Druid Grove Design

[liquidformat]

Hi All,

I am trying to design a Druid Grove and wondering what cool spells, magic items, and monsters are out there to incorporate into the grove.

Monsters:
Dryad
Treant

Spells:
Hallowed
Druid Grove
Stone Wall (for construction)
Move Earth (For Construction)
Earthfast (For construction)

Itesm:

[Doctor Despair]

Adu'ja and Volodni are good choices for characters with PC levels.

Needlefolk are neat.

There's also a whole race of mushroom folk I can't recall of the top of my head.

[liquidformat]

Adu'ja and Volodni are good choices for characters with PC levels..

What are Adu'ja and Volodni and what book do they come from?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by liquidformat
What are Adu'ja and Volodni and what book do they come from?

These are both humanoids with the plant type. Volodni are from Unapproachable East, Adu’ja are from Dragon Magazine.


Originally Posted by liquidformat
I am trying to design a Druid Grove….

What do you want the grove to look like?

Where is it located, and what is it meant to be?

[Doctor Despair]

Here's a good resource (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?620522-3-5-Most-Playable-Plant)

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by liquidformat
...monsters....

If you're open to Pathfinder material, there's also the ghoran, the gathlain, and the various leshies.

Ghorans are Pathfinder's primary plant people, meaning humanoids with the plant type.

.

[liquidformat]

These are both humanoids with the plant type. Volodni are from Unapproachable East, Adu’ja are from Dragon Magazine.



What do you want the grove to look like?

Where is it located, and what is it meant to be?

Sorry was away over the weekend, So I am looking at making the grove in a homebrew world in a massive forest. The Grove is really the only 'settlement' inside the forest, the rest of the forest is rather dangerous and untamed filled with magical beasts, plant creatures, animals, and some savage tribes. This isn't going to be a super high magic tipsiverse setting, magic is present in the world but not prevalent. Most civilized areas are centered around people between level 1 to 4 with the most powerful being around level 6-7 and level 10 being rather legendary figures. The game isn't E6 or anything but the civilized world is more low powered...

I am debating having an oak tree Treant CR 20 and a Dryad CR 20 as its spirit that evolves because it is an ancient oak tree be something of the 'demigods' protecting the grove/ forest as a whole.

I am also debating having a small wizard college at the Grove but still on the fence about that...

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by liquidformat
So I am looking at making the grove in a homebrew world in a massive forest.

I like the basic concept, and it sounds like the grove will be almost a forest-city in itself, rather than just a circle of trees.

Are you thinking of the Grove as a multiracial community, with elves, dwarves, halflings, humans, etc.? Or will there be one main humanoid race? Will it include one or more plant races, and how many of them will there be?

Will there be temples to forest-related deities, or other deities altogether? If this is a settlement or small forest-city, will it be completely self-contained and cut off from whatever is beyond the great forest, or will there be trade routes through the forest and beyond?

And will the oak treant/dryad pair be ruling the Grove as well as protecting it? If they're not ruling it, who will be?

[liquidformat]

I like the basic concept, and it sounds like the grove will be almost a forest-city in itself, rather than just a circle of trees.

Are you thinking of the Grove as a multiracial community, with elves, dwarves, halflings, humans, etc.? Or will there be one main humanoid race? Will it include one or more plant races, and how many of them will there be?

Will there be temples to forest-related deities, or other deities altogether? If this is a settlement or small forest-city, will it be completely self-contained and cut off from whatever is beyond the great forest, or will there be trade routes through the forest and beyond?

And will the oak treant/dryad pair be ruling the Grove as well as protecting it? If they're not ruling it, who will be?

The Druid Grove would be something more than a simple circle of trees but not a city since few live there full time, more of a massive religious site. The whole forest is called the Greensea and takes up a massive area. The Treant and Dryad are the protectors and something of 'demigods' the druids and priests are the ones that do the 'ruling'.

As far as races I played around with the anthropomorphic Animals to better balance them, and so there are the different tribes of anthro animals, wood and wild elves, and other random fey and plant creatures and peoples through out the forest all of which would be treating the Druid Grove as a holy site, at least the not evil and intelligent ones...

[Bronk]

I would have the grove be pretty big since it's in this very extensive, super dangerous forest. I like the word Greensea!

I'd start with an idyllic forest glen, mostly wooded with ancient mossy trees, but with part being a grassy clearing, and part being rocky and overgrown with moss, filled with wildflowers and small fuzzy animals. A stream would wind through it to a largish pond at one end filled with reeds along the edges. The space available in this area would be of indeterminant size because of fey magic, perhaps miles of it, although the biggest mostly sparse area could be a meadow maybe football field size. There would be all sorts of sounds of insects (like that droning that happens when a zillion crickets get together, but not biting insects) and frogs (peepers, with the odd bullfrog thrown in every now and then), plus the odd owl or hawk screech as well. The whole place would be hidden with fey magic unless the locals allowed you to enter.

Outside the grove, you would have whatever trees makeup the rest of the Greensea, but really nice. Inside, you would get larger, more majestic versions of them, along with some magical flora such as fey cherry trees, the odd wishfern, that sort of thing. Your most powerful dryad and her tree would have a place of honor at the heart of the grove, with her ancient oak tree matching the fey cherry trees in sheer height, but eclipsing them in width. A circle of lesser dryad trees would form a large ring, forming her court. Your lead treant could be next to your lead dryad's tree, and be almost as big, leaner but with an air of movement to it, and it's cohorts would intersperse with the dryad trees.

Between the center of the grove and the edge of the larger Greensea, regular treants and dryads would be here and there. I'd have the dryads be more towards the center, and the majority of the treants near the edge as defenders.

So, that would be my setup. To fill out the rest of it, I'd add fey, green/wood/forest elves at the least, maybe star elves, and give everyone a role and some levels if necessary.

-I'd want the lead dryad to be a powerful druid, and the lead treant to be a powerful wizard.

-I'd add in a lot of fey, and I'm assuming neutral or good fey. Naiads would live in the pond at the end of the stream, nymphs could frequent the springs that feed the stream, and Fossegrim could hang out at the waterfalls on the way down. Grigs and Brownies can hang out wherever. Pixies and Petals can fly around, and I'd have all the meadows filled with shimmerlings, and maybe the Treant Wizard has a shimmerling swarm as its familiar. Warrior Thorns can come and go, providing protection at the grove, between groves, and acting as backup sent from wherever the higher up fey groups are (more powerful fey, Seelie Court, etc.), or from this grove, depending on your world.

-I'd add player races too, and they'd be a mix of druids (for the druid grove), bards (also joined by grig bards), deepwood snipers, branch dancers, targeteers, rogues, and sorcerers.

-I'd have a lot of fey adjacent creatures here and there too, like Oaken Defenders, a Spirit of the Land communing with the two leaders, some Unicorns, Aranea, and Sylphs.

Then, when everyone's not partying, or visiting the main courts, or training, or doing druid grove things, they're watching the woods, ready to fend off evil fey, monsters, travelers they don't like, that sort of thing. The Pixies can add new Permanent Images in and around the grove, then bards, druids, and nymphs specifically could protect and change their borders with the Hallucinatory Terrain spell.

After doing all that, I'd have the place be summer all year long, either due to the Spirit of the Land, the better magic available to the high level wizard and druid rulers, or because the place is special to a sylvan deity.

I'd also add some portals, maybe one to a star elf village, or some other elf villages or dryad/druid groves, maybe one or two to whatever version of the Beastlands or elven god realms you have as well. If not portals, I'd add in some version of the Faerunian Fey Crossroads.

Then I'd work on what the Plane of Shadow and the Region of Dreams would look like there, just in case.

There was a magical healing moss from the AD&D version of Myth Drannor that I'd have scattered around too...

Also, not only are there Faerie Dragons in 3.5, but also Arboreal Dragons (planar dragons, breath a cone of thorns, but don't have magic), and 2nd Edition had Amber Dragons, that progressed as druids...

If it were evil, I'd use evil fey and have them shade more towards the Plane of Shadow and maybe some undead?

If it were a mix of good and evil fey, I'd include more of the Seelie and Unseelie fey templates on other creatures.

If you went epic, I'd also stick a mythal in there, and have Elven High Magic be a thing. Maybe they also grow star plants and trade them with the Elven Imperial Navy to make Spelljammer ships? Sky's the limit.

I would do all that, then let all of that be in the background to be discovered organically instead of as an infodump. Maybe the want to know that the Aranea use their silk to make clothes for the nymphs, maybe they don't. You know how it is.

Edit: Maybe it's better if the lead dryad is a high level cleric instead of a druid... it would cover more of the magical bases, and leave more for the nymphs and druids of the grove to do.

[Duke of Urrel]

Anything that high-level druids want to build out of stone, they can easily create using the Transmute Mud to Rock spell. So creating a colossal Stonehenge in the middle of a forest without harming any of the trees poses no problem at all.

[Bronk]

Right? They can also move the trees around, or be the trees themselves.

[ksbsnowowl]

The 3.0 splat book Masters of the Wild had lots of great options for Druids and Druid Groves. There were magic items that were basically Stonehenge standing stones. They were basically scrolls, but useable once per day. And essentially immovable terrain features.

Another place to look for inspiration is the 3.0 adventure The Standing Stone, which featured a village built inside a former Druid grove, with a massive ring of standing stones around it.

[aglondier]

Becmi had a creature that makes an awesome addition to any druid controlled forest.

The Actaeon. An ogre sized humanoid deer with a breath weapon that permanently baleful polymorphs its victims into tiny woodland critters (temporary with a successful save). It always knows who makes and who fails the save. So it attacks from surprise, breath weapon on the largest group, stabbity stabbity on anyone it misses, then it collects any transformed critters who made their saves and carries them out of the forest. It will try to be merciful, but not at the cost of harm to itself or the forest.

Players quickly learn not to mess with the woods.