D&D 5E (2014) Dhampir PCs as Vampire Hunters

[Mind of tempest]

So what would this party of those with parental issue be?

I was thinking party of workable joke characters in a mad adventure.

 

[Zardnaar]

Just needs a trenchcoat of protection to wear in lieu of armor.

And call yourself Blade or variants of it. Edge perhaps.

The new Drizzt Do'Urden to piss off DMs.

 

[Mind of tempest]

And call yourself Blade or variants of it. Edge perhaps.

The new Drizzt Do'Urden to piss off DMs.

look I am too young to know why drizzt would anger a dm can you explain it?

 

[Weiley31]

look I am too young to know why drizzt would anger a dm can you explain it?

Probably cuz Drizzt is seen as a Mary Su type character that became somewhat of a cliche character type and now EVERYBODY wants to parade around like such a character and it just snowballs from there.


Especially when, at the time Drizzt came around, everybody just wanted to be a "good" Drow that didn't want to deal with all the other ruined by Lolth Drow that gave the race a bad name.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

UNDEAD SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP!

Would you like to know more?

I think you just basically wrote an entire RPG setting with this post.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Probably cuz Drizzt is seen as a Mary Su type character that became somewhat of a cliche character type and now EVERYBODY wants to parade around like such a character and it just snowballs from there.


Especially when, at the time Drizzt came around, everybody just wanted to be a "good" Drow that didn't want to deal with all the other ruined by Lolth Drow that gave the race a bad name.

My feeling was that most of this was people pretending to be appalled by a thing that had never actually happened, but that they had heard about from someone else.

I mean, played since 1988, and I've never come across a player who basically wanted to be Drizzt. Nor heard of one from another DM I knew IRL. So how common can it actually be? I guess it could be, but perhaps people who have had it happen could report in on it?

I've seen a few good Drow, but they were all extremely different takes to Drizzt.

Also, the issue with Drizzt, wasn't really that he was a "Mary Sue" (by definition, he could not be), or even "overpowered" or something. It was that he was lame. He was this utterly cliche faux-angsty woe-is-me but I'm so awesome dude who was like... not cool. He was tacky. Even if you think he was a Mary Sue, plenty of other characters are "Mary Sues" by that standard, but people don't get mad when they get copied, because guess what? They're not lame. And Drizzt was lame.

And Blade isn't lame. Blade is cool. So if a player rips off Blade, the DM is most likely going to be like "Yeah, awesome! You've got a badass PC!", not "Ugh not this lame loser again!" as they would with Drizzt clone.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Blade from his first appearance in 1973, was certainly a badass to begin with by 1970's standards. He was created by Marv Wolfman for Marvel, the writer best known for his DC work such as Teen Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Gene Colan the penciller who created Falcon and Captain Marvel. I would certainly say that Blade was influenced by Shaft.

It's a common "anti"-hero archetype of having someone who might contain a bit of darkness in their nature fighting against their nature.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Blade from his first appearance in 1973, was certainly a badass to begin with by 1970's standards. He was created by Marv Wolfman for Marvel, the writer best known for his DC work such as Teen Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Gene Colan the penciller who created Falcon and Captain Marvel. I would certainly say that Blade was influenced by Shaft.

It's a common "anti"-hero archetype of having someone who might contain a bit of darkness in their nature fighting against their nature.

blade has terrible taste in clothes, far too many colours in that costume and he can pull that off, the Bandolier is nice however.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

look I am too young to know why drizzt would anger a dm can you explain it?

Drow are viewed as usually chaotic evil or neutral evil. Drizzt was one of the few exceptions. He wasn't neutral either, but full-on good-aligned. Drizzt's backstory was quite unique to explain how this was even possible. Drizzt became an outcast in the Underdark, an extremely dangerous place, and even surviving long enough to become an outcast was difficult enough.

Many GMs aren't particularly interested in evil PCs, especially if they believe in session zero, because they don't want a conflict between evil PCs and good PCs, while most adventures are written for good or neutral PCs. Just by putting drow behind the "evil" gate ensured that PCs couldn't be drow. (Or you could do an all-evil or all-drow campaign, where this isn't an issue.) However, GMs run into a few problems with good-aligned drow:

1. In some editions, drow are overpowered. Not an issue if the entire party is drow, but this is rare.
2. Many GMs like evil drow, and do not want good-aligned drow in their campaign. There's all kinds of issues that come up: everyone assumes you're evil based on the reputation of the drow, you suffer penalties in the light, there are so few good-aligned drow that they typically overly resemble Drizzt (or dance naked in the moonlight, etc).
3. Drow (specifically good-aligned drow) became very popular for a time. Drizzt being really badass by drow standards (and drow being really badass by D&D novel standards) is just one of many reasons for this. Lots of GMs aren't interested in "fad" PCs. This creates a conflict between player and GM: a similar conflict comes up if a player really wants to play a concept that the GM is really opposed to (like a gunslinger, a kender, an evil PC in a good party, someone from a part of the setting the GM isn't familiar or interested in, etc).

R. A. Salvatore has written about many evil drow, who typically appear in the popular Drizzt series. He edited a six part series featuring evil drow (with no sign of Drizzt), but you won't get to see many players getting to play evil drow... it would frankly be easier to play a good-aligned drow in a "typical" party, even if the player has to argue with the GM a long time to get their way.

Forgotten Realms authors went to great lengths to portray an incredibly evil society (one that, realistically couldn't exist) and to play a good-aligned drow you basically need to trash all of that background to explain why your character is both different and alive (hopefully without carbon copying Drizzt's background). You end up with a character who is basically an elf, with slightly different powers, who is required to be "edgy". Baldur's Gate introduced the popular Viconia, a dark elf priestess who no longer worships Lolth but is evil and still worships an evil deity; her personality in no way resembles Drizzt.

Drow work better, sort of, in other settings such as Eberron (they're not all evil, and their backstory is completely different) or Warhammer Fantasy (they are a cultural offshoot of high elves, and yeah they're almost always evil but they can see in the light, don't look different, etc). The "signature" Warhammer dark elf is probably Malus Darkblade, who is very definitely evil but maintains some audience sympathy because he keeps finding himself being tortured or manipulated by dark elves who are slightly worse than him.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Still happening today, BTW - known as "being taken behind the woodshed", and generally done with a willow rush.

Can confirm. Just last year my cousin had the pleasure of beating the piss out of his cousin from Oklahoma and taking his kids away from him for it. The second part was vastly more controversial in the extended family than the first, which I found odd.