I am just curious about how the Drow living on the surface of your world, or the world you play in, have getting around their sunlight sensitivity and the prejudices they would face because they are Drow.
I like the Drow, and see them as just another type of Elves in the same way, that Wood Elves or High Elves are types of Elves, and I would like to use them more in my campaigns. The problem is that most of my games take place on the surface, resulting in the drow having a pretty significant disadvantage, both physically, due to sunlight sensitivity, and racially because the surface world has a bee in its bonnet about the Drow.
How have the Drow in your world, or the word you play in getting around these problems?
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
My game is an Eberron game, so the dynamics are already different to those in Forgotten Realms, BUT:
For sunlight sensitivity, I just ignore it. This maybe isn’t something I’d recommend to anyone super concerned with “balance,” but most Eberron drow have never been subterranean, so it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
For social disadvantages, I also mostly ignore it. In my game, the only visual difference between a drow and any other elf is white hair, so they’re just perceived as any other elf by most people. To those who do recognize them, a decent analogy would be this: in the real world, if someone introduces themselves as being from a culture portrayed as cannibalistic in popular media, how are you going to react? You might be wary and uncomfortable but you’re not going to initiate violence on sight. There’s not history of drow coming out of the ground to kidnap people as slaves. They’re all on a different continent where even the plants want to kill you. So if one shows up in a big city, it’s a curiosity, not a threat.
The more I hear about Eberron, the more I like it. I just worry about losing the magic feel of the realms, where magic is, well, magical and can do almost anything.
The magic in Eberron might be everywhere, but it seems so low level from what I have read, that it's almost mundane.
I cant imagine Eberron casters using spells like "Plane Shift", or "Time Stop', and others - let alone spells like "Wish" that can literally reshape reality. Eberron magic seems much more like "I have this magic ring, so I can cast fireball 4 times every long rest" kind of magic.
The like the world in general, I just don't get the same "high magic" feel from Eberrons "wide magic" world.
Maybe I am mistaken, as I haven't actually played the setting, and am.just going off what I have read.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
The more I hear about Eberron, the more I like it. I just worry about losing the magic feel of the realms, where magic is, well, magical and can do almost anything.
The magic in Eberron might be everywhere, but it seems so low level from what I have read, that it's almost mundane.
I cant imagine Eberron casters using spells like "Plane Shift", or "Time Stop', and others - let alone spells like "Wish" that can literally reshape reality. Eberron magic seems much more like "I have this magic ring, so I can cast fireball 4 times every long rest" kind of magic.
The like the world in general, I just don't get the same "high magic" feel from Eberrons "wide magic" world.
Maybe I am mistaken, as I haven't actually played the setting, and am.just going off what I have read.
There are spellcasters who can cast the Big Bad spells. The difference is, you won't find two or three of them in every city, like you will in FR.
The more I hear about Eberron, the more I like it. I just worry about losing the magic feel of the realms, where magic is, well, magical and can do almost anything.
The magic in Eberron might be everywhere, but it seems so low level from what I have read, that it's almost mundane.
I cant imagine Eberron casters using spells like "Plane Shift", or "Time Stop', and others - let alone spells like "Wish" that can literally reshape reality. Eberron magic seems much more like "I have this magic ring, so I can cast fireball 4 times every long rest" kind of magic.
The like the world in general, I just don't get the same "high magic" feel from Eberrons "wide magic" world.
Maybe I am mistaken, as I haven't actually played the setting, and am.just going off what I have read.
A fundamental principle of Eberron is that the world needs heroes (i.e. the PCs). There absolutely is "high magic." 50,000 years ago, the ancient giant empires used magic that destroyed an entire moon to win a war against extra-dimensional invading horrors. The elves of Aerenal created a gestalt deity from the collective power of their undying ancestors. An unknown magical force annihilated an entire nation of over a million people. But note the limitations: the giants did their thing in the forgotten past, the elves' Undying Court either will not or cannot assert their influence beyond their borders, and no one has any idea how the nation of Cyre was destroyed or if it might happen again.
If you want an Elminster to go around casting Time Stop, it absolutely fits, but it's going to have to be a player character (or the Big Bad). Forgotten Realms has that problem where there are so many high-level heroic NPCs running around that there doesn't really seem to be any need for whatever the PCs are doing. From its inception, Eberron made conscious decisions to avoid that by limiting the presence of higher-level magic outside of what the PCs bring to the game (and, of course, the problems that require the PCs to deal with them).
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Hi, guys
I am just curious about how the Drow living on the surface of your world, or the world you play in, have getting around their sunlight sensitivity and the prejudices they would face because they are Drow.
I like the Drow, and see them as just another type of Elves in the same way, that Wood Elves or High Elves are types of Elves, and I would like to use them more in my campaigns. The problem is that most of my games take place on the surface, resulting in the drow having a pretty significant disadvantage, both physically, due to sunlight sensitivity, and racially because the surface world has a bee in its bonnet about the Drow.
How have the Drow in your world, or the word you play in getting around these problems?
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
My game is an Eberron game, so the dynamics are already different to those in Forgotten Realms, BUT:
For sunlight sensitivity, I just ignore it. This maybe isn’t something I’d recommend to anyone super concerned with “balance,” but most Eberron drow have never been subterranean, so it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
For social disadvantages, I also mostly ignore it. In my game, the only visual difference between a drow and any other elf is white hair, so they’re just perceived as any other elf by most people. To those who do recognize them, a decent analogy would be this: in the real world, if someone introduces themselves as being from a culture portrayed as cannibalistic in popular media, how are you going to react? You might be wary and uncomfortable but you’re not going to initiate violence on sight. There’s not history of drow coming out of the ground to kidnap people as slaves. They’re all on a different continent where even the plants want to kill you. So if one shows up in a big city, it’s a curiosity, not a threat.
The more I hear about Eberron, the more I like it. I just worry about losing the magic feel of the realms, where magic is, well, magical and can do almost anything.
The magic in Eberron might be everywhere, but it seems so low level from what I have read, that it's almost mundane.
I cant imagine Eberron casters using spells like "Plane Shift", or "Time Stop', and others - let alone spells like "Wish" that can literally reshape reality. Eberron magic seems much more like "I have this magic ring, so I can cast fireball 4 times every long rest" kind of magic.
The like the world in general, I just don't get the same "high magic" feel from Eberrons "wide magic" world.
Maybe I am mistaken, as I haven't actually played the setting, and am.just going off what I have read.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
There are spellcasters who can cast the Big Bad spells. The difference is, you won't find two or three of them in every city, like you will in FR.
A fundamental principle of Eberron is that the world needs heroes (i.e. the PCs). There absolutely is "high magic." 50,000 years ago, the ancient giant empires used magic that destroyed an entire moon to win a war against extra-dimensional invading horrors. The elves of Aerenal created a gestalt deity from the collective power of their undying ancestors. An unknown magical force annihilated an entire nation of over a million people. But note the limitations: the giants did their thing in the forgotten past, the elves' Undying Court either will not or cannot assert their influence beyond their borders, and no one has any idea how the nation of Cyre was destroyed or if it might happen again.
If you want an Elminster to go around casting Time Stop, it absolutely fits, but it's going to have to be a player character (or the Big Bad). Forgotten Realms has that problem where there are so many high-level heroic NPCs running around that there doesn't really seem to be any need for whatever the PCs are doing. From its inception, Eberron made conscious decisions to avoid that by limiting the presence of higher-level magic outside of what the PCs bring to the game (and, of course, the problems that require the PCs to deal with them).