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I think it would be better if Paizo developed the cave elf to be more than just the option tbat gives an elf darkvision. They might be doing that but in the meantime the cave elves, to me, are pretty meh
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Not according to James Jacobs who brought in Drow and involved in there implementation in Pathfinder and worked on them for D&D. I trust him when he says they are very much like D&D Drow and have no reason to disbelieve him because he should know better then anyone else.
Other in the fantasy industry have done it because there dark elves are not inherently Drow and that is not the case for Pathfinder. Pathfinder 2e has had dark elves in the carven elf heritage and will continue and be a better way to represent there kind of subterrain elf. Because they would have to change the Drow so much to not be recognizable and that would come with baggage and is better to have a clean slate.
Creative Director
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Indirectly related, but does anyone know if Xulgath are getting the boot? I'm asking because Palladium Fantasy has had Troglodytes since well before the OGL and SRD were even faint glimmers in anyone's brain.
They aren't. Unlike drow, which have an extensive history being built up to things that folks adore by D&D over decades, troglodytes haven't.
Furthermore, by calling them xulgath (a name I invented for lizard people in my homebrew back in the late 80s, and that I transitioned over to Pathfinder to be the ancestral name for the creatures we once called troglodytes in previous editions), and by building up our own different lore about them, and by giving them a different coloration and look, what we call a xulgath and what WotC calls a troglodyte are not really the same thing anymore.
At this time in Pathfinder, if we call something a troglodyte, we would simply be using the word in the context of its real-world definition, not as an underground lizard person. And since so many gamers have been conditioned to assume that's what a fantasy TTRPG means when they use the word troglodyte... we'll likely just avoid using the word entirely just to not confuse folks.
If we'd done the same thing to drow, and had started that ages ago, and if there wasn't decades of pre-existing fandom for this exact combination of elements in an underground-dwelling evil elf society... perhaps we'd be in a different spot today. We are not in that spot.
In time, the work we put in to drow to begin the process of transitioning them away from the D&D tropes that most gamers want and adore and that we don't want to pursue in a non-OGL product (for example, underground elves who worship proteans) may well be transposed onto the cavern elves (an element that, at this point, is VERY underdeveloped and in current print exists only as a way to give your elf PC darkvision), but that'll be something we pursue later. The more our "replacement drow" look and act like D&D's drow, the more fraught things get in an ORC product. By using snake people, we avoid that fraughtness, and this potentially leaves things open for us to start exploring with cavern elves what we'd started to explore in the framework of drow in a book like "Abomination Vaults."
But cavern elves won't be "recontextualized drow" in the way that someone coming from D&D will recognize. That's the Whole Point of what we've chosen to do in order to protect Paizo going forward into the new future of the ORC.
I haven't played pf1e since pf2e came out so my recollection of the archtype isn't the sharpest, but being able to hover straight up made for a fun cat burglar rogue, and the extra magic was nice.What feats do cavern elves have access to that will recreate a pf1e drow noble character? Isn't it just dark vision.What is not available in the current set of "elf feats" (of which there are like 40) that you would need?
No heritage is going to carry significantly more benefits than another heritage, for obvious balance reasons.
So a fundamental change between PF1 and PF2 is that ancestries give you a lot less up front than PF1 races did, but give you stuff throughout your career with "ancestry feats" being selected at 1st, 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level.
So you start out with an ancestry that gives you little more than size, starting HP, attribute mods, any special senses, and movement speed. From there you select a single Heritage which carries one effect on the order of "you have improved vision" or "you have resistance equal to LEVEL/2 to something". Then you select your first level ancestry feat, which usually carries an effect like "you get a cantrip" or "you get training in some weapons or skills".
Levitate is a 3rd level spell, so if you wanted it as an innate spell, that would be about right as a once/day spell as part of a 9th level feat (compare the Dwarf feat Stonewalker, which is a 9th level feat that gives you "Meld Into Stone", a 3rd level spell, 1/day). We'd need to come up with that.
But if you just want a cavern elf with lots of magic, you could spend your first ancestry feat on wildborn magic which gets you a free primal cantrip your 5th level feat on Wildborn magic which gets you 3 more, and your 9th level ancestry feat on Otherwordly Acumen which gets you a 2nd level primal spell as a 1/day innate spell (and you can change what it is). There aren't really a lot of 13th and 17th level ancestry feats for any ancestry, so there aren't currently "magic related" ones for elves, but this is probably a thing that should be printed sooner or later.
But the bulk of things like "how good you are with poison" or "how good you are with hand crossbows" or "how good you are with magic" is supposed to come from your class, either via class features or class feats.
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WotC owns the particular expression of dark elves as evil underground spider-adjacent matriarchal society torture-happy ever-scheming things called drow in the context of fantasy role playing games and the closer you get to that, the bigger your legal risks.Wotc doesn't own noble dark elves anymore than they own noble elves. Or Blizzard nightborne might be in trouble next.
I see the confusion though and yes, I agree cavern elves would cover the core idea of elves that live underground.
Didn't Paizo drop the spider thing a long while back?
There seems to be some confusion. I always knew Paizo would rework Drow further in their pf2e release. Probably most Drow fans understood that. Constantly saying "well Wotc owns spider matriarch drows" isn't addressing what anyone is saying here. It's kinda feeling like a straw man as I don't think anyone here has asked for a 1 for 1 wotc Drow/new non copyrighted dark elf.
This.
People keep spouting that line as if everything that Paizo wrote about drow didn't exist. Which is not true. All the drow throughout Golarion are uniquely Paizo's. All the lore from the cities paizo made are uniquely Paizo's. All the lore that Paizo could write about their drow is unique to Paizo.
If Paizo can rename duergars, deep gnomes, kobolds, and any number of other ancestries. They can just as well do the same with drow. If they can add new lore to those things to make it their own, then they can do the same to drow.
Everyone else in the fantasy industry has managed to make their own dark elves, but paizo is refusing to even try to keep the one they created. That line is thus pure copium.
You know that driders are a thing for the OGL Paizo drows too, right ?
And that driders are a mix of drow and spider. I mean, the name says it all.
So, no Lolth (because not in OGL), but still several things to do with spiders.
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Diversification is healthy.Only if those diversified options are not in direct competition with each other.
Unfortunately I'm not sure how that measures up against D&D3/3.5's, D&D4's, and (despite the quality issues) D&D5's success. There's still the (A)D&D1 situation. At best what Lisa has found is that completely unmanaged growth is unsustainable but, we know this from nature (and not ironically, the current economic crisis the U.S. finds itself in). What is competing against itself isn't clear. Certainly Forgotten Realms outcompeted Mystara but all of the other settings did not really resemble one another and appealed to different audiences (and so weren't really competing with one another for eyeballs). What really bankrupted TSR was a pretty constant over-estimation of how many copies of books sold and not in the least because they had overestimated how much of the fanbase were completionists interested in collecting one of everything.
This was an all too common mistake made by corporations in the '90s. Marvel, DC, and many other publishers overestimated the size of their markets and suffered dire financial crises because of it. (But it was hardly the case that the X-Men were directly competing with the Avengers.) So I'm afraid Lisa's conclusions are all wrong and that the important lesson for publishers is to always print too few (but not very many too few) copies so that you don't outstrip the actual demand. (Only under rare circumstances [when finances are tight] will your market cannibalize itself. And honestly, in the '80s grade schools, we had a simple video game, lemonade stand, that taught this lesson.)
IMO the Kickstarter (and Kickstarter like) business model actually takes the mystery out of this equation by facilitating your market self-identifying and directly investing in...
I don't think Paizo compares to Wotc (and really Hasbro) in this or any case. Paizo is still more akin to TSR in terms of what profits sustain them or margins sink them.
People keep acting like Paizo and Wotc/Hasbro are on the same footing. They are not. A legal battle that would shutter Paizo's doors is a footnote to Hasbro. Hasbro's lines competing with each other is an expected cost of business where Paizo might find it an undertow that sinks them.
Has the market changed enough that Lisa's conclusions are no longer valid? Possibly, but not concrete enough of a possibility to justify dividing the design teams focus more than it already is with Pathfinder and Starfinder.
Somewhere else a member of the Starfinder team commented that when Starfinder does eventually switch over to ORC (which isn't for a few years), the "Drow" will stick around, but get tweaked and a new name. An example was for instance getting rid of the houses and just having them have corporations. Starfinder Drow are already pretty distinctive what with them having taken over Apostae and being space arms dealers.Eh, I'm just gonna pretend in my games that the Drow which are canon on Golarion were immigrants from a realm best forgotten and therefore there's a limited supply of them around, thus there's no new lore to be had.
Starfinder, OTOH... that's gonna be doubly painful for the players of that system when the hammer comes down, because Drow are much more ingrained in that world.
And being far more socially engaged than any cavern-loving ancestors or paler racist kin. Something something betrayal something from Starfinder Core.
The Kobold situation also confuses me, but one obvious difference is that PF 2E sunk a lot of effort into reinventing them, in the same manner they did with Goblins. Versus Drow, which didn't get much focus. So Paizo might be more invested in re-jiggering them. At least they are not Kobold Press, which obviously has even more invested into the little guys.Also as I mentioned elsewhere I'm honestly suprised they dont seem to need to change Kobolds since unless I am mistaken Kobolds as little lizard creatures were as much Wizards of the coasts as Drow or color coded dragonsI suspect the Kobolds being changed may either be likewise done via the change to Dragons (2 birds 1 stone kind of thing), or is something that they are wanting more delicate balance from in regards to changing them.
Worst case scenario, Kobolds go the way of the Drow, or become so far removed from the original canon that it's not going to bother the OGL (but may still bother the players). Only the ORC lawyers (who I believe are also the one[s] that drafted the OGL) are the ones who know the answer to this question for sure.
I can definitely agree with that, and like I said before, Kobolds being tied closely to Dragons could translate to "Fixing Dragons = Fixing Kobolds at the same time."
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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,
I'd rather just have the "evil empires" and not bother with the evil "races".
You can have an evil Human empire without implying that all humans themselves are evil.
Generally, I agree, except for creatures that are metaphysically made of evil (such as fiends) or for those that are so alien that they defy classification, yet so destructive that they might as well be evil (the Great Old Ones).
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Generally, I agree, except for creatures that are metaphysically made of evil (such as fiends) or for those that are so alien that they defy classification, yet so destructive that they might as well be evil (the Great Old Ones).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,
I'd rather just have the "evil empires" and not bother with the evil "races".
You can have an evil Human empire without implying that all humans themselves are evil.
Yeah, it's a little hard to deny things being objectively Evil when the setting actually states that things can and will be objectively and inherently Evil.
Which is one of many reasons why I suspect the remaster wants to do away with Alignment. (The other obvious reason being the OGL tie-in, of course.)
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Has anyone made a PF2 conversion guide for Second Darkness? If not, I bet a lot of folks would be very interested in playing it and you could definitely tweak the ending to be whatever send off you want for the Drow. I know some folks were waiting for Drow to get another focused AP but between what appears in Extinction Curse, Abomination Vaults and the bestiary, I think there is probably enough material to help newer converts to PF2 who want to learn about the Golarion stories of Drow, to fully convert 2nd Dark over and have a wonderful time. Highhelm is the very first Dwarf centric AP in either PF1 or PF2 and that is for a core 6 ancestry. (Yes, there lore has been tangentially explored in a book or two of other APs, but there has never been a whole AP on them. Golarion is not lacking for source material to play a phenomenal Drow focused AP, you just have to put in the smallest bit of work.
GMing, designing encounters and converting stories into adventures is what the PF2 system was designed to do very well. I have homebrewed a level 1 to 13 adventure that included the Slithering for a couple levels in the middle and running the slithering was really no more time intensive than writing material from scratch. Golarion is a fine place to explore Drow adventures on your own and there is plenty of material there to fill up an entire adventure's worth and then some. Another way to look at the remaster is to see that paizo has put all the effort into Golarion Drow that they reasonably feel they can moving forward. There are bestiary entries for various drow, various drow fleshwarps and for making NPCs of all levels that can build upon any ancestry that you want. None of that material is against the rules for you to keep using or to hack as source inspiration.
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In WotC's apology letter back in January, they stated, "we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose."
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I saw that as a kind of shot at Pathfinder.
When discussing the legal ramifications of drow, it might be worth keeping in mind that Hasbro may perceive an opportunity to punch down at the industry's second biggest brand to be beneficial. Blizzard may have dark elves, but I would bet they have a bigger legal team than Paizo, and nobody is saying, "Dump D&D and play Warcraft as a replacement."
It's reasonable to disagree with Paizo on the logistics or the absolute removal of drow, but they are in a tough situation and Hasbro has every reason to take a swing at them if they have an excuse. With that in mind, and knowing that there have been lots of behind the scenes talks, I find Paizo's claim that this is needed to be very believable.
I agree, except for creatures that are metaphysically made of evil (such as fiends)
*The privation theory of evil has entered the chat*
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This may or may not help, but for those who are saying "Paizo's lore is different enough that it wouldn't run afoul of the OGL thing," consider the following thought experiment. (This actually works as a decent rule of thumb for "maybe we have a problem" when it comes to pretty much anything involving copyright, plagiarism, etc.) Imagine the thing you're talking about didn't exist. Instead, someone has come to you with their "new idea" and begins to explain it to you.
How likely are you to go, "But that's just [IP of some other company]?"
So if someone came along and said, "I'm going to introduce a variant ancestry of elves for Golarion. They are dark-skinned (and are called "dark elves" as part of that), live exclusively underground, have darkvision, many of them are evil (they worship chaotic and evil deities as part of that), they organize themselves into scheming political factions that are ruled matriarchally, favor the use of poison and hand crossbows, and have a tradition of warping humanoids into monstrous abominations, some of which are spider/drow centaur-kinda things called 'driders,'" at what point in there, if any, would you have said, "But that's just D&D drow with some tweaks here and there?"
And how far back up the chain of those descriptors would you have to go before "this is clearly not D&D drow" would seem reasonable to say?
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In WotC's apology letter back in January, they stated, "we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose."
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I saw that as a kind of shot at Pathfinder.
To me, it sounds more like backpedaling on a blatant business decision, and (now) a bald-faced lie in an attempt to put naive people/businesses into a false sense of security.
If this sort of thing was really meant for those types of people, they wouldn't have done (or continued to do) the tactics they have done (or are doing) now.
Quite frankly, Paizo's decision to not do any more OGL work is ultimately a case of telling Hasbro/WoTC that they can't be trusted, that their true colors are shown, and that anyone else (or any other business) with half a brain would abandon them on the sinking Titanic ship they occupy.
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In WotC's apology letter back in January, they stated, "we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose."
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I saw that as a kind of shot at Pathfinder.
To me, it sounds more like backpedaling on a blatant business decision, and (now) a bald-faced lie in an attempt to put naive people/businesses into a false sense of security.
If this sort of thing was really meant for those types of people, they wouldn't have done (or continued to do) the tactics they have done (or are doing) now.
I do agree that it reads to me as an attempt to shift the narrative, but both things can be true. There's defintely the undertone of taking a shot at Paizo, and I think underestimating how hard WotC will punch if they think a competator is infringing on their IP without using the OGL is a very bad idea.
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This may or may not help, but for those who are saying "Paizo's lore is different enough that it wouldn't run afoul of the OGL thing," consider the following thought experiment. (This actually works as a decent rule of thumb for "maybe we have a problem" when it comes to pretty much anything involving copyright, plagiarism, etc.) Imagine the thing you're talking about didn't exist. Instead, someone has come to you with their "new idea" and begins to explain it to you.
How likely are you to go, "But that's just [IP of some other company]?"
So if someone came along and said, "I'm going to introduce a variant ancestry of elves for Golarion. They are dark-skinned (and are called "dark elves" as part of that), live exclusively underground, have darkvision, many of them are evil (they worship chaotic and evil deities as part of that), they organize themselves into scheming political factions that are ruled matriarchally, favor the use of poison and hand crossbows, and have a tradition of warping humanoids into monstrous abominations, some of which are spider/drow centaur-kinda things called 'driders,'" at what point in there, if any, would you have said, "But that's just D&D drow with some tweaks here and there?"
And how far back up the chain of those descriptors would you have to go before "this is clearly not D&D drow" would seem reasonable to say?
And when you are there, would those who love drow be satisfied with the result ?
I think not.
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I think it would be better if Paizo developed the cave elf to be more than just the option tbat gives an elf darkvision. They might be doing that but in the meantime the cave elves, to me, are pretty meh
Yep. Cavern elf feels more like I'm a dwarf elf than I'm an dark elf or drow. Anyone who knows the history of the drow knows their power is far greater than darkvision.
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Ive removed more posts. If the flags continue at this rate, the thread will be locked for a cooldown period.
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I'm not sad to see the drow go. They were a stereotype played out years ago, and although Paizo had been moving them away from their classical tropes, in effect they haven't been the drow the drow-fans wanted anymore, anyway.
Actually, I never understood the excessive love for the drow. When they first appeared in AD&D, they clearly were a kind of self-gratification of some kind of sexual fetish on the writer's side, likely repressed. They got worse, once they were drafted into the bland Forgotten Realms. And then Drizzt, oh my god, what a terrible character from a truly, atrociously bad writer, oh, how I have detested those awful novels. And from there it went downhill.
No, I won't miss the drow. Good riddance.
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...Indirectly related, but does anyone know if Xulgath are getting the boot? I'm asking because Palladium Fantasy has had Troglodytes since well before the OGL and SRD were even faint glimmers in anyone's brain.They aren't. Unlike drow, which have an extensive history being built up to things that folks adore by D&D over decades, troglodytes haven't.
Furthermore, by calling them xulgath (a name I invented for lizard people in my homebrew back in the late 80s, and that I transitioned over to Pathfinder to be the ancestral name for the creatures we once called troglodytes in previous editions), and by building up our own different lore about them, and by giving them a different coloration and look, what we call a xulgath and what WotC calls a troglodyte are not really the same thing anymore.
At this time in Pathfinder, if we call something a troglodyte, we would simply be using the word in the context of its real-world definition, not as an underground lizard person. And since so many gamers have been conditioned to assume that's what a fantasy TTRPG means when they use the word troglodyte... we'll likely just avoid using the word entirely just to not confuse folks.
If we'd done the same thing to drow, and had started that ages ago, and if there wasn't decades of pre-existing fandom for this exact combination of elements in an underground-dwelling evil elf society... perhaps we'd be in a different spot today. We are not in that spot.
In time, the work we put in to drow to begin the process of transitioning them away from the D&D tropes that most gamers want and adore and that we don't want to pursue in a non-OGL product (for example, underground elves who worship proteans) may well be transposed onto the cavern elves (an element that, at this point, is VERY underdeveloped and in current print exists only as a way to give your elf PC darkvision), but that'll be something we
I am sure that Paizo could do something with an entirely different sort of creature. The drow were made to be overly powerful, but as a student of literature and history, I do not recall the dark elves of the Eddas resembling the drow in significant ways. Nor do I seem to recall running across anything that looked like and worked like the drow in Orlando Furioso or The Faerie Queen.
Maybe some sort of evil fey might work, but anything that is too close to the traditional portrayal of drow probably will be a call for legal action from Hasbro. Even the threat of legal action by a huge corporation would be enough to tie up the resources of publishers the size of Paizo or Kobold Press.
@ especially in Against the Giants and the Spider Queen series, they were an unknown foe (even if hints were placed in some versions of the Slave Lords modules/compilation).
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@ especially in Against the Giants and the Spider Queen series, they were an unknown foe (even if hints were placed in some versions of the Slave Lords modules/compilation).
I don't think you can easily reinvent the drow into something people will accept as a good replacement for the drow of old. The Starfinder team has their work cut out for them to deal with drow in that setting, as Starfinder will ultimately go under the ORC license. I don't think anything can be done in the near future. Even then, Hasbro could still take legal action against drow in a fantasy setting. It doesn't matter if they win. They may tie up enough resources to make Paizo or any other company go bankrupt before a court can rule on whether there was an infringement of Hasbro's intellectual property.
Having played the Slave Lords, the Giant Series, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, and Queen of the Demon Web Pits, I found the drow to be very scary villains. Not only were they powerful, one could not reason with them as they were convinced of their own superiority. The Sekmin can easily fill the role of powerful, implacable enemies without making Hasbro call their lawyers.
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...Indirectly related, but does anyone know if Xulgath are getting the boot? I'm asking because Palladium Fantasy has had Troglodytes since well before the OGL and SRD were even faint glimmers in anyone's brain.They aren't. Unlike drow, which have an extensive history being built up to things that folks adore by D&D over decades, troglodytes haven't.
Furthermore, by calling them xulgath (a name I invented for lizard people in my homebrew back in the late 80s, and that I transitioned over to Pathfinder to be the ancestral name for the creatures we once called troglodytes in previous editions), and by building up our own different lore about them, and by giving them a different coloration and look, what we call a xulgath and what WotC calls a troglodyte are not really the same thing anymore.
At this time in Pathfinder, if we call something a troglodyte, we would simply be using the word in the context of its real-world definition, not as an underground lizard person. And since so many gamers have been conditioned to assume that's what a fantasy TTRPG means when they use the word troglodyte... we'll likely just avoid using the word entirely just to not confuse folks.
If we'd done the same thing to drow, and had started that ages ago, and if there wasn't decades of pre-existing fandom for this exact combination of elements in an underground-dwelling evil elf society... perhaps we'd be in a different spot today. We are not in that spot.
In time, the work we put in to drow to begin the process of transitioning them away from the D&D tropes that most gamers want and adore and that we don't want to pursue in a non-OGL product (for example, underground elves who worship proteans) may well be transposed onto the cavern elves (an element that, at this point, is VERY underdeveloped and in current print exists only as a way to give your elf PC darkvision), but that'll be something we
In a game that really had no sense of balance at all, sure, you can just make some creatures that are way harder than anything else that is the same level as them...but that is terrible design. All you have to do to make Drow scary in PF2 is have them typically be a level or two higher than the party when they first encounter them and make sure that the more powerful drow are ready to step in when they start to feel too much the same. I think Second Darkness actually does this pretty well as an adventure.
Remember, PF2 doesn't do exact 1 to 1 abilities between npcs and PCs. PF2 Drow are plenty scary as villains if put in at the right level. But making any ancestry that is just clearly better than any other choice is a "good riddance" of a bygone era of gaming.
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@ especially in Against the Giants and the Spider Queen series, they were an unknown foe (even if hints were placed in some versions of the Slave Lords modules/compilation).
That's an issue with timelines, taking a later product and placing before an earlier one. The giants modules hinted at Eclavdra, but it wasn't until the final one you met her...wielding an artifact and adjacent to a temple of eldritch horror. This was a person meant to stand out against a party fighting scores of organized Fire Giants. So yeah, pretty powerful, but in a wholly different way to the waves of giants; lithe, stealthy, with little strength, yet lots of exotic incapacitating effects (as opposed to the giants' pure physicality).
With "normal Drow", we're talking about 2nd level fighters meant to survive high-level AoEs, and using poison potent enough to neutralize those same PCs. Then add on anti-party spells to handle Invisibility, another to control light levels, and Dispel Magic for some of the leaders. Mechanically, they were a major game changer specifically designed to face PCs. Yet that's several editions ago. Drizz't flipped the script of course, leading to popularity leading to more tempered versions that have to depend on having high levels (which if combined w/ old school abilities made them quite broken).One didn't even get to know them culturally until the 6th module, in a city where citizens qualified as adversaries (and which did have non-evil Drow, they just had little societal influence due to Lolth's fairly direct intervention). Though in a different RPG world, that type of society is what Salvatore developed with Drizz't, yet from the player-facing side, I fail to see the appeal. There are Golarion countries where one can play out the decadent inter-house rivalries for power.
tl:dr Without that mechanical imbalance for low-level Drow to fight high-level PCs, there's just the spider & demons, right? But isn't that more about the spiders & demons than the Drow themselves? Pretty sure the serpent folk are going to come w/ their own decadence, poisonous monsters, and fiendish allies too.
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In time, the work we put in to drow to begin the process of transitioning them away from the D&D tropes that most gamers want and adore and that we don't want to pursue in a non-OGL product (for example, underground elves who worship proteans) may well be transposed onto the cavern elves (an element that, at this point, is VERY underdeveloped and in current print exists only as a way to give your elf PC darkvision), but that'll be something we pursue later. The more our "replacement drow" look and act like D&D's drow, the more fraught things get in an ORC product. By using snake people, we avoid that fraughtness, and this potentially leaves things open for us to start exploring with cavern elves what we'd started to explore in the framework of drow in a book like "Abomination Vaults."
But cavern elves won't be "recontextualized drow" in the way that someone coming from D&D will recognize. That's the Whole Point of what we've chosen to do in order to protect Paizo going forward into the new future of the ORC.
For what it's worth, I thought the protean-adjacent direction of recent Drow was a fascinating one. Proteans are a really interesting creation of the setting, and we don't see enough of them! I'd absolutely love if the cavern elves picked up some of that identity. I know you've mentioned them as CG-adjacent, but them picking up some protean (and maybe Calistrian) aspects would be fascinating to me. Thanks again for all the clarifications you've been providing on the forums these last few days!
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...Indirectly related, but does anyone know if Xulgath are getting the boot? I'm asking because Palladium Fantasy has had Troglodytes since well before the OGL and SRD were even faint glimmers in anyone's brain.They aren't. Unlike drow, which have an extensive history being built up to things that folks adore by D&D over decades, troglodytes haven't.
Furthermore, by calling them xulgath (a name I invented for lizard people in my homebrew back in the late 80s, and that I transitioned over to Pathfinder to be the ancestral name for the creatures we once called troglodytes in previous editions), and by building up our own different lore about them, and by giving them a different coloration and look, what we call a xulgath and what WotC calls a troglodyte are not really the same thing anymore.
At this time in Pathfinder, if we call something a troglodyte, we would simply be using the word in the context of its real-world definition, not as an underground lizard person. And since so many gamers have been conditioned to assume that's what a fantasy TTRPG means when they use the word troglodyte... we'll likely just avoid using the word entirely just to not confuse folks.
If we'd done the same thing to drow, and had started that ages ago, and if there wasn't decades of pre-existing fandom for this exact combination of elements in an underground-dwelling evil elf society... perhaps we'd be in a different spot today. We are not in that spot.
In time, the work we put in to drow to begin the process of transitioning them away from the D&D tropes that most gamers want and adore and that we don't want to pursue in a non-OGL product (for example, underground elves who worship proteans) may well be transposed onto the cavern elves (an element that, at this point, is VERY underdeveloped and in current print exists only as a way to give your elf PC
Some times PCs face foes that are more powerful and smarter than the PCs are, nothing wrong with that.
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I wonder if you can actually make drow/dark elves cool again.
Drow were fun because they were evil, because they rejected the elf paradigm everyone had come to know, they were subversive and rebellious...
This whole thread completely focuses on this one aspect of the drow and forgets what they were like as though they don't even remember how powerful and frightening the drow were as enemies. What it was like to be stalked in the darkness by these vicious, powerful elves that would feed you to their spider goddess or enslave you if they caught you...
There is no discussion as to they were popular. Why did the drow become popular? It was because they were powerful, not just evil.
...My biggest problem with the drow doesn't have anything to do with their skin color.
I still remember being shocked reading about Eol, the original 'dark elf' in the Silmarillion. Who was called that not because of skin color or dwelling underground, but because he was an evil kidnapper and worse (to keep it PG). IOW, as you say, "dark" because of his power, his evil, and the fact that he was a shocking, intentionally-ignoring-cultural-norms departure from standard elfdom. All the other Silmarillion elf-on-elf conflicts, you got the feeling that the elves on both sides thought they were in the right, had "good intentions." With the orcs, you got the "twisted by Morgoth" excuse. But Eol? He was just a tough, nasty, selfish brutal character.
And he had a lot of the "lore" elements that people here are claiming come from D&D. He used poisons. In ranged weapons. He could see underground. He was a magical crafter.
Now here's a funny thing. Both Silmarillion and D&D1E were released in 1977. So this might, interestingly, be a true case of two independent creations of a very similar concept. But even so, it would be simple enough to base a PF2E dark elf concept on Eol instead of Gygax's template and get something that maybe scratches the fandom itch.
So yeah, I agree, Paizo...
The Tolkien estate has a reputation for going to extreme lengths to protect its copyright.
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A thing that's just meant to be stronger than other things should not be a PC Ancestry though.
I feel like if we did eventually get a Drow Ancestry, there are people who would be extremely disappointed that they were roughly as powerful as "Elves".
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This may or may not help, but for those who are saying "Paizo's lore is different enough that it wouldn't run afoul of the OGL thing," consider the following thought experiment. (This actually works as a decent rule of thumb for "maybe we have a problem" when it comes to pretty much anything involving copyright, plagiarism, etc.) Imagine the thing you're talking about didn't exist. Instead, someone has come to you with their "new idea" and begins to explain it to you.
How likely are you to go, "But that's just [IP of some other company]?"
So if someone came along and said, "I'm going to introduce a variant ancestry of elves for Golarion. They are dark-skinned (and are called "dark elves" as part of that), live exclusively underground, have darkvision, many of them are evil (they worship chaotic and evil deities as part of that), they organize themselves into scheming political factions that are ruled matriarchally, favor the use of poison and hand crossbows, and have a tradition of warping humanoids into monstrous abominations, some of which are spider/drow centaur-kinda things called 'driders,'" at what point in there, if any, would you have said, "But that's just D&D drow with some tweaks here and there?"
And how far back up the chain of those descriptors would you have to go before "this is clearly not D&D drow" would seem reasonable to say?
This honestly, at this point I just have to ask what exactly these people are fighting for?
They can't use the name, and they can't build off the Drow lore that was already established in setting since it copies DnD, so what are you asking for?
They can use dark elves.
They can be matriarchal.
They can't use their history.
They can't use their culture.
They can't use certain fashion (like specific outfits).
They can't use the name.
They can't use Driders.
They can't live underground.
They can't have them worship Fiends.
They can't use their iconic magic.
They can't use the naming conventions.
They can't use the evil makes your skin change color thing (I'm not sad to see that go)
What do you have left? Where in Golarion would you put them?
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This may or may not help, but for those who are saying "Paizo's lore is different enough that it wouldn't run afoul of the OGL thing," consider the following thought experiment. (This actually works as a decent rule of thumb for "maybe we have a problem" when it comes to pretty much anything involving copyright, plagiarism, etc.) Imagine the thing you're talking about didn't exist. Instead, someone has come to you with their "new idea" and begins to explain it to you.
How likely are you to go, "But that's just [IP of some other company]?"
So if someone came along and said, "I'm going to introduce a variant ancestry of elves for Golarion. They are dark-skinned (and are called "dark elves" as part of that), live exclusively underground, have darkvision, many of them are evil (they worship chaotic and evil deities as part of that), they organize themselves into scheming political factions that are ruled matriarchally, favor the use of poison and hand crossbows, and have a tradition of warping humanoids into monstrous abominations, some of which are spider/drow centaur-kinda things called 'driders,'" at what point in there, if any, would you have said, "But that's just D&D drow with some tweaks here and there?"
And how far back up the chain of those descriptors would you have to go before "this is clearly not D&D drow" would seem reasonable to say?
This honestly, at this point I just have to ask what exactly these people are fighting for?
They can't use the name, and they can't build off the Drow lore that was already established in setting since it copies DnD, so what are you asking for?
They can use dark elves.
They can be matriarchal.
They can't use their history.
They can't use their culture.
They can't use certain fashion (like specific outfits).
They can't use the name.
They can't use Driders.
They can't live underground.
They can't have them worship Fiends.
They can't use their iconic magic.
They can't use the naming conventions.
They can't use the evil...
If Paizo had dropped the evil matriarchy and drow nobility powers and gone in much harder on the fleshwarping angle, they might have been able to salvage something, but that's not what they did. They were forced to do something fast, and they didn't have the time for the from-the-ground rebuild they would have needed. I don't know why so many people don't understand this even after James explained it.
...Indirectly related, but does anyone know if Xulgath are getting the boot? I'm asking because Palladium Fantasy has had Troglodytes since well before the OGL and SRD were even faint glimmers in anyone's brain.They aren't. Unlike drow, which have an extensive history being built up to things that folks adore by D&D over decades, troglodytes haven't.
Furthermore, by calling them xulgath (a name I invented for lizard people in my homebrew back in the late 80s, and that I transitioned over to Pathfinder to be the ancestral name for the creatures we once called troglodytes in previous editions), and by building up our own different lore about them, and by giving them a different coloration and look, what we call a xulgath and what WotC calls a troglodyte are not really the same thing anymore.
At this time in Pathfinder, if we call something a troglodyte, we would simply be using the word in the context of its real-world definition, not as an underground lizard person. And since so many gamers have been conditioned to assume that's what a fantasy TTRPG means when they use the word troglodyte... we'll likely just avoid using the word entirely just to not confuse folks.
If we'd done the same thing to drow, and had started that ages ago, and if there wasn't decades of pre-existing fandom for this exact combination of elements in an underground-dwelling evil elf society... perhaps we'd be in a different spot today. We are not in that spot.
In time, the work we put in to drow to begin the process of transitioning them away from the D&D tropes that most gamers want and adore and that we don't want to pursue in a non-OGL product (for example, underground elves who worship proteans) may well be transposed onto the cavern elves (an element that, at this point, is VERY
Are dragons really made to be higher level than they appear? Or just good at fighting as solo monsters? I mean most of what really makes dragon fights difficult is their speed, which the game is pretty loose about speeds as a balancing factor. Like it seems to factor into Ancestries for PCs, but the advice for speed on page 64 is to pick something that makes sense, so it is clearly not a carefully calibrated metric.
So if dragons are punching over their weight, it is because they have good numbers for their level and their abilities take into account that they are very good at the hit and run. Like a level 10 young red dragon has pretty modest attribute modifiers, just over moderate perception, 1 high skill, high AC, pretty close to average saves, under High HP, pretty average resistances, high attacks, just under high damage for its best attack but with an extra element rider. So maybe a hint on the high end, but a lot of monsters are there with them.
If anything, they just made too many very low level drow in PF2, like they top out at level 8, and are creatures for low level play. In PF1 they start around level 1 (CR 1/3) as well, so Drow in Golarion were always supposed to be around regular ancestry level. They weren't built to be Early D&D super monsters in Golarion.
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I don't have much of nostalgia for drow but I am sad with any kind of outside forced setting change.
However, I do have one big worry about this and its Starfinder because starfinder drow are actually important to setting unlike pathfinder drow and more than that, they were interesting to me :'D You can't just remove them from starfinder without screwing up major interesting part of pact worlds and I'm confused of how devs are going to handle it, plus you gotta have blue aliens in starfinder x'D
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I don't have much of nostalgia for drow but I am sad with any kind of outside forced setting change.
However, I do have one big worry about this and its Starfinder because starfinder drow are actually important to setting unlike pathfinder drow and more than that, they were interesting to me :'D You can't just remove them from starfinder without screwing up major interesting part of pact worlds and I'm confused of how devs are going to handle it, plus you gotta have blue aliens in starfinder x'D
Everything we've heard so far from Paizo on drow in SF could be summed up as "this is a tomorrow Paizo problem". Which probably also says a lot about how SF sales stack up next to PF sales.