My Life As A Gamer: When The Druid is Charlie

Returning to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition has been far more invigorating than I thought. A lot of the rules have interactions that are not made explicit, yet produce the promised gameplay experiences that so many say that they want.

Take, for example, the Druid spell "Heat Metal".

By itself, it's notable.

By means of the heat metal spell, the druid is able to excite the molecules of ferrous metal (iron, iron alloys, steel) and thus cause the affected metal to become hot. On the first round of the spell, the effect is merely to cause the metal to be very warm and uncomfortable to touch, and thus is also the effect on the last melee round of the spell's duration. The second and sixth (next to the last) round effect is to cause blisters and damage; the third, fourth, and fifth rounds the metal becomes searing hot, causing disability and damage to exposed flesh, as shown below.

This can be avoided by dropping or doffing the effected metal. That includes armor, which is addressed elsewhere. Those able to doff affected armor fast enough lose the benefit of their armor; those dropping shields lose those benefits also.

Now, rather than facing significant or serious attack penalties for attacking targets in heavy armor, the Druid faces neutral or beneficial attack modifiers using his melee or missile weapons. Druids can use spears (which can be thrown) and scimitars (which includes a lot of similar weapons), but notably this means that Shillelagh turns into a fantastic follow-up spell.

This spell enables the druid to change his own oaken cudgel into a magical weapon which is +1 to it and inflicts 2-8 hit points of damage on opponents up to man-sized.

Clubs are already +1 to hit against unarmored targets. This spell add another point to that attack role, an attack roll already made easier because the target is unarmored so the base target number is lower. Suddenly Legionaire Bob is in the shit, having had to drop his shield and weapon (so he's unarmed) to doff his armor (so he's unarmored), and facing an angry leather-clad man with a magic clobbering stick.

Meanwhile, those that did not drop and strip are either dead or disabled and likewise out of the fight (or will be shortly).

Heat Metal is a low-level spell, by the way. Combine this with another spell, Animal Friendship, and you're not just facing the Druid. You're facing his animal menagerie (which doesn't count against his Henchmen limit), and right away this at 1st level that Druid can have a faithful War Dog following him around. That dog is a combat drone for all intents and purposes. Gain a level or so, use Heat Metal, and that Druid starts neutralizing threats that his War Dog pack can finish off.

This also applies to high-level Rangers (who get Druid spells) and to Bards (ditto).

And that's just as the level of a specific character class and how their abilities interact with basic gameplay procedures.

Now scale this up.

That Druid starts learning early on how to do things that can impact Patron level play. Charm Person or Mammal also allows the Druid to acquire allies, albeit via means he has to finesse carefull and maintain over time, and it's available when Heat Metal is so it too comes on early. Same applies to Fire Trap. Suddenly that Charisma score starts looking useful, doesn't it? A low-level Druid can lock down a small area if he wishes, making him very good at guerilla warfare, and using charmed assets he can acquire quite the intelligence network to stay ahead of counter-insurgency efforts.

You want to mine, log, or otherwise disrupt his area? You're gonna suffer for it.

This only gets bigger as the Druid gains levels. Long before shapeshifting and elemental summoning, he can keep dirty city folk out of his forests in a manner that looks a lot more like Vietnam than you might think.

Now I'm not at all surprised when I see low-level characters in some #BROSR campaign report doing stuff like this. It's been there all this time, but in our youths too many of us didn't appreciate it so we disdained it. Not anymore.

Time to #WinAtRPGs.