Druid (Template)

[Cipher Stars]

I mean Druid of course referring to the old celtic magicians of the earth, not the class.

Druid

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Druids are people granted power by Gaia , a spirit of nature itself in whole. Gaia is comparable to an overdeity of exceedingly high divine rank.
While this is true in part of the source of the power, druids are actually granted the power by other druids who are needed to perform a binding to complete the ascendance into a druid.
Their powers can't directly harm creatures, so they are almost always seen with swords. Never crossbows (or firearms) as they tend to have more sensitive components. Swords are much simpler. Druids always seem to be on quests for elementals or to defend nature, or to quest for swords or as favors to others. A druid who is at peace and undisturbed is a rare thing, making training a new one a rather difficult task more often then not.

Creating a Druid
Druid is an acquired template that can be added to a living creature of the material plane. It as of yet, no undead has tried to become a Druid and it is unknown if a once-living creature of the material plane that has become undead can become a Druid. Case-by-case basis pretty much. An evil psychotic wight will not be able to become a Druid. But an Archvampire may, as they are freed from general bindings brought about by the nature of what they are like lesser vampires and most undead are.

For 10-15 years the druid-to-be must study druidic lore, learn three new languages, and learn the roles and duties of being a Druid as well as getting a head for the magical, as well as clear-thinking to handle yourself in stressful situations on the fly.
After you are ready, at least ten years after starting, an existing druid can ritualistically tattoo your body along the back, sides of the abdomen, and one or both arms with various tattooed runes that allow you to perform the druidic abilities.

Level Adjustment: +5
or
Challenge Rating (Pathfinder): +3

Alignment: No change, but must be Lawful enough to handle the mentor/master/sensei for ten to fifteen years and beyond (Druids and their initiates usually remain together in whats called a Grove... if they wish, of course.)
They can never harm the land. They can be perfectly evil, but if they bring harm to the land or try to enslave an elemental, they lose the Druid template and cannot regain it until repentant and subject to an Atonement spell after making amends, when they can regain their tattoos to become a druid once more.

Hit Dice: No change to the die, but the minimum die result per HD is 1/2 the die, such as 6 on a d12. Roll regardless and re-roll results lower then the half mark.

Senses:
True Seeing (Su):
Druids can cast a duration-less True Seeing effect as a full round action. True Seeing wears off if the druid is rendered unconscious or otherwise goes to sleep.
This can be used as a Detect Magic effect. It can read auras to function as Detect Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos and determine if a target is a Caster (and if its Divine, Arcane, or something else), determine race, determine emotions the creature is feeling- including sensing if they are in love, lustful, or hostile, and to determine ages.
This sight overlays their real vision, invoking a -2 penalty to spot checks due to multiple sets of sensory input. It functions as True Seeing at base, with +2 spot penalty, and can add the other effects to impose an extra +1 per extra effect. Using all at once (Detect Magic, Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, Caster detection, Racial detection, emotion detection, and age detection) would impose a -10 to spot checks.
If you look at something with more then twice your HD, you are blinded for 1d6 rounds. four times your HD and you are permanently blinded until healed.

Speed: No Change

Armor Class: No Change

Special Defenses:
Earthly connection (Ex):
When a druid is in contact with the ground, they can run forever (No checks relating to the Endurance feat) and are not subject to death from massive damage. They have a +2 to Fort and Will saves. Whats more, they must maintain this connection to perform bindings. They have an untyped +4 Str and +4 Con when their earthly connection is established.
When in contact with the ground, the druid naturally heals at a rate of 1% total HP per minute, taking almost an hour and a half to fully heal the druid.
The druid can quickly channel earth based healing in order to attempt to close wounds, eliminating bleeding effects.
Earthly connection is required to perform Bindings.
Earthly Connection is severed when the druid is 2ft away from the ground. Such as when jumping, flying, or in a building with a basement, or the second floor (or on the stairs) of the building. Stone counts, but Iron and Steel (and Bronze, or other alloid metals not naturally found in nature) sever the connection on a half-inch = 2 feet basis. So a druid standing on a half-inch thick steel plate would be severed from the earth until she moves off the plate and onto the ground.
So, shoes or boots don't count against earthly connection unless they are unnatural metals or iron or are really frick'n big shoes.
Stone counts as the ground just as well as the ground does. So a large stone hill, or a big slab of stone does not sever the Druid's connection even if it were huge. However, due to mortar and fillings interrupting the connection, the second floors and such of stone buildings are usually disconnected from the earth still. One might think Wood would be fine for a druid as well, but wood is dead and does not provide connection anymore unless it is living.

Notice: Druids don't have anything special to do with Water or Sky. Earth is considered separate, while Seas and Skies are thought to have separate entities behind them similar to Mother Earth. However, there has been an instance where there was a Druid who had just as much sway over the Seas as he had over the Earth.
Druids are not Earth exclusive by hard cosmic law. A druid can be of the sky or sea just as well as it could be of land. Its just not something you hear about as its fairly rare for the other two entities to be as caring, they're more complacent as they don't have as much to worry about.
But by all means, if it fits your setting Sea and Sky druids could be included, even dual or tri natured druids that serve multiple domains.

Special Attacks:
Cold Fire (Su):
Druids are gifted with Cold Fire, a highly draining flame that slays Demons and Devils.
The druid can effect an area of 5ft per HD in radius. The Cold Fire kills the devils and demons up to a total HD of slain creatures equal to twenty times the druid's HD, but no more on a single creature equal to x1.5 the druid's HD.
Creatures that survive take 1d6/HD damage that can't be negated and are considered nauseated.
The creatures are not killed(or take damage) immediately, but 3 rounds later. Meanwhile the druid in question is instantly rendered Helpless, awake and aware but exceedingly fatigued and drained to the point it is unable to manifest any abilities or move any muscle beyond short movements with great effort, such as barely being able to turn there head, or looking around. The druid is helpless for 1 hour per HD of killed creature.
An effect that heals exhaustion heals this effect, but they cannot manifest Cold Fire until they rest for 8 hours.

Binding (Su):
Binding, or Unbinding, is the Druid's key "magic". They can bind and unbind things in general. They can unbind the molecules in metal to make it liquid like and rebind it to solidify it again. They can bind two things together to seal them seamlessly.
Bindings can never directly cause harm, injury or death to any living creature. Directly meaning the cause of harm. Such as binding an arrow to someones face, causing it to fly forth and penetrate their skull. However, if you can bind their clothing together and render them immobile in order to keep them while you swing a sword at their neck.
Through use of Binding, as a standard action you can produce the following effects, saves would equal 10 + 1/2 Druid's ECL + druid's primary mental stat:
Trip: Bind someones shoes to the ground, or pant leg to the rock behind them. Or something to the effect of tripping.
Disarm: Bind their weapon to something else, causing it to fly out of their hand. Or something to the effect of disarming.
Sunder: Unbind their weapon, causing it to liquefy or turn into fine individual particles. Can be used on armor. Magical items get a fortitude save.
Entangle: Binding their clothes together can render them entangled, or Immobile (Druid of HD 10+).
The following take a full round action (Start on your turn, end on the start of your next turn).
Unmake: Against undead only. A druid's magic has no qualms about binding or unbinding the flesh of the Undead. A Druid can take a full round action (Start on the start of their turn, then the effect manifests at the start of their next turn) to unmake an undead creature, turning it into a liquid mess. Intelligent undead get a will save to keep themselves together, but at a -5. Against undead, they can perform any other bindings directly towards them.
Spell Mimicry: Bindings can copy the effect of nonelemental (Including Force, Air, or Positive and Negative effects and so on. Stone or metal effects are usually perfectly fine.), nonechantment, nonillusion, and no divination spells, such as copying the effects of a Darkvision spell, an Invisibility spell, or something like Arcane Lock. But it cannot mimic spells such as Gaseous Form, Mage Armor, , Cause Fear, or Obscuring Mist.
In special circumstance, a DM may rule something as acceptable or unacceptable depending on the method the player wishes to accomplish it. Examples would be:
Unbinding water to make mist to duplicate Obscuring Mist.
Binding two elements together that are explosive when combined for an effect like a Fireball.
Or
Trying to bind a door to the wall to mimic Arcane Lock, when the door, wall, or both are synthetic and not natural (like plastic, though that's not likely to be an issue in most games) would be an example of when to deny a binding.
Spell Mimicry use of binding does not mimic metamagic.
Binding counts as Druid (the class) spellcasting for feats and prerequisites, but still isn't effected by Metamagic.

Special Qualities:
Elemental Connection (Ex):
Elemental in this case does not refer to that little 8HD fire elemental you defeated that last encounter, but primal elemental beings governing over an area or specific element, such as an Iron Elemental, an entity governing the element Iron. Or a phosphorus elemental, or a Hydrogen elemental.
There are larger elementals that instead of governing an element, govern an area. Such as the Doomstone elemental who controls the Doomstone mountains.
They communicate in an expression of mental images and feelings to express ideas and directives. Druids have the ability to communicate with them and ask favors. Elementals can perform wonders and functions as a Miracle or Wish spell but is limited to effects the Elemental itself can accomplish. Contacting an Iron Elemental, you can't ask it to make gold appear out of nowhere. You can, however, ask an Area elemental to bring gold up to the surface or something to that effect. Elementals are rather finicky however. They can be moody and depressed just like people can, and they are never too giving. Favors require favors. To ask the Doomstone elemental to create a gold stockpile under its mountain for you to mine could perhaps require you to shut down the other mines that are destroying its ecosystem, to trade one mine for another. Or to remove threats to its environment, such as stopping the local werewolves from killing all its wildlife or hunting down a demon-summoner who's cursed magic is causing a blight on the land.
Small favors can be granted if you are in good standing. Larger favors would require a closer friendship with the elemental or a good quest to meet the elemental's request.
The DM has the final say on what the element in question can or can't do.
Contacting the Elemental takes a free action, as per the rules of talking, assuming the elemental is within 100miles. The elemental's reaction speed can vary depending on what it was doing, if anything, and its distance. The elemental can be made aware before hand to ignore this, but if it is not already nearby the elemental takes 1d6 rounds to arrive in range to perform its action.
These elementals don't manifest physically, like "Fire, Water, Earth, or Wind elementals" do, they are more like pure forces of nature. So no lumbering iron elemental, but a force that manipulates the iron. Elementals of this type who are of an energy are extremely rare, but they do exist. Pure elementals governing the force of Fire or water... They do exist (I'm not talking about the typical elementals found in the MM of course). And the Druid can search for them to make a bond in order to call upon their aid.
Elemental's personalities reflect their traits. A Gold elemental could be vain, a Helium elemental might be tense and easy to anger. An Oxygen elemental could be cool and relaxed. The personalities are up to the DM however.

Charm Crafting (Ex):
A Druid can craft charms. These take a few years to create, 1 year per effective spell level the Binding the charm would mimic. Creating a charm for a binding is an annoying process. It doesn't require sacrifice other then time and magical energy used to create bindings and innate magic within the charm. But by doing this, a Charm's binding can be used as a swift or move action instead of its normal action.
A druid can enlist an elemental to help her in the crafting of a charm, allowing an effect the elemental would produce to be instilled within the charm for more regular use.
A charm can be made with Metamagic instilled into its binding, increasing the crafting time proportionately. Adding a Quicken Spell metamagic into the charm makes that charm able to be used as a free action. The most you can add to a charm is three metamagic effects.
A druid can have a number of charms equal to 1/2 its HD.
By taking x10 years in the crafting process, the bindings become Extraordinary in nature and function in areas of antimagic and when in contact with Iron. This requires the aid of an Iron Elemental to help craft the charms.
By taking 700 years, the Druid can develop a charm of pure iron that is connected with its aura and allows the Druid to manifest its abilities normally when in contact with Iron, but the iron aided by the Iron Elemental makes the Druid resistant to harmful, direct magics. Giving the Druid spell resistance equal to 10 + the druid's HD in addition to removing the Iron weakness.
In addition, their Iron Aura counts as Iron or Cold Iron, infusing the druid's melee (But not reach) touches or attacks with an iron/cold iron property which can be harmful to certain creatures, and you can dispel magic by touching it, including dispel magic on a creature's active spell effects. You can dispel magic targeting you when it makes contact with your aura (aka, its but a moment from hitting you.)
Druids with an iron charm are referred to as Iron Druids and the level adjustment increases by +2/CR +1.
A charm can be created that stores earth energy, allowing features to be used without contact with the earth for a limited time. The charm can hold energy for a number of effective spell level usage of a total of 2 per Druid HD. This charm takes 10 years to create. So a 20th level Druid can store 40 spell levels, which can be used to cast 10 bindings that have an effective spell level of 4 before the charm runs out of juice.
The charm refills at a rate of 2 effective spell levels per round in contact with the earth. By taking a move-equivalent action you can store an extra 4 that round.

Shapechanger (Ex):
Druid's, during the ritual period in which they gain their tattoos, are bound to six random animal forms that they can take. In a process similar to binding, they transform into the animal. It must be an Animal creature and they need to be checked by the DM for validity, to avoid particularly overpowered animal forms. Generally, the most special abilities the animal form can possess is 4.
Example forms could be... tigers, cheetahs, lions, bears, wolves, dogs, wolverines, eels, sharks, otters, beavers, platypuses, deer, elk, gazelles, hawks, eagles, owls, and so on.
A druid never has two of the same kind of animals. A druid wont be having one deer form and one elk form, or one hawk form and one owl form. In other words: One Predatory animal, one Flying animal, one Aquatic animal, one Hooved animal.
Changing takes a move-action while focusing on the binding to change is a standard action. The changing is all that applies if a charm is created for the animal form. Such as a charm for your Bear form, it would take only a swift-action to do the actual shape-changing, but no action for the binding itself.
This counts as Wildshape for feats and prerequisites.

Planeswalker (Ex):
Druids have the ability to travel the planes, move from world to world. This functions as plane shift.
To travel to a plane, the Druid must be in contact with something connected to the plane in question. Like touching a hardy tree to plane shift to a plane like Lamannia - The Twilight Forest. Or in contact with a lava rock or obsidian to plane shift to Fernia - the Sea of Fire. A tombstone to plane shift to Dolurrh - The Realm of the Dead, and so on.
All druid can choose one element, such as a certain type of tree, stone, plant, or so on. Whenever in contact with this, which is called its "Anchor", the druid can plane shift to their a demiplane influenced by their actions, the plane is hostile to the druid in most cases but some druids may find a way to get the inhabitants friendly. The demiplane will house waypoints the druid can use to plane shift with to various locations that they have been anchored in the past. To create waypoint, the druid needs to anchor a location, to do this the druid expends 100gp and 4 hours to bind the location to the demiplane. The location needs to contain the druid's Anchor, such as a large tree or a large slab of obsidian. If the Anchor in the area is destroyed, the anchored location is no longer available to travel by plane shift anymore from the demiplane.
Druids can bring others with then when they plane shift so long as they are in contact with the druid and the anchor the druid intends to use to plane shift. No limit on the number of those the druid can take with her, neither is there a limit on waypoints and achors.

Timeless (Ex):
Druids do not age. The method is different per druid, but they find ways. Some may die before they find the way, but eventually Druids can find a way. Be it some special binding they discover, a way to hide an aged body behind an illusion and simply prevent themselves from dying of old age (Gather penalties and benefits of aging, but keep visuals and don't die of old age), or some Immortali-Tea herb blend that keeps them perpetually youthful (Keep looks, and just ignore benefits and penalties they would get from aging) that they must drink once a week or something. Other example methods could be a golden apple they need to eat every once an a while, or they need to quest for a deity that can grant them their agelessness.
Or they can simply be Ageless without fun roleplaying aspects.


Weaknesses:
Iron Vulnerability:
A Druid in contact or close proximity to Iron or Steel cannot perform bindings, even bindings tied to a charm, Planeswalk, Shapechange, or manifest Cold Fire. Iron weapons, but not steel, can sometimes leave trace amounts of Iron in the wounds, preventing the Druid from being able to close them and takes three times as long to recover from them.
The Druid can still be healed by other magics, such as by a cleric or Druid (Class) with a Cure spell.
The Druid can still perform anything not listed. Such as contacting an Elemental for aid.

"Thou Shalt not Kill":
Druids cannot directly harm a creature with their Binding abilities. If a druid tries to use bindings to harm a creature directly, such as by trying to bind their flesh together or unbind their heart or something like that, or trying to bind a sharp pointy object to their skull, the Druid is instantly slain and the binding does not occur.
When performing a binding in an attempt to heal a person, make a heal check DC = 10 +1 per 5 damage to be healed, or +1 per +1 ability damage to be healed. If this check fails, the magic recognizes it as a harmful effect doing more harm then good and the druid is instantly slain and the binding does not occur. You get a +5 to the heal check if you've created a Charm for the healing binding.
Druid Bindings can't bring a creature back to life, aka- it cannot mimic Raise Dead or a Resurrection. A druid can, however, guide a reincarnation spell. Instead of going to the afterlife, the druid can attempt to bind the creature to a new form as per the reincarnation spell. However, the druid can choose what form the reincarnation will take on. This reincarnation binding must be used and completed within an hour per HD the druid possesses after the death. The reincarnated creature doesn't remember anything from its past life without outside aid, though general feelings and emotions can remain in connection with other things. Such as love for a place or a food, or a person. Or hate for an enemy.

Abilities: +2 dex, and +4 to one mental statistic.

Skills: +4 Concentration, +4 Craft (any one), Handle Animal +4, +4 Knowledge (Nature, Geography, planes), +4 Survival. These are always class skills for the druid.

Environment: Druids, contrary to the class of the same name, are not bound to nature in any zealous or fanatical way. Druids live in cities just as well as anyone else, though they are at a disadvantage if the road is synthetic (not a problem in most fantasy games) or they are three or more stories above the ground.

Organization: solitary, pair (or couple :3), or Grove (3+).

Treasure: triple standard. Druids often have charms of worth to magical item collectors, though the charms are useless to anyone who isn't a druid, and they often have collected various magical items over their years. Usually powerful magical items in some cases.