#antinature nature cleric whose lawful good just feels really fun to me

[verminfang]

Dnd character concept I want to play at some point (usually I have a million I just drone to friends about rather than post to tumblr but I feel like the concept is like, appealing to some of the mutuals), longish post because the concept behind it involves a lot of talking about what I feel the nature cleric class can be (as a fun opinion and deffo not prescriptive)

So often there’s a question about why play a Nature Cleric instead of a Druid (mechanics aside) and also about why the Nature Cleric gets features like Heavy Armor proficiency seemingly at odds with the whole nature vibe

My thoughts on this are to remember that rather than being representative and of channeling nature, a nature cleric is channeling the way in which humanoid civilizations (those that would be worshiping a god) interact with nature, as a resource or something to seek sanctuary from.

Mountains, Seas, Forests and Plains as seen by the miner, fisherman, woodsman, hunter or farmer who prays to their gods for safety and bounty.

If you look at the class features a Nature Cleric gets and see them as Civilization’s Taming of Nature as opposed to a Druids representation of the wild and natural it actually forms a pretty compelling argument:

As a class feature Nature Clerics have proficiency with and wear heavy armor, worked steel refined from the earth, unlike Druids who have a cultural taboo against it (there's potentially interesting stuff about fey fearing iron, there being fey themed druid subclasses and the idea of iron as a talisman as well here)

Their channel divinity is

The ability to magically charm and control plants and animals, at level 17 this is further expanded to give you the ability to command charmed creatures and notably named ‘Master of Nature’

The ability to charm and later command plants and animals through the invocation of your deity fits pretty well into the idea of domesticating and controlling nature, the humanoids dominion over it.

The other notable feature nature clerics get is

It’s the ability to protect you and your allies from the elements. It’s shelter. It’s ‘dampening’, reducing the power nature has over you. It’s civilization holding strong against whatever weather or natural disaster the natural world wants to throw at you.

So.. the ‘anti-nature nature cleric’..are they evil, some fern gully Hexxus motherfucker? I don’t think so. I truly think there’s nothing wrong with a character who venerates civilizations successes over nature. What does this character celebrate? Agriculture, domestication of animals, shelter, rebuilding from disaster, medicine saving those who’d simply die if they were left unattended in the wild, curing diseases.

The druid class and the realities of nature have been in a bit of a conversation. Disney druid who touts the harmony of nature in a very Disney way has seen some reactions in the form of the druid who is aware that nature is red in tooth and claw, accepts and celebrates it, death is all part of a glorious cycle, your spore druids and wildfire druids.

A nature cleric that goes one step further in that conversation, nature isn’t all bunnies and butterflies its disease, tidal waves and death, lets not accept it as whats natural lets actually try and do something about it. Build walls, grow food to provide for others, heal the sick and wounded. Death is natural? Clerics get revival spells I’m bringing my friend back.

So character concept:

Water Genasi Nature Cleric with this as their ethos, a cleric of Chauntea

Water Cleric as another add on to the theme of Civilization and Nature, connected to an element of the natural world that is also essential to humanoids, cities are built alongside it, the cradle of civilization etc. 

top of the head PC name is Nile for obvious reasons.

I think the place I’d most like to use this PC is Tomb of Annihilation, the survival campaign module where you deal with the jungle, disease, apex predators and a curse that hurts those risen from the dead unnaturally.