I'm curious, with all the elven options for feats. Why is cavern elf with dark vision and taking ancestry feats to give you spells not fitting the bill?
Is it because the pf2e ancestries are not front loaded enough for over powered race options out the gate?
Are they missing features that are impossible even to reflavor existing feats for? Like changing elven weapon expertise around to fit dark elf lore?
Or is it because you don't agree to have to fluff things such as skin tone, name, etc?
2 of those come off as pretty whiny to me. I could see one is them as a fairly valid criticism though
Tbf my only memory of dark elves because I tend to just make my own stories instead of reading to on the lore
They live underground
They can see in the dark
They have some minor innate spells
They like poisons and hand crossbow
They involve spiders in some way
They are kinda dicks.
But then I guess that one DND book series has a maybe less of a jerk dark elf
Anyways from this limited and ignorant list, cavern elf with appropriate ancestry feats and minor fluffing does like 90 percent of the work
You said it "elven options for feats". They are not "Drow options", or "options for half-drow" or anything related to drow what so ever.
No spell resistance, no spell resistance vs healing/good spells, no way to get constant detect magic, no way to get a bonus vs aberrations, no way to get bonuses when casting shadow spells or evil spells, no way to get innate Mawbane poison (con damage or similar), no way to get innate charm spell, no drow weapon familiarity, no poison use, no light blindness, no bonuses for traveling in the darklands, no way to get innate cloak of shade/shadow and dust of twilight, no way to get thematic skill bonuses, no way to use summon spells to instead summon buffed spiders, no way to get a number of spells previously gotten from feats (dispel magic, spider climb, divine favor, and suggestion), and last but certainly not least no...
So the issue is you don't get it all with zero leg work or imagination?
I guess that's fine. You must be mad no werewolve PC's because beastkin don't do it for your.
A fair few of those things you mentioned though can be gained with various archetypes though.
You can get detect magic with arcane sense, the games systems specifically limits constant effects.
But the issue is your want bonuses, and that's often not really pf2e, rather it's access to options.
So doing better shadow spells? Nah
Taking shadow caster and creating your own Drow? Yah
What I'll agree about, is there is no Drow PC currently in pf2e where you get to look at pathbuilder and see the words Drow.
You can still build something in that direction and... Use your imagination.
But maybe I'm weird when I flavor me lizardfolk tiefling deer instinct barbarian to raging into a demon instead of a deer.
Should I be made there is no demon rager?
No cthulian horror rager?
No druidic mountain man barbarian?
If it looks like a duck and talks like a duck
You and I will have to agree to disagree
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If it looks like a duck and talks like a duck
You and I will have to agree to disagree
You see it doesn't look like a duck (art) or talks like a duck (RP) or walks like a duck (mechanics). Elves and Drow are fundamentally different despite having the same origin.
Its like I am saying that you cannot make a specific dinosaur because we don't have the stat and abilities, but you are saying to just use the stats of a chicken "because both are dinosaurs".
We have no Drow PC currently
We can create something akin to one that you can fluff and call Drow
So either wait and beg for Drow
Or play drow
If it looks like a duck and talks like a duck
You and I will have to agree to disagree
You see it doesn't look like a duck (art) or talks like a duck (RP) or walks like a duck (mechanics). Elves and Drow are fundamentally different despite having the same origin.
Its like I am saying that you cannot make a specific dinosaur because we don't have the stat and abilities, but you are saying to just use the stats of a chicken "because both are dinosaurs".
We have no Drow PC currently
We can create something akin to one that you can fluff and call Drow
So either wait and beg for Drow
Or play drow
Which is what people said to do: Either homebrew your own drow or wait until the official came out.
So, we have no issue right?
None! Home brew your broken starting ancestry for Drow PC to your heart's content.
President
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-Jim
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I've tried my hand at making a drow heritage. It does include light blindness which I think is unavoidable for balance sake. I would love feedback on it.
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My take on all this is that “PF2E doesn’t offer a playable Drow” is a reasonable complaint, and “It can get you pretty close with minimal tinkering so long as you keep your expectations in line with the general power level and power progression of PF2” is a reasonable response to that reasonable complaint. If you’re wanting to Drow it up in Society play, tinkering won’t get you anywhere, so the still-reasonable response isn’t super helpful. Likewise, if you’re super uncomfortable house ruling for your home game, the still-reasonable suggestion isn’t all that helpful. And that may just be how it goes. No game can be all things to all people.
I’d honestly be surprised if Drow ever get an in-depth official treatment in PF2 because they just don’t seem all that significant to Golarion. Plus, they’re strongly associated with the Forgotten Realms, and Paizo seems fairly focused on emphasizing differences these days.
There may be room for a third party publisher to make a Drow supplement, and as has been pointed out in this very thread, it’d take only minimal tinkering.
I've tried my hand at making a drow heritage. It does include light blindness which I think is unavoidable for balance sake. I would love feedback on it.
Just a minor thing, but should Drow Lore provide another skill training? Most similar ancestry feats work that way, with two skills and a lore, but this only gives Religion and Drow Lore. Perhaps Stealth would be a good choice?
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I've tried my hand at making a drow heritage. It does include light blindness which I think is unavoidable for balance sake. I would love feedback on it.
Light blindness seems wildly punishing for a PC, so I’d probably suggest either dropping that or moving Light Adaptation down to 1st level. It far outweighs an extra language, but in the interest of balance, if you drop it, I’d move Elven into the bonus languages and leave them with Common and Undercommon.
If you keep light blindness, though, I’d make Light Adaptation and Keen Senses mutually exclusive.
I don’t see any need for the “Special This replaces [whatever Elf feat]” entries. If someone wants to take both Drow Weapon Familiarity and Elven Weapon Familiarity, that seems like a weak choice, but not one that causes a problem. I’d probably have Drow Weapon Familiarity apply only to Drow weapons, though, not Elf weapons.
The issue is context and difficulty in following.
Huge run in sentences and no paragraph structure unfortunately, results in difficulty for some to understand.
Insert of sound effects doesn't help.
Inflammatory statements give the wrong idea.
And bouncing constantly between using pf2e ruleset for your home brew world and discussing golarion lore without a clear moment to state Wich one is being discussed further makes it difficult to have a meaningful conversation.
This thread has gone over both home brew and golarion lore, so it helps to make it clear Wich aspect you are discussing at the time.
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Light blindness is why they got 120 ft darkvision in PF1
Drow darkvision is the same as everyone else’s in PF2, though, so that’s moot. Also, in 1E the dazzled condition was a lot less onerous than it is in 2E, so light blindness, in turn, wasn’t as punishing.
That is to say, you can have an option that removes the light blindness. But light blindness being default allows for strong base heritage options.
But the heritage isn’t strong. All it has over all the basic darkvision heritages is a bonus language. That doesn’t make up for being constantly dazzled in bright light.
The best argument to keep light blindness, in my opinion, is that the Drow NPCs all have it, and that’s a weak justification in 2E where NPCs are just different from PCs.
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Light blindness is why they got 120 ft darkvision in PF1Drow darkvision is the same as everyone else’s in PF2, though, so that’s moot. Also, in 1E the dazzled condition was a lot less onerous than it is in 2E, so light blindness, in turn, wasn’t as punishing.
That is to say, you can have an option that removes the light blindness. But light blindness being default allows for strong base heritage options.But the heritage isn’t strong. All it has over all the basic darkvision heritages is a bonus language. That doesn’t make up for being constantly dazzled in bright light.
The best argument to keep light blindness, in my opinion, is that the Drow NPCs all have it, and that’s a weak justification in 2E where NPCs are just different from PCs.
I would say it's inappropriate to keep light-blindness. As either it's crippling, or a player will find a way to make it not matter. In the case of the second, if you've given the ancestry a lot of other to make up for it, now they're unbalanced compared to everyone else.
For the PF2 paradigm, don't do it.
If you want to acknowledge that Drow normally have it, give a trait that's called surface adapted instead which says it's removed the normal penalties associated with light blindness.