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Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 4:03 am
by Allalltar
Hello everyone,

been a while since anyone has heard anything from me, but I do exist still. There's ongoing (well, let us be honest, a lot of) Problems with the druid guild and I do know that the general reception of the druid guild is somewhat mixed among the playerbase. The idea, when set back in motion by me around 19 years ago, it seemed to have a lot of merit. Teenage me didn't really have much grasp of many concepts of such a complex game such as geas. The resulting concept had many flaws, but also had an inherent draw for one reason or another. In the end, we ended up with a broken guild and its responsible wizard (me) ended up with no time for many years to fix the rampant problems. There were some attempts, one way or another, made to plan to fix the problem but... none did ever bear fruit. The result is the wasteland that the guild has been for the past 1 1/2 decades, for which I do feel sorry. But geas is a project of free time and if none of that is to be had... sometimes, things remain broken for a long time.

Enough preamble though, am here because we're looking for ideas. More specifically we're looking for ideas of what Problems people are perceiving during gameplay and watching people play druids. Where are the biggest issues? Can you think of ways to solve them?

Furthermore we're always on the lookout for new quest ideas, in particular some which would not require violence against living beings to be solved.

I'd like to add that while I do welcome feedback, please do keep it to a civilized level. Also, if you feel a particular Idea needs further discussion among you all, create a separate thread and link it in this one, making it easier for us to pick apart ideas.

Should there be any concern in sharing your ideas or feedback on a public forum, you can always deliver them via mudmail to me.

Please ensure that people do become aware of this particular forum post.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 4:11 am
by Allalltar
As an addon, as to what we're already aware and working on:

- The problem with quests and kills. Druids will never be your regular murder anything guild, but we have some solutions in mind to at least mitigate that issue and help druids be able to participate in normal, everyday mob hunting parties and solve quests
- The aged, annoying and unwieldy spell system. We have ideas for that as well, but suffice to say anything to toggle that will be a bit of work
- Spell balance.

What I would generally welcome as well are spell/ability ideas for druids. Always felt like they were lacking in many an area.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 8:09 am
by ferranifer
I think a good start would be to define clearly what are the immovable basis of the guild from the design standpoint, since some of the most controversial points of their gameplay and integration with the rest of the game are caused by the "rules" of the guild (or the player perception of the rules). There has been discussion about what are "divine" unbreakable rules and what are player constructs that can be changed/evolved. And afaik some of these are code-driven. It'd be nice to know what can and what cannot be altered.

E.g.
complete pacifism against living beings, is this an unmovable tenet of the guild?
are they directly supported by Evren, or by some other force of nature? are they a cult? a philosophy? how does their magic "mojo" play out with Taniel? Sathonys? Lilith? Do they oppose goblinoids or other "evil" forces? Could they? Do they even operate in the good/evil moral axis?
are they actively against civilization/industry or are they meant to take a more passive stance (this has an impact on the game dynamics at large)? Is there space for greenpeace-like "activist" druids that oppose the game by force?
what is their intended role in the game dynamics at large?

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 8:10 am
by ferranifer
Also, I think it's awesome that you're taking this initiative Allalltar! Thanks a lot for this!

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 8:02 pm
by Kythaela
Spell suggestions...
1. Sunstrike
Can give a burning affect to undeads.
2. Entangle
With the use of herbs, allow the druid to tangle an enemy for a period of time, preventing the enemy from using weapons, or just fleeing the room.
Not sure how op this may be though.
Maybe allow it to randomly disarm?
Maybe entangle the legs, making said enemy fall.
3. I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of weather manipulation...
Perhaps when its storming, call lightning?
Or allow the druid call forth fog preventing anyone from seeing?
Doesn't work like darksight, but a thick fog.
Possibly allowing druid and or party/friends etc to flee without being chased by npc.
4. Allow the druid to drop their staff, cast a spell, and allow it to turn into a snake, biting the attacker giving them a poisoning affect.
To turn snake back into staff, said druid just picks it up.
If anyone else were to ttempt to pick it up, it strikes them giving them the poisoning affect as well, or just not allow anyone but a druid to pick up the staff.

Also, to be honest, I do like some of the spells druids have already.
Though a bit long in casting.
I like the healing abilities the healers have, perhaps make them stronger as the ability grows In strength?
Maybe reduce the casting time down a bit.
Lets talk about trees, when they turn into treants, help file says they aren't very good at combat and are to be strictly used in the most dire of situations.
If druids can't attack, how about the treant be more moble, like a mercenary and be the guardian of the druid?
We can't attack orcs, but there is nothing that a treant wouldn't do to defend their woods.
Allow the treant to be the frontline of attack and let the druid heal the treant.
I like that they are not going to become murders, but still allow druids to be a viable member of a party with other skills that would be a great tribute to any team.
If we are going to be primary people who can attack undeads, maybe give us spells that are more focused to wound undeads, but other abilities that give others boosts in ways that clerics don't have.
Maybe some kind of wind attack... This will be somewhat like needles, though the druid will conjure forth a strong gust of wind, blowing leaves, twigs, small branches, etc into the face of said enemy.
As for stoneskin, I like the thought, but currently it seems to be weaker in caves, meaning it doesn't last very long.
Maybe when in caves, tunnels, underground, or in mountains, allow the stoneskin draw strength with its surroundings and make the stoneskin last longer.
I like the temp solution of removing the issue of coins, but I think we could have worked around it so that druids don't have to worry about coins.
Such as...
Bringing food to beggers rather it be mushrooms, berries, cherries, apples, pears etc.
There are plenty of ways to gather food from the woods.
As for repairing clothing... Allow us to mend our own garments with certain herbs and a spell.
Same with mending our staff.
Also, currently our clothing is not armour, but your basic thin clothing.
It really should be made as good as thick leathers or something.
Also, can we have it so that if we wear the hood, guards don't auto attack us?
As for random non killing quests...
What about providing certain herbs to herbalists in the herb shops in the cities, or helping out the healers with items etc?
Perhaps finding random wounded animals and healing them etc.
Speaking of wounded animals, druids have this resurrect animal spell.
I am not really sure how much use its going to get.
If someone kills an animal, its going to basically rot before any druid may stumble apon its corpse.
Currently the help file says not to use it on horses etc.
What about correcting that so that it can be used to heal wounded horses, or any mount.
This would help to train animal lore etc.
Otherwise, I just don't see the ability being used often.
Now, I am not all that smart in game balances, what's too op, what's not.
I leave that up to the admin, I am just tossing out suggestions as far as skills.
I have no idea what code is going to stay and what's not.
I also am very thankful that the guild is getting a look at.
I see so much potential with them, and hopefully some kind of solution or compromise can be made to suit everyone.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 2:28 am
by Delia
One of the main problems for me was that druids could not participate in majority of game content. Personally I think a druid should be able to kill and craft to a degree atleast.

All living beings could be assigned a taint value which would represent how wrong it is to kill that being as a druid. So eventually a druid killing stuff would accumulate taint and gain a penalty for various stuff until use of powers is impossible. Taint would drain off with time and there could be some purification ritual for it.

If a druid really needs skins/furs or something, there could be a way of ritually killing an animal so that the animal does not suffer any distress and its spirit would move on peacefully. The animal would give its life willingly to the druid.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 2:46 am
by Delia
The guild also needs to be able to exert enough power to stand on their own and not fall into the healer niche. Even if they shun the murderhobo life, they should be able to mount a lethal defense.

The guild should support different playstyles. If someone wants to go full pacifist, ok, but if someone wants to do the fighting druid, guardian of the forest, that should work ok too.

Druid trees really need to be more interactive. People should be able to cut them. Mages should be able to break branches for wands. Let other players mess with druid goals :)

It would also be fun if there were magic/holy versions of normal animals randomly spawning and roaming around. They would give some advantage to druids(spies?)and other people could massacre them for superior resources. Skins and furs make better leather and parchment, feathers are better for magic, organs better for alchemy.

Connecting druids with mages could be fun. Magic nodes could be nature holy places where twydomer manifests somehow and naturally nasty pesky mages would want to exploit that. Personally I think it would be swell if druids were these divine mages, using a mixture of holy powers and the actual magic system, just with druid membership heavily modifying the experience.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 7:54 am
by Allalltar
Thanks to anyone who's commented so far. I'll say at the beginning I was a bit of discouraged by how much negativity some people in the playerbase have towards the druids. However I am very pleasantly surprised by all the positive and helpful feedback I've seen so far. Thanks for that. If you do have more please keep it comming!

As for needing a way to extort their own stance upon the world, I most definitely agree. Opening up to different playstyles is something to consider as well. We were originally going with a more simplified thing to address the killing problem, but I do like Delia's taint idea very much and will have to give that some more thought.

There's a lot of neat ideas to work through already, I'll just point out some things that I've caught while reading:

hoods and guards: Sorry, won't happen. The reason is that being hidden is a really powerful thing and thus guards to generally prevent you from entering their cities and / or attack as a hidden stranger could be up to all kinds of nasty things. That 100% will not change. If it causes too much death, I might consider ditching the feature entirely though.

In regards to the coin issue: Too much in this game is based on currency. From your basic "give me five gold coins to get X" to "here have 10 gold coins for helping me". While the theory is neat to have ways around it, in the end it is a lot of work on our side ( read possibly hundreds of hours ) for very little immersive gain. I think it is reasonable to assume that a druid has a coin pouch to deal with the outside world where they must.

As for evren / non evren. That is something to be debated in the long run, I think, though I would always think that a druid is limited in their deity choices, though not possibly to just one... stuff to think through.

That's all from me for now, keep any feedback coming!

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 11:28 am
by ferranifer
On the idea department, I'd love to be able to take on animalistic forms with meaningful gameplay implications.
E.g. a bear that can act as a tank, a wolf that can run without tiring or a panther that can stealth and ambush.

I am not privy to the inner philosophy of the guild, but the sermons and npc talk seem to at least hint at the existence of the concept of guarding nature and fighting against those that try to break the natural cycle of life and rebirth. I'd enjoy being able to play as a animal guardian and even have a path of progression as such where you could perhaps eventually become the primal aspect that the animal represents. Think Princess Mononoke's giant animals or the Spirit of the Forest itself. Plus it would make perfect sense for an animal to be aggressive where their nature tendencies call for it: aka predatory behavior or self defense.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 6:51 pm
by Kythaela
Currently the guild already has 3 different catagories.
Healer, gardener and explorer.
I think explorers should be able to explore, give them the ability to kill etc.
Maybe the healers be uber strong in the arts of healing, but can't attack like the explorers can?
Healers wouldn't want to harm anything, while the explorers know of dangers in the world and is ready to face them.
Gardeners... I don't know really.
Maybe like healers, only their strength lays in herbs and certain powers with herbs?
Maybe give them the ability to draw more stuff with herbs then the others.
Just some randome thoughts.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:49 am
by Kythaela
The one issue I do see is when multiple druids play, we all apparently share Twydomer power. It looks like no one has their own pool of it.
If there is going to be like lets say 10-15, or even 5+ druids playing, the power will never become remotely balanced, or will it ever be strong enough to make using abilities worth it.
It drains super quickly even when using 1 or to abilities, its almost drained as it currently stands.
We will eventually run out of places to plant trees to regenerate the power.
Can there be a way that we all have our own pool of Twydomer power?
By the way, druid trees can be cut down. At least I know they can be hacked at.
Saw someone hacking away at a tree.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 5:34 am
by Delia
I think the amount of twydomer can be tweaked when the guild grows and/or things can be added/changed. Mage Guild has a similarish mechanism called magic flow that is divided in different circles of magic. The power in circles changes naturally and the more mages use magic the weaker it becomes. So 5 mages using air magic will make for miserable air mages...luckily mages can learn and shift to use from other circles too.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 5:51 am
by Delia
Some ability ideas:

Change room temperature
Change area temperature
Change global temperature
Change local weather
Change domain weather
Change global weather
Change wind power
Change wind direction
- target determine effect, self is protect from missiles/levitate, for example
Call weather effect
- blizzard, lightning, storm, etc, conditions affect power
Summon fog
- makes concealment easier, move the fog with winds, can conceal/juggle exits, can combine with some poison effect
Tangle Vines/Roots/Whatever
- Vegetation grabs target for push out of room, falldown, pull row, push row. Can combine with some poison effect.
Giant Growth
- works on area or animal, area creates a wall that can combine with a poison effect, animal enlarges target animal into fighting form temporarily
Partial Transformation
- druid can take on an animal aspect that gives some buff. Fish for swim/dive/waterbreathing for example.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:50 am
by ferranifer
Tree gate:
Travel from any tree to any other tree in the world. Limited to druid planted trees. Would be best if it wasn't like the clerical dimension travel. I imagine something a bit more floaty/flowing through the twydwomer in a direction and maybe even feeling the world's imbalance or taint as an encroaching darkness only broken in the places where the trees grow. So the places with no trees are some sort of fluid barrier or wall, the edge of the place where you travel. And druids could plant trees to bridge the gaps between those areas? Kinda like sailing/floating through the ether.

Glowbug swarm:
A cloud of glowbugs surround and chase the druid, providing light but making hiding very difficult. Can be sent to a non-friendly, and then it also distracts the target. This causes some attacks to miss due to trying to wave the bugs away from one's face (kinda like salto or cloakdance, dis check). Undead eat the bugs instead (different message, same effect). The glowbugs can only be summoned in a forested area or around a druid tree.After summoned they stay with the druid until sent to someone else or dispelled.

Growing:
Accelerate the growing of people's hair and beards. Regenerates cut ears and noses. Removes scars.

Magic berries:
Creates juicy magical berries that can be eaten to heal. Portable, light-weight healing potions that druids can give to others. They only last 24 hours.

Menhir:
Druid lays down and falls asleep deeply. Druid turns into a menhir (a Stonehenge like standing stone) and cannot be damaged, moved, awoken or affected in any way. Anything that happens in the menhir's presence is recorded and stored (all emotes, people coming and leaving, says, whispers too, which the menhir can hear). Druid can awake at will. This is basically a cool way to logout and leave a presence in the world, gather information or become immune to damage when chased (though it should take a while to cast). Does not survive armaggedon. The druid accesses the memories of the menhir by sleeping normally and they see the history in their dreams.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:00 am
by ferranifer
I think perhaps the most important element missing from druids (apart from the nokill restriction) is that they have no ability to have any impact in the world and nobody cares about their existence.

This can be addressed by making them very useful and more social, but it also can be addressed by giving them a global mechanic that has an impact (positive and negative) on other players.

I think maybe we could throw around some ideas in those lines?

E.g. the health of twydwomer is directly connected to the adversity of the weather conditions. Super cold winters or super hot summers. And other people can affect twydwomer negatively and positively. E.g. killing animals or cutting trees hurts twydwomer.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:26 am
by Allalltar
Yay for more ideas, thank you all for sharing things.

No, druids will always share the same power source, Twydomer. It is that which encompasses all and one of the things that sets druids apart. However and that is where you come in, planting trees isn't the only way that power can be generated. Give me neat ideas, especially things that you don't see carbon copied to every other guild we have already. Planting trees was always only meant to be the beginning.

So keep your ideas coming!

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 2:30 pm
by Kythaela
Wow, great ideas!
So, Someone mentioned about hurting druids power.
When trees are cut down, it does cut into twydomer.
I noticed it just by the nibbler who cuts trees down and the lumberjack.
As for ways to restore twydomer, what about releasing souls from undeads, dreleasing souls from furs/leathers.
Both of these are already in the game, but I just have not seen it restore twydomer.
Wasn't sure if it actually did, or if it was more for rp purposes.
Currently we can grow trees, but what about bails of hay for horses?
Then people can feed horses hay.
Allow horses to get hungry, and need water etc.
Allow druids the ability to grow hay to help have interaction with peple and their mounts.
Also, healing mounts, your giving life back to an animal, wouldn't this be smiled upon?
We talk about a lot of land based skills, but what about the rivers, lakes and streams?
There is life in them as well...
What about somehow giving nourishment to lakes, rivers, streams sea etc?
Even the fountains.
Your helping the fish, perhaps help them grow to allow people who fish to catch larger fish?
People who drink from the fountain can gain energy back quicker, feel more refresh ed etc.
Perhaps even heal wounds if the blessing was powerful enough.
Perhaps even regen mana?
IDK, just tossing out ideas.
When doing these things to the water, your increasing twydomer and helping out the population same time.
Another suggestion, currently taniel is the only church that allows marriages.
What about certain ranked druids to wed couples at Evrens shrine?
Some may really dislike taniel, and refuse to wed in the church, and may want a Evren's wedding etc.
With the marriage of a couple blessed by Evren, could give a big boost to twydomer especially sense this isn't a constent event and its more rare thus the good size twydomer boost.
Also, its more rp, drawing people into choices as to where to wed.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 2:57 am
by Delia
One way to steer players away from murderhoboism is to encourage certain behaviour through the skill system. I do not know how the druids work but having more mental guild skills for various powers works in that regard.

Look at your average mage, for example. Even mages with good fighting skills do not see much reason to continuously go about slaughtering mobs as that time is away from spending time with magic. It might be good exercise to test spells on a few mobs but it is hardly suitable for clearing areas like fighters do.

So one idea could be to use existing circles of power that describe cleric and mage powers too. Fire, air, water, mind and earth and assign druidic powers behind those circles. Twydomer would still be the power supply and you could have somewhat different druids depending on their area of expertise. Skills could be something like channel earth, channel water and so forth or even more detailed.

This of course, would make them a caster class, which I think they already are, and also would expand the array of possible powers a druid can have.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 5:59 am
by Kythaela
So, I never liked PVP, but that doesn't mean that others feel the same.
I've never been able to build a really good pvp character that could stand a chance in a fight.
That, and using a screen reader, I tend to lag behind.
But, as others have pointed out, there is strife in the game, and I can understand that.
Being an elf, though a druid, I shouldn't like seeing undeads attack an elvin city, or seeing evil run rampid.
It is a conflict of nature because I've been told that geas druids sort of take a neutril stand between good and evil factions never getting in volved.
wich brings the question of the skyll "abyss"
| The abyss is one of the most powerful and |
| exhausting requests known among the brotherhood of |
| the druids. It enables a druid to slam his or her |
| staff into the ground to tear apart the earth. This |
| is done in a way which does not really harm the |
| earth and all effects are temporary. But the use of |
| this request requires quite a good amount of |
| selfcontrol and the direction which is blocked by |
| the abyss can not be chosen because of this great |
| amount of concentration needed. Once there is an |
| abyss this is no ultimate blocker. You can always |
| climb down the abyss or jump over the abyss should |
| you need to cross it.
So, I guess druids don't have to stand in the middle of battle itself, but can cast this "abyss" spell to assist in some fassion
according to the help file above.
I am thinking that the stronger the spell is, the deeper the abyss gets, and harder to climb or jump.
Sense its only a temp spell, I don't see that the spell is too op.
If someone sees a druid casting spells to cause such problems, well, the druid has just placed themselves in a situation where they could be attacked and its a choice they have to live with.
Keeping in mind that they really can't completely fight back.
If druids remain as they are and they don't attack living things.
However, as I stated in a prior post, this is in the circle of the explorers, and if lets say they become druids that can attack things, well, this would be a good tool to have.
I think also, that druids should have the ability to perhaps conjure floating type barriers, or craft wooden shields to help deflect bolts and arrows.
Another spell I was thinking of was called locus.
This would conjure a swarm of them, eating anything and everything on the ground completely dissolving/destroying and completely removing any items in the room that is on the ground.
This would help get rid of bone items thats on the ground etc.
Perhaps restoring some twydomer once more.
Also may help clear up some of that goblin camp spam lol.
Someone mentioned I think in an earlier post about glow bugs that might light up the way of the druid or said party?
I haven't went back and rered the posts.
What about conjuring fireflies to swarm the druid lighting his/her way through dark areas?
The stronger the spell, the stronger the swarm, the stronger the swarm, the longer they stay around, and the better the possibility that they can see through darkness that deathpriests conjure.
This then might bring light to others who are in the room.
I thik another unique ability would be to turn leaves into parchments.
This would be a thin piece of paper almost like onionskin type paper.
It would be thin and brittle, maybe it wears down faster then other parchments when read.
However the skill, the longer it lasts, but still not becoming as good as normal parchments, or maybe it can, who knows.
Sense druids are in tune with nature, what about the possibility of working with bees to make honey, or bees wax?
Perhaps the wax could help harden the parchments that is either made by druids, or the parchments guild.
This would allow the books to last longer.
This would require multiple skills however.
Druids would have to plant flowers to grow that allows bees to pollinate, bring it back to the hive to produce the comb and then honey etc.
This then would possibly require, or help build dex sense when the druid has to remove honey, they can't exactly just rush in and stick hands where they could get stung multiple of times.
They would have to be careful.
Planting flowers could help restore twydomer.
Lets talk about a druid being more helpful to party members in ways that is other then just healing.
Currently druids have stoneskin, but once cast, currently it prevents the affected person to not be able to use weapons.
I say keep it this way. I say perhaps allow the druid to cast barkskin on other players that isn't as hard as stoneskin, but still gives a resistance to weapons for a short period of time.
However... if said player is affected by the spell, and they get hit with a fire affect spell, the damage can be twice as bad as it would normally be.
Perhaps barkskin would give a resistance to certain weapons, and a weakness to others, or the spell would slow down the actions of the affected player wearing the skin...
Just different ways to help balance out the spell.
With druids having a fondness for nature, what about allowing them a heightened awareness for minerals?
The druid could cast the spell on someone giving them a temp boost in mining or something.
The one thing I've noticed, in the Elor forest, one of the druids mentions that healers can heal broken bones.
Currently there is no such spell, so, this information is misleading.
It does say we can't restore limbs, but if this information is to remain, then we need to have the ability to mend broken bones.
One last thing... Someone mentioned healing berries...
There is actually a such thing in the game already. Though once they are picked, they don't return until reboot.
So, maybe this is a bug that can be fixed.
The berries are located in the Elor forest.

Re: Druids - looking for Feedback and Ideas

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 10:43 am
by ila
Just addressing the pacifist nature of druids, this is in my opinion a twofold problem:

First, most of geas involves violence. A lot of areas with rare resources are well-guarded, a lot of quests and exploration involves traveling past monsters or other assailants, and a few quests simply cannot be done without murdering some "boss" NPC.

Second, druids are meant to be pacifists, but they're not any good at it. Rather than being a strength, it's a clear weakness. The only other class that has such a mechanical weakness are mages, and even then most current mages play mage/fighter hybrid even though they're not supposed to be good at fighting, so it's clearly not as dramatic of a weakness.

I would suggest to make them good at pacifism. This could take a few forms, and if they're meant to be good at peaceful resolution I'd suggest considering giving them more than one:


1. Avoiding combat. There are already spells and skills to do this which other classes have, whether avoiding being seen as by enemy, appearing friendly to enemies, or outright stopping fights which have already started.

This could even address their hoods. Perhaps they raise their hood as a sort of jedi mind trick to psychically impress upon others that they're peaceful and to be ignored. It could stop others (hostiles like goblinoids or even guards) from noticing them enough to attack. It could be countered with high DIS or something, and opponents they're allowed to fight (undead or whatever else) might be outright immune to it.

Doing actions that counter stealth might also weaken its effect, though not quite as dramatically as it's not stealth per se.

This would let them effectively explore otherwise hostile environments, peacefully opening up large parts of the game to them, and even making them particularly suited for certain delivery quests where the journey is the danger.


2. Fighting nonlethally. Geas already has a stunmode mechanic, and druids could just be particularly well-suited in its use. Mages also have this benefit (depending greatly on the spell used), this mostly depends on having means of dealing high damage that doesn't depend on lethal ticks (like bleeding, burning, acid, etc.)

They could even have a mechanism where their damage-over-time spells (imagine if they could set foes on fire) honor stunmode too, which not even mages have.

This, in addition to adding stunmode resolutions to the few quests that invariably result in murder (maybe you arrest the villain and take them in instead) would open up combat and combat quests to druids.

There could also be a mechanism where you nonlethally dispose of mooks, perhaps you scare them into just leaving the area, but then druids would just be a more peaceful reskin of what more murder happy characters do, so I'm not sure I like this as a solution to "druids can't kill entire villages."


3. Give them nonlethal options that aren't fighting. If they're really not meant to kill goblinoids, maybe give them the ability to gain goblinoid trust, and even become honorary Lilithians.

The caveat here is that it suffers the same troubles Lilithians seem to suffer: most Lilith-controlled areas have no real quests or interactions that aren't wanton murder of her followers, but at the same time going Lilithian means most of the game's kill fodder now likes you.


4. This isn't druid-specific, but I finally thought of how to make food and cooking highly desirable: make it give combat exp.

Druids presumably follow Evren who opposes needless killing, but is okay with hunting for food.

Presumably this means druids should be allowed to hunt for food too, and then eat that food.

If they eat something, it could reverse the damage that killing it caused, and maybe even give some bonus exp to druids.

Add in a cooking guild that specializes in maximizing the EXP drawn out from slain monsters, and bam! Now druids have decent access to combat exp, while following their own pacifist ideals.