Drow

I hate always-evil races and pretty much always change them to being no better or worse than anyone else, but delves don't give you much to work with. You're just left with *consensual* femdom fapbait. I don't think I've ever used them in a campaign.
I generally ignore bigotry/xenophobia in my campaigns unless I have a specific reason for it, solely to avoid this.
Why not have him wear a sign around his neck saying "There's something wrong with me and you should figure out what it is as fast as possible for your own safety" while you're at it.

Any character who spends all their time talking about how they hide themselves raises red flags both IC and OOC.

We breed them.

Make them maledom.

Anti-elffag please fuck off.

Make Drow just a culture of Dark Elves.

Make the full Dark Elf subrace encompass more than them, including Rockseer Elves, the FR Dark Elves who were formerly Drow, and the Mystaran Shadow Elves.

They primarily live in the underdark, although a few have set up communities on the surface in darkened ancient woods.
Cut off from the sun, they're highly sensitive to its touch, and they use artificial light instead, created by their innate magical talents.

The Drow are a particularly infamous kingdom, who have turned to the service of archfiend Lolth. (Who may be an aspect of the Obyrith Queen of Chaos. Given both's love of spiders)

Drow are weird as hell wherever they appear in D&D and if you take the jazz out of incredibly weird, incredibly fucked-up evil cave elves because of muh original setting or muh realism or muh moral relativity you probably need to eat a bullet. Never remove something interesting from your game to replace it with something less interesting.

If you can comfortably aim and hit something at Kirkbride Dunmer level every time then sure, "save" Dark Elves. But if you can't just man the fuck up and use Drow as they're meant to be. They're actually good. Most of the problems people have with Drow are that they, the person, are either unimaginative or have weird sex hang-ups.

His criticism on drow is right, though. A race of "a goddess did it" is not a great race and it shows that drow are only there to get slaughtered by the good guys and be fetish fuel. Drow are nothing you can really take serious.

>Maybe not treat them as a two dimensional hedonistic matriarchy

So you propose making them as boring as other elves by giving them """depth"""?

But user, doesn't slaanesh love elves?

>Most of the problems people have with Drow are that they, the person, are either unimaginative or have weird sex hang-ups.

I mean what is your actual problem with "goddess did it"? "World made to suffer due to sadistic antfarm experiment of jealous goddess" is in no way a bad pitch. There's a horrible black comedy to Lolth's attitude to the Drow and the Drow also unironically believing they're in it for the long game.

This x1000. Use the weirdness.

>>Most of the problems people have with Drow are that they, the person, are either unimaginative or have weird sex hang-ups.
Who are you quoting?

But they're good where they are aren't they?
They work fantastically for Underdark adventures though.

This x10000.

>hidely-hodely niggers, I have shit taste
kys

...

>you meet some elves, they farm ash or some shit but are essentially grounded and like humans at heart
What a thrill.

What a thrill.

The Boss as a Drow Matriarch?

Neat.

So you are quoting yourself? That is a bit self-centered.

I'm not him, I just ctrl+f to find what he was quoting.

>implying

>user didn't continue singing Snake Eater

>I mean what is your actual problem with "goddess did it"?
Think about why "a wizard did it" got known as a lazy writing crutch.

If you think "I don't have to explain this because of magic" in any way compares to "here's a fucked-up and hostile society in religious thrall to use in a setting" you are a confirmed retard. How many times do you have an anthropologist PC in your games in the first place? And even THEN the Drow would be fascinating from an anthropology PoV, not offputting.

Like a wizard did it is lazy because you *don't have to explain* - but that isn't the Drow. The Drow present the explanation and have hundreds and thousands of little lore tidbits and incredibly gameable shit built around it. If you throw out all that scaffolding you have to work hard for it not to be a net loss.

>here's a fucked-up and hostile society in magical thrall to use in a setting
There, I did it.

This man is on the right page. Of course, make it accepted fact that every asshole on the surface still calls them all Drow, because Drow are the famous ones.

>everyone makes an attempt to make elves look less like humans with pointy ears and more alien/faun-like
>drow never reflect this change

>everyone makes an attempt to make elves look less like humans with pointy ears and more alien/faun-like

Only idiots who can't just separate them from fairies and let them be mundane do that.

>Evil demon goddess is actually keeping Drow alive
wtf?!

Yeah, since Drow are the only ones who care about the surface particularly, they're the only ones who come into contact with other races.

Most non-drow will probably wind up worshipping the nearly forgotten Elven god of earth and flameL Tilvenar//Darahl Firecloak. (He was driven mad by Lolth and the Queen of Air and Darkness and lost most of his power.)

I usually write them as having a lot of different cultures including ones where they live in human kingdoms in their own(still somewhat matriarchal) settlements where their contribution is providing night-fighting troops instead of grain. That way a drow PC doesn't actually seem that out of line.

Not that other drow don't exist, of course, but by giving people a variety of cultures, you can kind of play into that.

Do you know Lolth has a giant spider mecha?

Yeah, I figure it's like how High Elves are split into the "xenophobic stick up arse" kind, and the "relatively friendly" kind. Or the wood elves split into the "xenophobic savage" kind and the "relatively friendly" kind.

Sacrificed for the machinations of La-Li-Lu-Le-Lolth.

Exactly this. Dragonborn and High Elves have variants that you immediately assume are up to no good. Give me more things I can use as a stereotype and then turn it on its head.

"As a boy, I had a dog named Bill. Like all dogs, Bill was a loyal friend. If we had not fed him, Bill would have been loyal. If we had struck him, Bill would have been loyal. Only when the dark elf can make that claim will he take his place in society."

Make them humans who die in the sun, which is why they live in a cave.

Drow society is North Korea. Drow expats are eastern European immigrants that are constantly amazed by the opulence and relative freedom of surface life.

by gassing them all. nords are the master race desu

the solution is simple, really. We kill them

By opening context menu and clicking "Save".

t. idiot

Hmm....

This is generally a good idea, also if you're going to go full hedonist, try to go with something better than what the default is, or at least more.

We had a pretty fun Drow is a Chaotic Neutral campaign

Spiders are kinda mecha, way more than other insects.

Remove baldies.

Slay Lolth or otherwise get her to fuck off, and then get them out of the Underdark, would be a start, maybe.

Every fucking time.

In my setting due to the generally shit nature of mainstream Drow society, it is not uncommon for large groups of Drow (mostly men) to jut get-up and leave, becoming Underdark nomads instead.
This is common knowledge among Elves as well as Dwarves, who some times enlist their services when fighting Drow.
Also, it is common for humans to hire bands of monsters as mercenaries, so a Drow or two will get lost among all the Orcs, Goblins, and Kobolds.

I think she looks kinda cute tbqhwufamalalama

I could really see that, calling him Tilvenar on purpose, maybe even nicknaming him Tilvenar Once-tainted. Just as any offshoot of Drowdom who left Lolth would be.

> Dark elves had dark brown skin, as opposed to the ebony skin that drow presently have. They also may have had black hair instead of white and no darkvision. Dark elves were also not tainted with Wendonai's blood

> Rockseer Elves are the rarest of all Elvenkind. They are far taller than most of their kin, with a few reaching almost to eight feet in height. An average weight for a Rockseer is between 120 and 140 pounds, with little gender difference. Rockseers are very pale skinned, and they have no body hair. Head hair is extraordinarily fine, always worn long, with the appearance and texture of exquisitely fine silk. The hair is silver, and eye color is a pale, almost ice-blue. They are androgenous in appearance, making it difficult for outsiders to tell males and females apart.

That tickles me. I think it must be the height. Why would a race of Elves forced to live deep in the Underdark grow taller? They should be the shortest.

> Shadow Elves have the same standard life span and age requirements as normal (high) Elves. They are slightly smaller and slimmer. Their ears are larger and their flesh is extremely pale. Their hair is often white, following a general trend toward albinism from their long subterranean existence.

> When the Dhaerow were forced into the Underdark after their dark pacts with Lolth and other outcast Seldarine a change was begun in their blood. Wendonai, a Balor, began to serve as a consort for the powerful, infusing the bloodline of the with his taint. This taint resulted in the Drow known today.

That's a pretty decent start for expanding Dark Elves, but leaves one more chance for a !Drow.

> !Drow are the descendants of the Dark Elves forced into the Underdark that upon noticing the increasing taint and darkness in the nature of their people, fled. Known as traitors to all Drow and other Elves, known simply as Drow to the rest of the world, !Drow stand alone.Their deep dark brown skin and pale hair does not help.

>only when I can beat and maltreat them with no consequences will dark elves have a place in society

>my character has a mask on because he's a drow and people don't take kindly to his kind, even though he's a speshul snowflake who's Chaotic Neutral instead of being full on evil

>oh, ok.

so many red flags

>high elves are called "high" because of their culture/society
>wood elves are called "wood" because of their culture/society
>dark elves are called "dark" because they have dark skin
The adjective was never meant to be a literal description of them. In Tolkien the High Elves are those who went to Valinor (and then back to ME), the wood elves are those who didn't and instead lingered in their woodland realms, whilst the dark elves are those who rejected the call to pilgrimage to Valinor willingly, rather than get sidetracked, and never had any of their kin see the light of the Two Trees.

That was completely in-character thing for a Dwarf nobleman to say, yes.

Don't judge him too much, he's a dwarf and that is how he views all non-dwarves.

Underground-dwelling tall race makes sense if it has divine origins which is plausible in a fantasy setting, but if it's just an underground adaptation of a surface dwelling race they should be short.

cute

Speaking of !Drow: dandwiki.com/wiki/Crystal_Elf_(Vitreur)_(5e_Subrace)

I could almost get behind spider riding crystal equiped xenophobic Elves with a, "we're not Drow," complex.

Sectaurs!

I knew that was familiar.

In the setting we played, only female Drow were seen as evil. The men were largely just slaves toiling away in the mines of the Underdark, occasionally tortured or killed for fun by their female overlords.

I prefer to use Dark Elves as nomadic merchantfolk whose departure from Elven society is too old for most people to understand fully. I mean, elves can live for hundreds of years; if your drow grandpapie rebelled against the crown and your family and servants got exiled from court, sure it sucks for you.... but for everyone else, that was 2000 years ago or something.

They don't need saving. They are doing just fine.

Morrowind Dunmer should be the ideal to aim for

Or it means "underdark"

Like you've got wood elves living in the woods, valley elves in the valleys, sea elves in the sea, you've got (under)dark elves living in the underdark.
Although, it's likely he term Koehesti, meaning Earth Elves, was easily twisted into Koresti meaning Black Elves (which was the originally the other name for Drow)

Yeah, I figure it's probably something that caused the separation of dark elves from surface elves. Lolth gives him the cursed rose when she starts the whole war of the Seldarine.
This sends the dark elves into confusion as their god turns crazy, demanding blood sacrifices and such. They mostly shut themselves off from the war, leaving them spurned as cowards by the other elves.

>dat pose
She thinks she slick...

Noice

In the same way Lolth does, sure

#lifeasablackamerican

> Guys, how do we save Dark Elves?

But there's nothing wrong with the Druchii.

B R E E D

...

That looks really nice user, yours?

If so could I get a list of your mod setup?

that was gay af

Just don't play Drizzt. The whole fucked up evil elf thing is still a pretty neat idea if you can take it with a grain of salt and the knowledge that it's considered weird in universe too.

Not as good as the original portrait honestly.

the bg1 or bg2 portrait?

Should have specified but I meant BGII

Even if it was essentially just a trace.

From what? Being one of the most popular fantasy archetypes?

>this simplistic assumption that an entire race is good or evil is RIDICULOUS.
That's D&D for ya'.

Change them from evil black-skinned matriarchs to Chaotic Good BLM YAS QUEEN SLAY genderqueer feminists.

how can you play a drow without being an edgy faggot?

Return to /pol/

By learning how to play Evil and long lived characters well.

>all these replies
>no eastern european origins mention
I'm disappointed in you Veeky Forums

I find it's possible by having a goal that does not VIOLENTLY conflict with the parties general goal. Or have like a 'enemy of my enemy' thing going on.
Also, not being either a mustache twirling bag of dicks. Or an utter sociopath.

Esteban Winsmore is the godking of the Dark Elves. He leads Pohdohllah to peace and prosperity with fire and sword.

Restore them back to their 1980s Sex Dungeon Aerobics Instructor aethestic.