D&D 5E: The Dryad's Dragon - Olo Dale

Olo Dale - Level 5 Lightfoot Halfling Druid (Circle of the Land)

• Gender: Male
• Age: 24
• Alignment: Neutral Good
• Proficiency Bonus: +3
• Speed: 25 feet
• AC: 15

Attributes

• STR: 10 (+0)
• DEX: 14 (+2)
• CON: 15 (+2)
• INT: 11 (+0)
• WIS: 16 (+3)
• CHA: 11 (+0)

Proficiencies

• Languages: Dwarvish, Common, Halfling
• Weapon: Dagger, Sickle, Spear, Mace, Quarterstaff, Sling, Javelin, Club, Scimitar, Dart
• Armour: Light, Medium, Shields
• Tools: Woodcarvers tools
• Skills: Animal Handling, Arcana, Medicine, Survival
• Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom

Features and Traits

• Lucky (can reroll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw)
• Brave (advantage on saving throws to resist being frightened)
• Halfling Nimbleness (move through the space of any creature larger than you)
• Naturally Stealthy (can attempt to hide even when only obscured by a creature larger than you)
• Druidic (can speak Druidic, leave hidden messages in the language, and automatically spot another Druid’s hidden message)
• Wild Shape (can turn into a non-flying creature that has – at most – ½ CR for 2 hours)
• Bonus Cantrip
• Natural Recovery (recover a number of expended spell slots equal to or less than half your level during a short rest)
• Circle Spells (Forest)

Weapons

• Scimitar (Finesses, Light): +5 Attack Bonus, 1d6 + 2 slashing damage

Equipment

• Leather Armour (AC: 11 + Dex)
  • Oak Wooden Shield (+2 to AC when held)
• Ash Wooden Staff (Druidic Focus)
• Explorer's Pack (Backpack, Bedroll, Mess Kit, Tinderbox, 10 Torches, 10 Days of Rations, Waterskin, 50ft of Hempen Rope)

Spellcasting

• Spell save DC: 14
• Spell attack modifier: +6
• Spellslots: 1st level slots – 4, 2nd level slots – 3, 3rd level slots – 2
• Number of spells that can be prepared: 8
• Cantrips: Druidcraft, Guidance, Poison Spray, Thorn Whip
• Circle Spells: Barkskin (2nd Level Spell), Spider Climb (2nd Level Spell), Call Lightning (3rd Level Spell), Plant Growth (3rd Level Spell)

Background

The Dales are a respected family of Druids, alchemists, and traders among the Clans. The traders and alchemists bring supplies and medicine from clan to clan, while the Druids protect their own clan from the beasts that call the woodlands home. Though Olo Dale was born to a trader father and a woodcarver mother, he always took more interest in the Druids of his family, especially his grandfather Perrin Dale. As a child would spend as much time as he could at his grandfather’s small hut, watching in awe as he used his ancient magics to perform all manner of miracle. In his early teens, Olo pleaded with Perrin to take him on as his apprentice many times, wishing to harness the powerful arts of the Druid to smite evil and explore the world, only for his grandfather to repeatedly refuse to teach him even basic spells. This lasted for many years until, on Olo’s 18th birthday, Perrin agreed to teach his grandson in the ways of the Druid, admitting that he had come to admire the boy’s determination and perseverance in the face of repeated rejection. And so, despite his parent’s initial protests, Olo began to train in the Druidic arts.

The lessons were hard and seemingly random at first – taking a jug of water to the other side of the village without spilling a single drop, memorising meaningless symbols and drawing them from memory the next day, and keeping a fire burning in the pouring rain, just to name a few – but Olo never gave up, no matter how much he wanted to quit and just become a trader. Eventually, Olo began to excel at his lessons and completed many with relative ease when he realised just what Perrin was trying to teach him with ease – keep calm under extreme pressure or you’ll just make things worse for yourself, use simple memorisation methods to help you remember something that would otherwise never stick in your mind, and look to the world around you in order to find solutions to problems you could never solve on your own. It was then that the real training started.

Thanks to his earlier lessons, Olo quickly mastered the Druidic language and complex spell incantations, and soon he was a fully-fledged Druid (a novice Druid, but a Druid nonetheless) in the eyes of his family and the rest of the clan. Even his parents admitted that he seemed better suited to the role of a mystic protector than he did as a trader. Olo stayed with his grandfather for several more years, learning much from the old man under that time and becoming a skilled magic-user in his own right, but Perrin knew that the boy still longed to see the world beyond his clan and so decided to teach him one final lesson – the Balance.

Perrin sat Olo down one cold night and explained the concept to the young Druid. The Balance is a relic from an ancient Druidic religion, of which Perrin was one of the few remaining followers, and was believed to be the force that tied the world together, and to which every seemingly opposing concept actually contributed to. Life and Death, Order and Chaos, Technology and Nature, these forces all worked together (though not necessarily harmoniously) to sustain the Balance and allow everything to thrive. However, if any one concept were to ever gain an advantage over its opposite then it would bring about some form of pain and suffering – if there was no Death then the world would soon become completely overrun and all its resources would soon dry up, if there was total and complete Order then no one would be able to oppose unjust but ‘ordered’ systems, if Nature overran the world then great advancements that have helped countless people would be utterly eradicated and the various races would be reduced to little more than cave-dwelling savages. The only opposing concepts that were exempt from this belief were Good and Evil, as the ancient Druids considered evildoers to be enemies to the Balance itself, even if they did not realise it, and those who did good to be its (sometimes unknowing) protectors. Perrin told Olo that, even if he did not consider the Balance a mystical force like his grandfather did, he should do everything he can to protect it from scourges such as the undead or the conquering Empire. He then handed Olo a pack of supplies and wished him luck on his journeys.

And so, Olo has set out into the world outside of his clan, determined to find adventure and protect the Balance to the best of his abilities.