Whilst looking for stuff completely unrelated to Druids or Evil characters, I stumbled upon the Fey Spell Lore feat. It's a good feat, but nothing special by itself.
I already knew about the Shade of the Uskwood feat, which, again, isn't anything special by itself.
The two feats combined make for a pretty spectacular addition to your spell list, though.
All for the small price of two feats, being Neutral Evil, and worshipping Zon-Kuthon. Lol.
Which, in all reality, can be accomplished at level one if you are Human.
Anyways, here are the spells you get from each feat...
Fey Spell Lore:
0—dancing lights;
1st—lesser confusion;
2nd—charm person;
3rd—invisibility;
4th—bestow curse;
5th—charm monster;
6th—major curse;
7th—cloak of dreams;
8th—insanity;
9th—irresistible dance.
Shade of the Uskwood:
0—disrupt undead, ray of frost;
1st—ghost sound, touch of fatigue;
2nd—chill touch, spectral hand;
3rd—ghoul touch, invisibility;
4th—displacement, ray of exhaustion;
5th—animate dead, phantasmal killer;
6th—nightmare, waves of fatigue;
7th—circle of death, shadow walk;
8th—mass invisibility, waves of exhaustion;
9th—horrid wilting, weird.
What do you think?
Is this something that is worth exploring further?
I think Slyme is right but it is not really the point.
The idea uses up 2 feats and you lose the ability to cast fire spells with Shade of the Uskwood.
It does give you a lot of options to do the kinds of things Druids cannot innately do. It is not as good as it seems at first sight as either all or nearly all the spells you gain take up higher level spell slots.
My opinion is if I was playing with a well rounded adventuring party I wouldn't take these feats. If you have another party member who can cast the spells you gain then the value is much diminished.
If you are adventuring solo or with 1 other player, depending on what they are playing, then this could be really good.
I disagree that the 2 feats are best taken together. I would likely take Shade of the Uskwood first, for 2 spells/ level at the cost of fire spells. The benefits of Fey Spell Lore are really independent of the other feat.
I think it is definitely worth exploring esp in small adventuring groups lacking spell casting options, when it could prove excellent.
Adding more spells to your spell list never hurts, and both of these feats do that, but the OP seems to be implying a strong synergy between them and I am not seeing it. Am I reading in, or am I missing something?
_
glass.
It actually looks to be the opposite of synergy to me as both feats give invisibility at 3rd level. So, taking one feat makes taking the other one weaker. I think it depends on the type of character you're trying to make. Fey Spell Lore makes sense if you're trying to make a charmer/enchanter type character. If making such a character you'd probably be looking at the Feyspeaker archetype which it energizes well with.
As for the Shade of the Uskwood feat, I'm not sure. I suppose if you want to play as a sort of debuffer style druid this can make some sense. When I saw animate dead it made me think of it working well with a necromancer build but its the only spell out of the group that a necromancer build would be looking for and the death domain gives it to you as a 3rd level spell. Sure, the death domain only lets you cast it once per day, but do you really need to be casting animate dead more often than that?
As for the idea of playing an evil druid. I've played two of them now and they aren't any more campaign breaking than playing an evil wizard or an evil cleric. Yes, the character would love to bring the nearby town and/or world to ruin and return things to the natural order. But you just have to give your character longer vision. The druid I'm playing right now (granted its a 5e ebberon game) wants to "reset" the entire planet. But this involves more than just wiping out all life, it has to be re-seeded as well. It would be terrible if all life was wiped out before his planetary ARKs have been built and so he will fight tooth and nail against any and all threats to the world same as any good character.
Yes, he absolutely should be stopped, but if he succeeds, it won't matter much since that won't happen until the end of the campaign anyway. Additionally, since he's a warforged he's not in any rush to bring his plans to fruition since dying of old age isn't something that's going to happen. I've got his details (backstory, plans, etc.) posted here for anyone that wants to know more. Though, unless you want to dive into the campaign pages 2(History) and 6(The Plan) are probably the most interesting bits, the rest is just information the DM requested from me.
Considering you gain all the spells as a spell one level higher than normal makes this less than optimal. You would be better off using normal druid spells for the most part. If you want to expand your spell selection just use UMD. Druids may not get it as a class skill, but the trait dangerously curious gives you that an a +1 bonus, add in skill focus and you start with a +8 bonus at 1st level. This will allow you to use scrolls of other classes.
There was a druid in my first campaign setting that was a sort of voodoun-creole with a little Aztec priest mixed in. He loathed mankind and wanted nothing more than to shed his humanity and revel in the primal, cold-blooded purity of the reptilian world. He had an enormous viper that he would tenderly milk for venom as well as a staff that could summon what he referred to as the Great Serpent (like a rod of the python, but a giant, half-dragon anaconda that he did not have any specific control over). He spent as much time as possible in the form of a black dragon and wore wild plate armor made from a black dragon for that double-dragon goodness and was cold, cruel and cunning.
Druid make excellent villains, whether they're world-conquering masterminds or deranged hermits.
In my current game, I've heavily edited and expanded the druid's spell list to help cultivate a trickster-druid. With 35 skill points at lvl5 and various charms, illusions and some necromancy thrown in; smoke and mirrors, but also literal smoke.