![]() ![]() Their class only progresses to 13 th level, and the last three levels have a setting-wide population cap – four at 11 th level, two at 12 th level, and it’s lonely at the top. They also gain immunity to “the charm spells of woodland and water creatures such as nixies and dryads” – this too is an ability that persists through editions that are not Fourth in number.ĭruids have a restrictive set of rules for advancement. I don’t think there was a specific concept of “difficult terrain” when this was written, but this will prove to be the most useful ability of the bunch, so much so that it propagates to the Ranger and, sometimes, elves.Īt Initiate of the 5 th Circle (6 th level), the Druid gains shapeshifting, and the mechanical notes here don’t reprint the rule, but point back to Supplement I. I wonder how many Druid players pushed the envelope on “animals” to include a wide range of monsters? On one hand, it’s powergaming on the other, it makes perfect sense that a Druid knows what kinds of monsters stalk the forests and mountains she calls home. ![]() This is only better than Identify Plants because it is useful to know exactly what’s attacking you. I saw a Monty Python bit on this, I think. I’m reminded of all the games that require characters to learn the first level of Knowledge: Botany or Lore: Nature or whatever to identify basic plants – by granting the ability, you imply that the task can’t be completed without it. Um, rather less useful, unless you’re looking for a specific plant and no one in the party has any way to find out what they’re looking for. Also, approximately every MMO ever written has at least one quest that involves poisoning someone’s water supply, so I guess druids would be great in those games. Okay, I can see how there could be one or two times in a campaign that distinguishing pure water from tainted or poisoned water could be helpful. Anyway, the Druid picks up a few class abilities at second (“Initiate”) level: Roleplaying games have been taken to task for information-presentation issues for decades, and it all started here. Man, the format of the Druid class writeup in this book is killing me. The restrictions on weapons and armor that appear here will continue down through the ages all-but-unchanged, other than 4e, though thankfully the restriction against “clerical items of a written nature” doesn’t have quite the same legs. Eldritch Wizardry attempts to resolve Supplement I’s dual-casting druids into a single spell list, closer overall to Clerics than Magic-Users. This has always been a strange choice to me, because… I don’t know, mainly because of Bernard Cornwell’s Merlin (and several other Druids) in The Warlord Chronicles. Right off the bat here, Gygax and Blume emphasize that druids care more for trees and the wild than for aiding other humans. I will have to read and in some measure comprehend the rules presented in Eldritch Wizardry, and that will surely break down the walls of the paltry reality I have constructed about myself to hide from the endless darkness behind the stars. ![]() I don’t want to get off on a tangent here, but God help me if this column ever gets around to psionics. If the druid is an enemy, you’ve as much as got your whole adventure written if that 70% roll hits, but holy cow I would not want to figure out how to do something interesting with 1d4+1 fighters of level 1d4+1, and (1d4+1)*10 normal men.Įldritch Wizardry gives us Druids as a playable character class, which is by far the sanest thing in this document. This is also the first time the rules describe druidic shapeshifting: “three time per day, once each to any reptile, bird and animal respectively, from size as small as a raven to as large as a small bear.” They also have a 70% chance to have quite a sizable number of followers. ![]() In Supplement I: Greyhawk, Druids are monsters with a combination of “magic-use” and “clericism,” with a slightly higher level of the latter. That note of Druids as potential antagonists surfaces again, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Like the Bard, the Druid’s history goes back to OD&D – but the Druid is presented as a type of monster. Now that I’ve said all I can think to say on the Bard class, let’s break down the Druid – a class most often defined in its contrast to the Cleric. ![]()
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