Druid Class Guide for Dungeons and Dragons 5e

We'd love to hear about your favourite characters from novels, movies, television, and mythology who you think would be great inspiration for a Druid character!

One of my favorite druids was a game starting character from a while back. My friend and I were getting ready to start a long campaign and decided to try and create a fun duo to add to the party. He created a dwarven fighter that was specialized and obsessed with mechination and steel work. So I created a half elf druid to be the other half. We took some liberties with class description, especially with the druid. Basically, his character and mine were best friends. His dwarf was fascinated by the concept of evolution and how nature would change to solve it's own problems. My druid was enthralled by cities and the creations of intelligent races. We justified this by saying that his dwarf recognized that he could not mold and craft without the forces and complexities of nature, whether he we using fire to forge or wind to sail, etc. My druid viewed cities and machines as just another by product of nature. How is that tower, built by a human, any different that a nest built by a bird? It was a lot of fun from a role playing perspective and also at later levels had quite a bit of functionality.

Did a play as a stealth druid. Since giant crabs have +4 to stealth, you can wild shape a giant crab for creative stealth checks.

When challenged with making a druid villain, I made a circle of druids that grow poppies in a "sacred" forest and used the woodland creatures to work the land and distribute the product. Mary Hadalamb, the Kingpin, talked and acted like a Disney princess but talked like scar face in private. Made for really fun role playing.

Was expecting Beast Boy to make the list of pop culture reference for the Druid since he would be close to a Circle of the Moon Druid

Too bad Rage breaks concentration, or you could be a Bear Totem Barbarian Bear with conjured Bears.

We were facing a balor in the Underdark, way under level. We were supposed to be running from it, but our Druid decided he wasn't going to run, so he cast Erupting Earth on the ceiling causing the cave to collapse on the balor, then cast entangle on the rocks. So, yeah. Our level 8 Druid solo'd a balor. Like a freaking boss. Another fun thing to do with Polymorph and wildshape is to turn into a giant eagle, grab an enemy, fly upabove the rest of the enemies, dropping wildshape, polymorphing the enemy into a whale, and wildshaping back. There are few things more satisfying that whale-bombing your foes.

Have recently returned to d&d...last played in 1994...and these vids have been a crash course in 5e. Thank you!

Imagine a druid/necromancer combo a Necrobotanist if you will, uses Vines to strengthen the joints of skeletons, use parasitic plants to reanimate corpses, make a dying corpses bacteria grow exponentially until corpse explosion spreading poison everywhere. Could even do a golem type creature of dead bodies off a battlefield held together by semi sentient plant life a flesh/nature golem

Warforged druids are just transformers: beastwars.

My girlfriend played a druid for a one-on-one session we had and she played her as a nature wizard, which is really cool. She chose the cloistered scholar Background and literally played like a bookworm who befriended animals everywhere because she was kinda shy and favored animals over people.

The Firbolg from Volvo’s is hands down the best race choice. +2 to wisdom and the inate ability to communicate with beasts and plants.

You've been summoned by the great arch-druid of the Faerie Forest. "Greetings children, I am Bok, Champion of the Wild, I shall assign you 3 challenges. And for your first challenge you must..." Turns into a Dire Wolf and goes belly up "... rub the belly".

One of my favorite characters I've ever played is an ecoterrorist swamp druid who got her equipment off a corpse in a bog ("Bog armor is free!"), has mold growing in her hair and on her clothes, polymorphs annoying enemies into ducks, and recently became an envoy of Cthulu. I describe her as an elfin personification of the word "moist" and she is amazingly fun to roleplay.

"What is your druid's connection to nature?" Drugs. Lots of psychedelic drugs.

A couple of important points to mention about Circle of Dreams - specifically the Balm of the Summer Court power: First, it's useable at a range of 120 feet, and only requires a bonus action. This makes it something like a Cure Wounds spell (albeit a little less potent), but doesn't require touch - giving it a huge tactical advantage. This is especially true when an ally falls; you can typically get to them for healing before they even get to their first death save. Secondly, because it is a class feature and not a spell, you can use it while Wild Shaped. This means you can take the opposite tactic: take on wild form and fight alongside your melee combatants, utilizing your Balm of the Summer Court healing dice at the start of the fight. Then, once your beast form's hit points start to dwindle, you fall back and take on a more passive roll as a healer with traditional spells like Cure Wounds, Healing Word, etc. Either way, I consider Dream Druids among the best healers in the game. Their often whimsical nature also makes them a bright and fun addition to a party when it comes to roleplaying.

My druid, Torgga Craghelm (hill dwarf) was raised to love smithing and mining, in the tradition of her clan. However, she always felt more connected to the beasts and plants of the deep caves and foothills. When she came of age, her father surprised her by arranging for her to join a local druid circle, she left her home for a life of service to nature. A year later she returned to find her village destroyed. She tracked the group of raiders and eventually found them, a savage band of goblins and kobolds led by a creature she did not recognize but which wore her ancestral shield (the one that her many-times-great grandfather had forged when they settled in the valley and which had hung above her family's hearth since she was a child) as a breastplate. Her fists clenched in rage as tears stung her eyes. He vision was drowned in red and black. The next thing she knew she was on her back, staring up at a cloudy sky just starting to rain. Her shoulder hurt, she reached up and felt it, when she looked at it it was slick with blood, and was not a hand but a large bear's paw. Before her very eyes it shrank, the hair receding into her skin, the gore-stained claws becoming fingernails. The pain in her shoulder ceased. She stood shakily, looking around. The camp was in ruins. Tents and shelters lay in heaps of rubble. Bodies, parts of bodies and unrecognizable piles of gore littered the site. All was carnage and desolation. She vomited, and saw several goblinoid fingers in the sick. She retched again and again until nothing was left. She searched the scene for the remains of the thing wearing her family's shield. It was not there, it had escaped. With nowhere else to go she returned to her circle. Her mentor sensed her recent rage and admonished her that emotion must never drive her actions, balance was what kept them from descending into the mindless, savage outbursts of the barbarian. He sent her to meditate while he conferred with the circle to decide what to do with her. She decided not to wait for their verdict. Taking what she could carry she abandoned the only family left to her, she went out into the world swearing vengeance upon that creature which had taken everything from her. So that's her backstory. She dislikes goblins and kobolds, but was forced to save a town of goblins in the first mission of the campaign (far in the future, more civilized but still clearly goblins) because she found common ground with their desire to save their town and families. She does not adopt animal forms unless under severe stress or as a reaction of sustaining heavy trauma, she took to heart her mentor's warning about succumbing to her emotions. In a recent prize-fight against a barbarian she used strategy and pushed him out of the ring with repeated thunderwaves instead of using wildshape to easily best him in combat. The only time she has wildshaped was when she had been beaten unconscious and healed. Afterwards she was very upset and had to be restrained from beating a prisoner to death so that the party could get information. For my roleplay the DM gave me auto-success on intimidation checks during the interrogation. Angry dwarf lady wins!

Thanks Dude’s! This is by FAR the best druid class explanation I’ve seen, and has really clarified for me what the role of the druid is. Already watched twice and probably will again. This has sparked heaps of character ideas. How about a forest gnome with faction agent background, who is a messenger boy for the Emerald Enclave? They could even have him deliver a sealed message to an adventuring party that reads “Please give this young druid some life experience in the wider world”. I know a gnome is not ideal for a druid, but I really like the idea of a character that is not at all intimidating, that when cornered can turn into something truly terrifying... Keep up the great work guys!

"Summon an army of rabbits. Turn them into T-Rexes." - Karen, the Supervillain's Secretary

Ace ventura is a modern day druid