[d20r, Race] Drow

[Fax Celestis]

Also known as dark elves, drow are a subterranean offshoot with a distinct bent towards magic. Their adaptation to living below the surface has afforded them the ability to see better in dark conditions, but that same adaptation has left them susceptible to abrupt exposure to sunlight.

Drow have dark skin, nearly black in most cases. White is the most common hair color among drow, but almost any pale shade is possible. Drow tend to be smaller and thinner than other sorts of elves, and their eyes are often a vivid red.

Drow usually coat their arrows with a potent venom.

• +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution, -2 Wisdom, +2 Charisma.
• Medium size.
• A drow's base land speed is 30 feet.
• Immune to sleep spells and effects. Drow do not sleep: rather, they trance, similar to elves.
• +2 racial saving throw bonus against Charm or Compulsion spells or effects.
• +2 racial bonus on Will saves against spells and spell-like abilities.
• Darkvision out to 120'.
• Racial Weapon Proficiency: Drow are automatically proficient with the the hand crossbow, rapier, short sword, and any weapon with the word "drow" in its name.
• Natural Magic: A drow has a small pool of magical charges they may tap into daily. A drow has one charge per three class levels, minimum one. A charge may be spent to activate one of the following spell-like abilities or to power a feat with the [Drow] descriptor: dancing lights, darkness, faerie fire. Caster level equals the drow's class levels.
• Light Blindness: Abrupt exposure to bright light (such as sunlight or a daylight spell) blinds drow for 1 round. On subsequent rounds, they are dazzled as long as they remain in the affected area.
• Automatic Languages: Common, Elven, Undercommon. Bonus Languages: Abyssal, Aquan, Draconic, Drow Sign Language, Gnome, Goblin.
• Favored Class: Sorceror.

[WaterTengu]

why a negative on wisdom? wouldn't their senses be heightened because of the darkness?
why a positive on charisma? drow tend to be standoff-ish and crude.

[Knaight]

Where exactly did this standoffish and crude idea come from? I have more often seen the portrayal of Drow as manipulative, scheming elves with a strong force of personality. As for wisdom, its much more than just perception.

[Fax Celestis]

why a negative on wisdom? wouldn't their senses be heightened because of the darkness?
why a positive on charisma? drow tend to be standoff-ish and crude.

The -Wis is due to not many drow entering into priestly or druidic roles, while the +Cha is due to their natural predilection towards spontaneous magics. Also, the -Wis is to make the total ability modifiers into a +0, so that I can feel a little bit better about giving an LA +0 race spell resistance.

[Baron Corm]

I don't know about balance because it's for d20r, but this drow would be proficient with a "Drowkiller Mace". Just a pointless nitpick

[Fax Celestis]

I don't know about balance because it's for d20r, but this drow would be proficient with a "Drowkiller Mace". Just a pointless nitpick

A weapon titled like that would have a Special line that read:

Special: Despite having "drow" in its name, drow are not proficient with drowkiller maces.

[Vic_Sage]

The -Wis is due to not many drow entering into priestly or druidic roles, while the +Cha is due to their natural predilection towards spontaneous magics. Also, the -Wis is to make the total ability modifiers into a +0, so that I can feel a little bit better about giving an LA +0 race spell resistance.

Actually alot of Drow enter ways of the Cleric, I think it was like 55% of all females become Clerics of Lolth.

[lesser_minion]

Historically, many drow (all females) had a higher charisma score and cleric instead of wizard as a favoured class.

The idea seemed to be that drow society was literally ruled by its clerics, who were invariably female. The males actually had a charisma penalty. I haven't really read up on drow since then, but I ignore that rule in my RL campaign.

[Alteran]

A weapon titled like that would have a Special line that read:

Special: Despite having "drow" in its name, drow are not proficient with drowkiller maces.

Ah, I disagree. I'm sure Drow would be interested in finding more ways to kill each other, they tend not to get along very well with anybody.

[Greg]

The -Wis is due to not many drow entering into priestly or druidic roles, while the +Cha is due to their natural predilection towards spontaneous magics. Also, the -Wis is to make the total ability modifiers into a +0, so that I can feel a little bit better about giving an LA +0 race spell resistance.

Favoured class is cleric/wizard, so if anything, the WIS and CHA modifiers should be switched.

[Limos]

Bah, I've always hated Drow. It's gotten much worse now that they have Drow in the 4e monster manual for a player race. Everyone always wants to be Drow.

I've always hated Elves in general though, so don't mind me.

[newbDM]

What is d20r?

And there are the official lesser drow by WotC which are LA+0:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...040215a&page=2

Bah, I've always hated Drow. It's gotten much worse now that they have Drow in the 4e monster manual for a player race. Everyone always wants to be Drow.

I've always hated Elves in general though, so don't mind me.

Why does this always have to come up in elf/drow threads?

[RTGoodman]

What is d20r?

It's Fax's d20/3.x remake/rewrite/whatever, called d20 Rebirth. You know, like all those links in his sig?


Personally, I don't think the Wis penalty works for them canonically either, but there's no other stat you could really penalize to give them a balanced set of modifiers. Now, see, the problem is that Drow (to me, at least) seem almost Mary-Sue-ish in their ability to do well at EVERYTHING, from Fighting to Sneaking to Magicing to Praying, so there aren't ANY penalties that make sense (except for Con, 'cause Elves of all sorts are frail anyway).

I don't know how much you'd be into it, not knowing everything you're planning on doing for them, but I guess you could conceivably make a racial feat for Drow like that one feat from the 3.x Dragonlance stuff (Dynamic Priest, I think it's called?) that lets Clerics use Cha instead of Wis for spellcasting. That gives them a reason to have a Wis penalty and still have Cleric as a popular class choice, I guess, but I'm not sure if it fits with your design philosophy for d20r.

[Devils_Advocate]

Well, they're overpowered as a LA +0 race for regular 3.5 Edition d20. Spell resistance is even better than the bonuses dwarves get to saves, which is what brings them near LA +1. A bonus to a casting stat always means cheese potential, as well. Admittedly not so much with Cha as with Int or Wis.

They may be balanced against the other d20r races, though. (Haven't looked at 'em yet.)

why a negative on wisdom? wouldn't their senses be heightened because of the darkness?
why a positive on charisma? drow tend to be standoff-ish and crude.

Drow are crazy in a sexy way. Impressive force of personality, not a lot of common sense. At least, spinning them like that is what these stat mods make sense for.

Incidentally, Charisma actually makes more sense as the ability score for priestly spellcasting than Wisdom does. Think about it; which of the following are more appropriate to a divine champion?

- Persuasive. Decisive. Possessed of an ineffable shiny mystical quality.
- Perceptive. Rational. Having a great deal of common sense.

I'd say the former more than the latter.

[Fax Celestis]

Favoured class is cleric/wizard, so if anything, the WIS and CHA modifiers should be switched.

Uh. Check again:

Favored Class: Sorceror.

[sigurd]

For a redone game, why not drop the 'drow' name?

Without the historic game baggage I like the race.


Sigurd

[Fax Celestis]

For a redone game, why not drop the 'drow' name?

It's "iconic", if you will: removing it would likely cause pitchfork-wielding riots.

[Fax Celestis]

Well, they're overpowered as a LA +0 race for regular 3.5 Edition d20. Spell resistance is even better than the bonuses dwarves get to saves, which is what brings them near LA +1. A bonus to a casting stat always means cheese potential, as well. Admittedly not so much with Cha as with Int or Wis.

They may be balanced against the other d20r races, though. (Haven't looked at 'em yet.)

What if I were to have the SR kick in at, say, ECL 5, like raptoran flight?

[lesser_minion]

I guess if people really didn't like it, it might be possible to change the Wisdom penalty to either 'pick from this list' or 'DM may choose an ability score to penalise'. That actually gives DMs a decent chance of curbing character abuse. And an early warning sign if you play a drow fighter and the DM makes you dump Strength.

I don't think decent unrestricted SR is really acceptable for a +0 LA (it needs work to be balanced at +1 IMO) regardless of ability scores, simply because it is normally very hard to get, and several common spells (save-or-lose with no save, anyone?) are far more dangerous when SR is not available. Possibly scaling the LA with actual character level or even ditching LA and just penalising XP awards instead (but this may be too much of a step back to 2e)

If decent unrestricted SR became a bit more common, and spells became less of a serious threat, I could maybe see a +1 LA race with unrestricted SR.

Otherwise, there could be a 'Drow Elite' prestige class that gave you the SR and maybe some extra perks.

EDIT - Sorry, this is unclear. I know that SR alone can't really justify +2 LA. I don't think it has a place in anything smaller in the existing rules, but properly balanced wizards could cut it to +1 LA.

EDIT 2 - Sorry, I missed Fax's post about this above as well.

[Shadow_Elf]

Uh. Check again:

They mean that in 3.Xe, their favoured classes were Wizard (male drow) and Cleric (female Drow).

Also, people have to remember when critiquing the balance that the Drow must be balanced with other d20r races, not with standard 3.Xe races. There may be a different standard around which LA +0 is based, depending on how Fax is doing this.

[Fax Celestis]

Edited SR to only activate after ECL 5.

[lesser_minion]

Also, people have to remember when critiquing the balance that the Drow must be balanced with other d20r races, not with standard 3.Xe races. There may be a different standard around which LA +0 is based, depending on how Fax is doing this.

I'm sorry for any offence taken there. My assumption was that spellcasting would still be one of the biggest threats faced by characters - and I was working on the difficulty in obtaining spell resistance (the 'Spell Resistance' spell notwithstanding) in 3.0 - meaning that characters with innate spell resistance granted through character race would seriously outshine characters without it. Hence my comments about SR being difficult to balance as a racial trait. You're right, it could be reasonably balanced with the other races, depending on what they get.

In fact, Fax seems to have already solved my problem by cutting the SR at low levels - with slightly easier obtained spell resistance, this should work perfectly well. 3.x Spell Resistance is apparently absolutely impossible to obtain for a mundane if you actually want something that is relevant at the level of play at which it is obtained.

[Talya]

The -Wis is due to not many drow entering into priestly or druidic roles

From what fluff I've seen, every single drow female raised in a traditional drow city must become a cleric. They can multiclass, certainly, but they need at least that first level of cleric at some point in their life.

I'd say this represents a higher than normal percentage of drow entering priestly roles.

Now, I understand you not wanting to change the drow name to keep the iconic feel, but if you change the fluff to the point that it no longer really resembles drow behavior, why bother?

Anyway, it's a minor criticism. It seems balanced, at least. If you were refluffing them for a custom setting, I'd certainly try playing a drow sorceress based on these rules.

[Fax Celestis]

From what fluff I've seen, every single drow female raised in a traditional drow city must become a cleric. They can multiclass, certainly, but they need at least that first level of cleric at some point in their life.

I'd say this represents a higher than normal percentage of drow entering priestly roles.

Now, I understand you not wanting to change the drow name to keep the iconic feel, but if you change the fluff to the point that it no longer really resembles drow behavior, why bother?

Anyway, it's a minor criticism. It seems balanced, at least. If you were refluffing them for a custom setting, I'd certainly try playing a drow sorceress based on these rules.

See, I was under the impression that the "Drow females enter Cleric" thing was Faerunian, not un-setting-specific.

[lesser_minion]

From what fluff I've seen, every single drow female raised in a traditional drow city must become a cleric. They can multiclass, certainly, but they need at least that first level of cleric at some point in their life.

I'd say this represents a higher than normal percentage of drow entering priestly roles.

Now, I understand you not wanting to change the drow name to keep the iconic feel, but if you change the fluff to the point that it no longer really resembles drow behavior, why bother?

Anyway, it's a minor criticism. It seems balanced, at least.

While you are right about many drow females becoming clerics in a matriarchal and basically theocratic society, this is a fluff element, and so it is generally up to the DM, even though it is strongly implied in 3.x core material.

A Wisdom penalty is about the only plausible ability score that can still be penalised for drow (with Strength a close second) if you are worried about net bonuses to ability scores. The fluff issue of "not many drow entering priestly or druidic rules" may be a bit idiosyncratic to Fax's perception of elves in his own campaigns, but it is mainly his rules set, and it will be coloured by his ideas just as much as 3.x and 4e are coloured by the impressions of their respected designers.

[Devils_Advocate]

What if I were to have the SR kick in at, say, ECL 5, like raptoran flight?

In that case, they only become overpowered at level 5.

Again, that's in a regular 3.5 game. If spellcastiing is less powerful, or SR is cheaper, or races in general are more powerful, or caster level is easily boosted, or some other relevant change, in d20r, then they could be fine.

But in a regular game, this SR means that spellcasters of the drow's level with no caster level boosts are 50% less likely to effect the drow with a whole bunch of spells than they otherwise would be. It's on par with melee attacks or ranged attacks against a chracter having a 50% miss chance.

If you give a character considerably more potent defense than most characters, that's not good for game balance. Either you try to balance it out by dragging down offensive ability, in which case the character "participates" in games of Rocket Tag mainly by Not Getting Killed (a la Monk); or you keep offense at a normal level in addition to powerful non-offensive ability, and the character is plain overpowered (a la Cleric).

[Fax Celestis]

In that case, they only become overpowered at level 5.

Again, that's in a regular 3.5 game. If spellcastiing is less powerful, or SR is cheaper, or races in general are more powerful, or caster level is easily boosted, or some other relevant change, in d20r, then they could be fine.

But in a regular game, this SR means that spellcasters of the drow's level with no caster level boosts are 50% less likely to effect the drow with a whole bunch of spells than they otherwise would be. It's on par with melee attacks or ranged attacks against a chracter having a 50% miss chance.

If you give a character considerably more potent defense than most characters, that's not good for game balance. Either you try to balance it out by dragging down offensive ability, in which case the character "participates" in games of Rocket Tag mainly by Not Getting Killed (a la Monk); or you keep offense at a normal level in addition to powerful non-offensive ability, and the character is plain overpowered (a la Cleric).

Hm. Okay, I see where you're coming from. What about, then, making it 7+levels, instead of 10+levels? That'd mean that an equally-leveled caster without boosts would have a 65% chance, 75% with Spell Penetration, 85% with Greater Spell Penetration. It'd be a meaningful chance, but not a gigantic possibility.

[Kroy]

Hm. Okay, I see where you're coming from. What about, then, making it 7+levels, instead of 10+levels? That'd mean that an equally-leveled caster without boosts would have a 65% chance, 75% with Spell Penetration, 85% with Greater Spell Penetration. It'd be a meaningful chance, but not a gigantic possibility.

That seems 'bout balanced, though it's hard to judge without any other races to compare it to.

[Shadow_Elf]

How does Spell Resistance work in d20r? Or, for that matter, in 3.Xe?

I remember that in the original D&D Miniatures game, Spell resistance was very simple: Your Spell Resistance had a number from 1-20. After making an attack against you, a character casting a spell had to make a second d20 roll. On a roll matching your Spell Resistance Score or above, the spell succeed.

So to hit a creature with SR 11, you had to roll 11+ in order to hit them.

I think that this system would be easy enough to implement here, if its not far too different from what the system currently is. Then you could give Drow SR equal to their Class levels: an ECL 5 Drow character has SR 5, which means that spells have a 20% chance of failing against it. But then Spellcasters can get modifiers to their SR rolls. I.E. Spell Penetration gives you a +1 modifier on the roll, etc.

Maybe this is too much of a chage, and I'm just crazy. Thoughts?

[Fax Celestis]

How does Spell Resistance work in d20r? Or, for that matter, in 3.Xe?

I remember that in the original D&D Miniatures game, Spell resistance was very simple: Your Spell Resistance had a number from 1-20. After making an attack against you, a character casting a spell had to make a second d20 roll. On a roll matching your Spell Resistance Score or above, the spell succeed.

So to hit a creature with SR 11, you had to roll 11+ in order to hit them.

I think that this system would be easy enough to implement here, if its not far too different from what the system currently is. Then you could give Drow SR equal to their Class levels: an ECL 5 Drow character has SR 5, which means that spells have a 20% chance of failing against it. But then Spellcasters can get modifiers to their SR rolls. I.E. Spell Penetration gives you a +1 modifier on the roll, etc.

Maybe this is too much of a chage, and I'm just crazy. Thoughts?

It's a big change. The difference between the minis game and the 3.x game is that spellcasters roll 1d20 and add their caster level, then compare that number to their target's SR. Equalling or exceeding that number means the spell succeeds.