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Bingo.

Here we have Vhaidra and Nathyrra-two drow assassins. One of them follows Lolth, the other Eilistraee. Not the sort of distinction you'd want to mix up, and not one you can tell by the color of their eyes.

For a more extreme example, mistaking this violet-eyed drow woman for a 'seldarine drow' would be just about the worst mistake you could possibly make. That's Eclavdra, Lolth's highest-ranked mortal follower in D&D. With the same eye color that 'Seldarine' drow get by default in BGIII, same eye color as the famous drow rebel Drizzt.

But besides that, ignoring all the non-red-eyed followers of Lolth, we should think about what the ramifications would be if every drow who turned from Lolth had his or her eye color change. They'd be killed on sight if it happened in a drow city. Because in a society like Lolth has built where religious dissent is punishable by death or driderhood, an obvious physical distinguishing characteristic like that would effectively be a death sentence. Similar to one of the criticisms of the LP series in which a bunch of drow worldwide spontaneously had their skin color change to mark them as no longer 'tainted' by Lolth. An express ticket to your own funeral.

To quote the character creator in Baldur's Gate III: "Loth marks her followers with bright red eyes so the Underdark will learn to fear drow on sight."

That's what character creations says. It's not in 5e lore, though. Larian made it up.

The red/purple eyes in BG III is an invention on the part of Larian that contradicts established lore spanning 5 editions of D&D and multiple decades. Pointing out that Larian wrote that into BG III doesn't prove anything, because wee are very much aware of that blurb-it's the precise target of the criticism here.

There's also a post directly above yours with multiple examples of Lolth-worshipping drow who weren't marked with red eyes. with pictures, if that would help.

I wonder what this isn't new "brilliant" WotC idea.

Ok. I will admit, the lore is totally off. You are right there. Then again, I don't think any video game has truly done Drow right. Can you think of a single video game where a Drow was:

4'7" to 5'5"
87 to 157 lbs
Long hair with pins or webbing made of metal
White, black or purple teeth
Possibly pale yellow hair, or even silver or copper

But yeah, whether Lloth followers or not, it is common for Drow to have red eyes, but they can also have blue, white, pink, purple, silver...and it doesn't matter who they serve.

Thats how lore is made pal, someone made it up ... and WoC approves it as canon.

I believe you are messing two things up here ...
And its race and worshiping.

Feel free to corect me if im wrong, but Llolth-sworn Drow seem to be to be simply Drow who was born inside society of followers of Llolth ... was raised in her image, and know all thing that such Drow should know ... we can expect that s/he would have Llolth-sworn mentality bcs of those things, but its not a rule, since individuality is still possible.
And s/he have red eyes, since Llolth claimed his soul when s/he was born, as mentioned previously.
No matter if s/he personaly do, or do not trully worship Llolth when adult, and responsible for his own believes.

Then there are Seladine Drow ... wich can be translated as "the others" ... meaning any Drow that was not born into Llolth-sworn society ...
And they do have all other eye collors.

Of course all surface dwellers will simply tell you exactly what you said: "it is common for Drow to have red eyes, but they can also have blue, white, pink, purple, silver..."
But surface dweller hardly knows all social groups between Drows.

Lol. You know, those are some good points. Larian made it up and WotC did not say they couldn't. Like it or not, it's canon now baby. Lol.

Same with race, people. I guess Drow have now evolved to being their own race.

I really don't care. I can play a Drow, they're my favorite characters that I've made, they look cool, they have different dialogue options even from each other because one is Llothsworn and one is not, Im good.

Actually, the standing precedent is that video games are considered to be acceptable canon if and only if, when and only when, they do not conflict with or make declarations on material covered by the source books and other official PnP publication material. In places where video games make, do or claim something that is also spoken about in the existing source books, the video games are considered secondary, and are not accurate canon unless they agree with the primary sources.

Drow, Drow society, Lolth and her worship, as of current lore, are defined substantively enough that this game's declarations about marked eyes and such is strictly off-canon, as are their definitions declaring Drow to be racially distinct from elves, (they're not; they're elves), and declaring there to be racially distinct sub-sets of drow. Please, bear in mind: we have literal decades of lore about Drow and Drow society, and the struggles, dangers, prejudices and difficulties that face Drow who do choose to break free from it. Nowhere, in ANY of that, does any element of it EVER point to their eye colour, or make any comment of it being a marker... They aren't writing new lore, they are being disrespectful to existing lore that has a greater precedence, greater wealth of sources, a stronger backing, a longer history and overall far more legitimacy than their game.


What you're presenting here, if you leave out the utter garbage about Lolth making their eyes red and cliaming their souls, would actually be a quite reasonable depiction of the situation... however, you do have to leave out said utter garbage for it to be reasonable, and even then, the issue is that this is you putting that supposition onto the space, because the game does not do that. They could do that, but they don't. They leave it at "There's two racially distinct species of Drow and one is EVIL and the other is GOOD, and you can TELL beause of their EYES!!" Which, as mentioned, is utterly appalling. If they actually presented it in a way that suggested that what kind of Drow you are or choose to be is not an immutable fact of your physical birth, that would actually help, a lot.

This is honestly not what i see when i open the Game ...

Its close, but kinda oversimplyfied and a little off, not much but a little.
It seem to me like you are either forgoting or ignoring individuality that Larian allows us to express ... races are nothing more than image of our own society, not our character ...
So ... i would say, to just tune your words a bit:
"There's two racially distinct species of Drow and one SOCIETY is EVIL and the other SOCIETY is GOOD, and you can TELL beause of their EYES!!"

That seem a little closer.
It dont say anything about your *character* it says all you need to know about *standard people between wich your character was born, and raised* ...
It also affect if your character will have "racial" dialogue options more tuned toward good, or evil ... since that is society s/he is from.
You are still perfectly able to play "odd Llolthsworn Drow that will be totally good" but you would never be typical Drow that is good ... unless you choose society of Drows that are typically good.

I don't have an inscription about eyes in game in my language. I am not familiar with DnD, and for first time I defined it as "There are Drow who worship a Goddess", later I learned that Lolth is an evil goddess. And there are Drow who have given up on this and taken other side.

That's how I understood it, not that "red-eyed drow are evil." Later, I began to delve into the specifics of the race outside the game to better understand it. But I believe there is no indication in Drow description that they are evil because of the color of their eyes... I don't think that the limited choice of eye color is a problem. Also you can easily "turn on all colors" if it annoys you so much.

I tried to warn you folks. D&D fans be like StarWars fans. Details tick them off if messed up.

But it is true that WotC is behind this game. If they are saying Lloth gives Drow red eyes now, then Lloth gives red eyes now. Right? Disney made it so Leia could fly through space with the Force like a super hero, so that is now a Canon Force power, and now Lloth gives red eyes to her Drow followers cause WotC didn't stop Larian and tell them it's wrong.

Unless they take it back now because they realize they screwed up and Lloth doesn't really do this. 😄

That's fair, I'll pay that. It's still a problematic issue as long as the visual racial distinction and eye-marking-god-claiming stuff is left in, however... because it still runs utterly against the established lore and undermines a massive portion of it substantially...

I'm not ignoring Larian's permissiveness in terms of dialogue agency... I'm just not impressed by it. Far too many inappropriate things are gated behind race, in terms of dialogue. Certain lines that literally anyone should have access to and should be allowed to offer if it suites their character, are locked away behind specific race tags, and that's just deeply unpleasant, and a poor way to handle it. It's creating and perpetuating gross racial stereotypes and baking them into a statement of 'actually that's real', at a player level, when it shouldn't, and it's disgusting.

By all means there should be race-locked dialogue options, but they should be comments related to history, culture and knowledge... right now they aren't; right now, they're things like "You can only threaten to eviscerate this cretin if you happen to be one of those "Racially Evil Drow!"", "You can only plead for people to clam down and not get into a fight if you're one of those "Racially Pacifistic Halflings"" and "You can only be incredulous about space travel if you're a "Racially Bumpkin-like Halfling""... no-one else is allowed to suggest those things, when ANYONE should be able to, regardless of their race!

Funnily enough, if they actually re-worked the character creation screen so that it was all individual sub-race picks, without the stepped category or race and sub-race, a lot of this issue would be less of a problem... If your choices were simply one level of race choice, listing "Lightfoot Halfling", "Stoutheart Halfling", "Wood-elf", "Sun-Elf", "Drow", "Rock Gnome", "Forest Gnome", etc... then there would be no game-level declaration of Drow as separate racially from elves, and the choice of whether you socially follow lolth and her culture, or don't, could just be a drow choice within that pick, and not a classification of race or subrace... If it were set up like that (and they dropped the lolth-marked eyes rubbish), I may not have even made this thread... It wouldn't be an ideal fix, but it would be very close to an acceptable one...


Out of curiosity, what language do you play in? I ask because in the english client, there is very definitely a textual indication that lolth marks the eyes of one particular 'sub-race' of drow, at a racial level.

I do agree with a lot of points you make. I found it odd in reverse when my Llothsworn Drow had no option other than something good. I can't remember the scene offhand, but the point is that if you aren't going to have players select an alignment then you need to give them all alignment options in dialogue regardless of race and such so that if Im playing an evil Drow I can be evil all the time but if Im a good Drow I can be good all the time. I mean, like you said, some exceptions apply, of course. Lae'zel, for example, should be friendlier to other Gith and have different dialogue options. That kind of thing.

I actually think itd be better for Larian if they'd just did make alignment part of creation so it limited your particular character's dialogue choices. Wouldn't that be easier than trying to make sure all dialogue options were available for all characters?

Either way, I also think deity should be a choice at creation for all characters. Not a race choice but deity choice. Heck, choosing deity could be used to determine alignment. I choose to be a follower of Tyr. That makes me Lawful Good. I follow Eilestree, that makes me Chaotic Good. I follow Loviatar, etc. If you pick None, for deity, you are Neutral. Make that the tag that directs most dialogues with race only directing a few.

This would be nice and make a lot of sense. The only part I would add would be some dialogue options for where you grew up, like Underdark (they already have Baldurian) since the possibilities are so great.
This would have allowed for them to make many more dialogue options. I am wondering how they are going to treat Duergar, if they will be a subrace of dwarves or separate like Drow. Agree about that eyes part, they could simply remove that sentence. All the eye colours are available for any race so I don't think leaving the starter choices as they are would be an issue.

This would be horrible. I don't know of anyone who plays alignment that rigidly, not to mention there are too many variables with it. If alignment is added to character creation it should never force us to play only that way throughout the game.
If they add all the rest of the deities (or at least a much wider selection) then I would agree for this to be in character creation. I don't think this should determine alignment though, maybe if the one step rule was brought back it would be tolerable. It is still rather restricting, some people may want to play as followers of one deity or be a certain alignment and as the story progresses they will want to change as their character develops.

Even if they wanted to introduce alignment, they cannot, at least as long as WotC doesn't change their mind.

This is Larian's campaign, and if the DM says X, then X.
I remember 2nd edition tieflings. Vs 5th edition... things can and do change quite significantly. If WoTC are okay with Larian making drow from Lloth red eyed, then that's how it is.

Limitations of dialogues in RPG is known issue for last few decades ...
But you are still completely able to threaten "cretin" ... not just with the same words, and those words you mentioned are used only by Evil Drow, since tat Evil Drow is using natural fear of his race on someone ...
NO Halfling will ever be scarry, when he will talking about how they do think in Menzoberranzan.
But he still can threaten others, just will have to find some own mojo ...

If you find some options to be missing, its not fault of racial tag ...
Its just missing options.

I must say tho, it would be certainly interesting to allow Seladine Drow to pretend they are Llolth-sworn ... for surface dwellers it should be quite easy, and it could provide some bonuses to threatening ... but in Underdark, or when talking to specific NPC that can tell the difference, it should provide us disadvantage.
I would love such thing.

Kinda too many words, since the only change you made is merge Seladine and Llolth-sworn Drow into single race.

Im sory, but i DO want Drow to be separate racially from elves ...
Since they are. :-/ Actualy in litteraly every matter, social, kultural, appearance, racial traits, stat bonuses, the way world see them ... all of it. :-/
If you want Drow to be just another elves, since they are elves with "only different skin collor" ... then i want Gnomes to be just another elves, since they are elves with "only different size". :-/

Im affraid not ...
Its much easier ot create 9 dialogue options and allow us to decide wich one is fitting us the best, than create 9 dialogue options, then redistribue them between 9 alignments ... then create some more, so it dont feel so empty ... and then constantly hearing people sobing about provided options dont fit them enough, knowing that there is actualy allready implemented option that would fit them perfectly, its just hidden under another alignment.

It certainly should, but at same time, i would like to allow both Seladine Drow, and Llolth-Sworn Drow to pick any other deity ... i mean, i would have no problem with renaming those two races, if that is what bothers people ... but i still want both Evil and at least Not-so-Evil society of Drows.
Its culture vs. individual ... and personaly i believe it would be shame to loose this.

And how about some kind of "sugestions" in dialogues?
Like i dunno ... change collor of that dialogue option, or add a little star to certain dialogue option ... just something (optionaly turnable on/off, ofcourse) that tell people something like:
"You created worshipper of Tyr ... this dialogue options is fitting Tyr's expectations the best ... but the choice is obviously yours."

And why is that? Why Can't my halfling ever say "I don't like being insulted, do that again and I'll gut you in an instant"? Why? Why can't my human, or my tiefling say that? It's a perfectly normal sentence that literally ANY character of such a threatening inclination might say. why is it that ONLY the "Racially Evil Drow (tm)" are allowed to say that? Why, Rag? Why are you defending that?


That's a very narrow view of character; A halfling who grew up working with the underground anti-slavery and abolitionist movements beneath Calimshan, and who had moved through various connections into more broad reaching work, and now helps support and supply the subversive abolitionist movements that hide themselves within drow society further into the underdark, who knows exactly how they treat run-aways in Menzoberranzan and has the notches on his belt to prove it, may well want to tell delicate know-it-all princesses like Shadow to step off before they talk like that to him again... Can't though. Can't, purely because I'm a halfling. Purely because of my RACE. Thanks Larian, and for shame.


You're the first person to mention skin colour in this thread. Facetiousness does not, and will never, win you any credibility. All it does is make you look like a fool with nothing to add to the discussion but pointless ridicule; you're not, so please don't act like one.

Drow. Are. Elves. It's SUPER IMPORTANT to their cultural identity.

They are racially distinct from wood elves, from sun elves, from moon elves, etc., However, they are ALL elves. They ALL have different cultures, lifestyles and societal structures from one another. They are all still elves. The fact that Drow are of the elven people is incredibly important to who they are.

This isn't even a discussion; it's just a basic fact of the world space.


How about rather than pushing for a reinforcing of groups of people being branded as evil and not evil based on a locked in, in the blood, distinction of race choice (which is what it currently is, no matter how much apology you make for it)... you instead petition Larian to change this so that your background - that is, the society you were born and raised in - is something that you choose as part of your... I don't know... Background? Not your Race? You're talking about social history; you're talking about upbringing; you're talking about where you've come from, and what you begin the adventure believing... all of that, which is what you're talking about here... that's all Background. It's not race. It shouldn't be decided by your choice of race.

I agree that I would like Good or Evil as a choice somewhere in the creation, or make it based on Deity choice so you gain like a tag based on Deity. I chose Tyr, so people might treat me better if they know this. I might choose Selune, so Shadowheart might hate me. Shouldn't be just a Cleric choice and shouldn't be a Drow choice either. Everyone should have to pick their Deity or at least select None.

As for whether Drow should be a separate race, I don't care as long as I can play one. That said, it wouldn't hurt to put them as an Elf subrace.

One point I will make, though, is that in many video games, Dark Elves are separated out. I think people who don't know D&D well get confused if they don't. Do game designers make Drow their own race so players know it's an option.