starts... well... everything; THAT is where the nature-loving traditional Druid is needed.

[TuggyNE]

I see someone has already made my point for me: that the origin of the term druid is a lot closer to the way the OP posits Druids should be, so this is not exactly groundbreaking insight, however reasonable.


Ah, yes, Saruman. If only Gandalf had confirmed his kills been less merciful. That whole bit with the Shire at the end of the story really killed me inside. They were dreaming of a return to their happy homeland, only to realize that the crappiness of life can't all be blamed on Sauron (at least without playing Six Degrees of Sauron).

Yeah, but it was necessary to drive home one of the subtler points of the mythos: not everything can be blamed on Sauron, because he wasn't even the first Big Bad. So it's really more Six Degrees of Morgoth Bauglir. "Nothing was evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so."

[hamishspence]

(His name is "Getafix" in the English translations, not sure what the original French name was.)

According to TV Tropes, it was Panoramix.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Beldar
The common man has no mechanization, no vats of chemicals, no guns. He has to clear a field with an axe. He plows it with a wooden plow (with a metal blade if he is lucky) pulled by an ox. That's if he is lucky.

Much of the world's forest cover was cleared by exactly these methods, many centuries or even millennia before mechanized assistance. Greece at the time of the Persian invasions was heavily wooded--the mountains around Thermopylae were covered in oak forest, now long gone, stripped for the keels of triremes.

Iceland before 870 was almost entirely covered with birch and willow forests; by 950 most of these had been cut for firewood, grazing land, and for fuel to support the production of iron from bog ore. The central highlands of Madagascar were deforested at this same time, or possibly earlier, again for grazing and cultivation.

The early Malagasy, and many other cultures around the world, used another approach you haven't mentioned at all, which is fire. Some Native American cultures used fire on a large scale to maintain grassland habitats, which provided resources they valued. In the tropics fire was used for clearing small-scale plots which would be worked for a season or two and then abandoned; this continues today.

More on fire in a moment--but first, two other points:


Originally Posted by Beldar
Nature...has many unintelligent, but very potent, denizens effectively guarding it, such as Shambling Mounds, Assassin Vines, Needlefolk, Phantom Fungus and on & on & on.

Indeed, the denizens of nature are so many, varied, and potent that it is amazing any common men at all have survived being farmers, right out there on the edge of nature.

The most pertinent question here, which you haven't addressed, is population density of all these creatures. This is fundamental to any discussion of species interactions, which is what you're really talking about, but the Monster Manuals rarely if ever specify how common or uncommon any particular creature is. How many shambling mounds exist in a particular reach of forest? How many assassin vines grow in a particular valley?

This is relevant for the next point:


Originally Posted by Beldar
But even then, a farmer is literally taking his life in his hands when he decides he needs a new field and undertakes to clear the trees in it.

...Nature needs no defense, in a D&D world, against that common farmer.

You're making a convenient assumption here--that a solitary farmer goes out to clear a single field, and faces the wilderness alone. This is the Jack London approach, Man vs. Nature, with Man in the singular and very much on his own.

But farmers do, in fact, often form into villages or other communities, where there are many hands sowing, plowing and harvesting, working the fields together. This reaches far back to Early Neolithic cultures at least, such as the Cris peoples of the Danube and East Carpathians, who established small settlements very much like villages.

So how would farmers deal with shambling mounds or assassin vines? Cooperatively, in numbers, and with fire. Your "occasional, comparatively helpless" farmer doesn't need to rely on the happenstance of adventurers; the farmer will have his brothers and sons beside him, and his brothers-in-law and their sons, and everyone else who forms their community.

And they will be defending their farms and their homes, fiercely so, working in concert and with a strategy in mind. As already noted, most of the creatures you've described won't be "defending nature" per se; more often than not they're individual predators looking for an easy meal, not part of a deliberate and coordinated attack on agricultural communities. They're not committed to a sustained conflict, nor to throwing themselves against a large, coordinated group. The description for needlefolk (Monster Manual II, p. 158) emphasizes that they attack individually, without any plan or strategy, and won't attack "if they can see that the odds are strongly against them."

So I think farming communities could more than hold their own, standing their ground with cooperation, strategy and fire--all advantages which most of these creatures don't have and won't acquire themselves. Over time, centuries or millennia, the advance will be inexorable.

[hymer]

Quite a few of good points have been made. Here's one I didn't see on skimming the page:
I'm not sure why all these natural beings would work in concert (as OP seems to think they would), unless motivated by someone like a druid. They don't even understand the concept of Nature, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't care. Nature isn't a faction or nation.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Palanan
As already noted, most of the creatures you've described won't be "defending nature" per se; more often than not they're individual predators looking for an easy meal, not part of a deliberate and coordinated attack on agricultural communities.

Touched on here and earlier, yes.

[Cirrylius]

Good druids, in contrast, prefer more Diplomacy and less killing; they preach family planning, recycling agricultural wastes, and using renewable organic materials rather than non-renewable minerals – though a little metal is okay, even for druids.
I find myself wondering if that would be class worth differentiating from agriculturally-themed Clerics or vanilla Druids; Suburban Druid, maybe. A class that spends less time alone in the woods and more time ensuring that farm-community life is just that little bit easier and more informed.

I can't imagine it'd get many PC adherents, but it'd be stupid popular with the locals.:smallbiggrin:

[Phelix-Mu]

I find myself wondering if that would be class worth differentiating from agriculturally-themed Clerics or vanilla Druids; Suburban Druid, maybe. A class that spends less time alone in the woods and more time ensuring that farm-community life is just that little bit easier and more informed.

I can't imagine it'd get many PC adherents, but it'd be stupid popular with the locals.:smallbiggrin:

That kind of behavior is very much in line with the NG or LN druid. Such druids need to keep the locals in-line, pliable, and generally not rampaging about the lands. If you can't engage in other, more...expedient means of population and behavioral control, then making friends and advising on the problems associated with too many children, blessing crops and teaching reforestation techniques...well that is bread-and-butter control tactics. In the big scheme of things, this stuff is low-level druid stuff, eventually the province of npc druids, but a pc druid could be very beneficent if they wish. Even a CN one could do this kind of thing, as could TN ones. NE ones, of course, can be good-hearted if they wish, but probably wouldn't find such behavior useful in the big scheme of things.

The interesting thing about druids is that they can really do almost anything they wish on a limited basis. It's only behavioral trends or really big actions that generally alter alignment, so even a fairly reckless druid is unlikely to just blunder into alignment change.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Cirrylius
...A class that spends less time alone in the woods and more time ensuring that farm-community life is just that little bit easier and more informed.

In the Forgotten Realms, clerics and druids of Chauntea are frequently found working in small villages and rural communities, helping improve the fertility of the fields and often pitching in with the harvest. Druids of Chauntea would much rather spend their time on agriculture than off in the forest somewhere.

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[Cirrylius]

In the Forgotten Realms, clerics and druids of Chauntea are frequently found working in small villages and rural communities, helping improve the fertility of the fields and often pitching in with the harvest. Druids of Chauntea would much rather spend their time on agriculture than off in the forest somewhere.

I knew the idea had to have been fleshed out somewhere already.