D&D General Druids and Path Dependency: Why the Scimitar Helps Illuminate D&D

[Ralif Redhammer]

I love candy corn and I have never made a candy corn pizza. One day....

Oh no. Ralif ... do you know what you've summoned? You've crossed the streams ....

Candy Corn in a peanut butter sandwich is a delight.

Candy corn + salted peanuts + chocolate chips is a great combo introduced by someone back when I still worked in the office instead of from home.

I eat healthier at home, though.

Definitely. For all magic's ability at higher levels to reshape the universe, sometimes it's those lower level spells that would be the ones truly reshaping society.

umm... thread tax:
The Plant Growth line of spells is HUGE in an agricultural society. Farming communities should prefer having a druid over having a priest. I could see a druid riding a circuit (like an old-style preacher or judge in 1700s America) where he visits each town once every few weeks to heal, help crops grow, etc.

 

[dragoner]

Here is a vid with scimitars:

 

[Campbell]

Pretty much every RPG that has standalone IP has this sort of path dependency. This is true for Bards, Wizards, Clerics, Rangers, Paladins, Druids and even Rogues to a certain extent in D&D. The particular expression of the archetype is remarkably D&D specific. The same is largely true for all sorts of design elements in L5R, Exalted, Earthdawn, Vampire, Shadowrun, et al. In games with either a specific or implied setting things given a specific context that often involves mixing elements from different concepts. That's just part of design.

 

[Voadam]

The Plant Growth line of spells is HUGE in an agricultural society. Farming communities should prefer having a druid over having a priest. I could see a druid riding a circuit (like an old-style preacher or judge in 1700s America) where he visits each town once every few weeks to heal, help crops grow, etc.

Nature domain clerics get plant growth too.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Nature domain clerics get plant growth too.

The fuzzy line between nature domain clerics and druids is, perhaps, another reason to keep their weird class archetypes that are D&Disms (scimitars, shapeshifting, prohibition on metal armor) intact.

 

[Vael]

So I was going to address this before being interrupted by the Snickers-deprived.

You raise a great point- I am not using path dependency here in the sense that we often think about it; in other words, that the cost of switching is so high that superior alternatives are not utilized. Instead, I am thinking of it in the more banal sense ... that history matters, and that the decisions of the past had necessary and crucial effects upon the present.

When it comes to the very nature of class identities in D&D, I think that there is a fair amount of path dependency. Some classes, such as Druids, are a prime example of this. They aren't really represented in fantasy literature. They aren't really a part of the general time period of even the generously-expanded general D&D medieval/Renaissance range. They aren't based on an accurate representation of the past- and but are instead a very specific misconception that had a great amount of currency in the 60s and 70s.

In many ways, Druids are essentially D&Disms. The very markers we associate with Druids (shape changing, no metal armor, scimitars, even the specific spells) were all set out when the class started, and absent those signifiers, the "class" doesn't exist.

Now, this was going to be the first part of a three part series (the next one to contrast the Ranger, and the third to g deeper into the difference with non-crunch rules like the "no armor") but it's apparent I'm not going to start threads for a while.

This all gets reinforced by the DnD fantasy fiction that reinforces those DnDisms. And in more recent fantasy fiction, the Iron Druid series is all about a Druid that shapeshifts and is considered super powerful because he can use cold iron and wield magic.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This all gets reinforced by the DnD fantasy fiction that reinforces those DnDisms. And in more recent fantasy fiction, the Iron Druid series is all about a Druid that shapeshifts and is considered super powerful because he can use cold iron and wield magic.

D&D makes D&Disms, which then get widely disseminated into more mainstream culture, and then get repeated as regular fantasy tropes (in books, movies, and videogames), which reinforces the D&Disms as standard fantasy tropes...

 

[Starfox]

The Plant Growth line of spells is HUGE in an agricultural society. Farming communities should prefer having a druid over having a priest. I could see a druid riding a circuit (like an old-style preacher or judge in 1700s America) where he visits each town once every few weeks to heal, help crops grow, etc.

I'm extremely careful about the effect of spells and effects on the economy. D&D is written as a game for adventures, often in dungeons, and everything in the game is described from this point of view. Spells and effect that affect the economy are simply outside the scope of the game. A few spells, like Plant Growth, have an economic function mentioned, but that's more like an accident of design.

Still, some of my players love this kinds of effects, and look out to find just these - or magic to enhance the bards performances and other effects well outside the scope of the game as written. Its one of the issues we have with 5E as a set of rules. Not sure I will continue with 5E (or 5.1) after finishing the current "test run".

 

[James Gasik]

On the other hand, of course magic has an economic impact- why wouldn't it? Any innovation is going to have more than one use, whether intended or not.

The issue is when you look at a standard D&D world and say "odd, why is it like this when X spell exists?". Why hasn't fabricate started an industrial revolution? Why can't we solve a housing crisis with Wizards casting Galder's Tower every day? Why are there starving people when every 5th level Cleric can call upon the power of their gods to create food and water? Why is there disease when purifying food and drink is a 1st level spell, and curing disease is a second level spell?*

Why haven't undead who create spawn taken over the world?

There's no good answers to these beyond "because that's how it is", which undermines the verisimilitude of most game settings. And if we follow these things to their logical conclusion, we end up with worlds nothing like the traditional fantasy adventure of D&D.

So we look the other way and ignore it. Or make crazy rulings, like how in Pathfinder 1e, the iron from the wall of iron is perfectly able to hold back attacking foes, but is somehow unable to be used for anything other than a wall. It does make discussions with people who insist their D&D campaigns have to "make sense" and be "realistic" amusing, since there's absolutely nothing sensical about the proceedings, because they are fantasy...but what fantasy is to the individual is literally in the eye of the beholder (no, not you, Xanathar! The ego on that guy!).

*Unless you want to say spellcasters other than the PC's are rare, of course. Though that implies a "specialness" about PC's a lot of people reject. And there are official settings where spellcasters are so common you can't throw a rock without hitting an archmage!

 

[Starfox]

On the other hand, of course magic has an economic impact- why wouldn't it? Any innovation is going to have more than one use, whether intended or not.

The issue is when you look at a standard D&D world and say "odd, why is it like this when X spell exists?". Why hasn't fabricate started an industrial revolution? Why can't we solve a housing crisis with Wizards casting Galder's Tower every day? Why are there starving people when every 5th level Cleric can call upon the power of their gods to create food and water? Why is there disease when purifying food and drink is a 1st level spell, and curing disease is a second level spell?*

Why haven't undead who create spawn taken over the world?

There's no good answers to these beyond "because that's how it is", which undermines the verisimilitude of most game settings. And if we follow these things to their logical conclusion, we end up with worlds nothing like the traditional fantasy adventure of D&D.

So we look the other way and ignore it. Or make crazy rulings, like how in Pathfinder 1e, the iron from the wall of iron is perfectly able to hold back attacking foes, but is somehow unable to be used for anything other than a wall. It does make discussions with people who insist their D&D campaigns have to "make sense" and be "realistic" amusing, since there's absolutely nothing sensical about the proceedings, because they are fantasy...but what fantasy is to the individual is literally in the eye of the beholder (no, not you, Xanathar! The ego on that guy!).

*Unless you want to say spellcasters other than the PC's are rare, of course. Though that implies a "specialness" about PC's a lot of people reject. And there are official settings where spellcasters are so common you can't throw a rock without hitting an archmage!

The problem is not hat a few spells can have economic impact. The problem is the lack of spells with an economic impact - and that the few ones that do have an impact become weird when not accompanied by many more that are made for the economy.

Then again, when you look at the literature, it is very rare that magic affects the economy. Magic in most fantasy is made for war.