Podcast: Drow Warrior 1 Usefullness

[Majoru Oakheart]

I can't accurately vote in the poll, since I would use both options equally. Drow certainly have foot soldiers, as well as priestesses, assassins, warlocks, and wizards. I'd also use Drow weapon masters, Drow warlords, etc. in addition to the stock warrior 1.

True. But do you need a default "drow" that you then apply the class "warrior" onto in order to make a Drow Warrior 1 when you could instead have:

Drow Footsoldier
Level 1 Soldier(or Minion even)

Who had it's only unique way of fighting instead of the generic "gives the base creature proficiency in some weapons and some hitpoints".

 

[Evilhalfling]

Orginally vault of the Drow anyone with armor and weapons was a 2nd level Fighter.

Besides in 4e we have minion rules, why would anyone bother stating a warrior?
And at the level I would prefer to use Drow (like many here) a 2nd level fighter is a minion

 

[CleverNickName]

I know that I am in a well-defined minority here, but I actually like tweaking monsters. I would much rather have a generic "base" creature in the MM that I can modify to suit my particular adventure, setting, or whatnot, than to have thirty-two flavors of the same monster to sort out.

I always end up making changes to the monsters as-written, and it's just easier for me to add things, than to remove them.

 

[FourthBear]

I know that I am in a well-defined minority here, but I actually like tweaking monsters. I would much rather have a generic "base" creature in the MM that I can modify to suit my particular adventure, setting, or whatnot, than to have thirty-two flavors of the same monster to sort out.

I don't think you're in a minority here. I feel relatively confident that most DMs you asked on this group would say that they like tweaking and modifying monsters. I certainly do, although I am in favor of having several example builds for advanced creatures for major categories of monsters. I think what the differences come down to are the rules that support this tweaking and the base material to be tweaked. And that all of this is in competition with the desire to have ready-to-play creatures right in the Monster Manual so that you don't have to tweak on the fly if the players happen to step off the track.

Adding class levels onto many monsters (especially humanoid ones without very potent special abilities) is pretty trivial, IMO. I don't think it's the most efficient way to generate a memorable encounters, since the classes were designed for PCs in mind and will therefore have options and complications better suited for a character with constant spotlight and a player devoting his time to just running that PC.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

However, guidelines for creating your own classed / advanced / templated / what-have-you monsters were one of my favorite DMing things about 3e. "Here are the four types, or you could write up something entirely from scratch. Go with whatever seems Drowish I guess" would be, comparitively, a step back in my mind.

This isn't true of ALL MM races in 4e, but they've stated that the drow WILL have a PC-race-style writeup in the MM, along with (presumably) an assortment of NPC writeups, so you're getting the best of both worlds.

 

[Patlin]

I like tweaking monsters when I have the time, hence the pages of drow, orcs, and githyanki I mentioned in the original post. On the other hand, I like the monster manual to help me out when I don't have the time. If my adventurers cast plane shift unexpectedly and travel to the astral plane (for example to escape from something on the prime) I would like to be able to open the MM up to "Githyanki" when I decide it's time for a random encounter. It'd be nice to find a creature (or better yet, a group of creatures) there who are ready for play.

 

[Incenjucar]

I went with the second option because it was closer to true, but neither really work.

One is so generic as to be bland and useless and the other is mostly specifics which are for NPCs not for generic encounters.

If I were to use drow, I'd want a Drow Hunting Party statted up. "Drow Wizard?" Zzz.

 

[Patlin]

If I were to use drow, I'd want a Drow Hunting Party statted up. "Drow Wizard?" Zzz.

Point to you. I didn't spend much effort on the variant names, I admit. "Spider Priestess" was the only name I really liked, and even that I have reservations towards, as it would probably need to be "Scorpion Priestess" on Eberron.

 

[Imban]

This isn't true of ALL MM races in 4e, but they've stated that the drow WILL have a PC-race-style writeup in the MM, along with (presumably) an assortment of NPC writeups, so you're getting the best of both worlds.

I'm holding out hope that it's indeed that way, because that could be awesome. Of course, it's always possible for that to bite me in specific cases - shades of a previous edition's "Drow as PCs" writeup that had essentially none of the abilities associated with Drow, or other situations where the NPCs and PCs are so different that they can't honestly be called the same race, but I'll wait for the full books to see everything.

 

[CleverNickName]

Point to you. I didn't spend much effort on the variant names, I admit. "Spider Priestess" was the only name I really liked, and even that I have reservations towards, as it would probably need to be "Scorpion Priestess" on Eberron.

What about "Ebony Spider Adept?"