It depends on the circumstances. If a boar runs up and stabs you with a tusk and the druid stops that attack, standing there patting the pig on the snout saying "don't you dare hurt my cute little piggy!" then yes... chop its bloody head off and nail its innards to the forrest wall. The pig still stabbed you, so the animosity remains... and consequently nature's food chain recognizes that when an herbivore assaults an omnivore it has a 50% chance of being eaten and a 49% chance of just being gutted. (The other 1% are occasions where a rampaging deer tramples a wayward child to death who strayed too far from town) This is actually a form of animal empathy... it lets the animal learn from its mistake during the last fleeting moments of its short brutal life wishing that it never had bothered to try to become a carnivore of human flesh. Perhaps in the next life it will come back as a mink, bunny, halfling or housecat, something cuter and less apt to fits of rage. It's not like the druid would be forgiving if a human walked up to him and stabbed him in the guts, and then his buddy screamed out, "it's ok, he's just grumpy in the mornin!" and walked off with the errant knifer. Revenge is a very compelling and natural emotion... kick a bear in the nose in real life and you'll see what I mean.
Now if a druid is walking around with a tame animal that hasn't attacked you yet, then there's no real reason to kill it, and in fact that'd just be cruel and uncalled for. If the druid shouts out, "let me deal with this bear so that it wont attack us" a good 100 feet away from the encounter, then for Katia's sake just let them go and tame the critter. I've seen both instances like these rampantly smashed by overcaffienated sociopaths who scream and charge even critters very obviously under control, sadly. Some rare cases it is in character, like when a raging orc-blooded barbarian just wants to smash everything it sees... but most cases I've seen are rangers using things for target practice and low-lvl players farming them for xp.
This isn't very cut and dry though, since there is a hardcoded lapse in perception from when a player sees a red hostile animal and clicks on it to attack, to the point when a druid makes his empathy chack and turns the beast calmly blue. Many times the "force attack" is really just the fighter following through on his own NWN engine inertia... since turning something blue mid-attack just doesn't prevent a previous targetted attack from following through. Druids should not be angry at people who kill animals that they were already fighting at the time when the druid tames them... Though yes, I have seen many instances where the fighters were attacking a monster and the druid tamed an animal which helped them fight the thing... the monster dies, there's a short pause, then the fighter just turns back around and starts wailing on the poor animal that was just helping him. Horrible RP, and no wonder many druids are upset with this practice... even most CE characters wouldn't be that psychotically random.
Tamed wild animals from the wilderness on the other hand should expect to be shot down when trying to enter town. Any druid who encourages wild animals to visit the city without a leash or storms through town in the form of a bear should be expelled from the order and made to reroll their character with negative wisdom modifiers. Those who go crazy and attack everybody doing the Johan quest with threats and lured beasts should be publicly executed by their own druid circles or exiled to Belinara in order to keep the peace. Druids who think that the whole world should be vegetarian and scold every man with a cheeseburger should watch cute little baby bunny rabbits mauled to death by hungry revenous wolverines in the dead of night amidst their horrid shrill screaming. Those who yell at tailors and lumberjacks should walk around naked and be limited to throwing rocks as weapons... the list goes on.
Generally the amount of respect a druid gets is equally perportionate to how much of a realist they are... extremists and fanatic stereotypes are the ones that the average character can't stand. This is true also for Paladins, where you'll find that the ones who drink and consort with womenfolk are more easily to identify with than the chaste ones who think that every single aspect of life that's enjoyable is a cardinal sin. The same goes for a druid like Yarniblut who eats meat and doesn't pity a doe crazy enough to attack a half-giant with a 6-foot long sword. This is not to say that no amount of predjudice exists, there will always be that. Just how you present yourself and interact with others in a case by case manner is the ultimate decider in the relationship's long run. Get past the initial jabs at the class as a whole and build a relationship from there with the individual. If you serve to be a good exception, then you totally smash their stereotype.
Now as Dorganoth said, just one bad egg can spoil the bunch, and right now many memories are fresh with bounties, burning dwarves, threats and lightning storms in response to pelt skinning. It's up to each individual druid to come forth and explain to their friends in game how they are different, where they personally stand on certain issues, and to become active in their druidic circles so that they can self-police the type of militant behavior that serves only to stir up anger at the class as a whole. Sure there will be jerks out there who will go out of their way to tease you about your oaths, but this is not much different than the kinds of interaction that Paladins of Toran and Rofierien get from just about every rogue in game. When it spills into griefing is when you send a tell to that person "stop this, it isn't fun for me and its getting old" and they quirp back with something like "You're a druid/paladin/orc PC... GET OVER IT!" and keep harrassing you. Those instances you should screen shot immediately and send in a report to the Grievances Forum.
On the tactics side of things, anybody who doesn't assign the druid a role in the party is a poor leader... druids have decent hp, tons of healing, a decent list of offensive spells and a whole slew of nifty buffs. On quests especially, some of their powers can be godsends... Imagine if you had to sneak into Prantz past Broegar's guards... why not just send the druid in cat form? It's not like the dwarf patrol's going to drop everything they're doing and shoult "Halt cat! To arms! To Arms! Holy hells, there's a KITTY-CAT on tha loose!!!" More likely than not, the stubby little brigand will either ignore it or might even be bored enough to feed and pet the little furball. Did something fall off the ship and sink to the ocean's deep dark, cold floor? Have the druid either tame a dolphin or dive in themselves in water elemental form; anything down there that would normally be hostile would probably just see water. All sorts of witnesses to events abound in the animal kingdom; as well as messengers, diversions and onslaughts. A swarm of rats storming the wharf at the right time could divert a large portion of guards from their regula patrols and not even seem cause for alarm. The druid's usefulness is limited only by the expanse of their imaginations.
