Eldritch Druid? Concept help

[Provo]

I haven’t made a character in a while (DM currently). I’d like help to make my next character appealing.

The basic idea is a Far Realm/Lovecraftian Druid. Rather than your power working on tune with nature, it is a perversion of nature. Rather than spike growth, you produce grasping tentacles. Rather than wildshaping, you shift into mishappen creatures (all of the mechanics remain the same)

My problem is character building. I want to have a personality and goals that aren’t villainous. How do I explain the source of his power? And how do I role play somebody who is a bit insane, but still is human enough to empathize with and fit in in an adventuring group? Any thoughts?

Also I do like multiclassing. If any class combo seems particularly thematic (wild-magic sorcerer? GOO Warlock?) I am glad to use it to flesh out the character.

[clash]

Goo warlock is great thematically and the telepathy lets you "talk" in wildshape

[Vogie]

A combination of GOOlock and Druid would work. This allows you, in Wild Shape form, to communicate telepathically, and summon weapons to your hands. If UA is allowed, the Claw of Acamar invocation can turn your pact weapons into a tentacle. Otherwise, you can use an invisible familiar as a form of telekinesis and allowing you to "speak" from outside yourself.


Alternatively, I actually have a druid-esque warlock pact in my sig that you can look at, using Gaia as a patron.

[PeteNutButter]

I haven’t made a character in a while (DM currently). I’d like help to make my next character appealing.

The basic idea is a Far Realm/Lovecraftian Druid. Rather than your power working on tune with nature, it is a perversion of nature. Rather than spike growth, you produce grasping tentacles. Rather than wildshaping, you shift into mishappen creatures (all of the mechanics remain the same)

My problem is character building. I want to have a personality and goals that aren’t villainous. How do I explain the source of his power? And how do I role play somebody who is a bit insane, but still is human enough to empathize with and fit in in an adventuring group? Any thoughts?

Also I do like multiclassing. If any class combo seems particularly thematic (wild-magic sorcerer? GOO Warlock?) I am glad to use it to flesh out the character.

I'd flavor it as not necessarily corrupt, but different. Be a little insane, but be a visionary. "Things could be so much better if you weren't all so worried about how they should be." (Chaotic)

This reminds me of the movie Annihilation, which was all about corruption, change, self destruction.

Mechanically speaking a GOO druid dip can help. If you are inclined to go moon druid, consider taking 3 levels in GOO for chain pact and the invocation Gift of the Everliving Ones. It's creepy and does wonders with a healing spirit parked on top of you. In that case definitely pick up warcaster or resilient con.

On the flip side, things like spore druid already have a bit of a darker flavor. If you want to summon corrupt minions shepherd can do that in spades.

[Mjolnirbear]

Use a Curse as a role-playing hook.

Start druid. Add at least one level of GOOlock. Consistent with the lore for this warlock, your mind touched something ancient and unknowable. It has corrupted your mind and the knowledge within it.

So you start off with no mind barrier. You randomly say things into peoples' minds, not knowing that you spoke them instead of thought them. As the corruption spreads in your mind your knowledge becomes affected. You start thinking lizards with fur and spiders that lactate are normal, and that the 'real world' is suffering from catastrophic change. Your animal forms and spells reflect this change. Soon you have wolves with beaks and bears with tentacles and why do some humans only have two eyes? It must be corruption.

The more corrupted you are, the more freaky and unnatural your various forms are. Use wild shape and Mask of Many Faces to reflect this. You can either wear a hooded cloak because humans have forgotten their 'pure form' and are not ready for that knowledge, or nearly naked to try to remind everyone they are corrupt and you'll find some way to make the world 'normal' again.

Write out a 'progression of crazy' with your DM. Your DM may well give you a mechanical benefit for this, but don't expect it. Emphasize that your intention is to show how your Curse changes in a cosmetic fashion. Work out how to (or whether to) cure your madness and take Invokations like cloak of flies and mask of many faces.

And your team accepts and protects you from terrified mobs because you have the most noble of intentions. You heal the sick and donate to orphanages and bring down tyrants because while your reality meter is broken as hell your morality compass is firmly in the right place.

[Provo]

I like the idea of visionary “Corrupt nature? Can’t you see that I serve the greater nature of the cosmos?”. “What you call the natural order is but a dream. It vanishes in the light of the truth I’ve been shown.”

So far all the sub-classes mentioned sound fitting (though I will avoid shepherd, so I don’t bog down combat).

How about Druid spells, are there any that seem particularly easy to fluff?

Druidic language is a bit strange to explain. Not sure if I should be a Druid who was “excommunicated” when I went “insane”, or if is better unexplained... aka: once upon a time I had a vision, and woke up fluent in a secret language

[Provo]

Use a Curse as a role-playing hook.

Start druid. Add at least one level of GOOlock. Consistent with the lore for this warlock, your mind touched something ancient and unknowable. It has corrupted your mind and the knowledge within it.

So you start off with no mind barrier. You randomly say things into peoples' minds, not knowing that you spoke them instead of thought them. As the corruption spreads in your mind your knowledge becomes affected. You start thinking lizards with fur and spiders that lactate are normal, and that the 'real world' is suffering from catastrophic change. Your animal forms and spells reflect this change. Soon you have wolves with beaks and bears with tentacles and why do some humans only have two eyes? It must be corruption.

The more corrupted you are, the more freaky and unnatural your various forms are. Use wild shape and Mask of Many Faces to reflect this. You can either wear a hooded cloak because humans have forgotten their 'pure form' and are not ready for that knowledge, or nearly naked to try to remind everyone they are corrupt and you'll find some way to make the world 'normal' again.

Write out a 'progression of crazy' with your DM. Your DM may well give you a mechanical benefit for this, but don't expect it. Emphasize that your intention is to show how your Curse changes in a cosmetic fashion. Work out how to (or whether to) cure your madness and take Invokations like cloak of flies and mask of many faces.

And your team accepts and protects you from terrified mobs because you have the most noble of intentions. You heal the sick and donate to orphanages and bring down tyrants because while your reality meter is broken as hell your morality compass is firmly in the right place.

Yes to everything here. If I go this route, I wouldn’t cure the madness. Rather, I would eventually *stabilize* to where I am still affected, but learn to distinguish our reality from the *other* realities.

That would probably be when I enter into tier 3, and I would flip from insanity to super-sanity where I understand these unknowable dangers, and I am reality’s bastion against them.

[Trustypeaches]

The Far Realms and Great Old Ones aren't necessarily evil, they simply have alien morality that is beyond our understanding.

A Druid based on such Lovecraftians horrors doesn't have to aspire to drive everyone mad, spill the blood of the cosmos, and summon the lightless age of Shub Niggurath. Rather, they could be simply be a representation of a strange, alien ecosystem that seems monstrous and unholy to those who don't know better. There might even be some hidden beauty to them that they're come to appreciate, such as a soft phosphorescence of a color that exists outside the range most can see.

As for the source of the druid's power, perhaps they developed a symbiotic relationship with some alien organism after prolonged exposure researching them (or after encountering them by chance while exploring an ancient ruin). The organism is not sentient, but is connected to the druid's nervous system and has warped their physiology from the insight out. The cells are malleable and the druid has command over their organic matter, capable of producing all manner of abberant growths . You could have a lot of fun coming up with tons of strange, alien plant and animal life that your spells take the form of.

[Vogie]

Actually, the addition of 3 levels of Primeval Guardian Ranger can give you a very otherworldly quality. Reach, additional piercing damage, auto-refreshing THP, Large, slow. It was originally meant to describe the ranger turning into a tree, but you instead refluff it as a mutation, doubly so when you're in a wild shape form.

[Mjolnirbear]

You: *Summons Wolves*
Party: what. The hell. Are those?!
You. "....Wolves?"
Party: wolves don't have bat faces!!
You.: "you're kidding me. You guys have never seen a wolf? Of course they look like bats. They're distantly evolved from each other. Someone forgot to put ranks into Nature. Sheesh. Anyways, can we rescue these orphans now? C'mon guys, focus."