Disclaimer
Okay, so this is going to be a little different than my previous lore posts. So, if you want the old style, give me some hate mail in the comments and I’ll do some more of those. That said, I figured I would try this to see what you all think.
Then what am I doing? Well, I am going to go over building a character to their subclass with what I believe to be the best choice for roleplay reasons. This way you can see the foundation in which I would take a class if you wanted to play a Firbolg be druid or otherwise. With the building of the class, I am using the point-based system which is easy to use with my calculator I have on my website. As well as a pdf file to show you visually how my character would work. With that clarified let us begin.
The Stats
Ability Score Increase Your Wisdom score increases by 2, and your Strength score increases by 1.
Age As humanoids related to the fey, firbolg have long lifespans. A firbolg reaches adulthood around 30, and the oldest of them can live for 500 years.
Alignment As people who follow the rhythm of nature and see themselves as its caretakers, firbolg are typically neutral good. Evil firbolg are rare and are usually the sworn enemies of the rest of their kind.
Size Firbolg are between 7 and 8 feet tall and weigh between 240 and 300 pounds. Your size is Medium.
Speed Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Firbolg Magic You can cast Detect Magic and Disguise Self with this trait, using Wisdom as your spellcasting ability for them. Once you cast either spell, you can’t cast it again with this trait until you finish a short or long rest. When you use this version of Disguise Self, you can seem up to 3 feet shorter than normal, allowing you to more easily blend in with humans and elves.
Hidden Step As a bonus action, you can magically turn invisible until the start of your next turn or until you attack, make a damage roll, or force someone to make a saving throw. Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Powerful Build You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Speech of Beast and Leaf You have the ability to communicate in a limited manner with beasts and plants. They can understand the meaning of your words, though you have no special ability to understand them in return. You have advantage on all Charisma checks you make to influence them.
Languages You can speak, read, and write Common, Elvish, and Giant.
Firbolg Druid Synopsis
The Firbolgs were added to Volo’s Guide To Monsters to allow a multitude of new races players can choose to be. As a result, many races were fitted to be a perfect match with certain classes, and a quick look at the abilities reveals that a firbolg druid would be the most optimal choice. That said, I see some use in a cleric or even ranger build as well. The fact that firbolgs have two magic abilities make them a really flexible spellcaster. This again can be further emphasized with a Firbolg Druid.
The reason being, druids have one of the largest lists of spells to choose from but do not have disguise self nor invisibility. This means a druid or any other class would now have access to these spells; enhancing their utility. The last notable ability is the fact they can communicate in a limited manner to beasts and plants. This really adds unique gameplay to your character giving them a whole lot more to play out. As well as tying back with how much the creators seem to want Firbolgs be druids.
Firbolg Druid Level 0: Backstory
When creating my characters, the first thing I do is develop a backstory. Now why many create these large all-encompassing backstories. I have gone on the less is more approach. Why the large backstories are a viable format (I have done it for years), I have begun favoring a simple backstory for many reasons. One is because the real story is about to begin for your character. So why write a campaign worth before you begin. Two, a lot of details get tough to remember. Three, it is easier to come up with.
For example, Firbolgs are known to be isolated humanoids that live in family-based clans. Now I need to think about what caused him to leave the clan. I could do clan destruction, but I love a good redemption story, so I think I am going to use another part of their lore to complete this chunk. Firbolgs are very much against materialistic wealth and believe they should only have what they need. However, I think mine is going to be materialistic. This way he follows mostly Firbolg lore but stands out, so he becomes his own.
Firbolg Druid level 0: Finalized Backstory
Now before I create my final backstory product, I need a name for him. If you are looking for firbolg names, I suggest going to fantasy name generator to get your name. I chose the name Petydark as it sounds cool and hints at his dark desire for wealth. With name established, the final result would look like this:
“Petydark had grown up in the family clan of Mortoris (another name from the generator). The clan prided itself on being protectors of the Mortoris Forest and living in harmony there. Petydark though had grown a love for gems that could be found in the town below. One day a red-cloaked Merchant offered him a beautiful gem in return for a favor. Petydark agreed to the deal and began to deliver a vial to the tree house used for rangers. As he was heading to the tree house, he dropped the vial in the river. Now the forest is dying and Petydark is searching for a way to save his home from his mistake.
As you can see it comes down to one paragraph and gives a name for you, a location, an opponent that could come up later, and a reason for adventuring. This should give your DM plenty to work with and if not, he can ask for additional details. That said nine out of ten times this works and makes it easy to remember and gives you a lot of versatility when playing your character.
Firbolg Druid Level 0: Point Buy
If you are using point buy, then I suggest you use my calculator that really makes the process simple and easy to use. For the point system, I know that firbolg lore states that they are a race that originates from giants. As such I wanted to do 14 Strength. Then a 12 Dexterity because Dexterity is just a great stat. A 14 Constitution as living in the wild has to help build up a good Con. 10 Intelligence, 16 Wisdom since he is going to be a druid. Then a 10 Charisma. All in all, he is average in a lot but prides himself on his giants like strength and his wisdom after realizing what his greed can bring.
Firbolg Druid level 0: Background And Skills
With an established backstory. I now can choose my background. My suggestion for backgrounds, it to use DnD Beyond when choosing your background as it has a lot of easy to understand backgrounds. I chose the Outlander background as it ties into living in the woods, with no outside help. This gives me the skills of athletics and survival. Both of which are fitting for my character and should still help him out when he is adventuring.
Druids only know two skills from a list of skills they can choose from. I use DnD Beyond myself when building a character as it walks you through all their abilities and choices from level 1-20. For my skills Here is a link to the druid page if you wanted to see it. I get to choose, I decided on perception as it is the most common skill used and will come in handy more times than not. Then, for my last skill, I chose nature due to his druid background and his desire to fix the land to the way it was before he spilled the potion in the water.
Druid level 1: Cantrips
Now that we are at level 1, we get spells! Now I go over three great cantrips that we do not think about in another post, so I highly encourage you to check that out. Regarding a druid’s cantrips, we get 2 cantrips so I want to choose that would make the most sense for my character. So, after taking a look at a Firbolg’s lore, I notice that they are friendly creatures. This means regarding my spells I am going to pick mainly those that have utility but also can be offensive.
This leads me to my first pick, create bonfire. I believe this one would work exceptionally well as it does damage equal to the popular cleric cantrip sacred flame, but also, makes sense for utility as bonfire’s would be how they keep warm at night.
Regarding my second cantrip, I like utility so I would choose something that makes sense but has a high utility aspect. This led me to either guidance or druidcraft. Both have lots of utility and are really useful, but I am choosing guidance for two reasons. One, my character is built off being new and was tricked. Now he seeks guidance in his life, so it is like calling upon his family to help. Two, guidance is a really useful spell and maybe as time goes on he is able to help guide other people from making the mistakes he made in the past. Adding more roleplay ability later on down the road.
Druid Level 1: Spells
Now for spells, you can prepare your Druid level + Wisdom modifier, which means I can choose 4. However, for the sake of simplicity, I am going to choose just my favorites that I can cast every day. So, since I can cast 2 spells now, I am going to choose two spells and tell you about them.
The first spell I am going to have is goodberry. Goodberry, feeds you and heals you for each berry you eat. This is a really useful spell that provides healing, utility, and makes sense for roleplay. After all, if you are in the woods and do not have any time to forage, then you are going to need a good berry meal.
For my second spell, I chose an offensive spell called, Ice knife. This a solid damage spell that deals on average 13 points of damage. That said, I need to argue roleplay for this. For this spell, I am going to tie it back to his backstory. In the backstory, he discovers that the merchant was having him bring an extremely potent poison to someone. He is afraid of what could happen and so sought a way to protect himself. That is when he sought out the knowledge to defend himself. Thus, the Ice knife was discovered.
Firbolg Druid Level 2: Subclass
For my subclass, I decided to stick to players handbook since most people should have that one. This said if you want to look into some extremely cool subclasses for your character. Might I suggest Xanathars Guide to Everything It really does have everything in it, from Underdark druids to shepherds that are druids. They are all really cool. But, enough of that, the subclass I chose is the Circle of Land.
The reason for this subclass is due to the fact that my firbolg druid is seeking to repair his homeland. So, his great love and ties back to the forest have caused him to have a closer bond with his land than other druids.
Druid level 2: Spell And Cantrip
Thanks to my subclass choice, I gain an additional cantrip to be used for my druid firbolg. For this cantrip, I chose Shape Water as it made the most sense for roleplay reasons. After all, he gains the cantrip due to his love for his homeland, and his mission is to repair the water destroying his homeland. Therefore, I Chose the biggest one to deal with water.
For my last 1st level spell, I am choosing, one that will help me with my roleplay. This led me to choose Earth Tremor. The reason being, it goes back to being tied with his homeland. His deep connection comes through with earth tremor as the land itself recognizes his love for his home and so seeks to help him. It is a cool and unique tie in and just sounds really awesome.
Firbolg Druid Dice
So you have your firbolg druid build in mind. Maybe he is kind, or perhaps vicious. Whatever you chose, your proud of him. Now comes the part where I recommend an item that I think will help make your firbolg druid special. In this case a set of dice that really remind me of the base nature of a firbolg. The dice in question being the Raya Unicorn Dice set.
Not only are they beautiful, but to me, firbolgs are a nature-loving and gentle race. So to have something that embodies the pureness of nature; something both druids and rangers love, make this a great choice. Plus, it might be me but the purple and pink remind me of firbolg colors as well. Which, in all honesty, is probably because of Cadeuces from Critical Role. As such, if I were to play a Firbolg Druid, I can definitely see my self having a set of these for him to help make my character feel special.
Firbolg Druid: Summary
With that, you see how I would go about choosing my characters stats, backstory, and subclass for my decisions. Start off reading a little bit about their lore so you can create the backstory, then use your backstory to decide on spells and subclasses for my firbolg druid. I hope this helps and this is an experimental post so please leave your comments below. If you want to see what my usual lore post are like, check out my article on Tortles. It was really well done and seems to be my most popular one. Hope you have a phenomenal day, and keep rolling!
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