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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 261448" data-attributes="member: 2020">POSTED  The problem is your own and it starts with the very first words you typed in your topic. I mean the title of course.  An accurate title would have been "The problem with fight MY drow."  For your drow bear no resemblance to the Drow as I have seen them anywhere else. Your Drow are elites who are all LE and so well organized they make the Devils themselves envious. Your Drow fight in a selfless manner willing to sacrifice for the greater evil in a way that makes the most heroic good jealous.  Your Drow are an abomination and to argue how god awful cool they are under the guise of a discussion about the accepted Drow the rest of us know is plain dishonest and at this point boring.  ANSWER  No, no, no, this isn't a Flame War.  And I am being misunderstood here.  It's not really my problem.  It really WAS the problem of my friends and acquaintances who I once knew.  They are the ones who had their characters slaughtered.  They are the ones, for the most part, who had PCs nailed by the drow.  It isn't personal to me.  It's something I've witnessed all through my gaming career.  And unfortunately, the drow we faced were not elites.  At that time, ALL the drow were classed, and you never encountered one below 2nd level, and rarely below 5th.  And they all were multiclassed.  They all had magical arms and armor.  And they ALL had magic resistance, special innate magical abilities, the ability to move unseen, and the ability to move silently.  The AVERAGE drow was a walking death machine, bristling with Wands of Viscid Globs, poisoned bolts and blades, assorted death magic, and clerical/wizardry spells of the most fiendish sort.  Nobody just walked into 5 0 level (non-classed) drow.  The typical, run-of-the-mill drow (the mundane, weak types) were 5th level as fighter/clerics, or fighter/mages, or cleric/mages, or thief/any-of-the-others, or triple classed.  They were always led by a higher level type, who invariably had some sort of powerful wand, staff, rod, or wondrous item (they called them Miscellaneous items then.)  This higher level type was their equivalent of a 3rd to 5th level leader - but THEIR leader was 9th to 12th level, in each class.  And, they had poison, and they used it, without mercy.  (Poison was a real big thing, in 2nd edition D&D, and the average character couldn't use it, because it was such a potent, game-breaking weapon.)  I merely state what the DMs I played under, and the DMs I observed, would have done with the drow - I state how those DMs (all several dozen of them) would have interpreted and run the drow.  I do ... not ... state the drow are cool.  I never played a drow PC for many years after seeing them come into print.  They were not an attractive race to play.  I have played only three drow in my gaming career.  They are difficult to play, and a drow PC has a particularly hard time surviving.  Are they particularly dangerous foes?  Yes, they are.    In our campaign, drow are one of the supreme powers of the Underdark.  In our campaign, the drow COULD come to the surface and crush humankind and demihumankind.  They could ... but they do not do so.  Even as per the concept of Gary Gygax, the drow could conquer the surface world, but they are no longer interested in doing so.  And their chaotic nature prevents them from forming into a single Nation, which would be required if they were to conquer the surface.  - - -  How did a congenial conversation turn into an accusation that I was being dishonest, or misrepresenting what I was discussing?  The drow ARE an abomination.  Did I not say there was a reason they are known as DARK elves?  Did I not portray them as terrible, frightful, and best left alone?  If not, then I say now that that is a good interpretation of the drow.  Terrible, frightful, and best left alone.  Losing your character is not very fun, and in my gaming career, going and fighting the drow was the fast track to just that.  People stopped going after the drow, after enough characters were killed in the attempt.  I should know, for I was there.  I saw the slaughter.  A lot of people did start to play drow PCs, because they were so MUCH MORE powerful than any of the other races.  DMs had to tone down the drow, in order for them to fit in and not break the game (which led to more than one player-DM argument, as I remember.)  Eventually, the rules toned down the drow, and the drow became less popular as characters - at least, less popular in groups I was in or knew of.  When your average drow had magic resistance 50%, special spell-like abilities (detect magic, levitate, clairaudience, etc.), access at 1st level to magical arms and armor, special bonuses to stats (take a look at D1, Descend Into the Depths of the Earth, sometime), and special unlimited level advancement as a cleric or wizard, people moved to run this race as PCs.  Humans, halflings, dwarves, and even elves could not compete against this.  Of course, toned down they could, and the drow PCs inevitably got toned down.  However, the NPC drow were never toned down.  EVERY drow NPC was a terror, and a company of drow was a devastating enemy.  The idea that the races should be balanced did not exist for the drow back then, for a long time.  The idea, back then, was that the drow were BETTER than everyone else (ask Gary Gygax.)  The idea, back then, was that the average drow was worth five of anyone else, or more.  The idea, back then, as specifically stressed in the core material, was that the drow only did not take back the surface, and enslave everyone on it, simply because they were too chaotic to do so.  However, the idea of them uniting to do so was not ruled out.  The idea of them putting aside their chaos to wage war was not ruled out.  And there was always Lolth.  Lolth functioned as the effective Strong Leader I keep talking about.  The Leader who with fear and force would unite these chaotic evil beings into a tight organization.  Such were the drow of my gaming past.  In games I played in, in games I saw others playing in (or heard of, if I wasn't there), the drow were like this.  They truly were the abominations you speak of.  They also WERE the Accepted Drow.  They were Accepted all too well.  And god knows, people were afraid of them.  Finally, please remember that these are the ENBoards, and that means Courtesy in Your Posts.  Edena_of_Neith</blockquote>

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