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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6604194" data-attributes="member: 22424">In fairness, D&amp;D's surface cities are also unrealistically huge.I see three issues with this:Firstly, adding all those slaves only increases the problems with food shortage - they need fed, too. Of course, if they'd used golems, undead, or similar then they could get around that problem.Secondly, you need a lot of space to grow enough food for 10k people, where space is at a premium in the underdark. (Incidentally, it also creates a massive strategic weakness for their society - anyone who wanted to wipe out the drow would be mad to attack their cities - far better to wipe out their food supplies instead.)Thirdly, having the food farmed by slaves suggests that either there is an entire caste of overseers for those slave-farmers, whose entire job is to raise food for the people; or it suggests that the drow spellcasters engage in a massive outlay in magical power to keep those slaves charmed or otherwise controlled. Either way, that suggests a fair number of drow whose entire job is to provide food for the citizens of the city. But that sort of altruism doesn't seem to work with a CE race.Of course, neither the first nor third of these is insurmountable. Not sure how they could get around the lack of space, though.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 6604194, member: 22424"] In fairness, D&D's surface cities are also unrealistically huge. I see three issues with this: Firstly, adding all those slaves only increases the problems with food shortage - they need fed, too. Of course, if they'd used golems, undead, or similar then they could get around that problem. Secondly, you need a lot of space to grow enough food for 10k people, where space is at a premium in the underdark. (Incidentally, it also creates a massive strategic weakness for their society - anyone who wanted to wipe out the drow would be mad to attack their cities - far better to wipe out their food supplies instead.) Thirdly, having the food farmed by slaves suggests that either there is an entire caste of overseers for those slave-farmers, whose entire job is to raise food for the people; or it suggests that the drow spellcasters engage in a massive outlay in magical power to keep those slaves charmed or otherwise controlled. Either way, that suggests a fair number of drow whose entire job is to provide food for the citizens of the city. But that sort of altruism doesn't seem to work with a CE race. Of course, neither the first nor third of these is insurmountable. Not sure how they could get around the lack of space, though. [/QUOTE]

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