What characteristics should have a druid to become a 2E priest how I see it?
Let's continue our discussion where I left it last time. The druid has an obvious vantage over the cleric -she's an agent of a specific philosophy, with restrictions on weapon and armor use- and an obvious disadvantage- she lacks many important cleric spells. Plus, we want a way to get free from the wild shape power. And an aura would't be a bad thing at all.
Let's examine some archetypes of druids without an animal companion. Ancient Guardian is almost perfect: the domain choice is the right one for a pacifist priest, and her calm emotions power made my heart leap when I read it. Patience of Nature is also beautiful. Unfortunately, this druid does have wild shape, and the existing archetypes replacing wild shape don't stack with it.
Halcyon Druid is also beautiful, and it does replace wild shape. Peacekeeper? Great! Resist Fiendish Influence? Amazing! It's that bonded mask thing that ruins it a bit, making it too campaign-bonded- and I wouldn't have minded adding cleric spells to her list instead of wizard spells.
Then there are the Nature Priest and the Restorer. Both have something I like, and both have too little to be what I would need. However, I bet you knew I was going to talk about these archetypes, since I fused them together in my Nature Sage here, didn't you?
When we search outside of Paizo, the first thing to come to my mind is Kobold Quarterly #15, with the Nature's Orders article. The Purist druid archetype does a good work replacing wild shape with channel energy. Unfortunately, channel energy was just one of the things I was trying to make facultative for the cleric! Plus, the Purist doesn't alter the druid's spell list.
Another issue of the same magazine, #21, had a class that is still today one of my 3PP favourites, and later earned a book all for itself- The Shaman (before Paizo sent out a class of their own with this name). The Kobold Press Shaman is a spontaneous druid with a spirit guide similar to an animal companion, a series of totem secrets similar to oracle revelations, and some healing witch hexes. I even wrote some official archetypes for it! But, well... I talk about it here only because it expands the fan of options for divine characters, and because I like it so much. It's not versatile enough to serve my purpose.
Then there's (again) the Dùlra from The Book of Many Things! Do I like it? Heck if I like it! I asked for that class to be written, and Faerie Friend is a simply adorable power. I wrote the Brown Friar archetype for the class, and the Faerie Pact alternate class option to give other divine characters some of her abilities. It even has an aura! The only thing is... that even with my modifications, the dùlra spell list still includes too many distructive spells. It would still need some tinkering (maybe one day...)
Do you know what druid would be a perfect priest?! The Spirit Mender from Spheres of Power! But I guess I'd better dedicate an entire new post of this series to spherecasting, since it's a whole different system of magic...
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