The Drow can be made to punch much higher above their weight with a few simple changes.
Starting with the Drow Elite Warrior. Parry is a fighting style > maneuver. Parry which adds only 3AC is not as useful as blind fighting which gives advantage when in darkness against something that is blind. Advantage is worth +4.
What to expect:
How Drow will use darkness on items and conceal those items so they can for instance draw a sword and darkness fills the area; or fire a crossbow-bolt and a cloth falls from the bolt as it shoots toward the target carrying with it the darkness.
Use of Rust Monsters in darkness which can sense metal and therefore have an advantage in darkness to eat the metal armor and weapons of enemies of the Drow.
Rework of the elite Drow warrior to better fit darkness combat.
Priestess spell changes to be more flavorful and useful to Drow and their darkness empahsis.
Mage spell changes.
An archmage built around the Maddening Darkness spell.
Drow Melee:
Instead: Drow Shadow Warrior. Get rid of parry. Add Blind Fighting. The Drow uses darkness on its blade to engage enemies with advantage under most conditions if light sources are level 2 spells or less. When the blade is sheathed the darkness is not present and so the Drow Shadow Warrior might cast darkness on their blade just before engaging in an ambush. This allows the blind fighting technique when engaging; but they can sheath their sword to end the darkness and find another target presuming they aren't crowding each other. In squad tactics they may all communicate; finishing their targets and then each other's targets until the squad has no targets then all sheathing their swords together.
Hand Crossbows:
Use of crossbow bolts as sources of darkness: Hand crossbow tactics: use darkness on the bolt to darken an area up to 120feet away. Disadvantage shots once darkness is cast before shooting. Critical miss means the shot lands more than 20 feet away from pre-aimed target. A miss is just a miss. It is presumed the bolt has a bit of cloth wrapped around it to prevent the use of the darkness pre-casted on it for an ambush. The cloth falls away once shot. This gives an accurate shot at the enemy while using ammunition that has darkness casted upon it.
Rust Monsters:
Putting together the basic darkness tacitcs of the Drow it becomes apparent that rust monsters would be a useful tool to the Drow. Against enemies with non-magical metal items the Drow can launch volleys of darkness-casted crossbow bolts into a crowd of those enemies and then let rust monsters into the darkness to have their way with all the metal gear. A ... solid ... tactic if you ask me ;)
Priestesses as 10th level spell casters:
Priestess 5th level changes: Drow aren't a mindless society of ants, so they'd learn spells useful to the Underdark and to society and not be limited to the monsters manual. Swarm of insects doesnt feel like one of those spells that would be very useful. I think the Drow clerics would use Dawn at 5th level. It's an ironic use of light and I feel the Drow would love to make a mockery of using light to harm the lightdwellers. Also the Drow are the greatest threat to other Drow so it is a tactical choice. Dawn can be used to remove the innate darkness ability of any Drow and it imposes a steep penalty on Drow and other Underdark creatures. I could see Priestesses being used to execute Drow prisoners using Dawn.
Planar binding also seems very Drow-ish.
If a healer then some combo of Dawn and mass cure.
If a religious figure then planar binding. Planar Binding has a lot of preparation so I see this coming up as part of a story arc in the campaign and not as useful for a random encounter.
I definitely don't recommend Insect Swarm. It's a mild inconvenience in combat compared to Dawn. Especially to other Drow. The light obscurity is pointless. Dawn on the other hand is a super weapon against enemy Drow and many other denizens of the Underdark. A Drow Priestess would rather have that as a weapon.
Humans are vulnerable to fire so we made flamethrowers. If you understand that concept, then Dawn makes the most sense.
Drow Mages as 9th level spellcasters:
I don't think a Drow Mage would choose a simple attack spell for 5th level. Poison gas isnt useful for society. Perhaps to add flavor consider instead. 5th level Drow Mage Spells:
Transmute Rock
Control winds
Animate Objects
Building on the idea of using light as a weapon against fellow Drow, perhaps wall of light.
the idea for the 5th level spells of the Drow Mage should fit a society's needs. Unless you want a pure battle Mage it is unlikely a society needs cloudkill. Instead they may need control winds or transmute rock to move noxious gas or clear cave-ins.
These spells have dual purposes in combat so are highly useful for a Drow Mage.
3rd level Drow Mage Spells:
Lightning versus fireball makes sense because close quarters and long hallways improve the use of lightning. A 100foot corridor becomes a 100foot death trap.
To replace fly if a DM feels levitate is sufficient for utility mobility, maybe fear or counter spell to add utility to the Drow Mage. But fly also is a very powerful spell so DM's choice.
I feel that Drow are a martial race complimented by their magic users, so fear and counter spell would make good alternatives to fly.
2nd level Drow Mage Spells:
Alter self is totally useless. Instead, keeping with Transmutation, perhaps Hold Person would have more usefulness for a fight including Drow fighters.
High level Drow also need a way to handle high level light spells.
I'm working on a 15th level Drow Dark Mage. Their 8th level spell is maddening darkness.
Drow Strategy and Tactics:
The idea is the Drow know they have advantages in the dark. They will seek to snuff out all light sources that take away advantage or creates disadvantage.
They will use dancing lights and faerie fire when it makes sense to create advantage against targets where darkness doesn't need to be used because the area already is dark.
I want to make a few slight changes to the Drow Mage and Priestesss lower level spells. Including control fire. The idea with control fire is to extinguish natural fire sources. This can include a control water spell if the Drow of the area know of water sources they can maybe use to douse torches. But control fire makes most utility sense.
Darkness is used liberally, and may be cast on the weapons of "shadow warriors" whose blind fighting style allows them to have advantage while in darkness.
There's a lot of options from levels 4 to 8 spells for light sources, so the Drow have trained Dark Mages (a canned 15th level archmage from the MM or something) with an emphasis on maddening Darkness.
This allows drow communities to confront would-be light bearers all the way up to 8th level spell casting.
When to mark an opponent with light:
Drow may hit a target with faerie fire or dancing lights. These targets would be marked so that spell casters that need to see targets might use their spells, such as hold person. The Drow Shadow Warriors using darkness would know to avoid engaging those lit targets first. So lighting certain enemies might occur before darkness happens in such a scenario. Then darkness follows on remaining ranged targets maybe too far away. And the Drow Shadow Warriors would activate their darkness once they engage their targets.
That gives the DM a lot of options for controlling a Drow campaign with sensible underdark strategies.
Other ideas include poisoned caltrops. Because in darkness a blind fighter should be able to avoid them but a bumbling surface dweller will step all over them.
The Drow can be made to punch much higher above their weight with a few simple changed.
Starting with the Drow Elite Warrior. Parry is a fighting style > maneuver.
Instead: Drow Shadow Warrior. Get rid of parry. Add Blind Fighting. The Drow uses darkness on its blade to engage enemies with advantage under most conditions if light sources are level 2 spells or less.
Hand crossbow tactics: use darkness on the bolt to darken an area up to 120feet away. Disadvantage shots once darkness is cast before shooting. Critical miss means the shot lands more than 20 feet away from pre-aimed target. A miss is just a miss.
Priestess 5th level changes.
Drow aren't a mindless society of ants, so they'd learn spells useful to the Underdark and to society. Swarm if insects is NOT one of those spells.
Teleport, ressurect, planar binding and transmute stone are very Drow-ish.
Teleport and ressurect are useful. If a healer then some combo of 2 of those or mass cure.
If a utility cleric then transmute stone. Useful for mining or combat.
If a religious figure then planar binding.
High level Drow need a way to handle high level light spells.
I'm working on a 15th level Drow Dark Mage. Their 8th level spell is maddening darkness.
Drow Strategy and Tactics.
The idea is the Drow know they have advantages in the dark. They will seek to snuff out all light sources that take away advantage or creates disadvantage.
They will use dancing lights and faerie fire when it makes sense to create advantage against targets where darkness doesn't need to be used because the area already is dark.
I want to make a few slight changes to the Drow Mage and Priestesss lower level spells. Including control fire. The idea with control fire is to extinguish natural fire sources. This can include a control water spell if the Drow of the area know of water sources they can maybe use to douse torches. But control fire makes most utility sense.
Darkness is used liberally, and may be cast on the weapons of "shadow warriors" whose blind fighting style allows them to have advantage while in darkness.
There's a lot of options from levels 4 to 8 spells for light sources, so the Drow have trained Dark Mages (a canned 15th level archmage from the MM or something) with an emphasis on maddening Darkness.
This allows drow communities to confront would-be light bearers all the way up to 8th level spell casting.
That gives the DM a lot of options for controlling a Drow campaign with sensible underdark strategies.
Other ideas include poisoned caltrops. Because in darkness a blind fighter should be able to avoid them but a bumbling surface dweller will step all over them.
Blind fighting is much weaker than parry, it is not a big change to downgrade. Yes, Blindfighting is more helpful if you can arrange for darkness, but that strategy depends on none of the enemy having no similar anti-darkness abilities. Living in the under-dark means most of their enemies likely have such abilities. As for players, half of all warlocks take Devil Sight.
As for 5th level spell replacements, they have to be Cleric 5th level. Insect Plague was choosen because it is one of the few offenseive cleric 5th level spells and also offers obscurement, see darkness plan above. If you want to replace it, the other choice is flame strike, which seems un-drow like. Spells like Teleport (7th level WIZARD) and Transmute Rock to Mud (WIZARD) are not allowed. Planar Binding is a better idea but it is a prep spell you cast before, and you have to summonn before, so you really need two-three other spells before you take it. Lot of prep work, how many other spells you are giving up? Raise Dead is what you get at 5th level, not Ressurect.
The basic idea of a strategy is good, but you need to work on it a lot more.
The Drow Priestesses would be divided between healers, utility or religious figures. The utility Priestess would learn 5th level spells like Transmute Stone which has practical use in Drow Society. In combat she would use this to turn an area into mud, and then when some enemies (and maybe even together with allies) have sunk into the mud they would transmute back to stone.
Drow can levitate so this ability can be used aggressively against more grounded enemies.
The Drow can be made to punch much higher above their weight with a few simple changed.
Starting with the Drow Elite Warrior. Parry is a fighting style > maneuver.
Instead: Drow Shadow Warrior. Get rid of parry. Add Blind Fighting. The Drow uses darkness on its blade to engage enemies with advantage under most conditions if light sources are level 2 spells or less.
Hand crossbow tactics: use darkness on the bolt to darken an area up to 120feet away. Disadvantage shots once darkness is cast before shooting. Critical miss means the shot lands more than 20 feet away from pre-aimed target. A miss is just a miss.
Priestess 5th level changes.
Drow aren't a mindless society of ants, so they'd learn spells useful to the Underdark and to society. Swarm if insects is NOT one of those spells.
Teleport, ressurect, planar binding and transmute stone are very Drow-ish.
Teleport and ressurect are useful. If a healer then some combo of 2 of those or mass cure.
If a utility cleric then transmute stone. Useful for mining or combat.
If a religious figure then planar binding.
High level Drow need a way to handle high level light spells.
I'm working on a 15th level Drow Dark Mage. Their 8th level spell is maddening darkness.
Drow Strategy and Tactics.
The idea is the Drow know they have advantages in the dark. They will seek to snuff out all light sources that take away advantage or creates disadvantage.
They will use dancing lights and faerie fire when it makes sense to create advantage against targets where darkness doesn't need to be used because the area already is dark.
I want to make a few slight changes to the Drow Mage and Priestesss lower level spells. Including control fire. The idea with control fire is to extinguish natural fire sources. This can include a control water spell if the Drow of the area know of water sources they can maybe use to douse torches. But control fire makes most utility sense.
Darkness is used liberally, and may be cast on the weapons of "shadow warriors" whose blind fighting style allows them to have advantage while in darkness.
There's a lot of options from levels 4 to 8 spells for light sources, so the Drow have trained Dark Mages (a canned 15th level archmage from the MM or something) with an emphasis on maddening Darkness.
This allows drow communities to confront would-be light bearers all the way up to 8th level spell casting.
That gives the DM a lot of options for controlling a Drow campaign with sensible underdark strategies.
Other ideas include poisoned caltrops. Because in darkness a blind fighter should be able to avoid them but a bumbling surface dweller will step all over them.
Blind fighting is much weaker than parry, it is not a big change to downgrade. Yes, Blindfighting is more helpful if you can arrange for darkness, but that strategy depends on none of the enemy having no similar anti-darkness abilities. Living in the under-dark means most of their enemies likely have such abilities. As for players, half of all warlocks take Devil Sight.
As for 5th level spell replacements, they have to be Cleric 5th level. Insect Plague was choosen because it is one of the few offenseive cleric 5th level spells and also offers obscurement, see darkness plan above. If you want to replace it, the other choice is flame strike, which seems un-drow like. Spells like Teleport (7th level WIZARD) and Transmute Rock to Mud (WIZARD) are not allowed. Planar Binding is a better idea but it is a prep spell you cast before, and you have to summonn before, so you really need two-three other spells before you take it. Lot of prep work, how many other spells you are giving up? Raise Dead is what you get at 5th level, not Ressurect.
The basic idea of a strategy is good, but you need to work on it a lot more.
I disagree. The ability to use darkness changes everything. Parry is less useful because darkness is a 2nd level spell which removes any ability to see from almost every monster encounter and every player encounter where the players aren't 3rd level casters or higher. And the next lighting spell is 4th level spell. So by then the parry is utterly meaningless.
A further comment. Parry increases AC by 3. Advantage is +4 to a dice roll. Darkness with Blind fighting is a more powerful combo against any I'll prepared party.
Devil's sight is also meaningless to non warlocks. So the Drow would use this tactic to deal with 75% of the party at advantage. A single warlock is almost no threat to a Drow warband.
And that's just removing parry as a trade off for Blind fighter. That's not even altering the monster manual variant other than that one change. Until the party has 4th spell levels they have no meaningful counter.
I'll have to review the 7th level things. The spellbook I was looking at online I had filtered cleric and 5th level. So don't know why 7th level wizard spells were in it. I'll just review that later..on phone now.
Everything I find says Transmute Rock is 5th level spell for Wizard. I'll change that part from priestess to the standard Drow Mage which should have 2 5th level spells.
The intent of planar binding is role play, not combat. There may be a way to work in all the prep but a Drow religious figure would not be throwing bugs in people's faces.
A party my combat a utility cleric but might interact with a religious cleric. I'll review the 5th level cleric spells when at a computer to sort that out. Teleport would obviously not be necessary. I doubt I'll add the bugs but we'll see. You're likely right about using it to obscure enemy ranged.
You misunderstood my Darkness reply. A ton of warlocks first tried it, thinking it is a game changer. They found out it is no where near as powerful as it looks . There are way too many low level ways to get around it - including merely retreating to a fall back position and resuming combat from around a corner. But...
There is a feat called Eldritch Adept that lets ANY spellcaster take an Invocation, so you often see non-Warlocks taking Devil Sight. Second level Druids get Wildshape for 1/4 CR creature - including Giant Bat, Giant Centipede, and Cave Badger (all of which can see >= 30 ft in magical darkness). Anyone, not just drow, can take the fighting style called Blindfighting - 10ft blindsense. Spellcasters get area effect spells even before they get Dispel Magic and Counterspell.
The Darkness strategy is an OK strategy, not the best by far. On a scale of 1-10, it's about a 6 at best. In part because as you get higher level, darkness totally fails as a strategy (higher level light spells, Dispel, Counter, Blindsense all become common). If you are never going above 4th, it might be considered a 7/10. It is especially a bad idea for an entire army to use it, because like I said, the Drow face powerful enemies that can easily train their own army to counter it - if only just by getting Blindfighting themselves.
I just immediately replied that Parry is a better ability, without bothering to check what version you were using. Only the Drow Noble get something called parry, and the version they got sucked. No way I would let anyone replace the Drow Noble sucky Parry with Blindfighting. I thought you were talking about the Battlemaster maneuver which is much better.
You misunderstood my Darkness reply. A ton of warlocks first tried it, thinking it is a game changer. They found out it is no where near as powerful as it looks . There are way too many low level ways to get around it - including merely retreating to a fall back position and resuming combat from around a corner. But...
There is a feat called Eldritch Adept that lets ANY spellcaster take an Invocation, so you often see non-Warlocks taking Devil Sight. Second level Druids get Wildshape for 1/4 CR creature - including Giant Bat, Giant Centipede, and Cave Badger (all of which can see >= 30 ft in magical darkness). Anyone, not just drow, can take the fighting style called Blindfighting - 10ft blindsense. Spellcasters get area effect spells even before they get Dispel Magic and Counterspell.
The Darkness strategy is an OK strategy, not the best by far. On a scale of 1-10, it's about a 6 at best. In part because as you get higher level, darkness totally fails as a strategy (higher level light spells, Dispel, Counter, Blindsense all become common). If you are never going above 4th, it might be considered a 7/10. It is especially a bad idea for an entire army to use it, because like I said, the Drow face powerful enemies that can easily train their own army to counter it - if only just by getting Blindfighting themselves.
I just immediately replied that Parry is a better ability, without bothering to check what version you were using. Only the Drow Noble get something called parry, and the version they got sucked. No way I would let anyone replace the Drow Noble sucky Parry with Blindfighting. I thought you were talking about the Battlemaster maneuver which is much better.
I will try to reply more fully over time as you notice I am constantly editing my post. This is because I'm stuck using a Phone behind a very tight firewall.
Anyway regarding darkness, I still disagree. I think your point is valid in a way, but it's an engineering problem. That is to say there is nothing wrong with the idea, it is the application.
Casting darkness on a barbarians great ax really messes with the barbarian's day. And he can't retreat from his main weapon of choice whatever it is. This means casting darkness on the "Drow Shadow Warrior's" own weapon is less useful. It is probably more useful if they cast it on their enemy's weapon or shield.
I also don't disagree that devil sight won't be helpful. But I don't think there's enough of it to go around. If a whole party had devil's sight then that's probably a different story.
But I'll review that a little later on. I mean if the table knows the exact challenges they'll face then they can always spoof the game with a player optimized against that thing. There's just no way around that.
But if players wanted at first to do surface quests only later to do underdark then they can't be expected to all have taken devil's sight.
You misunderstood my Darkness reply. A ton of warlocks first tried it, thinking it is a game changer. They found out it is no where near as powerful as it looks . There are way too many low level ways to get around it - including merely retreating to a fall back position and resuming combat from around a corner. But...
There is a feat called Eldritch Adept that lets ANY spellcaster take an Invocation, so you often see non-Warlocks taking Devil Sight. Second level Druids get Wildshape for 1/4 CR creature - including Giant Bat, Giant Centipede, and Cave Badger (all of which can see >= 30 ft in magical darkness). Anyone, not just drow, can take the fighting style called Blindfighting - 10ft blindsense. Spellcasters get area effect spells even before they get Dispel Magic and Counterspell.
The Darkness strategy is an OK strategy, not the best by far. On a scale of 1-10, it's about a 6 at best. In part because as you get higher level, darkness totally fails as a strategy (higher level light spells, Dispel, Counter, Blindsense all become common). If you are never going above 4th, it might be considered a 7/10. It is especially a bad idea for an entire army to use it, because like I said, the Drow face powerful enemies that can easily train their own army to counter it - if only just by getting Blindfighting themselves.
I just immediately replied that Parry is a better ability, without bothering to check what version you were using. Only the Drow Noble get something called parry, and the version they got sucked. No way I would let anyone replace the Drow Noble sucky Parry with Blindfighting. I thought you were talking about the Battlemaster maneuver which is much better.
I will try to reply more fully over time as you notice I am constantly editing my post. This is because I'm stuck using a Phone behind a very tight firewall.
Anyway regarding darkness, I still disagree. I think your point is valid in a way, but it's an engineering problem. That is to say there is nothing wrong with the idea, it is the application.
Casting darkness on a barbarians great ax really messes with the barbarian's day. And he can't retreat from his main weapon of choice whatever it is. This means casting darkness on the "Drow Shadow Warrior's" own weapon is less useful. It is probably more useful if they cast it on their enemy's weapon or shield.
I also don't disagree that devil sight is helpful. But I don't think there's enough of it to go around. If a whole party had devil's sight then that's probably a different story.
But I'll review that a little later on. I mean if the table knows the exact challenges they'll face then they can always spoof the game with a player optimized against that thing. There's just no way around that.
But if players wanted at first to do surface quests only later to do underdark then they can't be expected to all have taken devil's sight.
As we get into later gameplay well it's incredibly hard to make high level encounters work in 5e anyway. So I'm not trying to suggest that this Drow strategies would be a legitimate CR20 boss.
I can think about how that might look, but over all this is meant to have drow punching above their weight. Not meant to be a 1-20 campaign outright.
I still think utilizing darkness correctly absolutely will wreck low to mid-level players.
Especially utilizing maddening darkness for anyone above 5th or or 6th level spells. It could probably be dangerous app the way out to level 15.
Edit...
Reviewing eldritch Adept the earliest other player characters could get it is level 4 so the Drow are extremely lethal just with their innate Darkness ability if adding blind fighting style up to level 3.
This makes sense for what should be a CR5 anyway.
The Drow Shadow Warrior concept probably still wrecks any adventurer who doesn't have blind fighting or devil's sight up to level 7. I don't think Parry will add or take away much. I see it as a balancing.
Though maybe just leave parry? The point of taking away parry was just to feign balance. But can just homebrew the hell out of it.
There are options to add light to the battlefield but there are actually appropriate darkness counters too.
The Drow would be a bit weak from levels 5 through 12 probably.
But a Drow Dark Mage based on the Archmage CR12 utilizing maddening darkness can rebalance that quite effectively. Again putting level 15 players and below at risk of disadvantage due to darkness. The other features of the spell notwithstanding.
You know...Drow, despite their differences, are experts in tactics. That includes Clerics, Fighters, Rogues, and Arcane spellcasters working in unison and playing to their strengths as a unit. That combined with their fanatical loyalty to Lloth is a force to be reckoned with.
With regards to the darkness thing...if you 'just' focus on darkness, I agree with Mog_Dracov...but...if you consider a group of multiclassed Hexblade (Pact of the Blade)/Rouge (Assassin) are working with multiple Sorcerors and Clerics of Lloth...that can be a pretty formidable undertaking if they have the ability to counter spell or use counter-counter magic like Silence.
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Aut Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam (Find a way or make one) - Hannibal Allegedly
Lessons learned in blood are not soon forgotten. - Clyde Shelton
The truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is and you must bow to it's power or live a lie. -Miyamoto Musashi
Grousing and lamenting howG Drow originally had Ultravision or Infravision and are now just relegated to Darkvision, which changes tactics significantly! Bring back the original drow with levitation and everything! They never fought with light against one another in the books of Salvatore, but heat flaring and heat cloaking was a big deal. So very sad that this was changed away from them so that they are really no longer recognizable. and Poison poison poison.
Grousing and lamenting howG Drow originally had Ultravision or Infravision and are now just relegated to Darkvision, which changes tactics significantly! Bring back the original drow with levitation and everything! They never fought with light against one another in the books of Salvatore, but heat flaring and heat cloaking was a big deal. So very sad that this was changed away from them so that they are really no longer recognizable. and Poison poison poison.
The Drow get levitation, it's a Racial feat "Drow High Magic". Not to mention Dispel Magic and Detect Magic.
Grousing and lamenting howG Drow originally had Ultravision or Infravision and are now just relegated to Darkvision, which changes tactics significantly! Bring back the original drow with levitation and everything! They never fought with light against one another in the books of Salvatore, but heat flaring and heat cloaking was a big deal. So very sad that this was changed away from them so that they are really no longer recognizable. and Poison poison poison.
They also had incremental magic resistance starting at 50% at first level up to a max of 80%. So half the time, you can cast a spell and it did squat. High level drow fighters were a spellcaster's bane.
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Aut Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam (Find a way or make one) - Hannibal Allegedly
Lessons learned in blood are not soon forgotten. - Clyde Shelton
The truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is and you must bow to it's power or live a lie. -Miyamoto Musashi
Infravision was fraught with issues trying to model in the game. Starting with the issue of being endothermic- there's a reason that the only species with eyesight that extends into the infrared range are all exothermic.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Blind fighting is much weaker than parry, it is not a big change to downgrade. Yes, Blindfighting is more helpful if you can arrange for darkness, but that strategy depends on none of the enemy having no similar anti-darkness abilities. Living in the under-dark means most of their enemies likely have such abilities.
This is a wonderfully weird argument: What you're saying is that, living in the underdark, everyone takes blindfight - oh, except the drow, who can create magical darkness at their whim. That there are some exceptions to Darkness+Blindfighting being useful doesn't render it useless. I would expect the vast majority of drow enemies to be non-warlocks-with-devil-sight or blindfighters.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Does anyone think the Drow Shadowblade is broken? They have the ability to cast Darkness at will and also have Devils' Sight. I can finally give my players a taste of their own medicine!
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Drow Shadowblades are so good! Give them a Google!
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The Drow can be made to punch much higher above their weight with a few simple changes.
Starting with the Drow Elite Warrior. Parry is a fighting style > maneuver. Parry which adds only 3AC is not as useful as blind fighting which gives advantage when in darkness against something that is blind. Advantage is worth +4.
What to expect:
Drow Melee:
Hand Crossbows:
Rust Monsters:
Priestesses as 10th level spell casters:
Drow Mages as 9th level spellcasters:
Drow Strategy and Tactics:
When to mark an opponent with light:
That gives the DM a lot of options for controlling a Drow campaign with sensible underdark strategies.
Other ideas include poisoned caltrops. Because in darkness a blind fighter should be able to avoid them but a bumbling surface dweller will step all over them.
Blind fighting is much weaker than parry, it is not a big change to downgrade. Yes, Blindfighting is more helpful if you can arrange for darkness, but that strategy depends on none of the enemy having no similar anti-darkness abilities. Living in the under-dark means most of their enemies likely have such abilities. As for players, half of all warlocks take Devil Sight.
As for 5th level spell replacements, they have to be Cleric 5th level. Insect Plague was choosen because it is one of the few offenseive cleric 5th level spells and also offers obscurement, see darkness plan above. If you want to replace it, the other choice is flame strike, which seems un-drow like. Spells like Teleport (7th level WIZARD) and Transmute Rock to Mud (WIZARD) are not allowed. Planar Binding is a better idea but it is a prep spell you cast before, and you have to summonn before, so you really need two-three other spells before you take it. Lot of prep work, how many other spells you are giving up? Raise Dead is what you get at 5th level, not Ressurect.
The basic idea of a strategy is good, but you need to work on it a lot more.
Reserved for more focus on Drow unit tactics.
Drow Priestess:
The Drow Priestesses would be divided between healers, utility or religious figures. The utility Priestess would learn 5th level spells like Transmute Stone which has practical use in Drow Society. In combat she would use this to turn an area into mud, and then when some enemies (and maybe even together with allies) have sunk into the mud they would transmute back to stone.
Drow can levitate so this ability can be used aggressively against more grounded enemies.
I disagree. The ability to use darkness changes everything. Parry is less useful because darkness is a 2nd level spell which removes any ability to see from almost every monster encounter and every player encounter where the players aren't 3rd level casters or higher. And the next lighting spell is 4th level spell. So by then the parry is utterly meaningless.
A further comment. Parry increases AC by 3. Advantage is +4 to a dice roll. Darkness with Blind fighting is a more powerful combo against any I'll prepared party.
Devil's sight is also meaningless to non warlocks. So the Drow would use this tactic to deal with 75% of the party at advantage. A single warlock is almost no threat to a Drow warband.
And that's just removing parry as a trade off for Blind fighter. That's not even altering the monster manual variant other than that one change. Until the party has 4th spell levels they have no meaningful counter.
I'll have to review the 7th level things. The spellbook I was looking at online I had filtered cleric and 5th level. So don't know why 7th level wizard spells were in it. I'll just review that later..on phone now.
Everything I find says Transmute Rock is 5th level spell for Wizard. I'll change that part from priestess to the standard Drow Mage which should have 2 5th level spells.
The intent of planar binding is role play, not combat. There may be a way to work in all the prep but a Drow religious figure would not be throwing bugs in people's faces.
A party my combat a utility cleric but might interact with a religious cleric. I'll review the 5th level cleric spells when at a computer to sort that out. Teleport would obviously not be necessary. I doubt I'll add the bugs but we'll see. You're likely right about using it to obscure enemy ranged.
You misunderstood my Darkness reply. A ton of warlocks first tried it, thinking it is a game changer. They found out it is no where near as powerful as it looks . There are way too many low level ways to get around it - including merely retreating to a fall back position and resuming combat from around a corner. But...
There is a feat called Eldritch Adept that lets ANY spellcaster take an Invocation, so you often see non-Warlocks taking Devil Sight. Second level Druids get Wildshape for 1/4 CR creature - including Giant Bat, Giant Centipede, and Cave Badger (all of which can see >= 30 ft in magical darkness). Anyone, not just drow, can take the fighting style called Blindfighting - 10ft blindsense. Spellcasters get area effect spells even before they get Dispel Magic and Counterspell.
The Darkness strategy is an OK strategy, not the best by far. On a scale of 1-10, it's about a 6 at best. In part because as you get higher level, darkness totally fails as a strategy (higher level light spells, Dispel, Counter, Blindsense all become common). If you are never going above 4th, it might be considered a 7/10. It is especially a bad idea for an entire army to use it, because like I said, the Drow face powerful enemies that can easily train their own army to counter it - if only just by getting Blindfighting themselves.
I just immediately replied that Parry is a better ability, without bothering to check what version you were using. Only the Drow Noble get something called parry, and the version they got sucked. No way I would let anyone replace the Drow Noble sucky Parry with Blindfighting. I thought you were talking about the Battlemaster maneuver which is much better.
I will try to reply more fully over time as you notice I am constantly editing my post. This is because I'm stuck using a Phone behind a very tight firewall.
Anyway regarding darkness, I still disagree. I think your point is valid in a way, but it's an engineering problem. That is to say there is nothing wrong with the idea, it is the application.
Casting darkness on a barbarians great ax really messes with the barbarian's day. And he can't retreat from his main weapon of choice whatever it is. This means casting darkness on the "Drow Shadow Warrior's" own weapon is less useful. It is probably more useful if they cast it on their enemy's weapon or shield.
I also don't disagree that devil sight won't be helpful. But I don't think there's enough of it to go around. If a whole party had devil's sight then that's probably a different story.
But I'll review that a little later on. I mean if the table knows the exact challenges they'll face then they can always spoof the game with a player optimized against that thing. There's just no way around that.
But if players wanted at first to do surface quests only later to do underdark then they can't be expected to all have taken devil's sight.
I will try to reply more fully over time as you notice I am constantly editing my post. This is because I'm stuck using a Phone behind a very tight firewall.
Anyway regarding darkness, I still disagree. I think your point is valid in a way, but it's an engineering problem. That is to say there is nothing wrong with the idea, it is the application.
Casting darkness on a barbarians great ax really messes with the barbarian's day. And he can't retreat from his main weapon of choice whatever it is. This means casting darkness on the "Drow Shadow Warrior's" own weapon is less useful. It is probably more useful if they cast it on their enemy's weapon or shield.
I also don't disagree that devil sight is helpful. But I don't think there's enough of it to go around. If a whole party had devil's sight then that's probably a different story.
But I'll review that a little later on. I mean if the table knows the exact challenges they'll face then they can always spoof the game with a player optimized against that thing. There's just no way around that.
But if players wanted at first to do surface quests only later to do underdark then they can't be expected to all have taken devil's sight.
As we get into later gameplay well it's incredibly hard to make high level encounters work in 5e anyway. So I'm not trying to suggest that this Drow strategies would be a legitimate CR20 boss.
I can think about how that might look, but over all this is meant to have drow punching above their weight. Not meant to be a 1-20 campaign outright.
I still think utilizing darkness correctly absolutely will wreck low to mid-level players.
Especially utilizing maddening darkness for anyone above 5th or or 6th level spells. It could probably be dangerous app the way out to level 15.
Edit...
Reviewing eldritch Adept the earliest other player characters could get it is level 4 so the Drow are extremely lethal just with their innate Darkness ability if adding blind fighting style up to level 3.
This makes sense for what should be a CR5 anyway.
The Drow Shadow Warrior concept probably still wrecks any adventurer who doesn't have blind fighting or devil's sight up to level 7. I don't think Parry will add or take away much. I see it as a balancing.
Though maybe just leave parry? The point of taking away parry was just to feign balance. But can just homebrew the hell out of it.
There are options to add light to the battlefield but there are actually appropriate darkness counters too.
The Drow would be a bit weak from levels 5 through 12 probably.
But a Drow Dark Mage based on the Archmage CR12 utilizing maddening darkness can rebalance that quite effectively. Again putting level 15 players and below at risk of disadvantage due to darkness. The other features of the spell notwithstanding.
I've been cleaning up the first post for legibility, accuracy and ease of understanding the concepts.
You know...Drow, despite their differences, are experts in tactics. That includes Clerics, Fighters, Rogues, and Arcane spellcasters working in unison and playing to their strengths as a unit. That combined with their fanatical loyalty to Lloth is a force to be reckoned with.
With regards to the darkness thing...if you 'just' focus on darkness, I agree with Mog_Dracov...but...if you consider a group of multiclassed Hexblade (Pact of the Blade)/Rouge (Assassin) are working with multiple Sorcerors and Clerics of Lloth...that can be a pretty formidable undertaking if they have the ability to counter spell or use counter-counter magic like Silence.
Aut Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam (Find a way or make one) - Hannibal Allegedly
Lessons learned in blood are not soon forgotten. - Clyde Shelton
The truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is and you must bow to it's power or live a lie. -Miyamoto Musashi
Grousing and lamenting howG Drow originally had Ultravision or Infravision and are now just relegated to Darkvision, which changes tactics significantly! Bring back the original drow with levitation and everything! They never fought with light against one another in the books of Salvatore, but heat flaring and heat cloaking was a big deal. So very sad that this was changed away from them so that they are really no longer recognizable. and Poison poison poison.
The Drow get levitation, it's a Racial feat "Drow High Magic". Not to mention Dispel Magic and Detect Magic.
They also had incremental magic resistance starting at 50% at first level up to a max of 80%. So half the time, you can cast a spell and it did squat. High level drow fighters were a spellcaster's bane.
Aut Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam (Find a way or make one) - Hannibal Allegedly
Lessons learned in blood are not soon forgotten. - Clyde Shelton
The truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is and you must bow to it's power or live a lie. -Miyamoto Musashi
Infravision was fraught with issues trying to model in the game. Starting with the issue of being endothermic- there's a reason that the only species with eyesight that extends into the infrared range are all exothermic.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
This is a wonderfully weird argument: What you're saying is that, living in the underdark, everyone takes blindfight - oh, except the drow, who can create magical darkness at their whim. That there are some exceptions to Darkness+Blindfighting being useful doesn't render it useless. I would expect the vast majority of drow enemies to be non-warlocks-with-devil-sight or blindfighters.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Does anyone think the Drow Shadowblade is broken? They have the ability to cast Darkness at will and also have Devils' Sight. I can finally give my players a taste of their own medicine!
Drow Shadowblades are so good! Give them a Google!