PF2R Drow


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion

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James Jacobs wrote:
The potential new look for intellect devourers (which will likely be referred to as "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" and by their own name for their kind: Xoarian) that I've proposed is a five-limbed octopus type thing, with the body being something that'd fit into a skull all comfy, and with each of the five limbs being devoted to controlling one of the body's five senses. We'll see though if that route sticks or if we go some other direction, of course.

( Slowly points at James Jacobs with an intense stare, opens mouth and begins to scream in an inhuman voice).

Taken from the 70s film remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yeah I’m kind of old lol.


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My take continues to be different appointment though understand why they are being removed. Though if they are removed it leave them out. Especially and unless I’m mistaken they are retconned out of the setting. Either go all in and they are forevermore more removed from the setting. Or simply don’t retcon them and in any new setting for the remaster simply mention why they were removed for OGL reasons.

Retconning then bring them back would imo just cause too many people to go back and forth wondering and be possibly confused on Paizo stance on the Drow.

To give an example and warning spoilers for an old TV show there used to be an TV show called Dallas. One of the main characters was killed off. To the point of no return. Picture them dying in front of friends and family in an hospital room after being hit by a car. The actor at the time wanted out of their contract to do other work. Unfortunately for him his post-TV career never took off. The producers decided against all better judgement to bring the character back. Two-three years after the character death, The character wife in show suddenly wakes up walks around the apartment sees as if her husband is still alive. Walks around sees his shoes clothes on a chair on the floor walks to the bathroom and sees the character alive taking a shower.

Needless to say many fans were angry to say the least. The show ratings were hurting at that point due to poor writing and having a character with no hope of return coming back and the past two to three seasons by using an dream retcon was just an insult to the fans and imo an major reason why the show was cancelled due to poor ratings.

Doing the same with Drow bringing them back at a later date whether it be magic, dream or whatever Deus Ex Machina should not be done.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

If we get evil underground elves with weird magical powers, they won't be called drow or have much in common with drow as WotC have them.


Evan Tarlton wrote:
If we get evil underground elves with weird magical powers, they won't be called drow or have much in common with drow as WotC have them.

Yes, how they will look and/or Paizo will create underground evil elves, or an equivalent creature, will be fine...

Right now the actual problem is why they are doing it...

Silver Crusade

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That problem being WotC.

Dark Archive

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James Jacobs wrote:
Ectar wrote:

I'm still hoping to hear something about Shraen:

the city of Drow who got ousted from Zirnakaynin for worshiping Urgathoa instead of a demon lord, traveled to Vask, transformed themselves into undead along the way, and have a new city.

Like, a significant portion of their backstory is based on getting ousted from Zirnakaynin. Just up and replacing them with Sekmin, even undead Sekmin, loses a lot of development from the Extinction Curse AP.
It's a really cool city, and I'm just worried it's going to lose a ton of appeal in the transition, whatever that ends up looking like.

Have nothing to reveal about Shraen yet, but my gut feeling is to find a way to have it still be Urgathoa worshiping elves who end up there. They don't have to be drow, since the story of them here is not about them being drow and playing to the OGL tropes that we can no longer use in print once we switch to ORC products.

Whether they are cavern elves, or an Urgathoa cult who fled Kyonin or Celwynvian, or potentailly even aquatic elves or something wild like that... dunno. I wouldn't expect to hear much more from us on this specific topic for a while, though.

Out of intrest is there a reason you couldent just go with the Drow were all cavern elves all along route and just port over the stuff from second darkness (Perhaps minus the uh more questionable parts) to them?

Silver Crusade

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Because legal counsel most likely advised them that not-Drow!Elves that live underground in an evil demon worshipping matriarchal sensual clothes wearing society was too risky a target.

That or more simply, “hey let’s switch these Drow for something else and tell the exact same Drow stories.”

Writer: “but, they’re not Drow though”

The writers probably weren’t feeling that, and the fans most likely wouldn’t either.


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Temperans wrote:


It feels like Drow and Wizard were specifically targeted. For as much as I believe...

Yes the class that has had the least amount of changes done to it is specifically being targeted. I'd count druid in the list of bigger changes to it than the whole wizard thing.


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Well if they change the Drow to Cave Elves and keep their culture mostly the same then fans are not going to notice or care about the name change. If the Cave Elves are completely opposite of what the Drow were in cultural, behaviour , tactics etc imo yes fans will notice. If one takes Hobgoblins renames them and makes them peace loving farmers they are imo no longer Hobgoblins just something else completely.

In the end it’s not for anyone here to decide how I and other posters view or feel about the change. We all on an individual basis decide. Some will shrug and not care other if the Drow as a whole are radically changed and some can will notice and either like or not the major changes.

I think the main issue is that many elements even if OGL are being ported over into the Remaster with no significant changes. So it has done thinking why are those rules. Races etc are allowed and not the Drow. If and I mean if it’s because of an either a societal change or simply the devs being uncomfortable about writing and using the Drow whatever the reason simply admit that. They mentioned not being comfortable about writing and including Slavery in APs just say the same thing for Drow.


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Initial ORC inclusion by Paizo may also require a “I have no serious concerns about this” opinion by the law firm independently responsible for the ORC. I think Paizo is paying their bills but Paizo isn’t a controlling client. They’re trying to make the ORC as safe as possible for third parties to rely on in perpetuity. This is too risky and undermines the entire enterprise.


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The Thing From Another World wrote:
just say the same thing for Drow.

Several pages back, James Jacobs, the Creative Director, had this to say about removing the Drow

James Jacobs wrote:

I 100% understand and empathize with that position, but it's the way it has to be. Part of being a creative director is making tough decisions, and this is one that kinda agonized me to make the call for... especially as someone who's put a lot of work into re-contextualizing drow for 2nd edition (in print in Abomination Vaults, and not in print in some future plans for them we had in the works that were really kinda complicated and not yet fully figured out) in a way that makes them not legacies of D&D and not problematic, and whose favorite ever RPG character spent most of her adventuring career as a drow before she died late in the campaign and got reincarnated as an aquatic elf, and as someone who's first 2 published adventures featured drow ("Scepter of the Underworld" in Dungeon #12 and "Thunder Under Needlespire" in Dungeon #24), and as someone who's first in-print D&D credit was a special thanks from Ed Greenwood for "two names and more fun" in the credits page for "Drow of the Underdark"... making this decision was not one that I championed lightly or happily.

But it had to be done, for the health of the company and the game going forward. I hope Darklands fans who stick around will be happy with what we do to that part of Golarion going forward—it remains one of my favorite parts of the setting—and I apologize to those folks who like drow a lot and feel betrayed by this decision.


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Well, I weep for thee, denizens of the Darklands, who names shall not be uttered; mystery cultists who once worshipped the spider mother. Teal and lilac you then became, a false history for which you were blamed. I weep for thee, you redacted drow, exit stage left, after a bow.

On a more pointed note, the homebrewed world I run is unaffected by this, but it's sad we won't get a proper ancestry entry for Drow that have cha+ in place of int+ and a feat tree for minor magical shenanigans dealing with darkness and dusk. Guess I (or people on infinite) can just write their own, but it still would have been lovely for 'official' stuff. No idea what 'sekmin' is, but if they're the new tyrannical Darkland doods, I guess I'll familiarize myself with them at some point; any good spot to read about them?

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Sekmin are snakefolk


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Cori Marie wrote:
Sekmin are snakefolk

I'm more disappointed they aren't called Snekmin than anything.

What a missed opportunity to capitalize on, Paizo.

Liberty's Edge

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Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
Cori Marie wrote:
Sekmin are snakefolk

I'm more disappointed they aren't called Snekmin than anything.

What a missed opportunity to capitalize on, Paizo.

They may be trying to limit abuse of Power Word: Pun.

On a more serious note, there are a lot of ways to make the Sekmin into great villains. Perhaps even a few of them impersonated creatures from another world to deceive some of their enemies.

The Lore team will be working extra hard. Perhaps there was a small group of cavern elves that broke bad that someone mistook for drow. However, home games are safe. My advice is to start with the cavern elf ancestry and see what other ancestries might work to give your home campaign something that works for drow in hour campaign.

I will miss the drow, but I understand the issues that James Jacobs and others raised. My hope is that we will see several interesting Darklands societies. Maybe there might even be a cavern elf city with different factions, some good, some not so good.

Paizo Employee Community and Social Media Specialist

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Removed a couple more off topic posts. Thank you for keeping this mostly civil, y'all. Disagreement is welcome, but dont attack each other.


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Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
Cori Marie wrote:
Sekmin are snakefolk
I'm more disappointed they aren't called Snekmin than anything.

Maybe it's like how the name "Algollthu" came from a repeated mistyping of "although", they just added some extra 'l's so that was harder to spot.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

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I'm trying to put together a retcon in which the serpentfolk played a long con to convince elves that drow existed. The pieces are there, but I haven't quite put them together yet.


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Charlie Brooks wrote:
I'm trying to put together a retcon in which the serpentfolk played a long con to convince elves that drow existed. The pieces are there, but I haven't quite put them together yet.

If they were trying to disrupt the people with the longest memory, it actually works really well.

Plant rumors, brainwash/Dominate stray cavern elves, aim the elves at demons.

Why, it sounds almost exactly what they might have done to the ancient Cyclopian civilization of Ghol'Gan!


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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Something I've been thinking about is how Paizo staff has in the past talked about how hired writers/artists sometimes accidentally bring dndisms to their writing at paizo. I wonder if this also had a small part to play in it. If Drow were kept and the work was put in to change them, paizo would have to be extra diligent both to preserve their creative uniqueness but also to ensure a writer doesn't accidentally write something that would step on DnDs toes.

Now I know this can be done with anything that might share dna with a dnd monster, but I could see the argument that drow especially could have that issue.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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The word "sekmin" is somewhat derived from the word "Sekamina", the name of the middle layer of the Darklands, with the idea being that this middle realm was once ruled by the sekmin empire, and is now being reclaimed by them.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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pixierose wrote:

Something I've been thinking about is how Paizo staff has in the past talked about how hired writers/artists sometimes accidentl6 bring dndisms to their writing at paizo. I wonder if this also had a small part to play in it. If Drow were kept and the work was put in to change them, paizo would have to be extra dilligent both to perserve their creative uniqueness but also to ensure a writer doesnt accidently write something that would step on DnDs toes.

Now I know this can be done with anything that might share dna with a dnd monster, but I could see the argument that drow especially could have that issue.

Putting this behind a spoiler tag since it's going to be a wall of text... but here's some historical context to help folks understand Paizo's history with drow a bit better.

Spoiler:
Drow are one of the most popular aspsects of D&D. We knew that from the start. For example, every time we put a drow on the cover of Dragon or Dungeon magazine, that issue sold better. Drow are one of D&D's most successful creations.

That's why we chose to embrace the concept of drow into our setting with our 3rd Adventure Path; at that time we were still doing 3.5 adventures and were continuing to eagerly try to "court" D&D fans and delight our existing customer base which we'd built up with the magazines–and many of whom rolled over their existing magazine subscriptions to Pathfinder Adventure Path.

Knowing that drow were SUPER popular, we did an Adventure Path that was all about them. At the time, there was a lot of pushback against WotC for making drow too friendly and safe, so we adopted the pose in "Second Darkness" that our drow were always evil and went back to the "original" take of them from the earliest editions of AD&D—that they were evil elves who worshiped demons. It skirted the edge of what we could do with drow using the OGL, and even though we did add new lore to them (traditions of fleshwarping, or how they first came to be in the first place, or the concept that a very evil elf could spontaneously transform into a drow), we knew that our fans wanted the drow that they were used to from D&D and that they were eager to see drow as enemies again. Also at this time we published "Into the Darklands" to contextualize OUR version of D&D's Underdark.

Then, about halfway through the creation of Second Darkness, we found out that 4th edition was on the horizon and wouldn't be open and that we were publishing for a game system that would soon be out of print, which would have effectively killed the company's bread and butter of publishing 3.5 products. So we shifted gears away from 3.5 and headed into Pathfinder 1st edition, and the question of what we could and couldn't publish shifted away from a close association with D&D and firmly into the arena of a competitor to the brand we once helped to build and directly support.

Over the course of the next 15 years or so, the world would change, our fan base would change, and we would change. The world of today is less interested in monolithic evil societies than we all were when Pathfinder began, and the idea of "evil elves turn into dark skinned drow" had increasingly become apparent to us as being problematic from a racist viewpoint. And so over the course of those 15 years, we adjusted our stance on drow, relenting on the lore of them being always evil, dialing back the concept of evil elves turning into drow, exploring drow societies that don't worship demons, and most importantly, continuing to recontextualize their skin color until ariving at the pale lavender hues of 2nd edition.

But at the heart of it all, they were very much still an evil empire of underground dwelling demon worshiping elves. It would take us many more years to shift away from that concept and gradually do a "rebranding" of them to ease world canon into the new lore that is less D&D adjacent and more something of our own, but also to ease customer opinion and acceptance of them into the new role. We began with new art of them in the 2nd edition Bestiary, and then the next big steps we took with them was to introduce the non-evil drow present in Abomination Vaults.

All of this was in an era of false security and safety implanted in our minds and souls from spending 15 years in the safe harbor of an OGL and SRD that the industry had accepted as being something that would be around forever. We had no feelings of having to rush things, and were taking our time to do it gradually and right.

Then, this January, the notion that the OGL would be revoked threw that all out the window. While the resolution was what we'd hoped for, that the OGL was eternal and couldn't be revoked (a stance we never stoped believing, but were very frightened of a potential near future where we'd have to fight that belief in court and potentially have our production schedule disrupted and thus our profitability tanked), the disruptions that month did made us realize that the time was right to go our own way.

So we decided to pursue a new open game license, the ORC, with a coalition of other RPG publishers, and began work almost immediately on the Remastered rules for Pathfinder. We knew at the start we'd have to do a lot of work at restructuring the elements of things in Pathfinder that were only available through the OGL—while the rules themselves are open content (and beyond that, we'd rewritten the rules for 2nd edition from the ground up), the flavor text we'd been allowed to benifit from as a result of the SRD containing things like creature and spell names or lore was not. We'd already done a lot of work making a lot of those monsters our own with a combination of name and flavor changes as well as giving them different abilities in play, but among all of them, the drow hadn't had much of that work done at all. Just some proverbial "baby" steps, and the name itself was still cemented in the game.

And now, the time we had to finish that went from "However long we want to do the change gracefully" to "NOW."

While the input of lawyers has had an impact on all that we've done in preparing for the Remastered rules, and indeed all of our decisions on how to interpret what we can or shouldn't do with the OGL all the way back to Pathfinder 1's "Burnt Offerings", the decision to just cut drow off and move forward without them was something the creative department at Paizo decided to do. I believe I was the first to moot "let's just cut them out entirely" as an option while we were all trying to be tender and delicate about our options, and that perception was something that the majority (I believe all) of the creative staff embraced—but not without fear and sadness.

Drow have never been a huge central part of our world and game, but neither are they an obscurity. They're in a middle zone, and that meant that they weren't going to be something we talked about the changes to up front like, say, alignment or dragons, but we had to find a way to approach the subject soon. We were already hard at work on a Darklands adjacent set of products between Highhelm and Sky King's Tomb, so I volunteered to take what I'd written in "Into the Darklands" back in 2008 and recontextualize it as a "Return to the Darklands" 6 page article in the last volume of Sky King's Tomb—the only product in that group of Darklands-facing stuff that wasn't already locked in with art and layout. It's literally the first chance we have in print to reveal the new direction, and it being in the last volume of that Adventure Path wasn't ideal.

So we decided to do an "Into the Darklands" panel at Paizocon and get out ahead of things, to let everyone know of the decision, and to give people a chance to adjust and accept or to make decisions to look elsewhere for their RPG content.

If you want to level your ire about this all at anyone, do it at me. Not at the designers or developers or editors at Paizo. Not at our lawyers. Not even at Wizards of the Coast. I'm the one who pushed for the original way we brought drow into the game back in Second Darkness, and fostered the idea that "if you liked drow in D&D, you'll like them in Pathfinder" from the start. That was one of our primary goals overall, in fact—to retain fans of D&D we'd created with Dragon and Dungeon and transition them into the parallel world of Pathifnder fandom. In hindsight, I see now that it would have been better to do something wildly different with drow, but at the time in the mid 2000s, we had other deeper fears.

So... I'm sorry if the loss of drow or the disruption to drow-adjacent canon has upset anyone. It upsets me as well, but not as much the alternative. Hopefully by this time next year the sting of losing drow will be reduced to a dull ache, and then eventually to just faint nostalgia, as we all went through when we lost the licenses to the magazines and had to bid similar farewells to mind flayers and beholders and carrion crawlers and kuo-toa and githyanki and umber hulks and the rest. And hopefully the vast amount of content we've ADDED to the game and the hobby, like munavris and seugathis and urdefhans and leshys and fleshwarps and pugwampis will continue to create nostalgia and gaming delight of their own to replace and, I hope, exceed the love we all had for content of yesteryear.

As for how well handle canon going forward from previous drow-adjacent stories... we will be handling those when (and if) we do new stories that build off of that content. The stories we've already published, be they old (like Second Darkness) or relatively new (like Abomination Vaults) aren't going anywhere; the OGL remains, after all. We just aren't going into an OGL future.

But since we chose to retain a lot of what folks adore about drow in our setting, now that the world has changed, we have to change with it.


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James Jacobs wrote:


Putting this behind a spoiler tag since it's going to be a wall of text... but here's some historical context to help folks understand Paizo's history with drow a bit better.

While the "pain" of such a hard retcon still remains and i personally am still very much frustrated with the change and the Snakepeople-alternative, I thank you a lot for explaining and contextualizing here.


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James,

I really appreciate you coming on here and explaining the situation in detail. The ORC transition had to be stressful, but I think everyone, even the folks not happy with the decisions, are glad that you folks got ahead of things and gave folks an early heads up.


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James Jacobs wrote:
pixierose wrote:

Something I've been thinking about is how Paizo staff has in the past talked about how hired writers/artists sometimes accidentl6 bring dndisms to their writing at paizo. I wonder if this also had a small part to play in it. If Drow were kept and the work was put in to change them, paizo would have to be extra dilligent both to perserve their creative uniqueness but also to ensure a writer doesnt accidently write something that would step on DnDs toes.

Now I know this can be done with anything that might share dna with a dnd monster, but I could see the argument that drow especially could have that issue.

Putting this behind a spoiler tag since it's going to be a wall of text... but here's some historical context to help folks understand Paizo's history with drow a bit better.

** spoiler omitted **...

Hnn. Interesting.


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JJ is consistently a patient class act. Thank you for the effort you put in here.


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At this point I’m good with the change though l do hope we get to see some truly evil empires and races in the Remaster world background of Golarion. Not every race had to be evil yet not every race has to be good either imo,


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Thanks for the response and putting things in more context. Even if I disagree with the change, I can accept that it's already done and that there probably was some deliberation.

It still stings and hurts that the changes are happening.


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The Thing From Another World wrote:
At this CB point I’m good with the change though l do hope we get to see some truly evil empires and races in the Remaster world background of Golarion. Not every race had to be evil yet not every race has to be good either imo,

The switch away from “evil Races” and to the term “Ancestry” are related.

Liberty's Edge

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I completely understand those who try to find a way to convince Paizo to put drow back in the setting.

After all, I wish the same for the Chaotic-Lawful axis on a PC-level. It is one of the stages of grief.

But, to be honest, what many many fans of drows who posted on the boards, prior to news of the No more drows in PF2, asked vehemently for was drows closer to the DnD ones, and especially drow nobles with all their power and glory.

With the switch from OGL to ORC, there was no way Paizo could ever provide this.

Me, I'm just happy that Cavern Elves will become a real people and not just a Heritage with zero specific culture and place in the setting.

Dark Archive

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Must admit thing I'm more worried about is how the change is going to affect one of my favorite pathfinder NPC'S Koriah Azmeren since the discovery of the drow is a large part of her background and it seems there answer from what I have read elsewhere is she 'fiddled with the truth a bit.'


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Kevin Mack wrote:

Must admit thing I'm more worried about is how the change is going to affect one of my favorite pathfinder NPC'S Koriah Azmeren since the discovery of the drow is a large part of her background and it seems there answer from what I have read elsewhere is she 'fiddled with the truth a bit.'

You should definitely watch the panel. It was framed as “she lied to protect the surface from a greater threat.”


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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
keftiu wrote:
JJ is consistently a patient class act. Thank you for the effort you put in here.

This. So much this. Thank you James for all your time, effort, and advocacy.

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I'll miss the drow - or rather, my 80s/90s version of myself will. One of my first characters was a drow trapped in the city of Sigil. At least I'll retain the memory! Now it's time to look forward and not backward.

As James mentioned earlier in the thread, Pathfinder has matured, and it's time for them to forge their own unique path (no pun intended). Who knows, maybe in a few years, there will be a new, badass species/ancestry/race that tweens/teens can point to and exclaim, "I want to play them!"


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Kevin Mack wrote:

Must admit thing I'm more worried about is how the change is going to affect one of my favorite pathfinder NPC'S Koriah Azmeren since the discovery of the drow is a large part of her background and it seems there answer from what I have read elsewhere is she 'fiddled with the truth a bit.'

"Some things shouldn't be public knowledge and creating a fiction is a time-honored Pathfinder tradition. Especially when the ramifications for Golarion as a whole are worse if the facts are revealed."

I can buy it, and also the ramifications later for folks like Eando Kline.

Liberty's Edge

Anorak wrote:

I'll miss the drow - or rather, my 80s/90s version of myself will. One of my first characters was a drow trapped in the city of Sigil. At least I'll retain the memory! Now it's time to look forward and not backward.

As James mentioned earlier in the thread, Pathfinder has matured, and it's time for them to forge their own unique path (no pun intended). Who knows, maybe in a few years, there will be a new, badass species/ancestry/race that tweens/teens can point to and exclaim, "I want to play them!"

Beastkin and Fleshwarp spring to mind.

Now, if we could have Swarm and Ooze ancestries.


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James Jacobs wrote:
Putting this behind a spoiler tag since it's going to be a wall of text... but here's some historical context to help folks understand Paizo's history with drow a bit better.

It sounds like a tough decision to make. Sorry you have to take that burden, Mr. Jacobs. Best of luck with the stuff in the future.


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James Jacobs wrote:

Putting this behind a spoiler tag since it's going to be a wall of text... but here's some historical context to help folks understand Paizo's history with drow a bit better.

** spoiler omitted **...

Thank you for the in depth explanation, I for one completely understand the reasoning and agree with the decision. Personally I am just lamenting the loss of a distinct dark elf ancestry, as they are one of my favorites across many forms of fantasy media. I know that many see them as only D&D Drow but I've personally never been a fan of that version and was looking forward to Paizo's take on them.

Radiant Oath

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FallenDabus wrote:
keftiu wrote:
JJ is consistently a patient class act. Thank you for the effort you put in here.
This. So much this. Thank you James for all your time, effort, and advocacy.

This again. It's a brave person to stand up and accept all this (unfounded) hate.


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I understand, I do, and I sympathize as well, but after several days of this being on my mind and discussing it with people (which, I am quite sad to say, had the unfortunate result of some rather toxic commentary lobbed my way by several people on other forums and sites who purport to be diehard fans of the game same as I), I am still beyond pained by this. It is with heavy heart that me and my group have decided to go to other systems after finding that this has (rather surprisingly to me) taxed my and several other people in my group's mental and emotional health far too much.

I wish Pathfinder in general and Paizo in specific the absolute best and thank them for the years of joy they've brought me and my group.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Wishing you the best gaming possible, whatever system you choose.


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So regarding the Drow issue, would it be safe to use the origin of the word, 'trow', which had a much broader meaning of trolls and evil sprite creatures? Maybe lean into them having fey and trollish/giantish aspects to them?

This would require a bigger rewrite of course, but I think you could use this as a starting point to build back to an evil elf-like creature that has the same place in the story and the same vibe. A revised drow if you will. :D


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Drow aren't the overpowered option they once were. The lore never mattered to me as I write what I feel like writing in regards to a character and care not so much about world lore as player lore always comes first.

Those of us that optimize stopped caring much about the drow after they were no longer the overpowered option they once were. Part of what made the drow so popular was the overpowered character options like free ambidexterity, magic resistance, and innate magical powers. Those options were removed long ago. Now drow are just another type of elf. Not the super elf they started as.

When drow first started boosting up, it was because it was awesome to be a drow. If your DM let you play a drow, you were a superman PC if everyone else was playing a common race.

Drow stopped being supermen long time ago. Not sure why anyone worries about it anymore.

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Paizo has done more than enough to earn my trust.

There hasn't been a huge amount of Drow Lore through the life of Pathfinder, most of it was concentrated in Second Darkness (Paizo's least loved Adventure Path).

So I have had opportunities to use those gaps in my games to build my own elf-lore into the world.

I heavily disagree with anyone that categorizes James or anyone at Paizo as "spineless" with the decision to remove Drow from the game moving forward. It takes an immense amount of courage to take something so beloved, take a hard critical look at its necessity in the world and lore they are trying to build going forward and choose to excise it.

But Drow are like an appendix for the body of the Pathfinder universe. Once a necessary organ to keep the setting alive, but now a volatile vestigial organ with a very real chance to burst and poison the whole thing any minute.

That being said, Drow will still have a place at my table, because I took the bits of lore I liked, and explanded upon them, and discarded the pieces I thought didn't suit my setting, table or friends.

I welcome anybody to do the same.

Dark Archive

James Jacobs wrote:
So... I'm sorry if the loss of drow or the disruption to drow-adjacent canon has upset anyone. It upsets me as well, but not as much the alternative. Hopefully by this time next year the sting of losing drow will be reduced to a dull ache, and then eventually to just faint nostalgia,

I didn't think I would be, but I feel somewhat placated. This is close to how I feel; I don't think I'll ever not be disappointed by the decision, ultimately. But I'll get over it. It's just still fresh and I'm feeling very reactionary.

Looking forward to hearing more about the Urdefhans. Their depiction in EC was particularly cool. A little less "let's just kill everything everywhere all the time" and a little more "let's build a strict, honorable society so we can kill everyone everywhere in the future".
I got definite Klingon vibes from them, and I'm here for it.

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