Customer Reviews

Plot and Poison: A Guidebook to Drow (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a good source of material to create either your own drow characters or a group of marauding villains. The first chapter gives you details for making them "real". It includes sub-races, being a drow elf,and a history from their point of view among other things. It also has alternate natural spells for YOUR drow elves. ie fire spells to replace what they normally start with. Chapter two gives a pantheon of gods for them to worship(no Lolth).Chapter three gives you new and old creatures of the underdark. It includes a template for drider characters and of course drow elves as well. Chapter four has prestige classes. Includes a new kind of bard called the deepsinger and something for every other class as well. The last four chapters detail spells, equipment(repeating hand crossbow), skills, feats, and magic items. All in all this is a wonderful source of ideas and can help fill in the blanks for your own band of merry marauders.

Whether you're a casual fan of the Dark Elves or a long time lover of the Drow this book will have something for you. It grants amazing insight into playing this mysterious race as well as presenting a mind numbing number of options for character customization. From prestige classes(such as the mutating Creature Cultist to the demanding Dominant) to sub-races(such as the barbaric Drey and rules for creating Half-Drow of any race) to martial art styles, new magic spells and domains and finally new magic item descriptors and even a new magic item type(the verminous magic item which are magic items created from living verminous creatures). One of the few books I feel warrant a "must have" status.

The reason I drop it down to 4 stars instead of 5 is due to the header font type they use. It's a bit difficult to read. Aside from that this is simply a superb book.

I think that the authors of this book did a very good job, but I think that some of the prestige classes could have used some more work and a little more thought. The most interesting and useful section of the book is that pertaining to feats and Fighting styles. while some of them are clearly going to need some tweaking for my campaign, they have generally be thought through very well. The pantheon of Drow presented in Plot and Poison should covert easily enough to the standard D&D and Forgotten Realms pantheons. Over all, a useful book. the book is presented well, though the title font could have been a bit clearer as I find myself searching through the text to try and decipher the title. My favorite idea is the shield-based fighter, and I will be employing that in my campaign for sure. Good job guys!

This d20 license book by Matthew Sernett and published by Green Ronin is part of Green Ronin's "Races of Renown" series. It gives many interesting details for concocting Drow villains to challenge your PCs. It includes a number of presige classes, tons of feats, and a goodly amount of monster stats and templates for constructing some truly vile and deadly foes. It also has quite a few new magic items that are quite useful such as Boots of Spiderkind, Gloves of Deftness, Quiver of Sharpness. Details are given for deities of the Drow, but the usually accepted Goddess of the Drow is conspicuous by her absence, I suspect for copyright reasons. In her place is a different, but similar, deity.

Once again, WotC's D20 system claims another casualty. This book carries on the crass misportrayal of the Drow as a race of dominatrixes in Boris Vallejo strap outfits, whose primary vise of their universe is sexual perversity. They mutilate the Drow pantheon, and while much of the artwork is indeed beautiful and well-done, there is a particular emphasis placed upon depicting pointless nudity and fetishist situations. Much of this book, I found sickening, and it wasn't the graphic descriptions of violence.

That said, there ARE some useful things in the book, like a description of Drow name honorifics, and some of the aspects of society have thankfully not been tampered with by the fanboys. Some of the subraces are interesting, particularly the Drey, and the martial arts styles are a blast. Just.....avoid the bits about the Drow society centering around leather and whips, and please keep the mind out of the gutter.

Just reading the discription, and looking at the cover has me excited about getting this book. My group of players are usually up to there necks in drow intrigue. So this should help flesh out our adventures nicely. Not to mention that on occasion, I have a drow player character.