Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Focused Feedback: On Drow

Sorry, Fallen, but this incredibly vague and nebulous set of details is largely incorrect or misinformed; some elements of it are vaguely true-ish, about as vaguely as saying "some kind of war", but in general, if your research doesn't get you to the point of consistently spelling the central deities' names correctly (Lolth, and Eilistraee), it's hard to give what you're saying much weight.

The Drow did not fight the Feywild; that's a place.
No-one 'made' the underdark, save those responsible for the creation of the entire material realmspace.

You do just leave the underdark, if you are a drow that develops a conscience or decide you cannot live within drow society any more, and you decide getting out is what you want to do, yes. You won't be able to come BACK, most likely, but getting out in order to flee to the surface is less of a difficulty for an individual drow to decide to do, depending on their rank and position (particularly important or valuable drow may have assassins sent after them, naturally).

There are a number of deities that you can turn to even within Drow society, besides Lolth. In Lolth-dominated communities, it's generally not a good idea to worship anyone else, of course, except in secret, but even Lolth only shares about an equal footing of worship with Vhaeraun, an equally evil and malicious deity who actually does promote gender equality and the importance of personal actions defining worth, rather than your particular squishy bits (don't misunderstand, he's every bit as dark and nasty as Lolth). Beyond those two, there are several others that drow may worship as well; Selvetarm has his share of direct followers, as does Zinzerena, and in secret there are yet many who do offer prayer to Eilistraee even while serving Lolth and the Lolth-driven society on outward appearance.

There is also a long history of various uprisings and resistance movements within the underdark drow society, such as those committed to ending Lolth's tyrannical rule entirely, or those seeking to break the religious stranglehold that her priesthood holds over much of their society, or even those who seek an abolition of slavery and slave-taking.

As mentioned, the whole "Eilistraee 'purified' the drow and magically changed their physical appearance to make them lighter skinned as a 'reward' for being good and as a form of 'salvation' because dark skin is inherently bad" is a construction of one particular series of novels which goes directly against virtually every other piece of relevant lore in existence on the matter and which Wizards have retconned thoroughly and disowned as applicable canon... and with good reason.

There are many drow the dwell on the surface, and many of them do indeed worship Eilistraee. They are not a race, or a subrace of people. They're just Drow. Who are Elves. Just Drow who made particular choices about their own lives, or who are the children or descendants of such drow.


As mentioned already in this thread, this is to do with the tag system, which, also as already mentioned, is more than capable enough, and indeed would have an easier time of handling this distinction and division if Drow were a simple, single subrace of elves, and payers could elect a deity regardless of class, as we should be ale to do.


And the very idea of baking that choice into a FACT of your RACE, that you are locked into from character creation, and have baked into you as part of your literal biology is absolutely freaking disgusting and no-one at all should be acting as apologist for Larian for doing this. It's positively VILE.

In THIS part of character creation, you are picking your biological race and subrace. Who you worship, and whether you are a good or evil aligned individual should NEVER be baked into this particular choice.

The world should definitely react to what race you choose, especially if it's drow. Unlike our world in which every kind of racial stuff has to be erased for SJW sake, in forgotten realms, most surface races will assume you are evil if you are a drow or a druegar. And one of the main difficulties you have when you play one is to amend yourself and present evidence of your goodness in order to be accepted.

If it wasn't there, the principle of race itself wouldn't mean anything and everyone should be playing humans with different attributes.

Yea I agree that's not what I meant but I didn't write it well. To summarize if you're a drow you're a drow and everyone should see you as a drow. There's not a good drow subrace and an evil one.

Your actions makes you good or evil. Not your subclass.

Interesting. To my mind, the original 1st edition description of the drow -- white hair, jet black skin -- has an obvious real world analogue in a photo negative. Take a chodachrome photo of someone who seems fairy like, view the photo's photo negative and you have a drow. Ground / underground was a way of capturing the doppelgänger archetype -- these are skeksis -- this a race where the dark self and self have been split into two communities and not really an analogue for real world peoples.

(but it was intended to be comment on real world gender relations -- but I digress)

I hadn't realized that War of the Spider Queen involved Eilistraee lightening the skin of the drow. That's a problem and possibly the UR source of this problem. Might have to read that. (and if so WotC might do well to apologize for that)

When I look at Tasha's I see artists using colors that make it clear that the skin tones are not like human ones. Drow go from charcoal to coal and, were I a WotC artist, I would avoid coal as color because that could easily be confused for a human skin tone. I'd go for charcoal and I would emphasize the blues in the black colors. Which why I selected it as unproblematic. My favorite 5e drawing so far is the Matron Mother in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes -- ethereal, unworldy, timeless.

Somewhat off topic but doesn't Vhaerun want to institute a patriarchy no less oppressive than the matriarchy of Lolth?

That is a bit odd. Half drow tend to be looked down on by Drow for their human blood, and by everyone else for their drow heritage. So it would make sense for someone like Minthara to take note of the ditstinction, but for most other people, they see a half-drow, and they'd mentally think 'drow' first. Even for folks who would readily make the distinction, Half-drow tend not to have a particularly good rep as a group-the Crinti are pretty infamous in Southwestern Faerun.


Niara and I touched on this, but the Darkelves/Drow thing is a touchy subject. The thing with Eilistraee and the spell and the drow turning back into brown-skinned dark elves originated in a series that's been effectively marginalized into obscurity by WotC...and IMO for good reason.

It's definitely a mixed bag, IMO. WoTC has definitely gotten a better leash on the artists this edition for more consistent art direction....but the art direction itself has been very mixed, IMO. I really like that the Sylvan elves and Gold Dwarves are now depicted more in-line with their discriptions....it was a bit awkward that you'd read descriptors like 'earthen', 'copper' etc as descriptions of skin color and the illustration more often than not showing a Caucasian-skinned elf or dwarf. On the other you have weird-as-hell decisions like making Moon elves blueberry skinned, and the skin-crawling choice to make drow pasty-grey/white. I'm not particular on the specific hue of Drow skin color-Greyscale/purple/obsidian-some variation seems fine to me. Brown was a poor choice though, for obvious reasons.

Sign me up as fan of eggplant purple




Edit:


I think that's the emerging consensus on this thread. But I still want to retain the -- enslaved to an evil god and somehow freed themselves aspect of the drow story.

I think they should have used the term Underdark rather than Lolth Sworn. It makes sense for this to be a separate tag because the cultures of Underdark and the surface are completely different and would definitely have some influence on how you would react to things, changing the name would remove the implied alignments and deity.

People should definitely treat you with caution no matter which Drow subrace you are. Only the player and perhaps perceptive Drow would be able to determine where you came from. The subraces should be just for player dialogue options.

When you choose to play a human, the game doesn't ask you to choose between being a human that grew up in an orphanage or a human that follows Lathander, nor does it ask if you are a good human or an evil human - you're just a human. I don't understand why it should be any different for drow. They are conflating race/species with cultural background and personal alignment. That's not to say that cultural background and alignment aren't important aspects of a character and potentially useful mechanics in the game, but they should really be separate questions. The way that they have combined these things is confusing, inconsistent, and somewhat offensive for reasons already well explained upthread.

For an example of this sort of thing done well, Pillars of Eternity split it into separate questions:
-What is your race/subrace?
-Where are you from?
-What sort of life did you lead before all of this started?
They are clear about what they are asking, providing a decent amount of contextual information as well as the mechanical impact of each of the options so you can make an informed choice. This feels like a pretty good bar to shoot for, and questions about deity and alignment could be added easily.

It's different for Gith, Duegar and Drow because the respective gods of the races made claims to those souls at birth. Humans, surface elves, halflings etc are born free to choose. In one case choice is assumed, in the another choice is a heroic act.


Switching from (fantasy) race to culture doesn't get one of this conundrum. (note that I am giving voice to opinions I do not hold) "Why did Spain have the right to colonize south america? Because those cultures were -- culturally -- evil. They practiced human sacrifice, they took slaves, they practiced ritualistic torture . . . If they convert, all will be well."

So we have the same problem of othering expressed in cultural, not racial terminology. Race was not as important to the Spanish as it was to the English (come Americans) because in England you had the rise of a new class that was in need of a new ideology to justify their action while in Spain republican movements would be stymied until latest days of the age of empire. You can actually find accounts of advocates of indigenous genocide in the U.S. being made by people who believed that the 'other' was biologically superior in some way.

Witness Matizca -- the South Americans Matizcans are all evil despite the fact they are all humans. The colonial power, Spain Amn, is not evil but Lawful Neutral. The clash between civilization is just inevitable and tragic.

(again, who the hell approved this setting?)

So 'culturally evil' takes us from the frying pan of 'racism' to the fire of colonialism. I truly believe that moving from (fantasy) race to culture causes more problems than it solves. Better to say that:

1. Fantasy races are not analogues for real world peoples (and have policies in place to make sure this is the case)

2. Race does not exist in the real world. You hairy footed friend is not really part halfling despite what you might suspect.

3. Unlike in our world evil is real force in the world and evil gods exist.

So evil gods make some 'races' evil and a handful of individuals are able to break the chains that the evil gods have bound around their souls.

And to be clear, @grysqrl and all -- I do think that you should be able to choose alignment and deity in character creation for all races.

I just really, really think WotC is making a mistake by moving away from alignment and we are seeing it here -- people like alignment so Larian is trying to sneak it in. But the new way of sneaking it in is more problematic than the old one. We should be able elect alignment, just like in Pathfinder, just like in Solasta, just like in BG2.

thats fine

To be clear, I meant no ofence or attack, even if I spoke a little harshly; the leading apology was intended genuinely.

Don't worry about it Niara, just not having a good day. I'll do a actual reply another time.

It's actually the Lady Penitent series where that occurs, which is a sequel trilogy to the WoTSQ series. Though you might want to read WoTSQ first for context since WoTSQ sorta 'sets the stage' for the LP. From there, Empyrean Odyssey is sequel trilogy to *that* where the infamous Spellplague gets kicked off. Basically a congo line of escalating-ly questionable metaplot decisions. Shame, because there were parts of WoTSQ that I genuinely enjoyed, with an interesting premise whose potential was just never met for a variety of reasons.

Staying away from hues that could be taken as human is for the best. IMO. WoTC seemingly deciding to whiten the drow to avoid the controversies to my cynical mind-very typical WoTC always taking the easy way out. If they wanted to counteract the racial controversies, addressing the Curse of Ham stuff D&D fans have had problems with for ages might have bee a good place to start, but hey...what do I know.

more to subject, IMO the seldarine/lolthsworn is a clunky and weird distinction mechanically, but I wouldn't mind it nearly as much if they weren't treated as in-universe distinction-iirc you can find the terms being used in game somewhere which is jarring, because they really weren't forgotten realms terms before this game. 'Spider-kisser' was a term, but 'loltsworn'? no. Certainly not 'seldarine drow'. The eye thing though is much worse than some new invented terms.


That's a question that does not have a simple answer. He actually promises cooperation and equality of the sexes, and some of his clergy make good on this dogma and form societies where Drow men and Women are more or less equal. The thing about Vhaeraun though is that he's also a bit of a sociopath who will tell people whatever they want to hear if it gets them on his side. Priestesses of Lolth will be told he'll grant them wealth, power, that they'll be installed as the new matrons after the revolution is over, or that they'll be his chosen or even his consort. He tends not to make good on those promises though-they (and everyone else) are all just tools to him. The statistics laid out in the demihuman deities give has 1% of his clergy represented by these undercover clerics, now keeping in mind that these would be mostly female....less than 1% of his entire clergy is female. Clearly traitor priestesses making the transition and new female clergy being joining the ranks is basically not happening in practice. By contrast, Lolth's clergy is 4% male. So yeah, the Drow god who espouses gender equality has worse gender equality in his clergy than Lolth. It gets worse. One of the big dictates Vhaeraun has is growing and spreading. Vhaeraun's worshippers are really active in the slave trade. I'd really rather not spell it out how those are connected. Suffice to say he's a really evil and insidious deity.

I dont think choice of your race is influencing your "alignement" at all ... O_o

I mean, in EA you can certainly play lolthsworn Drow who help druids and tieflings, and overall is so good, he almost have halo ...
Also you can certainly play Cleric of Tyr that is so huge a*****e that even Baal would be ashamed of him. O_o

So ...
Feel free to call me foolish, but i believe that subrace of your Drow sugest that in some futher parts of game we will visit Menzoberranzan (or more likely some smaller Drow-focused area) where our red/white eyes will give us some unspecified options in dialogues, since NPC will expect us to be one of them.

Okay. My point is, you can play a Drow. Why do we care whether it is listed as a race or subrace? And, so far, the only dofference in gameplay between playing a Llothsworn amd Seldarine Drow that Ive found has been in a dialogue option or 2.

So most of the game you still can choose to be a good or evil Drow whether you are Llothsworn or Seldarine.

This said, I agree with a few who say that it is actually immersion-breaking to create a Llothsworn and have them still act like they are loving, kind, sweet people. I will admit that choosing a Good or Evil Drow thus makes certain moments of the game feel off because if you are Evil you'd have more evil dialogue choices throughout.

So I don't mind Drow as a subrace or race, as long as I can play one. I will say that they should probably do away with the Llothsworn vs. Seldarine subrace or at least call them Surface vs Underdark. Then if you want dialogue choices, have Good, Neutral, or Evil be character creation choices for all races.

As a side note: Why don't Drow have sun aversion? THAT was more of what I expected as a difference between the 2 Subraces. I thought Seldarine would have no sun aversion and Llothsworn would.

It is not up to us users to overcome our confusion and think about what was easier and faster from the coders' perspective. It is up to the coders to think about what is better interface and presentation from the users' perspective.

On the topic of presumed difficulty of coding a more sensible interface,

• As I said in my previous post (p2, top), the devs are very capable of using more than just Race and Class to get tags. Notably they can use Deity (currently a parameter of the Cleric Class only).
• As far as Races are concerned, and parameters associated with them, High Elves can choose a starting cantrip and Half-Elves can choose where to put their flexible +2. Obviously Half-High Elves can do both. So I have a hard time imagining that a Drow Elf sub-race of Elves that could choose a Deity/Alignment parameter could possibly be anywhere near a difficult thing.

On the topic of presentation,

• Presenting two mechanically identical sub-races and asking players to understand that, in that very specific case, they not really selecting a sub-race like they would for any other race, they are really selecting a Deity/Alignment, is plainly poor and confusing presentation.
• When choosing the Race of Half-Elf, you have 3 sub-races : Half-High Elf, Half-Wood Elf, and Half-Drow. This Race is for individuals that are part-Humans part-Elves, and the 3 sub-races correspond to the 3 sub-races of Elves ... oh wait ! Why are Drows then not listed as a sub-race of Elves ? Why can I not choose a Half-Lolth-sworn Drow or a Half-Seldarine Drow ?

In a sense, yes, this is not the most important and urgent thing. It is probably less important than things like Group/Ungroup All, hotkeys for Standard Actions, etc. But it doesn't mean it's fine either. And the "can we do the thing ?" test is most of the time not a good indicator of whether something is acceptable or needs to be worked on, in my opinion.

In the UI/presentation/ergonomy category :

• Can I then have Gale memorise/un-memorise spells of level 2 ? Yes. But that's no reason to have the level 2 section of the "spells menu" polluted by the upcast version of the level 1 spells.
• Can I choose Colossus Slayer when choosing a Hunter, and can I choose Riposte when choosing a Battlemaster ? Yes, but it's clearly bad presentation to put these choices above the choice of the subclass.
  (In the past I've said this from an intuitive-theoretical point of view. You don't need your own empirical data or a qualification in User Interface Design to think that the order of choices should follow the reading order : top to bottom. Last week I played a bit with a friend, who isn't very familiar with BG3, and who did get confused when reaching Ranger level 3. So now I have a bit of empirical confirmation.)
• Can I transfer all my equipment to sell on the inventory of the character with higher Charisma before talking to the trader, just so as to have the best price ? Yes. And it not tedious in the slightest.
• Can I choose Elf Blue 2 and Elf Blue 3 for eye colour ? Yes. Ah ... these ones got moved next to Elf Blue 1, where they belong.

In the controls category :

• Can I put the whole party in Hide mode ? Yes. But that doesn't mean the way to do it is any good.
• Can I have the whole party jump over a broken bridge ? Yes. Ah ... well, this one got improved a bit in Patch 3.

Anyway, I'm not too concerned about whether Larian should solve Problem X or Problem Y first, which one is easier to solve, which one impacts quality of life the most, etc. Some things should be higher on their list of priorities than they currently appear to be. But so long as they solve everything by the time of the full release, it's ok.

Drow are a 'villain' race, that exist to be something players can fight/kill without any pretense of morality. They';re known for worshipping an evil goddess that has them do evil things, spiders, matriarchy and being really evil; Lloth specifically blesses her followers with red eyes to mark them as 'hers'. If you play a good drow in BG3 you can specifically reference this when the character talks to some tiefling children, warning them to run if they see drow with red eyes. Is that racist? It's a snap judgement based on the colour of a drow's eyes, but this is also a race that has a very justified reputation. Even if you try to be good amongst Lloth's drow (and are caught) it... will not end well for you. Best case scenario, you're quickly killed.

This entire thing is because (I suspect, I'm not up to date on details) people and WoTC got fed up with drizzt (himself a massive outlier) clones, and made an entire group of not-evil drow for people to stop contradicting the canon.

No, she doesn't. That's the problem.

Drow, as a people and culture have the reputation you describe. Drow. Not the "magically easily identifiable evil drow", just Drow. There are not "Magically easily identifiable good drow with the special magical pass that lets people know they're good" either.

Drow that have abandoned their society and culture and sought a better way do exist. More of them now than ever, in fact. Enough that there exists a minor populace of them on the surface, and there are even drow that have been born and grown up as surface drow, never connected with Lolth or drow society at all. Unfortunately, they're still drow; they still look like drow, and they are still likely to meet people who will want nothing to do with them - or even to kill them - based on that fact alone. They are not a different race or even sub-race. Race has nothing to do with it; they are Drow, and they don't have an in-baked fact of racial physical distinction to prove that they are 'good', or that the other ones are 'bad'.

The whole "This group is a separate race and two separate sub-races, and they have visible physical differences to tell you who is evil and who isn't, based on their race" thing - that's not Wizards. That's Larian. And it's gross.

"Good" Drow (the actual alignments vary, but they are non-evil) make up about 15% of the total population of Drow, and most of them live either on the surface, or in the upperdark away from the big Drow population centres.

Also Drow have been migrating away from Lolth since 2e, this is not a new thing.