Editing Druid (section)

===Druids in 3e & PF===
[[File:Lini.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Lini, the iconic Druid]]
3rd Edition Druids started out okay but then 3.5 unwisely introduced the feat Natural Spell. This let them be massively buffed bears who can summon more bears whose own stats have been buffed into the stratosphere out of their eyes while farting lightning, pissing acid, shitting explosive berries, and breathing fire that does irresistible damage. Hence, the [[CoDzilla|C.o.D.-Zilla]] [[meme]]. Truly macho, macho men - so why play a [[fighter]], unless you have a thing for brushing bear pelts.

3e went wild-boar hog wild on ''evil'' druids, also. Its [[Blighter]] was an anti-druid dedicated against nature, that even the misanthropes among the real druids had to oppose. [[Eberron]] has two baddies: the Circle of the Ashbound believe (falsely) that arcane magic harms nature and that destroying magical items and users is good for nature - long story short, it involves their founder killing a [[lich]] who'd been screwing around with nature and then noticing nature bounced back ''really well'' afterward - and the Children of Winter, social darwinists who believe that [[A Song of Ice and Fire|"Winter is coming!"]] and launch eco-terrorist attacks on civilization to winnow out the weak and ensure only the strong will be left to keep everybody from dying out during the "winter phase" of Eberron's life-cycle.

Out in the d20 wild-west [[Scarred Lands]] has druids as servitors of the Titans, as opposed to clerical servants of the gods; in that setting ''most'' druids are evil, and against nature as well, leaving only Denev's druids to Save Da Erf. We might also mention [[Arcana Unearthed]]'s various classes serving The Green or The Dark despite not being ''called'' "Druid".

In [[Pathfinder]] Druids were easily most nerfed class by far. Shapeshifting only adds to your ability scores instead of replacing them, so you need to actually build for melee to be good at it. Animal companions now advance completely differently (and somewhat slower), no longer being an advanced animal but completely arbitrary collection of HD and special abilities where different types of animals just get a different set of natural attacks, movement and ability scores. This also closes an exploit where more powerful animals gave a penalty to effective druid level that could be negated by taking a feat that boosts your effective druid level up to your HD to get powerful ACs easily. With the release of Bestiary 2, Druids gained one new power they didn't have in 3rd edition: By wildshaping into a giant hippopotamus with a 4d8 bite attack, turning the normally terrible Vital Strike feats (which double or more your weapon damage at the cost of preventing full attacks and denying you multiple attacks that would get that and other bonuses multiple times) into something that does more damage than a direct hit from modern artillery.