Today I’m continuing with the Druid spell list, covering levels 5, 6 and 7.
5th LEVEL: Wall of Fire, Control Winds, Pass Plant, Hold Plant, Animal Growth, Commune With Nature, Anti-Plant Shell, Transmute Rock to Mud, Turn Sticks to Snakes, and Animal Summoning II.
Wall of Fire, Animal Growth, Transmute Rock to Mud and Turn Sticks to Snakes are all pre-existing spells. Hold Plant is a variation on Hold Monster that works on animated plants like Ents and Shambling Mounds. Commune With Nature is much like the Cleric spell Commune, but the Druid must perform the spell outdoors, and only gets answers which pertain to nature. Anti-Plant Shell is a spell much like Anti-Magic Shell that stops all plant-based attacks. Animal Summoning II is simply a more powerful version of Animal Summoning I.
Control Winds: This spell allows the caster to either calm a strong wind, or create winds of great force. The winds created are strong enough to drive flying creatures from the air and make sailing impossible.
Pass Plant: The caster of this spell can pass from one type of tree to another of the same type within 480 feet. In a somewhat ludicrously exhaustive touch, there is a list of tree types that the spell can affect, and certain types get a bonus or penalty to the distance traveled. I think this is the spell I was getting mixed up with when I wrote about Plant Door yesterday. Quite obviously, that spell is simply used to create a tunnel through dense forest. This is the one that lets you teleport.
6th LEVEL: Conjure Fire Elemental, Weather Summoning, Transport via Plants, Anti-Animal Shell, Animal Summoning III, Finger of Death, Turn Wood.
Finger of Death and Feeblemind are both pre-existing spells. Anti-Animal Shell is a variation on Anti-Plant Shell, and Animal Summoning III is a stronger version of Animal Summoning I.
Conjure Fire Elemental: This is pretty much the same as the magic-user spell Conjure Elemental, except that it can only summon a Fire Elemental. But given that Druids have a stronger connection to fire, the elemental won’t turn on the druid. There’s also a chance that a few salamanders might be summoned, or that the elemental will be super-huge. Gotta love those random old-school D&D factors.
Weather Summoning: This lets the druid create any weather pattern he wants, so long as it’s reasonably consistent with the current environment. Only Druids of 11th level or higher can make really extreme weather, and druids may act in concert to combine effects. As mentioned yesterday, this is pretty nasty when combined with Call Lightning.
Transport via Plants: This is like Pass Plant, but the Druid can go from one plant to another of the same type he has seen or heard about with no range restrictions. The only caveat is that if there’s an error (as in the Teleport spell) the druid will go to a totally different species and may end up very far away from his intended destination.
Turn Wood: This creates a giant wall of force that repels any wooden object in its path.
7th LEVEL: Fire Storm, Control Weather, Conjure Earth Elemental, Animate Rock, Reincarnation, Creeping Doom, Confusion, Transmute Metal to Wood
Control Weather, Reincarnation, and Confusion are pre-existing spells. Conjure Earth Elemental is the same as the fire elemental spell above. Animate Rock is a variation on Animate Any Object, that only affects stone.
Fire Storm: This spell creates flame in a large area, with the same damage and effect as a Wall of Fire. So it doesn’t do a whole lot of damage, but it can set stuff on fire and can be used to extinguish a big fire as well.
Creeping Doom: This spell summons 100-1,000 small insects and centipedes and spiders and other creepy-crawlies. They move forward and attack anything they are commanded to. There’s no damage range given, so I’ll have to take a look at the rules for insects in OD&D (alas, my books are not with me just now). Needless to say I won’t be making several hundred attack rolls a round, so I’ll probably come up with some formula that averages out the number of hits for each level of Armor Class, and deal 1 point of damage for each hit. That sounds plenty deadly to me.
Transmute Metal to Wood: This spell changes metal into wood permanently. Saving throws apply of course, but eventually that vorpal sword is going to be transmuted if enough attacks hit it…
So that’s the Druid spell list. Alas, there’s not much here in the way of campaign tidbits, but I do need to explain why they are no longer drawing from the complete list of Cleric and Magic-User spells. The obvious answer is to tie it into the dungeons, and why the Druids are exploring the depths. I’ve already decided that the aberrant nature of the dungeon and its denizens is a threat to the natural world that the Druids would like to see dealt with. I’ll place something down there, either an object or a monster or something, whose awakening has caused a sudden limitation in the spell-casting powers of the Druids. It’s something I’ll have to make insanely difficult to correct – though not impossible. Although I plan to follow the development of D&D as closely as possible, I’m not opposed to derailment by the PCs. It’s their game after all.
Next: Monsters! And very cool ones at that…
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