D&D 5E Drow Characters

[Warpiglet-7]

Has anyone played a drow in 5e?

I was recently amazed at how many racial spells are available for them. With the racial feat of drow high magic, by level 5 a drow could be very classically drow with six! Useful spells.

a drow warlock would be useful and effective potentially in all pillars of play.

my main concern is one of immersion. I no longer play evil characters and find it difficult to believe there would be many good drow.

neutral? Maybe with some creativity. Not a fan of super contrived Drizzt clones. Honestly, loved the books nearly 30! Years ago but not Drizzt so much.

anyone have a good time with 5e drow? A single classed drow hex blade or Eldritch Knight would be intriguing (if the story is right).

 

[DND_Reborn]

We had a true neutral Drow in our game a while back. A lot depends on the nature of drow in your game. Our DM had traditional attitudes towards Drow at large, so the player had to make efforts to hide her appearance often. As a warlock with Mask of Many Faces it would be relatively simple to hide your appearance if needed.

I think you can definitely have fun with playing a drow, and the possible challenge that goes along with it depending on the nature of the campaign.

 

[Sacrosanct]

drow are so overdone I'd sooner end up playing something like an elephant or minotaur before a drow. Also, I think many people who do play drow ignore the sunlight sensitivity thing.

 

[humble minion]

Purely mechanically, the disadvantage on attack rolls in daylight could be almost crippling unless you're playing an entirely dungeon-focused or underground campaign. You could get around this partly by playing a sorceror with with no attack roll spells i guess, but warlock is so Eldritch Blast-centric that it could be a real problem.

'Jaded' is a reasonable way to play non-evil drow, I reckon, but frankly, if you think about possible responses to childhood trauma or being raised in a cult, there's a pile of character ideas right there. They grew up in an evil society where worshipping an evil god was mandatory on pain of being slowly fed to spiders, and where slavery, murder, assassination, live sacrifice, demonology, etc were routine. That sort of thing messes with you. Some react by embracing the environment whole-heartedly and becoming the next generation of clerics of Lloth, some run as soon as they can, some mouth the words enough to avoid punishment and get by from day to day. Of the ones that escape, maybe some consciously seek to become the antithesis of the society they fled (drow paladin?), some are fanatically vengeful against their previous people, some suffer huge PTSD, some are glad to be out but have internalised certain parts of the standar Lloth-y indoctrination that surfaces at unexpected times. Maybe they instinctively defer to female characters while offhandedly ordering male characters around, maybe it takes them a long, long time to believe that anyone at all can be trusted and relied on, or maybe they refuse to kill spiders (because as a drow you learn early that this is sacrilege), maybe they're hugely dismissive of and racist towards, say, dwarves because they've only ever met dwarves who are broken-spirited long-term slaves living in squalour.

You don;t necessarily need to be good-aligned to want to flee drow society - it's an awful place to be even as a neutral. 'Good' and 'compassion' for many probably isn't even a concept they've got words for. But a neutral who is escaping drow enemies, or couldn't take it any more and bolted, or even one who got marooned on the surface after a raid went wrong and actually kinda liked not being told what to do by spiderclerics any more - that's enough for a PC to work with. Aspirations towards good may or may not come later - that can be character development that can happen in play.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Yeah I am not a player that ignores weaknesses and accepts benefits.

Disadvantage in bright sunlight. Period.

I think my hang up is the psychological toll of the culture.

unless there was a good influence...maybe a magic item...and opportunities to spend time with goodly captives or svirfneblin or hell, myconids...I Dunno I just have trouble getting into it and yet am intrigued by the race in a way.

maybe a N hexblade influenced by a patron and also befriended by the captives? It would take thought though.

back in the 80s, we played the occasional fugitive evil drow in renegade adventuring parties but keeping them hidden was...work. We were playing murderhobos unapologetically and intentionally.

I am not sure I could get into it without a pretty compelling idea these days.

 

[DND_Reborn]

maybe a LN hexblade influenced by a patron and befriended by the captives? It would take through the.

I think having the patron's influence being what helped you survive drow society until you could leave it is the best route, but a lot also depends on what type of character you want to play.

 

[auburn2]

Has anyone played a drow in 5e?

I was recently amazed at how many racial spells are available for them. With the racial feat of drow high magic, by level 5 a drow could be very classically drow with six! Useful spells.

a drow warlock would be useful and effective potentially in all pillars of play.

my main concern is one of immersion. I no longer play evil characters and find it difficult to believe there would be many good drow.

neutral? Maybe with some creativity. Not a fan of super contrived Drizzt clones. Honestly, loved the books nearly 30! Years ago but not Drizzt so much.

anyone have a good time with 5e drow? A single classed drow hex blade or Eldritch Knight would be intriguing (if the story is right).

So I DM a group I have been doing a long time, since 1E. One of the players often plays a good female drow, typically a cleric or cleric-wizard worshiping Elistree. Right now she is playing a good female drow warlock-rogue in 5E.

When I count up all the good drow she has played over the years, her characters probably account for half of all the good female drow in Ferun. She is certainly not a Drizzt clone because she has never played a martial character ... or a male for that matter.

Is it odd that a full half or more of the parties I DM with that group have a good drow? Yes it is odd, but it is a player and it is a player's choice. That is the character she likes to play.

One other house rule I use - I allow a feat for daylight adaptation. A Drow can take this feat to eliminate penalties associated with sunlight or bright light. That is a steep price to pay though.

 

[MGibster]

my main concern is one of immersion. I no longer play evil characters and find it difficult to believe there would be many good drow.

I'm a big fan of evil Drow, but when they became a regular playable race in the PHB I decided I needed to make sure there were plenty of good ones. So in my little homebrew campaign, Drow aren't evil. They still have a spider motif going on, they're matriacrchal, and aside from some strictly controlled trade they're isolationist, but they're typically not evil.

 

[opacitizen]

Just finished DMing a multi session one shot purposefully featuring and built around Eilistraee-worshipping (non-evil) drow player characters who were already living on the surface in a kind of a refugee camp. They didn't have much contact with the surface dwelling races, the camp being located in ruin in a primeval forest, but the local druids were supportive of them, mostly, because of Eilistraee.

Having an all drow party mostly negated the issues arising from sunlight etc, as the characters and the whole drow community operated during the night and meditated / rested while the sun was up.

No, nobody was a Drizzt clone, even though we did have a ranger.

It worked quite well.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Disadvantage in bright sunlight. Period.

Solution: Gnomish spectacles of darkening.