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|“||Yes, all trees of the forest are sacred. But if you so much as look funny at this tree, you will not live to see tomorrow.||”|
The Dryads in the Monster Manual are unplayable as characters out of the box. And this is actually for an entirely different reason than the reasons most vaguely humanoid monsters are unplayable - although most of those still apply. The issue with playing a Dryad is that every single one who doesn't specifically perform crazy shenanigans with permanent shrink item or obscure spells from the WotC website will die less than a day after leaving an area that isn't even the size of a large town, let alone going to another city or plane entirely. That doesn't mesh well with most adventuring lifestyles.
And really, that seems to exist for the sole purpose of telling the player "no, you cannot play this character". So here is a Dryad which is actually playable:
- Size::Medium Size
- 30' movement.
- Type::Fey Type
- Low-Light Vision
- +2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma
- +2 bonus to Survival checks.
- Plant Empathy (Su): A dryad continually senses the health of all plants around her, as with a detect animals or plants effect in a 60' sphere emanating from the dryad. She does not need to concentrate on this ability, and receives the third-round information immediately.
- Tree Spirit (Su): Dryads are the spirits of trees, and each one has a single tree somewhere that she is particularly fond of. So long as her special tree is alive, the dryad does not age and can be raised from the dead without level loss or material components (and may retain her current form if reincarnated). However, if her tree is destroyed, she immediately gains a negative level and loses the benefits of this ability. This loss does not go away unless and until she performs a 1-hour ritual to reestablish a link with a new tree, or until the old tree is restored. She cannot perform this ritual on a tree already linked with another dryad.
When in physical contact with her special tree, the Dryad can duplicate a commune with nature effect centered on the tree as a spell-like ability. This takes the same time as casting the spell, but is usable at will.
Most adventuring Dryads have naturally well-protected trees (by selection bias if nothing else), and this should probably come up no more often than other characters having families and the like.
- Favored Classes: Favored Class::Elementalist and Bard
- Automatic Languages: Common, Sylvan
- Bonus Languages: Aquan, Auran, Elvish, Gnome, Ignan, and Terran.
- Level Adjustment: +Level Adjustment::0
- Effective Character Level: Effective Character Level::1