Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General I just made Male Drow Cleric of Lolth?! huh?!

Well Wotc wanted them to remove the alignments so they did.

Female dwarves in FR lore have beards as the norm. Fibbledorf Pwent is always trying to get Cattie-Brie, a human woman who is the adopted daughter of dwarf King Bruenor Battlehammer, to grow "a proper beard".

Quoting Demihuman Deities (from 1998, 2nd edition D&D, pg. 31)
"The clergy of Lolth includes dark elves(94%) and chitines (6%). Of the dark elves, 96% are female; there are male priests of Lolth (4%), but the Spider Queen very rarely allows them to rise above 7th level of experience."

Whoever keeps consistently insisting that Lolth does not permit male clerics quite frankly don't know what they are talking about. And also realize that our perspective of the worship of Lolth primarily comes from the lens of an inhabitant of the drow city of Menzoberranzan (through RA Salvatore's novels), but guess what, there are many other drow cities in the Underdark that worship Lolth in notedly different ways. And heresies and cults are also something that exists with many major deities, and many of those deities permit their existence provided they serve that deity's will or interests. Church organizations might be interested in stamping them out in order to maintain complete power over the worshippers, but the deities themselves generally welcome more worship as that in turn brings them more influence and power.

The Forgotten Realms is a complicated and nuanced world, not everything is as it seems. And there is a difference between the reality people in the world of Abeir Toril perceive and the actual cosmic truth of the universe.

And to share another quote from that book concerning humans worshipping Lolth.

"Lolth is a cruel, capricious goddess, thought by many to be insane. She delights in setting her worshipers at each other's throats, so that the strongest, most devious and most cruel survive to serve her. Lolth roams the Realms often, appearing in answer to the rituals of drow priests, and working whatever harm she can to the enemies of drow. (During the Time of Troubles, Lolth appeared in the northern city of Menzoberranzan for a short period of time.) The Spider Queen secretly wants to be worshiped by humans and elves of other races on the surface surface Realms, and sometimes journeys among their communities, whispering of the power Lolth can bring. Lolth is malicious in her dealings and coldly vicious in a fight. She enjoys both personally dealing and causing death, destruction, and painful torture. Even more, Lolth enjoys corrupting elves and humans to her service. Lolth can be kind and render aid to those she fancies-but she really cares only for herself; her favor and aid can never be relied on."

Ummm... I'm sorry to rain on your parade here, but whether male drow could become clerics of Lolth, changed back and forth over the years. The 2nd edition sourcebook "Demihuman Deities" states that this is possible, though rare (4% of the clergy are male), not all drow settlements will allow it, and males cannot advance beyond 7th level, but in those days practically any nonhuman had a level cap. The 3rd edition book "Faiths and Pantheons" stated that "all clerics are female". I never really played 4th edition, so I don't know what happened there, but I have not seen any restriction on males becoming clerics of Lolth in 5th edition. I could have missed it, of course, but I just went over the books, and have not seen such restriction.

Surely the decision on male clerics rests with the goddess! She may just be having some fun at the character's expense.

Is it not written:

"We are but as private parts to the gods. They play with us for their pleasure."

I support you, this is a great idea for those who started playing as a cleric of Lolth but then realized that it was too cruel

Well then this whole thread is kind of pointless, isn't it?

While the idea of hours of Drow specific content including quests to betray Lloth or complete her trials seems neat, it's probably unlikely we'll get any of that. If you want to deny Lloth pick the non-lloth drow, easy.

Hey, go with it! That would explain why he's not part of the society anymore, but Lolth is a goddess of Chaos and she loves when shit like this pops up. Hell, she loved it when Drizzt broke from Drow society and caused all kinds of trouble for them. Come up with a really cool backstory to go with it. Lolth doesn't mind, trust me. :P

This is actually not true (even going back to 2E). Male drow clerics could exist though they were extremely rare and did not usually get past level 6. I can't remember which supplement book has this bit...either the Menzobarranzen book or one of the Pantheon books.

Its not disrespecting lore, its assuming that people wont be butthurt by something they can chose not to do. Like.. if you dont want YOUR male drow to serve Lolth... don't? Rather than insisting that someone else not be able to do it.

Pwent is a fucking stupid character, and no, they do not have beards...

That's the thing, being opposed because you feel something is disrespecting a tradition is a strange position. change is scary to some. Does this really affect me, the way I play or the overall lore? Not really. Same with alignments, doesn't really affect anything current in anyway, its not saying past evil characters are suddenly not.

Hey Mr. Anger Management...



Source: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Dwarf

I like it when there are "rules" that get broken. It's human nature that when someone tells you how something can't be, that you will instinctively go, "oh, yeah, is that so?" It's like Eddie Van Halen deciding it was OK to play keyboards on stage, despite everyone else saying that he shouldn't do that because he is a guitar hero. Yeah, Eddie Van Halen would've made a great Drow Cleric.

You find me some official WOTC/TSR art with a bearded dwarf woman and we can talk. Its a stupid old joke that has been driven into the dirt by the same old farts who think a dwarf with a Scottish accent is the highlight of hilarity.

Lol, don't ask me why I am continuing this silly argument as I'm not sure why myself, but....

https://archive.org/details/tsr09300addforgottenrealmsdwarvesdeepfr11/page/n6/mode/2up

Not art, but a source book written by the guy that created Forgotten Realms. Read the sub-section titled The Handsome Dwarf.

Didn’t female Dwarves in the original Baldur’s Gate games use the exact same sprites as the males?

My remarks in this thread are not aimed at players but at Larian.

So far, from my perspective, one of the core strenghts of BG3 is the attention to details to character interaction depending on what your origin is.

Example : if you're a Gith, Shadowheart freaks out with whole different dialogue lines.

Such detail is what I would wish for a Male Drow Lolth cleric from Larian. For example, make drow NPC and some other NPC notice how unique you are and react accordingly. Drow lolth worshipping females want to kill you, Shadowheart and Gale have some dialogue lines ask you how you could become a cleric despite the "gender", etc.
*Maybe such feature is already in, or work in progress? I won't know, I didn't play further with this character.

Not just a character creation interface.

Drizzt is "awesome" because he is a character with story, background. My Trizzt good drow ranger character will suck because he is not.

Not seeing any art... It's a dumb in joke. They note that a few can grow beards (like humans), but not all have them.

Yeah, I said there was no art. It is not a joke though. That was a 2nd edition sourcebook and it's written by the same guy, Ed Greenwood, that created Forgotten Realms. Disputing what that book says is kind of like saying something Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth is wrong.