The best DMs will allow it as an immediate reward and remember it for minor consequences later to progress the campaign in some way. “Druid knocked unconscious and taken while eating ants” type stuff
Druids shouldn’t be engaging in diplomacy anyway. Most of the druids I’ve known, thought that diplomacy = “destroy all cities and allow the forest to grow you humanoid bastards!”
I love that you came back and added that edit, that’s some commitment to keeping us up to date on the latest scientific breakthroughs about ant brains (I mean, I’d they have one?) and I appreciate it.
Honestly, this would be a lot of fun as a campaign. Starts off a normal group, druid played by the dm as a PC. Druid shifts, hijinks ensue, druid dies, and now the rest of the party has to battle their way across an unforgiven, sapient bug populated map, to reach the wizard’s house to turn them back. It’s only a mile away, but to them at their size, it might as well be the other side of the planet
Or ‘ants are enough energy for an anteater, but not a druid doing other stuff. Buff melee attacks/perception while in anteater shape, but nerf them in some way if they change or try to use magic in human form’
I was wondering why the DM would even need to make a call, but I guess that would be relevant.
Any DM that said no without a reason for a lack of ants would be a bad DM.
Maybe an ant hunt mini adventure or some minor consequence to this action.
Or just reward their creativity…
The best DMs will allow it as an immediate reward and remember it for minor consequences later to progress the campaign in some way. “Druid knocked unconscious and taken while eating ants” type stuff
“Sure you can.” Later on the druid fails a diplomacy check because they’ve got an ant stuck between their teeth.
Druids shouldn’t be engaging in diplomacy anyway. Most of the druids I’ve known, thought that diplomacy = “destroy all cities and allow the forest to grow you humanoid bastards!”
"okay so i have a great deal for you, you stop expanding your logging business and i don’t turn into a tiger and eat your face, sound good?
I kind of like the idea of "of course you can! … Rolls die
You have angered Ancephole, goddess queen of the ants!"
And then you get this cool side adventure where the party has been shrunk down and must escape a hive of sentient ants
Pretty sure ants are already sentient, but I like it.
Edit: apparently ant sentience is somewhat hotly debated, and the current understanding of ant consciousness and metacognition is murky.
Honestly, people getting sentient/sapient messed up in fiction is one of my pet peeves, and here I go doing it myself.
Sapient ants. A colony of sapient ants
I love that you came back and added that edit, that’s some commitment to keeping us up to date on the latest scientific breakthroughs about ant brains (I mean, I’d they have one?) and I appreciate it.
Edit: ants do in fact have (tiny) brains.
Those ants were a druid colony and now you’ve eaten Neveah…
Honestly, this would be a lot of fun as a campaign. Starts off a normal group, druid played by the dm as a PC. Druid shifts, hijinks ensue, druid dies, and now the rest of the party has to battle their way across an unforgiven, sapient bug populated map, to reach the wizard’s house to turn them back. It’s only a mile away, but to them at their size, it might as well be the other side of the planet
That’s just the plot to Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Depending on how old your group is, it might be nostalgic, or novel.
Similar, but I’m thinking more bugs with cities. Fully sapient.
Or ‘ants are enough energy for an anteater, but not a druid doing other stuff. Buff melee attacks/perception while in anteater shape, but nerf them in some way if they change or try to use magic in human form’