Druid lines/alignment question

[Icewalker]

Would a Druid be willing to do this, and what would the alignment be:

Generally hide/defend prey to the point where predators begin to get very hungry. Then, provide food/prey to the predators in limited amounts so that they remain half-starved, and will attack travelers for food. Then, after a long period of time, once travelers avoid the area just because everyone knows the animals there attack people, set everything back to normal. This being used as a method to keep people from messing with nature, by just keeping people out of the area in general.

Would a druid be willing/able to half-starve animals, and what would the alignment be if they would execute such a scheme? I'm guessing Neutral Evil.

[Parvum]

The average druid would see that as bleeping with nature, and thus a fall. Extreme druids would do it, but it's really dancing on the toes of the extreme alignments (lawful evil or maybe even good). A PC might get away with it because... hey, PC. But a PC would probably never do it.

Also, if that happened, nearby towns would hire adventurers to find the increase in animal activity, leading them to the druid and a climactic ba-

Aaaaaaah...

[WrstDmEvr]

Would a Druid be willing to do this, and what would the alignment be:

Generally hide/defend prey to the point where predators begin to get very hungry. Then, provide food/prey to the predators in limited amounts so that they remain half-starved, and will attack travelers for food. Then, after a long period of time, once travelers avoid the area just because everyone knows the animals there attack people, set everything back to normal. This being used as a method to keep people from messing with nature, by just keeping people out of the area in general.

Would a druid be willing/able to half-starve animals, and what would the alignment be if they would execute such a scheme? I'm guessing Neutral Evil.

It depends on how much the druid thinks ahead. If they plan out everything beforehand and know that they will have to deprive animals of food, they fall. If, however, they start out thinking the want to keep people away and hide the prey, then realize the predators are starving and help them as much as possible without letting humans know about the abundant animal life. Then once humans are gone they restore the wilderness to it's original state. This way might work, depending on your DM.

[Icewalker]

I'm the DM, and they hide the prey for the purpose of getting the predators to attack travelers.

Seems like walking the edge, just wondering whether it is going to far.

[Crow]

Sounds reasonable for an evil Druid. He's basically replacing one prey with another.

[Naga-Darmag]

One question worth considering is if it wouldn’t it be more effective and les harmful to the local animals if the druids in wild shape together with there animal companions attacked the people. Feeding the dead body’s to the local predators will make them se humans as potential pray.

[Icewalker]

I don't know if that'd be possible on a wide enough scale.

I don't know much about druids...do they have any spells that would let them mess with animal instincts/control animals on a large enough scale to do this magically?

[Sleet]

Sounds reasonable for an evil Druid. He's basically replacing one prey with another.

That's what I was thinking. He's willing to impose his own will on the order of things, everyone else be damned. That's NE.

Perfect rival, IMHO, to a big bad Old Order LN Druid.

[Yahzi]

I agree; it's perfectly reasonable for an evil druid. Evil in the sense that he applies animal solutions to human problems. (A good druid would go tell people not to go into the woods, rather than just punishing them for it after the fact.)

[Fhaolan]

Without epic-level magic this isn't very feasable.

Very few creatures are so exclusive in their diets for this to work, and there really isn't a solid dividing line between predator and prey. A cougar will kill and eat a wolf, if the opportunity provides. Foxes also eat fruit and insects. Ducks eat fish, and are in turn eaten by other animals. I've watched a bull kill and eat a squirrel.

If all you do is arbitrarily mark certain animals as prey, and hide them away from the arbitrarily marked predators, the predators will simply find other prey. Mainly each other, fruits, tubers, and insects. And then the prey animals that you have hidden somewhere will likely turn on each other as well. That is the nature of nature.

Of course, as DM all you need to do is say 'this works', and be done with it. But at that point it doesn't matter what alignment the druid actually is, because if you're handwaving away how it works, you can handwave away the alignment issue.

EDIT: I've rambled, and not answered the question. Sorry. A druid that somehow manages to pull this off would probably be Neutral Evil or Chaotic Neutral (druids have to be part Neutral still, right?) in my estimation. They are damaging the cycle of nature, temporarily in the case of Chaotic Neutral, permanently in the case of Neutral Evil.

[Naga-Darmag]

I’d say it is easier and have a bigger effect also on a smaller scale than to try to protect large enough quantity of pray animal (without hurting the predators that hunt them) to active the desired effect. Also if food becomes scars the predators will most likely move to better hunting grounds and is more likely to attack cattle and pets than humans. And for controlling the predators of the forest, I’m sure these some spells for controlling animals but simply training them or talking to them can be enough (especially if you talk to the outcast worg that taken over the biggest local wolf pack and stuff like that).

[Leon]

Yes and any of the bottom right 4 in the Alignment Square could be happy with it

[horseboy]

Without epic-level magic this isn't very feasable.

Not only that, but Where the Hell are you going to put all the "prey" animals? Franklin county last year harvested 733 deer. That's just how many were brought down. They're talking about expanding the season. That'd mean there are A LEAST three times that that survived. That's over 2000 deer. That's JUST deer. Stop and think how many squirrels there are in that same area. Or the chipmunks! My God, man, think of the chipmunks, voles, moles, rabbits and other assorted rodentia. Then you've got all the birds and just no. You'd be better off taking a couple of alpha wolves from various packs and training them to get the pack to attack humans. Or, you know, talk the local dryads into animating the trees and scaring them off.

[Icewalker]

Yeah, I guess it would be unfeasible. Better come up with a better thing than a single guy doing this with RAW.

[horseboy]

Send out an army of O'possums. Nasty, vicious, spiteful beasts they are. Have them go out in waves and swarms like those old Army Ant movies from the '70's, stripping down everything before them. Blech!

[Chronos]

The ultimate goal here is to get lots of predators attacking humans, right? If so, then the easiest way is probably just a lot of Charm Animal and Speak with Animals spells to convince the predators that humans are good eatin'. This is made easier if the dominant predators in your area are social, like wolves or lions: Convince the alpha of the pack or pride, and the rest will follow. Less social animals like cougars and bears, you'd only be able to recruit a few, but then again, it doesn't take very many man-eating bears to get noticed.

[Emperor Demonking]

If it was possible a druid would probably be fine with it, its protecting life at the expense of a little bit of suffering.

[Fishy]

Well, first you're talking about forcibly and drastically altering the ecology, to prevent people from accidentally altering the ecology.

Second, this smells an awful lot like textbook Lawful Evil to me: this druid thinks that the world would be better off if it bent to his will, suffering of the innocents be damned. A plot of this magnitude carried out over the amount of time it would take to work might very well shift his alignment enough to prevent him from being a Druid at all.

I like the plot, and there are fun things to do with it: but I'd go ahead and make it Evil Archivist Elves or deranged clerics working to keep outside interference away.