Drow-made armor

[Belares]

I had one of my NPC bad girl as a Drow Cleric/wizard (it was a late night when I went with this combo and I should have made her Cleric/sorceror, but I digress) and she was wearing +2 mithral chainmail that I decided was of Drow make and after a long fight the party defeats her and her assistant. My question is that I have seen no rules in 3E on Drow-made armor and if there is one can someone help me out. I have told the party that it will deteriote(sic) within days of leaving the underground crypt.

 

[hong]

Going by the book, drow armour in 3E is just like any other armour. The rots-in-sunlight thing was specific to 1E and 2E. That said, of course, you're free to rule that the rots-in-sunlight thing continues to hold in your campaign.

 

[Crothian]

In old versiions of D&D all Drow had magical armor (just +1 or higher) that got destroyed if in the sun too long. basically, a way to make the Drow more powerful without letting PCs have their stuff. I nixxed that idea real fast. Just make it have wierd designs in it. Does it really need to be more powerful?

 

[Belares]

I see your points and it does have the chance of making the fight a lot tougher if you make everything Drow-made. I may go ahead and let them use it but make it cursed in some way for it was made by Drow after all. Hehe or even better have it that it is easily reconized as Drow-made so that racial hatred of Drow will come into effect.

 

[mikebr99]

You're right... there aren't any rules in 3e like previous versions, that Drow equipment will deteriorate when exposed to sun light.

But that said, there should be... there has to be some reason that the surface world isn't overrun with Drow. They are an incredibly powerful race, and needs some checks and balances to keep the rest of us relatively safe.

But this train of thought would be a house rule... and it would mean that Drow made equipment that could be exposed to sun light would be more expensive... and probably require the sun light adoption feat.

my $.02... which, when converted from Canadian, means I should probably still be talking for another hour or so...

 

[hong]

In old versiions of D&D all Drow had magical armor (just +1 or higher) that got destroyed if in the sun too long. basically, a way to make the Drow more powerful without letting PCs have their stuff. I nixxed that idea real fast. Just make it have wierd designs in it.

Yep. For example, you could have +5 full plate that, over a time span of a week, slowly turns bright pink in colour with purple polka dots on the codpiece and gauntlets. That should do the trick.

 

[Shin Okada]

There is no rule for Drow items. But if you want to give Drow NPCs some powerful magic items which cannot be used by PCs, how about making them "Evil only" items (cuts the price by 30%). You can't use this trick if your PCs are Evil, though.

 

[Wolf72]

cursed items ...

use the cursed items ideas in the DMG ... they have one that only functions underground ... you could easily make that "does not function in Daylight" ...

so the +2 mithral chain would become mithral chain ... not that bad? well if your armor was loaded with enhancements then you'd be sucking wind ... no heavy fort, no SR, no silent moves, ... no nada!