[SPOILERS] On the removal of Drow


Abomination Vaults

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Spoilers for the Adventure Path, naturally, though hopefully the title was vague enough!

AV spoilers:
So... Paizo has announced drow will no longer be in Pathfinder post-remaster. While one could technically play with them in AV anyway, some folks (myself included) might take it as a fun chance to do something new. They do have a big part in the story, with both Volluk and his assistant being drow and, far more importantly, the Level 9 drow community.
So, what do you guys intend on doing?

- You could have the urdefhan replace them, and have them fight against some other big threat. But in another recent AP, you also aid urdefhan (and against drow... what are the odds?) which might be rethreading ground if you've played it.
- You could have them be cavern elves, which they essentially already are... but it removes the fun twist of "they're normally a danger, but these ones are on your side".
- You could have a city of fleshwarps escaped from upper levels, but that'd make two levels with fleshwarp theming
- You could have them be another darklands denizen, like serpentfolk, duregar, deep gnomes, caligni, etc, but they don't have the same vibes as drow do

So what do you guys think? Keep 'em, replace 'em, what's the plan?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I'm keeping them myself, but I have already begun the adventure myself so the players have met drow. You could replace them, but the only option you listed which seems appropriate to me would be duergar. A non-violent community of fleshwarps could be cool though.

Urdefhan seem far too destructive to team up with.


Another possibility would be replacing them with Sekmin/serpentfolk, which is the way the other canon drow cities seem to be going. That preserves the flavor of "usually antagonistic race is surprisingly helpful." You'd have to find new art for all the NPCs, though.

My group is almost 2/3rds of the way through the adventure and have met several drow (and one of my PC's is a drow), so I will be keeping them for my game.


[Spoilers]
The urdefhans are very aggressive in this adventure, so they are clearly intended to be opponents. I quite liked the political potential between the differect fractions and the party in the third book and focused on that. We finished before the Paizo drow retcon but that would abolutely not have changed how I ran this adventure. You can of course keep the political aspect with some drow replacement, but bear in mind that they should have been there for +500 years, and have a role in the mystery how to kill the BBEG, and give the party lots of exposition through Quara and the seer twins. So escaped fleshwarps wouldn't really work since I have a hard time seeing Belcorra entrusting them with a lens.

But I liked how the drow were portrayed here, and we had lots of fun RP between the party and the Yldaris denizens (especially the young impressionable elf in the party, and the stern old cleric). I played the drow as brash, slobby, butch teenage jocks. Also there's lots of great art that you would need to replace. I can't really see how replacing them just to stay 100% pure Paizo-ORC-kosher would add anything to this AP.

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