Arelith

Soo.. I just logged on after a couple days of not playing and I see that there are lots of updates! Kudo's to the dev team for doing all that, looks awesome.

After I saw the updates, I started to look through the things that were put in and came accross the blessed druidic sickle and immediately wondered what it did. As such I went to the wiki and looked for it, only to come to the thought: "Wait... druids are almost never blacksmiths because most druid's don't use metal because of RP"

So to make this item you must be an epic level druid with high blacksmithing. Isn't that kind of mechanics messing with RP?

If we're going for metal toting druid blacksmiths on Arelith, I'm game. I was just wondering.

'metal toting druid'
What I want to know is, what did people think scimitars and sickles were made of to start with anyway? somebody post the stats

One Two Three Five wrote:'metal toting druid'
What I want to know is, what did people think scimitars and sickles were made of to start with anyway?

Broken Dreams.

One Two Three Five wrote:'metal toting druid'
What I want to know is, what did people think scimitars and sickles were made of to start with anyway? somebody post the stats

What do you mean..?

Druids been toting metal since day one, is what I mean.

Mielikki is the only god that permits metal

I think it's a fair point. Druids don't tend to be smiths, and neither do characters who take 10+ levels of rogue or assassin (for creating the thieves' tools), since said characters tend to be DEX-based, and ores and coal are heavy.

Is there data on how often these combinations occur?

One Two Three Five wrote:'metal toting druid'
What I want to know is, what did people think scimitars and sickles were made of to start with anyway? somebody post the stats

Scimitars? Definitely metal. Sickles? Shaped lunate rock flakes.

I never understood the whole "can't wield metal things." Is it because metal does not naturally occur in nature? Is it some anti-manufacturing thing?

Because I mean, neither do treated hides or leather. Or sharpened wood. Or sharpened stone and bone.

Never got the distinction. I think it was a poor effort of early DnD to some how base it off the Celtic druids and the "uncivilized" nature of non-Romam Britannia. Or something.

I think it just seems more naturey to be honest. I get why they put it in the game originally. I'm glad we don't enforce it on Arelith though.

Still, druids don't have a huge call for metal themselves, and it would seem a bit weird for a druid to open a blacksmith shop. I don't think I've ever known a druid who invested so much in forging.

I remember at least one druid that was a smith specializing in scimitars which is almost funny. DnD's druids are already so godang weird I guess nobody questioned it.

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:I never understood the whole "can't wield metal things." Is it because metal does not naturally occur in nature? Is it some anti-manufacturing thing?

Because I mean, neither do treated hides or leather. Or sharpened wood. Or sharpened stone and bone.

Never got the distinction. I think it was a poor effort of early DnD to some how base it off the Celtic druids and the "uncivilized" nature of non-Romam Britannia. Or something.

You can harvest an apple and next year you'll have more apples. You can cut a tree and plant two in its place so that some years later you can harvest them again. You can get hides and meat from animals, which reproduce.

You can't, however, plant metal and it doesn't regenerate itself over the years. It is a limited resource (if you ignore that they respawn in Arelith, of course).

It's all about the "Balance" and when it comes to metal the only thing you can do to maintain that balance is to leave it alone.

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:I never understood the whole "can't wield metal things." Is it because metal does not naturally occur in nature? Is it some anti-manufacturing thing?

Because I mean, neither do treated hides or leather. Or sharpened wood. Or sharpened stone and bone.

Never got the distinction. I think it was a poor effort of early DnD to some how base it off the Celtic druids and the "uncivilized" nature of non-Romam Britannia. Or something.

Trees are living and renewable. They will grow back. Metal has to be cut out of rock which will not be reformed and also require large quantities of rock for ore to form a single ingot. They may not like the burning of coal in forges either as it produces pretty nasty smoke. I can see several reasons, really.

Anyway, druids can use some amount of metal, mainly metal weapons like scimitar and sickle. This is probably for pragmatic reasons as stone weapons have their limitations. Druid being a blacksmith though? Doesn't make a great deal of sense in most cases, but personally I don't mind the requirement on the sickle. Someone has to make the weapons druids use, and a druid smith who is very careful about what they mine and only makes weapons for a good cause could be pretty cool. It does serve to make the sickle more special as well.

Right, sure, but presumably metal comes from the earth, right? Of which there is a deity. Presumably in the magical setting the metal (some of which ITSELF is magical) does come back somehow. Not to mention that some metal can be gotten from other planes. The world doesn't act like our world, Lathander might literally be the sun, people call the ocean evil because it's Umberlee, entropy is a sentient goddess of secrets...

Hey, wait. Wouldn't druids go after dwarves?

nd a druid smith who is very careful about what they mine

Probably solved, mischief managed. Druids would be the best non-dwarf miners and smiths, I bet, because they'd know just what to take (and possibly just.. ask the earth for its bounty), and could use their magical fire to light up that forge. (Also, uh. Would druids even know about atmospheric pollution from burning coal like in the modern world? I super doubt that.)

One Two Three Five wrote:Right, sure, but presumably metal comes from the earth, right? Of which there is a deity. Presumably in the magical setting the metal (some of which ITSELF is magical) does come back somehow. Not to mention that some metal can be gotten from other planes. The world doesn't act like our world, Lathander might literally be the sun, people call the ocean evil because it's Umberlee, entropy is a sentient goddess of secrets...

Just because magic exists, doesn't mean everything has to work differently in the setting either. Gravity doesn't pull people towards the sky for instance. If there is no solid reason to assume it works differently, the safest bet is probably to assume it works like in our world. And evidently druids do consider excessive use of metal as something bad, so it makes some sense to assume it is more or less the same in this particular case. But sure, maybe a druid smith would be more open to mining in the earth elemental plane or what not. There may well be other situations where they wouldn't be bothered about mining either.

Also, who said anything about atmospheric pollution? Coal burning has way more obvious and local effects. None of which is particularly new.

Shadowy Reality wrote:

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:I never understood the whole "can't wield metal things." Is it because metal does not naturally occur in nature? Is it some anti-manufacturing thing?

Because I mean, neither do treated hides or leather. Or sharpened wood. Or sharpened stone and bone.

Never got the distinction. I think it was a poor effort of early DnD to some how base it off the Celtic druids and the "uncivilized" nature of non-Romam Britannia. Or something.

You can harvest an apple and next year you'll have more apples. You can cut a tree and plant two in its place so that some years later you can harvest them again. You can get hides and meat from animals, which reproduce.

You can't, however, plant metal and it doesn't regenerate itself over the years. It is a limited resource (if you ignore that they respawn in Arelith, of course).

It's all about the "Balance" and when it comes to metal the only thing you can do to maintain that balance is to leave it alone.

By that argument, Druids should not make anything out of stone either. Yet the Grove itself is filled with stone benches, tables, great big pillars line the entry... And the Sky Talker Druids carve stone heads too.

The "no metal" thing doesn't make any logical sense and isn't enforced on Arelith. So everyone's free to RP what they want.

-Tialirr- wrote:stuff

So can druids be art crafters? Gems don't come back on a reasonable scale.
Also fire comes from an actual world full of fire, why wouldn't earth do the same thing? Brb gotta look up how the plane of earth connects to the prime, I bet it's something ridiculous

Edit: Also, kind of moot, since none of its enforced on Arelith and druids are now encouraged to take forging anyway.

Actually stone is renewed in nature every day. It takes years for sand to form its hard form or calcium to form it but it does.

And the metal thing is depending on gods the druids worship. Some allow full metal use, some limited and some would stomp druid over for use of metal.

I got about five minutes into manual of the planes and let me tell ya


in a setting where dragons shot a laser at the moon, importing metal from other planes (or space rocks, meteoric metal is an rpg standby) shouldn't be the breaking point.

Importing metals from another plane doesn't seem to be a very druidic aproach to things. Nor pratical.

Sure but the metal has to come from somewhere and apparently there's a plane of minerals for this purpose. So can druids mine for gems?

Like given how easy it is to planehop from the isle of Arelith, which is purgatory anyway, a druid could in theory go to Hell or something, mine for their ores there, and smith them in the irradiated wasteland of the underdark or whatever, yeah? It's maybe not very druidic but neither is grabbing a junk of mountain to make a giant head with, or turning a bunch of perfectly good trees into a gigantic, unnecessary treehouse, right? By DnD's thin-and-vague-and-pseudo-celtic version of druidism.

This doesn't account for druidism inspired by other cultures, either... Hm. Anyway, druids can and should be smiths.
Edit: look at it this way, would you rather have druids with a metal sickle and actually decent armor, or druids with 3 monk levels

One Two Three Five wrote: Edit: look at it this way, would you rather have druids with a metal sickle and actually decent armor, or druids with 3 monk levels

Touché.

Still, epic druid forger has got to be a rare cat, so maybe a low forging DC, with a prerequiste 20 levels druid is in order? If not seems rather useless. Same with the rogue, the rogue levels should count as crafting levels when crafting specific rogue items.

Trunx wrote:The "no metal" thing doesn't make any logical sense and isn't enforced on Arelith. So everyone's free to RP what they want.

I think its more of previous servers type of thing. I know on Narfell druids didn't use metal, so many take it as gospel. Very few nature gods I have seen directly prohibit metal.