I rolled up a Circle of Stars Druid for an Eberron campaign recently. Even before I even knew what adventure I was going to play, I drew up Delre, keen to try out a nature-focused character. The idea of playing a “nature wizard” was intriguing. A druid built to deal damage from spell attacks and not a Circle of the Moon wildshaper. Once I knew we’d be playing in Eberron, the character started growing more substance. She would be a hill dwarf originally hailing from the Mror Holds, but wouldn’t have spent much time there growing up. She would live nomadically across the continent of Khorvaire with her honeybees and jars of homemade mead. She would be friendly with goblins, her main trading partners. When the group of us set a start date to play in Eberron, Delre Doldarun the Circle of Stars druid was born.
Who was Delre Doldarun?
Delre was raised by a druidic gnome named Badger. After her mother died in childbirth and her father vanished east into the mountains out of grief, the mining clan sent the newborn to an orphanage near Krona Peak. These serious and work-obsessed dwarves had no need for another mount to feed; a tiny, baby girl who would take years to eventually (if ever) contribute to their society. By a stroke of luck, Badger was passing through soon after Delre arrived at the orphanage, and he decided to take the fledgling creature under his wing. Badger raised Delre, becoming her teacher and mentor in addition to caretaker. He taught her to live off the land, grow food, build makeshift shelters, and care for insects and animals. They lived travelling from place to place, creating short-term homes in forests and grasslands when they needed to, and making a living off of trading goods in nearby markets. Delre even developed her own brand of mead from their hives of travelling honeybees she learned to cultivate. Since she was surrounded by it since her first memory, Delre didn’t really understand that her caretaker’s affinity with nature was out of the ordinary. When she was old enough, Badger taught her about Druidic as well as different types of magic in the world of Eberron.
Naturally inquisitive, Delre’s curiosity eventually turned skyward, and she began to study the stars. One night, while she was searching the heavens, Delre spied a most interesting assortment of stars. She hastily marked their location and arrangement on a scrap of leather so she could continue to study them on future nights. But after that mystical evening, she could not find them in the sky again. It became clear to Badger that Delre had learned as much from him as she could, and the elderly gnome encouraged her to continue her studies at Morgrave University to seek the answers to her questions about the universe.
Why was she created?
With all the impending doom of climate change and world disaster in today’s world, I felt like playing a character who cared deeply about the environment. Really lean in to an over the top hippy, rooted in nature and the old ways despite being in a world so overwhelmingly enriched by technology and innovation. As I kicked ideas around, I started to draw inspiration from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. How about a character rich with wisdom about and respect for the natural world, open minded to blending western science with aboriginal teachings? Around the same time, I also was musing about the difficulties people are facing more and more these days to fit in with and adapt to the fast-changing world we live in. You could fall asleep for little over a year now and new slang, trends, and the best vacuum cleaner would have all changed in that time.
Somehow, Delre was born out of those two streams of thought. To some she seemed wise, to others desperately naive. But her eagerness and openness to learn from anyone or any thing, would keep her moving forward and making friends with all sorts.
Once I was settled on a druid, I next needed to pick a subclass (we started the adventure at level 2). I had recently been gifted a copy of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and the subclass options all looked amazing. I wanted to play them all. My decision was made slightly easier as I was already determined to play my nature wizard, so I started bouncing ideas around with the DM about the Circle of Stars subclass. Growing up, there were a few years where I was obsessed with Greek mythology, stars and constellations. My DM was also getting excited about pulling in some of the lore about Eberron into the campaign. Together we read Keith Baker’s Reach For The Stars article, and from then on there really was no turning back on Delre Doldarun, the Circle of Stars druid.
In D&D, so many of us trend towards playing characters who mirror ourselves or our favourite heroes, and sometimes both! You might see people trying to diverge from their ordinary, orderly, boring selves, by going the chaotic neutral route. Unfortunately, playing chaotic neutral well is quite a feat. It can very easily turn into chaotic stupid, and unless the whole party and DM are on board for that, it can make for some pretty tense (and potentially not fun) table dynamics. It’s rare I’ll see someone play a character that’s so ordinary but so unlike who they are. I really wanted to try something like that with Delre, I wanted her to be chaotic but not annoying for the rest of the table. I’ll admit it was difficult to try and balance all these things and remove every part of myself from her personality. I don’t think I fully succeeded, but it was an enjoyable attempt.
How to roleplay her?
When Delre set out to study the stars at Morgrave University, she was an aloof teenager, awed by the impressiveness of academia and the awesomeness of airships and lighting rails able to transport you hundreds of miles in mere hours. She looked upwards and outwards, so unlike the typical miners of the eastern reaches of Khorvaire who were her kin.
I thought about how a typical freshman might feel, leaving their small town and going to the big city for the first time. How would she interact if she was used to wagons and horses and now there were magically propelled ships everywhere? Days used to be spent travelling town to town and sleeping on the roadside; selling honey, mead and other artisanal goods to kind neighbourly farmers. All of a sudden she was surrounded by people from every corner of the planet. Although worldly enough from spending time in marketplaces and trading with merchants from all over, her lens was that of an artisan, her views shaped by Badger’s stories and teachings. The odd time she may have picked up an anecdote or saying from a traveller, but for the most part, she knew only what her limited experiences had provided her so far and what Badger had told her about the world. It’s one of the reasons her attention was so aptly drawn to the sky. The unknown that was right in front of her but couldn’t be reached, that even Badger didn’t have answers for when he knew so much about everything else.
More specifically, I decided to give Delre a healthy does of self-confidence. Personally, it always takes me a while to muster up the courage to speak my mind, so for Delre, I put that at the forefront of her being. She wouldn’t hesitate to speak up and call out a professor if she disagreed with a statement or lesson. She also wouldn’t shy away from announcing the things she might be wondering about but lacking the understanding of the true meaning. This behaviour is what lead her into being sent to Xen’drik on that dangerous research mission in the first place, and into the mysterious ruins mere minutes after crash landing on the unfamiliar continent.
To be honest, I also added some personality traits that would enable me to progress the gameplay if everyone else was being indecisive. Insightful, introspective, and caring, but also naive to many parts of the world, brash, and potentially reckless. She once shot off a guiding bolt in a crowded room at someone because she was pick-pocketed. Overreaction? Definitely. In character? Certainly. Would she do it again? Probably not… Believe me when I tell you how horrified Delre was when her bolt missed the target and disintegrated an innocent bystander. She barely spoke for 2 days after that, realizing for the first time just what kind of negative repercussions her growing powers could have. This episode, plus witnessing her new best friend almost getting knifed by a goblin gangster – a shockingly different experience compared to the goblins she was used to hanging out with – not to mention getting chased across the ocean by a terrifying dragon, all had her utterly rattled. Let’s just say it was a traumatising orientation week for our young Delre.
What mechanics did she start with?
Wisdom needs to be a druid’s highest statistic, then constitution or dexterity, I figured. Dwarves usually have high constitution too. Charisma is typically the dump stat… but I wanted to give her a little bit of skill in her negotiating skills, you know, as a guild artisan. I also wanted her to be able to deal heavy damage, but avoid being a total glass cannon. Using the roll stats method of 4d6 drop lowest, and a full re-roll for stats totalling under 70 (see reference), here’s what she started with:
| Ability | Score |
| Strength | 8 (-1) |
| Dexterity | 15 (+2) |
| Constitution | 18 (+4) |
| Intelligence | 11 (0) |
| Wisdom | 19 (+4) |
| Charisma | 13 (+1) |
I guided some decisions around her personality based on the statistics, but I also made some decisions around how I arranged her stats based on the character I was creating. Slight for a dwarf, it made sense for her to have higher dexterity than strength, also probably something to be said being raised by a gnome and not the dwarves she was born to.
Druids are lighter on skills than some other classes, combining her Guild Artisan background, Delre started off with proficiency in:
- Insight (Wis)
- Perception (Wis)
- Persuasion (Cha)
- Survival (Wis)
As a Circle of Stars druid, you get some Cleric-esque flavour with the ability to use Guiding Bolt and Guidance. You also get the Starry Form feature to use instead of Wild Shape when you want to. It buffs healing spells, concentration checks, or provides an additional ranged attack for up to 10 minutes at a time. These abilities are super thematic; you’re basically drawing on an ethereal power to channel the might of the heavens, you turn into a literal constellation on the battlefield. And you do this all without having to praise some devotion to a god or other patron, studying books, or being “born special”. It’s super cool, especially when your DM is just as pumped about it as you are.
Wild Shape is a staple for druids, and I was able to use it a few times to dip into that beefy HP pool, and gain some physical stats to overcome barriers or challenges that my weak little dwarf wasn’t going to stand a chance at. The wall climbing ability of a cat, panther, or spider can be very handy in a bind, and you have the ability for an hour without having to blow a spell slot for it.
In conclusion, would I play a Circle of Stars druid again?
Yes, for sure. On the mechanics side, it felt quite powerful at the low levels and there’s more than enough intriguing constellation lore in Eberron (and other worlds) to dig into with different characters from a roleplay side of things. Would I have the next druid be as chaotic as Delre, the invincible teenager? Probably not, but it was fun to run around with that for the series of sessions we played. I think Delre could have grown a lot as a character, but we didn’t get to test that out at the higher levels this go around. I’d also like to explore the higher level spells and Circle of Stars features. It was interesting to play a rural, nature-based character in Eberron, ironically most of our party was more nature-based than technology-based as well. Next time I’d likely try exploring some of the more metropolitan and techno aspects of the world through my character.
For now, Delre rests between the pages of many D&D adventures, the mystery of her missing constellation lost to the lore of unwritten fables. Only time will tell if its story will ever unfold.