Archdevil's page

It goes
Demons = CE = Tanar'ri
Devils = LE = Baatezu
Daemons = NE = Yugoloths

IIRC the fantasy names were introduced in 2nd edition as a way to slightly distance D&D from real-world religion and "Satanic panic."

Pretty sure the 5e MM does also say that yugoloths are also known as daemons. So you can still call em daemons if you want.

If you want to be a healer with full spellcasting but cleric is a boring option for you, have you considered a witch or shaman maybe? Not sure about the archer part but you at least get more "interesting" class features.

I disagree, the metagaming in this instance is more subtle but still there. Generally the player knows their GM very well and has a good idea of what strategy is most likely to work to convince them (bold move, out of the box idea, sob story, joke etc.). The character has never met the guard before and doesn't have that advantage.

I have GMed for players who are mildly autistic and I find that it is best to separate intent from execution when it comes to social interactions with NPCs otherwise you saddle them with a big disadvantage which can compromise their experience.

But the player isn't trying to convince the GM, they're trying to convince the NPC. A decent GM should have a reasonable idea of what strategy will or won't work for a given roleplay interaction.

I absolutely agree that people who may be shy or have difficulty with social interaction in RL shouldn't be punished for it in roleplaying situations. I'm just saying that if someone does have a creative idea for a roleplay interaction, you should reward them for it.

I just don't see the point of the term "metagaming" if you say that just being creative in-character counts as metagaming.

I think, Drizzt aside, that the drow are a really interesting race, but a traditional member of the drow wouldn't fit most campaigns. Hence the tendency of so many players of trying to create playable characters that end being Drizzt clones.

Oh yeah, your average drow definitely isn't a good fit for a typical party. I guess my beef is that I think people's definition of "Drizzt clone" is "any non-evil drow character" and I feel like that's not really fair, there's lots of interesting possible characters you could come up with who would fit that but also be totally different from Drizzt in many other ways.

(Unrelated but something that occurred to me while thinking about the idea of Drizzt ripoffs, I wonder if anyone's ever played a character who was deliberately trying to be like Drizzt, IC, since the guy is famous in-universe as well??)

I think another thing that hurts the Drow in terms of people seeing it as a valid character race is that authors often stat them up with some absurdly powerful array (at first, the Drow was a 41 RP race). A race and (social) class background shouldn't make someone 4 times (by some measure) better than a human.

If you just throw Drow in there as an elf variant, with maybe +Cha instead of +Int, that's roughly as powerful as an elf people aren't going to side eye it as "powergamer, eh?" as much.

I mean, those Drizzt books came out how long ago? People are going to move on eventually.

Very good point, I tend to forget about that aspect because I mostly have played 5E (where drow are an elf subrace, pretty much exactly as you described, with a little sidebar in the PHB about how they're almost always evil and you should double check with your DM about whether you can play one).

Unfortunately, I doubt people will ever move on from Drizzt being the most famous drow, considering the books were still being published up until a few months ago, only ending because the whole Forgotten Realms novel line was shut down :P

This said, merging these two conversations, painting your face like the Gygaxian drow is seriously weird and creepy and white nerds need to stop doing it ten years ago. :P

*cringe* That's the worst. Please, people, just paint yourself sort of grayish-purple like so many drow illustrations are anyways and stay away from the unfortunate implications. :S

I guess this qualifies as embarrassing... Drow are my favorite D&D race. I've read a probably excessive amount of sourcebooks and novels about them, and I secretly feel a little bit hurt when people say things like "drow players just want to make Drizzt ripoffs".