Druidic Skills

The woodland cult of druids is extremely demanding of its followers. Druidic rituals are never described openly, and practiced only at the will of nature itself. Druids will be extremely reluctant to teach new students unless these pupils have already demonstrated great community with the powers of nature. DMs should create quests and ordeals for neophyte druids, but the best way to gain a druid’s favor is to perform a great druidic feat through luck. Becoming a professor for novice druids is not a druid’s primary goal.

Zero-level characters use druidical powers like other clerical talents. They may cast one first-level druid spell per day, and they must make a wisdom check to use it correctly. This check automatically fails if the character wore metal armor or used forbidden weapons within the past 24 hours. With “great insight,” a zero-level character might use high-level druid abilities, such as shapechanging or knowledge of plants and animals.

Learning a spell and casting it more than once costs one AP.

Students of druidism are not required to tend toward true neutral alignment, although all must have close ties to nature and the nature deities. Rangers and bards both learn druidical spells despite their varied alignments, and zero-level characters might be allowed this variance as well. The use of druidic powers does not affect a character’s alignment tendency.

Druids never punish their former students for their alignment choice. The actions they despise are crimes against nature. For example, if a zero-level character desecrates some unspoiled place, he or she will contract a disease as do fallen clerics and will lose all magical druidic powers. Worse, all the world’s druids will seek revenge on that character, after the deed is discovered.