To Drow or Not to Drow?

Depends on how you feel about alignment or using evil characters in your player group.

Back in the day, we strictly enforced alignment. Player characters had to be good or neutral. They could be law or chaos but there could be no evil in the party. We got into to many arguements with evil characters spoiling the fun. So if you enforce alignment, the Drow would be right out!

Our current group does not strictly enforce alignment. Instead we use it more as a guideline so that players are not dispatching NPCs in a most evil fashion. Anyone could be good. Anyone could be evil. The party is still basically good so there you have it.

It is really an alignment thing and how you enforce it.

+1

Drow might have been an interesting/surprising/dangerous gimmick at some point, but now? Ruined by Drizzt and oversaturation in general. Besides, I find them really difficult to DM as monsters. Too many unique powers, magic items, and spells, multiplied by dozens of the buggers. As PCs? Out of the question. I plan to never use them again in any capacity. Regards.

For reasons already stated, Drow as normally written up are not so great.

Drow written as normal elves but black-skinned and evil are just fine. Merely flavor.

But we don't allow evil PCs.

As I mentioned in the thread that spawned this one there is very little reason for a Drow to go rogue, EVERYBODY HATES DROW. Could a drow be good "deep down"? yes, would he survive long enough to tell the pitchfork weilding townsfolk that? nope.

I played a neutral drow cleric of Tyche once. His partner was a young human shaolin monk. They fought monsters.

Drow are tougher than the average PC though, especially with all those spell abilities and stat boosts.

Arminath:

Actually, I was sort of thinking that I might get away from the standard associations we have with many of the standard demi-human races by re-naming them.

Drow/Dark Elves=Shadow Folk
Elves=Forest Folk
Dwarves=Mountain Folk
Halflings=River Folk

Drow definitely work better as monsters than as PC's for several reasons.

1) The inherent racial abilities, if retained, make them more than a match for any other PC race of equvalent class/level. (IIRC, Unearthed Arcana did away with these abilities for PC's.) This was a common problem with the new demi-human races in UA, in fact. Such abilities go towards making the Drow tough opponents for PC's.

2) Their role as being opposed to normal Elves and all other surface dwellers. Their initial presentation in the MM makes it clear that, while they are creatures of legend, they are conceived of as licking their wounds from their failed war with their surface dwelling cousins. Other Elves view them as corrupt and as enemies. Their complete depravity is shown in D3.

These things all seem to be linked more to racial character than to alignment. Just as all dragons are described as "greedy" in the MM (even the good ones) all drow would have, at least to some extent, antipathy to all surface dwelling races and revel in decadence. Not exactly characteristics that would work well in a party-based game.

3) The fact that once they show their face outside their under realm Drow will be marked for death. Peasants might flee from them in terror after hearing legends of the dark elves who fought a war with their fairer cousins but word will eventually reach the ear of the local lord who will send out his knights accompanied by his court wizard and cleric to deal with the interloper. May the gods help him if he happens upon a group of Elven NPC's. Other players running normal Elves will need to role-play the inherent distrust and hatred towards them, too.

As far as alignment goes, if they are used as PC's they could theoretically be any alignment the player desires. Not that being a Lawful Good Drow is going to matter much since they'll be hunted down by pretty much everyone anyway. I have no problem with PC's being evil and an evil Drow will face much the same fate as his renegade, dual scimitar weilding, good aligned counter part.

You might as well ask about a player running a good aligned Troll. People would tend to douse him in burning oil first and ask questions later.

If you're going to use Drow in OD&D I'd say that for male Drow the normal Elven ability of acting as a Fighting Man one adventure and a M-U in another should hold fast. Females could have a similar ability but choose between Cleric and Fighting-Man.

The Tooks too lived on the Brandywine.

I think the "cultural" aspects of the inland Shire Hobbits are often confused with the "racial" inherancies. The Hobbits of Hobbiton are merely one subset of what the race can be like, and of course, Hobbits really are amazing creatures. You can learn all that there is to know about them in a month, and yet after a hundred years, they can still surprise you.

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On the topic at hand: "Not to Drow."

Why?
+1 re: broken munchkin fodder.
+1 re: Drizzt fatigue. Especially now that WoW has slathered it on even thicker.

The former reason is why they're not PCs, but the latter reason is why they're not even in my campaign world. They're just too tired, and I cannot stand to look at them any more. They're also too strongly associated with Forgotten Realms in my mind.

But I do have "bad" elves in my campaign. They're just not racially obvious. Elves run the full gamut of alignments, just like Men and Dwarves. Some Elven cultures are also much more prone to Chaos, and turn out chaotic elves with greater frequency. There's at least one Elven Court closely modelled on the Norns from Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn.

What all Elves have in common is their merry sense of humor - some of their jokes are just crueler than others.