Good ways to combat drow

[Calemyr]

A campaign I'm currently involved in is about to venture into the setting's version of the Underdark for the first time in the next session. Fortunately for me, before we can make that trek my level 13 Artificer will have 18 days to prepare and research. This artificer specializes in gadgets, ranging from a homunculi army (using the leadership feat) to reinventing the gun (black powder in this setting has been invented but largely ignored because magic is more powerful and more cost effective than black powder) to building a gargantuan (level 12) effigy wyvern that serves as the party's transportation.

What I'm curious about is this: what magical gear would be considered no brainers for a party venturing into the underdark? Are there any aces that you can suggest I hide in his belt of many pockets?

[Pronounceable]

A drow repellant spray would be ideal.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

High-level light spells. Anti-poison spells. Spider killer. Wand of Assay Resistance. ToM had a magic item that blocks the light for Darkvision, one of those would be helpful.
Other than that, plan on multiple humanoid caster opponents, essentially, that probably will go Tucker on you.

[SurlySeraph]

Every party member who doesn't already have darkvision or at least low-light vision would benefit from Goggles of Night. However, they're overpriced, so a wand of Light or Daylight might be a better option. A Belt of Dwarvenkind is a good but more expensive alternative, especially since it gives you Stonecunning (in the Underdark, everything is made out of stone).
If you can't fly, you need rope. There are always gaping chasms to fall into.
Items that give you a bonus to spot or listen are also useful, given the number of stealthy underground-dwelling creatures.
As for killing Drow, just get a wand of something that ignores spell resistance. There are plenty of good Conjuration spells for that.

[Jayabalard]

A drow repellant spray would be ideal.

Bat-Drow repellent mihgt be even better.

[BendakStarkiler]

There are some no brainers that you should bring along, sunrods and everburning torches, but if you are inventing things maybe something like a repeating crossbow with bolts of true sunlight, you would need to find a cleric with the sun domain for that though.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

There are some no brainers that you should bring along, sunrods and everburning torches, but if you are inventing things maybe something like a repeating crossbow with bolts of true sunlight, you would need to find a cleric with the sun domain for that though.

Artificer. And Light spells on arrows are very helpful v. Drow.

[chiasaur11]

Well, it shouldn't be too bad.

Most of them will kill the others to throw off the yoke of their chaotic evil kin.

[BlueWizard]

SR reducers. Lots of them for the big bad leader guys.

[Person_Man]

Immunity to Poison, from the lists of stuff:

Spoiler

Show

Immunity to poison
Monk 11
Druid 9
Tattoed Monk 3, ecl 9, Complete Warrior, crane tattoo
Elemental Savant 9, ecl 14, Complete Arcane
Bone Knight 8, ecl 12, Eberron: Five Nations
Contemplative 5, ecl 15, Complete Divine
Scorpion Heritor 5, ecl 10, Sandstorm - only against scorpion poisons
Warforged, race, Eberron & Monster Manual 3
Necrocarnum Mantle, soulmeld, Magic of Incarnum
Fiend Blooded 10, ecl 15, Heroes of Horror
Justice of Weald and Woe 10, ecl 16, FR: Champions of Ruin
Buer, vestige, ecl 7, Tome of Magic
Serpent Slayer 3, ecl 9, FR: Serpent Kingdoms
Master of Vipers 1, ecl 10, FR: Serpent Kingdoms
Gatekeeper Mystagogue 3, ecl 8, Player's Guide to Eberron
Shadowcaster 15, Tome of Magic, sustaining shadow, see text
Child of Night 6, ecl 11, Tome of Magic, stacks with sustaining shadow, see text
Bone Knight 8, ecl 12, Eberron: Five Nations, plus other immunities
Seeker of the Song 4, ecl 14, Complete Arcane, all allies within 30', see text
Holt Warden 5, ecl 10, Complete Champion
Sanctified One 1 (Wee Jas), ecl 6, Complete Champion, for one minute per day
Vermin Keeper 3, ecl 8, FR: Underdark, organic poisons only
Pale Master 10, ecl 15, Libris Mortis
Haztaratain 7, ecl 12, Eberron: Secrets of Sarlona
Feast, domain, ???, against ingested diseases
Vow of the Spider Queen, feat, Drow of the Underdark
Demonbinder 7, ecl 12, Drow of the Underdark, even against magical poisons
Heart of Steel, warforged graft, Faiths of Eberron

A Warlock/Demonbinder might be ideal, in that you get immunity to all poisons, the ability to see in darkness, telepathy, UMD, and various other useful powers. Of course, you have to be Chaotic Evil, and drow (or half-drow, which counts as drow). But hey, I'm sure your DM will be happy that you're not playing Drizzit.

Undo Resistance feat: If you deal Sneak Attack damage with a Cold Iron weapon, you reduce the target's Spell Resistance by 1. Multiple uses stack. Fiendish Codex II.

Fear. SR doesn't work against extraordinary ability like Frightful Presence, Frightful Strike, Intimidate, etc.

There are a million ways to gain magical darkvision, blindsense, tremorsense, true seeing, etc. Find one that works for your build.

Also note that most DMs I know play Drow as Lawful Evil. So you can often sneak into Underdark by posing as slavers or some similarly depraved merchant. A good Bluff Skill goes a long way. Maybe a Marshal/Tattooed Monk? Or Haberdash?

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Immunity to Poison, from the lists of stuff:

Spoiler

Show

Immunity to poison
Monk 11
Druid 9
Tattoed Monk 3, ecl 9, Complete Warrior, crane tattoo
Elemental Savant 9, ecl 14, Complete Arcane
Bone Knight 8, ecl 12, Eberron: Five Nations
Contemplative 5, ecl 15, Complete Divine
Scorpion Heritor 5, ecl 10, Sandstorm - only against scorpion poisons
Warforged, race, Eberron & Monster Manual 3
Necrocarnum Mantle, soulmeld, Magic of Incarnum
Fiend Blooded 10, ecl 15, Heroes of Horror
Justice of Weald and Woe 10, ecl 16, FR: Champions of Ruin
Buer, vestige, ecl 7, Tome of Magic
Serpent Slayer 3, ecl 9, FR: Serpent Kingdoms
Master of Vipers 1, ecl 10, FR: Serpent Kingdoms
Gatekeeper Mystagogue 3, ecl 8, Player's Guide to Eberron
Shadowcaster 15, Tome of Magic, sustaining shadow, see text
Child of Night 6, ecl 11, Tome of Magic, stacks with sustaining shadow, see text
Bone Knight 8, ecl 12, Eberron: Five Nations, plus other immunities
Seeker of the Song 4, ecl 14, Complete Arcane, all allies within 30', see text
Holt Warden 5, ecl 10, Complete Champion
Sanctified One 1 (Wee Jas), ecl 6, Complete Champion, for one minute per day
Vermin Keeper 3, ecl 8, FR: Underdark, organic poisons only
Pale Master 10, ecl 15, Libris Mortis
Haztaratain 7, ecl 12, Eberron: Secrets of Sarlona
Feast, domain, ???, against ingested diseases
Vow of the Spider Queen, feat, Drow of the Underdark
Demonbinder 7, ecl 12, Drow of the Underdark, even against magical poisons
Heart of Steel, warforged graft, Faiths of Eberron

A Warlock/Demonbinder might be ideal, in that you get immunity to all poisons, the ability to see in darkness, telepathy, UMD, and various other useful powers. Of course, you have to be Chaotic Evil, and drow (or half-drow, which counts as drow). But hey, I'm sure your DM will be happy that you're not playing Drizzit.

Undo Resistance feat: If you deal Sneak Attack damage with a Cold Iron weapon, you reduce the target's Spell Resistance by 1. Multiple uses stack. Fiendish Codex II.

Fear. SR doesn't work against extraordinary ability like Frightful Presence, Frightful Strike, Intimidate, etc.

There are a million ways to gain magical darkvision, blindsense, tremorsense, true seeing, etc. Find one that works for your build.

Also note that most DMs I know play Drow as Lawful Evil. So you can often sneak into Underdark by posing as slavers or some similarly depraved merchant. A good Bluff Skill goes a long way. Maybe a Marshal/Tattooed Monk? Or Haberdash?

This is mid-campaign.

[BardicDuelist]

Immunity to Poison, from the lists of stuff:

Spoiler

Show

Immunity to poison
Monk 11
Druid 9
Tattoed Monk 3, ecl 9, Complete Warrior, crane tattoo
Elemental Savant 9, ecl 14, Complete Arcane
Bone Knight 8, ecl 12, Eberron: Five Nations
Contemplative 5, ecl 15, Complete Divine
Scorpion Heritor 5, ecl 10, Sandstorm - only against scorpion poisons
Warforged, race, Eberron & Monster Manual 3
Necrocarnum Mantle, soulmeld, Magic of Incarnum
Fiend Blooded 10, ecl 15, Heroes of Horror
Justice of Weald and Woe 10, ecl 16, FR: Champions of Ruin
Buer, vestige, ecl 7, Tome of Magic
Serpent Slayer 3, ecl 9, FR: Serpent Kingdoms
Master of Vipers 1, ecl 10, FR: Serpent Kingdoms
Gatekeeper Mystagogue 3, ecl 8, Player's Guide to Eberron
Shadowcaster 15, Tome of Magic, sustaining shadow, see text
Child of Night 6, ecl 11, Tome of Magic, stacks with sustaining shadow, see text
Bone Knight 8, ecl 12, Eberron: Five Nations, plus other immunities
Seeker of the Song 4, ecl 14, Complete Arcane, all allies within 30', see text
Holt Warden 5, ecl 10, Complete Champion
Sanctified One 1 (Wee Jas), ecl 6, Complete Champion, for one minute per day
Vermin Keeper 3, ecl 8, FR: Underdark, organic poisons only
Pale Master 10, ecl 15, Libris Mortis
Haztaratain 7, ecl 12, Eberron: Secrets of Sarlona
Feast, domain, ???, against ingested diseases
Vow of the Spider Queen, feat, Drow of the Underdark
Demonbinder 7, ecl 12, Drow of the Underdark, even against magical poisons
Heart of Steel, warforged graft, Faiths of Eberron

A Warlock/Demonbinder might be ideal, in that you get immunity to all poisons, the ability to see in darkness, telepathy, UMD, and various other useful powers. Of course, you have to be Chaotic Evil, and drow (or half-drow, which counts as drow). But hey, I'm sure your DM will be happy that you're not playing Drizzit.

Undo Resistance feat: If you deal Sneak Attack damage with a Cold Iron weapon, you reduce the target's Spell Resistance by 1. Multiple uses stack. Fiendish Codex II.

Fear. SR doesn't work against extraordinary ability like Frightful Presence, Frightful Strike, Intimidate, etc.

There are a million ways to gain magical darkvision, blindsense, tremorsense, true seeing, etc. Find one that works for your build.

Also note that most DMs I know play Drow as Lawful Evil. So you can often sneak into Underdark by posing as slavers or some similarly depraved merchant. A good Bluff Skill goes a long way. Maybe a Marshal/Tattooed Monk? Or Haberdash?

Um, he has a character. He's an artificer. He's looking for ITEMs that will help him that he can make in 18 days.

[LibraryOgre]

Cast Continual Flame on a number of rocks. The ability to "light dump" and keep them from throwing darkness is great; in 2e, when it was free, we'd spend days... even weeks... making Continual Light rocks for "drow bags" (canvas bags that we dumped on the ground when we saw drow).

[potatocubed]

The best way I know of to combat drow is to hire a bunch of adventurers to go into the Underdark and fight them. Oh... wait.

[TheThan]

Bat-Drow repellent mihgt be even better.

wait, there are bat-drow now?

[Dr Bwaa]

I agree, Haberdash could do it =D

Since you obviously can't make him (you could hire him!) I do say the slavers idea is a good one. It worked in Star Wars! Just make a Ring of Glibness*

Keep options for Darkvision open, but go with Daylight and other high-level light spells first. Darkvision helps you, but Daylight helps you and hurts them.

Keep a scroll (wand, Artificer Item, whatever) or two of Passwall around. Move Earth and Stone Shape are good, too. Your DM has given you a lot of time to prepare, so you should have all the scrolls/wands you could ever need at your disposal, to deal with every possibility. Spider repellant/antidote is a very good idea. Carrying around a couple spiders to cast Giant Vermin on is also a very nice tool in almost every situation if you have a good imagination. The druid in one of the games discovered this spell and has since informed me that he always, always, always keeps at least two live spiders on his person for this very reason, so he doesn't have to look for them.

*Do not EVER make a ring of Glibness, or if you do, make only one and treat it as a Major Artifact, not a "one-per-party-member" thing. Otherwise your DM will cry forever.

[ocato]

Well, I first and foremost suggest Infusing your weapon with Elfbane and/or Magebane as often as possible. No Drow likes getting pelted with the +3 (GMW) Shocking Elfbane Magebane Heavy Repeater (or firearm your character invented or whatever).

Getting around drow SR is typically done best by either not casting spells or casting spells that don't care about SR, obviously. Anything you can do to make your Melee stronger (potions of bull's strength or enlarge person maybe?) will be valuable so long as you can keep them covered. I also have to agree that you're going to want as many scrolls of stone shape, wall of stone, passwall, etc for getting around and trapping your enemies. You'll want a wand of daylight (obviously) and probably a wand of Neutralize poison (get the druid version to save on caster level if you want to save cash). Assay Spell Resistance is the kind of thing your party's cleric should be worried about presumably. If your party caster isn't thinking of it, make sure you mention Circle of Protection: Evil. A nice little boost to AC/saves and most importantly, it'll keep that Cleric of Lolth or eeeevil drow wizard from dominating someone in the party. If the caster won't bite, get a scroll or something, even if it's just protection from evil for you.

As for 'aces' in the hole? Nothing really springs to mind except the possibility of stone-shaping them into little prisons or mazes and liberal use of daylight during combat.

[Doomsy]

Kill the alpha females first. The rest will start backstabbing each other brutally in the power vacuum. Lloth is a poor social engineer.

Also, a high diplomacy. Chaotic Evil is all about career advancement. Plan accordingly.

[D Knight]

pack some Raid and a few wands of daylight it will keep them away from you with no problem. and yse i an serious about the Raid because they are like cockcroaches one spry and they die. also eybon eyes (lets you see through magical darkness its from SC) and casting it on reg goggles with perm or like said before goggles of dark.

[Leewei]

Sudden exposure to bright light blinds Drow. My beguiler took delight in spending a fight against them flashing an item with daylight cast on it. The DM understandably ruled that the blindness trick would only work once per fight ... drat.

Glitterdust is a great spell. They still get their +2 racial save vs. spells and spell-like abilities, however it bypasses SR and arguably triggers light-blindness even on a successful save.

Drow sleep-poison is a pain in the butt. The cheapest dodge for this is a delay poison spell which grants 1 hr/level poison immunity with the catch that the poisons all hit you when the spell expires. Make sure you have a healer with either a high Heal skill or else a neutralize poison spell to back this up. Rouse, a 1st level spell from PHB2 is a great countermeasure to the sleep poison as well.

Pure casters need to heavily bias their build to overcome / ignore SR. Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration feats are desirable. Robe of the Archmage / Ioun Stone / Tattoos / anything else possible to boost your caster level for overcoming SR is needed not just for the Drow, but also for their Demon allies and the likely Mind Flayer encounter or two.

[monty]

I recommend fire, and lots of it. Works for a surprising number of problems.

[TheThan]

I recommend fire, and lots of it. Works for a surprising number of problems.

Not just problems related to DnD.

[erikun]

Since nobody has mentioned it: some way to move around underground. Cloak of Spider Climb, or Cloak of Arachne or whatever they're called, will help with impassable walls. Something with Feather Fall or Levitate will keep the Drow from just knocking you into pits.

Some way to see in the dark, as has been mentioned. Darkvision is preferred, as it leaves you less obvious, but sunlight is good in a fight.

Stoneshape, because it can be used for anything.

Others have covered anything else I can think of, and better than I could.

[monty]

Not just problems related to DnD.

Of course. It follows the same principle as brute force - if it doesn't solve the problem, you probably aren't using enough.

[TheThan]

Of course. It follows the same principle as brute force - if it doesn't solve the problem, you probably aren't using enough.

Naturally

(this space taken up for word count)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Get everyone in the party a Ring of the Darkhidden and a Blindfold of True Darkness. Ring of the Darkhidden is from Magic of Faerun, it causes the wearer to be invisible to darkvision, but clearly visible under normal light via normal vision. It costs 6700 gp, requires Forge Ring, CL 3, and Invisibility. A Blindfold of True Darkness is in the Magic Item Compendium, it grants Blindsight 30' and makes you immune to gaze attacks but blocks your normal vision, with a price tag of 9000 gp. Get a Staff or a few Scrolls of Heightened Deeper Darkness, counted as a 9th level spell if possible. It will overpower normal light sources and any light spell of 8th level or lower, including any spells that would normally overcome a Deeper Darkness. The party can travel through the underdark completely unhindered this way.

[sonofzeal]

Of course. It follows the same principle as brute force - if it doesn't solve the problem, you probably aren't using enough.

Remember: explosions expedite change.

[Iku Rex]

Ring of the Darkhidden is from Magic of Faerun, it causes the wearer to be invisible to darkvision, but clearly visible under normal light via normal vision.

(The most up-to-date version is in the MIC, and it's only 2000 gp. Badly broken in an underdark campaign.)

[jcsw]

Be careful, underdark sunglasses are only 10gp, so don't go overboard with the light.

[Khanderas]

Bat-Drow repellent mihgt be even better.

The nature of the Bat-Drow repellent is such, that you never need to list it.
your belt always contains items beginning with Bat- that you need.