I would like to force a Druid to loose his Druidness.
Hmmm.
Are you sure?Don't you really mean: "I intend to set up a situation where the player has to make hard choices for his character, and one or more of those likely choices would result in the character losing his druid status."
I ask this, because if you as DM intend to "force" the player to lose all his character's class benefits, that doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Whereas if it's a result of player choices, that's all well and good. It's what the game is about: players dealing with the consequences of their choices.
The question about what a character loses is right there in the CRB:
Ex-Druids
A druid who ceases to revere nature, changes to a prohibited alignment, or teaches the Druidic language to a nondruid loses all spells and druid abilities (including her animal companion, but not including weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She cannot thereafter gain levels as a druid until she atones (see the atonement spell description).
So the player would still have "ex-druid" levels, with the same hit dice, skill levels, feats and so on, but no spells or other class abilities. If I were that player, that would suck bad. If this were forced on me by the DM, I would feel extra bad. But if it were the logical result of my own choices, I could only blame myself.
Eventually, this guy could retrain those dead levels into something else, but in the short term it would be non-optimal. <g>
Got to agree. Forcing a character to lose all abilities is just rude. Putting him in a situation where the easy route does so is a good RP situation. Also no druids can worship whatever god they want by RAW. What they can't do is screw with nature for the worse. For example he can sacrifice 1000 virgins on an alter but he can't start a forest fire. He still doesn't lose his druid levels. He merely losses access to most class abilities like wild shape and spell casting. This makes him basically having taken NPC class level which really sucks. Would compensate with a nice template, let him retrain the levels, turning him into a full on blighter(anti druid), a few feats, or a good amount of magic items. That is assuming he stays fallen. If he can get attoned real quick don't bother with compensating
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This is a terrible idea don't do it, the job of the DM is to make sure the players have fun, loosing all your class features isn't fun.
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If this is because the player wants to change classes, just let them do it via the Retraining rules in Ultimate campaign, rationalized by their increasing affinity for _____ over time, and possibly including some big epiphany moment like described.
If this is because something about the character is unbalanced, take the player aside and talk to them about it. Let them make changes for free and work with them to rationalize in-game what happened.
If this is because you feel it would make an interesting story, just don't. People don't like when you force them to do things they didn't want to do. They wouldn't have made a druid if they didn't want to be one. If you force things like losing powers and class changes on your players, you'll quickly find that nobody wants to play with you as their GM. Most seasoned players have at least one horror story of a GM who was too heavy-handed, and you don't want to be remembered as "Jim, that GM who made lose my druid powers for no f***ing reason."
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can't start a forest fire [with out loosing druid powers]
That ain't true.
Druids worship personifications of elemental forces, natural powers, or nature itself. Typically this means devotion to a nature deity, though druids are just as likely to revere vague spirits, animalistic demigods, or even specific awe-inspiring natural wonders.
A perfectly valid choice of worship for a Druid is The Demigod of Mushrooms who thrives after forest fires. There's nothing particularly 'unnatural' (oh, god, that word is stupid) with forest fires. In fact, the unnatural thing is forest fire prevention which causes the fires that do start to become larger than they otherwise would have been.
I turn against the idea that logging or any human use of nature by definition goes against druid codes. The actual Celtic druids, which the class is based on, didn't think this. Nor does countless nature-aligned cultures around the world.
The druid has to revere nature, or at least a part of it. That does not automatically makes all druids tree-hugging hippies from the city with next to no understanding of ecology.
Okay, end of rant ... =)
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I would like to force a Druid to loose his Druidness. My intentions are to have an interaction with an evil God of some kind where he willingly agrees to pay a sacrifice to said God. Canonically, if a Druid begins to follow a chaotic evil God, would that cause this effect? Also, the rest of the group is all around level 4 at the moment, so is there a way to give him a leg up in whatever new class he winds up having rather than starting as a fresh level 1?
The situation, would be as follows -PC that Druid has a developing relationship with is near death and a chaotic evil God agrees to restore her if he makes an appropriate sacrifice.
Please tell us that this druid is your character, Moondoge. That was how I read your post the first time, because the prospect of a GM forcing this upon an unsuspecting player was so horrid it didn't cross my mind.
This is a game, a hobby. The participants sit down around a table and collectively tell a story in an effort to have fun. Bringing 'force' into that mix rarely helps that effort.
If you work together with the player (or GM, if you're playing the druid), this could be a very nice story.
And, since there's a thing called 'rule of cool', the loss of druid powers and levels shouldn't be allowed to interfere with fun and balance. Just have the Druid instantly gain an equal amount of cleric levels, or what-ever. You want justification? It's an evil god. Surely, such beings are powerful to grant followers buttloads of XP on occasion.
This is basically a "How do i make the paladin fall" convorsation all over again.
Honestly do you think its a good idea to force a player to technically become a NPC class just for *your* benefit of a storyline? Doesnt sound very fun to me honestly, the story is for the group as a whole and the drama you seek is a can of worms that is most likely going to spread off the table.
If you insist on going that route, talk with the player and find out if he even is interested in that kind of a storyline, otherwise... shy away like a plague.
If he wants to change his class, you could go with having him find a plot device magic item that changes all levels that he has in any single class to any other class that he desires, with the fringe benefits of changing his alignment as necessary and letting him replace any feats that are rendered useless by the class change. This item would have only one "charge" and thus would become useless junk after your player takes advantage of it to rebuild his character.
If you have more than one player who is dissatisfied with his current class, you could raise the number of "charges" to be enough to cover all players who wish to do rebuilds of this sort.
Unless he is an unusual Druid (or you are allowing him to shift his stats) he probably won't make a very good wizard. Monk is more likely to fit his stats.
Mechanically, retraining allows you to change one level to another level. Each level would take 7 days (5 if it is a 'synergy class' which neither of these are) and 70 (or 50) gp per total levels the character has. So for a 4th level druid to become a 4th level wizard it would take 28 days and cost 1120 gp. It would certainly be acceptable to handwave the cost and even adjust down the time if that fits better into your campaign.
As far as 'in story' motivations, just about anything can work.
If we go by RAW then your plan currently would result in your PC being an ex-Druid 4/new class 1 ... so he'd basically be useless.
As mentioned, retraining is your best bet, and as DM you can totally hand waive any gold and time costs associated with it. This would allow him to replace his Druid levels.
On the other hand, you could always just keep the 4 levels of Druid, and just move into another class, like the aforementioned Monk. Maybe bring in a Monk NPC who the PC gets along well with and instills a desire to become a monk from. This also works with the above retraining idea.
Lots of things will work here, but making the Druid "fall" is a very, very poor one as it only hurts the PC. The only time this kind of falling can be beneficial is in the case of a Paladin falling so deeply they turn all their class levels into Antipaladin levels. There exists no such thing for a Druid.
What does he want to do as a wizard?
A well built cleric can perform at least individual wizard roles quite well. Maybe a cleric of Nethys, a nature deity, or a demon of some sort? Only recommending this because they work off the same stats as a druid
Once did something similar using a Contract Devil. A wish or 3 should be able to retrain 4 levels. Heck it should also let him swap a few stats around and maybe some feats
Retrain rules are an easy way of doing so. Justification is the tricky part. Perhaps he finds a monastery that practices a special style dedicated to becoming one with nature. Maybe part of the treasure is a cursed spellbook that forces the first reader to study it for days on end. Perhaps he meets with the Magaambyan Arcanists and becomes entralled. Perhaps he is captured by an evil cult and given the Winter Soldier treatment
If he's going for monk then he's going to have to also shift his alignment to Lawful
He could theoretically just go Martial Artist archetype since they bypass the Lawful requirement.
I'm reminded of the dwarf in Neverwinter Nights 2 who got his ass kicked by a monk and so he really wanted to become a monk to kick peoples asses as good as them.
As a Druid this may not work quite the same, but it could be humorous.
I would like to force a Druid to loose his Druidness.
This is as far as I got.
My response is just don't.
Seriously, please don't do this. If you have a problem with the character talk to the player outside of the game about what your concerns are. If you force the player to go through something like this they probably aren't going to be happy. If you really want to explore a whole "falling/redemption" arc with the character then talk to the player about that and ask them if they're interested. If they are not interested, just drop it.
Edit: Now after my initial statement and reading through the rest of the thread, the player appears dissatisfied with their character but they want to keep the character.
Can you be more specific about what the player doesn't like about the character and see if there is any way to salvage the character by changing the mechanics via archtype or something similar.
Perhaps an effect that replaces the character with an alternate version of them?
Perhaps the party enters a mysterious area, and it leads them to a world that could have been; something just like their own, but with a cascade of differences due to the For The Want of a Nail effect.
While here, they encounter the other version of their good friend, Druid McThornface, but the event that catalyzed him into pursuing druidic teachings never happened, or happened in a way to cause him to hate nature, rather than embrace it.
Then something happens, old Druid dies or is injured or decides this new world needs him, while his alternate self, Monk McPunchface, decides to join your cause.
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Just give him access to a Hourglass of Transfiguration and call it good.
I had a cleric once who temporarily lost her powers (we house-ruled that she had to roll WIS whenever she tried to use a spell or channel). Even without the house rule, it would have been a blast. The DM let her get her powers back incrementally and at really climactic moments when she had epiphanies about the divine will and showed progress toward reform. It was one of my most rewarding episodes as a role-player.
Whichever way your player ends up going, I think being an ex-Druid for a while and then spontaneously gaining replacement monk levels at moments of personal virtue/inspiration/devotion could be delightful. Obviously, this depends on the personalities involved (among players and DM) and the kind of game you're running. If this player just wants to explode faces, my recommendation is infelicitous. If you're running a deeply narrative game with many well-developed personalities, give it a try. Make those monk or wizard levels mean something.
Just to be clear, I propose that the character be an ex-Druid 4, then ex-Druid 3/monk or wizard 1, etc. Growing into strength from such a demiss situation feels glorious.
You could just let him be a spontaneous caster and give him the spell slots and spells known of an oracle or sorcerer. That should work if he otherwise likes the flavor of the druid, and simply dislikes the preparation.
If you and the player want the PC to change classes then whatever story you like to explain it should be fine. On the other hand...
Wizard won't improve the situation with memorizing spells. Prepping spell lists for general situations ahead of time might, stuff like: Town spells, underground dungeon spells, wilderness adventure spells, etc. Honestly he could also just build a generally useful spell list and roll with it, especially if he focuses on summons (which can be cast spontaneously) or wildshaping and melee (in which case spells will be more for utility and between combat). Opting out of Druid just before getting into the fun of wildshape seems like a shame to me.
Monk has some pretty decent synergies with Druid if the player might be interested in multi-classing instead of completely retraining. If alignment is a concern there's a Martial Artist archetype with unrestricted alignment. You can get pretty good at grappling, tripping, or even just high damage unarmed strikes this way.
If the player wants to be extra Evil for some reason you could check out the "Shade of the Uskwood" feat.