The zeitgeist with DND druids has always bored me. I play them exclusively evil, as I am finding out just as I think about it now.

There is a middle finger of vecna druid archetype that allows for unique shapeshifts into an abomination. It’s a lot of fun to play and the shapeshift options are very versatile and adjustable each shift. I role played a LE human who sook out expediting the heat death of the universe for the Eldritch pantheon. I joined the party as they were already doing a good job leading to the destruction of society. It was all for the purity of nature, of course.

Another I played was a spore druid who was basically Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but evil. The archetype I used was absolutely awful but it came with lots of good stories as I got incredibly high irl to play the character. I conspired with the DM against the party for the glory of Strahd for an entire year of play, and then abandoned the vampire lord when the party started winning the final fight. Convincing the party irl (who was none the wiser but absolutely hated my character) that Strahd was just trying to get in their heads to split the party will probably be my favorite memory of DND for all time.

Not a backstory quirk, but I have a fun alternative mechanic for a Druid!

I have a Druid PC in the campaign I’m running right now who’s still relatively new to DnD and was disappointed that Wild Shape is limited to just twice a day (the DnD movie might be partially responsible for this). After some discussion we came up with some homebrew rules that she’s happy with and I’ve really enjoyed too.

She chooses two animals per day that she can Wild Shape into and she can switch between them and her human form as often as she’d like, but their HP doesn’t reset and if one of them hits 0, she loses that Wild Shape for the day. She doesn’t have to choose them at the beginning of the day, but once she’s transformed into an animal, she’s locked into that animal for the rest of the day. So if she decides to transform into a cat to be sneaky at the beginning of the day, she loses out on a possibly big beefy meat shield later on. She also can’t choose the same animal twice.

It’s been a fun way of giving her the flexibility to go in and out of animal form during RP (and sometimes a little in battle) without feeling like the balance is thrown way off.