Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion aren't clerics and druids pretty much the same thing?

From the Wiki
"Main article: Church of Silvanus
Silvanus had both clerics and druids in his faith, though their presence varied by location,[21] with druids being the more prominent due to his narrow focus on wild nature without concern for balance.[27][18][22] One could even find halfling druids revering him over their own pantheon's nature deity, though this was a rare occurrence.[40][41][note 2] Some barbarians,[42] hermits, wilderness dwellers,[4] and rangers also worshiped him.[4][43]

His clergy often worked together with the clergy of his allies, Mielikki and Eldath, towards common goals.[24][33][44] With the latter two being instructed to support, protect, and (if the need arose) obey the clergy of Silvanus.[44] These included protecting the wilderness from further encroachment by civilization,[4] such as the felling of trees and limiting farms or ranches to already cleared land. Also the fighting of diseases, planting new plants, and fighting those who did the bidding of Malar.[27][31]

His worship was widespread across the east and south of Tethyr, especially in the Forest of Tethir,[45] in the Dalelands,[46] the Moonshae Isles, the Chondalwood of the Vilhon Reach, and the Yuirwood in Aglarond.[30]"

Druids are not bound to a one god and arrive at their powers through different means. Even if we narrow it down to the clergy of Sylvanus in particular, the issue remains. Druids are extremists. Clerics get the work done.

From the Player's Handbook on the Nature Domain:

Gods of nature are as varied as the natural world itself; from inscrutable gods of the deep forests (such as Silvanus, Obad-Hai, Chislev, Balinor, and Pan) to friendly deities associated with particular springs and groves (such as Eldath). Druids revere nature as a whole and might serve one of these deities, practicing mysterious rites and reciting all-but-forgotten prayers in their own secret tongue. But many of these gods have clerics as well, champions who take a more active role in advancing the interests of a particular nature god. These clerics might hunt the evil monstrosities that despoil the woodlands, bless the harvest of the faithful, or wither the crops of those who anger their gods.

There is a fine line between a druid, a ranger, a nature cleric and an oath of the ancients paladin. One could question why so fine a line results in largely different spelllists and proficiencies, but I can't say there is no separation in lore.

that excerpt from the player handbook was very interesting. i guess it does make sense if you put it like that.
so druids may worship one or more gods in the same way as a random classless villager npc would, which differs them from clerics being literally like a representative of that god on earth, doing his will.
i see.

Here's a link to that old tome... It doesn't have the badass artwork by Easley and Parkinson, but easier to read probably cause it's just the text stuff.

https://www.frpworld.com/downloads/ruleandaccs/The%20Complete%20Druids%20Handbook.pdf

Some interesting ideas esp. in chapter 3 which gives some cool deets on "The Order" and chapter 4 in top section on Druidic Faith where it gives some comparisons to other types of priests.

In that edition Chauntea still gets top billing as like a Magna Mater great earth goddess type figure, and Silvanus is modelled on Zeus' oracle at Dodona, all the oakfather stuff, and his roman variant. One thing I dig that they did in BG3 was that they also gave the Shadowdruids a bit of a serpentine angle with Kagha (I love her performance! It's so good!!!) cause that recalls the Pythia at Delphi and like the Minoan stuff, although they did her as a total viper here, no doubt. I think it would be cool if they did another take that included the Apis bee as well as the snake for the shadowclave and maybe slightly less villainous there, cause that was what the Pythia was called. Using smoke to calm and domesticate the honey bee was one of her sacred deals. All her priestesses were called bees and the Pythia was the queen bee. Also some interesting stuff with the Bovids, because they were used mainly to plow and fertilize the fields, more than say to produce meat and diary, which would have been rare and more for ritual sacrifices, treated also with that sort of solemnity. Like the hecatomb in the Iliad when they do that whole bit raising the pyres, sacrificing cattle was a huge deal when it happened not like a thing they'd be doing all the time. But anywhere you get along those lines because Silvanus/Faunus were also associated with Mars, so that whole idea of cattle raiding, or orchard raiding, or salting vineyards, all things ultimately inimical to life.

I thought it was kinda curious that in D&D regular druids cannot raise/turn undead, because the undead are considered unnatural, even though the mythology it's based on is pretty deeply rooted in Chthonic mysteries too. Dogs and Ravens being the animals we most tend to think of. Raised by wolves in this context means uniting with the Canids. Our earliest interspecies alliance, before all the rest there was the dog, hence best friend hehe. Even though they're "druids" a lot of the mythos is still keying off the more familiar tales that Greenwood sort of built the FR pantheon around too. Silvanus just meant the woods or the forest in Latin, but he also has associations with the fields and marches, like on the one hand the syrinx was his sacred instrument, it's a panflute reed instrument that you'd associate with riverlands farming and such. Then we also get all these interesting ideas relating not just to acorns and great oaks, but basically all the fruit bearing and medicinal trees. Because orchards took so long to cultivate, this is another aspect still preserved in like the story of the apple of discord and such. Point being, the archetype is always one of forestry and foraging and such, but just under the surface is all this other stuff about early agriculture and animal husbandry encoded in the stories it's all based on. So it's just kinda funny that the trope remains wild vs civilized, when it was sorta the story of both coming together. Or at least that was always my read.

To me the coolest thing in that whole book was the idea of the Awakened Grove! When the druid hit lvl 12 and became legit, that was always a cool thing to explore because as soon as that happens you'd get the sort of stuff like we see in BG3, where the animals all come alive and converse with the Druid in natural language and such. Or I guess maybe the idea was that they would, communicating with the natural spirit somehow via the awakened beasts and plants and elements. That is also how I interpret what's happening in the Emerald grove, though it's not really made explicit. I feel like it's sort of implied by everything with the rite of thorns. I still think it would be cool if they revisited it in Act III or an expansion.

ps. oh also just that idea of the sickle being one of the druids canonical weapons, like to me that's the most druid-y weapon, even more than the club. Cause it's got both the mistletoe chop to save the oaks and the swipe to work the fields. It all seems very small village pastoral to me, more than say full on into the wild. Cat's to guard the grain from rats, hounds to protect crops from the rabbits and deer. More at that level. I think the way to go with druids is just that they are sorta resisting the forward march of industry and commerce in favor of a more agrarian sorta thing. Or at least that seems a lot more flexible considering all the rest of the stuff that's going down. Like robocops and runepowder hehe.

So maybe a Cleric of Silvanus would be like the priest in charge of keeping the grain for winter for the villagers and making sure the proper rituals were followed so the sewing and harvesting goes according to plan? Making sure by checking the stars and all that, but might have a somewhat more urban thing going on. Say tending the apple orchards and vineyards and holding rites there.

Whereas an initiate in the Druidic order, that stuff is all very secret. Or it's supposed to be. That's why it's maybe a little disarming to me how all these druids in the grove are so forward with the outsiders initially, but that's maybe a test of trying to update the druid lore, just so it's not quite so cloak and dagger as it used to be.

They still got some of that going on here though, I mean like pretty much that's the set up least on Kagha's end. It'd be interesting to see more with the shadow circle, because it's supposed to have a whole parallel structure to the regular druids. I think that would be interesting to explore a bit, that and all the stuff with the mushrooms in the Underdark which seem very connected, or might be

Technically, they do.

You can see this in various forms of media. Like the DnD film where the MC identified himself as a Bard. They saught out the help of someone who is identified as a Paladin. There was someone identified as a Wizard.

Even in BG3, we see this. People explicitly acknowledge you as a Druid. Gale will identify whether you're a Sorcerer or a Wizard.

BG3 doesn't offer the most drastic of differences between Druid and Nature Cleric, but even so it's still there.

Nature Cleric explicitly is devout and gains their abilities from their deity (Which may or may not be Silvanus), while a Druid may not care about any deity at all (For example, the Shadow Druids) and simply have a connection to nature in some form.

Here's an excerpt from 5e PHB in regards to Nature Domain:

"Gods of nature are as varied as the natural world itself; from inscrutable gods of the deep forests (such as Silvanus, Obad-Hai, Chislev, Balinor, and Pan) to friendly deities associated with particular springs and groves (such as Eldath). Druids revere nature as a whole and might serve one of these deities, practicing mysterious rites and reciting all-but-forgotten prayers in their own secret tongue. But many of these gods have clerics as well, champions who take a more active role in advancing the interests of a particular nature god. These clerics might hunt the evil monstrosities that despoil the woodlands, bless the harvest of the faithful, or wither the crops of those who anger their gods."

i found this:

"Chauntea was the Faerunian goddess of life and bounty, who viewed herself as the embodiment of all things agrarian. The Earthmother was seen as the tamer parallel of Silvanus, the Forest Father of druidry and wilderness, as she was the deity of agriculture and plant cultivation."

from some dnd wiki. so there's a specific divide between an agricultural lifestyle and a truly wild one.

There is almost 50 years of shifting lore to sift through ... like the Bible or Koran - one will find quotes in support of contradictory stances.

I was going to post something similar. The druidic dieties are pretty much:

Chauntea: agriculture
Silvanus: wilderness and forests
Meilikki: huntress and wild animal guardian
Umberlee: sea
Talos: storms
Auril: winter and cold
Eldath: lakes

I don't think the last two are mentioned in BG3 at all, but Aaron in the grove will acknowledge that you follow the First Circle if you are a cleric of Meilikki. I'm not sure about Talos, as I haven't tried it, and the others are not available to be selected.

Much of the forgotten realms is not so much inspired by mythology but completely copied. Meilkki, for example, is a straight 1:1 clone of the Finnish goddess of that name.