I don't know what you mean about "druidic deities", since all the aspects of nature that druids care about are things that everybody else is going to care about too. We've got one faith that is 100% about druid stuff (the green one) but druids are individuals and are free to worship as they choose. But just because Uskwood druids worship ZK, doesn't mean he's a "druid deity" it's just because these people are Nidalese and are thus obligated.
I mean, this is one of these situations where "trying to force monotheism on a polytheistic society" is weird. With the exception of clerics and representatives of a church, everyone should be praying or performing rites for whatever deities are most appropriate to their immediate concerns. So just like it shouldn't be weird for a sailor to leave an offering for both Gozreh and Desna before going on a long voyage, it shouldn't be weird for a druid to say some words to Erastil when hunting. A druid in the church of Erastil should be "a druid who is friendly with the church and will do druid things for them as they agree on goals and methods" moreso than a servant or representative of Erastil, IMO.
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Let's say you have a deity that is very druidic in their dogma, like a mythic druid with Divine Source, but their alignment isn't TN. What would you say is their view on followers outside of the druidic alignments?
Their view on those followers would be something the player of the mythic druid gets to decide for themselves, IMO.
One mythic druid might be sanguine about it and rationalize that the 'little people' aren't all ready to accept the dispassion and disconnect from material / mortal worries that comes with embracing a more neutral stance, and choose to tolerate that, recognizing that *they* are becoming more 'god-like' in their thinking, and not everyone is quite 'there' yet.
Another mythic druid might have no patience for fools who cling to the sham of civilization and it's 'codes' and 'morals,' and accept no followers unable or unwilling to leave it behind and 'shed their city self' and embrace the animal within and become like unto a force of nature themselves.
In either case, pick one and make up a rationalization for that choice.
But, also, in either case, whatever rules the system/setting mandates for clerics/paladins/druids to receive their powers should remain in place. This is purely for secular worshippers!
The Druidic magic is based on Balance and through this, being a part of the world. Your mythic Druid may personally be above all that, but unless they have the mythic allignment cheat for themselves, his misaligned followers just won't have the mindset to be Druids, no matter how willing your mythic Druid is willing to provide them with magic. Even if they worship a god, they are not merely clerics with another powerset. Ah, memories of the great Godlearner heresies of days gone by.
Yes, in allowing special exemptions to exist, Pathfinder has encouraged those who want to use special exemptions as a basis for completely abandoning the rules that the exemptions highlight. At what point do you draw a line?
First of all a mythic druid is not a deity even if it has the path ability Divine Source. It simply allows them to grant spells and domains nothing else. If the sources of the characters abilities are from the deity a character with the path ability Divine Sources cannot power any other abilities except spells and domains. So if the setting requires a paladin to choose a deity and he chooses a character with Divine Source he would not get any other abilities. If the setting allows a character to worship multiple gods at once he could choose the character with Divine Source as one of those goods and get the rest of this abilities from the other deities.
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I never got why Desna attracts a notable druidic following
Because butterflies are pretty.
I never got why Desna attracts a notable druidic followingBecause butterflies are pretty.
Or perhaps because Desna is about travelling and appreciating the world and those that are in it.
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Desna, the Far-Wanderer, makes far more sense to me to sponsor druids than Gorum or Zon-Kuthon. I love to rationalize why someone might make a non-vanilla choice, such as a druid of Abadar (someone all about taming civilization, and a patron to *domesticated* animals and *cultivated* crops!), but Gorum and Zon-Kuthon seem pretty radical, even to me!
And that's cool. People have different degrees of 'what makes sense,' and not everything has to precisely line up with the boundaries of *my* creative rationalizations.
In my own version of Golarion, there's an order of druids and rangers who serve Asmodeus, who are convinced that something called 'the Consanguinity' is coming, when Hell will come to Golarion, and that the environments of the two worlds will merge. They prepare against such a day by calling fiendish beasts and infusing their traits to mundane creatures, such as horses, hounds and hunting cats, but also plant life, etc. to 'prepare' for this day and strengthen / toughen up the 'most useful' creatures to survive this merger and be able to function in the new world order. They consider the transformation of the roses of Ergoran (which turned white) upon the death of Aroden to be a sign of the coming Consanguinity, and have stables and kennels of their modified creatures there, outside of Ergoran.
So I'm in no position to criticize those druids of Zon-Kuthon. :)
I don't think druids are *sponsored* by deities. We can see this how in the new edition coming out this year Druids are no longer divine casters (they are "primal" casters.) I figure this is consistent with how many Golarion Druids hold no faith but the green one, which is not associated with a deity and they still get spells.
So a Kuthite druid isn't really different from a Kuthite alchemist or Kuthite monk or Kuthite kineticist or a Kuthite wizard - they have powers, and worship ZK, but that power does not derive from him.
Abadar Druids as all urbanites merely recognize that the City is just another jungle filled with predators and prey. They have a more Elf-Woods approach to managing the City. The Druidic Abadarite has no problem with predation, as long as the economic ecology remains in balance.
Obviously he'd welcome any LG, NG, CG, or TN follower that holds these aspects in high regard, but as a druid, he should technically be predisposed to favor his NG and TN followers over the LG and CG ones, as they go against the idea of "balance" held by most druids.
I'm not sure why you believe this.
The 'druid force' believe that only someone with a neutral component is able to be a druid, but I don't see why this character would agree at all.
A Neutral Good druid would certainly believe that a LG or CG person was closer to being morally correct than a NE person, whether or not being NE was still ok as far as getting druid powers are concerned. The would also agree more with those two good alignments than LN or CN viewpoints, both of which are also 'druid approved.' And they would disagree about the same amount with true neutral as they do the other good alignments.
'Druid Approved' philosophy doesn't mean any particular druid has to agree with another particular druid. If this particular druid felt that neutrality was that important, they would be true neutral (and hence accept followers with any neutral component, just like druidism in general. This druid God disagrees with that neutral outlook being the 'best', he thinks being good is just as important as striking a balance between law and chaos.