Notes from the Nails: as I’m sure you all know, today is Estival Solstice, the most druid-y day of the year. With that in mind, I’d like to talk about druids – specifically, how to write a homebrewed druid circle.
Where are all the Druids?
Those of you who have been following us for a while might have noticed that we publish more subclasses for some base classes and fewer for others. Fighters and warlocks are abundant, while clerics and druids are more rare. Perhaps some of you have been wondering why that is – is it favouritism? Do we just like fighters better than druids… all five of us?
The truth is, it’s more complicated than that. Although we do love fighters and warlocks, that isn’t the main reason why we’ve published more of them. I would argue that the druid’s main problem actually stems from the narrowness of its concept.
The Fluff is Built in
Consider the fighter. A person who fights. The base fighter class has almost no fluff or theme built into it: it’s just good at the mechanics of fighting, with its large hit die, extra attacks, and full set of weapon and armour proficiencies. From there, there are a million different fighting styles, historical cultures, fictional characters, and fantasy tropes you can draw upon when creating martial archetypes, to say nothing of the various ways you could weave magic onto the fighter chassis.
However, with the druid, you have almost the complete opposite: the base class is already packed with lore and roleplaying ribbons, such as the restriction on metal armour, the Druidic language, and the heavily biased spell list. The core druid circles then differentiate themselves mechanically: Land has more spells, Moon has a bigger Wildshape list. Even worse, the Circle of the Land actually covers several different settings and terrain types, meaning it’s somewhat redundant to make a ‘tundra druid’ or a ‘desert druid’ (not that we won’t find a way in our setting books, of course). Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: when you say the word ‘druid’, you are immediately invoking a whole package of ideas that come together to create a very specific image. There’s very little room for subdividing that further; you can only get so specific before your subclass concept becomes too niche or uninspiring.
It is perhaps illustrative that any given town or city in a D&D world will have many cleric NPCs, each representing different gods, but only one druid NPC. How boring would it be if you encountered two druids in the same town? It’d be like having the same encounter twice! This is because the realm of what a druid can be is much more narrow than the possibilities you have with clerics. And while there are, of course, things you can do to remedy this, it remains the ‘default’ situation that druids are pigeonholed into their ‘nature-loving Luddite’ slot, while clerics are free to be duplicitous heretics, inspirational firebrands, gentle healers, gruff holy men, pure shrine maidens, or any number of other personalities.
In many ways, I feel that it would have made more sense to do away with the druid class altogether and rationalise it into the nature cleric. Now that clerics don’t have to have divine patrons and druids can worship gods, there really isn’t much conceptual space between the two. The cleric could even be given Polymorph as a domain spell as a sop to people who miss the Wildshape aspects of D&D druids! Alas, we are where we are.
Squaring the Circle
Now that we know that coming up with appealing concepts for druid circles is a problem, can we find a solution? Of course we can! Personally, I have a few different tricks for cracking this particular nut. One approach would be to go back to basics: ask what makes a druid different from other classes and build from there. Another option is to blend the druid base with other classes’ mechanics. If all else fails, one can also reach back to older editions of the game and adapt something, but I for one much prefer to work with my own ideas.
Back to Basics
The essence of the druid’s aesthetic is that they are spiritual people that draw their power from the natural world. Druids are presented as traditionalists and ecologists who generally serve neither god nor man, but fight to protect the natural world. Therefore, some of the strongest themes for druids tie in to some aspect of nature – such as how the moon druid is focussed on beast forms. The same logic can be found in our circle of the scale, vermin lord, and circle of the root and stem, as each picks on a different natural motif and blends that into the base class. Each one is, thematically at least, a variant on the moon druid.
Is there more mileage in this yet? I’d say there is. What about a slightly deranged druid that sees monstrosities as the equals of beasts? It’s something we’ve already explored in the context of Lovecraft (unspeakable circle), but perhaps a more restrained design with simpler mechanics and a more earthly focus could work in generic settings. Equally, there may be space for a druid that concentrates exclusively on birdlike forms.
Another thought I’ve had is to ask why druids protect and preserve nature. In the Players Handbook, it says that druids believe that “nature exists in a precarious balance,” and there has long been an emphasis on harmony and neutrality in the lore. For this reason, I was surprised that there wasn’t a ‘four elements’ druid – that is to say, a circle that draws on all four elements equally – and I have therefore been working on a ‘circle of harmony’ that I hope to release on the blog at some point in the future.
Opposites Attract
You may be thinking that this ‘variant moon druid’ thinking is limiting. I don’t disagree, but the heart of creativity lies in taking a limitation and turning it on its head. Hence the circle of steel, urban druid, and circle of desolation. Each one takes an element of the classical druid (anti-technology, anti-urbanisation, and pro-ecology) and inverts it. This design-by-reversal can easily be thought of as a way to pacify players that too easily dismiss druids as being strictly tree-hugging recluses, but can equally be used to fill the druid’s role in unconventional settings. Indeed, it takes some philosophical gymnastics to justify each of the above druids, but I feel like that encourages more challenging and interesting roleplaying in a class that does not often have the room for it.
Fusion Dance
As horticultural experts, druids would surely appreciate a bit of hybridisation. What mechanics, then, would fit with their aesthetic? An obvious one is an animal companion – beastmaster style -which lends itself to a shamanic sort of theme. An augur or soothsayer who reads the future in natural phenomena could be made by infusing some of the diviner’s flavour, and WotC’s alchemical artificer might be cross-bred with the druid to produce a dedicated herbalist. Clearly, there are plenty of unexplored possibilities here; feel free to let us know in the comments if there are any you’d like to see implemented.
Problem Solved
There you have it. Even in the course of this short essay, I’ve thrown up a few new ideas for druid circles, and laid out pathways that could lead to many more. I expect you’ll be seeing a few more tree-huggers on the blog in future! Beyond that, I hope this has shed some light on the creative process that goes on behind the scenes at Middle Finger of Vecna, and maybe even that I have inspired some of you to try your hands at subclass design. It certainly changes the way you look at the game when you step behind the curtain – and like all creative pastimes, it’s very rewarding.
