If a single druid can potentially create numerous leshy throughout their lifetime, then it stands to reason that common leshy would far outnumber druids, right?
Why aren't druids uncommon then? Don't they typically live the lives of hermits, or in very small isolated enclaves?
One would thing you wouldn't encounter them within the setting quite as often as you would a leshy.
Curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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I think they're only as Uncommon as any Adventuring PC would be. Wizards take tremendous intelligence and years of study to cast even basic spells. A level one fighter should theoretically represent a once in a lifetime talent for combat. The whole point of a PC class is that you are a unique figure among the masses. The common depiction of Druids as hermits and isolated enclaves should make them no less known to the populace than comparable Witches or Oracles.
I fail to see how the commonality of Leshies figures into this calculus whatsoever. Just because there are possibly more of one than the other doesn't necessarily mean anything with regard to how familiar most people are with them. There are probably a lot more tardigrades in your backyard than dogs, but the dog is the one you're most familiar with.
Also, presumably not all druids create leshies, let alone many leshies.
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I think the issue here is that a much higher percentage of "extant druids" become adventurers compared to the percentage of "extant leshies" who do. I don't think most Druids run around creating Leshies, and I think most Leshies just kind of want to hang out rather than doing dangerous stuff.
If a single druid can potentially create numerous leshy throughout their lifetime, then it stands to reason that common leshy would far outnumber druids, right?
A Leaf, Cultivation, or Spore Druid would have a leshy familiar, but wouldn't most druids keep only a single familiar during their lifetime? If the familiar died so that the druid would create a second leshy familiar, then the first one would be gone.
Typically, familiars revert to their original intelligence and form when their master dies. For leshies that means that the nature spirit that animated them reverts to spirit. However, my players have played many leshy PCs who were not familiars. Thus, I declared that some nature spirits like being leshies and volunteered to become leshy familiars so often that they learned independence. And they also could become leshies without druidic aid. My wife's water-and-wood kineticist lotus leshy Monet was a gardener. She created nursery gardens that would be comfortable places for nature spirits to become leshies.
This story also explains why leshies have become common recently. The nature spirits needed many lifetimes of practice as leshy familiars before they learned how to become independent leshies. And nature spirits have no urgency, so they could go a thousand years between those episodes as familiars. Only in the Age of Lost Omens have a lot of spirits gained the experience to become independent leshies.
I am currently running Strength of Thousands set at the Magaambya Academy. The Magaambya grounds include the Leshy Gardens:
Leshy Gardens
This overgrown section of campus is the domain of several leshys, who are uncommon elsewhere on campus (and in Nantambu for that matter). The chief groundskeeper, Thema (CG female elf gardener 6), discourages the leshys from ranging far from their patch of overgrown land because they have a tendency to cause mischief. The riotous Leshy Gardens is therefore a tangle of trees, shrubs, and vines amid carefully cultivated green space, such as sparring fields and picnic spots. Students sometimes come to ask the leshys for aid, particularly when stuck on a difficult assignment requiring a uniquely plant-based outlook.Small, twisting paths lead into the Leshy Gardens, and the leshys are normally happy to have visitors. Most of the leshys are leaf leshys (Pathfinder Bestiary 218), but gourd leshys (Bestiary 218) and flytrap leshys (Pathfinder Bestiary 2 161) live here as well.
I figure that most leshies in the Magaambya Leshy Gardens are retired familiars whose druid died but retained their leshy status. Eventually, they will die of old age as their plant bodies age.
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Leshies do form for reasons other than becoming familiars - the ritual that creates them can be performed by any skilled practitioner of primal magic, and doesn't by default create a familiar bond, according to their ancestry entry. It's also apparently not unusual, according to A Fistful of Flowers , for leshy familiars to be released from their bond well before the death of their druid - that's where a fair few of the leshies in that adventure came from.
The quote from A Fistful of Flowers is in the introduction the GM should read to the players:
Here and there in the wilds of the Verduran Forest, a seemingly normal plant suddenly reveals themself as a leshy, a curious little human-shaped plant crafted by a druid as a companion or minion. Sometimes, leshys outlive their druid creators, while many others are set free to live their own lives. Most of those who live in the Verduran Forest today have stories along these lines, yet recently the forest’s clusters of leshys have seemed thinner and fewer. You are but four of these stories.
The leshy community was so small that Lady Constance Meliosa having stolen away four of them made the population "thinner and fewer." She also had four guard leshies in addition to the other four, but the module strongly implies that she created them herself with primal sorcery.
The Monster Core also has its own take on leshies.
Leshy
Leshies are intelligent plant creatures who guard areas of primeval wilderness or earthly power. Originally created by powerful fey, they manifest when a skilled practitioner of primal magic—typically a druid— combines a nature spirit with a body carefully grown and crafted from local vegetation. The rites and materials required to create a leshy vary depending on the type of leshy. They are typically given life in an area of great natural significance, such as an arboreal’s grove, a druidic circle, a fairy ring, or a great natural wonder.
The leshy Monet came from my own A Fistful of Flowers mini-campaign for playtesting the animist and exemplar, Playtesting in A Fistful of Flowers with 7 Leshies. Though the introduction mentioned the druids of the Verduran Forest creating the leshies, no druids appear in A Fistful of Flowers, except one pregenerated leshy Bottlespeaker is a druid with their own leshy familiar Twinsprout, and the backstories of two other pregenerated leshies mention their druids. My players would have recruited any local humanoid druids into their quest to deal with wayward humans.
Instead, they ran with the absence of humanoid druids from the active story to declare that the leshies had their own independent community. Furthermore, the player of the leshy animist Sunny wrote a backstory in which Sunny's sunflower spontaneously became a leshy (we can assume a nature spirit was involved) to comfort her favorite human Eleanor. Later when Eleanor died, her spirit became Sunny's first animist spirit.
My view of Golarion and the Pathfinder rules is greatly influenced by my players' actions.