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Druid Circle of the Symbiote
🕑 Added 2024-06-11 14:00:09 +0000 UTCDruids typically view themselves as caretakers and protectors of the natural world. They provide a service to nature, using their magic to maintain the natural realm. Druids of the Circle of the Symbiote take this a step further. They become part of nature, allowing plants to take root in their flesh and become an integral part of their being.
Druids of this circle are sometimes seen as extremists by their brethren. They tend to treat plants and animals as equals, refusing to consider intelligent creatures as any more worthy of respect or protection than any other living thing. At their most extreme, these druids wage active war against civilization and its people, calling on plants and animals to topple those who would invade the natural world and subvert it to their selfish ends.
Symbiotic Event
A druid embarks on this path when a magically augmented plant takes root in their flesh. How did this come to happen to you? Did you form this bond of your own free will, or were you coerced into joining a druidic sect?
D6 Roll or Choose
Symbiotic Event
1: You were destined to join your druidic sect from a young age. The plant that became your symbiote was planted on the day you were born. As a child, you tended to it carefully and formed a close bond with it. You consider your symbiote your most trusted friend and confidant.
2: Your symbiote chose you. You became lost in an ancient forest. After days of wandering, you grew weaker and weaker. Finally, you collapsed to the ground on the brink of death. Whether through chance or luck, you fell into a grove of vines that grew into you. The symbiote lent you strength, allowing you to survive but at the cost of doing its bidding.
3: You are the sole druid of this circle. Through experimentation and research, you cultivated a plant that fed on magical energy. As you mastered primal power, you learned to form a close bond with the plant. Other druids find your creation at best unsettling, at worst an unholy abomination.
4: You are the symbiote, an intelligent plant wedded to a stumbling, oafish humanoid form. Your host’s mind long ago fell into decrepitude, but their body remains healthy and useful. You learned long ago that humanoids find the truth of your nature disturbing, so you do your best to blend in.
5: You hail from a world where plants and humanoids live in harmony. You were sent here to investigate this strange world where plants cannot speak and humanoids treat them as a resource to be exploited. Are you a spy sent to overthrow this realm, or a curious explorer eager to learn what you can?
6: You were recruited into this druidic circle against your will. Your symbiote watches over you. When you take actions that displease it, it wracks you with agonizing pain. Are you a criminal forced to walk a righteous path, or an innocent forced into service?
Symbiote Appearance
How does your symbiote appear to others? Is it obvious, or does it remain hidden?
D6 Roll or Choose
Symbiote Appearance
1: Your symbiote seeks to remain hidden from view. It slides into the folds of your clothes and seeks to avoid detection.
2: To an observer, your symbiote looks like a flower that you have tucked over your ear or into your hair. Closer examination reveals a web of roots that have bored into your skill and reach into your brain.
3: Your symbiote lives just under the surface of your skin, forming a spiderweb pattern of roots and vines. Those who observe you for a time can see these roots shifting and moving under your skin.
4: Your symbiote has replaced your hair, leaving you with a long, flowing mass of vines that spills down to your shoulders. During the winter, it withers down to a dull, brown color. In the summer, it bursts with colorful blooms.
5: Your symbiote has replaced one of your limbs, forming a sinuous tangle of woody roots woven like rope. This replacement limb is as strong and flexible as your original, but it places some strange demands on you. Instead of drinking, you must dip your limb in water to slake your thirst.
6: Your symbiote grows deep within your chest. It grows vines that loop between your organs, reaching to just below your skin. Short, sharp thorns that pierce your skin stud parts of your body. To sustain your symbiote, you must skewer chunks of raw flesh on these thorns. Your symbiote draws nutrients from this meat to survive.
Circle Features
Primal Symbiote
At 2nd level a network of vines and roots begins to grow across your body, forming a symbiotic relationship with you. This symbiote grants you a number of benefits, as it draws physical and magical nourishment from you and provides enhanced primal power in return.
Primal Nexus. Your symbiote is capable of channeling and shaping magical energies. You can cast spells while in your beast form due to wild shape. Any material components required for a spell cast in this manner must have been merged with your form. Similarly, you gain the benefits of your spell focus if it merged with your form.
Fortifying Presence. You have advantage on all checks made to avoid breaking concentration.
Symbiotic Transformation. As a bonus action, you can expend one of your uses of wild shape to allow your symbiote to surge with primal energy, turning you into a plant-like brute. Thick, fibrous plates cover your skin, slashing thorns burst from your arms, and leafy vines wind around your body. For the next 10 rounds, you gain a +2 bonus to AC, your melee attacks inflict an additional 1d6 piercing damage, and you gain advantage on checks made to hide near or among plants.
Symbiotic Reflexes
Starting at 6th level while you gain the benefits of symbiotic transformation, on each of your turns you gain a symbiotic action that your symbiote uses to help protect you from harm. It uses its tendrils to pull you out of harm’s warm or aid your efforts. This special action can be used to dodge, dash, disengage, make a single melee attack, or grant you advantage on your next Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check this turn.
Survival Instinct
Starting at 10th level, while you are in mortal peril your symbiote can attempt to move you to safety. On your turn while you are dying, you can stand up from prone, move up to your speed, and use your action to dash or dodge.
Surge of Sustenance
Starting at 14th level, as an action you can expend a use of wild shape to grant the benefits of finishing a short rest to yourself or a creature you touch. You cannot use this feature again until you finish a long rest.
Comments
Mike Mearls
Somewhat. It's usually not a direct influence, but I think that a subclass that provides good specialization usually suggests a multiclass combo.
Mike Mearls
Hadn't thought about speech, but let me think on that.
Ethan Henry
This seems like it would synergize well with a fighter multi class... How much do you consider multi classing when designing a subclass?
Mike
re: Primal Nexus... does that imply the ability to perform Verbal components and thus the ability to speak in beast form?
