Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Hello all,

As the title requests, for those with experience playing druids or nature clerics, how does a druid view a cleric of a nature deity? Is there alot of friction? What about a cleric of chauntea vs a druid of silvanus or rillifane? Strife? Hostile? Im curious on opinions and playstyle.

Or is there a realms source to get info on this?

It's opinion based so please respect people's opinions.

Thank you for your time!

I would imagine it's open for interpretation and would probably depend on your character's own experiences, prejudices, and the like. We love to delve into lore to figure out how our characters should or shouldn't act when the lore is really just there as a rough guideline, and we are free to, within the confines of the setting, develop our characters naturally in ways that we like or that fit with our interpretation.

So I'd say ask yourself: does my druid like his interactions with that priest of Chauntea? Do his ideas mesh with theirs, or is there something that irritates him, be it his ego, his interpretation of nature vs theirs, or past experience with other priests?

TheKai wrote:As the title requests, for those with experience playing druids or nature clerics, how does a druid view a cleric of a nature deity? Is there alot of friction? What about a cleric of chauntea vs a druid of silvanus or rillifane? Strife? Hostile? Im curious on opinions and playstyle.

It is highly dependent on which religion the druid and cleric belongs to.

There can be some conflict with faithful of Chauntea and those of Silvanus, however... these two deities are allies. In Silvanus' faith, it is the druids who lead and who are revered above clerics. In Chauntea's faith, there is about 40% clerics and 50% druids. There is no mention of what I can see of clashing between the two religions -however- it does mention inner conflict between the same faith between druids and clerics. For both faiths, clerics tend to cities & towns (walled gardens, water etc) and responsible expansion (with farming, woodcutting etc) whilst druids tend to outskirts and woodlands. So there will be times when within a faith, the views will differ. It does not have to happen but the possibility is there. Druids & clerics within nature faiths have different roles. Druids are more leaning towards tending and protecting nature while clerics are leaning towards educating others and spreading the faith.

Chauntea can be revered by all races but in case of humans, the conflict with Rillifane might be that of elves vs humans, as Rillifane cares for elves first. However, clerics of Rillifane are tasked with seeking out other races to educate them. While Rillifane would take elves sides first, he does not shun other races but rather seeks to educate them and make them live in harmony. Another possible conflict with Chauntea is that she is an agriculture goddess while Rillifane is even more wild than Silvanus. So the possibility of conflict is civilization's encroachment on the wild.

TheKai wrote:Or is there a realms source to get info on this?

Yep. Most of what I have written is from http://www.nj-pbem.com
Go to General Realms Info -> Gods of the Realms and choose your pantheon. They have pretty much all related to what we use except for the orc pantheon. The Forgotten Realms wiki can be good -if the sources are stated-, always double-check. The website above has all the sources from Faiths & Avatars and Faiths & Pantheons.

It is mostly up to you if you want your character (be it a druid or cleric) to have a certain view of other druids & clerics of other faiths or even within the same faith. If you have a druid of Silvanus, he can absolutely despise clerics of the faith and see them as lesser... nothing wrong with that. Strifes inside in the same faiths are -very common- and something that is at times gone to war over (perhaps not nature deities, they work in more subtle manners to undermine their foes).

Kayan said it well, the lore is only a rough guideline Read the lore, be inspired but keep the following in mind;

Kayan wrote:So I'd say ask yourself: does my druid like his interactions with that priest of Chauntea? Do his ideas mesh with theirs, or is there something that irritates him, be it his ego, his interpretation of nature vs theirs, or past experience with other priests?

I forgot to thank you guys for this. So, thank you!

There's no friction between the Clergy and the Druids of the same gods.
Unless it's a personal matter.

But, the Cleric of Silvanus serves the god first of all. They're priests.
A Druid of Silvanus serves nature above all and the god they choose is the closest to their philosophy about nature.

A Cleric is part of a church. A Druid is a protector and/or personifying an aspect of nature.
They're not the same class with different abilities.

A Druid wouldn't be hanging out in churches or temples. And a Cleric wouldn't be hanging out in a Druid Circle.

A Cleric is more in tune with a god him/herself. A Druid is in tune with nature itself.

Though, a Druid might view a Cleric as detached from nature by wearing all that metal plates and focusing on the civilized aspect as well as having the ability to resurrect people, which is not as natural.

Way to break it down, thank you!