What is the deal with the huge gap in power between Druid levels 14 to 15?
SymphonyofSwords
Member Posts: 40
It has always seemed so weird to me that the druid suddenly stops leveling after level 14 for a very, very long time. And when he finally starts leveling again, he does it in such an unexpected fasion, it can only be characterized as OMGWTFSTEROIDSCALLTHECOPS.
Is it an oversight by game developers? Or is there a pnp explanation to this?
Is it an oversight by game developers? Or is there a pnp explanation to this?
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Spoilered due to size. Just some info you may find interesting.
From the Complete Guide to Druids.
"Higher-level Druids
The worldwide organization of the druids allows for the existence of only a
limited number of 12th- or higher-level druids, assigning them special titles, servants,
and responsibilities. Druids who gain enough experience to reach 12th level can
advance only if they find a vacancy within the Order's ranks or wrest a position from
another druid through the challenge. (See Chapter 3: The Druidic Order.)
Only one 15th-level druid exists in any campaign world: the Grand Druid, chief
of all druids in the world. The Grand Druid can come from any branch, though on
many worlds this position requires a member of the usually dominant forest druids. A
Grand Druid who retires and continues to gain experience can become a hierophant
druid, of which a world can have any number.
The rules for druids of 12th and higher levels described in the PH on pgs. 37-38
apply to all druidic branches. For more details on the hierarchy of druids and the special responsibilities of higher-level characters, see Chapter 3: The Druidic Order."
From the Players Handbook
"Druids, Archdruids, and the Great Druid
At 12th level, the druid character acquires the official title of “druid” (all druid characters below 12th level are officially known as “initiates”). There can be only nine 12th-level druids in any geographic region (as defined by oceans, seas, and mountain ranges; a continent may consist of three or four such regions). A character cannot reach 12th level unless he takes his place as one of the nine druids. This is possible only if there are currently fewer than nine druids in the region, or if the character defeats one of the nine druids in magical or hand-to-hand combat, thereby assuming the defeated druid's position. If such combat is not mortal, the loser drops experience points so that he has exactly 200,000 remaining--just enough to be 11th level.
The precise details of each combat are worked out between the two combatants in advance. The combat can be magical, non-magical, or a mixture of both. It can be fought to the death, until only one character is unconscious, until a predetermined number of hit points is lost, or even until the first blow is landed, although in this case both players would have to be supremely confident of their abilities. Whatever can be agreed upon between the characters is legitimate, so long as there is some element of skill and risk.
When a character becomes a 12th-level druid, he gains three underlings. Their level depends on the character's position among the nine druids. The druid with the most experience points is served by three initiates of 9th level; the second-most experienced druid is served by three initiates of 8th level; and so on, until the least experienced druid is served by three 1st-level initiates.
Only three archdruids (13th level) can operate in a geographical region. To become an archdruid, a 12th-level druid must defeat one of the reigning archdruids or advance into a vacant position. Each of the three archdruids is served by three initiates of 10th level. From among the archdruids of the entire world, three are chosen to serve the Grand Druid (see “The Grand Druid and Hierophant Druids” section). These three retain their attendees but are themselves servants of the Grand Druid.
The Great Druid (14th level) is unique in his region. He, too, won his position from the previous great druid. He is served by three initiates of 11th level.
The ascendance of a new Great Druid usually sets off shock waves of turmoil and chaos through the druidical hierarchy. The advancement of an archdruid creates an opening that is fiercely contested by the druids, and the advancement of a druid creates an opening in their ranks.
The Grand Druid and Hierophant Druids
The highest ranking druid in the world is the Grand Druid (15th level). Unlike great druids (several of whom can operate simultaneously in different lands), only one person in a world can ever hold this title at one time. Consequently, only one druid can be 15th level at any time.
The Grand Druid knows six spells of each level (instead of the normal spell progression) and also can cast up to six additional spell levels, either as a single spell or as several spells whose levels total to six (for example, one 6th-level spell, six 1st-level spells, three 2nd-level spells, etc.).
The Grand Druid is attended by nine other druids who are subject only to him and have nothing to do with the hierarchy of any specific land or area. Any druid character of any level can seek the Grand Druid and ask to serve him. Three of these nine are archdruids who roam the world, acting as his messengers and agents. Each of them receives four additional spell levels. The remainder are normally druids of 7th to 11th level, although the Grand Druid can request a druid of any level to serve him and often considers applications from humble aspirants.
The position of Grand Druid is not won through combat. Instead, the Grand Druid selects his successor from the acting great druids. The position is demanding, thankless, and generally unexciting for anyone except a politician. After a few hundred thousand experience points of such stuff, any adventurer worthy of the name probably is ready to move on to something else.
For this reason, the Grand Druid reaches 16th level after earning only 500,000 more experience points. After reaching 16th level, the Grand Druid can step down from his position at any time, provided he can find a suitable successor (another druid with 3,000,000 experience points).
Upon stepping down, the former Grand Druid must relinquish the six bonus spell levels and all of his experience points but 1 (he keeps the rest of his abilities). He is now a 16th-level hierophant druid, and begins advancing anew (using the progression given in Table 23). The character may rise as high as 20th level as a hierophant druid (almost always through self training).
Beyond 15th level, a druid never gains any new spells (ignore the Priest Spell Progression table from this point on). Casting level continues to rise with experience. Rather than spells, spell-like powers are acquired.
16th level: At 16th level, the hierophant druid gains four powers:
Immunity to all natural poisons. Natural poisons are ingested or insinuated animal or vegetable poisons, including monster poisons, but not mineral poisons or poison gas.
Vigorous health for a person of his age. The hierophant is no longer subject to the ability score adjustments for aging.
The ability to alter his appearance at will. Appearance alteration is accomplished in one round. A height and weight increase or decrease of 50% is possible, with an apparent age from childhood to extreme old age. Body and facial features can resemble any human or humanoid creature. This alteration is not magical, so it cannot be detected by any means short of true seeing.
17th Level: The character gains the biological ability to hibernate. His body functions slow to the point where the character may appear dead to a casual observer; aging ceases. The character is completely unconscious during hibernation. He awakens either at a preordained time ("I will hibernate for 20 days") or when there is a significant change in his environment (the weather turns cold, someone hits him with a stick, etc.).
A 17th-level hierophant druid can also enter the Elemental Plane of Earth at will. The transference takes one round to complete. This ability also provides the means to survive on that plane, move around, and return to the Prime Material Plane at will. It does not confer similar abilities or immunities on the Prime Material Plane.
18th level: The character gains the ability to enter and survive in the Elemental Plane of Fire.
19th level: The character gains the ability to enter and survive in the Elemental Plane of Water.
20th level: The character gains the ability to enter and survive in the Elemental Plane of Air."
You can also view the progression rate for druids here.
http://grey.hawk.free.fr/WebHelp/PHB/DD01478.htm
IWD/IWDEE has a more reasonable progression rate.
Then you take into account that magic may work differently on the planes, a druid might be powerless in the planes for his magic is tied to the natural world of the Prime Material Plane. Don't remember the particulars and a quick search didn't yield any notable results.
Why hasn't anyone written/played/etc. a paladin character who's terrified of losing his powers and so does what he thinks he's supposed to, despite not actually being the over-the-top paragon of justice with a steel rod up the bum?
For exemple, in the last patch, i had the pleasure to notice that now, the HLA Elemental Transformation is now ALSO screwed ! ; you can no more move when you transform into it, hurray!
The only issue I've seen with them is that it doesn't report on your screen that your base Thac0 is now 2. But that is a relatively minor issue.
The only issue I've seen with them is that it doesn't report on your screen that your base Thac0 is now 2. But that is a relatively minor issue.
Interesting.. YEs, i also quickly noticed the THAC0 (2 not '10') thing at high level.. but as the result was correct (2- STR ok), i did not mention it either.. i won't bother on what is all in al working after all ))
as for the earth elemental ;
maybe my observation was due to the fact i used an old (previous version) save then ?
corrected with new 1.3 fresh games maybe ? If so, would be a lesser evil then : OK..
( and i was about to talk about my ideas to reshape the whole cernd class with the things i had found possible to do in the codes with DLTCEP ; regen for the werewolves forms (but much lesser AC..-10 for the GW, to compensate the no regen?! ..totally unrealistic right now for 'simple hides'..i just can't enjoy that 'realsim' for a werewolf as such anyway^), 'real' 24HP for the elemental HLA etc (all things already 'bugged' in the original.. or at least making Cernd well.. what he is even now.. i know some people, including you Elminster, find him currently perfffeeeect as such -and perfectly enjoyable like that *) - , but well, all the same, the personal patches i had the time to do for him for the previous 1.2v could be useful for me in that last one again so.... similarily, maybe just an impression too, seems the new patch have at last also also correctly modified the DEX/STR stats (in red under the transforms; like the original BG for that too now, OK -logic too-) for those same elementals (a thing i had to modify manually too in my manual patches for him -i also modified the CONSTITUTION for those transforms, seemed logical to me too, but well..^^-, if i remember)... but that will be for another day anyway.. and another subject too.. and for the time i will have the time to do a full playthrough with such NPC/class anyway.. if ever.. i just like logical things even in fantasies so ..(like regenerating werewolves, wow, an ultra modern revisit of the myth that!.. i guess *) ^^ )
(returning here); good too so... one thing less (to vanilla fix), one another to care about then (with my previous saves).... ok, good to know anyway .. )
Now, as to druid alignment, the whole thing kind of bothers me. If intentions are what matter, then druids are striving for the good of the whole world, and are clearly all good aligned (even the shadow druids). If actions are what matter, and nature is more important than civilization, druids are *still* good, because they're fighting for the ultimate bigger-picture good. If actions are what matter, and civilization is more important than nature, then shadow druids are clearly evil and it's not clear why other druids should be alignment restricted at all. I get that the game designers wanted druids to be more about balance than about good and evil, but in the bigger-picture sense, they're clearly fighting for balance because they think that's better for the world (which is what balance-based philosophies in the real-world do as well). So what the game designers seem to be saying is, if you run around saving puppies, you're good, but if you work towards improving and sustaining the entire world, you're true neutral. This makes very little sense to me.
Usually when we talk about neutrality I have two landmarks:
1) Time is the most neutral thing ever. It passes and it doesn't care if something good or bad happens.
2) In the Dragonlance series, neutrality is balance, but is a balance because too much good or too much evil are both wrong, so neutrality wants to prevent one of them to subdue the other
I don't know if this fits the druid neutrality, but I have a third landmark.
Animals are neutral, and they are neutral just because they didn't "eat the apple". Or, in more concrete words, they can't see the difference between good and evil, they simply act in a selfish way. They are not good because they are selfish, they are not evil because they never do pointless evil acts.
Animals are the emanation of Nature.
Druids are true neutral because they should follow the way of the Nature, and so they should follow the way of animals.
Your question is:
are they doing this because they think it's the good thing?
Yes, but only if you intend good as "the right thing to do", while we know that things are different.
Let's say I'm a good person, and I had to kill someone because he was trying to kill my family. I'm I doing the wrong thing? No! But I've killed someone, and I will probably have nightmares for my whole life for that, because for me killing someone is an evil thing even if I had to do it!
So here we have a good man doing an evil thing for a good reason.
When a druid does what he thinks is right, a balance thing, he doesn't feel it as an evil or a good thing, he feels it as the right thing to do, and this can be something we identify as a good or an evil act.
Druids work the same way. Their individual action may have good or evil components, but their goal is to keep the world in balance, which is the ultimate good. Or maybe it's not, depending on what you value, but they think it is, which is why they strive for it. And if they think balance is the ultimate good, and the alignment system doesn't reflect that, that means they're not properly defined on the alignment system. There's no reason to hold them to any one alignment, because the alignment system has no meaning for them. One druid might appear good or evil depending on their specific methods for maintaining the balance, and the alignment system should reflect that precisely because it's not calibrated for druids.
The only way druidic neutrality (and Dragonlance neutrality) makes sense is if they are aware of the alignment system and believe the labels of "good" and "evil" measure real and substantial things, but disagree with the goodness and evilness of those things. This either means they're wrong, in which case they're kind of stupid, or they're right and the entire alignment system doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean.
First of all I want to say that I have no answer. I'm not saying that mine is a solution of your question,
I'm just telling you the way I handle this.
I believe that the alignment system is inaccurate, and I just want to find a consistent policy to handle it.
The whole "good" and "right" thing is a stratagem that helps me.
A good man is someone who does good things in *my* idea of goodness, not in his.
A neutral one does "neutral" things.
An evil one does evil things.
All of them could do those things thinking they are the "right" things to do, but in my "vision" they do good or evil acts.
I.e. Hitler wanted to conquer the world and to do the things he did, firmly believing he was doing the right thing (for the German people), but we call them evil acts.
A druid does neutral things believing he is right, even if I believe some of those acts are not good.
Nature created us people, and we can be fragile, ill, disabled or whatever. That's the way of nature, that's the way animals evolved. It doesn't care if a pestilence kills 1.000.000 people, because that's how things go for nature, a pestilence will make people stonger.
How many times someone says "Why God allows this evilness?" Because He knows is the right thing to do (I'm an atheist, this is just an example
That's the difference between "good" and "right".
This is the path I follow when dealing with alignments.
It likewise isn't a stretch for me to see a character the believes that good and evil are necessary prerequisites for eachother. Without evil, there can be no good and vice versa. Since life is best served by a diversity of views and the struggle has significance and meaning, it is appropriate to work to a balance of good and evil.
One other point, this brings to mind is one of semantics, but I think it is important. In this discussion, "good" is being used in different ways and is conflating different meanings. "Good" is used for druids or TN above to pursuing the state of things that best serves all life. While "good" in the classic NG sense could mean always helping others, being charitable, trying to cure diseases, etc. Those two terms may overlap but they also may not mean the same thing and I think the alignment system is using "good" in the latter sense.
To use a simple analogy on the different definitions, one person with the 2nd Ed NG view could believe that fighting diseases that can kill people as an absolute good always to be pursued because every life is sacred and you must work to protect each and every life. Another TN version of good could say that actions taken to fight potentially fatal diseases weaken the species by allowing undesirable traits (susceptibility to disease, for example) to flourish or could wind up with a generation of people who aren't exposed to certain diseases and therefore have no immunities leaving the species exposed to a potentially devastating plague. That TN version of 'good' could view lost lives as an acceptable cost in service of the bigger picture (in this example, the evolution of the species or protection against a pandemic) while the NG version of good might fight to save everyone and view abandoning the genetically weak to death as an unacceptable act.
Eh, just my $.02.