Though most dryads prefer to stick close to their bonded tree, you have always felt the call of adventure. With a magical acorn in tow, you’ve made your way to Baldur’s Gate—and this is where your story begins.

This mod adds a new playable race with four subraces, four bodytypes, new race progressions, a unique acorn mechanic, immersive character tags, guardians, CC options, and more. This mod overwrites the “Wood Elf” tag with the “Dryad” tag--see “Known Issues and Quirks” for more details.

Racial Progressions

The Dryad racial progressions are inspired by the vanilla game Dryad summon, and are based around harnessing the power of nature to great effect. As your dryad levels up, they will be able to mimic barkskin, resist magical effects, summon other dryads to their aid, and more. The race is intended to be quite strong, and it’s recommended to use mods that increase the difficulty of the game if you prefer a greater challenge.

Wiki links for the vanilla abilities/passives:
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Darkvision
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Fey_Ancestry
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Barkskin
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Permanently_Armed
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Fallen_Lover
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Magic_Resistance
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Conjure_Woodland_Being
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Nature%27s_Step
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Grasp_of_the_Forest

Customization Options

A dryad’s appearance may change along with the season or environment from which they come. Thus, this mod adds four subraces, each themed after a certain season. Each subrace comes with its own unique appearance options and its own starting cantrip.

• Spring Dryad - Entangle (Dryad ver.)
• Summer Dryad - Fire Bolt
• Autumn Dryad - Shocking Grasp
• Winter Dryad - Ray of Frost
  

The mod comes with custom leafy underwear that is equipped on dryads by default. The underwear has a different design for each subrace, in keeping with how leaves might appear during that season.

Currently, elf and half-elf heads are available for dryads, as well as one custom dryad head. The custom dryad head supports tattoos, freckles, vitiligo, scarring, and maturity, while the elf and half-elf heads do not.

Want extra heads? Check out Love test Dryad head for all, with five variants!

The mod also comes with two hairstyles, “Medusa's Locks”, which is a mashup variation of the “Dryad” and “Gorgon” vanilla hairstyles, and "Braids of Stheno", which is a mashup variation of the "Bruenor Braids" and "Portrait Model" vanilla hairstyles.

The Acorn Of Far Travel

Every dryad begins the game with an Acorn of Far Travel in their inventory. A dryad will become sick and vulnerable if they stray too far from their bonded tree. Fortunately, there is a solution—an acorn harvested from a dryad’s bonded tree and blessed with a special spell can mimic the proximity of their tree. This acorn is essential to your dryad’s livelihood. Without it, your dryad will lose their natural resistances and become vulnerable to most types of damage. This adds an extra element of danger to the game—lose your acorn, whether by dropping it, selling it, or having it confiscated, and the rest of the game becomes that much more difficult. This also allows players to, if desired, intentionally handicap themselves to offset dryads’ strong racial progressions.

Note that the Acorn has no effect on non-dryads, though the status may still appear if holding an Acorn.

(If you really need another Acorn for some reason, you can use this Script Extender command to spawn another acorn.)

Compatibility and Recommended Mods





Currently the mod is compatible with the following CC mods:

Long Flowery Hair
Short Flowery Hair
Bruenor x Bone Dance Braided Hair
Neon’s Assorted Hairs
more dreadlocs and curly hairstyles
more dreadlocs and curly hairstyles Vol.02
Hairstyles of Faerun

If there’s a CC mod you’d like to be patched in, feel free to request it, though I can’t guarantee it’ll be included.

I recommend the following mods to go along with this one:

Love test Dryad head for all
Basket Full of Equipment SFW
Male Dryad Outfit
Bloodvine Clothes
Woodland Dress

Known Issues and Quirks

• I am aware that lore-wise, dryads are female-only. However, I decided to put in the extra work to also make male dryads so that those who prefer can play a male dryad.
• For deeper immersion into the dryad roleplaying experience, this mod overwrites the “Wood Elf” tag with the “Dryad” tag. You will be able to select “Dryad”-tagged options as if it were a vanilla race. Since it’s not currently possible to create custom tags, this is as good as it gets for now. Disabling the mod should revert the “Wood Elf” tag back to normal.
• When examining the dryad underwear in inventory, an incorrect model appears. I will likely not be fixing this because it’s such a small thing.
• Due to using a female texture, the male elf heads have a neck seam where they connect to the body. I intend to fix this in a future update by creating a male version of the texture.
• By default, Dryads receive the Baldurian tag due to vanilla game limitations. However, if you install Community Library and Tag Framework from BG3 Community Library, the Baldurian tag will automatically be removed, allowing for different/more accurate dialogue options.
• Dryads have leaves for genitals, this is intentional. I do not plan to add real genitals.
  

Plans for Future Updates

I make no guarantees that any of these will come to pass, these are just ideas for the future of the mod.

• Fix neck seams on male dryads.
• Improve the dryad underwear by adding vines.
• More compatibility with other CC mods.
• Add a dryad hireling.
• Add more custom dryad head presets.
• Adjust the portrait generation from generic elf to something else.
• Add more custom icons for passives, spells, and subraces.
  



This mod is my first race mod, and a lot of love and effort went into every bit of it. But I certainly could not have done it without the lovely people mentioned below. Huge thanks to:

• My beta team: ne0nbutchery, CelestialSpider, and Rando!
• ne0nbutchery and commanderstrawberry for the race icon!
• Archer for the leaf VFX!
• Kaz and Archer for teaching me how to make custom guardians!
• labotor for holding my hand through much of the race-making process!
• KittHaven for assistance with fixing UTav-related issues!
• Trips for creating the race template I used!
• ByteBard for the equipment generator!
• ne0nbutchery for creating Dryad Head 1!
• And everyone at the Down By The River discord who supported me in this endeavor! I love you guys!