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It has been quite some time since I posted, but I lurk around here sometimes. Anyway, I have an idea for a homebrew campaign setting, but I have a problem; drow, I need them for the setting. I have always loved dark elfs, (little surprise with my avatar), and while love some of the weird ancestries we have now, like the poppets, I need a decent option for Dark elfs.
No, I don't thing Cavern Elf is a good answer. Is just a normal elf with darkvision. I am thinking on two options:
- first is some 3PP. Are out there some good version of Drow/dark elf on some 3PP? Pathibuild integrated would be a very welcomed extra.
-Current 2ed options...not much I know of, but I would love to be surprised. Elf with tiefling maaaaybe could work. I was tempted to look on fletching, but not look quite appropiate.
Some ideas would be very welcome. ^^
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Yeah, but all that at once isn't balanced by PF2 standards. Heck, it wasn't really balanced by PF1 standards. Drow noble was overpowered as heck.
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You are forgetting . . .
I’m not forgetting those things. Those things are where “maybe a set of ancestry feats” comes in.
It would be like saying you don't need a gathlain ancestry because the leshy ancestry exists. The two while both being "weird plant fey" are in fact very different in what they can do and their history.
I have no idea what a Gathlian is, so I don’t know whether a Leshy heritage plus feat line would be appropriate, but a Drow is an Elf, so a heritage plus feat line seems absolutely on point.
For non-PCs we already have Drow as NPCs.
For PCs, I think cavern elves are perfectly acceptable.
Create some heritage feats to pick up some innate spells like darkness, faerie fire, and dancing lights.
Perhaps some additional heritage feats for whatever else you feel they need, but absolutely the elf ancestry + heritage feats is the way to go.
That's really all you need IMO.
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Yeah, but all that at once isn't balanced by PF2 standards. Heck, it wasn't really balanced by PF1 standards. Drow noble was overpowered as heck.Drow noble was very overpowered. But as far as PF2 is concerned all the drow available at the moment are lesser Drow Nobles.
If you look at the creature entries they all have spell resistance, 3 spells (including darkness) at will, above average stats, and above average attacks.
But remember, NPCs are usually better at many things than an individual PC could be at the same level. It's just how the game is written because NPCs serve a different purpose than PCs.
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And we are saying that expecting all those things to be packaged on one PC ancestry is not going to happen with PF2 balance. If you don't feel like you can build an acceptable Drow out of the existing elf options, you're not going to be satisfied with any reasonably balanced solution.
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There either needs to be a LOT more drow-flavored feats added to the Elf ancestry feat list, or a new Ancestry should be made. I have tried to make a drow before and the current options do not hit the mark.
Lots of those features can be spread out over multiple levels and/or archetypes. Roll for Combat's Battlezoo has shown we can get Dragons as a playable ancestry and it works like a dream, so please spare me the "we can't have all the powerful drow stuff at once" remarks. Obviously we couldn't have them for free, and definitely not at level 1.
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There either needs to be a LOT more drow-flavored feats added to the Elf ancestry feat list, or a new Ancestry should be made. I have tried to make a drow before and the current options do not hit the mark.
Lots of those features can be spread out over multiple levels and/or archetypes. Roll for Combat's Battlezoo has shown we can get Dragons as a playable ancestry and it works like a dream, so please spare me the "we can't have all the powerful drow stuff at once" remarks. Obviously we couldn't have them for free, and definitely not at level 1.
The last sentence is what I meant. Anyway, if you feel like the current ancestry feats don't hit the mark, than the easiest thing to do is homebrew some new ancestry feats. You can try things like spell resistance and poison use from existing feats from other ancestries.
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A big part of what made the drow cool in earlier editions was that they had all of those juiced-up powers that no one else did, and, in particular, that the average drow was far more capable than the average almost anything else. PF2 is rigorously balanced, though, and there's just not space for that, so you have to work around it, one way or another... and the first step is to decide what you want your overall strategy to be.
- You might decide that Drow are now at the same power level as everyone else, and that's okay. In that case, it's relatively easy to homebrew. Start with a cavern elf, possibly whip up some applicable backgrounds, and stand ready to adjust some of those ancestry feats to be more in-theme. Elves already have a decent number of ancestry feats, and if you're willing to open it up a bit there's lots. You can run it a bit free-form. Talk with your players abotu what they want to be able to do as a drow, make sure that you agree that this is a "drow thing", find an ancestry feat from some ancestry that is similar in tier and effect, and port it over. Like, if they want to be able to cast a particular third-level spell? Well, there are ancestry feats that cast particular third-level spells. Go look at those to figure out which level it needs to be and what kind of requirements it should have. Stuff like that. I've personally found that homebrewing on the fly in order to support particular player needs is notably less work than building out an entire structure, because you don't need to do the things your players don't want. As an example, you might think that drow ought to have ancestry feats based around the idea that they're regularly trying to poison one another, but if none of your players is interested in that, you can save yourself the work and move on.
- You might decide that Drow in general are supposed to be more awesome than other ancestries in general, but that the PCs are the same level. In that case, it's as above, except that starting PCs should explicitly be young and/or otherwise initially unimpressive drow, and notably so, while PCs of other ancestries might be seen to be generally talented, capable, of great potential, and so forth.
- You might decide that PC drow are supposed to be Totally Awesome, and that they're Just Better than everyone else. That one gets... messy. Among other things, it tends to encourage parties composed of nothing but Drow... and if you want that, that can be fine, but it's still very much a thing. Also, you have to figure out what kind of bennies you're handing out. On the flip side, if you want other ancestries to be competitive then you also have to figure out what they get that drow don't, and that is going to add even more messiness to the table. Again, potentially worth it, but the difficulty of making it happen without undue ugliness even more of a thing than it was with the simpler "Drow are just better" version.
Now, obviously this isn't the last word on how to do this thing... but I think it's an important first step.
The last sentence is what I meant. Anyway, if you feel like the current ancestry feats don't hit the mark, than the easiest thing to do is homebrew some new ancestry feats. You can try things like spell resistance and poison use from existing feats from other ancestries.There either needs to be a LOT more drow-flavored feats added to the Elf ancestry feat list, or a new Ancestry should be made. I have tried to make a drow before and the current options do not hit the mark.
Lots of those features can be spread out over multiple levels and/or archetypes. Roll for Combat's Battlezoo has shown we can get Dragons as a playable ancestry and it works like a dream, so please spare me the "we can't have all the powerful drow stuff at once" remarks. Obviously we couldn't have them for free, and definitely not at level 1.
Exactly this. I will agree that the current options of elf ancestry traits don't allow you to exactly replicate what other drow NPCs have.
However, if you look at other ancestries for spell resistance and innate spells you can probably figure out balanced feats to allow for selection, and otherwise allow you make your drow character. But I don't think there needs to be a separate drow ancestry. At most a heritage (like cavern elf) which is a requirement for access to the ancestry feats.
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The last sentence is what I meant. Anyway, if you feel like the current ancestry feats don't hit the mark, than the easiest thing to do is homebrew some new ancestry feats. You can try things like spell resistance and poison use from existing feats from other ancestries.There either needs to be a LOT more drow-flavored feats added to the Elf ancestry feat list, or a new Ancestry should be made. I have tried to make a drow before and the current options do not hit the mark.
Lots of those features can be spread out over multiple levels and/or archetypes. Roll for Combat's Battlezoo has shown we can get Dragons as a playable ancestry and it works like a dream, so please spare me the "we can't have all the powerful drow stuff at once" remarks. Obviously we couldn't have them for free, and definitely not at level 1.
Exactly this. I will agree that the current options of elf ancestry traits don't allow you to exactly replicate what other drow NPCs have.
However, if you look at other ancestries for spell resistance and innate spells you can probably figure out balanced feats to allow for selection, and otherwise allow you make your drow character. But I don't think there needs to be a separate drow ancestry. At most a heritage (like cavern elf) which is a requirement for access to the ancestry feats.
You can model spell resistance off of Arcane Safeguards.
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If you need something quick, I have a >>Basic Ancestry Doc<< for it. It's based on the old PF1 drow feats with rebalancing based on existing ancestries.
All free. I'd rate the quality as "middling", could be better if I expanded it. Controversy may vary.
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Dooo deee dooo Dark Elves?!! awesome.... ok so I am going to add hummm let me see oh yea my 2 cents. Just coming from a topic thread about Drows which was AWESOME!!!
You people i mean the whole of Pathfinder need to figure out what the history's about and pick a lane. Is the society a Matriarchal Theocracy (rule by religion and women) organized into Houses? If so you might make females more dominant arrogant better educated. As men are considered lesser.
Drow conflicts are more Machiavellian in style; with quiet assassinations in dark alleys or secret hidden strike forces obliterating a rival house in a single night. If one house should make such an overt attempt to destroy another and fail in the attempt, that attacking house will then be destroyed by the entire drow city for its perceived weakness. Weakness is not tolerated. Of course, if the attacked house was weakened enough by the attacker, the community at large might choose to consume it as well.
So you have a house of card cloak and dagger society. The whole Elf Heritages are kind of lame due to the fact it gives you nothing but Darkvision or the laughable Wandering Heart feat for a race raised in a cavern. but given the Drow are the decedents of the Ancient Elves turned by a demonic influence with its evil demon radiation. Their just Ancient Elves once you get them away from the evil demon radiation. Basically, the whole heritage thing super complicates the game with no need or reason. So picking cavern from any of the others makes little different in the character. You just get dark vision.
Background would change things given a cloak and dagger ones character would have the Emissary kind of background trained in the Society skill, and a Lore skill related to one city you've visited often. You gain the Multilingual skill feat.
There is a great deal you can do with homebrew. But given the extreme limitations of the new and ever-expanding digital game this game is evolving into you can't very from the chosen paths and still play...
You could start by reading the lore of the game and then compartmentalizing it from other Drow lore that WotC have done because they're two different games and settings.
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I to wished to make a Drow but due to the demonizing of the race in general it makes it impossible to run the character in the new and improved Golarion world. You are an outcast evil monster warped by a evil demon and it appears to be hunted down and killed for being inherently evil.
Not at all. Things might have been a little like this in the early days of Golarion, but that was a long RL time ago and is definitely not the case anymore. We have far more non-Evil Drows in PF2 actually.
You might want to have a look at the various undead Archetypes and how they compare to the actual "monsters". I can see Drow being an Archetype, Noble it's Advancement, similar to the Hellknight Armiger and the "proper" Hellknight.
One could also have different Rare Backgrounds; they usually provide minor special abilities. Those could be Requirements for the Archetypes.
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I asked because I found Cavern elf to be quite lacking. There are some heritage with specific feats, but that is not the case on Drow/cavern elf, there would be far less problem with some apropiate feats there. Obviously the most powerful feats on Noble Drow are quite high level feats, at least level 9. I never believed that would be low level.
What kind of feats I would like to see on Drow? Change on the ancestry weapons to better represent drow (things like crossbows or whips), poison, and some more spells on the feats, like darkness.
I find quite obvious that make the feats more powerful but with light sensitivity would not work, that is not how PF2 works.
Thanks to Ediwir for the doc, I will look at it carefully later when I get some time.
Edit: as I wrote on the first post, the idea has nothing to do with Golarion, but with a homebrew setting where I want to use Drow/Dark elfs.
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Dooo deee dooo Dark Elves?!! awesome.... ok so I am going to add hummm let me see oh yea my 2 cents. Just coming from a topic thread about Drows which was AWESOME!!!
You people i mean the whole of Pathfinder need to figure out what the history's about and pick a lane. Is the society a Matriarchal Theocracy (rule by religion and women) organized into Houses? If so you might make females more dominant arrogant better educated. As men are considered lesser.
Drow conflicts are more Machiavellian in style; with quiet assassinations in dark alleys or secret hidden strike forces obliterating a rival house in a single night. If one house should make such an overt attempt to destroy another and fail in the attempt, that attacking house will then be destroyed by the entire drow city for its perceived weakness. Weakness is not tolerated. Of course, if the attacked house was weakened enough by the attacker, the community at large might choose to consume it as well.
So you have a house of card cloak and dagger society. The whole Elf Heritages are kind of lame due to the fact it gives you nothing but Darkvision or the laughable Wandering Heart feat for a race raised in a cavern. but given the Drow are the decedents of the Ancient Elves turned by a demonic influence with its evil demon radiation. Their just Ancient Elves once you get them away from the evil demon radiation. Basically, the whole heritage thing super complicates the game with no need or reason. So picking cavern from any of the others makes little different in the character. You just get dark vision.
Background would change things given a cloak and dagger ones character would have the Emissary kind of background trained in the Society skill, and a Lore skill related to one city you've visited often. You gain the Multilingual skill feat.
There is a great deal you can do with homebrew. But given the extreme limitations of the new and ever-expanding digital game this game is evolving into you can't very from the chosen paths and still play...
Not sure I follow how "pick a lane and decide what Drow actually are" and "you should use homebrew" are compatible. If you're encouraging people to use homebrew, they can make whatever decisions they want about what Drow society looks like. They could write an entire history of how Drow society is based around who can make the best custard pie, and that would be correct. You instead seem to want to play with a bunch of old tropes in your comfort zone and are frustrated that they don't all align with the base setting of this game.
It also isn't like Drow need to in ONE lane within the same setting. The most successful PF2 AP features evil Drow and flesh warping, but also a neutral Drow settlement you're meant to ally with.
I also don't see how the digital age has harmed homebrew when the best digital tools (Foundry, Pathbuilder) let you homebrew feats, items, backgrounds, and more. It is more work than using the preloaded options, but homebrew always is. Some third party content even has modules you can install to save you that work.
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Borg
Well there's your problem. Mork Borg is a different game. This is Pathfinder.
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I asked because I found Cavern elf to be quite lacking. There are some heritage with specific feats, but that is not the case on Drow/cavern elf, there would be far less problem with some apropiate feats there. Obviously the most powerful feats on Noble Drow are quite high level feats, at least level 9. I never believed that would be low level.
What kind of feats I would like to see on Drow? Change on the ancestry weapons to better represent drow (things like crossbows or whips), poison, and some more spells on the feats, like darkness.
I find quite obvious that make the feats more powerful but with light sensitivity would not work, that is not how PF2 works.
Thanks to Ediwir for the doc, I will look at it carefully later when I get some time.Edit: as I wrote on the first post, the idea has nothing to do with Golarion, but with a homebrew setting where I want to use Drow/Dark elfs.
I do not know as much about Drows as most posters in this thread, but I feel the best would be to use the Cavern elf Heritage for the Darkvision, indeed change the ancestral weapons, and pilfer feats from more magical ancestries and heritages (I thought of Gnomes, others might exist) as well as those dealing with darkness (say Fetchlings).
Oh dear do I really come off that badly. You know I never even thought about using magic I just wanted the rich history and dominate female lead race you know leather and a whip, poison from a back-stabby society.
Awesome another code user this is a simple format you only need to use a letter not the whole word just saying it is so nice when people use the features!
Anyway I am old school D&D 80's child I have a great deal of learning if I were to pick up paper Game Mastering in Pathfinder. I had little luck trying to get a 1st edition D&DA game going or find one for that matter.
I do not mean to steamroll the forum with negative statements. I am sorry if I came across that way. I simply point out what I see and the flaws I find. As I said I have a lot to learn.
In the end I just like dark broody characters and, in an age, where you think "you know some people just need killing" an assassin seams way more fun to play. I just wanted a whip some daggers, a blowgun and poison not a super powerful can do everything character. I mean my Drow is 4foot 2 inch's weighs 70 pounds soaking wet.
Not by far a all-powerful god like toon with regenerative healing powers like DeadPool which now that I think about it would be AWESOME!!! But no just a disillusioned trained killer with no friends of family searching for her lover. bluh bluh bluh No worries though Like a wise man says I know nothing and learn from all.
Thank you for you kindness, I will strive to do better in my postings
I think the issue is that if someone has a vision for the culture, background, society of an ancestry then they don't really need the forums help and they don't need mechanics for it.
This thread was made not to decide those sorts of things, but rather how best to mechanical represent whatever version of Drow you want to exist in your game. We were basing the coversation mostly off of how Drow have been represented in D&D 3.5 through PF2, which has had considerably evolution. But some consistent things are differing weapon familiarities form base elves, inherent magic, and resistance to magic.
Most people in this thread have said that using base elves as a basis and allow for Drow as a heritage that enables you to select certain ancestry feats and swaps some normal elf things out (weapon familiarity) is probably the best way to go.
Most of your statements as I interpreted them, had nothing to do with mechanics but rather the first stuff I mentioned. Which no one really wants to debate about. People are welcome to like what they like, but Paizo has changed who Drow are for Golarion but you can use the old version if that's what you want. No one can stop you.
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Oh dear do I really come off that badly.
Sadly, yes. Yes you do.
You stepped into someone else's "asking for advice" thread, and then started rambling (in self-contradictory ways) about your own complaints in ways that weren't particularly helpful to the OP. You criticized Paizo for things that were not, in fact, true. It's... not a good look.
As for wanting to play a dark, brooding, poison-using assassin with no friends or family... you can? I mean, it's a bit edgelord, but there are plenty of people out there who are a bit edgelord. We have "thief rogue" right over there, and I think there's even a "poisoner" archetype floating around somewhere. It's possible to be a trained killer who uses whips and knives and crossbows without having it baked into your ancestry, you know?
For the OP... we've been told that we're going to get a full drow treatment eventually, but that's an "eventually" measured in years. Until then, you're basically stuck with homebrew and 3PP.
Don't worry, SuperHero, no harm done, just be a bit more careful another time. ^^
I suppose I will need to homebrew the drow. Is hard to put the homebrew on PathBuilder?
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Don't worry, SuperHero, no harm done, just be a bit more careful another time. ^^
I suppose I will need to homebrew the drow. Is hard to put the homebrew on PathBuilder?
I know the paid version supports homebrew, but I'm not sure how one goes about creating the data to be able to add it.
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If you just need to snag ancestry feats from other ancestries, you should be able to override the default restrictions. If you want to build a custom ancestry, I think you need to do some coding.
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I'm honestly not sure which features are paid on Pathbuilder, because I paid 5 bucks and got everything forever from it. Similarly, I paid 50 for foundry and got everything forever as far as mechanics go.
"The most successful PF2 AP features evil Drow and flesh warping, but also a neutral Drow settlement you're meant to ally with." I take it you cannot be one of the "Neutral Drows"
In so far as you can play Drow at all, you can actually play one of these neutral Drow. They are introduced around level 9, so assuming you have enough feats to check all the boxes you're looking for in a Drow... Than playing one of these characters would actually be an elegant way to introduce a higher level PC into the narrative. Which is something I'm jotting down for later in case I kill a player character around the this point in the story.
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
Everything you described far as I can tell, can be achieved with simple fluffing of flavor descriptors and changing the elven weapon familiarity.
I don't know of a GM (ok, maybe one, I don't care to play at his table much) that wouldn't work with tug on such harmless rewrite of origin.
Take cavern elf, call it drow
You can describe yourself as you just did, you can be from that society. Your can use those weapons.
Yes I said whiny and honestly your response is enforcing that impression.
But besides that silly snark, I fail to see how your can't create that character, at level 1. With existing rules as most of what you described is pure flavor
I did craft it I have a working character. No matter what other people's opinions are, there are certain inevitable facts. Drow are Elves that live in deep caverns. I can call my people anything I want it does not change the fact that they are elves. I do not like the whole evil demon radiation poisoning thing but whatever. My Characters been on the surface long enough to recover from the "evil Radiation".
People are people you have those who have to follow laws and you have the free spirted ones that run with chaos. No Matter I have two choices play or not play and I am perfectly ok with choosing not to play. There are other things to play or find entertaining. It is rather easy to just walk away from Pathfinder there are other games.
Ok? And?
Have fun, in whatever you do, but no need to make a soap box out of it
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Yes your sense of humor is extremely lacking,I agree. But I'll let you have the last word now.
dooo deeee doooo, dinky dinky do, bluh bluh bluh you know....you know?
I don't know... Are these meant to be words that mean something or are you having a stroke or something? I've seen you use similar... 'words' before and seeing what seem to be nonsensical words tossed into a post just makes me move on without reading the rest.
Yes they have meaning. kind of like "Drizzle, Drazzle, Drozzle, Drone. Time for this one to go home" Do I want to waste my time explaining them? No...
Just waned to know if they had some hidden meaning I didn't get, if you have a written tic or is it was just an off-putting habit [IMO]. If you don't wish to explain, that's fine.
Did you have anything to add to the topic at hand? No?
In fact I did. I suggested how spell resistance could be simulated with an existing PF2 feat. I just wanted to know if I should continue with the thread.