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Ambidexterity, if memory serves, reduced the penalties for fighting with two weapons by 2. Two Weapon Fighting dropped it another one or two. Two weapon fighting style another 2...
When the penalties started out at something like -8 for fighting with two weapons, that became significant pretty quickly.
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Why would they make specifically the drows the best at 2-weapon fighting?
I don't think that had been the intent, since the original Drow were ambidextrous yet seldom (if ever?) wielded two weapons (other than a spiked buckler) even though they would've been excellent at it given 1st ed. DnD rules (and since poison was their main shtick). But you put that assumed ambidexterity (or their superlative Dex which achieves the same result) in the hands of players (no pun intended) and they'll fully exploit it.
Move forward in editions where ambidexterity gets separated from superior Dexterity and getting Ambidexterity has an actual cost AND Drizzt hits the scene and "poof", Drow become the best due to that head start and player desire to emulate that icon. Plus there's some of the other ridiculous bonuses they get like bonuses to saves and Magic Resistance. Meanwhile things like males capping at 10 Str fall to the wayside, a fact that would've made them unfeasible as PCs (w/o that poison & magic support)I'd say 2-weapon fighting is as much or more tied to the Ranger class, also likely to Drizzt, since early Rangers didn't have that niche yet.
Now in PF2, where everybody's ambidextrous and Drow stats have become more normalized, there's no reason for them to be superior at it other than the iconic imagery from that 2nd-3rd edition stretch.
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I don't think that had been the intent, since the original Drow were ambidextrous yet seldom (if ever?) wielded two weapons (other than a spiked buckler) even though they would've been excellent at it given 1st ed. DnD rules (and since poison was their main shtick). But you put that assumed ambidexterity (or their superlative Dex which achieves the same result) in the hands of players (no pun intended) and they'll fully exploit it.
There are good reasons why their second weapon was normally the spiked shield. You have to remember that speed factors where a thing and the spiked buckler allowed an extra attack at a -2 so a drow with a short sword and a spiked shield made a primary shortsword attack, a secondary spiked shield attack, an extra spiked shield attack and can defend themselves 'as a small shield' against a single opponent and could make all three attacks before someone with an pike awl gets their attack. Plus it's 3 chances for poison.
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Getting back to lore, what are Golarion drow like? I had a player ask me about playing on the other day and I honestly couldn't tell him much about them. What are the differences? Does Lolth even exist?
The drow in a certain module don't seem evil and don't seem follow Lolth. Lolth I imagine is a copyrighted property.
Do they share any of the aspects common to drow? Who do they follow?
Some lore master of Golarion must know.
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Getting back to lore, what are Golarion drow like? I had a player ask me about playing on the other day and I honestly couldn't tell him much about them. What are the differences? Does Lolth even exist?
The drow in a certain module don't seem evil and don't seem follow Lolth. Lolth I imagine is a copyrighted property.
Do they share any of the aspects common to drow? Who do they follow?
Some lore master of Golarion must know.
Monster Codex, Darklands Revisited and Blood of Shadows talk about Drow in detail. As far as worship: demon lords, Nocticula, Norgorber, Urgathoa, Zon-Kuthon. As far as common aspects, I think so: it's been a while since I've browsed through the pathfinder specific stuff.
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Why would they make specifically the drows the best at 2-weapon fighting?
Originally it wasn't a focus. Mostly they were weird new dark faeire elves worshipping Lolth with tentacle rods. That was their surprising and weird weapon.
Then after they developed the culture more maybe in Forgotten Realms, they made them the best two weapon fighters because it was a cultural fighting style the males were raised to do from birth.
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No, there's no Lolth equivalent and as far as I can tell Golarion drow society seems less organized and rigid than in FR too.
IIRC, Golarion Drow are the descendants of elves that chose not to flee Golarion when the aboleths threw their self-destructive temper tantrum. They were driven underground to survive Earthfall and ended up being warped by Rovagug's influence.
It's sort of a shame they ended up just being villainbait, because I feel like there are interesting stories you can tell about a faction of elves unwilling to sever ties with their new home even in the face of a cataclysm and them dealing with both the fallout of those events and what happens when their kin end up coming back after the fact.
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No, there's no Lolth equivalent and as far as I can tell Golarion drow society seems less organized and rigid than in FR too.
IIRC, Golarion Drow are the descendants of elves that chose not to flee Golarion when the aboleths threw their self-destructive temper tantrum. They were driven underground to survive Earthfall and ended up being warped by Rovagug's influence.
It's sort of a shame they ended up just being villainbait, because I feel like there are interesting stories you can tell about a faction of elves unwilling to sever ties with their new home even in the face of a cataclysm and them dealing with both the fallout of those events and what happens when their kin end up coming back after the fact.
The Mualijae did not leave Golarion, and I don’t believe the founders of Jinin did, either. Elves descended from those who left Golarion are presented as one of several elven “ethnicities” in LOCG.
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Don't the Jinin and the Drow have a common ancestor? As in "these were once one people, but diverged"?
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The Mualijae did not leave Golarion, and I don’t believe the founders of Jinin did, either. Elves descended from those who left Golarion are presented as one of several elven “ethnicities” in LOCG.No, there's no Lolth equivalent and as far as I can tell Golarion drow society seems less organized and rigid than in FR too.
IIRC, Golarion Drow are the descendants of elves that chose not to flee Golarion when the aboleths threw their self-destructive temper tantrum. They were driven underground to survive Earthfall and ended up being warped by Rovagug's influence.
It's sort of a shame they ended up just being villainbait, because I feel like there are interesting stories you can tell about a faction of elves unwilling to sever ties with their new home even in the face of a cataclysm and them dealing with both the fallout of those events and what happens when their kin end up coming back after the fact.
Oh cool! I'll have to check those out more, I didn't realize. It's good there's a take on them that doesn't suffer from the issues the drow do then.
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Monster Codex, Darklands Revisited and Blood of Shadows talk about Drow in detail. As far as worship: demon lords, Nocticula, Norgorber, Urgathoa, Zon-Kuthon. As far as common aspects, I think so: it's been a while since I've browsed through the pathfinder specific stuff.Getting back to lore, what are Golarion drow like? I had a player ask me about playing on the other day and I honestly couldn't tell him much about them. What are the differences? Does Lolth even exist?
The drow in a certain module don't seem evil and don't seem follow Lolth. Lolth I imagine is a copyrighted property.
Do they share any of the aspects common to drow? Who do they follow?
Some lore master of Golarion must know.
I know they made a drow AP way back when named Second Darkness? Everyone was probably kind of burned out on the drow after all the drow centric material in the Forgottem Realms including the novels. My group didn't really explore them much in Golarion.
It's been so long might be interesting to use a full AP to flesh out the drow again in Golarion. I wonder if they could make the old drow interesting and do something different with them. The Underdark always was an extremely cool place that hasn't been much in style for quite a while.
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No, there's no Lolth equivalent and as far as I can tell Golarion drow society seems less organized and rigid than in FR too.
IIRC, Golarion Drow are the descendants of elves that chose not to flee Golarion when the aboleths threw their self-destructive temper tantrum. They were driven underground to survive Earthfall and ended up being warped by Rovagug's influence.
It's sort of a shame they ended up just being villainbait, because I feel like there are interesting stories you can tell about a faction of elves unwilling to sever ties with their new home even in the face of a cataclysm and them dealing with both the fallout of those events and what happens when their kin end up coming back after the fact.
I would not mind a Golarion drow update in an AP myself if it did something interesting with the world. I doubt I would enjoy a rehash though. So unless it was something really inspired to refresh the concept, no use doing it. As a long time gamer, I have to be real that almost everything that could be done with the drow likely has been done. It might be a thankless attempt to refresh something that was new and fresh and amazing when created, but now has been done to death to the point it would be real hard to do something new with them.
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I know they made a drow AP way back when named Second Darkness? Everyone was probably kind of burned out on the drow after all the drow centric material in the Forgottem Realms including the novels. My group didn't really explore them much in Golarion.
It's been a LONG time since I've played that: a quick look had basic drow info in #3 and demon lord worship in #6.
It's been so long might be interesting to use a full AP to flesh out the drow again in Golarion. I wonder if they could make the old drow interesting and do something different with them. The Underdark always was an extremely cool place that hasn't been much in style for quite a while.
I'd be interested. ;)
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Despite having fairly extensive knowledge of pathfinder lore, I'm not too sure on drow actually due to not having read darklands material due to majority of it being 3.5 and I've been waiting for update on them so that I know what is canon and what was dropped between 3.5 and 1e :p
But yeah, drow tend to worship demon lords in general with different houses having different patron demon lord and I think most notable difference between pathfinder drow and D&D drow is that pathfinder drow do lot of Flesh Warping. Like Flesh Warp creature family are almost all created by drow. Drider is part of the family and is form of drow punishment rather than Lolth's blessing dealio since pathfinder drow have no strong spider motif
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Jinin (or some relative thereof) basically saw the direction that the rest of the 'Darklands' elves were going and decided to keep moving, eventually finding the roots of a 'mithral tree' that they then followed up to the surface in the middle of Minkai.
There they encountered samurai and found more in common with them than their underground kin, and it shaped their society from that point, if memory serves.
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Yeah. It was all about how to introduce drows and all their trappings to Golarion without infringing IP. Then introducing Samurai elves while keeping the setting consistent. And more recently, getting away from the Black skin = utterly depraved and evil by changing the drows' skin color to blue/lavender.
All of that because people love drows. Who are just reskinned Melniboneans BTW.
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Yeah. It was all about how to introduce drows and all their trappings to Golarion without infringing IP. Then introducing Samurai elves while keeping the setting consistent. And more recently, getting away from the Black skin = utterly depraved and evil by changing the drows' skin color to blue/lavender.
All of that because people love drows. Who are just reskinned Melniboneans BTW.
I do not believe they are reskinned Melniboneans. But I imagine as always to each their own for viewpoint. They did not much remind me of Melniboneans. They really didn't remind me of anything else I had read in fiction.
Melniboneans I did read were a sort of thumb your nose at Tolkien elves type race. Moorcock was turned off by the all the Tolkien knockoffs and decided to make Melniboneans.
They are obviously another huge inspiration for D&D. I know the elemental mythology used in many D&D worlds seems to be built off Moorcock's elemental lord world building ideas.
Heck, even D&D's alignment system seems to be built off some of Moorcock's ideas on Chaos and Law.
Such good books too.
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Yeah. It was all about how to introduce drows and all their trappings to Golarion without infringing IP. Then introducing Samurai elves while keeping the setting consistent. And more recently, getting away from the Black skin = utterly depraved and evil by changing the drows' skin color to blue/lavender.
All of that because people love drows. Who are just reskinned Melniboneans BTW.
I do not believe they are reskinned Melniboneans. But I imagine as always to each their own for viewpoint. They did not much remind me of Melniboneans. They really didn't remind me of anything else I had read in fiction.
Melniboneans I did read were a sort of thumb your nose at Tolkien elves type race. Moorcock was turned off by the all the Tolkien knockoffs and decided to make Melniboneans.
They are obviously another huge inspiration for D&D. I know the elemental mythology used in many D&D worlds seems to be built off Moorcock's elemental lord world building ideas.
Heck, even D&D's alignment system seems to be built off some of Moorcock's ideas on Chaos and Law.
Such good books too.
Indeed the Melniboneans were the evil version of the Tolkien elves.
As I see them compared to drows :
Elves : check
Extreme racial arrogance : check
Worship of demon lords : check
Sadistic : check
Slavery : check
CE : check
Body modification of slaves : check
Nobility heavily involved in magic : check
Powerful martial abilities : check
Internal strife : check
Once domineering and imperialist on their neighbours, now recluse and self-centered : check (at least in Golarion).
In a way, I feel Golarion drows are even closer to Melniboneans. Including a 10.000 year old civilisation.
Granted, the Melniboneans did not have black skin. But their most famous (if divergent) representative had white hair, by virtue of being albino.
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Yeah. It was all about how to introduce drows and all their trappings to Golarion without infringing IP. Then introducing Samurai elves while keeping the setting consistent. And more recently, getting away from the Black skin = utterly depraved and evil by changing the drows' skin color to blue/lavender.
All of that because people love drows. Who are just reskinned Melniboneans BTW.
I do not believe they are reskinned Melniboneans. But I imagine as always to each their own for viewpoint. They did not much remind me of Melniboneans. They really didn't remind me of anything else I had read in fiction.
Melniboneans I did read were a sort of thumb your nose at Tolkien elves type race. Moorcock was turned off by the all the Tolkien knockoffs and decided to make Melniboneans.
They are obviously another huge inspiration for D&D. I know the elemental mythology used in many D&D worlds seems to be built off Moorcock's elemental lord world building ideas.
Heck, even D&D's alignment system seems to be built off some of Moorcock's ideas on Chaos and Law.
Such good books too.
Indeed the Melniboneans were the evil version of the Tolkien elves.
As I see them compared to drows :
Elves : check
Extreme racial arrogance : check
Worship of demon lords : check
Sadistic : check
Slavery : check
CE : check
Body modification of slaves : check
Nobility heavily involved in magic : check
Powerful martial abilities : check
Internal strife : check
Once domineering and imperialist on their neighbours, now recluse and self-centered : check (at least in Golarion).In a way, I feel Golarion drows are even closer to Melniboneans. Including a 10.000 year old civilisation.
Granted, the Melniboneans did not have black skin. But their most famous (if divergent) representative had white hair, by virtue of being albino.
Golarion drow might be closer.
Melniboneans
Elves : no check. They were not elves.
Extreme racial arrogance : check
Worship of demon lords : check (Were they Demon Lords or Chaos Lords?)
Sadistic : check
Slavery : check (that check box applies to quite a few evil cultures)
CE : Melniboneans chaotic? I did not see a chaotic culture.
Body modification of slaves : Original drow did not body modify
Nobility heavily involved in magic : check (not exactly unique could check a box for a lot of D&D cultures)
Powerful martial abilities : check (see above)
Internal strife : check (see above)
Once domineering and imperialist on their neighbours, now recluse and self-centered : check (is this true in Golarion? Not true in any other version of the drow.)
Melniboneans were sort of a prehuman human line as far as I could tell. They were fairly orderly with ordered militaries and a more lawful society though they drew magic from elemental lords and the Lords of Chaos, specifically the one lord of Chaos.
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Arioch was the demon patron of Elric, but the other lords of chaos were also revered by the Melniboneans.
Melniboneans were not humans at all.
IIRC humans were kin to apes whereas it is implied that Melniboneans were kin to a kind of avian/reptilian creature that Elric once saw in the primeval jungle of the continent that the proto-Melniboneans left to create their empire on the islands of Melniboné.
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I had a friend who went to a Catholic school in the aughts and the nuns there would hit you if you wrote with your left hand. My dad had similar stories about growing up in the 1970s.
I can confirm that their experience was not unique. I was enrolled in a number of private elementary and "middle schools" as a child, two of which were (or rather still are) hardline conservative catholic churches with their own education program, and the few left-handed peers I had at BOTH of these were dramatically admonished and forced to do coursework in class as well as performing the various rituals of the faith with ONLY the right hand. Neither of these schools had actual physically abusive punishments (as far as I ever saw), rather they preferred after-school detention writing/reciting scripture or vocal and embarrassing corrective scolding in class.
Left-hand dominant students were taught that it was sinful and dirty to favor that hand, I'm still not sure I understand why they taught/believed that.
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When I was growing up, my mother told me about being pressured to write with her right hand instead of her preferred left hand, but it ultimately did not work.
By the time I go to school in the 1960s, I was not pressured in any way as to hand preference for writing, but I did quickly learn to use scissors right-handed, as left-handed scissors were pretty much non-existent. By the time we did get some left-handed scissors, I was no more able to make use of them than my right-handed classmates.
My mother and I were both left-handed and both attended public schools.
I have heard about several non-Western nations that still force children to write with their right hands. At the worst extreme, I know of some places where you would cause great offense if you used your left hand for anything that you wouldn't use an unwashed hand that you just wiped your bottom with.
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When I was growing up, my mother told me about being pressured to write with her right hand instead of her preferred left hand, but it ultimately did not work.By the time I go to school in the 1960s, I was not pressured in any way as to hand preference for writing, but I did quickly learn to use scissors right-handed, as left-handed scissors were pretty much non-existent. By the time we did get some left-handed scissors, I was no more able to make use of them than my right-handed classmates.
My mother and I were both left-handed and both attended public schools.
I have heard about several non-Western nations that still force children to write with their right hands. At the worst extreme, I know of some places where you would cause great offense if you used your left hand for anything that you wouldn't use an unwashed hand that you just wiped your bottom with.
I just talked to my dad and asked him about this as I have never experienced any handedness discrimination nor have I seen it in modern America. He went to school in the 50s and 60s. He said he had never heard of this in America and his brother, my uncle, was left-handed. Asked my friends again, none of them saw anything of the kind growing up in America. No one I know ever experienced handedness discrimination in America, in the military, in Catholic School, or anywhere they can recall in America.
Can't speak for other nations. I haven't lived or gone to school in any of them.
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Check out the feat Right hand blood for a bit of 2e "right is better than left" lore. My gnoll will take it eventually, but as a lefty myself I'll reskin the feat to lose the "left is evil" flavor.
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When I was growing up, my mother told me about being pressured to write with her right hand instead of her preferred left hand, but it ultimately did not work.By the time I go to school in the 1960s, I was not pressured in any way as to hand preference for writing, but I did quickly learn to use scissors right-handed, as left-handed scissors were pretty much non-existent. By the time we did get some left-handed scissors, I was no more able to make use of them than my right-handed classmates.
My mother and I were both left-handed and both attended public schools.
I have heard about several non-Western nations that still force children to write with their right hands. At the worst extreme, I know of some places where you would cause great offense if you used your left hand for anything that you wouldn't use an unwashed hand that you just wiped your bottom with.
I just talked to my dad and asked him about this as I have never experienced any handedness discrimination nor have I seen it in modern America. He went to school in the 50s and 60s. He said he had never heard of this in America and his brother, my uncle, was left-handed. Asked my friends again, none of them saw anything of the kind growing up in America. No one I know ever experienced handedness discrimination in America, in the military, in Catholic School, or anywhere they can recall in America.
Can't speak for other nations. I haven't lived or gone to school in any of them.
From an article in the Lancet about "scientific" reasons that were used to justify forcing the use of the right hand : "As late as 1946 the former chief psychiatrist of the New York City Board of Education, Abram Blau, warned that, unless retrained, left-handed children risked severe developmental and learning disabilities and insisted that “children should be encouraged in their early years to adopt dextrality…in order to become better equipped to live in our right-sided world”."
Good thing that the US education evolved to be more inclusive.
Note : my first wording was "Good thing that the US education left that behind and evolved in the right direction." That is telling IMO.
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From an article in the Lancet about "scientific" reasons that were used to justify forcing the use of the right hand : "As late as 1946 the former chief psychiatrist of the New York City Board of Education, Abram Blau, warned that, unless retrained, left-handed children risked severe developmental and learning disabilities and insisted that “children should be encouraged in their early years to adopt dextrality…in order to become better equipped to live in our right-sided world”."
Good thing that the US education evolved to be more inclusive.
The thing is, he wasn't all wrong: In 1946 left handed items where much less common. Knives, pruning shears, measuring tape, measuring cups, cork screws, peelers, scissors, can openers and even heavier equipment line drill presses, grinders ,circular saws, ect are all 'handed' in the way they are used. So learning to be able to use things right handed did "better equip" them to live in that right sided world. That and it would make classes harder that require the use of handed items like "Home Economics" and "Shop" so it's easy to see how left handed could be seen as a disability for them. It was right after WW2 too, so even women where doing jobs traditionally done by men like in factories and shipyards which had a heavier reliance on machines and tool that where built for right handed people.
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A perfect example of young people making the all-too-common mistake of looking at the past through a modern lense and leaping to uninformed judgements.
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Nah, beating a child for using their left hand is bad. Was bad. Always bad.
Good thing nothing about The Raven Black's post or my reply had anything to do with child beating. Neither comment was about the methods of retraining but why it was done.
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Getting back to lore, what are Golarion drow like? I had a player ask me about playing on the other day and I honestly couldn't tell him much about them. What are the differences? Does Lolth even exist?
The drow in a certain module don't seem evil and don't seem follow Lolth. Lolth I imagine is a copyrighted property.
Do they share any of the aspects common to drow? Who do they follow?
Some lore master of Golarion must know.
In 1E, they were similar to the Menzobarranzan elves of FR, but way more into fleshwarping and they worshipped different demon lords rather than one singular deity (which made more sense to me). They were blue-or purple-skinned rather than black, at least after Second Darkness.
In 2E, there's an emphasis that drow aren't always evil, and some communities worship CN proteans instead of demons. Their art is lighter-skinned in the bestiary than in recent adventures. See here for more info.
For my money, the LO setting would have worked fine without drow, and including drow meant Paizo imported their baggage while also being too derivative of FR. Paizo has done better with other Darklands-dwelling people and will likely focus on them more than drow or duergar, especially since recent changes have been made.
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Nah, beating a child for using their left hand is bad. Was bad. Always bad.Good thing nothing about The Raven Black's post or my reply didn't have anything to do with child beating. Neither comment was about the methods of retraining but why it was done.
I wasn’t responding to you or Raven.
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I wasn’t responding to you or Raven.Nah, beating a child for using their left hand is bad. Was bad. Always bad.Good thing nothing about The Raven Black's post or my reply didn't have anything to do with child beating. Neither comment was about the methods of retraining but why it was done.
Sorry then: without you quoting anyone and it being right behind our posts, I took it to be aimed at my exchange.
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I'm confused. At what point did anyone indicate that abuse wasn't bad?
I was talking about people coming to false or incomplete conclusions due to not doing their due diligence and having all the facts.
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I'm confused. At what point did anyone indicate that abuse wasn't bad?
I think that they're looping back a bit to remark on how they believe that behavior should always be viewed through and judged based on the current cultural norms of western society that they currently hold as opposed to being discussed within any historical or philosophical context.
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I'm pretty sure saying that even if it was deemed morally okay the time, it was still abuse and it caused harm. Because guess what to do the person who was affected by it that was harmful abusive behavior to them that would have affected them.
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This was originally a lore errata thread. I had to go look at the OP to recall what this thread originally started as.
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I'm confused. At what point did anyone indicate that abuse wasn't bad?
I was talking about people coming to false or incomplete conclusions due to not doing their due diligence and having all the facts.
Yeah, you didn’t say that in a vacuum, you said it during an argument on people abused for being left handed and other people saying it didn’t happen or trying to justify it.
