Good Drow

[Darkness]

Yeah, German is teh funkey.

Anyway: Let's try to get this thread back on track - good drow.

And cut out the rudeness now, Redleg - or anyone else, for that matter. It isn't that hard, is it?

- Darkness

 

[tsadkiel]

If I mentioned page 92 of the Manual of the Planes, would that make me a bad person?

 

[jester47]

The topic was a good Drow SOCIETY.

My point was...

A) A "good" Drow SOCIETY defeats the purpose. It exists because once you have a good Drow society you can get about the business of playing Drow Rangers and Paladins with all the kewl Drow and said class benefits without having to actually deal with Drow society, which is what makes them Drow in the first place. (Their move into the basement of the world was a social change remember?)

B) If you added up all the "one-good-Drows" out there you could wipe out all of the evil Drow by sheer weight of numbers alone!


Clear as mud? Thought so....

(BTW "Drow are generally evil and chaotic in nature" is as close to a hard and fast rule as you can get in an RPG. Of course it does not HAVE to be evil, as long as you GM allows it. But then again a Paladin does not HAVE to be LG as long as your GM allows it. D&D is a fantasy world that does have inherently evil creatures. If we are going to ignore that fact, why not just ditch the whole alignment system period? Most other games (successful and otherwise) dont use alignment. Why should we?)

Aha! Much clearer. And yes I agree. Drow society is quite evil and most drow are chaotic evil.

However I do think that there can be very small good drow societies made up of outcasts and such that have made it to the surface. However these would be fighting a two front war against biggoted surface dwellers (esp elves) and may have a limited life span (like clerics of Eilistraee)

This brings up an interesting character concept: A drow is born in a good drow "enclave" and grows to near adolesence. Then the village is wiped out by greedy miners and the young drow (the sole survivor) decides that everbody has a problem. The evil drow and the surface dwellers all blow goats. He is chaotic neutral bordering on evil just cause he is balanceing between simply lookingout for himself and finding a way to kill everything.

The math on B has been explained. But yeah, there are a lot of "good drow" out there among the different campaigns. However Dragon 298 does make a good point about why drow society is evil and will remain evil and why there are ever very few good drow. It is a very good article. But the statistics work like this:

Drow elves have a high fertility rate. But the Mortality rate is huge. Most drow youngsters happily kill their playmates at the first opportunity. Any child showing kindness, mercy or virtue is ganged up on by the others and killed. Those that are not are offered by the parents as sacrifices to Lolth. 33% that make it out of the womb die before the age of 20. of those remaining ten percent are sent to be sacrifices for Lolth. So out of a 1000 drow children, 334 dont make it past 20 (typically these were the good ones) and 66 are sacrificed to Lolth. If a good drow made it through that he probably quickly learned to keep his head down and pretend to be evil evenif he hated it. One could argue that such a being would look everywhere for the opportunity to leave his society without the society knowing he left. So I would say that at most there might be 5% of the drow population that has any capacity for good. Then you have to get that guy to the surface and he has to survive the surface.

I would highly recommend at least looking at the Drow article. Great material there.

Aaron.

 

[Redleg06]

Got im there oh dark master of critterdom!

No, he simply missed my point. Go back through this thread and add up all the folks who played the a "good Drow" and then add up all of the folks who played evil Drow.

Now according to many points made here, a "good" Drow is more rare / different / or more original than a run of the mill evil one and therefore more of a challenge to role-play.

This has actually nothing to do with my inital point, but as a branch of it, I will argue that there are so many good Drow (PCs that is) that in reality an evil Drow PC is probably more rare.

Again this was never my point, but playing a Drow in strict hierarchical Drow society as described in Mr. Slavatores books (for instance) would strike me as much more difficult (particularly if your character is male) than what I consider the inevitable Good Drow wandering about on the surface for reasons only contained in a 2 page character background that only the player and maybe the DM will ever read.

A sub-point to my point was that good Drow societies were developed as a natural progression for people who wanted to play Rangers that had the nifty benefits of Drow without having to deal with the complexities of Drow society (which if run well could be a significant role-playing challenge.)

Now the idea of an evil elf ranger class was brought up. This blatantly violates the ranger character class, but hey since Drow PCs were not in the original PH you could just as validly make up a class that fits the society overall without braking with the concept of Drow, or even for that matter, Rangers. If one were to argue that like a fallen Jedi of another story, the Elves that went underground brought their fallen rangers with them, I could actually buy that. Of course some things would be changed, Underdark lore replacing Wilderness lore etc. to the point of haveing a new class that fills the ranger role in Drow society. Add to this that if properly tailred as mentioned, those Drow ranger skills would be of limited use on the surface and therefore would help avoid power-gaming, and not violate story continuity.

On the other hand if a Ranger becomes "not good" (talkin 1st Ed here) he looses his abilities, so that idea still might not have worked.

OK, I'm not really sure where I was going with that, but moving on...


For the record I NEVER said I don't like Drizzt. I actully Liked Homeland and Exile (did not care for Sojourn and I may have the titles mixed up) but that had to do with the fact that Drow society was evil and Drizzt and Jarlaxl (sp?) were exceptions rather than the rule.


Which brings me back to my point that there are probably so many good Drow PCs that they are the rule rather than the exception.

(OBTW, Dragonlady, I was exaggerating to make a point. I dont actually think that there are so many good Drow on paper that they outnumber the theoretical evil Drows written into the setting.)

And my last "for the record". Ghoti, you called yourself a Drizzt wannabe. I just rolled with it. My point was (again exaggerating for effect) the numbers of "Drizzts" should be limited to just the one. As clearly stated in my first post.

Meanwhile I am going back to "Views From The Edge" where they issue memebrs a flak vest...

 

[Tsyr]

No, he simply missed my point. Go back through this thread and add up all the folks who played the a "good Drow" and then add up all of the folks who played evil Drow.

Now according to many points made here, a "good" Drow is more rare / different / or more original than a run of the mill evil one and therefore more of a challenge to role-play.

This has actually nothing to do with my inital point, but as a branch of it, I will argue that there are so many good Drow (PCs that is) that in reality an evil Drow PC is probably more rare.


....


Which brings me back to my point that there are probably so many good Drow PCs that they are the rule rather than the exception.

That couldn't possibly have anything to do with the large number of DMs who discourage or flat-out don't allow Evil PCs would it, or the fact that an evil PC in a non-evil group is generaly a pain in the butt for all concerned? Or that true "drowish evil" includes racisim out the bunghole, making a drow playing with non-drow all but impossible unless the drow is controlling the others as slaves?

 

[Redleg06]

That couldn't possibly have anything to do with the large number of DMs who discourage or flat-out don't allow Evil PCs would it, or the fact that an evil PC in a non-evil group is generaly a pain in the butt for all concerned?

So, don't play a Drow. Or any evil Elf for that matter.

[/B] Or that true "drowish evil" includes racisim out the bunghole, making a drow playing with non-drow all but impossible unless the drow is controlling the others as slaves? [/B]

Well, yeah, that is what I meant by significant "role-playing challenge." But I am not sure I agree with that. Drow are LE right? A Drow would only behave that way when in a position of power over the other members of the party (assuming they are non-Drow). If not in such a position said Drow could still maintain subtle control over what she / he could consider manipulation of the party. There is a great book called Villians By Necessity by Eve Forward that addresses exactly that issue.

These are all issues in any evil group or group with evil in it (Drow or no Drow). That is part of the role-playing challenge, and I think many will agree, why D&D has kept it's alignment system. If you're gonna play evil characters (and kinda my point, if you're gonna play Drow) be prepared to deal with the consequences.

 

[Felix]

Redleg, Drow are CE. You'd better change your argument before some poster tries to crucify you because of your oversight.

 

[Redleg06]

Actually come to think of it, if you are referring to Salavtorian (that's not a word is it?) Drow society, a Drow on the outs with his / her own house may have to turn to outsiders as the only "pawns" they can truat. Or maybe their house got wiped out and they are out for revenge (the only recourse left to a Drow in such a position).

Coincidentally I have never played an evil character or in an evil party, but those two points make it sound interesting to me. For what it's worth.

 

[Redleg06]

OK, fine. They are CE. Whatever.

Self-preservation is still a staple of being evil right?

My ideas are still valid.

 

[Redleg06]

Come to think of it though, using Slavatore here again, that strict of a hierarchy strikes me as decidedly "lawful" though, dontch think? I am not saying the should not be CE (my whole point was good v evil, not catagories of evil).


Yes, I am fond of the paranthetical statement.

Yes my spelling sux, I'm from Missouri. We have only had written language for about 50 years or so...(narf!)