Drow - good for anything?

[Klaus]

Okay, how's about a Drow Battle Sorcerer?

+2 Cha gives bonus spells and adds to spell DC.
+2 Dex helps when you're limited to light armor (medium with Battle Caster feat).
+2 Int gives another maxed skill.
-2 Con is alleviated by HD d8

Caster level is 2 behind, but the spells aren't the only schtick for the Battle Sorcerer. The reduced hp can be alleviated by Improved Toughness (+1 hp/HD), or maybe by taking the Stalwart Sorcerer substitution level from Complete Mage (+2 hp per Sorcerer level). Or a toad familiar (+3 hp).

The analysis Seeten posted is neat, but there a lot of ways you can work around some issues. For intance, for every class that gets heavy armor, Seeten mentions "+2 Dex... full plate". Well, if you have +2 Dex, you only need to put a 10 in Dex to get the maximum Dex bonus a regular full plate allows. The points you save there can be spent on Con, effectively cancelling out those modifiers. Place a 13 in Con and an 11 in Dex and you end up with 13 Dex and 11 Con. Not a huge hit by a long shot.

 

[Felix]

Okay, how's about a Drow Battle Sorcerer?

+2 Cha gives bonus spells and adds to spell DC.
+2 Dex helps when you're limited to light armor (medium with Battle Caster feat).
+2 Int gives another maxed skill.
-2 Con is alleviated by HD d8

Caster level is 2 behind, but the spells aren't the only schtick for the Battle Sorcerer. The reduced hp can be alleviated by Improved Toughness (+1 hp/HD), or maybe by taking the Stalwart Sorcerer substitution level from Complete Mage (+2 hp per Sorcerer level). Or a toad familiar (+3 hp).

Something similar can be said for the Warmage. +2 Dex is nice in (eventually) Medium armor; +2 Int is another skill and an extra Warmage Edge; +2 Cha is bonus spells and save DC.

Then the question becomes, "do I really want to be a Warmage"?

 

[Klaus]

Something similar can be said for the Warmage. +2 Dex is nice in (eventually) Medium armor; +2 Int is another skill and an extra Warmage Edge; +2 Cha is bonus spells and save DC.

Then the question becomes, "do I really want to be a Warmage"?

And the +2 Dex adds to ranged touch attacks, which abound for Warmage (and makes up for the poor BAB).

 

[Votan]

My fix. +2 int for males. -2 wisdom. +2 cha for females. -2 con. SR. LA +1.

This means we get 1 ability score with a bonus, not 3. Each gender has a penalty to a stat. The arcane casters lose the con penalty. 1 la is much better for spellcasters than 2. It fixes most of the paladin problem, but I'd keep an eye on it, just in case.

This is a very good fix. It actually enhances flavor (such as the weak willed average Drow male or the seductive Drow Priestess) and synergizes well with the favored classes. It's also playable as a race.

The truth is that I don't much care, one way or the other, about specific Drow abilities. I care about interesting flavor (that is what is fun to play). They used to use tricks to strip magic resistance from PC Drow in previous editions -- this was fine as I didn't want to play a "magic resistant guy" but rather the dark mirror of the elf. What they could be if they turned their talents into darkenss. Either to revel in the insanity of the dark elves or to play the classic tortured hero.

Sure, this was such a good idea that many find it cliche. But a dark elf is supposed to be scary. For game balance I accept equal. But it actually hurts flavor when the dark elf is weak and kind of useless compared to the powerful humans and elves in the party!

 

[Votan]

Okay, how's about a Drow Battle Sorcerer?

+2 Cha gives bonus spells and adds to spell DC.
+2 Dex helps when you're limited to light armor (medium with Battle Caster feat).
+2 Int gives another maxed skill.
-2 Con is alleviated by HD d8

Caster level is 2 behind, but the spells aren't the only schtick for the Battle Sorcerer. The reduced hp can be alleviated by Improved Toughness (+1 hp/HD), or maybe by taking the Stalwart Sorcerer substitution level from Complete Mage (+2 hp per Sorcerer level). Or a toad familiar (+3 hp).

The analysis Seeten posted is neat, but there a lot of ways you can work around some issues. For intance, for every class that gets heavy armor, Seeten mentions "+2 Dex... full plate". Well, if you have +2 Dex, you only need to put a 10 in Dex to get the maximum Dex bonus a regular full plate allows. The points you save there can be spent on Con, effectively cancelling out those modifiers. Place a 13 in Con and an 11 in Dex and you end up with 13 Dex and 11 Con. Not a huge hit by a long shot.

Two quick comments:

1) Battlesorcerer is an optional rule but a good class for a Drow despite the absence of a decent skill list to exploit the +2 INT.

2) When playing an arcane caster and using point buy (similar arguments work for rolled but require more space), CON for an arcane caster is 14 in EVERY SINGLE CASE. If you play a Drow you have 12. You can't move these points you save in DEX into CON because at this level CON is twice as expensive.

When playing a melee character, you have the same issue. When buying stats, 14 is a big break point. This makes Dwarves (easy 16) tough and elves (usually 12) weak.

Even with the Elite Array (15,14,13,12,10, 8 -- the stats the game is balanced across a Drow you see issues).

Consider an iconic Drow (cleric so there is heavy armor) compared to the other two iconics (Dwarf and Human); we'll realistically assume that the 15 goes into wisdom . . .

Human:
STR 13 DEX 12 CON 14 INT 8 WIS 15 CHA 10

Dwarf
STR 13 DEX 12 CON 16 INT 8 WIS 15 CHA 8

Drow
STR 13 DEX 14 CON 12 INT 10 WIS 15 CHA 12

Sure, the Drow Stats are better. The Human is 2 levels up.

Now consider a Asimar:
STR 13 DEX 12 CON 14 INT 8 WIS 17 CHA 12

Is that not uniformly better than a Drow?

Sure the Drow could swap around stats to reduce DEX:

Consider:
STR 13 DEX 10 CON 12 INT 12 WIS 15 CHA 14

But the LA +1 race is still almost better.

Without the 2 HD, the Drow is clearly superior to the human or dwarf. But let's pick the exact middle of the range Level 11.

The Drow is Level 9 and casting 5th level spells. The Dwarf is Level 11, has about 15 more hit points, +2 BAB, better saves (before racial bonuses), better syngeries and cast 6th level spells at a higher caster level.

Ouch!

 

[irdeggman]

The Drow is Level 9 and casting 5th level spells. The Dwarf is Level 11, has about 15 more hit points, +2 BAB, better saves (before racial bonuses), better syngeries and cast 6th level spells at a higher caster level.

Ouch!

But isn't precisely because of those racial bonuses that the Drow gets the +2 LA in the first place? By his I mean the +2 to all spell saves (hey the same as the dwarf right?) but also the 9th class level drow has in addition SR = 20 - which is huge, especially since the character then gets to attempt saves also. Essentially the drow gets a +1 LA due to the imbalanced ability score adjustments and then another +1 due to SR.

 

[Darklone]

Stalwart sorcerer variant would be another solution to the drows hitpoint problem... but yet another hit at his effective level of his known spells.

 

[Wolfwood2]

I was intrigued by the suggestion earlier in the thread that 4E might fix the problems of LA characters being critically behind on hitpoints.

Taking drow as a test case, what if they got 1d8+con hitpoints for their two level adjustment levels? No other benefits. No BAB or skill points or saves or feat progression or class abilities. Just an extra 2d8 + 2(con) hitpoints.

Would that serve to make them more balanced?

 

[Darklone]

IMHO that would make them too strong.

You might end up at a situation where a drow might have more hitpoints than an elf with the same ECL.

 

[Votan]

IMHO that would make them too strong.

You might end up at a situation where a drow might have more hitpoints than an elf with the same ECL.

How?

The only way I can come up with for this to happen (1d8 + CON > 2 HD + 2x CON) is for an elf arcane caster with a large CON penalty.

With a 6 CON the Drow is 1d8 - 2 (average 2.875 -- slightly high as a roll of 1 or 2 still gives on HP) and the Elf Arcane is 2d4 -4 (average 2.5).


Anything else and the Elf still has more HPs.


I think one option to make LA less painful is to stagger it. Inflict the first LA at 2nd level (when you level up you don't actually level) and the second at 11th level (again, when you level up you don't actually level). This would balance the Drow at the levels that their advantages matter but make them playable from 1st level on. Sure, the 1st 5% of play they would be a little too good but 2nd level would sure make up for that.


EDIT: I just noticed that the proposal was 2d8 HPs instead of the relatively balanced 1d8 + CON that I read and figured would work fine as a way of making low level Drow make sense.