The Complete Guide to Drow

[Messageboard Golem]

The Complete Guide to Drow is a stand-alone, world-neutral sourcebook covering everything you ever wanted to know about drow. It focuses on aspects of the drow that escape coverage in conventional sources. Youll learn about drow mutations and half-breeds, ranging from the horrific burol (half drow, half mind flayer) to the more common half-demon shur and half-goblin urbam. Six new classes and prestige classes are presented, replete with new feats, magic, and equipment. Subterranean drow society is described in great detail, from social structure and army construction to weapons, poisons, and constructs, including the horrific drow war machines built from hollowed-out shells of giant beetles. Rounding it all out are a host of new underdark monsters, campaign ideas, and more.

 

[GameWyrd]

Hmm. The Complete Guide to Drow has a shaky start. I found myself turning to page 86 of the Monster Manual to remind myself what the default basics of the Drow are. Jet-black skin, evil, live underground, spider goddess and matriarchal.

It’s pretty much from here that the Guide picks up. The Drow are still evil, they don’t have to have jet-black skin (the front cover has blue Drow), they do live underground, they’re still matriarchal and spider Goddesses are still important. It’s a different deity set though. Lolth, the spider goddess in WotC’s tome isn’t Open Source and so Goodman Games writing for Natural 20 Press has to come up with something different. Rather slyly there is the Spider Queen deity and Tororthun as a possible aspect of that deity or perhaps as another spider goddess of her own. It’s sly because it leaves readers and GMs to freely assume that Lolth is the Spider Queen, or Tororthum, or another aspect of the Spider Queen like Tororthum. There’s a history for the Drow right at the start of the product, a story of conflicts between the elves and their allies and how the ben’docian (dark elves) lost the Kindred Wars, how they divided and entered the deserts, jungles and caverns, of how they all changed but only those who entered the underground caverns survived and became the Drow we know today. It’s a simple enough story and didn’t really inspire me but by the time I’d read the supplement twice I released it starts an important trend. The history runs into the social structure of the Drow. The structure is as you would expect if you’re used to Drow in the various forms in popular high fantasy campaign settings. Various Houses politick and complete with each other and within themselves. The Complete Guide to Drow doesn’t make a song and dance about it but it does explicitly state that the society is matriarchal. The role of male Drow isn’t so clear; by implication we might pick up that they’re not treated very well at all but there seem to be exceptions here and there. There’s enough text to help you get to grips with Drow at war – the shameless use of fodder troops that are just there to die and with who the Drow trade with in the Underdark. Underdark? Illithids? There are a lot of pre-conceived Drow ideas that are taken for granted by this Guide… but I think it just about gets away with it. If you’re buying this book then you’re not taking your first anxious steps into the Dungeons and Dragons flavoured aspect of the hobby.

The chapter on Drow characters does better. From the start enough attention is paid to the inevitable Drow renegade idea. There’s a table for social status, I can’t encourage people to actually roll randomly to decide such an important issue – what sort of super GM can write a scenario which will work just as well with a Drow renegade and other characters as it would with a Drow noble with the same group? The table is there though and it does work to show the differences in the class culture of the dark elves and the attached paragraphs help add some mechanic quirks (such as benefits and penalties to starting cash) to character creation. In with the basic Drow race there are a half dozen of mutations; these are effectively half-drow and half-other-non-human-race. The Burol are the Drow/Mind Flayer combination, there are rules for Drider characters too (the Drow/Spider combination from page 78 of the MM, Shaturug are Drow/Orc, Shur are the dangerous mix of Drow/Demon and Urbam are the strange mix of Drow/Goblin. These hybrid mutations are normally the results of Drow trying to improve their blood line or perhaps just rewarding a favourite slave. There are illustrations for the Burol and Shur and I’m grateful for those two since they’re well drawn and really do enhance the mutant race. It’s just a shame that the other mutations don’t have accompanying images. I rather like both these character concepts and the direction the author, Jeffery Quinn, has chosen for the Drow. The Drow are mutants, they’ve changed a lot since the Kindred Wars and it’s nice to think that this can and is continuing to happen. Later on in the Complete Guide to Drow there’s observation on the magical radiation which permutated the Drow cities in the Underdark and this is another step on the same path. Unusually for presented character classes all of the above, including the basic Drow PC stats, have a challenge rating modifier which I assume is directly translatable as an effective level modifier for PCs or NPCs of these races.

The usual collection of prestige classes is present here too but there’s also a new core class as well. The Blood Druid is a variant of the standard druid character class. I think the variant is justified. You can try and walk the nature path to a point in the unique wilderness of the underdark but it is very different down there, more importantly, you can try and walk that path as a Drow but as a dark elf you are inherently different (mutated and changed from the original and balanced ben’docian. Different – but not impossible and so the Blood Druid works well enough for me. Besides, the route the class abilities take means its possible to have scary looking Drow polymorph into spiders. The other classes are all prestige and include the Adamantine Soldier, Dark Blade, Keeper, Soulless and Weaver of Power. I found the Adamantine Soldier to be slightly out of place and style with the image of the Drow as painted by the supplement but it’s still an interesting prestige class. This collection of prestige classes is actually a cut above the rest in that all of them are nicely defined, stylish and interesting. And yes, there is a collection of new feats too.

The chapter on Drow Magic starts with the typical list of new magic items and new spells. There are quite a bit of new spells, several pages worth. There are new domains too; combat, Drow, poison and spider. The inclusions of the Drow and spider domains are somewhat controversial and therefore interesting. It seems easy enough to justify the spider domain but what next? Could we have the bat domain, the earthworm domain, the ankheg domain or the black dragon domain? I guess it all depends on whether there is a deity ready to hand out spells on that portfolio. The very presence of a "Drow" domain is interesting for similar reasons and again if you play in a world where there is a Drow domain but there isn’t, for example, a Dwarf domain. Wouldn’t the Drow have a somewhat compelling reason to feel superior over Dwarves? Alright, so the Complete Guide to Drow doesn’t actually ask these questions but it’s a success that it inspires me to think them for the first time. It’s the opposite reaction to earlier on in the text when I was left feeling as if I could have come up with what was presented. Also of interest is the sub-section within the chapter on the background magical radiation in the Drow’s cities. It’s a sly idea insofar that magic items that work perfectly well in the Drow areas of the Underdark will start to fail if taken too far away – and that seems like a great way to limit the looting of player characters. Here in the Drow magic section you’ll find the spell lists for the Blood Druid variant core class and Dark Blade prestige class.

The supplement finishes by spending a page or two on loose ends, more pages on scenario hooks and Drow ideas. To my amazement I saw suggested here that you might want to try the Drow in some other setting that high fantasy. That was the last thing I expected such a typically D&D flavoured supplement to suggest. It’s a good idea even if there are just bullet point suggests for the likes of Drow CyberPunks and the like. Much more space is given over to taking the DM through the process of designing a Drow family. In some ways it would have been better if that particular section had been higher up the supplement.

New monsters, interesting ideas like spider golems and demonic spiders, take up about 5 pages in the appendix. The final two pages are for Goodman Game’s product adverts and the required OGL.

At the point of writing the Complete Guide to Drow is a PDF product and therefore it represents great value for money even if not everyone likes electronic products. It’s an easy PDF to print off; there are footer graphics on each page but they’re not solid and the whole document is black and white (with the exception of the cover and adverts at the back). There aren’t many illustrations in the Guide and that’s a shame but the silver lining is certainly the kinder touch on your supply of printer ink.

The Guide didn’t start well but through persistence and by slowly building up on common themes and ideas it improves significantly. By the end of the supplement I was quite pleased with the results. The Complete Guide to Drow is on the ball and reaching to be something better still but isn’t quite there yet. Nonetheless it’ll make a respectable addition to your electronic library.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

The Complete Guide to Drow is a PDF produced by Goodman Games and published online by Natural 20 Press. I purchased this book the moment I saw it was available, due to my previous experience with Natural 20 products. The Complete Guide to Drow is 52 pages long, not counting cover, table of contents and OGL. The artwork and layout is good. The spells and feats contained in the PDF are OGL, but not their names.

A brief introduction sets out the purpose of the guide- to serve as a DM's reference to role-playing the drow and their society. Next a history of the origins and physiology of the drow follow: drow are particularly arrogant and violent mountain elves driven underground during the "Kindred Wars" by the combined forces of Elves, Dwarves and Humans.

The first section covers the social structure of the drow. After a short discussion of the role of family in drow society, we are given an extensive table of drow names, including male, female and family names. Not a single "z" in the male names, however, and none of the house names has an apostrophe. The names are elvish in style (especially the female names), but occasionally a bit harsher than is normal for elves- almost dwarven at times.

Next comes a pantheon of 6 drow gods. Several versions of the drow spider god are found here. There is the raving Spider Queen, who lurks in her demonweb in the Abyss. The "Stone Spider, the Eight Legs of the World, and the Queen of the Damned" is a calmer alternative, possibly the Spider Queen in a rare lucid moment. A drow might be a devotee of the Spider Princess, who is associated with the untamed deep wilds, and is even more chaotic and evil than the Spider Queen. Rounding out the pantheon is a neutral evil god of magic, a militaristic god of tyranny and war, and a deified drow heroine who has become a goddess of death and the undead. Not all the deities are given alignments.

Shortly after a brief discussion of drow cities and trade is a very juicy section entitled Drow at War. It includes a fast method of determining typical house armies (by house size) and their command structure. It even includes stats for the drow equivalent of tanks: the animated conveyance and spider ballista. One is undead, the other a construct: both climb the walls and shoot blasts of force energy. Six new poisons conclude this section. These poisons cover the basics from aiding in interrogations (one causes Intelligence and Wisdom damage) to incapacitating enemies (one does Dexterity damage, the other is a sleep poison), to killing them.

The next section concerns Drow Characters. This is a quite conservative interpretation of the drow, with spell resistance, spell-like abilities (dancing lights, faerie fire and darkness), and gender differences (females have +2 to Charisma, males have a -2 to charisma). The social status of the drow character can be randomly generated- for example the drow might be an escaped slave, a craftsman, a disgraced noble or a merchant. It appears that the Drow are intended as NPC's only; no ECL is given, but the CR is +1.

A number of drow mutations are given. These are primarily cross-breeds between the drow and other species. While the text says that the drow/mind flayer cross is a "naturally born half-drow mutation," it seems to me that it is more plausible as the result of an insane lab experiment. Oddly enough, the drow/mind flayer is said to be blind, but the racial traits do not mention this fact.

The game statistics for a drider is given, though these "cursed drow" seem to receive a lot of benefits. Given that they failed certain tests of drow piety, it seems strange that they have cleric as a favored class.

The orc/drow cross are said to be natural leaders among the orcs. They are certainly strong, dexterous and intelligent enough. But I can't see how they could lead ants to a picnic, given their -4 Charisma pnealty. And with -2 to Wisdom it seems that they should be easily manipulated by others.

A demon/drow crossbreed is given, which is apparently not of tanar'ri stock- it has no special resistance to lightning or poison. It has a favored class of blackguard. This is an odd choice of favored class; prestige classes are automatically favored.

Finally, a drow/goblin cross is described. These crazed goblinoids are suicidal combatants, and are commonly used as practice victims in drow torture chambers. Their favored class is barbarian. They are small in size, and have 30 ft. base speed.

An alternate druid class and five prestige classes follow. The adamantine soldier is a fighter who learns new tricks with his artificial limbs (a magic item described later). The blood druid gains a diabolic companion, wild-shapes into fiendish animals, and summons fiends. Very high level blood druids have (among other abilities) something called earth resistance, which is not described in the text.

The Dark Blade either has an unusual BAB progression, or there is an error in the advancement table; the BAB begins at +0 at first level and goes to +9 at 10th level. A dark blade gains spell-casting much like an assassin, sneak attacks (up to +5d6), weapon specialization, evasion, improved evasion, ranged sneak attacks (no 30 ft. restriction), 4 combat mastery abiities (rather like rogue special abilities) and the ability to shadow walk. The dark blade seems rather over-powered: d6 hit dice, 4 skill points per level, good reflex and fortitude saves, spells, and 18 special abilities over 10 levels. The alignment requirements are any neutral, and it needs to have the Track feat. A ranger/rogue of 3/3 level could qualify easily.

The Keeper is a demonologist who can summon demons (but not control them) once per day, and use various binding spells up to 15 times per day (as per the binding spell). Contact other plane can be used up to 5 times a day (at 9th level). At 10th level he gets a +10 to certain knowledge checks, +5 natural armor bonus, damage reduction 20/+2, +5 to spell resistance, and can command demons as an evil cleric commands undead. Reflex and will are good saves, and he has full spell-casting progression.

The Soulless is a drow whose faith is being tested. The character has received the god's favor, but now all spell-casting ability has been withdrawn. I could see it as being a very dark, angsty class. The big benefit of the class is a bonus to SR- up to +8 at 9th level. They are pretty much immune to spells from casters of an equal level. At 10th level they get their cleric abilities back (at the current character level) and gains the fiendish template.

The Weaver of Power is a craftsman prestige class; these are the guys who make all the adamantine limbs. Automatic masterwork quality items and a +20 to craft checks are some of the perqs of this class. A weaver of power gets +1 to a spellcasting class each level.

Fourteen new feats are given. Some, like Improved Alertness and Rapid Healing, seem balanced. Most seem too powerful; one feat gives +2 to attack rolls, damage, initiative, skill checks and saves. This feat is granted only if someone has performed a truly exception service to the drow gods (i.e. DM discretion). Combat Intuition (+2 to all initiative checks and armor class) however has no restictions, and seems quite a bit above what a balanced feat should be. Enhanced Spell Resistance gives double what the equivalent epic feat gives. If you thought that epic feats were too weak, you might like these ones.

Drow items and magic items follow. There are several exotic weapons like the scissor-bladed longsword or the spider-fanged dagger. I am not very good at evaluating weapons, so I couldn't say if these are balanced or not. The scissor-bladed longsword is medium-size, costs 30 gp, does 1d8 damage and has a critical of 19-20/x3. The spider-fang dagger has a well that can hold up to 10 does of poison, is small, costs 150 gp and does 1d4 damage plus poison. Its critical is 18-20/x2. It can be thrown. There are various kinds of artificial limbs- some allow one to control undead, some give enhanced spell resistance or a boost to strength, and so on. Only three limbs will provide magical enhancements at one time. DM's are encouraged to come up with other varieties. I wasn't able to figure out how the items were priced.

For DM's who want to have drow items decay outside of the underdark, a handy table is provided. This will allow a DM to provide challenging encounters without burdening the party with an excessive number of usable magic items.

A lengthy section on spells follow. This includes several new domains, including drow (not at all like the one in FRCS), combat, spiders, poison and undead. Blood druids are given a spell list, and so are Dark Blades. 32 spells follow. Most have the theme of shadow, poison, spiders or radiation. Many are variants of other spells- shadow hands is like burning hands, but cold and dark. Wall of spikes is rather like wall of thorns, but made from stone.

The concluding section of the book is entitled "Campaigns." It gives some ideas on using drow outside of a fantasy setting (space pirates, cyber-punk, street samurai, etc.). There is some discussion about drow motivations and adventure hooks. A very useful sectionon designing drow families (including rivalries, factions, house rank, symbols and special abilities) round out the section. This complements nicely the earlier material on drow armies.

Finally an appendix sets out 7 new monsters; the spider ballista and animated conveyance mentioned previously, three types of golems, a soul spider demon, and the venom zombie (in three sizes).

The soul spider has a special ability that ignores saves and spell resistance- it is a touch attack that stores the victim's soul in the soul spider's web, but is otherwise like a trap the soul spell. It can be used 4 times a day.

The carapace golem is slowed by fire and cold based effects and is healed by sonic effects. It is covered with spikes, which it uses to impale the creatures it grapples. The rockslide golem has a magic missile ability (1/round, at 16th level), and the spell immunities of a clay golem. The spider golem uses poison and has the magic immunity of a stone golem. This is quite odd, since the spider golem is made out of metal, but is still subject to stone to flesh and rock to mud spells. Venom zombies are covered with contact poison and can also spit poison every round. But they don't spit poison unless they are desperate or frustrated. Who knew zombies had such an emotional range?

Conclusion
As a resource for DM's to challenge their players, this book provides lots of options. There are various incongruities in the rules and text which I would have liked to see cleaned up. Most are minor (the alignments of the gods can be guessed at in most cases), others are more serious (I think the soul spider's ability is too hard to avoid), and some are just peculiar (the alignment restrictions on the dark blade, the three limb rule for artificial limbs, the blood druid's earth resistance ability, the susceptibility of the spider golem to stone to flesh spells, etc.). There are a few gaps- torture seems a natural topic to include, as would recreational or enhancement-type drugs. A bit about drow handling of prisoners would have been handy in case PC's were captured by drow. Do drow like to hold for ransom, or do they torture all their prisoners, or do they put them into the gladiator ring, or what? I would have given it a 4, but downgrade it to a 3 because of these features.

As a resource for PC's however, I find much of the book (especially the "crunchy bits") to be so over-powered as to be unusable. Normally this would not make a difference in a resource aimed at the DM and focused around NPC's, but if you want to use this book for PC's, or if you think that NPC's should play by the same rules as PC's think carefully before buying it.

 

[Graf]

Good review.

 

[Forrester]

Back in the day, as we old-timers say, there was 2E. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that the most infamous of the 2E supplements was the Complete Book Of Elves. Who can forget the Bladesinger? Elven Platemail? The Stapling Shot? The Double-Arrow Shot? And, of course, special elf-only artificial limbs, made of mithril.

Those were the days. My views on what I shall politely refer to as The Elvish Problem are well known, and I promise you that the point of this review is not to dwell on the issue. No, I remind you of the infamous CBoE because finally, at long last, it has a worthy successor: The Complete Guide to Drow, produced by Goodman Games and published by Natural 20 Press. It is truly a munchkin’s wet dream, and I have little doubt that little Drizzt clones across the globe will be snapping this sucker up faster than you can say “adamantine limbs”. The feats alone will make your head implode, and I think it’s fair to say that the “playtesters” for this supplement were probably doing large amounts of Underdark mushrooms at the time. But this is not the place for personal attacks. No, the place for that is the conclusion of the review. So let’s get started.

The 56-page .pdf is separated into seven main sections: Social structure (includes warfare), Drow Characters, Prestige Classes, Feats, Drow Magic, Campaigns, and New Monsters. The cover art is painfully amateurish, as is most of the inside art, though I confess that a piece or two are respectable to my untrained eye – I especially like the picture of the drow/mindflayer crossbreed.

Social Structure/Warfare
Not bad. Not much you couldn’t find in a few Dragon magazine articles, but helpful nevertheless. I’m horrible at naming NPCs, and so the list of 200-odd female, male, and drow house names is nice to see. The Guide continues with a list of five new drow gods with paragraph-long descriptions, along with a not-so-cryptic reference to “The Spider Queen” that lives in her “Demonweb”. I guess Lolth isn’t OGC. There are a couple of pages on drow warfare that don’t get into much depth, and then a list of six nifty new drow poisons, some of which are not surprisingly unbalanced. For instance, Lance Flower Extract (type “Injury”) has initial damage of Unconsciousness and secondary damage of Death, save DC17. Compare and contrast to Wyvern Poison in the DMG, which has the same DC but causes 2d6 Con damage instead . . . and runs for 3000gp a shot.

Drow Characters
This section starts with the Monster Manual list of drow stat adjustments and abilities. A notable omission is a suggested ECL bonus for drow PCs, though it does state that drow characters get CR +1 – is this an implied ECL modifier? After a half-page on social status (and how it could affect character generation), the Guide quickly moves on to Drow Mutations, which include mind flayer/drow crossbreeds, driders, a very scary orc/drow crossbreed, a demon-drow crossbreed, and a goblin/drow crossbreed. These are interesting, but the lack of ECL suggestions are bothersome.

Prestige Classes
The crunchiness continues, with the Adamantine Soldier, the Blood Druid, the Dark Blade, the Keeper, the Soulless, and the Weaver of Power. I have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss all of them, but the Adamantine Soldier is worth at least a few sentences. The Adamantine Soldier is made of, well, adamantine – at least, one of his limbs is, and probably two or three. Because he’s drow (and thus better than you or I), he gets fighter BAB, four skill points/level, and Hide, Move Silently, Spot, and Listen as class skills. He also gets some free feats which are a bit on the unbalanced side (more on that later) and, at 8th level of the prestige class (which admittedly requires a minimum of fourteen character levels), gains the ability to “channel the natural radiation of his underground environment through his artificial limb”, creating a 100’ cone of magical force that does 8d6 + d6/bonus pt of Constitution, no save. It’s usable once per day per bonus point of Con. Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.

Feats
In fairness, most of the material up to this point wasn’t bad – certainly, not for a .pdf. Any book about drow is going to include some munchkin-friendly material – it pretty much has to. And barring the Adamantine Soldier, most of the material seemed balanced, at least on its face.

And then it all went to hell. There are only 14 new feats, but damn, what feats.

There's a feat that gives you +2 to init AND AC.

There's a feat that allows you to make a Reflex save when attacked to "take half damage by throwing up your arm to deflect some of the blow”. I can see all those PCs out there right now smacking themselves in the forehead and saying to themselves “Wow! Throw up my arm! Why didn’t I think of that?!” The DC is 10+damage, but still, given you can use it multiple times/round (with a good Dex) . . . this is just scary.

There’s a feat that gives you double your normal AC bonus from your shield. Nothing suggests that it doesn’t double the effect of the enhancement bonus, so yes, your large shield +5 will now give you +14 to AC.

There's a feat that gives you +4 to Spell Resistance. Before all you kobold and goblin PCs get excited, this one actually has a prereq – SR 12+. Before you say “that doesn’t seem TOO broken”, consider this: you can take this feat as many times as you like. The effects stack. Play a drow, take it three times, and get SR equal to 23+ character level. Unless you’ve pissed off Elminster off at some point, you should be pretty much immune to magic.

There's a feat that allows them . . .

You know, I don't think you're ready for this. Sit down. Take a couple of deep breaths. Okay. Here I go.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

There's a feat called "Retaliation”. It allows you a free attack at anyone that misses you in melee by five or more.

At your best attack bonus.

And you get up to your Dex bonus in retaliatory attacks per round.

Are you still there? Did your head explode? No? Let me try again.

There's a feat called "Retaliation" that allows you a free attack at anyone that misses you in melee by five or more. The counter-strike is at your best attack bonus. You get a number of strikes equal to your Dex bonus per round.

The prereq? Base attack bonus +3 or better, and Combat Reflexes.

I know what you’re thinking. There’s no way you could have just read that. There’s no way that could POSSIBLY be true. A feat that makes the pre-errata Expert Tactician look about as munchkinny as Endurance? Nope. They couldn't. I apologize. I’m sure I read that incorrectly . . . I’ve really got to start splitting the pills in half.

My sorry addiction to Pez is also causing me to note the feat "Dual Spell", which allows casters to cast two spells per round (with some restrictions, but still . . . ), and the feat that gives a character +2 to ALL ROLLS. The prereq for the latter is that a drow god thinks you’re special. I wish I was kidding.

Drow Magic
Moving on, we have adamantine limbs. Enchanted adamantine limbs, with powers that cost pretty much the same as regular old magic items. Anyone want three new item slots? I figured you did. We also have some especially cheaty drow weapons, worthy successors to the pre-errata mercurial greatsword. The Scissor-Bladed Axe, for instance, is an exotic Medium weapon that does d10 damage and has a crit range of 19-20 (x3). No, there are no typos in there. Damage-wise, that’s equivalent to a crit range of 20 (x5) or 17-20 (x2).

The artificial adamantine limbs are amazing in their own right. For less than 3000gp you can buy a leg that will double your movement speed; if you buy two, you can triple your movement speed. Again, we’re basically looking at two or three free item slots here. I just didn’t know that adamantine was so CHEAP. It seems the drow use it for pretty much everything – baby cribs, coffee cubs, bookshelves, paperweights – I guess why not use it in artificial limbs?

The section ends with a list of new spells and drow domains. The spells do not seem unbalanced, and in fact some are fairly interesting, though I question whether clerics should have a 7th level spell that does d10 radiation damage per level (max of 20d10) in a 20’ radius spread. The drow Combat domain power is also extremely unbalanced -- it gives the cleric +2 to all melee and ranged attack rolls, with all weapons.

Campaigns
“Imagine how you can bring the drow to life in your games: Drow space pirates have hijacked a transport bringing needed supplies to a local moon colony.” Now that’s a plot hook. A plot hook . . . FROM HELL!
Seriously, this section isn’t too bad, as it moves away from the crunchy bits. There’s a list of ten possible plot hooks and a two-and-a-half page guide to creating Your Very Own Drow Family. As with most other “flavor” parts of the guide, the section really isn’t deep enough to do more than spark a few thoughts in a DM’s noggin’, not that that’s a bad thing – sometimes, that’s all we need.

New Monsters
The Guide has stat blocks and descriptions for the Animated Conveyance (a CR2 creature that would last about three rounds in a real drow battle), three new golems (the Rockslide golem is of small size, CR7, and costs 80,000gp to create -- the drow are just not very good with money), a very nifty Tanar’ri spider, and some poison-spitting zombies.

And that’s about it.

------
I am of two minds on The Complete Book Of Drow. On the one hand, much of the Guide isn’t that bad. If we completely ignore the new feats, the new weapons, the adamantine limbs, and the Adamantine soldier, we’re left with material that almost passes muster – for a .pdf. The remaining material isn’t that deep – but for some, it’s worth seven bucks to get a few new spells, a usable prestige class or three, a few new monsters, and pleasant daydreams about sending a team of drow/mindflayer half-breeds up against the munchkin party of your choice.

On the other hand, one wants to have high standards, and there’s a lot of d20 material out there that is far superior to what’s here. DMs looking primarily for crunchy bits can probably invest their cash more wisely, and one just can’t ignore the lack of thought involved in the creation of the feats and weapons. I’m not exaggerating when I say that a few sections of the Guide read like a parody of a real splatbook; in that sense, it is truly a worthy successor to the Complete Book of Elves.

In the final analysis, I cannot generally recommend anyone purchase The Complete Guide to Drow. But maybe you’re a killer DM. Maybe you’re looking for printed justification to create super-ultra-twinked out NPC drow to throw against your players (“The guy you just attacked and missed suddenly attacks you again with his adamantine arm/sword, and hits for – hey, don’t start bitching, it’s a printed feat – anyway, you’re dead.”). If that’s the case, then this book is probably worth your time. Similarly, maybe you are one of those wussy DMs that can’t stand to lose players, and so you Monty Haul them to death. Do you play with unerrata’d bladed gauntlets and mercurial greatswords and give sneak-attack damage for magical missiles (individually) and allow players to play monster races without ECL penalties? If that’s your game, then this is the book for you.

But you’re still going to regret allowing Retaliation.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I, too, thought it was awful. Good for you for having the courage to bash a "Natural 20" product on their website; there seems to be too much promotion of their products here lately.

 

[Crothian]

I think that the goond Nat 20 products get the praise they desrve, while the lesser ones get what they deserve. It's not like they are going to do anything to someone who gives them a well thought out bad review.

Good review Forrester.

 

[Liquide]

And one a note, the staff reviewers are not allowed to review Nat20's products either. And a good review I must add, even though it sounds more like a 3 then a 2, but we all have out personal way of judging a rating (I read reviews not only look at the rating, which I recommend everyone to do)

 

[Capellan]

The Complete Guide to Drow has been out for some time, now, but a print version was just released, so it seems a good time to re-consider the original PDF.

The book begins with an origin story, relating the aftermath of the Kinslayer Wars among the elves. It's probably not a good sign that I find the snippets about the non-Drow subraces more interesting than the Drow themselves: particularly when the background promptly wipes out those subraces.

The next section goes into the social and religious structure of the Drow. The write-ups of the Drow gods are short but interesting, though they do raise some questions ... why are there male gods if - as the same section tells us - male Drow are seen as 'little better than slaves'?

This section seems oddly organised: covering families, religion, cities, trade, war and poison (in that order) it seems to jump around a bit - especially when the rules for generating Drow families are then tucked away toward in a separate section toward the back of the book. There's little 'fluff' here - the section is only 8 pages and even in those there are plenty of crunch-related details, including nearly a full page for poisons.

Next, we look at Drow as characters: I can only hope this section got a lot of attention in the print edition, as there are some significant gaps in the rules presented here. Male and female Drow have different ability modifiers, but the same 'CR modifier'. CR? Given that this was a 3.0 product, the lack of a Level Adjustment is understandable, but at the least it should offer an 'Effective Character Level'. CR is useless for character creation purposes.

Additionally, the CR modifiers provided are highly suspect. Drow are listed as +1 ... they have Spell Resistance, for goodness sakes.

There are some editing and rules problems here: Drow SR is listed as 11+ class level ... surely this should be character level? Their +2 racial bonus vs enchantment is claimed to add to a +2 racial WILL bonus vs spells and spell like abilities, but both are the same bonus type ('racial'). Also, the +2 WILL bonus is only mentioned in this note - nowhere else in the race description.

There is also a random table for the characters' social standing, giving some characters advantages and some disadvantages (how nice if you get the latter!). These social modifiers include several references to getting Wilderness Lore (now Survival) 'for free' ... whatever that means. As a class skill, maybe? This smacks of a 2nd Ed 'free proficiency' being incorrectly translated to 3E. There are similar problems in the spells section: for instance there is one spell that lasts only one round and gives a bonus to your 'next initiative roll' - but initiative is rolled only once per combat in 3E.

The sub-races offered are similarly dubious, in terms of their statistics: especially Drider, which are listed as only '+2 CR', despite multiple spell-like abilities and their large size. The book seems to consistently err on the side of overpowering: this continues with the classes - the Blood Druid is a variant druid who gets wildshape at 2nd level and wildshape to dire animals at 5th. The Dark Blade has a non-standard (but near fighter-level) BAB, and also gets spells, sneak attacks (which can be used at any range with missile weapons), improved critical damage AND weapon specialisation. Sign me up! Then there's the Keeper: an 8th level wizard can become a Keeper and get better BAB, Saves and HP than in their core class, as well as full spell progression and multiple demon summoning class abilities.

The power goes up another notch for Feats. These include Combat Intuition (+2 Initiative and AC), Enhanced Spell Resistance (+4 SR, and can be taken multiple times), Reflexive Blocking (Reflex save to halve damage when you take a hit), Retaliation (multiple free attacks per round) and Shield Block (double your shield AC bonus, without limit) are all ludicrously overpowered.

You're probably seeing a theme by now, and it continues through the spells (Summon Dark Ally III is a 3rd level spell that allows the caster to summon a Kyton) and the monsters (a small venom zombie is CR 1, but every hit it scores functions as a poison spell, and it can spit poison capable of doing a total of 3d6 Con damage).

Summation: there are some interesting ideas buried in all this, but - unless you like a *really* high octane campaign, or don't mind the bad guys having some major advantages over your PCs - the game balance is way off. It's possible some of these issues have been resolved in the print version - certainly the Venom Zombies have been revised (they are now a template), but unless those changes get filtered back to the PDF version, you're going to have a lot of work on your hands to make this material usable.