Breadth of experience feat and drow

[Lehmo]

Do drow who are a racial subtype of elf qualify for the Breadth of experience feat?

Feat: Breadth of Experience
Although still young for your kind, you have a lifetime of knowledge and training.

Prerequisites: Dwarf, elf, or gnome; 100+ years old.

Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Knowledge and Profession skill checks, and can make checks with those skills untrained.

If yes, do half elves also qualify?

[Blackstorm]

Drows ARE actually elves, so they qualify. Half elves also said in their entry:

PRD wrote:

Elf Blood: Half-elves count as both elves and humans for any effect related to race.

Emphasys mine. So they qualify.

[HaraldKlak]

Blackstorm wrote:

Drows ARE actually elves, so they qualify. Half elves also said in their entry:

PRD wrote:

Elf Blood: Half-elves count as both elves and humans for any effect related to race.

Emphasys mine. So they qualify.

How does this make Drow qualify as elves..?

Half-elves have Elf Blood allowing them to choose elf racial options, Drows doesn't this (despite the elf subtype).

As such, no, they don't count as elves, and choose elven racial feats. The get to count as drow, and choose drow racial feats.

[Mysterious Stranger]

While elf blood does allow half elves to choose elf feats they still have to meet the other requirements for the feat. Breadth of experience also has a prerequisite of being 100+ years old. This means you are at least old and close to venerable, so more than likely most half elves will not qualify for it.

Drow are elves in the same way full blooded Azlanti are humans.

[Umbranus]

Yes, that's a corner case that is a little strange.
Per the rules a drow would not qualify but if said drow would have a child with a human this child would qualify because it suddenly is elf enough.

I would allow it as I allowed a drow to have the elf weapon familiarity to treat a elven curved blade as martial weapon in a game I GMed.

[Deadmanwalking]

Personally? I'd allow any race that lives long enough to have it. It's not cultural, after all.

[Blackstorm]

HaraldKlak wrote:

Blackstorm wrote:

Drows ARE actually elves, so they qualify. Half elves also said in their entry:

PRD wrote:

Elf Blood: Half-elves count as both elves and humans for any effect related to race.

Emphasys mine. So they qualify.

How does this make Drow qualify as elves..?

Half-elves have Elf Blood allowing them to choose elf racial options,

The prd I quoted was referring to half elves, in fact, not the drows. My first sentece was about drow, second and quote was about the half elves.

Quote:

Drows doesn't this (despite the elf subtype).

So what's the meaning of Elf subtype? Just flavour? Evlves are Humanoid(elf). Drow too. I can't see how drows cannot qualify for elven options.

Quote:

As such, no, they don't count as elves, and choose elven racial feats. The get to count as drow, and choose drow racial feats.

I cannot see why. Drow are designed as dark elves.

[Dragonamedrake]

RAW no... Drow are not elves. They are however close enough I would allow it if I was the GM. Its basicly the difference between Chinese and European... they look different/have different cultures, but they are both human. Drow and Elves are basicly the same race... or really close cousins.

[Noir le Lotus]

Drow have the elf subtype, so they are elves !!

[HaraldKlak]

Blackstorm wrote:

Quote:

Drows doesn't this (despite the elf subtype).

So what's the meaning of Elf subtype? Just flavour? Evlves are Humanoid(elf). Drow too. I can't see how drows cannot qualify for elven options.

Subtypes are one game mechanical thing, being a race is a different one.

Looking at feat requirements, we have several that doesn't have exist as subtypes (goblin, half-elf, drow, duergar, and all the native outsiders, to name some of them).
As such it really doesn't make sense to base these feat requirements on subtypes.

I am not disbuting that Drow are a kind of elf, they most definately are. But mechanically the are an entirely different race than elves are. They have their own racial options, including racial feats.
In my opinion, it makes sense that the feat requirements follow this mechanical seperation between related races.

[HaraldKlak]

Blackstorm wrote:

The prd I quoted was referring to half elves, in fact, not the drows. My first sentece was about drow, second and quote was about the half elves.

Sorry about that. I missed the OP question about half-elves, so I read it in the wrong context.

[Kazaan]

The "elf-blood" Racial trait is just a "plain English" shorthand for how subtypes work. It is the subtype that qualifies you for rules elements related to race:

PRD wrote:

Humanoid races have few or no supernatural or spell-like abilities, but most can speak and have well-developed societies. Humanoids are usually Small or Medium, unless they have the giant subtype, in which case they are Large. Every humanoid creature also has a subtype to match its race, such as human, giant, goblinoid, reptilian, or tengu. If you are making a new humanoid race, you should either find an existing subtype to match or make a new one by using the name of the race as the subtype. If you are making a half-breed race, it should have the racial type of both parent races. For example, a half-elf has both the human and the elf subtypes. Subtypes are often important to qualify for other racial abilities and feats. If a humanoid has a racial subtype, it is considered a member of that race in the case of race prerequisites. A humanoid race has the following features.

It doesn't matter if you're a Core Elf, Core Half-Elf, Drow, or any custom race that involves Elf as a subtype. You could make a custom Humanoid(Elf) that is built more like a savage jungle Elven subspecies and it would qualify as an Elf for any applicable rules elements. A custom Humanoid(Elf, Orc) would count as both Elf and Orc for any and all rules elements contingent on being an Elf or an Orc. Drow are Humanoid(Elf) which means they qualify for anything and everything that requires Elf as a race: they are immune to Ghoul paralysis, they qualify for feats and traits with Elf as a prereq, they qualify for Elven Racial Archetypes, they qualify to use items limited to use by or for Elves, Spells that can only be cast by or target Elves, so on and so forth. It is not the foo-blood "trait" that qualifies you as a particular race. The Half-Elf "Elf-Blood" trait is Humanoid(Human, Elf), just written to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It was presumed that casual lay-players could look at Elf Blood and its explanation would be sufficient while more intelligent and involved players would not find it too hard to extrapolate exactly what is meant by the term. They didn't account for that large middle-class of players who want to use the system fully, but lack the lateral thinking and depth of scope to understand how it works.

[HaraldKlak]

Kazaan wrote:

The "elf-blood" Racial trait is just a "plain English" shorthand for how subtypes work. It is the subtype that qualifies you for rules elements related to race:

Your quote is taken out of context, being from the Race Builder out of the ARG, specifying rules for creating custom races.

Nothing in this direction is included anywhere in the description of types and subtypes in the CRB or bestiaries.

Trying to force this little bit of text onto feat requirements result in most of the racial feats being unavailiable to any character (since the races doesn't exist as subtypes).

EDITED to be a bit more civil than first.

[Claxon]

Since this isn't the rules forum, the feat is about being a long lived race and having a lot of experience from being a member of such. I would allow any character 100 years old or older from a long lived race to qualify because it represents having a human lifetimes worth of experience.

[Mysterious Stranger]

Another thing to consider is that it is possible for an elf to spontaneously change into a drow. I think it happened to an NPC during the AP second darkness. Admittedly this is an extremely rare occurrence, but it still happens. I do not have the adventure path so I don’t know the specifics, but that would indicate to me they are the same race.

Let’s say you have an elf that changes into a drow, does he lose the feats he qualified for before he changed?

[Blackstorm]

[QUOTE="HaraldKlak"
Your quote is taken out of context, being from the Race Builder out of the ARG, specifying rules for creating custom races.

Nothing in this direction is included anywhere in the description of types and subtypes in the CRB or bestiaries.

Trying to force this little bit of text onto feat requirements result in most of the racial feats being unavailiable to any character (since the races doesn't exist as subtypes).

EDITED to be a bit more civil than first.

But the drow as playable race, if I don't get wrong, first appears in the arg. So I don't see the problem quoting that. And the arg is still a manual that use rules. I mean, it wouldn't have any sense say something like "if you're building you're race her race subtype make her counting as that race, but if it's one of our race, they don't". Are you agree that's a crazy statement to make? Based on that assumption, you use inside the same manual, different rules. It's like drow doesn't count as elves, but if you build your own race that's exactly equal to drow and change only the stats, and you define them as descendant of angels, your race can access to elves feats while the drow still can't. ..

[Kazaan]

Furthermore, there's the matter of redundancy and parity. They have the Type/Subtype system for a mechanical reason; so they don't have to list every single race in the prereqs of a feat like BoE. They don't want to have to list Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Dwerger, Drow, Snirfnirblin, Savage Jungle Elf, Mountain Dwarf, Hill Dwarf, Cave Dwarf, etc. etc. They list Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome as the exemplar races and, by extension, any other race that "counts as" by virtue of any rules element; be that a half-breed, Racial Heritage, or a different race with the same subtype (ie. Elf->Drow).

And it's a bit tired how people drag out that ridiculous excuse of "ARG isn't part of the core rules so it doesn't apply." It's a set of rules, published by Paizo, based on the core rules of the Pathfinder System. Systems involve a significant degree of parity, otherwise they cannot function. To say that a Half-Elf qualifies as an Elf for a feat and a custom-made race that includes Elf as a subtype qualifies, but Drow don't, is laughably ignorant as to the nature of systems and internal consistency/parity. So there's nothing hard-coded into the rules that says a Drow, as an Elven Humanoid, can't take Breadth of Experience. There may be subjective, fluff-based reasons as to why a particular Drow doesn't take certain Elf-limited rules elements; and it's the responsibility of each player to design characters that make sense and are well-made, but that's an entirely different story. If this Drow has decided to have broad experiences that make him more knowledgeable, more power to him; no one's going to hand him a red card for it.

[Lehmo]

Thanks Kazaan, I have since jumped the fence - so to say - with your informative post. I agree with your post. I have spoken with the player via facebook and obsidian portal that it is fine to take the feat as a drow, but suggested as part of the character background or while roleplaying (for those players that like to roleplay a history rather than write one) that he simply use the description: "you have a lifetime of knowledge and training" in some degree of context with his roleplay.