I know the real discussion for the Druid is over, but I had totally forgotten about this idea until the other night. I've brought this up on another discussion board and it was generally agreed to be something that made perfect sense:
The Druid should get some sort of class feature(which could also be a feat for others to take) that allows them to not harm natural things with their damaging spells. Natural things would include all normal Plants(and possibly Plant Creatures), Animals, and Vermin, of a very non-magical or bizarre type.
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The Pathfinder Campaign Setting has a Feat (Green Faith Acolyte, p 218, IIRC) that allows a Druid to do this sort of thing, but only to have natural plants escape harm from his spells.
Even just a class feature that allowed a Druid or Wizard to automatically ignore his Companion / Familiar for area spells or damaging effects would be kind of neat, allowing a Druid to cast Entangle on an area where his Riding Dog is in melee or a Wizard to fling a Fireball into an area where his familiar is currently being swarmed by locusts.
Like a Selective Channelling effect?
Nifty. :)But...natural effects, such as Lighning or Whirlwinds do damage nature, just that it is ...um, natural for it to do so.
Hmm. Conflicted.
true, but that's totally a random effect, caused completely naturally, whereas a Druid whom Calls Lightning is summoning forth the power of nature via his/her own power. It stands to reason that a Druid should, at some earlyish level, be able to control his spells enough that he can exclude plants, animals and vermin from being harmed, since that is totally against what being a Druid is.
I think it sounds cool and I can't think of it having a significant impact on the game mechanics.
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I had long thought about giving druids channel energy as well, and rather than do direct healing, it would do heal over time similar to fast healing, until the total amount of healing was used up.
This would have several important uses. One, it becomes a pre-combat buff. Put fast healing on your tanks before they start getting cut up. Also, it would stabilize dying characters without needing a cleric to run in and do so. It is healing, but really frees up a lot of time for the druid to do other more important things during the combat.