Refluffing the drow.

[Rfkannen]

So drow as player race are kind of weird. I mean sure in the right setting they can work, but in a lot of settings it is just kind of... strange. So it makes sense in many campaigns that are going to have drow as enemies to not have drow characters. However it can kind of anoying to have limited options, so I beleive that it would be a waste to not use the drow race stats. So how have you used them? Races you made up, refluffed as another race, something else?

[Grayson01]

If you are using a Homebrew setting you don't really have to refluff them. You can just have different factions of Drow like FR's does. There are the Good Drow who live on the surface and whorship Eilistraee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilistraee). You could also use teh Ebberron Drow diety or any of the others. Also there can also just be good Drow, much like how Tiflings and Half-Orcs are mostly evil but are still player options.

[Rfkannen]

If you are using a Homebrew setting you don't really have to refluff them. You can just have different factions of Drow like FR's does. There are the Good Drow who live on the surface and whorship Eilistraee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilistraee). You could also use teh Ebberron Drow diety or any of the others. Also there can also just be good Drow, much like how Tiflings and Half-Orcs are mostly evil but are still player options.

Yeah that kind of thing can definitly work. I mean in my campaign the characters are close enough to a urban center that even trolls can get some amount of respect. Lot of diversety there. However I was just thinking that even personally I don't like drow, and I know a lot of people don't think they should be characters. So I wanted to see peoples ideas on useing the stats in another light.

[Vitruviansquid]

The DM says "Drow are not allowed. If you show me a character sheet that says 'drow' on it, I will slap you."

Problem solved.

[Grayson01]

The DM says "Drow are not allowed. If you show me a character sheet that says 'drow' on it, I will slap you."

Problem solved.

Maybe without the slapping part. But that is always and option.

[Greylind]

Maybe without the slapping part. But that is always and option.

Since I am using Golarian, Drow are pretty much fiend-worshippers with many different patrons, although I may keep Lolth as one of those many. But in that kind of setting, there are no good drow, to several decimal places of "none." 5E Gnolls are more likely to be heroes.

[mephnick]

I limit them to an NPC race. I like my drow as evil enemies like God intended.

The 5e Player's Guide actually says "Drow aren't PC races, but some idiot created Drizz't so now we have to put dark elves in the Player's Guide"

I'm paraphrasing of course.

[Easy_Lee]

Not all drow are bad, even in FR, just the underdark ones. Basically, the PHB writers completely forgot (or never knew in the first place) about Eilistraee and several books including the the Starlight & Shadows trilogy by Elaine Cunningham. And that's not even the most egregious case of something important being left out. No mention of psions yet, to name one.

Not only do fans know the lore better than WoTC's writers, but WoTC didn't even try to leverage the fandom's knowledge and make a more complete PHB. It's sad.

[Cambrian]

My campaign world doesn't have drow but I like the PHB drow subrace as an option.

My solution: anyone can use the drow rules. Mechanically nothing changes, but story-wise they're not drow-- they're an albino version of another variety of elf.

[Segev]

In a setting I ran, once, the sea elves, drow, and grey elves shared some history. Specifically, the grey elves and the drow got together and committed an atrocity against the sea elves which ripped their innate elven talent for magic from them as a race. The grey elves took this surplus power and used it to gain ageless immortality; the drow tried to extract still more from their share of it, and got their spell-like abilities from the surplus magical power.

Unfortunately for the drow, their efforts strained the power, and they only got the immortality; they're not ageless. They still age as slowly as any elf, but they don't stop aging even as they don't die of old age. The grey elves also made a miscalculation: WHEN they stop aging is a little random. It's not "at maturity," and some age until they're just shy of middle age, while others stop as early as half-way through puberty. A minor nuisance, comparatively, but still not ideal.

Most grey elves don't even know this history, as the elders hid their crime. The drow are more honest about it if only because they're not ashamed of it. The sea elves, for their part, mostly don't remember it, either, as too few survived from that time and those that did were busy raising their new generation. They do hate land-dwelling elves as a general rule, though, and drow in particular. (They have a harder time telling the fair-skinned elves apart, so they don't single them out for special hatred over the ire they feel towards elves in general.) The sea elves diminishment manifests mainly in having Fighter as a favored class (this was early 3e when I came up with this) and lacking any bonus to Int or Cha.

[JRutterbush]

Since I am using Golarian, Drow are pretty much fiend-worshippers with many different patrons, although I may keep Lolth as one of those many. But in that kind of setting, there are no good drow, to several decimal places of "none." 5E Gnolls are more likely to be heroes.Which is perfectly fine, since the PC's are meant to be heroes to several decimal places themselves. Being the one drow hero in all the world is a great way to make sure people remember you throughout history, after all. You can even leave some room in the epics for them to talk about your faithful gnoll sidekick.

[Karta]

I just change their names to "dark elves" and get rid of the sunlight sensitivity. I don't follow the fluff for most of the races, don't see a point in following the fluff for the Drow.

Most my games are in custom campaigns where there aren't any Drow, so if someone wants to play them they just play regular dark elves like from TES or something.

[mephnick]

Not all drow are bad, even in FR, just the underdark ones. Basically, the PHB writers completely forgot (or never knew in the first place) about Eilistraee and several books including the the Starlight & Shadows trilogy by Elaine Cunningham. And that's not even the most egregious case of something important being left out. No mention of psions yet, to name one.

Not only do fans know the lore better than WoTC's writers, but WoTC didn't even try to leverage the fandom's knowledge and make a more complete PHB. It's sad.

Eh, they're trying to send the game back to it's roots for the most part, and Eilistraee is dead.

It's not WotC's fault that authours and fans mary sue'd an entire race.

[Easy_Lee]

Regarding the sensitivity, anyone know if something similar to sunglasses or shady goggles is a thing in 5e FR?

[Grayson01]

Eh, they're trying to send the game back to it's roots for the most part, and Eilistraee is dead.

It's not WotC's fault that authours and fans mary sue'd an entire race.

I hear they are retconing that whole part and bring her and her brother back.. Sadly I kinda liked that story minus the whole it not really fitting in with any of the other FR books.

[hiryuu]

I run Lolth as Chaotic Good with a -really- bad PR department. The drow players run into are living way closer to the surface and are the sociopathic wackos the -actual- drow kicked out. Sometimes you get a wanderer from someplace else.

I also really like Eberron drow - they have a "weird" religion, and they're not evil in the "mwahaha whips and chains" sense, but more like the "those pale round eared people are touching ancient relics that nobody should be touching, let's kill them and prevent bad things from happening" sense.