drow/duergar and darkness

Nemesis Revised · Post by **Nemesis Revised** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 8:41 pm

1) is there a way drow/duergar can be changed to at least resist the blind using their SR? or their levels? funny how i get fballed by a goblin shaman and blinded at level 30

2)

* Darkness 1/day as cast by a Sorcerer of their character level

at level 30, my drow under the influence of darkness was dispelled by a bandit mage. is there a way for the darkness from higher level chars to resist the dispel? since it's following the concept of "a sorceror of their character level"

Death Dealer1 · Post by **Death Dealer1** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 8:43 pm

don't use drow in the new areas with goblins. those hipsing shamans come out of hiding with nothing but flamestrikes and firestorms....if your drow your dead no save.

Nemesis Revised · Post by **Nemesis Revised** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:05 am

so whatsa point of using drow when they are cool at low levels and virtually detectable on planar areas then?

Alain · Post by **Alain** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:15 am

no point.

Whats the point in going halfling, when they cant use a greataxe or longbow?

Why use a dwarf when their bonus AC is only good against giants and not elementals which are predominant in the planes?

Can you sense my sarcasm? Every race has drawbacks. the rarer the race is meant to be, the bigger hte drawbacks.

Drow are not meant to be nearly as abundant as they are in NS4, so dont expect me to feel bad if you feel they have big drawbacks.

With everything that has been done in the development stage against drow, there have been as many things done for them.

drow get movable darkness ---> Devs find a way to make monsters less dumb in darkness

Drow get high SR ---> they get an ECL

Drow get REAL nice stat buffs ----> Devs give them lightblindness

it all evens out.

Nemesis Revised · Post by **Nemesis Revised** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:46 am

but their darkness, as cast as a sorceror of their level, is dispellable even at high levels by something like a bandit mage for example.

Post by **Lokey** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:51 am

Nemesis Revised wrote:but their darkness, as cast as a sorceror of their level, is dispellable even at high levels by something like a bandit mage for example.

That's a very good point, and certainly should be fixed. Hard to find volunteers to rip apart and rebalance the spell/ability system for some reason though.

Nemesis Revised · Post by **Nemesis Revised** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:02 am

yeh

Go'f · Post by **Go'f** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 9:32 am

I had a long reply for you Alain, but then I realised I would probibly be wasting my breath cause I've said it before... if I am wrong and your interested then look at my previous posts about what the problem is with the changes to Drow

To me as a Drow player its simple put the SR back to +10 or reduce the ECL 3 effect and then make lightblindness avoidable in some way, either a spell combination or some resist/save/random chance of avoiding.

Save House Del'Armgo; make Drow an enjoyable race to play again.

Post by **Flailer** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 10:44 am

My hesitancy at least for making drow SR go all the way up to a max of 50 is that drow are already very powerful, but not by an intentional method.

Drow darkness was never intended to be the 'kill things from afar without being counterattacked' feature. Despite attempts at making the AI handle things a little smarter (but not too smart - we could have them completely ignore the darkness if we wanted), there always seem to be holes to plug up with darkness that are exploitable.

My inclination has been to keep it and work around it - Lokey's said we should scrap it. I'm starting to agree.

We could give drow just the visual effect of darkness (not the actual not-able-to-be-detected effect) and give them a conceal of 50% while it's up. Then I'd be more willing to make drow even more powerful.

As it stands now, penetrating drow SR reliably requires a pure caster or a caster that's taken no more than 5 levels of another class and taken the two spell penetration feats to make up for it. This requirement forces dedication on the caster's part. This doesn't even mention that the drow SR is still extremely powerful against 99% of the mobs in the game.

It's just difficult to justify pushing drow even more powerful when you see scores of drow killing things without any of them ever counterattacking.

My apologies if you're not one of those, but if you adjust the class you have to adjust it for everyone including those that took it in order to exploit it.

Nemesis Revised · Post by **Nemesis Revised** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 11:53 am

what about darkvision feature? maybe implement it in such a way that ppl with darkvision can see through darkness like UV?

JesterOI · Post by **JesterOI** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 12:05 pm

That explains Drow SR fine, but waht about Svirfs? Or have they been put back up to the 10+lvl?

Also would it be too much trouble to give Svirfs the proper AC? Use a script like the SR script, -4ac dodge vs giants & +4ac dodge would work perfectly.

Alain · Post by **Alain** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:05 pm

Red-Mane wrote:I had a long reply for you Alain, but then I realised I would probibly be wasting my breath cause I've said it before... if I am wrong and your interested then look at my previous posts about what the problem is with the changes to Drow

To me as a Drow player its simple put the SR back to +10 or reduce the ECL 3 effect and then make lightblindness avoidable in some way, either a spell combination or some resist/save/random chance of avoiding.

Save House Del'Armgo; make Drow an enjoyable race to play again.

If drow are such an unenjoyable race to play, then why are there so may on NS4? I have personnally made drow. They are more than worth the +3 ECL, and anyone who says different is lying to themselves.

Look at Aasimar, who is ECL 2. they get some nice stat buffs (only a little better than Drow) and nothing else. so youre telling me that the darkness +SR isnt worth 1 more ECL?

or what about Githzerai? another ECL +3 which I have personnally never seen anyone play. If drow are so bad, then why do I see 15 drow on at all times, and never a single Githzerai?

you need to sit back and look at ALL the other races before you complain about Drow ECL. they are on par or better than every other +3 ECL race, and more than worth 1 more ECL when compared to most ECL +2s.

Elagneros · Post by **Elagneros** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:09 pm

I don't see the trouble with drow at all.

I have a tiefling which uses the darkness too, and it is a very good feature. So you got drow with both the long lasting moving darkness + SR, that's pretty powerful already. The +3 ECL is more than fair IMO, and sometime seems a bit low.

Marah Telexus · Post by **Marah Telexus** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:05 pm

I agree that the drow are fun to play, however the reason you see alot on the server isnt because they are fun to play in spite of the new changes. Most people playing drow made them before the new changes and most would not make another with the changes in effect.

The problem now is that drow cannot go to any planar area without being blinded and SLOWED (the slow part is the killer), especially the fire plane and dwarven home plane (priests and gob shamans spamming flame strike and such). Then you have Dwarf elites (which are fighter type monsters) casting dispell on the drow darkness, and ultravision on themselves. It makes it very dificult to do anything in the planes except die. There really isnt any benifit of a drow in planar areas as they are now, they are at par with other races (perhaps that was the intention?).

I also agree that most of the other sub-races arn't as good or appealing as the drow, but why nerf? Why not make the other sub-races better and more appealing? Maybe make sub-race specific items.

As of now the drow SR can be reduced with mords or spell breach. Therefore, any mage can reduce a lvl 40 drows SR to 35, making it quite easy to penetrate. The 5+lvl SR is fine if spells cannot reduce it, but IMO it should be raised back to 10+lvl if mords is going to continue to decrease it. Just a suggestion.

Joran · Post by **Joran** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:08 pm

The problem now is that drow cannot go to any planar area without being blinded and SLOWED (the slow part is the killer), especially the fire plane and dwarven home plane (priests and gob shamans spamming flame strike and such). Then you have Dwarf elites (which are fighter type monsters) casting dispell on the drow darkness, and ultravision on themselves. It makes it very dificult to do anything in the planes except die. There really isnt any benifit of a drow in planar areas as they are now, they are at par with other races (perhaps that was the intention?).

If all that is really the case, then just call it justifiable payback for 30 levels of super-easy-levelling darkness cheese. Oh the Poor Drow (TM) :-(