/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

guys if I have Find Steed up and cast Create Bonfire does it work like Cone of Cold does and duplicate the spell

Can you explain what you mean by that a bit more?

Biggest issue I have with Crown Paladins is that Turn the Tide doesn't scale well at all. I'd probably tune that a bit if my PC wanted to go Crown.
Unyielding Spirit also does seem a bit weak, especially when compared to the other oaths' 15th level feature.
I'd say the fact that the Oath spell list has a lot of already Paladin spells is another problem.

That being said it's a pretty good Oath I think. Paladins in general in this edition are great, so the Oath is mainly here to complement that and provide good RP.

> I dunno what "divine pally" is.

Fuck off

What do people think of the caster-druids? Is the spell list and advantages enough to carry the class or is it dwarfed by it's melee brothers and other caster classes?

Did I get it wrong? Isnt Divine the vanilla pally?

There is no "vanilla paladin", they all have an oath that needs specification.

Fun or not? Based on the Dark Souls 3 enemy

I meant the first oath the most vanilla of all oaths

It's called Devotion

Maybe you mean Oath of Devotion? If you do, it's a great Oath. I honestly don't think you can go wrong with Paladins in 5e.

Devotion is amazing at all stage.
Ancients is amazing later on (aura).
Vengeance is crazy good at what it does.
Crown could need a bit of help, but mainly because strong Oath features are important to the class.
Oathbreaker is unavailable to PCs and rightfully so, since it's absolutely fucking broken.

You need to leave those old outdated ideas behind my user-bro!

Has anybody seen a Mystic (Immortal) in action yet? I'm working one up for Strahd, and I'm looking at heavy armor and a two-handed weapon, but I'm not sure if per-round temporary HP will be enough to cover for both the lack of a shield and the d8 hit die on the group's primary melee guy. How durable are Immortals in actual play so far?

Want to make a Fighter Archer build I dont know if battle master or champion is better.

I think they're pretty fun, coming from someone who's playing a Circle of Land Druid right now and has played one briefly for a one-shot, but I've realised that their potential comes an awful lot from their Circle spells, and it's important to choose the right one for what you want to achieve. It's like choosing a miniature Cleric domain, so remember to pick the one that actually benefits and enables the style of gameplay you want.

It's enough to be carried, sure, the fact that Moon becomes incredibly tanky has nothing to do with Land's viability. Just 'cause Moon is really good doesn't stop Land from still being good.

Takes a few levels to get off the ground though. Early Druid spell lists are kind of basic.

Both are solid, but I will say, Battlemaster will be a lot more fun to play, just because it has more active abilities and options to choose from.

What's your reasoning to choose Circle of the Land ? It seems so... boring? I dunno. 6th level feature is a joke and it just feels like there's no interactivity or interesting mechanical interactions in the class.

I have difficulties with druids to be honest. I feel most of the time they're not played like they should, because if they were, the guy wouldn't tag along with the rest of the party.

How do you play yours in a way that you're not constantly complaining about muh nature and doing cool things with it?

Man, I kinda want to DM a primal party.
Druid, Totem Barbarian, Ranger... That's the only way I see them fit somewhere.

Yes. There are no 5e mechanics for Eberron-specific stuff, though (some races... Warforged, Shifter and Changeling... dragonmarks and terrible artificer (as wizard subclass)) are in one of the first Unearthed Arcana articles, but they need some polishing (and the artificer just doesn't feel like 3.5 artificer, even WotC admited it was a mistake). Some setting-specific monsters would need homebrew too,if you want to use it.

But overall, all 3.5 Eberron books are great for fluff, and still valid in that respect even 2 editions later.

Quick, help me decide what character to use for my next campaign

>senile old wizard who has to rhyme all his spells to use them and despises it
>cavalier battlemaster who is all about chivalry and being that "knight in shining armor"
>frumpety dragonborn sorcerer who acts a lot older than he is
>old sea captain bladelock who is pretty much pirates of the carribean's Davy jones

In order:

>Gimmick, don't do use it.
>Generic
>Could be interesting/funny
>Could be MORE interesting/funny

Okay guys I think I fucked up

My party TPK'd to the shambling mound under death house and I revived them all with dark powers gifts
What should I do now? How should I have them leave the house?

My idea was just treat the house as not haunted anymore, as if "it was all just a dream"
So have things like the secret passage and the dungeon at the basement disappear, but plant things here or there that hint at what actually happened, and the house is now completely un-haunted

I don't know what I should do, any ideas?

You and everyone else will tire of the first one quickly.
Second one is pretty unremarkable.
I like both the others, I'd personally go for the Dragonborn.

The hell is redbranding?

If they want to leave just have the House be hostile as determined by the adventure

Redbrands are the enemy gang in the starter set, I think

You know, I always thought staves being a "weak" weapon only made sense if they are always and consistently made out of some kind of hardwood.
A lot of that Dragon Age junk looks like it's a shaft made out of metal. No. 2 looks for all the world like a fuck-off huge mace, which would really ruin your goddamn day if a solid hit landed just from sheer mass.

LMoP bandit gang

I agree, but then in Dragon Age a lot of the staves have blade attachments for that purpose exactly, fucking people up who get too close while you're twirling about at throwing fire or whatever.

....alright.
So how do you /redbrand/ then? Get wasted by an adventurer for your XP value and the piddly amounts of look you carry?

Role playing wise, while druids would be reduced to psycho terrorists in any kind of industrial age, in the vague time period of "D&D Land" there is less of an issue.

Clearing a few trees to use to build a house then using the cleared land for crops and animals isn't "destroying nature" by any but the most extreme views.

Seeing the world is also a good reason to adventure, only if you're a fanatic "our path is the only right way to do things" does not learning about other lands and cultures and druid circles not work.

A lot of classes have fine reason to sit at home and not go out, not sure the druid has much more than others. Lots of reasons for walkabout for druids as much as anyone.

Probably.
Or maybe just wear a red cloak and hang around looking shady

That's the party composition of Node's 5e series about a wilderness tribe

Seconded with Battlemaster, mainly because as a Fighter/Archer you only need Dexterity and Constitution to be high.
My favorite Battlemaster build, especially strong early on, is Inspiring Leader (Human Variant) with 14-16 Charisma and using the Rally maneuver. Taking Parry, Trip attack and whatever.
And if you get bored of it you can always go Bard after a while and inspire people up.

My reasoning was that I have a huge fondness for creepy witch types and the Land Druid makes a rather good one. Mechanically they're prepared divine spellcasters that have plenty of wild and nature themed abilities, which appeals to me a lot, and I like that they have a healthy mix of support and control spells. Land's Stride has situational usefulness, so I understand not liking it too much, but if you're up against a lot of natural enemies then it's actually quite a good defensive power, even if it does kind of require a campaign focused on exploring the wilderness. They still have access to utility wildshape after all, which means they always have a way to fly or swim when a Wizard might have to prepare a spell to do it, and I think they have a decent spell list once you get past the first level array (which isn't even that bad, just kind of uninteresting). Natural Recovery pushes their spellcasting a lot further than I thought it would once you hit lv5 or so.

Huh. Consider this; Clerics get prepared spellcasting and some additional spell prepared based on their domain. Wizards don't get additional domain spells, but they do gain an ability to recover spell slots so they last longer over a day in exchange for having fewer options. The Land Druid gets both of those things.

Yeah, I guess mages in Thedas seem to be a bit more "active" on average compared to D&D mages, which in many settings logically wouldn't need to adventure at ALL to do their jobs well.

The way I've always played them and narrated them is that PC or adventurer Wizards where scholars the way Indiana Jones was a college professor; technically accurate, but the vast majority of people in his profession do NOT do the kind of "hands-on" research he does, so to speak.

>A lot of classes have fine reason to sit at home and not go out, not sure the druid has much more than others. Lots of reasons for walkabout for druids as much as anyone.

I always try to portray adventuring types as exceptional, not necessarily in power (at least until the PC's get there) but in terms of motivation and career choices.
A Class is your skill set, but not necessarily a job description in and of itself, especially with 5e's class Archetypes; a Fighter can be damn near anything and a lot of those things would likely pay more consistently and be less suicidcal then adventuring would.
Even Classes were actively roving around looking for trouble is vaguely implied such as being a Paladin (evil ain't gonna go smite itself after all) could actually reasonably be expected to do their jobs better in a group like a military branch or knightly order or something.

It takes a special kind of crazy to actively go out into dangerous areas and fight monsters with completely random chances of reward and a large chance of the opponents eventually being exotic shit that's why outside your league and field of experience.

Just reanimate them outside the house

And on the topic of how to play it by not complaining about muh nature? Well, the one-shot character I mentioned was a mad goblin shaman, a little more concerned with being generic Chaotic Evil and setting things on fire than caring too much about nature. Obviously not well fleshed out since it was just for a one-shot, and I thought I'd play something a little bonkers, and it was a chance to play a rather gungho druid which was fun.

The witch I mentioned above is a lot more fleshed out as a character, and is one I'm using for an actual campaign. Someone who understands their power comes from a natural source, and while they do give it the respect it deserves, see it as more of a tool than anything, just like any Wizard might see their arcane power. It's a source of magic, so why not use it? She's an alchemist by trade, so that requires a deep knowledge of the various properties of medicinal plants, and her knowledge of the wilds helped her tap into that power for her own use.

I know those are some more specific case, rather than actual tips on how to avoid the trope if you don't enjoy it, but maybe it'll give you some ideas.

Trying again.

I've been playing a non-combat focused the last 2 years, which wouldn't do well on Roll20. Would you recommend a more combat-focused 5e game or to try out 4e to take full advantage of having grid combat and all that?

Think of Druids less as environmental protection activists because pretty much all D&D-style settings are WAY before that kind of thing is a huge and widespread problem (unless you're playing in the Witcher universe and therefore Druids act like activists as a joke).
Think of them more like Clerics, but their religion is more old-school and less organized. Druidism is their religion, but it's not about praying and sacrificing and living up to your ideals because nature don't give a fuck; it's instead about understanding what's already there in the world and making use of it.
They understand nature and as long as they aren't crazy they know that you change one thing and you change a dozen others without meaning to, and are intensely aware that actions have consequences even if you aren't aware of them immediately (high Wisdom score helps with that).

A Cleric gets his power loaned.
A Warlock barters for his power.
A Wizard makes his own power from scratch.
A Druid however, uses what's already there and nobody else is bothering to notice.

What about Bards?

Bards want you to think it's about music, but they're full of shit.
They're gently fucking the universe until the universe gives them magic as a way of thanks for being sexy and good at it.

Magical prostitutes, basically.

Bards draw their power from pre-marital intercourse.

See? This guy gets it.

Or just be a Sorcerer, and get your power from being a special snowflake!

Druids in the book get power from a nature deity or from nature itself, quite like clerics but recieving different powers. I can dig your fluff though, makes Rangers make sense as well.

Yeah, this is how I'm running it in a sense. Just like any Wizard knows with magic any action leads to a reaction, so does the Druid, they're just naturally inclined towards expressing that in a more physical kind of magic. As I said, witch, less inclined towards preserving nature than they are about how they can use nature for their own benefit. They understand it's a powerful, living entity in the same way a traditional druid would, and that it's a huge well of power that's all too easy to tap into and utilise. Respect or not, it's a tool than can be used, and if you have the resources and the knowledge on how to use it, why wouldn't you?

Sounds like Bards have the most fun.

>Whole party comes out after recharging the spells and gaining new ones.
>Cleric: "I just spent hours on my knees praying to my deity for guidance and power."
>Warlock: "I just carved off another piece of my soul for power that I control but ultimately damns me to thralldom after death, or even in life."
>Wizard: "I just spent hours pouring over old tomes and extrapolating arcane formulae to hack the physics of the universe to obey me through words of power and focused intent of will."
>Sorcerer: "I just spent hours exercising my innate magical muscles to increase my power through experimentation."
>Band: "Oh man, I just spent hours fucking the shit out of three chicks at once! She's gobbling down on my cock and then she brings in her sister who gets all jelly and joins her to 'prove her love' or something and then that hot Fighter babe we travel with walks in and it turns out she's bicurious and super into anal sex!"

Finally I get some insight from a player that actually seem to have put thought into his druid! Thank you very much. If you'd like to talk a bit more about your character's motivations, background and/or ways of thinking, I'm all ears.

It just seems to me that Circle of the Land should be a lot more shamanic. Giving them (and not to the class in general) Ritual Casting, communication with the spirits, hex and curses... Or maybe just giving them some of that Ranger flavor with Natural Explorer on their terrain and such.

I also wished there were ways to prevent a Moon Druid to shapeshift. I can't really see any, and I don't want it to feel forced for the PCs, but there are a lot of answers a DM can conjure up against most classes.

You do have a point about them getting benefits from Cleric & Wizard spellcasting. Maybe it's just not my cup of tea or something. It shouldn't impact how I feel, but I always get close, at the beginning of a campaign/scenario, to ban them altogether.

I actually portray Sorcerers as having innate magical abilities that they have to "work out" with the same way a Fighter needs to practice his skills.
They don't need to spend as much time on their skills like the Fighter comparatively does for a Wizard, but a Wizard understands the underlying mechanics better and so can do more with it eventually.

Sorcerers are Wizard-Jocks, basically.
Getting it from nature itself is what I meant.
If you sacrifice animals to nature, it doesn't care.
If you pray to nature, it doesn't hear you.
If you go on quests to prove your faith in nature, it doesn't notice.
If you talk to it, it doesn't talk back.

But nature is always THERE, and just like wood or food can be found and used by anyone who takes the time to learn, listen, and look for it.
And the Druid's power should work the same way.

I don't see it as mutually conflicting or even needing different fluff.
Druids take their power from nature, but what they DO with it depends on the person and is highly variable, the same way environmental protection groups can disagree on the right way to protect the environment.
And that's only if said Druid is deep into the Druid circle stuff; maybe he's just a person that understand's nature's power and understands how to access it and utilize it, like any trained woodsman or herbalist does in his or her own way.

I'd like to apologize for creating the current Create Bonfire meme. My tablemate and I just thought it was cool is all. Sorry.

The metagaming minmaxing idiot that was trolling the past three threads is the one to blame. You just uncovered something fun and added to our collective knowledge. Nothing to apologize for.

Also, when are you going to marry this tablemate of yours? You know she wants it.

It's a he actually. I've no interest in marrying him.

triggered

I usually DM for adventurers league, but now I'm playing. Which means I get to start a character for a level 1 game at level 4.

I'm going land Druid and taking healer.

For my level 4 feat, I'm considering taking Mage initiate to get find familiar and cantrips which don't require ability modifiers

What land type do you suggest?What spells do you suggest? I'm definitely considering flaming sphere

why would you take healer when you have goodberry and cure wounds

>Level 1 game at level 4
Wouldn't that be a steamroll? Also how is DMing Adventure League?

More combat focused 5e, why would you not do that?
Why bother learning a new system for almost no reason?

Her concept started off as "how do I make the most generic witch possible?". The setting is anti-magic, with the exception of druid magic due its more physical roots (that was a pun), while tensions over the last century has tarnished the reputation of arcane magic and physical manifestation of the gods. She was raised in an isolated coven, and spent her early years pouring over tomes detailing history, magic, and alchemy. She was a prodigy, but always found conflict with her mentors, and so bounced between several before she was finally sent away from the coven at ten years old to train with one of the coven's numerous loosely-associated witches. She aided them as a trainee caster and alchemist, and aided the local villages by dealing with the problems they face, from curing plagues to scaring off that pack of wolves that the villagers are *convinced* is in fact a group of werewolves. When her mentor died she took over and finished her training with hands-on practice, and even took on an apprentice herself.

She's ultimately good natured, but a lifetime of dealing with the uninformed peasantry who are constantly worried some hag's moved in or a demon put a curse over their family means she's a little... patronising towards anyone who isn't a spellcaster, or at least haven't proved themselves to have a similar depth of knowledge (our Rogue for example has Expertise in Arcana despite not being a spellcaster herself for example). Very "mother knows best", even though she's only in her early twenties. She has a fascination for magic, druidic, arcane, and divine, and her vast knowledge of the more forbidden types of magic has gotten her a lot of strange looks, even if the fact she doesn't practice any of those things has avoided her from face any kind of proper persecution (just wait until I get Ritual Caster: Wizard though...).

Because healer does not require spell slots. I do plan on using downtime to fill people's pockets with goodberries.

It's not a steamroll. Sure, I have more HP and spells, but i don't get an additional proficiency bonus. My level 1 spells are not stronger than other PCs level 1 spells.

It's... Alright, honestly. It's very tactical, there's a certain sense of "fairness" and "balance" to encounters which turns me off. Most non-combat abilities are semi-nullified.

Sounds great! Did you take inspiration from Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites (Discworld vol.3) ?

What's your party composition apart from the Rogue?

I like learning new systems, and I've heard good things about the tactical combat of 4e. We've played a lot of 5e at this point and trying something new would be cool.

It's a lot to learn and it isn't just you learning, it's everyone else too.
I'd recommend against it anyway, I played it for a few years and I didn't really like it all that much

This has always made me think druid is needless as a class. Why not just have nature clerics with wildshape?

My players took their cloaks and made them a symbol of good.

Feels good man, plus a team aesthetic is a criminally rare thing to see.

I actually explained it pretty well already.
If you didn't get it then pretty much nothing I or anyone else could ever possibly say would ever make it make sense to you or change your mind; it was made up a long time ago already.

That's okay though, seems like almost every player has that one class they don't like or or don't "get"; that's just being a fairly average D&D player.

4e's great on roll20. The biggest issue -managing the numbers and powers - is easily handled with macros if you get familiar with how to enter them. I would definitely recommend it if you're looking for something tactical and are going to use roll20

>Jailer
I didn't even read the pdf and I already hated it.

Far and away worst enemy in DS3, Pontiff Knights and ghrus a close tie for second.

Props for making dark souls homebrew though, do you have the Dark Souls 5e supplement?

Mechanically I get it. But in fluff, yeah it's kind of unnecessary, but you could say that about other classes as well depending on the setting.

what magic items for strahd

Thanks, I'll get a bit more familiar with the rules and see what I think.

I don't know if they considered not putting druid in, but I'm pretty sure people would have memed the fuck out of 5e if they released it without Druids.

It can be seen the other way around. Nature Cleric are cool, but they probably coulda done without the domain and gone for something else (Arcana / Death like they did in the following books).

On a side note, should Moon Druid wildshaping into Brown Bear get Multiattack? From the get go, 2nd level? Wouldn't it be fairer to everyone to wait before 6th level until they can Multiattack (and then you can even give them Multiattack on any beast they wildshape to) ?

There's a book in Curse of Strahd that I think is Strahd's diary or something because he gets angry like a teenage girl when someone has it and chases them down.

A Cleric prays.
A Druid doesn't; nature doesn't hear you.
A Cleric communes with his deity.
A Druid can't; nature can't talk, though with spells you can talk to bits and pieces of it.
A Cleric has a church (in most cases anyway), and the church has a doctrine and a faith. Not necessarily rules but a philosophy at the very least.
A Druid doesn't; nature doesn't "instruct" you to do anything at all.

A Druid has power, but he needs to make no bargains, no prayers, no obesiance, or anything if the sort. He gets his spells the way a woodsman goes and gets his wood; he just uses what he finds and takes it from nature and utilizes it as he personally sees fit.
Druids are simply more aware of the balance of nature then other classes because their primary stat REVOLVES around awareness, much like a woodsman or huntsman knows that if he cuts down all the trees and hunts down all the animals they won't have their chosen resource anymore.
Being a Druid is being part of a religion that makes zero spiritual or physical demands of you that you do not impose on yourself, just as nature merely is present but doesn't particularly care one way or another about your presence.

I get what you mean with the more depersonalized reverence of nature than the typical cleric, but I don't see why a cleric can't operate that way too. Mechanically the classes are very similar, and fluffwise they both fall within the bounds of "reverence to an outside power". It just seems redundant to have druid and nature cleric. Even the category of magic both being divine creates unnecessary overlap. If it was 4e style with primal power being a notably separate thing I could more easily swallow it.

i mean for him

dude is 400 yrs old he'd have swag

I think it would be best to limit early wildshape multi attacks, yeah.

As it stands, my two druids are out tanking, out damaging, and generally out-utilitying the other four members of the party by a mile.

>Moon Druid wildshaping into Brown Bear get Multiattack
I don't think it's a huge problem, yes the archetype is good but multiattack isn't even needed (dire wolf would just take the place as preferred shape at this level). Keep in mind they have to have seen the animal, so it's well within the right of the GM to say they haven't seen beasts that they think would be too good (establish it beforehand though).

Why is wildshape a thing with druids anyway? What legend/myth does that come from, and why is it so intrinsically linked with druids?

And what of nature gods? Is a druid who worships a god of nature just doing it wrong? Are actual celtic druids wrong by D&D's ideal of druids? And are cleric with less formal relations to their religions doing it wrong as well?

It IS "primal power", just without the WarCraft-like stuff attached where all magic is just accessing a different type of battery with a pithy name attached.
Nature doesn't "grant" spells; it's just trees and grass and animals and plants and deserts and rocks and shit. It's not taking or hearing or doing anything at all, but it has a subtle power a Druid can command.
The reason a Druid is more concerned with the balance of nature is because unlike all the other spellcasting classes their power is sorta reliant on nature still existing most of the time.
Kinda like Aquaman; Aquaman doesn't actually "talk" to fish. He gives them commands and they obey, though more intelligent fish he can speak with. He does however care about what happens to the ocean because he sure as shit can't command fish anymore if the environment they belong to is gone.

My players will be completing Lost Mine of Phandelver next session, barring any major shenanigans.

Due to their "kick in the door waving the four four" policy of negotiation and dungeon exploration, all the Rockseeker brothers are dead, and both Glasstaff and Nezznar have escaped, the latter with a small retinue of assorted goblinoids. I'm actually happy with this outcome, as the party now has a goal: track down Nezznar and make him pay for the death of a party member.

My question for you, /5eg/: where does Nezznar go next?

Yeah but that's exactly my point. As a Druid, meeting a Brown Bear is kinda 101. A Dire Wolf, though, is not.

And quite honestly, 2d6+4+1d8+4 each turn without using any bonus action is bullshit at 2nd level. It's a big problem whatever party composition you're in.
Let's not add the uncanny survivability as well. A 2nd level druid essentially has an average of ~75HP. I know it's only 11 AC, but it's still a major pain in the ass to balance around.

Nothing new here, obviously, but just getting rid of Multiattack before a certain point (or altogether I guess) would be a step in the right direction.

Last Druid I had was a freaking gnome and I couldn't even charm the fucker because of its stupid advantage against magic.
I swear to god one day I'll play Half-Orc Druid just to piss of everyone and never ever fucking die.

nezznar the wraith?

why would he leave the cave system

Moon Druids have a huge level 2-3 Power spike but they're generally pretty tame once everybody else reaches 4th-5th level. Animal forms don't scale nearly as well as the rest of the PCs do, let the Moon Druid have their power spike fun.

>It IS "primal power", just without the WarCraft-like stuff attached where all magic is just accessing a different type of battery with a pithy name attached.
But it kinda is a different type of battery. It has no relation to divine domains or gods, at least not any more so than arcane magic has to gods of magic, or law has to gods of justice

Is that fucking Vasalisa?

Not directly, although Terry Pratchett's books are at least partly responsible for my fondness for witches. The group is;

Human, Druid, Land.
High Elf, Rogue, Thief.
Halfling, Rogue, Arcane Trickster.
Human, Fighter, Battlemaster.
"Human", Warlock, Great Old One.

I swear I intended my druid to be knowledgeable, well researched one in the party, with 14 Intelligence and proficiency in all the intelligence skills bar Religion, then the Rogues and Warlock walk up with 16+ intelligence and just as many int-focused proficiencies. It ended up being one of the reasons she's gotten so chummy with the rest of the group, because they have some common ground in shared interests.

I say "human" because he's actually a mindflayer, but shush, don't tell anyone.

It's funny because they considered that too good for beastmaster pets but didn't do anything with it for druids. I think the problem though, is that CR takes multiattack into account, so it's not a great way to balance it. If anything, remove multiattack from CRs lower than 2, so as to make that spike less amazing. It's still sort of like Monk though, they get a lot of attacks early but the other classes catch up, on top of it being a resource so it's not as reliable.

Nezznar is the black spider, the wraith is named Mormesk, unless I'm mistaken (which wouldn't surprise me).

There's stuff about that, but it's not "Druids" specifically.
Native American myths have stories about people learning the skill of "wearing an animal's skin" and using that to change shape, and Slavic myths have stuff like that too.
>And what of nature gods? Is a druid who worships a god of nature just doing it wrong?
No, of course not.
A Cleric of a deity of trees says (perhaps even accurately) that all trees were made by his Tree God.
A Woodsman says that a tree is standing over there and he can cut it down with his axe and make a house out of it.
Both are correct.
One thing only invalidates another thing if they are ACTUALLY self contradictory, which is only true if you haven't the imagination to grasp why they wouldn't be.
>Are actual celtic druids wrong by D&D's ideal of druids?
I would say Celtic Druids were Clerics.
There's more then twelve Paladins in the D&D worlds and none of the ones I've ever played or seen played have ever been French, so Paladins aren't accurate either. They're more like Christian Knight Orders, except they aren't like that either actually.
And Monks come from a poorly understood concept that ALL magical kungfu martial artists in Chinese movies are actual monks.

D&D classes kind of are at best loosely inspired by real life.
Meh, fair point.
And "nature is just a power source, I respect it the way a fighter respects his sharp sword" is how I GM them anyway.
Yes, it is.
Seen that picture before.