So which drow book to get?

[Krug]

So which drow book to get? Plot and Poison, Sheloth, The Quintessential Drow, City of the Spider Queen, The Complete Guide to Drow... which one is worth it?

 

[jmucchiello]

So which drow book to get? Plot and Poison, Sheloth, The Quintessential Drow, City of the Spider Queen, The Complete Guide to Drow... which one is worth it?

Not that I know the answer but I'm sure it matters if you plan to play a drow character or plan to DM drow NPCs as to which book is best.

(And, no, under no circumstance is TDG releasing a drow book. You can't make us! )

 

[philreed]

Coming Soon: 101 Ways to Make Joe Write a Drow Book

 

[Scorpio]

"Tuesday's Drow Pagers"...

 

[Flyspeck23]

How about that as a starting point:
Character Customization, p. 57


Joe's right: it depends on what you want your drow book to do...
For PCs or NPCs? General information, campaign seeds or full-fledged adventures? etc.

If in any doubt: get 'em all

 

[jmucchiello]

How about that as a starting point:
Character Customization, p. 57

Okay, I admit, Drow snuck into CC but there were so many other humanoids in the crowd I couldn't easily filter them out.

If in any doubt: get 'em all

And then review them like Consumer Reports would with big checklists of features and direct comparisons so we'll know which are the best to steal ideas from for our books, er.. I didn't say that.

 

[dreamthief]

Joe's Book of Drow. Has a nice ring to it.

 

[Psion]

So which drow book to get? Plot and Poison, Sheloth, The Quintessential Drow, City of the Spider Queen, The Complete Guide to Drow... which one is worth it?

For what purpose. You have adventures, setting supplements, and rules supplements mixed up there.

For supplements, Plot & Poison is and awesome book with lots of twisted ideas. Quint Drow I would put second; it has some twisted ideas of its own like limbgrafting, rules for seduction, etc. Complete Guide to Drow is full of munchkinistic rules that you should avoid, but it does have some stuff that could be useful (if, for example, you adore the idea of old style drow weapons that decay in the sunlight...)

For setting supplements, Sheoloth is obviously your only choice. The city is decent, but the NPC stat blocks have serious issues.

For adventures, CotSQ struck me as a "Death by perpetual encounter" sort of adventure, but it has lots of well done encounters. An enterprising DM could make good use of this book by adding some plot depth and interaction or subterfuge possibilities. Queen of Lies, pretty much the same deal, but as it is a bit thinner, it might actually be more tolerable if you chose to run it in "wade through the bad guys" mode.

 

[Frostmane]

Which Drow book to get: My opinions

Ok

In my less-than-humble opinion 'Plot and Poison' is a must-have. City of the SQ is nice, especially if you're into the Realms, but ultimately is an adventure, rather than a sourcebook. Q Drow is another essential.. Sheoloth..well if you've got the other two, you can likely make something of it. Personally, I decided to pass. Not that its 'bad' per se..it just couldn't compare with 2e's Menzobarranzen boxed set in my regard. i may yet buy it on ebay if its pricetag isn't so steep in an auction.

Hope my 0.02 helped!

 

[SJ]

I'll pitch in for Plot & Poison. I bought it as I had started up a campaign where drow would be the penultimate bad guys (go figure!), and I was able to go all kinds of twisted with the NPC's that I would never have thought of on my own.

For players it's got some neat PrC's as well, but the whole background and villainous NPC thing is there in spades.