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The debate over the place of Drow in the world has been done to death, and any further begging for their inclusion isn’t likely to do much for Paizo either way - so I wanted this thread to be something else entirely! If an official Drow Ancestry dropped tomorrow (in whatever form you’d like), what would you do with that?
I want to know about your Drow characters! I want to hear campaign ideas where such a thing would fit well! It’s easy to have the abstract “Drow would be nice,” but I figure something more concrete is a little more entertaining.
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I would attempt to rebuild an old character, Adin Lir, a powerful drow noble and mystic theurge (cleric/wizard). Formerly the second of her house, she lost everything when her matron sold her into the service of a traveling adventurer in return for an artifact. She spent much of the rest of her life plotting revenge against, and escape from, her new master--who never gave up on trying to redeem her from her wicked drow ways. Nevertheless, she accompanied her new "matron" on many great adventures.
It was never resolved whether she escaped, got her revenge, or was redeemed and granted her freedom. The GM abandoned the campaign before that could be determined.
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Drow is honestly the only ancestry I can think of that I would never use. I'm generally not fond of Elves, but there are individual Elf cultures that I like (e.g. the Mwangi ones) but Drow seem like a combination of "everything I don't particularly care for" in one package.
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Drow is honestly the only ancestry I can think of that I would never use. I'm generally not fond of Elves, but there are individual Elf cultures that I like (e.g. the Mwangi ones) but Drow seem like a combination of "everything I don't particularly care for" in one package.
We had almost no detail on the three Mualijae elf peoples before 2e, so I’m hopeful any Drow update would similarly give us more to go off of than just the old houses of Zirnakaynin. I’d love to get away from treating them as a monolith because of one demonic city - something Abomination Vaults helps with.
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There was an old one shot character I used backed in the day that was a drow archer riding a spider. I used cavalier in PF1 but archetyped away all the tactician stuff, so a ranger would probably work.
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Keftiu - you have an extraordinary command of Golarion lore. What narratives do you see Drow characters fitting in to, in a unique way?
I’m with PossibleCabbage in that I struggle to think of interesting Drow characters that I would want to play.
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HooHOOOOOBOY! *rubs hands together* I got SO many concepts I'd wanna do with playable drow!
The first is admittedly a retread of the Sandwich Stoutaxe story (a D&D story that's surprisingly sweet despite having emerged on 4chan about an orphaned drow girl raised by her dwarf adoptive father who grows up to be a paladin of the dwarf god, Moradin). Imagine a drow kid, learning the crafts of smithing and siegecraft, and the value of family, a living example how those bonds do not require the sharing of blood. What makes it even better is that in Pathfinder (and Starfinder) there's illustrations of drow with beards, so ironically they'd fit in with dwarven society BETTER than an adopted elf!
"Aye, my adoptive son's beard is short BUT AT LEAST HE'S TRYING, which is more than can be said for YOU elves on the surface! I'm so proud of him!"
Next idea: OreaDrow! Seems inevitable given the amount of weird rocks and radiation in the Darklands they call home that some drow might have been born influenced by them!
Also, aasimars and tieflings occupy an interesting place in "mainstream" drow society, where the TIEFLINGS are regarded as blessed by the various Demon Lords they worship, while the aasimars are the ones viewed with suspicion!
Throwing another spanner into that mix is Nocticula's ascension, throwing House Misraria into an uproar! Do they keep to the old ways that have made them successful, or do they adapt to Nocticula's new doctrines and become a vanguard for change in wider drow society?!
Historically in Pathfinder, those orcs who still lived in the Darklands were mentioned as being a large source of..."interns" for mainstream evil drow cities. Given how 2e is moving to have drow communities who AREN'T like that, it makes sense that we could see some Darklands settlements where drow and orcs live in harmony as equals!
SO MANY POSSIBILITIES! XD
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I'd build a humble mushroom farmer. Probably a druid or a ranger.
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I'd build a humble mushroom farmer. Probably a druid or a ranger.
Noice.
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Hmm. Monk, psychic, sorcerer, swashbuckler, or thaumaturge. I could make a cool drow as any class, but those are the ones I would have the most fun with.
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Keftiu - you have an extraordinary command of Golarion lore. What narratives do you see Drow characters fitting in to, in a unique way?
I’m with PossibleCabbage in that I struggle to think of interesting Drow characters that I would want to play.
That's quite the compliment, thank you!
Almost every Drow character is going to stand in the shadow of the stereotype: that of the cruel, superior masters of the Darklands, who revere demon lords and loathe their surface kin... no matter how fair that is. You can play characters who play with that relatively straight ("My Tiefling heritage was interpreted as a blessing at my birth!" or "I learned my skill with the blade on bloody Darklands raids,"), or be in conversation with it ("When Nocticula changed, I realized I could no longer serve my House," "The endless bloodshed of Zirnakaynin just seemed pointless, after a time,"), but people are going to expect it no matter what.
The nice thing is, that's an angle on some fun builds: well-liked Tieflings and hated Aasimar, as mentioned, are a fun inversion, while if you truly bend canon to breaking, a Half-Orc Drow could be a fascinating person to play. Clerics, Magi, Psychics, Rogues, Wizards, and Witches are probably all over the place, as are no few poisonous alchemists and Sorcerers with monstrous bloodlines. Fleshwarps abound, for characters who *used* to be Drow. Redeemers of Nocticula are almost certain to be popular. Rangers with spider companions. The goofily-named "Shootists."
Get away from that infamous city, and other stories begin to emerge. Kyonin is trying to right old wrongs and welcome 'redeemed' Drow into their ranks via the reformed Twilight Lanterns - playing out that tense "homecoming" and your strange relationship to that nation could be a blast. Extinction Curse has a backmatter that describes a Drow who changed her ways, intermarrying with the Vourinoi of Osirion; her descendants are hunted to this day by Drow cultists of Nyarlathotep's local aspect. Abomination Vaults makes mention of non-Evil Drow who revere and live among proteans, and features a largely non-Evil, non-religious Drow outpost connected by trade to the undefined larger city of Lozardyn (potentially one of those protean hubs).
One of those Twilight Lanterns might put their old knowledge of demonic lore to use in the holy task of cleansing the Tanglebriar. Imagine a Vourinoi Thaumaturge who uses a mix of Osirian and Drow artifacts, fascinated by the legends of their Drow grandmother. Narriseminek is the Protean Lord of "ascendance and revelations," who commands followers to transform the bodies of willing creatures... imagine a Ganzi Fleshwarp who used to be Drow before remaking themself with alchemy, offering to help others do the same as their form of religious obligation?
There's no shortage of things you can do with them other than "puppy-kicking evil" and "Drizzt clone."
EDIT: It just dawned on me that Rovagug wrecked the Drow's whole everything, back in the ancient past. Y'know who hates Rovagug and loves redemption?
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I'd build a humble mushroom farmer. Probably a druid or a ranger.
I'm once again begging for a Fungus/Rot Druid.
Hmm. Monk, psychic, sorcerer, swashbuckler, or thaumaturge. I could make a cool drow as any class, but those are the ones I would have the most fun with.
Monk is a sneaky-good option. Cobra Stance is a level 4 feat that gives you Poison unarmed strikes, which just feels like a slam dunk.
I've wondered before if some mashing together of Tiefling and Vishkanya might make a rough Drow approximate, in terms of pure mechanics, while we wait for the real thing.
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Drow who live and revere Proteans sounds like an incredible reason to play a Drow Ganzi. Drow with gorgeous feathers and a striking tail. Perhaps more traditional Drow mistaken you for a flesh-warp of somekind.
Also I love your implied Drow saranrites.
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EDIT: It just dawned on me that Rovagug wrecked the Drow's whole everything, back in the ancient past. Y'know who hates Rovagug and loves redemption?
Bingo!
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There’s a thread there, actually - the Drow are incredibly tragic in origin, choosing to literally put roots down deep rather than abandon the world they’d adopted as home. Nothing indicates they chose Rovagug’s influence on their people - which doesn’t excuse the subsequent demon worship and atrocities, but roots them in what is functionally an environmental curse.
The Drow are the people unlucky enough to flee the bomb, but end up in a wasteland twice as irradiated - and they lived! To build anything that lasts in a place as hostile as the Darklands, all while menaced by the lingering influence of the historical Evil of the setting… arrogance earned from surviving, against all odds. While the Aiudeen ran away, they endured, even if it meant fleshwarping and seeking planar patrons, and that “do what it takes to live” ideal might make a good pillar for Drow culture.
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I mentioned in the god thread that CE stuff tends to strike me as pretty unnuanced. Drow characters could be the window we use to improve that nuance while still being evil.
We know that CE entities are capable of forming long-lived societies, even if it is more rare than not. If Drow are venturing topside more, for whatever reason, it would make sense for diplomats or foreign dignitaries to visit other countries or host visitors to the Darklands (cultural exchance, woo!).
It might be fun to play one of those diplomats. It isn't uncommon for people in diplomatic positions to also be part of whatever passes for the organization's intelligence service, so it doesn't even have to be altruistic. Just examining potential threats via new avenues that had been previously closed.
Separately: I'm a Nocticula obsessive, so she represents a really cool avenue, too.
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I’m so glad I asked my question. Some really good responses here. My interest is piqued!
I own but never played Second Darkness. My impression was that to be Drow on Golarion was to be innately evil, no exceptions. That always rubbed me the wrong way. I know a lot of lore got updated, so I may need to update my brain too.
I can also see the Drow as fulfilling a specific niche in the socioeconomic landscape of the Darklands. Although I would still like to see more separation from the D&D product.
The potential influence of Nocticula and Sarenrae is exciting to me too.
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My impression was that to be Drow on Golarion was to be innately evil, no exceptions. That always rubbed me the wrong way. I know a lot of lore got updated, so I may need to update my brain too.
For some context...
It was also at about this point that we learned that the game whose rules we relied upon for our publications was going out of print with a 4th edition that would be much less open to OGL use (and also wasn't really compatible with the type of stories we wanted to keep telling), so we began work on the Pathfinder RPG at about this time.
For Second Darkness, we wanted to start distancing ourself more and more from D&D's traditions, both to help make Golarion and Pathfinder their own thing, but also in an attempt to appeal to our long-standing customers at the time who were VERY happy with the old-school nostalgic work we had been doing with Dragon and Dungeon magazine. Without access to any of the actual nostalgia beyond what we could draw upon through the OGL, I decided to do an Adventure Path that would give us a chance to explore some of the game's most popular elements—the underdark and drow and demons (elements we had received a lot of praise and good reviews for when we covered these topics in the magazines), but also to do some new things with it. The hope was to include some science fiction elements with falling stars and the like, but also to move away from the popularity of Driz'zt and what, at the time, we were seeing as a backlash among our customers to "kinder, gentler drow." It was also a chance for us to start exploring how our elves were different than the standard D&D elf (a goal that I feel like we didn't succeed at, but that's a rumination for a different thread).
One element I'd come up with for Golarion's elves early on is that they changed to adapt their environments over time—something I'd already done a lot in my homebrew setting. An elf who lived long in a forest would grow tall and limber like a tree. An elf in the ocean would become aquatic and have webbed fingers and toes. An elf in the arctic would become pale and wispy like snow. And so on. So the idea that elves who retreated from Earthfall into the depths of the Darklands, where evil held sway and where the physical proximity to the metaphorical boundary between the planet's core and Rovagug's prison plane was so much closer, would transform into an evil version of themselves. Having this be something that could be spontaneously triggered in any elf who committed great evil, regardless of where they would live, helped to make Golarion's drow more different than D&D's drow. We included a sidebar in an early volume of Second Darkness talking about how drow were always evil specifically to soothe a lot of concern online that Paizo was trying to "cash in" on Driz'zt's popularity, and to let our customers at the time know we were going back to the original, nostalgic role they played as mysterious and frightening villains for heroes to fight against.
This was back in 2007 that we were working on Second Darkness. Now, 15 years later, the world has changed in a lot of ways, and one of the BETTER ways is how the gaming community has grown more interested and eager to see the old-school black and white "always evil" or "always good" tropes retired in favor of more realistic and inclusive story elements. In addition, the (always there from the start) problematic elements involving drow as "evil black elves" had finally worn out its welcome. Since then, we've worked to rebuild and recast drow elves into something new (note their lavender skin coloration now, and how the 2nd edition rules get rid of elements like spell resistance that make certain ancestries extremely troublesome to include as player options), but haven't really had a chance yet to fully revisit the Darklands and the drow. We dipped our toes into that arena in Abomination Vaults, but there's a LOT more to be done.
I'd love for Paizo to publish a big setting book about the Darklands, and to help create a brand new Darklands-themed Adventure Path to go along with it...especially one that assumes the PCs are all Darklands ancestries and that never actually goes to the surface world. Such a thing would by definition need to include a lot of new PC-appropriate ancestries, and high on that list would be drow.
We'll still keep the demon-worshiping city of Zirnakaynin in the setting as a great villain site for heroes to fight against, of course, but even then, the transformation of one of the most powerful demons into a non-evil deity will have some pretty major and super-interesting ramifications on that city's social structure that I'm really eager to explore. And beyond that, even back in the pre-Pathfinder RPG days in "Into the Darklands," I tried to include a wider range of drow cities in Sekamina. I always envisioned the drow as the dominant society of modern Sekamina (as opposed to the ancient dominance of the serpentfolk), and did my best to include a wide range of themes in drow cities in the region below the Inner Sea region:
Zirnakaynin = the classic D&D demon-worshiping matriarchy of drow that allowed us to rely upon customer expectation and nostalgia to help keep initial interest in an era where we were increasingly moving away from being a "D&D company." These drow were mostly chaotic evil.
Harrowspire = a drow city that was martial-themed, less matriarchal, and less demon-focused. The drow here were intended to be mostly lawful evil.
Blackstrand = a "suburb" for Zirnakaynin meant to be more of a melting-pot and trading post where all sorts of ancestries could mix, and that would feature drow that were less "always evil" but not necessarily friendly.
Delvingulf: an underground port city that, like Blackstrand, would be much more diverse—particularly with ulat-kini and ghoul elements being welcome on the streets. The drow here were most likely intended to be neutral evil.
Far Parathra: the most remote drow settlement; a city of super hedonistic and decadant drow that decided to abandon the traditions entirley and live life to the fullest. Still not a safe place (the Darklands aren't really intended to be full of "safe places"), but certainly a place where the most common drow alignmnet was chaotic neutral.
Giratayn: The uppermost drow city; a place that links to Nar-Voth and does a lot of trade with duergar. Drow here are mostly lawful evil.
Telderist: A remote and small city meant to be the newest major drow settlement—a "frontier" town of thieves, smugglers, assassins, pirates, etc. A place where a lot of drow exiles would have ended up. The drow here would be all sorts of alignments.
Umberweb: This was meant to be the "body horror" city. Here, fleshwarps were much more powerful and more respected, and the drow here didn't treat them as experiments but equals. Still not a friendly place though; the drow here are mostly chaotic evil.
There's absolutely LOTS more room for more drow cities, but Into the Darklands was only 64 pages long. One new city is one that we started exploring a little bit in Abomination Vaults but I'll avoid chatting about that here for sake of keeping it spoiler-light for more recent adventures.
TL;DR: What we did with drow 15 years ago isn't what we want to do with them today, but we don't yet have a product on schedule to spend the time they deserve on. Hopefully soon though! I've got my fingers crossed.
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ALSO: My little Shensen-fueled "bingo" above was, of course, a full agreement that Sarenrae vs. Rovagug is meant to be a venue by which religious drow can find a place in the rest of the world.
Eilistraee was one of my favorite Forgotten Realms deities, and I was always a huge fan of Driz'zt. If you look closely, you can see those influences on Sarenrae, who I included in my homebrew back in the early 90s as "the deity Driz'zt would most likely end up worshiping if he were in my game." Hence her having scimitars as favored weapons, and hence Sarenrae being a goddess of the sun—the opposite of a deity whose worship you'd find in the deep dark below. All of which is also why the Golarion version of Shensen worships Sarenrae.
Thank you for letting me ambush you with a "Let me tell you about my character" moment. I now return the thread to its original topic, which I'll eagerly continue to lurk in since I'm super interested in finding out what folks want in a playable drow ancestry.
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I love dark elves. That's at least partially because my introduction to the Forgotten Realms was due to one of the Drizzt books (Sojourn, yes, I found them out of order due to the school library only having the one). At the same time, I'm not as fond of the 'classic' depictions of them being always evil or the like.
One of the dark elf characters I want to play are pretty straightforward. It meshes the ancestry with the game Sunless Sea, where I could play a dark elf swashbuckler exploring a vast, underground sea with its horrors aboard a steam ship.
The other is from an online RP I was once in, where the protagonist was a mage (she'd probably be an Arcanist in Pathfinder 1e, not sure in 2e). She was the last remaining member of a former ruling family of dark elves who weren't on bad terms with surface elves, but were overthrown. Half her soul was eaten by a daemon, so she ended up summoning a succubus and merging their souls to survive, making her a strange half-succubus hybrid, and for years she made her home in a stalagmite at the bottom of a lake of magma, quietly crafting items and rescuing slaves from the local markets as she could, before finally deciding to leave the underworld. I'd put her as Lawful Neutral, and I'd like to play her sometime.
In my own novels dark elves are different, but that's a whole different subject (they're primarily lawful in it). Suffice to say, I really want a drow ancestry. *shuts up*
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... one of the BETTER ways is how the gaming community has grown more interested and eager to see the old-school black and white "always evil" or "always good" tropes retired in favor of more realistic and inclusive story elements...
That is not quite my takeaway from it all. I see that people want both. Sometimes the simple clear hero stories. Sometimes the more complex stories. It varies from customer to customer, and depends on the mood they are in. Often for short one offs after a long week a simple session is very relaxing.
Inclusive story elements are a trope of their own.|
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... one of the BETTER ways is how the gaming community has grown more interested and eager to see the old-school black and white "always evil" or "always good" tropes retired in favor of more realistic and inclusive story elements...That is not quite my takeaway from it all. I see that people want both. Sometimes the simple clear hero stories. Sometimes the more complex stories. It varies from customer to customer, and depends on the mood they are in. Often for short one offs after a long week a simple session is very relaxing.
Inclusive story elements are a trope of their own.
People wanting both = grown more interested. We agree, in other words.
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What precisely defines "A Drow"? Is it just "an Elf who lives in the Darklands?" Like if a bunch of Drow move to the surface, how many generations until their offspring are no longer Drow?
Since apparently Drow are not Elves or a heritage thereof, something that confuses me quite a bit, since it seems like this is just because "we need more rules for this than can fit in a heritage" which seems like playing favorites, since it seems like there's no reason Duergar or Svirfneblin couldn't be heritages of Dwarves and Gnomes respectively.
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Thanks for the replies and the backstory, James - I always wondered how Shensen stumbled into such a unique backstory, so it being actual play makes good sense!
There’s something really fun about a people cursed to scorn the sun still finding hope and joy in its light. Between the Sarenrae idea and the line of descent established for Osirion that I mentioned above, part of me wants to see a lavender-skinned dervish taking her duties across the Golden Road’s dunes.
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What precisely defines "A Drow"? Is it just "an Elf who lives in the Darklands?" Like if a bunch of Drow move to the surface, how many generations until their offspring are no longer Drow?
Since apparently Drow are not Elves or a heritage thereof, something that confuses me quite a bit, since it seems like this is just because "we need more rules for this than can fit in a heritage" which seems like playing favorites, since it seems like there's no reason Duergar or Svirfneblin couldn't be heritages of Dwarves and Gnomes respectively.
It seems to be something about that ancient brush with Rovagug that turned them into something that isn’t exactly an Elf anymore. Our Vourinoi friend does suggest they can have children together just fine, though.
Strangely, they seem more in touch with their Castrovelian psychic heritage than the main branch of that people.
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I now return the thread to its original topic, which I'll eagerly continue to lurk in since I'm super interested in finding out what folks want in a playable drow ancestry.
Thanks so much for the background, and for directly addressing one of my concerns!
Hmmm, what would I want from a playable Drow ancestry? I’d agree to treat it as a separate ancestry from elves. The heritages could branch out to their themes of spell resistance, innate spellcasting, underground hunters, demon-touched, animal companions, and fleshwarping. “Albino” drow seem like an interesting concept too. And obviously, the ability to build effective PCs (mechanically and narratively) with as many of the classes and other toys of the system as possible.
More importantly (for me, anyways) would be that the Drow culture would have to have a purpose and a place in the world of Golarion. Based on this discussion so far, my headspace would have them as the most “civilized” of the Darklands, power brokers and intermediaries between the other subterranean cultures that are too evil or too alien for other cultures to avoid conflict. This may support their largely “evil” outlook (e.g. being evil is necessary for survival) but also leave space for communities who have found another way.
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I'm honestly not sure why people are convinced there isn't already a drow ancestry; cavern elf is a thing! With Otherworldly Acumen, you can even get darkness or faerie fire as an innate spell.
That said, I have a concept for a half drow desna cleric that used their dream magic to make a living giving people customized dream experiences; they go on adventures to get more inspiration for the dreams they make! The Captivator archetype gives me access to the illusion spells I wanted to really lean into the dreamweaver idea (imo, the lack of illusions and such has been the biggest turnoff to me for playing a desnan cleric; if I'm playing a cleric of the dream goddess, I want to manifest some dreams, darn it :p ), and I was also planning on using Multitalented (monk) so I can pick up Ki Blast and throw some fun flavor of shooting out a wave of butterflies. Their ties to the darklands are pretty distant, but I imagine them having a curiousity about them and holding a fairly romanticized idea about them (ex "Wow! A massive network of caverns filled with strange and unusual locales and creature and plants? Sounds awesome!")
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I'm honestly not sure why people are convinced there isn't already a drow ancestry; cavern elf is a thing! With Otherworldly Acumen, you can even get darkness or faerie fire as an innate spell.
Someone or another from Paizo made a point early on of drow needing to be their own ancestry, since Cavern Elf would make for a very insufficient stand-in.
At any rate, my answer is simple and pretty boring: that amnesiac fleshwarp Investigator I've mentioned a few times was originally undefined but I eventually decided she used to be a drow. As much fun as I've had with her cast-off memories and hints at an unscrupulous, ambitious, surprisingly pleasant life before Xhamen-Dor, it would be even more fun to replace some of the "might as well" fleshwarp feats with drow ones via a reconciliation of memory Adopted Ancestry.
(I wouldn't be able to because Adopted Ancestry is Common-only, but maybe I could get a fiat exemption or fleshwarp will have a broader version added, who knows. Makes me curious what cultural feats they'd have, though I'd happily take just about anything with a practical, ferocious or poised feeling to it. Fleshwarp doesn't have any cultural feats, which...makes sense. ^_^; )
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I'm honestly not sure why people are convinced there isn't already a drow ancestry; cavern elf is a thing! With Otherworldly Acumen, you can even get darkness or faerie fire as an innate spell.
I believe because we’ve explicitly been told Cavern Elf isn’t meant to represent Drow.
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I'm honestly not sure why people are convinced there isn't already a drow ancestry; cavern elf is a thing! With Otherworldly Acumen, you can even get darkness or faerie fire as an innate spell.I believe because we’ve explicitly been told Cavern Elf isn’t meant to represent Drow.
The thing is... even if not all cavern elves are drow, you can still get every single iconic drow ability sans Spell Resistance (which isn't even a thing anymore) with the base elf feats.
The only drow stuff not available is faerie fire and darkness at the same time, and the different weapon suite, now that the Poison Use feature doesn't exist anymore. A couple of new ancestry feats patches this hole very readily.
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The ancestries in the Core Rulebook aren't really intended to map directly to specific types of things like drow—they're more world neutral and aren't meant to directly map directly to drow. That said, they certainly work for that until actual drow-themed ancestry rules are published.
When we do a drow ancestry, we'll not be coy about it. They'll be called out as drow. Or svirfneblin or duergar or whatever for other Darklands-adjacent ancestries.
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The thing is... even if not all cavern elves are drow, you can still get every single iconic drow ability ... with the base elf feats. ... A couple of new ancestry feats patches this hole very readily.I'm honestly not sure why people are convinced there isn't already a drow ancestry; cavern elf is a thing! With Otherworldly Acumen, you can even get darkness or faerie fire as an innate spell.I believe because we’ve explicitly been told Cavern Elf isn’t meant to represent Drow.
I would doubt most people want this to be all that drow are in this edition. ¯\_('•')_/¯
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I think it can be best summed up with this.
Cavern Elves can be a thematic match for Drow up into the point that Drow are there own ancestry. Much like how a fighter or rogue could totally function in a similar thematic space as a Swashbuckler but that doesn't mean you can't create cool, unique things by making a Swashbuckler class. While the basic toolbox to create a drow exists, there is the potential for growth.
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At any rate, my answer is simple and pretty boring: that amnesiac fleshwarp Investigator I've mentioned a few times was originally undefined but I eventually decided she used to be a drow. As much fun as I've had with her cast-off memories and hints at an unscrupulous, ambitious, surprisingly pleasant life before Xhamen-Dor, it would be even more fun to replace some of the "might as well" fleshwarp feats with drow ones via a reconciliation of memory Adopted Ancestry.
In what world is a cosmic horror-touched Drow mutant detective “pretty boring?” This character rocks!
Any GM with a heart should allow good-faith uses of Adopted Ancestry, especially for Fleshwarps.
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Oh, I don't that that paizo shouldn't do a seperate drow, I'm just not sure why it seems like people seem to think you can't make something that fills the space, like we have all the tool for a FR style drow. I never really cared for FR drow due to a lot of problematic aspects of their lore, so I would actually very much welcome a paizo take on them and have them do their own thing.
Fwiw though, I don't think the swashbuckler vs fighter or rogue is a very apt comparison because swashbucklers as a storytelling trope have a lot of elements in fighting style that aren't reflected at all in fighter, and are only somewhat reflected in rogue, while the existing elf does have basically every FR drow ability (to which end, I think the setting neutrality was very successful here)
If the mwangi ancestries are anything to go on though, I think paizo can make some really cool drow that set themselves apart from WotC's IPs
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One thing that bugs me about "Cavern Elves aren't Drow" is that while sure PF1 darklands people came loaded with all sorts of SLAs and the like, but PF2 is pretty firm about all ancestries being balanced against each other. Like we have PC Pixie and Strix not being able to fly effectively until after 10th level!
A basic ancestry doesn't really carry much beyond stat adjustments, senses, languages, and HP at level one. How are Drow going to be different from Elves in this regard? Assuredly they'll have Darkvision, but Darkvision is already what the Cavern Elf heritage gives.
The rest of everything else in an ancestry is built into heritages and ancestry feats. But one heritage shouldn't have a lot more rules content than another heritage, and we already have ancestry feats that require a specific heritage. So there's no reason we couldn't have a bunch of ancestry feats that require a specific heritage.
So it seems like all we buy by making Drow a separate ancestry is "we can make darkvision as part of the basic ancestry package and offset it with light sensitivity, then we can have Drow heritages". Literally everything else could be part of making them an Elf heritage, I feel.
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Well - being required to pick Cavern Elf in order to play a Drow and not having any other heritage options, well, sucks.
My Drow PC ideas are as follows:
- A skilled alchemist focused on mushroom-based poisons
- A barbarian who has been lost in the Darklands for too long
- An esoteric bard/thaumaturge trained to combat the occult dangers of the Underdark
- A cleric Droskar seeking to subjugate their own city “for their own good”
- A Druid/ranger dedicated to exploring and mapping natural resources in the Darklands
- A fighter/magus trained to defend the great Houses before their House fell
- A summoner with a demon/devil eidolon who “knows what is best”
- An albino ancestors oracle who’s family predates the Fall
- A smiling swashbuckler who views all other ancestries as inferior and “suckers” to Diplomacy
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Hmm here is an idea, a drow hermit order of stone Druid. Not finding peace or comfort in the cities on her people she went out into the darklands to find "truth" there she came into contact with a Lampad Queen. Under the Lampads tutelage she grew to be connected with nature, hear the stone around her. Now she travels to help others who are lost.
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At the end of the day, Pathfinder 2e is game known for its options. People come to the game with concepts in mind, and want to represent their character with proper support. We can extrapolate that many concepts can already be jury rigged with existing rules and character support, but it is understandable that players are let down when they don't get to pick any "Drow" option anywhere to note down in their character sheet.
Personally, I'm not really a huge Drow fan, but many people around me are, and are understandably disappointed that there is no Drow support yet. It's not the end of the world or anything, of course! But for them, it is pretty eh.
I don't personally mind if the Drow ends up as an ancestry or a heritage, but I do hope that there is proper support for them. I could make a speech about having them as an option is definitely important from a legacy standpoint, but honestly? I think they should be their own thing simply because many people want to see them being their own thing. :B
Also, I will point out that having them actually be an ancestry would allow them to also be used with versatile heritages, which is always fun.
Plus c'mon, a lot can be done with them being their own ancestry! Maybe they're a little more hardy than they surface cousins and have a simple and lonely +CHA. And Paizo can take their ancestry feats to any direction that they'd like; they don't have to copy and paste from the elves'.
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I mean, one point against cavern elf is that it excludes the existence of drow tieflings, aasimar, etc, which is probably not intended. Also, the existence of versatile heritages, especially with how many of them grant darkvision plus new feats, makes the "in house" dark vision heritages options feel bad (imo, this is a mainly a problem with the oversaturation of darkvis granting vers. heritages, and I homebrew them so that that give something else)
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A basic ancestry doesn't really carry much beyond stat adjustments, senses, languages, and HP at level one. How are Drow going to be different from Elves in this regard? Assuredly they'll have Darkvision, but Darkvision is already what the Cavern Elf heritage gives.
If the only thing they do is stick with the PF2 stats of +2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma, –2 Constitution then they will be different from the other elves.
I would prefer that drow elves are just a rare lineage feat for elves that grants darkvision or something, and then more feats related to innate magic and drow weaponry. That way they could still take versatile heritages.
Sounds good to me.
I want to know about your Drow characters!
For myself, it'll depend on how they build them and what stats and abilities they have. I start from a build and then work backwards to the background stuff.
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Here's a thought: a Drow "Ancestors" Oracle who is fueled not by the spirits of their honored dead, but by a seed of the Maelstrom's chaos they were blessed with by a protean - their random empowerment the result of a roiling plane. It's a novel angle on the classic 'Chaos/Wild Mage' trope, especially if played as a blessing to the host.
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Here's a thought: a Drow "Ancestors" Oracle who is fueled not by the spirits of their honored dead, but by a seed of the Maelstrom's chaos they were blessed with by a protean - their random empowerment the result of a roiling plane. It's a novel angle on the classic 'Chaos/Wild Mage' trope, especially if played as a blessing to the host.
This is interesting! I may have to build this PC.
Where could I find lore related to the Drow and the Maelstom? I’ve seen this pop up a few times and feel like I might be missing something.
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Here's a thought: a Drow "Ancestors" Oracle who is fueled not by the spirits of their honored dead, but by a seed of the Maelstrom's chaos they were blessed with by a protean - their random empowerment the result of a roiling plane. It's a novel angle on the classic 'Chaos/Wild Mage' trope, especially if played as a blessing to the host.This is interesting! I may have to build this PC.
Where could I find lore related to the Drow and the Maelstom? I’ve seen this pop up a few times and feel like I might be missing something.
Abomination Vaults #3 talks a little about Drow protean cults in a sidebar and features a non-Evil Drow community.
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I mean, one point against cavern elf is that it excludes the existence of drow tieflings, aasimar, etc, which is probably not intended. Also, the existence of versatile heritages, especially with how many of them grant darkvision plus new feats, makes the "in house" dark vision heritages options feel bad (imo, this is a mainly a problem with the oversaturation of darkvis granting vers. heritages, and I homebrew them so that that give something else)
The thing I think I would do if Drow were a heritage and someone really wanted to play a Drow Aasimar or w/e is that it doesn't seem unwieldy to let players choose two heritages. After all, it's canon that things like Tieflings and Aasimar are often due to some outsider influence many generations ago, so presumably your parents had a completely different ancestry. So I don't see a problem with letting someone be a Death Warden Dwarf and a Duskwalker or a Umbral Gnome and a Dhampir.
The thing about "so many versatile heritages grant darkvision" is probably a knock-on effect of "fumbling around being unable to see isn't fun" and this is already an issue that affects Dwarf PCs who take versatile heritages.
This obviously wouldn't work for something like PFS, but PFS already makes you cling pretty closely to the baseline. Playing a Drow in PFS shouldn't be more common than playing an Android or a Fleshwarp or another rare ancestry.
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The thing I think I would do if Drow were a heritage and someone really wanted to play a Drow Aasimar or w/e is that it doesn't seem unwieldy to let players choose two heritages. After all, it's canon that things like Tieflings and Aasimar are often due to some outsider influence many generations ago, so presumably your parents had a completely different ancestry. So I don't see a problem with letting someone be a Death Warden Dwarf and a Duskwalker or an Umbral Gnome and a Dhampir.
I do have it in my headspace for a future campaign to use the Ancestral Paragon rules from the GMG give my players an elemental versatile heritage ala the “free archetype” style.
So not a bad idea here.