“Stalking trespassers through the dense bamboo canopy, the pun-ji dryad reaches its long jagged claw out to the next column. High above the ground her long limbs and grassy hair blend perfectly with the thicket she was cursed to protect. The bamboo doesn’t bend under her weight, but instead sways gently in an imaginary breeze as she moves through the canopy like an eel through water. She is one with her home and these intruders have broken her solitude.”
The dryad is a beautiful fey creature, a guardian of a tree who she is magically bound to sharing it’s life. A typically charming creature, but what does it look like when dryads are bound to something other than a tree? What would a dryad look like that grew along side a bamboo forest? Today we re-flavor the arboreal fey creature to suit this new environment.
Re-flavoring the Dryad
The Pun-ji Wood Dryad on the other hand is a thin, gangly creature akin to a locust or stick bug. Her body appears emaciated, her neck stretched long and appears too thin to support her head. Her exposed spine looks like a bamboo shaft and her arms and legs bend at the wrong angle causing her movements to be sporadic and disjointed. Exaggerating these features gives her a more fearsome appearance. I think this variation would be more hostile and aggressive than her deciduous kin, preferring outright violence against other creatures.
Her limbs have grown in length, segmented to match her surroundings and better camouflaging her into her home. With these longer limbs the dryad can reach further than her cousins bound to a single tree, giving her a slight advantage in melee combat. The elongated stilt like limbs allow her to tower over her foes in combat, so we increase the reach of her attacks by 5 feet giving her a larger hit box. This feature is stolen from the Bugbear’s long limbed feature which adds extra reach to all of their melee attacks. I also like the idea of replacing the dryad’s bludgeoning club attack from the Monster Manual with a piercing jab attack. This type of attack is more thematic using long slender fingers tipped in sharpened nails.
Fey creatures can be both charming and frightening exuding as much fear as charm. To add more depth to our dryad variant let’s exchange Fey Charm with Horrifying Visage like the feature the Sea Hag and Banshee use. This form of fear will cause her foes to retreat, giving the dryad an attack of opportunity that takes advantage of her additional reach.
Tree Stride, is an iconic ability of the dryad, but for this new type I like the idea of reskinning the way the ability looks when the dryad uses it. When the pun-ji wood dryad uses her Tree Stride she becomes ethereal and translucent, instead of entering a nearby tree she moves through surrounding undergrowth like wind, the plants around her bending and moving out of her way. While this version of Tree Stride is active the beautiful half of her fey nature shows through reminding players what they are encountering. The ability still expends only 10 feet of movement just like normal, but allows her to move 60 feet without provoking Attacks of Opportunity.
Battlefield Manipulator
In combat the bamboo dryad excels at battlefield control, manipulating the positions of her enemies. Lets take a look at her spell list. Right off we can replace the Entangle spell with Spike Growth. This spell will up the damage each round if her foes are caught inside its radius while also being thematic for the monster. We can personalize the appearance by changing the description from brambles and thorns to sharpened bamboo spikes that erupt from the ground to better suit the theme. The other spell replacements could be:
At will: thorn whip
3/day: spike growth, longstrider
1/day: plant growth, pass without trace, hold person
The combo of new spells, Horrifying Visage and Tree Stride allow the dryad to position herself and her enemies exactly where she needs them to be, both forcing her opponents to deal with difficult terrain, and taking damage from the dryad’s attacks.
Here is her new stat block:
What do you think? How horrifying is the Pun-ji Wood Dryad? Would you make a change to the spells known or leave as is? Be the first to leave a comment below and let me know what you think.
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