Why does everyone hate drow?

[Dark Jezter]

I think it was a done only to explain why these powerful, magic-wielding creatures couldn't simply take over the surface realm. They have the means and the man-power. How does the current rules explain how the dark elves simply don't take over the surface realm?

Because...

• They're psychotic and constantly backstabbing each other.
• They can't stand the sun.
• Drow really aren't that good of a race in 3e (from a purely rules standpoint). Sure, spell resistance is nice, but that +2 level adjustment and -2 constitution are real killers.

Not at all. They are both creature capabilities you can't take with you.

No. One is a creature special ability, the other is a magic item.

So there is no reason not being able to take another creature's capabilities with you should upset you either. Other than it looks like something you could use.

Well, there is the fact that dissolving drow stuff was a concept created to let drow have good magical weapons and armor that the players would not be able to keep (this combined with the general overpoweredness of drow in earlier editions). It basically screws over the players by saying "Congratulations! You just beat a group of dark elves armed with disproportionately powerful magical weapons and armor! Don't bother looting it, though, because all that cool stuff you just found is gonna turn into dust once you take it out of the Underdark."

But they weren't "cool". They were basic "plus" items. Essentially, they were bonuses in combat, tantamount to giving them an AC or to hit boost. It's like crying that you can't have a creature's higher strength or natural armor bonus.

All the "cool" items were "real", and didn't disolve.

Again, magical items are not the same as creature special abilites. Disliking the fact that drow weapons dissolve on the surface in an obvious attempt to let drow NPCs have more powerful weapons and armor than the PCs is not the same as disliking not being able to take a dead creature's special abilites, and even suggesting such a thing is a severe stretch of logic.

I can't even understand liking dissolving drow stuff from a flavor standpoint.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

One that was widely disputed.

I mean are we mad that we can't take and use a beholder's eyestalk or a dragon's breath?

Heaven forbid we put a kink in the axiom of killing things and taking their stuff.

Mind you, that a lot of this came from the hazy 2E days, and the real world may not actually be at all like I remember it.

I'm not mad about dragons, as they usually had hordes hidden away somewhere. And, for the most part, my encounters with them led to their abilities seeming somehow more 'in line' with the rest of the game (except that fear thing).

Constrast that to beholders, with their eye-beams, or Illithids, with mind powers. In either case, the often lacking loot could be made up for in other manners, but it was still frusterating. This is worse since there never seems to be just one mind flayer.

When you hit Drow though, they always sem to be in huge sub-plots involving huge raiding parties, and huge numbers, only to have one of the basic axioms of the game -- a core reward system -- removed. Frusteration.

And, much like the other classics of Beholders and Mind Flayers, they each gain some special cancelling power. Also a little frusterating, but only in concert with large issues.

The Drow Dungeon, Beholderland, Flayerville, and Construct Central are all places I'd rather not visit if I can help it.

Give me a rabble of evil, intelligent humanoids, preferably ones that speak the same language.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I love the Drow...I've been playing them as PCs since 1Ed AD&D!

 

[Samuel Leming]

If memory serves, drow hate started in mid 1985 following the publication of the Unearthed Arcana for first edition AD&D. Using those rules, drow characters could fight with two weapons without penalty. Male dark elves were also able to reach 10th level if multi-classed or 12 level if single class as fighters or rangers with a Str score of 15 or above(Female drow could reach 12th or 14th level). Dwarves could only reach 9th/11th, and then only if they had 18/100 Str. Only half-orcs and humans reached higher fighter levels. Yep, I saw a steady stream of drow fighters and rangers after that, usually wielding two long swords(I only saw twin scimitars in games where the DM used weapon speed factors since the long sword was better against large opponents). It didn’t take long for many DMs to just flat out outlaw drow.

The Crystal Shard(as far as I know this was Drizzt’s first appearance) wasn’t published until early 1988. The source of this character’s inspiration was obvious, so he was more a symptom of the problem than the problem itself. That was until 2E and the horde of copy cat fan-boys became an even worse problem. If I remember correctly, Drizzt would have been mauled in his first encounter in that story if Bruenor hadn’t rescued him. Things change when a character becomes popular. Has anyone else heard the term "Wolverine Syndrome"?

So, yeah, overused in settings and seeing the same character played over and over again.

The next time I run a campaign, if I include drow at all, I’ll go further back to the drow’s roots and vary which demon prince or lord any given group of drow worship. Picture the drow paying homage to Orcus(undead), Yeenoghu(hyenas) or even Juiblex(slimes) rather than Lolth(spiders). DMs did this quite often in the early eighties, so I’m not being original here.

Spoiler:

Spoiler

Drow rhymes with cow. Like in "drowsy".

Sam

 

[Samuel Leming]

I love the Drow...I've been playing them as PCs since 1Ed AD&D!

Was that in the DFW area? That's where I played 1E and where I've seen the most drow played.

Sam

 

[Dark Jezter]

If I remember correctly, Drizzt would have been mauled in his first encounter in that story if Bruenor hadn’t rescued him. Things change when a character becomes popular. Has anyone else heard the term "Wolverine Syndrome"?

Yes, you remember correctly. At the very start of the Crystal Shard, Drizzt just about gets killed by a couple of tundra yeti. A little later in the book, Drizzt gets seriously wounded during a fight with a barbarian warlord and once again just about dies.

One of my complaints with the more recent Drizzt novels is that he's gotten too immortal. It never really seems like he's in danger anymore.

But then again, these novels are based on D&D, so maybe that could be explained by him gaining a few levels.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Was that in the DFW area? That's where I played 1E and where I've seen the most drow played.

Why, yes it was, back in about 1984, as I recall!

For the record, my Drow PCs (Darkethorne, Black Opal, and Steel Spider) have zero to do with anything TSR/WOTC published, except down the road when aspects of Drow culture were expanded upon. I don't read the novels, so "Drizzle" means nothing to me.

I did it because I'm a black gamer. Not too many of us.

Making a drow PC automatically created a societal dynamic I could instantly identify with... The character's mere appearance caused negative reactions in surface society, while his alignment (NG) and personal viewpoint was contrary to his native culture. As a Ranger/Druid/MU, he had a worldview that was somewhat askew compared to the usual PC...in one adventure, he actually threatened the party's main mage with attack if he launched a fireball in the heart of the forest...

He is a quintessential outsider wherever he goes.

Easy for me to get into character, don't you know.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think it was a done only to explain why these powerful, magic-wielding creatures couldn't simply take over the surface realm. They have the means and the man-power. How does the current rules explain how the dark elves simply don't take over the surface realm?

They definitely do not have the means. They're no stronger than the other races and have low numbers, too. They get their butts kicked every time they try to do anything on the surface, with the exception of the Cormanthor area, and that's just some messed up mythals.

So there is no reason not being able to take another creature's capabilities with you should upset you either. Other than it looks like something you could use.

I won't bother commenting on 2e. While I don't like the magic item bloat of 3e, it is part of the game's balance. Classed NPCs are supposed to have the same abilities and weaknesses as PCs - including the reliance on magic items. There's no reason why classed drow should be treated differently from classed elves. (They're not that special.) If you were playing a game like Iron Heroes or D20 Modern, you could give them the vanishing item stuff, but you would need to increase their CR to compensate for the increased challenge.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I like the spider theme of drow. IMO the problem is not that the drow are too much like spiders, but that they are not enough like spiders.

First of all, they are too sociable. It requires a suspension of disbelief that drow could work together without killing each other. Solution: make drow loners, coming together only to mate (and that infrequently, not more often than every couple of years. Or decades, even.)

They are also too active. I think they should be like spiders in the center of their web. Quiescent and torpid most of the time, but ready to spring into action when prey comes near.

My implementation would be based on demonic influence and lots of drugs. The drow have special powers because they sold their souls long ago to demons. They spend most of their time in drug-induced reverie, but can fight as if on speed. Drugs and demons make them pretty psychotic and spaced out.

The mushrooms that the drow eat are hallucinogenic, and low on nutrients. To conserve energy the drow don't do much. But when they do move, they are deadly. Their magical powers enable them to gradually dream their surroundings into existence. They don't have to worry about how to get equipment or wealth or actually set up a functioning economy; stuff just gradually congeals around them after years of dreaming.

You could have cities of drow, but they would be like ghost-towns, holding maybe 1% the population of an equivalent human city. And any particular drow would be doing nothing 99% of the time.

Some drow might be exceptions to these general guidelines. They are like the kind of spiders that actively hunt their prey instead of waiting in their webs. These might have all sorts of crazy motivations, including building up armies and crushing all surface races, and might cooperate with similarly obsessed drow. "Drug crazed and demon possessed" would still be the predominant themes, though.

I love this take on them. I'm gonna have to steal it.

I think Drow have been over used to the point of cliche'. They started out as very scary and intimidating. Then novel after novel and supplement after supplement came out, people just got used to them. Remember when the Borg first appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation? The mere mention of them sent the crew (and viewers) into the shivers. Then they became the running villain on Voyager, and they were just completely emasculated. Every encounter saw this lone ship with it's supposedly limited resources whuppin' the Borg all over the place.

The same with the Drow. Evil. VERY evil. Powerful and scheming. But the heroes in the books wipe the floor with them. The supplements and modules talk about their evil ways, but really, in mass market publications that have to be fairly toned down so as not to "cross lines", they just don't ring true. Drow exist in my homebrew setting, but encountering them is VERY rare. I think in a 10 year long campaign I ran, the players encountered Drow twice. The PC's survived both encounters, but only barely. They even turned down an adventure once where they were offered a huge sum of cash to hunt down an alleged Drow raiding party because of the risk. I can be a very malicious DM when the storyline warrants it, and they just didn't want to risk their PC's dying, I think. It also helps that my players never read any of the FR novels featuring Drow, so the mystique was still there.

 

[Psion]

I won't bother commenting on 2e. While I don't like the magic item bloat of 3e, it is part of the game's balance. Classed NPCs are supposed to have the same abilities and weaknesses as PCs - including the reliance on magic items. There's no reason why classed drow should be treated differently from classed elves. (They're not that special.) If you were playing a game like Iron Heroes or D20 Modern, you could give them the vanishing item stuff, but you would need to increase their CR to compensate for the increased challenge.

I am totally not on board with the principle that Drow need to be treated like PCs. And, IMO, it is precisely that attitude that has caused a lion's share of the disdain they have today.

The increased challenge of drow weapons and armor can be worked into their CR just like a strength bonus or a natural armor bonus, because they are mechanically equivalent.