I received a request for Dryads, and I felt that they’d be fun to fill a table for. Since B/X – OSE doesn’t contain Nymphs, Dryads can occupy a portion of that niche nicely. There’s an interesting “Save or Die” feature, which while not as flavorful as blindness, still makes them incredibly dangerous. Rescuing a hapless victim of the Dryad’s Charm from their arboreal prison could make for a neat adventure in itself.
I always endeavor to give them a special, distinctive Tree since it’s so central to their existence. I have another Generator that might be useful to give a Dryad’s Tree a more botanically flavorful name. The encounter is far more memorable if the Dryad dwells within a towering Cradlenut Maple, the looming roots of a Bloodflower Mulberry in bloom, or clinging to a cliffside in a jachelt Gravemantle Cherry, so it’s worth taking a few moments to flesh this out. Besides, that’s where she’s sure to store her treasures, and greedy murder-hobos will be digging up the entire forest otherwise!
Honestly though, I can only think of a handful of times that a Dryad encounter has devolved into some kind of combat. Most of the time they serve as flavorful, fairy tale-ish social obstacles. As a kind of genius loci, they can be very knowledgeable sources of information in their territory. Networked together through tantalizingly vast rhizome and root systems, they could really save a lost party’s bacon. I hope these entries help encourage you to plant one somewhere in your next Forest Hex.
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