D&D General better dark elves?

[Hriston]

I kinda agree that it is redundant to have both shadar-kai and drow in the same setting. To me they seem like variations of the same basic concept. But D&D has a lot of conceptually overlapping stuff like that. I do some serious curating for my own settings.

Drow are to shadar-kai as high elves are to eladrin. (See post #27.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Drow are to shadar-kai as high elves are to eladrin. (See post #27.)

Agreed. An unnecessary overlapping concept.

 

[BookTenTiger]

It could be fun to have "drow" be a category rather than a species. You could have the term drow refer to anyone transformed by the influence of Lolth. Maybe she exudes an aura deep underground, and people who settle there change, over time, due to the proximity to Lolth's power. So you could have elves, dwarves, humans, troglodytes... All are drow because they are magically transformed by Lolth.

 

[Minigiant]

The default of dark elves in my setting are pierced eared, death obsessed, haughty sloths who have undead toil the mushroom fields as they listen to fantasy Bauhaus and Joy Division

 

[Hriston]

Agreed. An unnecessary overlapping concept.

So remove shadar-kai and eladrin and just have three types of elves:

drow for the Shadowfell,​

high elves for the Feywild,​

and wood elves for the Material Plane.​

 

[Scribe]

So remove shadar-kai and eladrin and just have three types of elves:

drow for the Shadowfell,​

high elves for the Feywild,​

and wood elves for the Material Plane.​

Close but flipped for me.

 

[not-so-newguy]

I prefer the Mystara Shadow Elves. They are more viable:
'Far beneath the Broken Lands, in the tunnels where even the humanoids fear to venture, are the lands of the mythic Shadow Elves. Pale and xenophobic, their lands actually cover networks of tunnels directly underneath Alfheim itself, and running as far as Glantri and Darokin. These tunnels are miles beneath the surface, and few outsiders ever set eye on them, none have returned to tell the tale.'

Source: The Newbie's Guide to Mystara.

I was going to suggest this.
In essence, change the Drow's origin story: They were driven underground in order to avoid the fallout of a cataclysmic event. Their culture is based around surviving the brutal UnderDark.

 

[Grantypants]

You could explicitly make the drow into an organization instead of an ancestry/subrace/etc. In a campaign largely set in a single multicultural city, the drow are a group of elf-supremacist terrorists hostile to all non-elves. Instead of being literally underground, they are a figuratively underground secret society with many members in important positions of power. Before acting in public, they hide their identities by magically disguising themselves to have purple skin and white hair.

 

[Vikingkingq]

To be honest, if you want to do evil elves, I think you do them like Warhammer Fantasy do them: they're a culture, not a race, they look just like the "good ones" because they're the result of a civil war in elven society, and they're evil because they're a pointed meta-commentary on the darker aspects of American history. Still have all the 80s Heavy Metal cheese, but with less racism.

 

[Vikingkingq]

selfish has its uses, maybe malice is more pure evil never seen malice as a good thing.

shadar kai have three clear weaknesses.

name is a mouthful
planer thus making them harder to integrate into most settings
just goth elves they lack a coolness factor

I've come around on the Shadar-Kai since they were useful in providing that last extra je ne sais quoi for an Elf Shadow Monk, because sometimes Wood Elf fits mechanically but not thematically.