Bring to bear... all the bear.

[Quertus]

So, I've occasionally mentioned the (almost totally stolen) idea of - bear with me - a furry ursine Druid, combining green bond summoning, training their animal companion, boosting their healing power, neglecting saddles, contracting lycanthropy, and Vow of Nudity, who is a bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear.

I've grown curious - has anyone ever run a character that bears even the slightest resemblance to this?

(It occurs to me that, while initially a 3e D&D "build", one could make a "bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear" in other systems, even if few give a good reason for the summoned bears to be barely recognizable, so I've put it in "Roleplaying" rather than "3e". You know, just in case.)

[Bohandas]

Well, I mean the werebear care bear thing is already kind of implied by the base werebear template, which turns you lawful good

[Satinavian]

I have heard of people doing this in D&D.

And i have seen similar characters in other systems. Generally not druids though (because shapechanging, animal summoning and animal companions might being druid stuff is pretty D&D) and often for other animals as well (wolfs, snakes, monkeys, certain dinosausrs).

So yes, not really an uncommon character concept.

[Rynjin]

This is very easy to do in Pathfinder by simply playing a Coldborn Skinwalker and Child of Hope Druid (the latter is third party, but a commonly used 3rd party supplement). A regular Sphere Druid works just as well.

Notable Bear Sphere abilities:
Bearer of Bad News
Grin and Bear It
Paws and Reflect
Teddy Bear
Bear Arms
Arm Bears
Bear With Me

[Lord Torath]

Somewhat related:
The People vs Dr Muller, a (fictional) case about the right to bear arms. Also bear feet and bear faces.

[Alcore]

We need to bear more bears… IN SPACE!!

(While you did mention 3.5 in passing towards the end but you neglected to restrict systems)


Mongoose Traveller, as a good number of you might know, is a sci fi game. What a smaller number of you might know is Mindjammer; a mongoose Traveller clone with its own setting with sci fi fantasy dieled up… just a little


Among the oblitory cat and squid people are ursine people. That’s right! You too can play an anthropomorphic bear! If you min max your traits right you can play a bear bear with post human intelligence!

[KorvinStarmast]

Shardik, who saved the children.
The story of a bear (and some of the people that a bear met along the way).