Bring back Underdark 3 Greater Gifts

[Cerk Evermoore]

In D&D the Drow are incredibly warlike, fierce and cunning. They have houses and they war with eachother and hold Lolth in the highest regard. They used to have a great reputation around the server for being fierce warriors but lately it feels like the Devil's Table has lost its touch.

I personally feel that change is directly related to the removal of the greater gifts from drow. People used to talk about drow superiority because well they were superior. With base drow stats +3 greater gifts, you could create some pretty monster characters.

But now that those gifts are removed and human and high elf have become an obviously more powerful pick the drow community has taken some pretty serious hits population wise in my opinion. I would really like to see, the return of the 3 greater gift choices for the monster races.

I mean, if we're supposed to suffer all these things for the sake of being monsters and not go into any human towns or have access to like half the game without risk being pked on sight. I think we should at least deserve to have the stats to make us the "Big scary monsters" we deserve to be.

I don't know, I'd like this to be a serious discussion and not a argument.

[Nitro]

I don't think this is particularly true at all, last time we got to see racial stats was back in June, and then Drow were the second most played race, long after they'd had their gift changes at that. Things might have changed recently, but I'll be mightily surprised if Drow are not still the second most played race.

And I disagree that the current Drow gift setup makes them weaker, they already have a great base statline as is and can pick the melee magthere or clergy minor gifts to customize their stats a bit more, it seems in a pretty well-balanced place, which I for one think is what we should strive towards.

[Barradoor]

3 Gifts translate essentially to picking 3 of

+1 AB / +1, 2, 3 or 5 Damage
+30 HP / +1 Fort
+1 AB / +1 Reflex / +1 AC
+1 Spell DC / +1 Will
+1 Spell DC / 33 Skill Points
+1 Spell DC / +1 Unisave (Paladin/Blackguard)

Comparatively to current bonuses from drow (Dex +2, Con -2, Int +2, Cha +2) with -2 Dex for +2 Wisdom or -2 cha for +2 Con you're receiving

3 +2's, equivalent to an elf prior with 3 gift - along with 32 Spell Resistance, it makes them still superior.

Humans and Half-orcs IMO are the only things that compare, humans from a free feat and skill points, then Half Orcs getting two free feats.

[Dorkas]

I miss the 3 gift option for the fact that it allowed a lot more build flexibility to anyone, versus just being the same cookie cutter as everyone else, especially for weird rp builds. Bringing them back exclusively for drow though is just a terrible idea.

[Harasha]

They do seem to be popular at least right now.

Maybe more powerful drow-only equipment could be an option? That seems a way to give a race an edge, plus there's the story potential in acquiring materials and crafting. And it's easier to correct overpowered equipment than an overpowered race.

[Xuuldar]

I could be completely wrong but it seemed to me like the UD turned into a ghost town right about the same time several new areas were either added or revamped on the surface and horses were introduced. That was well after the gifts change. I feel like Drow are in a better place than most. It does cut down a bit on flexibility so I was sad to see it changed, but its the same for every race.

[RedGiant]

Some serious rebalancing might be required to make this work, but I would like to see every character have the ability to choose at least one major gift. I bemoan the loss of the extra boost to character variation more than anything else.

[Sab1]

This would being back some serious power creep at a time the server is trying to decrease it.

[Durvayas]

As someone playing a drow, I don't think we really need this.

[RedGiant]

Alright...maybe more variation then? The gift of the magthere is a good template. Perhaps allow some + - customization along those lines, one stat for another, but with the stats more open to different concepts?

[Imperatrix]

Drow make good wizards, sorcerers, and clerics, but they kind of suck at anything else, though the SR should not be underestimated.

What I would do is simply remove their int and cha bonus and allow players to pick which two stats they get. You can already trade dex and cha for wis and con, I don't see any reason not to simply expand on this.

Regardless, low drow population is probably a matter of perception since I see plenty of them around. Even then, I don't see how seeing less of them would be a bad thing; it would actually make sense for there to be less drow than other races in a non-drow city.

[Durvayas]

With UD race numbers, two things strongly influence player choice.

1) Stats
2) Cultural knowledge

Drow and outcast humans are far and away the most popular races in Andunor. They have the best stats, and drow have the most thoroughly documented culture of the UD races, which makes them pretty accessible, and outcasts have no culture at all, which means they're a blank slate and a 'safe' option that requires no reading.

I still think there are too many outcasts, and advocate for them to be made into a normal reward, because at this point, I think outcasts still handily outnumber the vast majority of the non-drow UD races combined, which seems wrong to me for the only monster city.

[flower]

Humans and Elves now hold extremely flexibility over Drow.

Human free feet + 30 skill ranks and + 2 major gifts (and one minor for perks) are vastly superior to the Drow subrace.

Elves get higher flexibility, as you can pick the suitable subrace along with two major gifts. Wild Elf, on top of that gets free AC, free feat (thoughness) and track. Elven racials items are also superior to the Drow one. Because longsword and chainmail will use major part of elven characters while, honestly, crossbow and bolts (which need even special classes to craft) are not the primary items for most characters.

[Ork]

Eh, maybe this is good. Rather there be more humans than Drow.

[Imperatrix]

Daily reminder that even in Menzoberranzan there is a 1% population of free humans. Humans are everywhere canonically.

Andunor is not Menzoberranzan, nor is it "monster city," it's Skullport-lite.

[flower]

Daily reminder that even in Menzoberranzan there is a 1% population of free humans. Humans are everywhere canonically.

Andunor is not Menzoberranzan, nor is it "monster city," it's Skullport-lite.

What has it to do, with other races having mechanically upper hand?

[Durvayas]

Sure, it is skullport-esque in theme, but that doesn't mean that it isn't weird as hell for a city that is built on top of what used to be a duergar trade post(and populated with the remnants of a goblinoid city and a drow city) to have humans outnumbering the actual monster races(excluding drow).

Skullport makes sense to have a majority human population, being that the city was originally founded by humans as a Netherese outpost, destroyed with a human remnant population, and then repopulated by humans again as a trade city.

Contrast Andunor, a trade city that was built by duergar and drow(houses Freth and Claddath) for the(at the time) exclusively UD races during the flayer war. It simply doesn't make sense for the human population to have exploded in the city the way it has if you take the city's history into account. I'm not saying its Menzobarranzan, but I am absolutely saying it should be "monster city".

[-XXX-]

Would you prefer to cast out humans from Andunor, making it half-empty 90% of the time the same way Pit Town was?

[Durvayas]

Would you prefer to cast out humans from Andunor, making it half-empty 90% of the time the same way Pit Town was?

I'm glad you brought that up. The pit town era was a blight on Arelith's long history, with the UD nearly perishing under staff/dev and DM mismanagement and neglect lasting for years.

It was never the choice of races that hurt the UD, but the environment of the era. The Pit-Town era of the UD had a litany of problems that drove players away from the server.

The UD was rife with griefers running unchecked, killscripts restricting PC movement on the surface to maybe 30% of the total map, having a total of four-six(maybe eight. I forget if jhareds had more than 2) shops on the entire UD server, and a half dozen racial settlements disseminating an already small population across the UD. Add to that a player culture that necessitated self policing(because you had to go to the surface to find a DM if you ever wanted one, and they rarely ever enforced rules in the UD, so ironically, the only way to stop griefers tended to be to catch them in the act and then, as a community, gank the shit out of them until they stopped respawning). Pit town itself had that cheese inducing no-PvP script that was abused by surface players daily, and the settlement was absolutely hideous to look at. There were lvl 15 hostile mobs spawning in Udos constantly, slaughtering lowbies unless they managed to find Kirraz or a higher level PC was around. People playing in the UD felt like proverbial second-class citizens as a result of the neglect and the killscripts, and how our side of the server was utterly screwed and left to fester while the flayer war plot was ignored for well over a year and a half. Things were so bad that there was such real resentment between surface and UD players that it resulted in the UD subforums being shut down entirely because every thread became a hostile shouting match.
Pit town was empty because the UD was left to rot and the UD playerbase knew it and left in droves.

Sure, it was possible you could have some fun. There was a rich drow culture on the server with all the traditionalism, outright mercilessness and cruelty it cannonically should have(Hell you could even argue that the total lack of DM presence actually helped that somewhat), so if you were playing a drow it was actually not too terrible(and every race had its niche so good RP wasn't impossible to come by), but by and large the fun was being had in spite of the state of the UD, not because of it.

So by referencing pit town, you could not possibly have made a more terrible comparison.

The UD has been completely redesigned from the ground up since the pit town era. Its been condensed, there are more than a dozen shops, several guildhouses, we actually have DMs(I can't overstate this enough) that enforce the rules and keep things from being total anarchy. The killscripts have been removed, and while I lament that there isn't a proper Melee Magthere building, I won't deny that Andunor is designed fairly well.
Virtually all the things that were driving players out of the UD have been rectified since the pit town era, and the population has exploded, with old UD players still trickling back to the server after having been gone for years. Even if you got rid of every single outcast right now, Andunor's player counts would still easily be almost, if not more than, triple what the UD had during the pit town era.

But you'll notice I'm not advocating for a removal of outcasts(human ones anyway. I don't think elven or dwarven ones should be a thing at all due to the presence of drow and duergar and how terrible those are for immersion). I recognize that the diversity outcast humans bring does have some value to the setting. My concern has always been that there are simply too many of them due to how very optimal they are to make, and it doesn't make sense for the only settlement on the server that actually is home to six different monster races(not counting svirfs, everyone knows the svirf HQ is burrowhome) is populated by 25-40% humans(or more if team evil on the surface is getting their shit rocked in a given month).

Outcast still doesn't have much in the way of tangible penalties that actually matter, while still being the shamelessly optimal route for grinding, hence why I support the implementation of putting them behind a normal reward as a means of population control. It would never get rid of them, and they would always have a signifigant presence in andunor(since you can still just buy the status), but it would make creating outcasts perhaps a bit less of a trivial decision.

One can also argue that with the destruction of wharftown, team evil no longer has anywhere on the surface they can call home, shifting the balance of alignment on the surface further since the devs have shunted them into the UD by default. Andunor being such an alluring place to settle for these displaced villains seems to have tipped the scales fairly heavily in team good's favor up top. Not much can be done to remedy that unless perhaps the castles were made easier for factions themselves to take over(and you know a stronk team evil faction would totally seize one), decoupling them from being innately under the control of cordor and/or myon/burrowhome(all LG settlements), or if there was another settlement to use as a base(RIP wharftown ).

[Durvayas]

At risk of double posting, I suggest a return of this thread to its rails. Cerk, I disagree with the assertion that the drow need a buff.

I counter with an assertion that Duergar need a buff. They haven't been able to hold steady enough numbers to have a faction of their own in... oof... nearly a full year now?

[Shadowy Reality]

What always bothered me is the asymetry between UD monster races and Outcasts.

UD monster races are (rightfully) dealt with as hostiles in most situations when interacting with the surface world. Outcasts not so much. When was the last time you saw an Outcast being treated poorly IC, forced away, executed on the spot? I'm sure it happens, but the norm seems to be healthy suspicion, not outright hostility. Outcasts are infamous, their deeds in the Surface world are somewhat known, they have to an extent become monsters.

Outcasts always had the benefit of having easy access to both UD and Surface, they now have the mechanical benefit of being Optimal as well, a dangerous combination.

I don't know if the solution is to buff monster races in some way, or introducing some penalties to Outcasts, or even if this is actually a problem.

[Thanatosis]

I counter with an assertion that Duergar need a buff. They haven't been able to hold steady enough numbers to have a faction of their own in... oof... nearly a full year now?

Player numbers are not strictly indicative of mechanical power.

[Cerk Evermoore]

For clarification, I was speaking of applying the 3 bonus gifts to "ALL Underdark races" I simply used the drow example because drow were one of the most superior when combined with the major gifts.

[Barradoor]

I'm only going to be listing combat qualities because that's where most of the talk is about this.

Deurgar Receive +2 Con, +2 Strength for -4 Cha. This makes them, along with their 1 ECL, able to get one gift; the ability to either be a 3 gift cleric, or a 3 gift WM that gets to double up on Strength, you can take intelligence to get more skill points etc.

Deurgar aren't able to play anything charisma based well, nearly anything else is certainly playable, and with an extra 2 strength, it makes melee builds slightly better than what a human could do. (Which is what gifts do. They are slight benefits.)

Svirfneblin receive Str -2, Dex +2, Wis +2, Cha -4

Honestly these are terrible with 2 ecl.

Goblins receive Str -2, Dex +2, making them equivilent to hin, along with the little buff when other goblins are around. They make a lot of funny builds, like Weapon Masters with a 10-20 crit range greatsword.

Kobolds: See Above

Gnoll get Str +2, Con +2, Int -2, Cha -2, making them good barbarians, their +1 ECL gives them the chance for one gift, and additionally they recieve Bonus Feat: Power Attack, Bonus Feat: Toughness enabling them to play Weapon Master as well without having to lose anything for Overwhelming Critical. Your one gift can be to balance intelligence, or just to have more strength.

Str +4, Dex -2, Wis -2, Cha +2, at a +2 ECL. Along with 5% Physical Immunity, +1 Natural Armor, Bonus Feat: Power Attack making them excellent melee characters, yet again.

Hobgoblin receives Dex +2, Con +2 along with 1 ECL, making them Effective in anything that requires dexterity.

Ogres are a meme race.

Imps make great Cha based casters.

[Sab1]

Giving UD more bonuses would be a bad idea. Some races are always going to be more popular over other races. Surface has always had more people over the UD and Drow have always been the most popular UD race. All this will do is start pushing the power creep again.