Creating a drow house for Menzoberranzan

[dantiesilva]

SO in an upcoming game I will be in I shall have my own drow household to run for the most part. It will be the 49th house of Menzoberranzan. I was wondering if there was any way to tell how many warriors a house hold would have, or how much wealth they a house has, and thus your characters. If anyone could get back to me that would be great thanks.

Custom Drow priestess class
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15282392&postcount=20

[Stake A Vamp]

SO in an upcoming game I will be in I shall have my own drow household to run for the most part. It will be the 49th house of Menzoberranzan. I was wondering if there was any way to tell how many warriors a house hold would have, or how much wealth they a house has, and thus your characters. If anyone could get back to me that would be great thanks.

so, here's how i see it

soldier: moderate, not enough to be a real threat to any of the major houses, or they would be stamped out, but not so few that they are defenseless/ too easy to stamp out.

wealth: low to moderate, a lack of power could indicate that they do not have the fiscal resources to fund coups, or that they are like the little dogs, after th wolves are finished with the resources, all thats left are scraps.

[dantiesilva]

Well from what I have read in the books the armies seem to be around a thousand for the first house, but well the size of the cavern and all the other equations make that impossible, while on the other hand I have read from online sources that the Baenre house, the most powerful house, had about 150 soldiers.

As For wealth the way I was thinking about it was the family members have decent items but their soldiers (20-50) have common items.

[dantiesilva]

Sinly Und
http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=573503

House Und Wizard
http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=575071

[dantiesilva]

Sorry i have not updated in a while been working on a few different projects

[themourningstar]

The Baenre have an army of around a thousand soldiers- read the War of the Spider Queen. I did some checking in the DMG about population statistics.. I did a base population of 20,000 drow. Slaves should be 4-5 times that, and should include all of the common surface and underdark races.
I gave the First house 7.5% of the drow population- 1500 drow. The First house is supposed to be able to take any two of the other Great Houses, maybe even three- so I put there's at 3%, and worked my way down. The 43rd house should have roughly 1% of the population- 200 drow, to split amongst the PC and NPC classes as you see fit. That, plus 800 to 1000 slave troops of course.

[themourningstar]

Ah, I forgot.. I would equip each member of your house by giving them wealth equivalent to a pc of their respective level- and the noble members of your family should have much, much greater than that. There is a book somewhere or another that has the rules and costs for making a magical stronghold- The Stronghold Builders guide? Be more fun to just make something neat and get DM approval though. Hope this stuff helped. :)

[dantiesilva]

Yes it has thank you

I have been busy with other projects for my DM so your imput was very useful. Thank you.

[BWR]

See if you can dig up the old Menzo boxed set. It has a brand new House for DMs and players to use, plus an adventure and lots of useful info, including population of the houses, how many of what classes and slave races.

[themourningstar]

Never had access to that one.. Be kind of interesting to check it out- the drow are my favorite race by far. Back then they still had iinfravision, and no racial spells per day I believe :D Kind of messes up the old Drizzt books.

[dantiesilva]

Never read the original drizzit books, only the newer ones for " The legend of Drizzit"

As for a mezo box set I will have to look that up. Thank you.

[BWR]

Never had access to that one.. Be kind of interesting to check it out- the drow are my favorite race by far. Back then they still had iinfravision, and no racial spells per day I believe :D Kind of messes up the old Drizzt books.

They did have spell-like abilities. Casting darkness faerie fire once per day, plus the levitate thing. Salvatore didn't invent that.

The Drizzt books went downhill after "The Crystal Shard", though Homeland and Sojourn were pretty decent.

[themourningstar]

They did have spell-like abilities. Casting darkness faerie fire once per day, plus the levitate thing. Salvatore didn't invent that.

The Drizzt books went downhill after "The Crystal Shard", though Homeland and Sojourn were pretty decent.

Ah, I thought that Salvatore had tied them to the house sigils. When Drizzt went to the surface I thought I remembered him losing them.. And yeah, the books aren't all that. I love the series- first fantasy series I ever read- but... Meh. Writing is subpar after reading authors like Jordan, Friedman or Sanderson, and Drizzt needs to get off his podium sometimes. Books are a little too preachy.

[dantiesilva]

Why I was trying to invent a new house in the underdark for a game I will be joining.

What level should the marton mother be, as she would be the highest ranking member of the house as well as the house wizard, weapons master, and then the soldiers, followed by slaves.

If anyone could help with this it would be great as it would allow me to move much quicker on finishing up the house and being able to use it in one of the games I am in.

[BWR]

Generally, the more powerful the house, the more powerful the matron mother.
A very small, weak, new house might not have an MM of more than 9th level. The lowest listed in the Menzo set is 11. Old Bitch Baenre was level 25, but Barrison Del Armgo (Sp?) MM was 13/13 level. And one of the lowest ranking houses had a 20th level MM.

[dantiesilva]

So I should not have a MM above level 10 then?

[BWR]

That's up to you. All I can say is that the tendency was that the less powerful the house, the less powerful the MM.

[dantiesilva]

Well I was going off the fact that this MM was once a part of the first house but knew she could not win inside the house so choose to make her own where she would be forgotten and thus rise to power.

[themourningstar]

How are you going to be playing this campaign? Is the MM going to be your main PC? If so, I would try to tie your houses rise to power to your characters rise in level.. And even if it isn't your main PC, a powerful mage can definitely be the power behind the throne..

[dantiesilva]

This will be a random NPC house that the PCs (me included) run into in my DMs game world when we get into the underdark.