Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

My own philosophy for building the world has always kind of been, surface = easy, underdark = medium, planes = hard, but the planes aren't in yet. Of course certain areas of the Underdark, like the region around the Darklake, are 'easy', just to allow players in the region to survive. I've never run into any danger there as a Svirfneblin or Drow, but then I know how to survive better than most having built most of it, it would be easy to make a misstep and die for it.

I do think it would be reasonable to reduce the ECL for Drow/Svirfneblin a bit, maybe down to the level of tieflings or aasimar, while also dropping the Svirfneblin nondetection, and both Svirf/Drow magical resistance somewhat. I see it as more of a problem for younger players than anything, because the exp you need versus how easy it is to get it is a tough hump for many players at least until you get to a certain level of proficiency as a character. Adventuring is also tough with the current stability status of the Underdark.

I'd love to see more Dwarves joining in the Underdark roleplay as well, I see Dwarves as the perfect race to explore both worlds, and draw the Svirfneblin out somewhat from their isolation.

If Drow were to receive racial feats instead of progressive spell resistance and faerie fire. The +5 ECL would make sense. 15 levels apart would allow for three, which seems reasonable.

You could tier Spell Resistance with three slots, which upon being filled would equal the same Spell Resistance that they get as a level 45 character for those that would prefer to keep it, then add two more racial feats to fill in the gap. It would allow for more customization with the race while remaining true to the core rules. They used to get sneak and hide as additional skills... which gave them a slight edge on survival. I'd say additional skills or feats would balance the +5 ECL.

Tieflings/Aasimar get the option of 2 racial feats which greatly reduces the "bummer" of the +2 ECL even though they are applied as general feats and taken from the standard feat pool. I think the other plane-touched races had something in the works as well.

On the other hand, Drow characters used to cost 400 hours at the start, not including class restriction costs and are now 200 + 100 for restrictions, which is still 100 hours less than the original starting cost.

Removing the SR completely and giving them five more levels would kind of remove the Drow-ness from it. Drow are supposed to be difficult.

I've never really competed with other PC's, save a few archery events or marathons. I generally just chose the race based on an idea/RP that I wanted to try, but Drow do seem to be very squishy now in terms of PvE. I think the Underdark has outgrown them.