Drow Noble: Why do People Freak?

[Riuken]

You can play a drow and buy into the "noble" with feats. This is like asking "can I play a level 5 fighter?" Yes, yes you can, but you have to advance to it so it stays balanced with everyone else.

Look, some concepts take a few levels to work. An unarmored paladin flurrying with a scimitar? Sure... at level 5+.

If it's about being drow for flavor, I'm sorry, it just sounds like the story the GM wants to tell can't accommodate a drow hero. Or more likely, they don't want the extra work of fitting you in after the fact.

The term "special snowflake" isn't used as a compliment, usually because it's a red flag for a player personality the GM and/or other players don't want to play with. Namely, the selfish "it's all about me!" personality.

[Purple Dragon Knight]

Drow in Golarion are vastly different than Drow in Forgotten Realms. Drow are always evil. In fact, regular elves who become evil transform into drow. Please read up on what a Golarion drow really is. Articles can be found in the Second Darkness adventure path. Thanks.

[kestral287]

So there was mention, in the OP, of how Humans are exceptionally powerful because they get one free feat.

Screw the extra stats (seriously, Drow Nobles have a pretty terrible stat spread for using the Advanced stat boosts; it can get so much nastier), screw their racial tendencies.

From a purely mechanical perspective, the difference between a Drow and a Drow Noble is exactly six feats. Drow Nobility, Improved Drow Nobility, Greater Drow Nobility, Noble Spell Resistance, Umbral Scion, and Improved Umbral Scion.

Let us-- generously-- assume that each of these feats, in and of themselves, offers a lesser boost than the Human's free bonus feat. We'll assume it's half of that, in fact. This is somewhat backed up if you follow the racial points bit; a fixed feat is two points and a feat of choice is four.

That puts you at 'only' 300% of the Human's effectiveness. Note that Humans seem to be pretty consistently considered the king class of munchkindom.

Now, add in that you get a net +8 to stats, compared to the +2 of other races. This renders a Drow Noble roughly four times as powerful as a Human on that angle.

From a pure mechanical standpoint, then, the numbers are pretty blatant. Drow Nobles stink of cheese. This can be compensated for! I'm in a game where we were allowed to modify/customize our races to bring it up to 17 RP... and hey, I took Advanced stats and Greater Spell Resistance. I've got no problem grabbing good stuff if my DM lets me. But that was something everybody was getting. Taking Drow Noble means you either force imbalance among the party or you force the DM to compensate for your existence. That's work for a DM, so unless you have a very good reason to make them do it... most would say no.

From the standpoint of character design, Drow tend to be boring. Even if you take the old-school look at the Drow rather than Golarion's, the simple fact is that the huge majority are evil. That's what the race is written to be. Trying to be the one special Noble who saw his race for what it was and cast off its chains is interesting... the first time.

And maybe the second time. And the third. After that, it became the norm. It became mundane and boring rather than anything interesting. And the alternative is... to play their race to the hilt, and be Generic Evil Guy #397.6. Meh? In an Evil campaign, sure, that'd be fun, otherwise it tends to get boring really, really fast, and fosters inter-party conflict.

[knightnday]

The Genie wrote:

I am not saying that the Drow Noble is not powerful it is in fact vastly powerful.

But I was not really talking about the whole well mechanically its stronger aspect.

Why do people freak if you mention playing a Drow and especially a drow noble? People seem to outright act like the sky is going to fall if you play one. Honestly some of the people on here are talking like if you started at level 20 ECL that a Drow would still be far too powerful let alone a Drow Noble.

Honestly Drow is an interesting race because I like playing against the grain myself. Like a Scholarly Centaur (Chiron style) or a Chaotic Neutral Drow who doesn't automatically wanna enslave the universe. Being handcuffed to a style of personality based off race is well.. Racist to be honest.

Humans can run the gambit from good and wholesome to utterly evil. Yet everyone says Drow are wholesale evil or else they are killed. Well what if one survived an attempt as assassination. A discarded newborn thought to be left to the spiders being found and taken away to be raised as a Drow who hates other drows or just hates evil in general due to a personal vendetta. Not a good motivation but hating evil is common.

Yes I know about Drizzt but only in name and reputation I have never read the canon sources about him. So he plays no part in my thought process on a good or neutral aligned Drow.

Yes Drow Noble is powerful, and is said to be a CR 1, so at level 5 you would be CR 1/Class 4 to get your ECL. This is what is suggested by one of the dev team.

And yes I tend to Gestalt Classes if I am allowing in powerful players, they start with perks.. and face a daunting drawback due to it.

The first step to understanding why people might freak is to do some research beyond name recognition; there is a reason why drow are often ridiculed on RPG message boards -- every third person has played a "good" or "misunderstood" version of it, often modeled on the most famous one.

You've been shown in no uncertain terms why Drow Noble are considered powerful and why people might freak about it. They are blatantly more powerful than the average party race.

Going past the mechanics, you are, in effect (for Golarion's sake) asking to play a good Sith Lord in a Star Wars game. Does that make a little more sense? Yeah, sure, there might be a good one out there somewhere. As kestral287 and others have mentioned, after the third or so story you hear about someone playing one you just sort of sigh and shake your head.

I'm not sure about the purpose of this thread. I'm not sure that I believe that folks don't know why the general population of the message board might balk at a Drow Noble, or that you need to justify your desire to play one or GM for them. If that's how you want to do it, go for it. A simple search about drow should educate you about what people think and why.

[Chris Lambertz]

Locking this one. It might be a better idea to start out a thread without negative blanket statements about preferences of other gamers. Condescending posts, personal insults and popcorn posts also don't add anything to conversation. Additionally, if you'd like to discuss drow as they exist in the world of Golarion, the Campaign Setting forum is probably more appropriate.