Drow SR

[MissEvelyn]

>play overpowered dommy mommy drow GF
>get nerfed
>complain

Why? Drows were OBVIOUSLY too good and I am surprised it took this much time for them to get a small hit like this. 32 SR was obscene. It artificially made them the strongest non-award race available for no other reason than "drow superiority".

They're supposed to be *that* good. It's both their blessing and their curse.

That said, you bring up one interesting point that I haven't seen discussed anywhere yet. Drow are currently a free race to play. Why not make them an award? Bump their Spell Resistance back up to 3.5 numbers, and then make them a Normal Award or Greater Award to play.

[Skibbles]

TL;DR: The nerf is fine IMO, because I don't think it's going to make much difference out of niche cases.

SR 32 lost a lot of bite over the years and seeing it reduced to SR 26 really doesn't feel any different to me. I found it mostly to be a bit of QOL for that one magic trap in the Temple of the Noisome God, and pretty helpful for the Meteor Swarm spam in the Undermountain, but otherwise - meh. UNI saves reign far more supreme, every drow still has to prioritize the same stuff everyone else does, and WoF is such an exhausting crutch for PVP I can't be bothered to care about it having trouble especially when drow had a better alternative baked in recently anyway (which remains, by the way, as a better alternative).

I'd think, if we're talking about trivializing PvE, we should be talking about how utterly broken Darkness is. Nothing makes a boss, dungeon, or encounter more trivial than a simple darkness spell. SR doesn't hold a candle to that, and drow parties can drop pretty consistent darkness spam if they coordinate their cooldowns.

Alternatively, just to add ideas to the mix, if SR was added back why not adjust those poor underused spell penetration feats? If people are so concerned about landing a spell sans a G-Breach lead then I think it would be cool to heavily reduce the feat tax for penetration. Double them! Instead of each spell pen being an increment of 2, make them increments of 4. Therefore a level 27 caster with a single spell pen feat will get through SR 32 with ease.

RE: Drow as an Award (I'm slightly offtopic)

If drow are going to have an award attached it should be that a reward is required to make them non-evil (right now there's no reward requirement to make them neutral - very bad imo).

Neutral drow seem to be in alarming abundance, but it's very hard to tell for sure so I'm kind of going with my gut by watching political trends, and noting that 'love' and 'friendship' have thoroughly and unironically entered the drow lexicon.

If drow numbers became hampered by an award it's going to probably do some pretty critical damage to the entire feel of the UD as that power vacuum is slurped up by everything not-drow or maybe even not-UD as is sometimes the case. I'm not sure they'd recover from that.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

But why? I'm waiting for the logic that says that if some arbitrary race gets SR nerfed from X to Y then another unrelated arbitrary (and not that good atm) class needs to go through the same nerf.

I sincerely do not see how what was explained for the update relating to races does not also apply to monk, namely:

Reasoning:
32 SR is capable of trivialising almost all end game caster content and makes consumable counters hard if not unreasonable to deploy in PvP scenarios.
[...]
Further, this means a breached opponent is no longer able to withstand counters that depending on the cost of the breach source were outlandish.
See: Mordekainens Disjunction being an 80 lore scroll or often 9th circle spell vs a free passive SR value to obtain 22 SR, which still serves to counter a considerable % of common tactics.

In particular, per rulebooks, monk gets a very close SR to spell resistant races level+10 vs level+11, hence it would simply make sense they follow the same pattern to me. I see sincerely no difference and I do not personally believe the class investment balances it.

Feel free to disagree, by all means.

I mean we are vocalizing our disagreement, but at this point it seems we are going to have to agree disagree.

If you can't see the difference in punishing in what is still the strongest race (and can play any class besides just weak monk) on arelith versus weak class all for 'keeping a pattern', then I guess you just can't see the difference. We obviously do not balance around rule books either, but take inspiration. Clerics with a single spell, not even a core feature to them, can have higher spell resistance than monks (which can be gotten rid of, but again its just some side spell and not even a core class feature)

[AstralUniverse]

the tl;dr is that there's no reason to do this. Monk is not a strong class. It's in a decent state. it doesnt need nerfs of buffs. There's no IC implication to the math behind the sr scaling. So if the class doesnt need tweaks and the IC info is preserved and remains the same - there's just no reason to do this nerf either from a thematic nor a mechanical standpoint. simple.

[Itikar]

[...] then I guess you just can't see the difference.

Precisely. I can't.

Because essentially I don't find the arguments you all presented to be particularly convincing and I do not think monk is so weak as you present it to begin with. Moreover, if the decrease in spell resistance does not affect drow and co. too much, neither it would affect monk too much. On top of that, nowhere I said that I would call exclusively for a nerf. It would be pretty fine if along with the regularization of spell resistance monk got some other more interesting features or adjustments to balance things out.

RE: Drow as an Award (I'm slightly offtopic)

If drow are going to have an award attached it should be that a reward is required to make them non-evil (right now there's no reward requirement to make them neutral - very bad imo).

Neutral drow seem to be in alarming abundance, but it's very hard to tell for sure so I'm kind of going with my gut by watching political trends, and noting that 'love' and 'friendship' have thoroughly and unironically entered the drow lexicon.

If drow numbers became hampered by an award it's going to probably do some pretty critical damage to the entire feel of the UD as that power vacuum is slurped up by everything not-drow or maybe even not-UD as is sometimes the case. I'm not sure they'd recover from that.

Posted more for this than for the above. Complete agreement. In particular, regarding the award requirement for neutral drow, or neutral monsters in general. I get that it is a delicate topic and it would have some hard consequences, for example evil drow would become unable to switch to neutral, and that would cancel an interesting aspect of roleplay. That can however be worked around with a good ruling over the matter. After all it is not that a few neutral monsters are so problematic, the issues begin to increase when they become many. The however is hard to assess without data at hand.

[Richrd]

Posted more for this than for the above. Complete agreement. In particular, regarding the award requirement for neutral drow, or neutral monsters in general. I get that it is a delicate topic and it would have some hard consequences, for example evil drow would become unable to switch to neutral, and that would cancel an interesting aspect of roleplay. That can however be worked around with a good ruling over the matter. After all it is not that a few neutral monsters are so problematic, the issues begin to increase when they become many. The however is hard to assess without data at hand.

Is it really a delicate topic though? I mean does it haver any other reason for it other than "unable to switch to neutral"? Drow have always been the go-to example of a neutral evil race. They are, by principle, not inclined to be anything other than neutral evil. This has been a characteristic of theirs ever since 1st edition DnD, without a pause.

I just really, really hope it won't be "because of X real life political thing" because wow, that'd get us straight to "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" by Extra Credits and comparing fantasy races to black people shit tier of reasoning. The ultimate Well Poison 5000XL Deluxe Edition of topic killers.

[Itikar]

Drow have always been the go-to example of a neutral evil race. They are, by principle, not inclined to be anything other than neutral evil. This has been a characteristic of theirs ever since 1st edition DnD, without a pause.

Greyhawk drow, maybe.

Forgotten Realms drow, according to the most authoritative source on them are not so irredemably evil as many players perceive or want them to be. At page 46 of the Drow of the Underdark, 1991 edition, it is explicitly stated that up to 15% of the drow population is "good", albeit generally better described as neutral for the standards of other races. The sourcebook then specifies that among the other evil drow, they will conform and hardly act any differently from them, but that's quite different from saying that "they are, by principle, not inclined to be anything other than neutral evil". Firstly because they have also a very significant chaotic tendency, and secondly because this is simply not true in the lore from about three real life decades.

Whether we like it or not it is not something that we can question. Personally it took me almost two decades to begin to barely tolerate non-evil drow. But what we like or dislike is not necessarily what is true.

[AstralUniverse]

Because essentially I don't find the arguments you all presented to be particularly convincing and I do not think monk is so weak as you present it to begin with. Moreover, if the decrease in spell resistance does not affect drow and co. too much, neither it would affect monk too much. On top of that, nowhere I said that I would call exclusively for a nerf. It would be pretty fine if along with the regularization of spell resistance monk got some other more interesting features or adjustments to balance things out.

I'm looking forward to your Monk thread.

[stoneheart-]

#notalldrow

This is true. Most "house drow" are yes, probably NE/CE, because they benefit more from acting in accordance with Lolth's will; that is to say, they advance in status and power. They traffick with fiends in foul rituals, perform blood sacrifices to their goddess, assassinate one another, and so on and so forth because it serves them to do so. But many "normie drow", who are not in houses or do not stand to gain social status, such as commoners, general non-priest classes etc. are neutral or even good because by and large they just want to be left alone and survive. It's implied that most even prefer the message that Eilistraee is sending them in their dreams, but never act on it for fear of persecution. The ones that do, I imagine, are in the 15% of "good" drow, many of whom live in secluded woodland communities on the surface.

They're really not as flat, alignment-wise, as people think yes. Of course it's ok to have the IC prejudice that they are because all a surfacer will ever see is drow marauding and slaving anywhere they can, but it's really just not true from a lore standpoint.

[It Came From Beneath The Earth]

You super don't need an aware for Neutral drow. You need an award for -good- drow.

[Archnon]

All I have to say is ... Won't someone think of the Svirfneblin. Poor little fellows losing a nice bonus.