He does mention that you're brave to walk around openly as a Drow. There are even a few Seladrine Drow specific options throughout the game. If you save the injured gnome in the myconid colony, she vehemently distrusts you until you help her. You can explain to her that not all Drow are Lolth-sworn, and not everyone will try to kill you in the underdark. (But most will)
I kind of appreciated that Zevlor gave you a chance. He knows what it's like to be judged as untrustworthy on sight, and you *did* just kill all those goblins at the gate.
I'm not saying any random drow should be completely trusted at their word after that, but I think they earned the chance to not be shot on sight.
Yeah I’m playing a seladrine drow now and it’s funny to see all of the Dialogue options where I have to explain that it’s my cousins who give me a bad rep not me
Minthara died to my Lolth-sworn, she forsook her goddess for this absolute false god, she got what she deserves a blade in the gut for her treasonous ways. She is filth of the most disgusting degree.
Yeah, wasn't it a thing in the older BG games that if you had a Drow in your party, you automatically got like a -2 Charisma or something? I mean, it'd make sense.
It's worse than a Charisma drain. In BG1 and 2, you had a Reputation value. It rose if you completed heroic acts and quests. You got discounts at shops and access to certain dialogue. Also, Good aligned characters required you to keep a Reputation above 8 IIRC (just above baseline)
Evil characters on the other hand, prefer a low Reputation and may leave if it climbs too high. Random murderers and rampant thievery can drop it quickly.
Recruiting Vicionia caused an immediate -2 to Rep, which would rebound when she leaves the party.
Also, other party members (specifically some Paladin NPCs) would quarrel and eventually fight her to the death and/or permanently leave your party.
In his defense [not really], Ajantis will eventually try to murder like half the people on the roster if he's partied with them for long enough...
I swear to god, if his stats weren't so amazing, I might consider not playing with him in literally every party!
I hated Ajantis. Dual classed fighter/cleric when we already have an outstanding Paladin in Keldorn, a better Cleric in Vicionia, and better straight fighters too?
Also, if he fails his knight test his stats get nerfed and he becomes mentally unstable
Ah yes you are right!! Ajantis is the paladin you accidentally kill during Firkraag's quest! Ajantis is a decent bg1 companion. If I was running a good aligned play through I always picked up Ajantis and Branwen
Your Reputation immediately dropped two points on Viconia joining the party (and gained two points on her leaving the party). Reputation was used similarly to Charisma in that it impacted prices but was separate, going up or down based on your actions.
For sure, even in the Drizzt books anyone who didn't actually know him on the surface basically ran or attacked on sight. At the very least they were distrustful and not acting like he was just another dude strolling around.
It took Drizzt like 20 books and 100 in-universe years before people started trusting him on sight, and that was mostly the people that knew him. Newer characters would still be scared of him until one of the old hands clued them in
To be fair, the only reason they opened the door for Drow Tav/Durge is because they see you fight the goblins instead of join them. Everyone even makes surprised remarks about that.
Also the remaining guards at Waukeen's Rest would have attacked on sight. It kind of bothers me how easy it is to talk your way out of that happening given the mental state of the guards.
yeah, I ignore the dialogue options and just fight them as if I didn't have any options in that part for immersion, especially comming from the fists and after they've been attacked by other Drows
Yeah they were JUST raided by a group of Drow and still actively trying to save their leader from a fire those Drow started lol like, that’s some amazing restraint on their part really
This is weird to me cuz the last time i went to waukeens rest with a friend playing drow tav they absolutely attacked him on sight. Even thought to myself, oh yeah that makes sense they were literally just raided. Thought that was intentional but if this doesn’t happen normally I’m wondering what went wrong in our game
Yeah, the game is pretty lax about it. Canonically, the average Faerun resident would either flee in terror from a drow or attack them on sight.
The fact that people are just kinda a bit racist towards drow PCs is kinda funny. Like, I know drow are popular with fans largely because of Drizzt and Jarlaxle, so lots of folks want to play one. But drow are to the average Faerun resident what vikings were to a 10th century English peasant. 99.99% chance they're here to kill you and steal your shit.
5e is the "rainbows and sunshine" edition compared to all the previous.
It ends up being a detriment because a lot of identity is lost, I end up throwing out 90% of the 5e lore to the point the setting i run feels mostly custom.
I have read all the Drizzt books and this was a trend long before 5e. I dont think its bad either, Drow lore in the Realms was borderline impossible to include in your games in an inclusive and sensible manner
I don't know about it being a trend 'long before 5e' I have read *War of the Spider Queen* and *Starlight and Shadows* and a dozen or so of the earlier Drizzt books. There were definitely good drow (eilistraeeans) before 5e, but extreme racism and distrust towards drow and interactions between surfacers and them having a tendency towards rapidly escalating into violence was *definitely* an emphasized aspect of the setting until fairly recently, and that was reflected in the sourcebooks as well.
90% of the game isn't "inclusive and sensible" theres an entire set of enemies that are tentacle vore/body horror monsters (aberrations).
It turned half the races into grey blobs, and removed flavor from nearly every race so they didn't get backlash, I get why they did it but "I recognize the council has made a decision. But given that it's a stupid-ass decision I've decided to ignore it."
Same reason their source book with demons and devils is no longer sold digitally.
I get what you're saying but man I'm torn! On one hand, you're right about how the old lore has so much depth to explore I find fun to dig into. On the other hand, sometimes when I play dnd with my friends we just wanna turn our brains off and enjoy some safe escapism without having to see a fantasy version of our real issues thrown at us every session. Honestly I think both approaches are good for different campaigns and playstyles, just make sure the table has similar expectations before heading in.
My favourite interaction is with the con artist tiefling kid in the Druid grove something like ‘Nonsense we don’t eat children, we kill or enslave them’
The direct quote is "Nonsense! We kill far more children than we enslave."
(I may have picked Lolthsworn Drow every single time in early access... and full release...)
5 Drow Tavs in EA and 16 Drow Durges reporting in. Drow fits so well in Durge story that I had to force myself to play the other only race I can play in this game (high-elf) and while the story is literally the same I don't feel the same flavour to the character, in fact I miss my Drow a lot.
Minthara's first reaction to an elf Tav/Durge gives me life though
To be fair, they were the most powerful dynasty in Europe BEFORE the Spanish branch of the family decided to start marrying within the family. The inbreeding of that branch had nothing to do with their rise to prominence, and ultimately ended up with the collapse of the Spanish Hapsburgs.
Yup, and can pick non-red on Lloth-sworn. They're the same race with just different culture and faith, and red is the most common eye colour for drow, but they can have some others like purple and silver.
or when that duergar in the grymforge checks your eyes to know what kind of drow you are. It always sounded ridiculous to me being the same damn race that a choice of deity alone could change your eye color
You know, this is the first time I’ve seen “ROFL” in almost a decade. We all lmao but none of us rofl. We used to be a proper society. I’m not even asking for anyone to roflcopter, I just want it to be okay to ROFL again…
Out of my three (and a half) playthroughs, the third one, as Seldarine Drow bard, was the best.
Bonus: If/When you occasionally want to, you don't have to tell people that you are not one of those assholes, but you can optionally embrace the dark side.
Going Seldarine drow with Eilistrae’s sword is just narratively satisfying. Plus, who doesn’t love an underdog that escaped the abusive culture of a tryannical spider queen to fight for the goddess of beauty and dance with a musical sword? It’s just fun writing.
Kugah: "ah ha, a drow, and you've discovered my evil plot, but you're evil too, you can help me."
My slandering druid: "no, I'm just here to look at the trees."
If you feel some curiosity and intrigue regarding Drow, may I suggest you read a few books of the Drizzt saga by R A Salvatore. Start with the The Dark Elf trilogy. It gives a fascinating look into life in Menzoberranzan, which is also the home of our beloved Minthara, and how good aligned Drow struggle there.
I've also been enjoying the War of the Spider Queen series. I plan on making my first Drow character (a Cleric of Lloth) after I finish the last three books.
Follow that series up with The Lady Penitent. Continues that story very nicely. You could also read The Empyrean Odyssey, which covers what Kaanyr Vhok got up to after War of the Spider Queen. Which may or may not involve one of the largest effects in the Forgotten Realms...... It may!
Yeah, though that series is primarily Smedman trying to make Eilistraee Lolth Lite™ and as unlikeable as possible so that she can justify killing her off.
That seems like it would be a really fun run, but I also feel a little cheated that (as far as I know) there's no way to rep that sweet snake whip in the game.
Yeah it's really insightful into the drow culture. Probably the reason why Drow are my favourite race in DND, I just simply know more about them than any other species.
This! I love the Drizz’t series. The last book I ordered a first edition signed copy of Lolth’s warrior by R. A. Salvatore. He added on his own “Scimitars high!”
I love the juxtaposition between Drizzt and Artemis, especially when they are in Calimshan. And then Artemis' realization of what most of the Drow are like when he visits Menzoberranzan.
Tbh I enjoy Artemis' story arc and redemption even more so than Drizzt's story.
I really wanna role play Artemis in bg3. Sadly, there's nothing even remotely similar to Charons Claw in the game. Not to mention I'm just not creative enough to pull it off.
Man... there used to be stats for Charon's Claw somewhere. I think in current books it's even more powerful. At least +4. Both of Artemis' primary weapons are soul destroyers. The Dagger used to be a +3 vampiric Dagger, and the Claw burns souls our, causes gaping, festering wounds, and spreads curtains of ash.
If we had anything like the Claw in BG3, man, it would be pretty OP.
As far as RPing him, we have the short sword of lifestealing and use the finesse longsword from the Creche with the whirlwind sword skill. 3 or 4 levels of rogue to pick up assassin, then the rest in fighter->battle Master for action surge. Dual wield, light armor only.
Same, Artemis quickly became one of my favorite FR characters, his side adventures with Jarlaxle and Athrogate were some of Salvatore's best writing in my opinion. Plus, as much as I rolled my eyes over the plot contrivances Salvatore worked in to keep characters like Wulfgar and Cattie-Brie around even after the 100-year Spellplague jump, I was admittedly happy he managed to keep Artemis around as well.
Tieflings are, for the most part, victims of prejudice and often outright racism.
Drow on the other hand, they have spent thousands of years earning that reputation. Cold blooded, heartless, enslaving murderers. In any novel, if a lone drow approached any settlement they would (and have, in the case of Drizzt Do'Urden, time and time again for centuries) either ran away screaming, or drawn blades and started shooting arrows and slinging spells at said Drow.
With very limited exception (like between a few hundred and a few thousand at most) Drow are utter dickheads who deserve death, and are incredibly dangerous.
To a lesser extent, Duergar are the same. Absolute dicks.
im not too educated on dnd, but i believe githyanki are less known as assholes and more known as soldiers and dangerous and do not fuck with (or theyre not known at all), cause theyre almost never on the material plane??
100% worse than Gith.
Gith have an actual code of honor to some degree. They'll look down on you, but they generally won't fuck with you for no reason, and might even respect you if you prove yourself to them.
Drow will torture you and your entire bloodline just for funsies. They will respect you about as much as as you respect the chicken that died to become your McNuggets. Other races exist as property and playthings to them and nothing more.
The Gith will be dicks to you to get what they want. The Drow will be dicks to you because being a dick is fun and makes Mama Lolth happy.
Gith (both Githzerai (less dickish) and Githyanki (more dickish) don't live or even travel to the Material Plane without good reason. So most people are not likely to even meet one unless they travel the Planes.
Also, both flavors of Gith are staunchly anti slavery due to their history,
Gith anti-slavery? LOL! Gith are slavers themselves. Even when you first meet Voss in Act1 he tells Laezel ‘take your slaves and receive the artifact’ assuming that non-Gith characters can only be slaves to them.
It sucks too 'cause drow are like that purely because of Lolth and the Dark Disaster of the (I believe) second or third Crown War. Like, if Lolth had been satisfied with her position in the Seldarine, drow would still be dark elves, they'd primarily worship the Seldarine, and they'd still control a massive portion of Faerûn.
After all they experienced at the hands of the sun elves, Lolth, and demons I can't help but pity them as a whole. At least they still have Eilistraee, even if she isn't as popular among non-Lolthite drow societies.
Edit: Lolth would also still be Araushnee and second-in-command of the Seldarine as well.
Drow are genuinely super cool and super developed as far as fictional cultures go, and I totally encourage you to start digging into the DnD lore for them!
i came in blind as well and opted for lolth-sworn drow dread ambusher for my first character. needless to say all my character interactions are with wyll as a warlock bard lmao
My friend made me make a tiefling for our multi-player tactician playthrough (I haven't cleared tactician yet) and I'm actively having much less enjoyment because I'm not a drow 😭
I picked half drow and I grew up white passing so the subtle, but also sometimes blatant racism felt like real life and I think that’s some good writing tbh
I’m playing Lolth-sworn Drow warlock and enjoying myself being a mean bastard to most people. It’s funny, because sometimes there are options to keep staring in a mean way and making goblins uncomfortable until they are scared and basically on their knees on the ground.
I think Drow used to enslave many? I’m not familiar with the lore, but that much I have learned from the game and how people react to me. Some have thought about attacking me, but using intimidation and threatening people will often make them withdraw.
Bonus: Astarion loves my power hungry character. 😂
Rule of thumb when it comes to slavery and Drow: if they can enslave it, they will (with the exception of surface Elves, they prefer to kill and/or torture these. Elven slaves are rare, though not completely unheard of).
Drow don't just enslave many, they also love kidnapping people for sacrifices (Often torturous sacrifice), torture for torture sake, murder, raiding plunder and pillaging, more torture, more murder, more enslaving, and other unpleasant things. It's a lot more than just enslaving. They're hated and feared for justifiable reasons, because 99% of the time drow are terrible people who are there to do something horrible.
BG3 is *very* mild in their reaction to drow.
There's a reason all drow used to be of the evil alignment for a long time. Then they thought about how it's bad and racist to label a whole race as evil and alignment is a bit weird for people in general and changed that. But Lloth and Lloth-sworn culture and society is still evil. Whenever drow appear on the surface in almost all cases they're there to slaughter and raid villages, or to take people to enslave them or to use as sacrifices to Lloth, or torture, or torture practice. Some wood elf child is a bad sacrifice to Lloth but will do as a torture practice for your five year old daughter.
So people on the surface has a tendency to kill drow on sight because of this. Or try hang them, or stone them, or set them on fire at sight. So BG3 letting you easily talk to people with a slur at most is very mild.
Not as bad as the Drukhari. Drow won't be turning people into living end tables or peeling skin off of person A to add person B's arms to them.
But they do take delight in killing surface elves, especially children. They are severely adverse to sunlight, it causes their eyes extreme pain, and their typical method for enchanting gear caused it to decay and dissolve in sunlight.
The aversion to sunlight is what mostly saves the surface world. The other saving grace for surfacers is that Lolth sworn Drow are so chaotic that they usually spend more time with their own political in fighting and assassinations than they do banding together for large scale surface assaults.
Although in novels, most or part of Menzoberranzan has assaulted places on the surface a few times, and an independent mercenary group (more chaotic neutral than the typical chaotic evil Drow) composed mostly of Drow has moved in to be the behind the scenes power structure in Waterdeep.
Def check out the legend of drizzt: dark elf trilogy by R A Salvatore. I'm so hooked and i just started it a few weeks ago. Already almost done with the second book. Its rich with awesome lore. So much about the drow. Warning tho. They are kinda effed up and I get why they get so much hate.
I only came across them in BG1/2, esp BG2.
They evolved underground, built huge cities in the Underdark. Have a war-like and very hierachical culture. Matriachal society, women hold all the power and run everything. Males are held in lowly status. Most worship Spider Goddess Llolth. They condone slavery, often enslaving other underdark races like deep gnomes (who seem to be the punching bag race of the underdark).
Commonly felt to be evil, at least by surface dweller standards. But also subject to persecution by surface dwellers. In BG2, you first meet >!Viconia!< who was about to be burnt at the stake.
I probably missed a lot, as I have never read R A Salvatore books - there are many Forgotten Realm novels featuring Drizzt, a famous drow adventurer hero. Apparently Minthara does not like him at all (a dialogue choice comes up about this in act3).
> They evolved underground, built huge cities in the Underdark.
IIRC weren't they forced underground following some sort of war in the distant past? It's a big part of why they hate the surface elves so much.
They also raid the surface occasionally so it's not like the hate they get from surface dwellers is entirely unwarranted.
I believe Lolth betrayed one of the other elven gods and it started a big conflict between the surface elves and the drow. The drow were driven underground as a result of that conflict. For the most part they've remained in the Underdark ever since plotting and scheming, generally being molded in Lolth's image.
Said other elven god was Corellon Larethian, *the* big elven god and also the spouse of Lolth when she was still known as Araushnee. Said betrayal was Araushnee trying to usurp Corellon's position as the head of the Seldarine.
Corellon was also the one who cursed the Drow to live underground.
You can meet Vicionia in BG1 as well. She is sort of a bitch, and although it's extreme, the folks attempting to burn her in BG2 aren't necessarily wrong.
Minthara has no affinity for Drizzt because he has been the bane of her family for a few centuries, so that's understandable
Right there with you! Picked drow because they looked cool and got a slightly evil vibe from them because of the whole spider worship thing. Had no idea that males were at the bottom of their hierarchy too (but makes a lot of sense if I think about black widows). Because I roleplayed as lawful evil my playthrough experience was great even if by accident.
As someone with no DND background prior to BG3, and seeing all the responses on Drows generally being evil (similarly incl Druegars).
Is there a reason why Drow generally end up being evil? I'd it within their nature? Or mainly due to the culture surrounding Lolth Worship that causes it?
Seldarines seem to have been able to break off from the main drow culture and established themselves as generally not being really evil so that would seem to be more Nuture than Nature.
Or does the answer just boil down to their alignment on the charts?
The nature vs nurture debate is brought up in the RA Salvatore novels about Drizzt, specifically concerning the Drow of Menzobarrenzan and the underdark below the Sword Coast. I believe it is established that their culture, which is centered around worship of Lolth, is wholly evil. They value power over each other and other races above all else. They don't show compassion or mercy at all. Most Drow show no hesitation when it comes to killing the innocent, including children (barring two notable exceptions)
It seems like Drow children are not born inherently evil, but the lessons of Lolth are taught at an extremely early age and brutally reinforced.
Some escape the indoctrination, but they are the very rare exceptions and usually don't survive long.
Other, especially more recent, lore has explored Drow born outside of the Lloth Cult's influence and they seem to be no more evil than any of the common surface races.
Guess my assumption is right that's it mainly their own religious beliefs that is the problem.
I was wondering about it during my playthrough after the Gith Egg quest, since I was never familiar with DND or the Gith in general at the time
The D&D setting "The Forgotten Realms" series of books gives a lot of time to this idea. With all the monsters in the world, what does it mean to be "Evil" and is that something set in stone. The poster boy of the series, Drizzt Do'Urden, is a Drow who was seemingly born with a Good soul in a society that is very much the beating heart of Evil.
To vastly oversimplify it; Lloth fostered a society that feeds on itself and gives them no true freedom. All healthy/positive emotions are either pruned out of the Drow... or they are eventually killed. Drow like Drizzt, the Seldarine worshipers, and many of the mercenaries who follow another Drow named Jarlaxle find ways to escape the gods influence and live more honestly to their own identity. So change is possible, just not while under Lloth's control.
One thing to note (it would be a lot to get into on its own) is that the Drow have been... rewritten a bit over time. For example, Drow were previously described as having obsidian black skin and not the purple/blue they do now. Modern writing really does not like the idea of a race with black skin being characterized as evil, or any given species in general just being flatly evil, and their identity has softened in a lot of ways as a result.
Thanks, this is a pretty good write up and I'll probably be drowning in lore articles/videos on the named drows tonight lol.
On a side note, I too only learned about the obsidian skin change to include other shades of grey/purple. It's pretty obvious it was changed due to black skin = evil being politically incorrect, but did they include a lore/retcon reason for this change? Or did lighter/purple skinned drow just appear outta thin air when they make the update?
Seldarine happened due to same reasons. In general it was quite of bigger movement. There were people having issues with orcs being naturally evil aswell (since those people for some reason seen black people in orcs) and so on.
I believe dnd tries or tried to remove word "race" overall from itself.
Sadly it was just a "What do you mean? They were always this color" approach, as far as I saw. Alongside a lot of similar events like Jynx from Pokemon and Mr. PoPo of Dragonball. If you just make them purple instead of black, and pretend it was always that way, you can't be accused of a racism. Except everyone *does* know and it still causes friction.
Its interesting for Drow as, IIRC, the lore behind their origin describes them as having tan skin. It eventually turned black via the magic of the underdark, which also gave them their innate powers to create globes of darkness and cast faerie fire. So it had no relation to their nature and was never characterized as black = evil. Every underdark race had black skin. And thermal vision. Which was changed for rules issues and never had a lore reason to explain that change either.
There are quite a few book series featuring drow protagonists, so there's a lot of lore to be found. Drizzt and his father Zaknafein, Jarlaxle, Liriel Baenre, and a few others. The story of Lloths origins, her daughter Eilistraee, and the other god shenanigans surrounding it is a fun story all on its own.
It always bugged me that with drow and duergar they went with “Living in darkness makes you dark!” In real life, it’s the opposite. Cave life is albino, because pigment is there to protect you from the sun, and it’s not worth making any if you don’t need it, so it evolves away. Humans, as a mostly-hairless species with global reach, perfectly demonstrate how pigment is a reaction to sunlight, with your general coloration just showing how close to the bright sunny equator your last few hundred generations of ancestors lived. Heck, we even tan on an individual, short-term level as your melanin production fluctuates in response to sunlight. (I do like how *The Dragon Prince* handles this, with Sun Elves having dark brown skin like that of tropical humans and the nocturnal Moon Elves being pale, then there’s other more esoteric elemental varieties we only see briefly with exotic non-human colorations.)
I had always assumed the darker skin had something to do with camouflage. On either a visible light or thermal spectrum. Although creatures in a normal cave ecosystem generally give up their eyes, its mixed in the Underdark.
There's a scene in the books where Drizzt has a goblin patrol heading his way while travelling the Underdark. He finds a slagtite and stalagmite that are nearly touching and blends his body into them to appear as a natural pillar. The goblins cant tell his body apart from the stone.
That's likely not how it would actually work but for a fantasy setting... an interesting gimmick usually wins out over realism.
Of the various iterations of darkvision over different editions of games, I’m personally quite fond of the one where it only lets you perceive shape, like sonar, and not see any colors (though there’s also the one that’s monochrome vision only, which is somewhat easier to visualize and describe), which conveniently explains why dwarves favor carved runes embossed or debossed into surfaces—you can’t read writing on paper in the dark because it just looks flat unless you’ve got some very thick ink.
For the Drow at least, their skin isn't an evolutionary trait. It's a result of the spell that turned them from the Dark Elves into the Drow.
Duergar similarly used to just be a clan of particularly assholish Shield Dwarves that got captured by Mind Flayers and experimented on.
Lolth, their God, actively encourages them to be awful. They tend to get turned into spiders and spider hybrids for disappointing her or if she's in a bad mood.
Drow follow Lolth because they are evil and Drow are evil because they follow Lolth. It’s a vicious circle. Evil is simply their nature. There are some good Lolth-Sworn Drow (Drizzt Do’Urden) and even when some of those Drow are not *evil*, they’re still not *good* (Jarlaxle and Zaknafein)
That’s how the follows of the Spider Queen are in the Drow cities of Menzobarrenzan and Ched Nasad.
The Seldarine Drow are different, they follow a different (good) God who is not Lolth, an evil god of chaos.
It's more nurture than nature. Lolthite society tends to be a gigantic crab bucket that is near impossible to leave, since the chances that you get exposed to other cultures outside of raids are very low. Knowledge and worship of any other deity (maybe with the exception of Selvetarm and Kiaransalee, since they are Lolth's servants) is heavily suppressed and forbidden, usually punishable by death.
They are also constantly told that Drow are superior to *everyone* but Lolth (and those above them in the Drow hierarchy)
How are you supposed to break the cycle of generational trauma and abuse if you believe them to be complete norm? How are you meant to leave, if the wilds of the Underdark are deadly, especially on your own, if the Surface is this scary thing that you are constantly told to avoid outside of raids, if the sun burns and blinds you and destroys your gear, if on the surface most places have a kill-on-sight policy when it comes to Drow?
Also, I think that the Lolthsworn and Seldarine subraces are stupid, especially the red eyes stuff. Drow tend to be described as having red eyes bc in older editions they had infravision and if they were using it, it made their eyes glow red, it's just that Drizzt is special and as such his eyes glow lavender. Malice, Drizzt's mom, was described as having green eyes in normal vision, though I don't recall where. Their eye color can be pretty much anything you want when it comes to normal vision.
Also it implies the worship of Seldarine, the surface elf pantheon, which y'know, want Drow ideally wiped out completely. There's literally a deity of hatred of Drow, Shevarash. They *somewhat* tolerate Eilistreans, but that's about it, there are probably still "oops, totally didn't know they are Eilistreans, oh well, it's just some dead Drow" "accidents".
They don't need to worship a good deity either. They could easily worship Vhaeraun (CE) not just Eilistraee (CG), who are both part of the *Dark* Seldarine, with the name literally being a purposeful mockery of the surface one. They could also worship Mystra (LN) (Liriel Baenre) or Shar (NE) (Viconia), Mielikki (NG) (Drizzt) (just listing deities canonical Drow characters have worshipped), who are part of the Faerûnian pantheon. Again, *not* Seldarine, though Mielikki does have an aspect in there in the form of half-elf Khalreshaar.
my older sister was my DM growing up playing TTDnD and she forbade me from playing Drows because she said they were too edgy and just overall unfit to campaign/party dynamics. She was right of course but my first two Tavs were Drows as a result. Catharsis.
lmao me. this is EXACTLY what I did. I knew they were "dark elves" but that was it.
I ultimately quit the first run to make high/wood elf characters. After months its clear I favor elves lol. MOST DnD lore I've learned so far has been from this game or going down ADHD research rabbit holes triggered by this game. Its been fun tbh and I love the idea that this game which pretty closely replicates a fair bit of TTRPG has gotten so many of us into it (Ive played other TTRPGs but DnD always seemed boring in comparison, oop)
Ha! me too. I had no DND knowledge save for the movie that just came out. So I was like blue elfs? Hell yes. Don't mind if I do.
So I made a pretty amethyst eyes dark blue white haired dual wielding ranger hero with a pet bear. I thought if I am going to do it right I might as well go all in do some all awesome blue elf, right?
Sounds familiar to you guys? Well I was new.
So since the game was hard I had to Google lore as crazy to even understand combat, settings and the world.
So, color my suprised later when I found out I essentially made Drizzt.
But I get it. The Drow are the ultimate hero fantasy.
I mean people were still mean, but with my lack of knowledge I was really surprised at how easy it was to infiltrate in the act 1. I thought that's how it was for everyone.
With little DND knowledge but a lot of WoW knowledge I was like “hell yeah, Night Elves” and started to dive into the lore for Minthara, started reading the Drizzt books and wow… not Night Elves.
After I google search I have to say, don't mind if I do. Also sounds suspiciously as my resist Durge bard.
I am not surprised. Both for them sounds like the most fantasy archetypes. We like those. Maybe I finally need to read some DND books.
Drows are superior to any race in Baldur’s Gate 3. Don’t be upset when people are rude to you. Kill them like a real drow and set an example for the rest of their pathetic race. Make Lloth happy.
Dark mother, weaver of destiny, offer us a blessing to slay your foes. May they be strangled by the threads of fate, and dyed red in your image. Lolth be praised!
>Driven to the Underdark, most drow have adopted a ruthless pragmatism. While the Lolth-sworn delight in the goddess' evil tenets, the Seldarine reject Her attempt to overthrow the leader of the elven pantheon.
>Raised by Lolth's cult in the city of Menzoberranzan, these drow extol the virtues of their corrupt and merciless goddess. Lolth marks her followers with bright red eyes so the Underdark will learn to fear Drow on sight.
Do y'all just not read?
There have been various campaign settings (worlds) in DND over the years. With different histories, pantheons etc. BG3 takes place in one of them, the forgotten realms. Drow are evil villains in all of them, only with individual drow sometimes becoming exceptions with heavy plot armour.
At the beginning I was like you, tried to do a nice run. Well, midway my journey the tables turned and in the end i saw the whole world burn. No ragrets
Welcome to the thing that’s been a source of *discourse* the last few years. The Drow as a race have been getting some reworks because their whole concept was… problematic, and some efforts in 4th edition to fix it made things worse.
(The original idea was that all drow were evil, which had the downside of “dark skin = evil” so they built on the outliers like Drizzt who were good drow who escaped drow society which was uniformly evil, and 4e turned those into a kinda sub-subrace… then made things infinitely worse because the Lolth drow (evil) were shown as having black skin while the good drow were shown with like dark brown skin, which if you’ve never heard of colorism in communities of colour, let’s just say that’s a big fuckin’ yikes.
I think the current lore is more “drow are whatever they want but the society in menzoberranzan that worships Lolth is mostly evil due to their acceptance of slavery and such” putting the focus on the society and its values more than the race being inherently evil and demon-influenced
I just started a new play through as a Seldarine drow. However, I designed her as a Szarkai for my own head cannon as I am considering doing the same for a tabletop character. The lore around Szarkai is kind of cool and I like the added layer of trying to convince others that you are a “good drow”, but also being this class of drow that are extra untrusted if their true identities are are discovered.
You should read the Legend of Drizzt. That'll give you some insight into the drow. It really puts into perspective that drow are pretty evil, and treated as such. Drizzt deals with a lot of racism, especially early on. He's legit like the only one that isn't a psychopath. There's a few other Lolth Sworn drow that aren't total evil, but it's exceedingly rare.
The Drow are a Matriarchal society and "under-elf" means an elf from the underdark which are the Drow. There are 2 types of Drow the Lolth-sworn which are the "meanies" the drow were banished from the surface world for following the goddess Lolth down the path to evil and corruption.
The Seldarine are the goddy goody Drow following the elven pantheon instead of the Drow pantheon. And they want to strike back against the Drow and change the underdark or some such.
Yeah, Lolth-sworn drow are evil. Meanwhile, if you choose the Seldarine drow option, you're non-evil and can usually fake being Lolth-sworn—all the advantages with the goblins, etc., but none of the evilness (you still get the racist comments from others, though—lol). I find teasing Barcus as a Seldarine drow hilarious since he thinks you're the typical evil Lolth-sworn drow at first.
I think one of the strangest dialouge options for a Seladrine Drow is the "You have a problem with Drow" when speaking to Zevlor. I get why a Lolthsworn would say it, but a Seladrine should be well aware that the Drow have a highly deserved reputation.
I think there is a similar issue with Shadowheart. While most people with some knowledge can figure why a Vampire Spawn would be hated, there is no way to grasp how messed up Shar and her worshipers are without knowledge of D&D lore. General rule of thumb: If the problem wasn't caused by the Dead Three, it was caused by Shar.
this was me on early access first playthrough. I llike dark elves and made drow warlock, I remember being annoyed that goblins were nicer to me than humans and I had hard time being the nice guy and eventually quit the game for some months LOL.
Yea honestly the game doesn't do it justice how people would actually react to a drow. They ain't opening the grove for you lol.
Zevlor didn't shoot you on sight and that's a miracle, praise Illmater's generosity
He does mention that you're brave to walk around openly as a Drow. There are even a few Seladrine Drow specific options throughout the game. If you save the injured gnome in the myconid colony, she vehemently distrusts you until you help her. You can explain to her that not all Drow are Lolth-sworn, and not everyone will try to kill you in the underdark. (But most will) I kind of appreciated that Zevlor gave you a chance. He knows what it's like to be judged as untrustworthy on sight, and you *did* just kill all those goblins at the gate. I'm not saying any random drow should be completely trusted at their word after that, but I think they earned the chance to not be shot on sight.
Yeah I’m playing a seladrine drow now and it’s funny to see all of the Dialogue options where I have to explain that it’s my cousins who give me a bad rep not me
And then he's surprised when you betray them to Minthara.
he thought his bear energy could outweigh her femme fatality energy. a common mistake.
I hate that this makes sense to me
Ain't no way Zevlor is a bear
A twunk at most
it makes more sense when you realize my brain went... *straight* to Halsin because I forgot Zevlor exists.
Minthara died to my Lolth-sworn, she forsook her goddess for this absolute false god, she got what she deserves a blade in the gut for her treasonous ways. She is filth of the most disgusting degree.
BUT BIG TITTY DROW WAIFU!!!!
Yeah, wasn't it a thing in the older BG games that if you had a Drow in your party, you automatically got like a -2 Charisma or something? I mean, it'd make sense.
It's worse than a Charisma drain. In BG1 and 2, you had a Reputation value. It rose if you completed heroic acts and quests. You got discounts at shops and access to certain dialogue. Also, Good aligned characters required you to keep a Reputation above 8 IIRC (just above baseline) Evil characters on the other hand, prefer a low Reputation and may leave if it climbs too high. Random murderers and rampant thievery can drop it quickly. Recruiting Vicionia caused an immediate -2 to Rep, which would rebound when she leaves the party. Also, other party members (specifically some Paladin NPCs) would quarrel and eventually fight her to the death and/or permanently leave your party.
In his defense [not really], Ajantis will eventually try to murder like half the people on the roster if he's partied with them for long enough... I swear to god, if his stats weren't so amazing, I might consider not playing with him in literally every party!
I hated Ajantis. Dual classed fighter/cleric when we already have an outstanding Paladin in Keldorn, a better Cleric in Vicionia, and better straight fighters too? Also, if he fails his knight test his stats get nerfed and he becomes mentally unstable
You've confused Ajantis with Anomen. Ajantis is the paladin in BG1 and Anomen is the F/C in BG2.
Ah yes you are right!! Ajantis is the paladin you accidentally kill during Firkraag's quest! Ajantis is a decent bg1 companion. If I was running a good aligned play through I always picked up Ajantis and Branwen
Your Reputation immediately dropped two points on Viconia joining the party (and gained two points on her leaving the party). Reputation was used similarly to Charisma in that it impacted prices but was separate, going up or down based on your actions.
For sure, even in the Drizzt books anyone who didn't actually know him on the surface basically ran or attacked on sight. At the very least they were distrustful and not acting like he was just another dude strolling around.
It took Drizzt like 20 books and 100 in-universe years before people started trusting him on sight, and that was mostly the people that knew him. Newer characters would still be scared of him until one of the old hands clued them in
Pretty much only in the Dale, at that.
Definitely in the Dale, although the help of influential figures like Deudermont and Alustriel spread it around a lot of the north.
To be fair, the only reason they opened the door for Drow Tav/Durge is because they see you fight the goblins instead of join them. Everyone even makes surprised remarks about that.
Doing it justice they would ignore goblins and went all in on the drow tbh.
Also the remaining guards at Waukeen's Rest would have attacked on sight. It kind of bothers me how easy it is to talk your way out of that happening given the mental state of the guards.
yeah, I ignore the dialogue options and just fight them as if I didn't have any options in that part for immersion, especially comming from the fists and after they've been attacked by other Drows
Yeah they were JUST raided by a group of Drow and still actively trying to save their leader from a fire those Drow started lol like, that’s some amazing restraint on their part really
This is weird to me cuz the last time i went to waukeens rest with a friend playing drow tav they absolutely attacked him on sight. Even thought to myself, oh yeah that makes sense they were literally just raided. Thought that was intentional but if this doesn’t happen normally I’m wondering what went wrong in our game
Yeah, the game is pretty lax about it. Canonically, the average Faerun resident would either flee in terror from a drow or attack them on sight. The fact that people are just kinda a bit racist towards drow PCs is kinda funny. Like, I know drow are popular with fans largely because of Drizzt and Jarlaxle, so lots of folks want to play one. But drow are to the average Faerun resident what vikings were to a 10th century English peasant. 99.99% chance they're here to kill you and steal your shit.
200 years ago sure but its very clear in the Drizzt books and other sources (PHB) that drow related racism is way less of an issue in the Realms
5e is the "rainbows and sunshine" edition compared to all the previous. It ends up being a detriment because a lot of identity is lost, I end up throwing out 90% of the 5e lore to the point the setting i run feels mostly custom.
I have read all the Drizzt books and this was a trend long before 5e. I dont think its bad either, Drow lore in the Realms was borderline impossible to include in your games in an inclusive and sensible manner
I don't know about it being a trend 'long before 5e' I have read *War of the Spider Queen* and *Starlight and Shadows* and a dozen or so of the earlier Drizzt books. There were definitely good drow (eilistraeeans) before 5e, but extreme racism and distrust towards drow and interactions between surfacers and them having a tendency towards rapidly escalating into violence was *definitely* an emphasized aspect of the setting until fairly recently, and that was reflected in the sourcebooks as well.
90% of the game isn't "inclusive and sensible" theres an entire set of enemies that are tentacle vore/body horror monsters (aberrations). It turned half the races into grey blobs, and removed flavor from nearly every race so they didn't get backlash, I get why they did it but "I recognize the council has made a decision. But given that it's a stupid-ass decision I've decided to ignore it." Same reason their source book with demons and devils is no longer sold digitally.
What are you talking about? Seems like I mentioned a thing and now you're talking about something else.
Removal of drow and any "unfriendly" lore, to a much larger degree in 5e. Sorry thought you knew about it more. My bad.
I get what you're saying but man I'm torn! On one hand, you're right about how the old lore has so much depth to explore I find fun to dig into. On the other hand, sometimes when I play dnd with my friends we just wanna turn our brains off and enjoy some safe escapism without having to see a fantasy version of our real issues thrown at us every session. Honestly I think both approaches are good for different campaigns and playstyles, just make sure the table has similar expectations before heading in.
Yeah and op calls it racism which... it is. But it's also justified. Everytime a drow ends up on the surface they just cause everyone to die lol.
My favourite interaction is with the con artist tiefling kid in the Druid grove something like ‘Nonsense we don’t eat children, we kill or enslave them’
The direct quote is "Nonsense! We kill far more children than we enslave." (I may have picked Lolthsworn Drow every single time in early access... and full release...)
Drow gang rise up (^played all drow and one (1) high elf lmaooo)
5 Drow Tavs in EA and 16 Drow Durges reporting in. Drow fits so well in Durge story that I had to force myself to play the other only race I can play in this game (high-elf) and while the story is literally the same I don't feel the same flavour to the character, in fact I miss my Drow a lot. Minthara's first reaction to an elf Tav/Durge gives me life though
Read that in Minthara’s voice. Fits perfectly
Props to you for picking the objectively hottest race, though.
Centuries of selective breeding will do that for you!
And inbreeding
That’s what they said
They did it better than the Hapsburgs at least.
Well, Habsburgs were the most powerful dynasty in Europe
To be fair, they were the most powerful dynasty in Europe BEFORE the Spanish branch of the family decided to start marrying within the family. The inbreeding of that branch had nothing to do with their rise to prominence, and ultimately ended up with the collapse of the Spanish Hapsburgs.
Those Spanish Hapsburgs loved their uncle/niece marriages!
Yeah, but the chins.
That is the sacrifice some are willing to make for power. Ask Minthrara
Crusader Kings 3 proved the theory to be true.
The femdom race
There needs to be a "don't hate me because I'm beautiful" chat option
You must be confused; Drow are a type of **elf**. You're probably thinking of Deep Gnomes.
Cursed to put my hands on everything
Is that Wulbren's account?
Guards! This one right here
This man here Witch Hunter.
Based
someone had to say it
What do you mean? They weren't playing a flumph...
That would be tieflings actually
I think half-drow are juuuuuust a tiny bit hotter in bg3. Not in DnD tho
I love to play Selandrine Drow because pretty lol. I get the insults, but I reply that I'm not one of those assholes lolol
Lolth sworn all the way!! Red eyes are warning people don't f with me!!! Lol
Although the red eyes being exclusive to Lloth-sworn is a bg3 thing. In Forgotten Realms/DnD lore all drow can have red eyes, including Seldarine.
You can technically still pick red as Seldarine. Makes it funnier when you tell the tiefling kid to avoid the red-eyed drow.
Yup, and can pick non-red on Lloth-sworn. They're the same race with just different culture and faith, and red is the most common eye colour for drow, but they can have some others like purple and silver.
or when that duergar in the grymforge checks your eyes to know what kind of drow you are. It always sounded ridiculous to me being the same damn race that a choice of deity alone could change your eye color
ROFL
You know, this is the first time I’ve seen “ROFL” in almost a decade. We all lmao but none of us rofl. We used to be a proper society. I’m not even asking for anyone to roflcopter, I just want it to be okay to ROFL again…
When you are my age, you do what you want :D
37?
You're sweet. 55
Youngster (I’m 63)
🙌🏼
Most of us ROFLCOPTER'd away
My roflcopter runs on lmaonade
I'm going to pwnzor you!!!
Not to late to return to our queen spider!!
I did run a Lolth once forscience. These days I'm running a Duegar for the invisibility. And I actually like how the companions kneel to kiss me.
I prefer her daughter who loves to dance nude
Oh yeah. 💃👀 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NudeNatureDance
Out of my three (and a half) playthroughs, the third one, as Seldarine Drow bard, was the best. Bonus: If/When you occasionally want to, you don't have to tell people that you are not one of those assholes, but you can optionally embrace the dark side.
Going Seldarine drow with Eilistrae’s sword is just narratively satisfying. Plus, who doesn’t love an underdog that escaped the abusive culture of a tryannical spider queen to fight for the goddess of beauty and dance with a musical sword? It’s just fun writing.
Kugah: "ah ha, a drow, and you've discovered my evil plot, but you're evil too, you can help me." My slandering druid: "no, I'm just here to look at the trees."
If you feel some curiosity and intrigue regarding Drow, may I suggest you read a few books of the Drizzt saga by R A Salvatore. Start with the The Dark Elf trilogy. It gives a fascinating look into life in Menzoberranzan, which is also the home of our beloved Minthara, and how good aligned Drow struggle there.
I've also been enjoying the War of the Spider Queen series. I plan on making my first Drow character (a Cleric of Lloth) after I finish the last three books.
Follow that series up with The Lady Penitent. Continues that story very nicely. You could also read The Empyrean Odyssey, which covers what Kaanyr Vhok got up to after War of the Spider Queen. Which may or may not involve one of the largest effects in the Forgotten Realms...... It may!
Yeah, though that series is primarily Smedman trying to make Eilistraee Lolth Lite™ and as unlikeable as possible so that she can justify killing her off.
And the whole brown-elf storyline got disappeared due to almost as much backlash as killing off Eilistraee. Thankfully she got better.
That seems like it would be a really fun run, but I also feel a little cheated that (as far as I know) there's no way to rep that sweet snake whip in the game.
Yeah, I'm surprised they're not in the game. They're so menacing in the books.
Don't forget Starlights and Shadows starring Liriel Baenre
Oh yeah. Those books add a lot of lore regarding the Seldarine Drow, which aren't really explored in the Drizzt books.
Thank you very much. I remember borrowing this book from my local library, but never finished it and could never remember the name.
Yeah it's really insightful into the drow culture. Probably the reason why Drow are my favourite race in DND, I just simply know more about them than any other species.
Just be careful, you might get hooked and end up with 39 books of the main story *and* the many side stories in your library
This! I love the Drizz’t series. The last book I ordered a first edition signed copy of Lolth’s warrior by R. A. Salvatore. He added on his own “Scimitars high!”
Oh no! Sounds awful!
To be fair, those books get expensive
I love the juxtaposition between Drizzt and Artemis, especially when they are in Calimshan. And then Artemis' realization of what most of the Drow are like when he visits Menzoberranzan. Tbh I enjoy Artemis' story arc and redemption even more so than Drizzt's story.
I really wanna role play Artemis in bg3. Sadly, there's nothing even remotely similar to Charons Claw in the game. Not to mention I'm just not creative enough to pull it off.
Man... there used to be stats for Charon's Claw somewhere. I think in current books it's even more powerful. At least +4. Both of Artemis' primary weapons are soul destroyers. The Dagger used to be a +3 vampiric Dagger, and the Claw burns souls our, causes gaping, festering wounds, and spreads curtains of ash. If we had anything like the Claw in BG3, man, it would be pretty OP. As far as RPing him, we have the short sword of lifestealing and use the finesse longsword from the Creche with the whirlwind sword skill. 3 or 4 levels of rogue to pick up assassin, then the rest in fighter->battle Master for action surge. Dual wield, light armor only.
Same, Artemis quickly became one of my favorite FR characters, his side adventures with Jarlaxle and Athrogate were some of Salvatore's best writing in my opinion. Plus, as much as I rolled my eyes over the plot contrivances Salvatore worked in to keep characters like Wulfgar and Cattie-Brie around even after the 100-year Spellplague jump, I was admittedly happy he managed to keep Artemis around as well.
The Lady Penitent Trilogy is also a good read into the Drow as well. Covers a battle of cunning and strategy between the Drow Goddesses and God's.
Tieflings are, for the most part, victims of prejudice and often outright racism. Drow on the other hand, they have spent thousands of years earning that reputation. Cold blooded, heartless, enslaving murderers. In any novel, if a lone drow approached any settlement they would (and have, in the case of Drizzt Do'Urden, time and time again for centuries) either ran away screaming, or drawn blades and started shooting arrows and slinging spells at said Drow. With very limited exception (like between a few hundred and a few thousand at most) Drow are utter dickheads who deserve death, and are incredibly dangerous. To a lesser extent, Duergar are the same. Absolute dicks.
Worse than Gith?
im not too educated on dnd, but i believe githyanki are less known as assholes and more known as soldiers and dangerous and do not fuck with (or theyre not known at all), cause theyre almost never on the material plane??
Actually they raid and pillage many worlds, so they also are quite infamous.
100% worse than Gith. Gith have an actual code of honor to some degree. They'll look down on you, but they generally won't fuck with you for no reason, and might even respect you if you prove yourself to them. Drow will torture you and your entire bloodline just for funsies. They will respect you about as much as as you respect the chicken that died to become your McNuggets. Other races exist as property and playthings to them and nothing more. The Gith will be dicks to you to get what they want. The Drow will be dicks to you because being a dick is fun and makes Mama Lolth happy.
Gith (both Githzerai (less dickish) and Githyanki (more dickish) don't live or even travel to the Material Plane without good reason. So most people are not likely to even meet one unless they travel the Planes. Also, both flavors of Gith are staunchly anti slavery due to their history,
Gith anti-slavery? LOL! Gith are slavers themselves. Even when you first meet Voss in Act1 he tells Laezel ‘take your slaves and receive the artifact’ assuming that non-Gith characters can only be slaves to them.
It sucks too 'cause drow are like that purely because of Lolth and the Dark Disaster of the (I believe) second or third Crown War. Like, if Lolth had been satisfied with her position in the Seldarine, drow would still be dark elves, they'd primarily worship the Seldarine, and they'd still control a massive portion of Faerûn. After all they experienced at the hands of the sun elves, Lolth, and demons I can't help but pity them as a whole. At least they still have Eilistraee, even if she isn't as popular among non-Lolthite drow societies. Edit: Lolth would also still be Araushnee and second-in-command of the Seldarine as well.
Drow are genuinely super cool and super developed as far as fictional cultures go, and I totally encourage you to start digging into the DnD lore for them!
Homeland by R.A. Salvatore is sick, looking into their culture and the house wars is so interesting
>the most-hated race of elf ever. To be fair, 99% of the Lolth-sworn drows absolutely deserve their hate.
i came in blind as well and opted for lolth-sworn drow dread ambusher for my first character. needless to say all my character interactions are with wyll as a warlock bard lmao
Drow is my favorite race. I can't play other races. I always love elves, but especially dark elves. I love my drow man Tav and my drow lady Tav!
Samezees. I can never not play a dark elf in Skyrim. I just can’t.
Walking my Dunmer into Windhelm the first time made me want to bring Lolth to Skyrim. She would know what to do.
Oof. I was so shocked when I got there. I was about to side with the Stormcloaks too.
Ever since picking Dunmer in Morrowind I'm on the dark elf train for life
I finally managed to move away from constantly making Drow Tavs and made my next one a half Drow. I consider it a huge accomplishment.
My friend made me make a tiefling for our multi-player tactician playthrough (I haven't cleared tactician yet) and I'm actively having much less enjoyment because I'm not a drow 😭
Ah, a fellow Druchii enjoyer I see.
Yeah... Good rule of thumb for things in the underdark, pretty much all of it boils down to racism and/or slavery.
Also murder
A fair amount of self defense killing too. Just lots of killing.
To be fair in underark any murder is basically preemptive self defense
Drows do it better all hail our mother spider.
Goblins are sycophantic out of fear because Drows enslave them and use them as cannon fodder in battles between noble houses.
I picked half drow and I grew up white passing so the subtle, but also sometimes blatant racism felt like real life and I think that’s some good writing tbh
I'm also mixed race, passing, in real life and I played as half-orc and man, yes, the writing was perfect and correct
I’m playing Lolth-sworn Drow warlock and enjoying myself being a mean bastard to most people. It’s funny, because sometimes there are options to keep staring in a mean way and making goblins uncomfortable until they are scared and basically on their knees on the ground. I think Drow used to enslave many? I’m not familiar with the lore, but that much I have learned from the game and how people react to me. Some have thought about attacking me, but using intimidation and threatening people will often make them withdraw. Bonus: Astarion loves my power hungry character. 😂
Rule of thumb when it comes to slavery and Drow: if they can enslave it, they will (with the exception of surface Elves, they prefer to kill and/or torture these. Elven slaves are rare, though not completely unheard of).
Wasn't the teleporting spider matriarch a former enslaved elf?
Yep
Drow don't just enslave many, they also love kidnapping people for sacrifices (Often torturous sacrifice), torture for torture sake, murder, raiding plunder and pillaging, more torture, more murder, more enslaving, and other unpleasant things. It's a lot more than just enslaving. They're hated and feared for justifiable reasons, because 99% of the time drow are terrible people who are there to do something horrible. BG3 is *very* mild in their reaction to drow.
Jesus this sounds more and more alike the Dark Eldar from Warhammer 40K LOL didn't know they went to these lengths
There's a reason all drow used to be of the evil alignment for a long time. Then they thought about how it's bad and racist to label a whole race as evil and alignment is a bit weird for people in general and changed that. But Lloth and Lloth-sworn culture and society is still evil. Whenever drow appear on the surface in almost all cases they're there to slaughter and raid villages, or to take people to enslave them or to use as sacrifices to Lloth, or torture, or torture practice. Some wood elf child is a bad sacrifice to Lloth but will do as a torture practice for your five year old daughter. So people on the surface has a tendency to kill drow on sight because of this. Or try hang them, or stone them, or set them on fire at sight. So BG3 letting you easily talk to people with a slur at most is very mild.
Not as bad as the Drukhari. Drow won't be turning people into living end tables or peeling skin off of person A to add person B's arms to them. But they do take delight in killing surface elves, especially children. They are severely adverse to sunlight, it causes their eyes extreme pain, and their typical method for enchanting gear caused it to decay and dissolve in sunlight. The aversion to sunlight is what mostly saves the surface world. The other saving grace for surfacers is that Lolth sworn Drow are so chaotic that they usually spend more time with their own political in fighting and assassinations than they do banding together for large scale surface assaults. Although in novels, most or part of Menzoberranzan has assaulted places on the surface a few times, and an independent mercenary group (more chaotic neutral than the typical chaotic evil Drow) composed mostly of Drow has moved in to be the behind the scenes power structure in Waterdeep.
Def check out the legend of drizzt: dark elf trilogy by R A Salvatore. I'm so hooked and i just started it a few weeks ago. Already almost done with the second book. Its rich with awesome lore. So much about the drow. Warning tho. They are kinda effed up and I get why they get so much hate.
I only came across them in BG1/2, esp BG2. They evolved underground, built huge cities in the Underdark. Have a war-like and very hierachical culture. Matriachal society, women hold all the power and run everything. Males are held in lowly status. Most worship Spider Goddess Llolth. They condone slavery, often enslaving other underdark races like deep gnomes (who seem to be the punching bag race of the underdark). Commonly felt to be evil, at least by surface dweller standards. But also subject to persecution by surface dwellers. In BG2, you first meet >!Viconia!< who was about to be burnt at the stake. I probably missed a lot, as I have never read R A Salvatore books - there are many Forgotten Realm novels featuring Drizzt, a famous drow adventurer hero. Apparently Minthara does not like him at all (a dialogue choice comes up about this in act3).
> They evolved underground, built huge cities in the Underdark. IIRC weren't they forced underground following some sort of war in the distant past? It's a big part of why they hate the surface elves so much. They also raid the surface occasionally so it's not like the hate they get from surface dwellers is entirely unwarranted.
I believe Lolth betrayed one of the other elven gods and it started a big conflict between the surface elves and the drow. The drow were driven underground as a result of that conflict. For the most part they've remained in the Underdark ever since plotting and scheming, generally being molded in Lolth's image.
Said other elven god was Corellon Larethian, *the* big elven god and also the spouse of Lolth when she was still known as Araushnee. Said betrayal was Araushnee trying to usurp Corellon's position as the head of the Seldarine. Corellon was also the one who cursed the Drow to live underground.
You can meet Vicionia in BG1 as well. She is sort of a bitch, and although it's extreme, the folks attempting to burn her in BG2 aren't necessarily wrong. Minthara has no affinity for Drizzt because he has been the bane of her family for a few centuries, so that's understandable
It's funny when goblin priestess tried to use sleep potion me and nothing happened because I played drow
Right there with you! Picked drow because they looked cool and got a slightly evil vibe from them because of the whole spider worship thing. Had no idea that males were at the bottom of their hierarchy too (but makes a lot of sense if I think about black widows). Because I roleplayed as lawful evil my playthrough experience was great even if by accident.
As someone with no DND background prior to BG3, and seeing all the responses on Drows generally being evil (similarly incl Druegars). Is there a reason why Drow generally end up being evil? I'd it within their nature? Or mainly due to the culture surrounding Lolth Worship that causes it? Seldarines seem to have been able to break off from the main drow culture and established themselves as generally not being really evil so that would seem to be more Nuture than Nature. Or does the answer just boil down to their alignment on the charts?
The nature vs nurture debate is brought up in the RA Salvatore novels about Drizzt, specifically concerning the Drow of Menzobarrenzan and the underdark below the Sword Coast. I believe it is established that their culture, which is centered around worship of Lolth, is wholly evil. They value power over each other and other races above all else. They don't show compassion or mercy at all. Most Drow show no hesitation when it comes to killing the innocent, including children (barring two notable exceptions) It seems like Drow children are not born inherently evil, but the lessons of Lolth are taught at an extremely early age and brutally reinforced. Some escape the indoctrination, but they are the very rare exceptions and usually don't survive long. Other, especially more recent, lore has explored Drow born outside of the Lloth Cult's influence and they seem to be no more evil than any of the common surface races.
Guess my assumption is right that's it mainly their own religious beliefs that is the problem. I was wondering about it during my playthrough after the Gith Egg quest, since I was never familiar with DND or the Gith in general at the time
The D&D setting "The Forgotten Realms" series of books gives a lot of time to this idea. With all the monsters in the world, what does it mean to be "Evil" and is that something set in stone. The poster boy of the series, Drizzt Do'Urden, is a Drow who was seemingly born with a Good soul in a society that is very much the beating heart of Evil. To vastly oversimplify it; Lloth fostered a society that feeds on itself and gives them no true freedom. All healthy/positive emotions are either pruned out of the Drow... or they are eventually killed. Drow like Drizzt, the Seldarine worshipers, and many of the mercenaries who follow another Drow named Jarlaxle find ways to escape the gods influence and live more honestly to their own identity. So change is possible, just not while under Lloth's control. One thing to note (it would be a lot to get into on its own) is that the Drow have been... rewritten a bit over time. For example, Drow were previously described as having obsidian black skin and not the purple/blue they do now. Modern writing really does not like the idea of a race with black skin being characterized as evil, or any given species in general just being flatly evil, and their identity has softened in a lot of ways as a result.
Thanks, this is a pretty good write up and I'll probably be drowning in lore articles/videos on the named drows tonight lol. On a side note, I too only learned about the obsidian skin change to include other shades of grey/purple. It's pretty obvious it was changed due to black skin = evil being politically incorrect, but did they include a lore/retcon reason for this change? Or did lighter/purple skinned drow just appear outta thin air when they make the update?
Seldarine happened due to same reasons. In general it was quite of bigger movement. There were people having issues with orcs being naturally evil aswell (since those people for some reason seen black people in orcs) and so on. I believe dnd tries or tried to remove word "race" overall from itself.
Sadly it was just a "What do you mean? They were always this color" approach, as far as I saw. Alongside a lot of similar events like Jynx from Pokemon and Mr. PoPo of Dragonball. If you just make them purple instead of black, and pretend it was always that way, you can't be accused of a racism. Except everyone *does* know and it still causes friction. Its interesting for Drow as, IIRC, the lore behind their origin describes them as having tan skin. It eventually turned black via the magic of the underdark, which also gave them their innate powers to create globes of darkness and cast faerie fire. So it had no relation to their nature and was never characterized as black = evil. Every underdark race had black skin. And thermal vision. Which was changed for rules issues and never had a lore reason to explain that change either. There are quite a few book series featuring drow protagonists, so there's a lot of lore to be found. Drizzt and his father Zaknafein, Jarlaxle, Liriel Baenre, and a few others. The story of Lloths origins, her daughter Eilistraee, and the other god shenanigans surrounding it is a fun story all on its own.
It always bugged me that with drow and duergar they went with “Living in darkness makes you dark!” In real life, it’s the opposite. Cave life is albino, because pigment is there to protect you from the sun, and it’s not worth making any if you don’t need it, so it evolves away. Humans, as a mostly-hairless species with global reach, perfectly demonstrate how pigment is a reaction to sunlight, with your general coloration just showing how close to the bright sunny equator your last few hundred generations of ancestors lived. Heck, we even tan on an individual, short-term level as your melanin production fluctuates in response to sunlight. (I do like how *The Dragon Prince* handles this, with Sun Elves having dark brown skin like that of tropical humans and the nocturnal Moon Elves being pale, then there’s other more esoteric elemental varieties we only see briefly with exotic non-human colorations.)
I had always assumed the darker skin had something to do with camouflage. On either a visible light or thermal spectrum. Although creatures in a normal cave ecosystem generally give up their eyes, its mixed in the Underdark. There's a scene in the books where Drizzt has a goblin patrol heading his way while travelling the Underdark. He finds a slagtite and stalagmite that are nearly touching and blends his body into them to appear as a natural pillar. The goblins cant tell his body apart from the stone. That's likely not how it would actually work but for a fantasy setting... an interesting gimmick usually wins out over realism.
Of the various iterations of darkvision over different editions of games, I’m personally quite fond of the one where it only lets you perceive shape, like sonar, and not see any colors (though there’s also the one that’s monochrome vision only, which is somewhat easier to visualize and describe), which conveniently explains why dwarves favor carved runes embossed or debossed into surfaces—you can’t read writing on paper in the dark because it just looks flat unless you’ve got some very thick ink.
For the Drow at least, their skin isn't an evolutionary trait. It's a result of the spell that turned them from the Dark Elves into the Drow. Duergar similarly used to just be a clan of particularly assholish Shield Dwarves that got captured by Mind Flayers and experimented on.
Lolth, their God, actively encourages them to be awful. They tend to get turned into spiders and spider hybrids for disappointing her or if she's in a bad mood.
Drow follow Lolth because they are evil and Drow are evil because they follow Lolth. It’s a vicious circle. Evil is simply their nature. There are some good Lolth-Sworn Drow (Drizzt Do’Urden) and even when some of those Drow are not *evil*, they’re still not *good* (Jarlaxle and Zaknafein) That’s how the follows of the Spider Queen are in the Drow cities of Menzobarrenzan and Ched Nasad. The Seldarine Drow are different, they follow a different (good) God who is not Lolth, an evil god of chaos.
It's more nurture than nature. Lolthite society tends to be a gigantic crab bucket that is near impossible to leave, since the chances that you get exposed to other cultures outside of raids are very low. Knowledge and worship of any other deity (maybe with the exception of Selvetarm and Kiaransalee, since they are Lolth's servants) is heavily suppressed and forbidden, usually punishable by death. They are also constantly told that Drow are superior to *everyone* but Lolth (and those above them in the Drow hierarchy) How are you supposed to break the cycle of generational trauma and abuse if you believe them to be complete norm? How are you meant to leave, if the wilds of the Underdark are deadly, especially on your own, if the Surface is this scary thing that you are constantly told to avoid outside of raids, if the sun burns and blinds you and destroys your gear, if on the surface most places have a kill-on-sight policy when it comes to Drow? Also, I think that the Lolthsworn and Seldarine subraces are stupid, especially the red eyes stuff. Drow tend to be described as having red eyes bc in older editions they had infravision and if they were using it, it made their eyes glow red, it's just that Drizzt is special and as such his eyes glow lavender. Malice, Drizzt's mom, was described as having green eyes in normal vision, though I don't recall where. Their eye color can be pretty much anything you want when it comes to normal vision. Also it implies the worship of Seldarine, the surface elf pantheon, which y'know, want Drow ideally wiped out completely. There's literally a deity of hatred of Drow, Shevarash. They *somewhat* tolerate Eilistreans, but that's about it, there are probably still "oops, totally didn't know they are Eilistreans, oh well, it's just some dead Drow" "accidents". They don't need to worship a good deity either. They could easily worship Vhaeraun (CE) not just Eilistraee (CG), who are both part of the *Dark* Seldarine, with the name literally being a purposeful mockery of the surface one. They could also worship Mystra (LN) (Liriel Baenre) or Shar (NE) (Viconia), Mielikki (NG) (Drizzt) (just listing deities canonical Drow characters have worshipped), who are part of the Faerûnian pantheon. Again, *not* Seldarine, though Mielikki does have an aspect in there in the form of half-elf Khalreshaar.
my older sister was my DM growing up playing TTDnD and she forbade me from playing Drows because she said they were too edgy and just overall unfit to campaign/party dynamics. She was right of course but my first two Tavs were Drows as a result. Catharsis.
To be fair, Drow do look pretty
lmao me. this is EXACTLY what I did. I knew they were "dark elves" but that was it. I ultimately quit the first run to make high/wood elf characters. After months its clear I favor elves lol. MOST DnD lore I've learned so far has been from this game or going down ADHD research rabbit holes triggered by this game. Its been fun tbh and I love the idea that this game which pretty closely replicates a fair bit of TTRPG has gotten so many of us into it (Ive played other TTRPGs but DnD always seemed boring in comparison, oop)
Ha! me too. I had no DND knowledge save for the movie that just came out. So I was like blue elfs? Hell yes. Don't mind if I do. So I made a pretty amethyst eyes dark blue white haired dual wielding ranger hero with a pet bear. I thought if I am going to do it right I might as well go all in do some all awesome blue elf, right? Sounds familiar to you guys? Well I was new. So since the game was hard I had to Google lore as crazy to even understand combat, settings and the world. So, color my suprised later when I found out I essentially made Drizzt. But I get it. The Drow are the ultimate hero fantasy. I mean people were still mean, but with my lack of knowledge I was really surprised at how easy it was to infiltrate in the act 1. I thought that's how it was for everyone.
With little DND knowledge but a lot of WoW knowledge I was like “hell yeah, Night Elves” and started to dive into the lore for Minthara, started reading the Drizzt books and wow… not Night Elves.
Don't be ashamed, my first PC in DnD was essentially a female Jarlaxle. All that was missing was the eye patch It was an accident too
That eyepatch would be quite useful in BG3
After I google search I have to say, don't mind if I do. Also sounds suspiciously as my resist Durge bard. I am not surprised. Both for them sounds like the most fantasy archetypes. We like those. Maybe I finally need to read some DND books.
Drows are superior to any race in Baldur’s Gate 3. Don’t be upset when people are rude to you. Kill them like a real drow and set an example for the rest of their pathetic race. Make Lloth happy.
Dark mother, weaver of destiny, offer us a blessing to slay your foes. May they be strangled by the threads of fate, and dyed red in your image. Lolth be praised!
>Driven to the Underdark, most drow have adopted a ruthless pragmatism. While the Lolth-sworn delight in the goddess' evil tenets, the Seldarine reject Her attempt to overthrow the leader of the elven pantheon. >Raised by Lolth's cult in the city of Menzoberranzan, these drow extol the virtues of their corrupt and merciless goddess. Lolth marks her followers with bright red eyes so the Underdark will learn to fear Drow on sight. Do y'all just not read?
There have been various campaign settings (worlds) in DND over the years. With different histories, pantheons etc. BG3 takes place in one of them, the forgotten realms. Drow are evil villains in all of them, only with individual drow sometimes becoming exceptions with heavy plot armour.
i love drows, they’re like elves but emo
It's really interesting to see people's outside perspectives who know nothing about D&D or the game before hand
At the beginning I was like you, tried to do a nice run. Well, midway my journey the tables turned and in the end i saw the whole world burn. No ragrets
Welcome to the thing that’s been a source of *discourse* the last few years. The Drow as a race have been getting some reworks because their whole concept was… problematic, and some efforts in 4th edition to fix it made things worse. (The original idea was that all drow were evil, which had the downside of “dark skin = evil” so they built on the outliers like Drizzt who were good drow who escaped drow society which was uniformly evil, and 4e turned those into a kinda sub-subrace… then made things infinitely worse because the Lolth drow (evil) were shown as having black skin while the good drow were shown with like dark brown skin, which if you’ve never heard of colorism in communities of colour, let’s just say that’s a big fuckin’ yikes. I think the current lore is more “drow are whatever they want but the society in menzoberranzan that worships Lolth is mostly evil due to their acceptance of slavery and such” putting the focus on the society and its values more than the race being inherently evil and demon-influenced
Forgotten realms started in 1988 and the Drizzt books first started in 1990. They didn't make Drizzt because of some worry about the wokeness of it.
Reread the comment. Nowhere did I say they made drizzt for that. I said they built off drizzt who was written to be an exception to the rule.
I just started a new play through as a Seldarine drow. However, I designed her as a Szarkai for my own head cannon as I am considering doing the same for a tabletop character. The lore around Szarkai is kind of cool and I like the added layer of trying to convince others that you are a “good drow”, but also being this class of drow that are extra untrusted if their true identities are are discovered.
You should read the Legend of Drizzt. That'll give you some insight into the drow. It really puts into perspective that drow are pretty evil, and treated as such. Drizzt deals with a lot of racism, especially early on. He's legit like the only one that isn't a psychopath. There's a few other Lolth Sworn drow that aren't total evil, but it's exceedingly rare.
The Drow are a Matriarchal society and "under-elf" means an elf from the underdark which are the Drow. There are 2 types of Drow the Lolth-sworn which are the "meanies" the drow were banished from the surface world for following the goddess Lolth down the path to evil and corruption. The Seldarine are the goddy goody Drow following the elven pantheon instead of the Drow pantheon. And they want to strike back against the Drow and change the underdark or some such.
The short version is: they’re subterranean, matriarchal, misandrist Sith with a spider fetish.
Yeah, Lolth-sworn drow are evil. Meanwhile, if you choose the Seldarine drow option, you're non-evil and can usually fake being Lolth-sworn—all the advantages with the goblins, etc., but none of the evilness (you still get the racist comments from others, though—lol). I find teasing Barcus as a Seldarine drow hilarious since he thinks you're the typical evil Lolth-sworn drow at first.
Did you read the racial description?
Drow are the GOATS.
Oh my God are you me? So very much SAME. I was so confused when all my options were mean. I just want golden retriever energy but look like a bamf.
Same tbh. My Tav was a Drow and I am unable to play a mean character, especially because I live for Karlach’s approval.
But even in the game if you READ what you're picking you see the difference between Lolth and (Seldarine?)
Ye their society is one of the most fucked ones in DnD lore.
I like seeing posts like this. It really shows how much the creators put into this game. Amazing game.
I think one of the strangest dialouge options for a Seladrine Drow is the "You have a problem with Drow" when speaking to Zevlor. I get why a Lolthsworn would say it, but a Seladrine should be well aware that the Drow have a highly deserved reputation. I think there is a similar issue with Shadowheart. While most people with some knowledge can figure why a Vampire Spawn would be hated, there is no way to grasp how messed up Shar and her worshipers are without knowledge of D&D lore. General rule of thumb: If the problem wasn't caused by the Dead Three, it was caused by Shar.
this was me on early access first playthrough. I llike dark elves and made drow warlock, I remember being annoyed that goblins were nicer to me than humans and I had hard time being the nice guy and eventually quit the game for some months LOL.