Good Drow

[Felix]

Ghoti: which word does "o" make an i sound?

I think it is clear that there must be variance in Drow society. (this, of course, is drawing from Salvatore, not the other FR stuff) Look at Jarlaxle (if not the rest of Breagan D'arthe), who can make a good case for CN. Zaknafein I'd peg at CN with G leanings. Vierna (Drizzt's sis?) looked like she was drifting from CE before the priesthood reeled her back in.

Sure, the whole of Drow are going to be evil bastards, but there would have to be some NE, CN variance, if not more deviant than that. I'd think that the obviously deviant would be killed, tho.

Of course, you can retort effectively to this by saying "I can tell you where to stuff Salvatore", but he did give a darned interesting and in depth study of Drow society. Probably better that YOU ever did!

 

[Ghoti]

Felix,
That word, where "o" makes an i sound is women.

As for the rest of your reply, I agree with you 100% and I would never tell you to stuff Salvatore as I enjoy his works.

Now can you tell me what "ghoughpteighbteau" sounds like?

 

[Redleg06]

but FR has good drow, you can't deny that and you can't blame "Dizzt wannabes" for this fact.

Yes, I can, and I do.

There were no good Drow societies before it became "trendy". Those were developed to market to Drizzt wannabes.

And since you mention it, there is a difference between a Drizzt wannabe and a Dwarf with an axe. Since the whole thing that made Drzzt unique was that he was not evil (the ENTIRE BASIS for his storyline and about 8 books about him), whereas even in Tolkein Gimli carrying an axe was not unique by any stretch, that was a societal trait. And since D&D is basically Tolkein inspired anyway...

And If you had bothered to read the whole thread you would understand why I don't like good Drow. Because in all reality there are more good ones than bad ones. Pay attention.

 

[jester47]

First of all I have not bought a copy of Dragon since probably 1993.

I did however, buy the Fiend Folio and Unearthed Arcana back when they came out and I know for a fact that there were NO good Drow to begin with.

Did said issue of Dragon magazine (#298 I believe) come out BEFORE or AFTER Mr RA Salvatore's Drizzt character? AFTER!

Therefore those "good and otherwise" drow articles are there purely to assuage the Drizzt wannabes who have no imagination and simply cannot fathom the idea of not playing Drizzt.

Hey! Step off. I'm not a Drizzt wannabe. But yeah, I play frikkin good drow. Whats your problem with that? Just because my barbarian drow Marsugal the Hammer (he carries a big honking hammer) is an elf from a subrace that has dark skin and white hair does not mean that I have a hard on for Drizzt and want to play him.

Marsugal cares not for what people think of him, on the surface or underground. He is Marsugal the Hammer! Traitor of the race and the battle of Ugrans Deeve. Survivor of the High Hunt, elf-friend, Dwarf-Friend. He is kinslayer, for he knows their ways to be wrong. One day he saw the sun and with that the light. He realised that the drow race was in the wrong for how could a race rightly hide from things like the sun and stars?! He betrayed his people, his god and his family. And he takes pride in it. Hes a loudmouth, and does not think twice about his actions. He will apologise for mistakes but he will not dwell upon them. He follows his own code. (this character is more of a Conan/Elric wannabe than a Drizzt wannabe.)

Yeah so before you generalise why don't you take a look at our characters? I find it just as unoriginal that you will not take up the challenge of creating an original good drow. Looking at the original Fiend Folio and assuming all the Drow must be bad is just about as unimaginative as playing a good drow ranger with two scimitars name Droozzit.

Aaron.

edited to make character background separate from argument and to try not to sound like a POed fan boy.

 

[Redleg06]

[! Traitor of the race and the battle of Ugrans Deeve. Survivor of the High Hunt, elf-friend, Dwarf-Friend. He is kinslayer, for he knows their ways to be wrong. One day he saw the sun and with that the light. He realised that the drow race was in the wrong for how could a race rightly hide from things like the sun and stars?! He betrayed his people, his god and his family. And he takes pride in it.

Hey, if that's what you tell yourself to avoid dealing with the fact that you just want an elf with Drow abilities without actually haveing t deal with playing a Drow.

Yup. Thank you for proving my point.

 

[Swack-Iron]

Hey, if that's what you tell yourself to avoid dealing with the fact that you just want an elf with Drow abilities without actually haveing t deal with playing a Drow.

Yup. Thank you for proving my point.

Oh, come now. That sounds about as valid as decrying anyone who plays a ranger as being a Strider-wannabe, or anyone who plays a (regular) elf as a Legolas-wannabe.

I can think of two reasons why someone would want to play a non-evil drow. The first is that they were inspired by Salvatore's example, and want to try the Drizz't hat on for themselves to see what it feels like. Not very original, true, but a valid role-playing effort anyway, since one of the whole points of roleplaying is to try to be someone you can't be in everyday life.

The other reason is to play a character who contrasts drow society in a method entirely different from Drizz't. The above barbarian example is a great one -- he's nothing like Drizz't, but still manages to have a great back-story that explains why he's no longer a spider-kisser, and probably presents a whole different set of challenges when he's presented with surface prejudice or drow enemies. I think that's a great character! And as long as the player takes the ECL mod to balance out the power level, I'd allow that in my game.

One of the challenges, of course, when you're running a game where there's a good-alligned drow PC is that it's your responsibility to provide foils for the character. That means that just about every other drow the party encounters has to be eeeeeeeeevil, and there should be quite a lot of them. This takes care of the problem of "more good-aligned than evil-aligned drow out there" that someone else complained about.

Another example of a good-alligned drow(ish) character:
In the FR game I run, there's a player who's playing a half-drow. The character was an infant left alone in the wilderness swaddled in a cloak with no clues to his identity, and was found by a surface wizard. Realizing the child was doomed to a life of prejudice, he cast Polymorph Other on the child and changed him into a human. As an adult, the character now adventures across the north, but his true parents are now eager to find him. The party are occasionally harried by evil drow with a mysterious agenda and a keen interest in the character. Who are his parents? Why is the child so important?

Stat-wise, the character was designed as a stock human. On the extremely rare occasion (it's only happened once in over a year of playing) he steps into an antimagic field he suddenly reverts to half-drow. And, of course, one day he'll be hit with a large enough Dispell Magic that the Polymorph spell will be completely stripped away.

 

[jester47]

What do I do if I want a halfling with drow abilitites? Your argument is crap. Heres why:

By your argument (drow were originally all evil, so they have to stay all evil) , the 1e monster manual states that surface elves are Chaotic Good. Does that mean that I cannot play a Lawful Evil surface elf?! Your argument for drow sounds just as ridiculous. Maybe when you play an evil surface elf you really just want to play a drow with normal elf appearance and a few less abilities, cause thats more challenging. Right, I thought not.

See that is the change that you fail to accept. People realised that society and race are not one and the same, and applied that knowledge to their gaming. Keeping a race and society in the same package is frikken stale. That was 20 years ago soldier, get with the program!

I agree with you that Drizzt clones are lame (and at times drizzt canbe lame too). And in the past, as now, they have been a problem for DMs. But I heartily disagree with you when you say all the good drow are wannabe drizzts.

Let me put it this way: Since we other gamers have discovered that society and race are not bound together, we have revised the idea of the drow into simply an underground sub-race of elves. However thier society by and large, is one that has descended into evil and creates many many evil individuals.

[edited cause well that was lame...]

enjoy!

Aaron.

 

[Aaron L]

Marsugal the Hammer sounds pretty dang cool to me.

 

[hammymchamham]

my CN Drow was best friends with a CG Half-Orc. Of course, they were friends because the Drow didn't want anyone beating him up. The Half Orc was the brawns and didnt really know that the Drow was taking advantage of him. My Charecter was N because he WANTED to be Good, but the only way He could do good was to be evil, IE necromancy and shadow adept. His background was he didn't like the drow society (mostly due to the heavy female influence, and hated anyone female).

When I was making the charecter as I was selecting my name, my DM jokingly told me to name him Drizzit. As I was writing the name down he said 'No, don't do that' and I asked why, and he explained to me who Drizzit is. I'm "happy" to say, my charecter hated everyone, except his CG Half Orc side kick.

 

[Bartholomew Fair]

I did however, buy the Fiend Folio and Unearthed Arcana back when they came out and I know for a fact that there were NO good Drow to begin with.

That's strange. I don't remember seeing an alignment requirement for Drow PCs in the Unearthed Arcana. That must have been how I played a good Drow in 1985. I'm not sure how I was playing a Drizzt wannabe years before Salvatore even wrote "The Crystal Shard" but I'm sure Redleg will tell me.