10: Their Natural Aversion To Sunlight
9: Their Creator, Lolth, Is Still Alive & Present
8: They're A Matriarchal Society
7: Their Society Runs On Slavery
6: The Drow Culture Is Counterproductive
5: They're More Attractive Than Other Elves
4: Some Become Disillusioned, Leading To Kindness
3: They're A Bit Short
2: Mind Flayers Fear Them
1: Attempts To Change The Racist Stereotype
If you remove what it is well known and what is wrong you have nothing left and this are the people who claim to be fans.
Despite making up only 13% of the Elf population of the Forgotten Realms, Drow are responsible for 50% of the violence and murder.
Not even among elves, they just straight up account for 50% of the violence in the Forgotten Realms.
Among the elves, watch yourselves
Near the knife-ears, it's not empty fears.
NEVER TRUST AN ELF!
I hate how they make the connection that if the elves have dark skin then it must be a connection to black people.
They have obsidian black skin and not dark brown skin and culturally there is nothing in common. I assume they would make the same claim if they had dark green or dark purple skin, anything except white skins and even that, I bet yellow skin would imply something racist.
I hate SJW looking for offence where there is none to begin with. Drow as a concept was extremely fucking cool and the SJWs are going to ruin it to somehow save the Drow.
They're sometimes drawn this way. Like in that official comic about Drittz (or whatever his name) and his hot sisters.
Them being green or purple is just for artist reasons as well as print reasons. Much easier to see details in shading and whatnot instead of just a black blob.
Dark grey rather than green.
There are literally dark brown skinned elves... Which are known as a more savage and brutal and stronger, faster, but less mentally swift elf subspecies: The wood elves, compared to the high elves.
You'd think if they were ready to complain about racial stereotypes, it would be that the pale elves have int bonuses while the tan elves don't. Drow are one of the strongest elf subspecies, rivaled only by elemental elves and averiels (winged elves), complaining "we're literally leagues stronger than all other elves, because we're black, how tragic and racist" is so dumb, there's clearly better targets. But that would require the writer to actually know D&D, which I guess is too much to ask.
I think wild elves have brown skin and wood elves are described as tanned, or something stupid like that.
Thing is that drow elves are iconic, wild elves or wood elves are what ever, you can remove them entirely and no one would care. For the average guy, there are high elves and drow and that is about it.
Drow have lore, books and fans. You must hurt the fans.
Those who wanted to play as a drow played as one without issues, you had to wear a disguise or people would fear you, it was special and interesting. Now they want to remove the evil race stigma, which kind of sucks, it removes what was interesting to play as one to begin with.
Marvin the Martian had better watch out, I guess. He'll be next.
HIGH IMPACT SEXUAL VIOLENCE
6: The Drow Culture Is Counterproductive - the drow are extremely powerful and efficient. In fact it is one of the major points of the drow, if you create a very competitive environment that is unforgiving to failure you will have a superior but very cruel society. This is why most people fear them.
2: Mind Flayers Fear Them - not true. In the books Drizzt is enthralled by mind flayers. They seem to fear the Gith but that is about it.
1: Attempts To Change The Racist Stereotype - this makes no sense, since it is not the actual Drow trying to change racist stereotypes of one of the coolest race created but wotc doing it.
I'm conflicted on 4, Drizzt was different do to his father, although I do not remember why his father was different to begin with, except their eyes.
I disagree. I can't remember any names but there have been a few companies that shot themselves in the foot by promoting cutthroat competitiveness between their constituent parts, resulting in their employees refusing to to help their co-workers if not actively sabotaging them. Every minute a Drow spends avoiding a knife in the back is a minute not spent doing something productive.
I would say "counterproductive" depends on what your goal is.
Remember, Lolth is not a goddess of the nine Hells, she is not an Archdevil. She is not Lawful. Lolth is a goddess of the Abyss, the demons, she is Chaotic. Those who worship her revere ALL aspects of her, including the fact she's chaotic. Drow create large societies with counter-intuitive laws that are meant to be broken and fucktarded matriarchal murder-cracy ruling structures in order to better worship her.
If you look at it from the goal of creating a chaotic and evil place, to better worship their patron deity, their society is VERY productive!
I don't like that argument - you make a character less interesting when you treat alignment as prescriptive rather than descriptive. I view Lolth as the Drow's abusive mother: she is Chaotic Evil because she hurts her children to keep them isolated and vying for her attention, not because she's a Goddess of Chaotic Evilness.
Cause and effect reversal: She is not bound by Chaotic Evil. Chaotic Evil is bound by her. She's a god. She defines terms, she is not defined by them. If she were to go around hugging puppies, then hugging puppies would, in some form, be a chaotic evil act, for the chaotic evil god has acted so.
That's even worse. An evil act is evil because it knowingly causes or risks causing unnecessary harm or suffering to the innocent, not because someone arbitrarily defined as "Evil" likes doing it. The alternative is just a lie self-aggrandising sociopaths tell themselves so that they can call themselves "Good" while constantly committing evil acts for evil ends.
But yet in the D&D universe, "Good" and "Evil" are tangible things. You can have a bottle full of "good", you can have a keg full of "evil". A strong enough wizard can make a big ol' vaccuum cleaner and suck the "evil", or "good", out of someone without altering their life philosophy, memories, opinions, or worldview.
A Marut, a Devil, and an Archon are all lawful, and are all assholes. Neutral. Evil. Good. All three will knowingly harm an innocent, if they felt it necessary. All three do not harm an innocent, if they do not feel it necessary. They're all more lawful than good/neutral/evil, but they still exhibit that other alignment somehow.
If someone held a serf contract for a person in debtor's prison, and the debtor ran away, and the contract owner asked for help, all three of them would go "back into slavery you go, little mortal." Because keeping contracts is important (Marut), because the contract is a deal made (Devil), because following contractual obligations helps society (Archon). The action itself is the same, the result is the same, even the intent is nigh the same: Keeping the contract. But for one to do it is Good, and for another is Evil, and for another is merely Neutral.
D&D alignment systems don't work well, but if you can get a pot of "evil", and make anyone who drinks it evil, then suck it out again, with no long-term effects on the imbiber, then "Evil" vs "Good" is no more personal and emotive than "heat" vs "cold". You can put on a mantle of cold resistance, and you can put on an Axiomatic Holy sword, and then you can pull the Holy out. It's just a fundamental force in D&D.
Maybe, I do not know but that was the point in the books. The drow were superior in terms of skills to any other elves, they had incredibly strong fighters and very strong magic both divine and arcane, they had high resistances, innate powers and tactics that made them extremely deadly. I do not know how the same thing would work in an environment that is not combat focused but that is how they were portraited in the books.
Except that the avoiding a knife in the back is the productive part. They are superior do to their combat prowess as well as manipulation and deception.
In real life scenarios it would probably fail do to the inability to expand, you can only expand if you have trust others with power. Second you need large number of trained people to create innovation and the heartless society would have to few trained people to generate innovation and in some cases it would purposely keep people down.
However it works perfectly in a medieval fantasy setting designed around combat prowess, where innovation means a new spell or a weapon enchant and education is not wide spread enough that population numbers would affect innovation.
So it would work in a drow society but not in a modern day society.
On top of that, it is not unique as a concept. The dark side in star wars is made the same way.
I think R.A. Salvatore changed Drizzt's backstory a little bit between Crystal Shard and the actual Drow books. In the Crystal Shard his father straight up worshiped the Forest God (read: Druid God) Mielikki, and he was forced to kill him? I think?
In the Drow trilogy, his father had an attack of conscience after being forced to kill a baby. And he was possessed by an evil spirit so Drizzt was forced to kill him.
The Illithid do not "fear" the drow, they respect them as a threat and come into violent conflict with them regularly. See: Baldur's Gate 2 where they straight up abduct a high ranking priestess.
The dark elves will always be villainous. It is their nature and their culture, anyone who says otherwise is future sacrifice to Lolth.
Nowhere in the source material does it say mindflayers fear them. Mindflayers consider them a lesser species(much the same way drow consider everyone else) but both have a healthy respect for each other.
Mindflayers aren't going to go out of their way to attack the drow, but will be more than happy to enslave a scouting party that dwelled too close a hivemind and the drow know attacking a hivemind will cost far more than it is worth.
Illithids fear dark elves in the same sense that humans fear wasps.
Some rare people might hold a phobia, but wasps're clearly lesser entities with bigger populations. But they could cause damage in big enough numbers or if you mess with their nest.
I wouldn't really call that a noteworthy trait.
I’ll never forget discovering them on a win 95 comp, some real old version called eye of the beholder, Drow chicks had tight suits like 7 of 9 but were douchebags to deal with
....
That basically sums up everything I ever knew about the Drow, and I never read the books (we all agreed not to cheat with each other's books, and I just never bothered in the years since I played) and have only run into the fuckers maybe once in a game that I can remember. So I basically know nothing about the Drow, but these are the things I do know. (Well, except for maybe the mind-flayer bit, but the rest clicked.)
Gods, those lists seem to be getting stupider and lazier by the year.
Drow society never made sense to me tbh. You can't have a massive network of hospitals and schools and banks if your entire ethos is "screw the other guy, backstab your friends". It just wouldn't function. Even the defense of "but they use slaves for that" doesn't cover the fact that it's designed to be super corrupt and self-destructive.
It's like an entire country of Kamala Harrises. It shouldn't work.
Not sure about hospitals since every house had priestesses, more priestesses = more power. But the "school" is amply described in the Drow books, you follow Drizzt during his school years where he learns to be a fighter.
The school works because the matrons wish it. The school was another way to take out competition and prove that they have better people and stuff like that. It was very important for a house o have the best in school. So the school was just another playing field for them. Becoming a teacher for a male was one of the few ways that he could gain prestige, so they wanted to do that. Matrons rule the society with an iron fist so as long as matrons wanted something it would happen. So the schools worked flawlessly with a high death rate.
More to add, the Drow society had to abide by laws. A house could not openly move against another house. They had to do it in secret, although everyone knew what was happening. If some members of a house survived the onslaught the house that attacked would have been terminated by the other houses.
Now if the house doing the attack managed to do it in secrecy it meant they had the blessing of Lloth and unofficially they were celebrated for their cunning.
My point is that they could not just go around killing others, strangely they had rules that had to be respected.
As a side note, does anybody find it aggravating that only Left Wing Dnd sessions get promoted? In general, I mean. On youtube it's always this super corporate liberal group playing out identity fantasies and on Dnd forums I keep running into weirdos talking about revolution and bringing liberal democracy to feudal kingdoms.
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