Druids that aren't exclusive to the wilds

[Drogan Tome]

I have been thinking of different ways that classes interact with the world around them and have been a little stuck on the Druid.

The fluff around druids is that they are almost always found out in the wilds away from civilization, shunning it in favor of nature. while this is all fine and dandy I was thinking of how the druid could fit in other capacities like a local wisewoman who supports a village or town with their farming, herbal medicines, guidance, etc.; helping communities to better live in harmony with nature instead.

how do you all treat druids in your games?

[PCScipio]

There is the Urban Druid archeype.

[blahpers]

My last druid lived on a farming/gardening commune in the Korvosan hinterlands and spend a lot of the campaign in the city proper, first motivated by the need to find his kidnapped sister, then by the prospect of the city's instability threatening the safety and sanctity of the entire region. There was no difficulty reconciling his faith with the presence of a city the size of a nation-state.

Druidism isn't completely incompatible with civilization. Seclusion is simply the path of least resistance for the druidic philosophy. You're absolutely right--druids are good candidates for folk magic practitioners, farmers, herbalists, advisors, or even community leaders.

[Drogan Tome]

thank you for the advice. this makes a lot more sense for me now

[Quixote]

PCScipio wrote:

There is the Urban Druid archeype.

I feel lioke the OP's question isn't at all mechanical.

How about a beggar Rat King-style character? A minor crime lord that has rapport with all the rats/cats/birds in the city? A gardener/herbalist/apothecary. Or a sewer-dwelling vermin caller. The menagerie keeper of a twisted traveling circus? Or even just a hermit who watched the city slowly take over the wild, until only this one little patch of forest remained?

[Coidzor]

There was a city described in one of the D&D 3.5 sourcebooks which featured a district of the city that was one giant park, inhabited and maintained by a cabal of druids along with a number of natural creatures, including some of the more benign-to-neutralish fey. (Saltmarsh, perhaps?)

Had a lasting impact on me, so I've recycled and rehashed the idea more than a few times.

I imagine that Druids would be important to anyone who wanted to engage in arboreal architecture and using living trees as building space. Druids, Wizardly sorts, and Druid-Wizard fusions tend to feature in my "tree cities."

(Although, come to think of it, some kind of Bard archetype might work for that kind of idea of fusion of arcane magic and druidcraft, too. There's even some sort of association between singing and magic that affects plants in my mind for some reason I cannot remember.)

I've never eliminated Urban Druids, but I've never been 100% comfortable with giving them time in the spotlight, either, due to not being entirely confident about the best way to use them. I do have a soft spot for the idea, though, and an even softer spot for urban fey in the "spirits of places" sense, so it's one of those things that I continually mean to come back to but just haven't gotten around to yet.

[Jeff Morse]

good novel of urban ruid also. https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Blood_of_the_City