Welcome to the Cage Berks!

[notARobot]

I found this posted on Reddit today.  It may be relevant to your interests (and by that I mean everyone interested in playing a Planescape game -- but particularly Knightsfalltoo).

[GravityEmblem]

By the way, which system is this in?

[notARobot]

I'm assuming second edition AD&D -- as far as I know, the Planescape setting didn't receive any updated supplemental material post-3e.

[Daos]

Not officially.  But there have been fan conversions.

Guess we'll find out on the 5th.

[Jherek Everfull]

Going to need to postpone for a bit. The planning for my upcoming nuptials have taken a drastic up turn. I will try to put together a big 16 ala GitP before to long. That way we can at least do a bit of character/party building. 

[notARobot]

Congratulations!

[GravityEmblem]

Nov 4, 2017 16:48:25 GMT -8 notARobot said:

Congratulations!

Seconding that: I wish happiness to you and the soon-to-be Mrs. FallToo!

[Ezeze]

I have been putting a little planning into this, and I'm thinking about playing just a horrible, horrible person.

A male Drow who escaped the Underdark and has resigned himself to living the rest of his life in Sigil because fuck you, Lolth! and also because he enjoys the irony of hiding from his old mistresses in a city ruled by the Lady of Pain (who he fervently hopes to never, ever meet).

He is not going to be a good person. He is not going to have two 'z's in his name. But he will lean harder on the 'masochistic' side of the generally sadomasochistic society he hails from, which should make it possible for him to interact with the rest of the group.

[Daos]

So a Forgotten Realms Drow or a Greyhawk Drow?  (It's weird to me that two separate published settings both contain Lolth.)

Hmm, I wonder if the daylight in Sigil counts as sunlight?  Technically Sigil doesn't have a sun, but it does have day and night cycles.  I'm not sure how that would affect a Drow.

[Ezeze]

Nov 6, 2017 11:47:59 GMT -8 Daos said:

So a Forgotten Realms Drow or a Greyhawk Drow?  (It's weird to me that two separate published settings both contain Lolth.)

Hmm, I wonder if the daylight in Sigil counts as sunlight?  Technically Sigil doesn't have a sun, but it does have day and night cycles.  I'm not sure how that would affect a Drow.

I'm not aware that there are any appreciable differences between the Forgotten Realms Underdark and the Greyhark Underdark.

If someone else wants to hail from either the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk I'll go with the same, just so we don't have the added confusion of juggling multiple Material Planes.

I'm inclined to argue that the light on Sigil is not daylight and so shouldn't mess with a drow, but it's ultimately up to Jherek Everfull. Even if it counts its not exactly difficult to stay indoors during the brightest parts of the day in a theoretically infinite city.

[GravityEmblem]

I'll probably be a Wizard, but I'm not sure about race.

[Daos]

I went ahead and did some research.  According to the 'Sigil and Beyond' splatbook:

Day And Night

There's day and night in Sigil, but it's not caused by a sun. Instead, the sky gradually fills with luminescence until it reaches a
peak and then immediately begins to fade. There's both bright daylight and deep darkness, but most of Sigil's day is a half-light,
the gloom of twilight, rich with shadows and haze. Things sensitive to sunlight can get around without problem for all but the
brightest six hours of every day (the three before and after peak). ; Sigil doesn't have a moon or stars, so things dependent on the
moon, like some types of shapechanging, don't happen in Sigil. The Cage's without stars, of course, but there's still lights in the
sky. Remember, the city's always overhead, so even in the darkest hours there'll be the sharp lights of far distant lanterns.

So there isn't sunlight, exactly.  But something equivalent to it.  But it does say that things sensitive to sunlight can protect themselves, except during the three hours before and after 'peak' (which is basically noon).

According to the MM, under Drow:

Dark elves do have one great weakness – bright light. Because the drow have lived so long in the earth, rarely venturing to the surface, they are no longer able to tolerate bright light of any kind. Drow within the radius of a light or continual light spell are 90% likely to be seen. In addition, they lose 2 points from their Dexterity and attack with a -2 penalty inside the area of these spells. Characters subject to spells cast by drow affected by a light or continual light spell add a +2 bonus to their saving throws. If drow are attacking a target that is in the area of effect of a light or continual light spell, they suffer an additional -1 penalty to their attack rolls, and targets of drow magical attacks save at an additional +1. These penalties are cumulative (i.e., if both the drow and their targets are in the area of effect of a light spell, the drow suffer a -3 penalty to their attack rolls and the targets gain a +3).

So presumably a Drow on Sigil would still suffer those penalties during the six hours mentioned above, but not during the rest of the day.

Direct sunlight utterly destroys drow cloth, boots, weapons, and armor. When any item produced by them is exposed to the light of the sun, irreversible decay begins. Within 2d6 days, the items lose their magical properties and rot, becoming totally worthless. Drow artifacts, protected from sunlight, retain their special properties for ld20+30 days before becoming normal items. If a drow item is protected from direct sunlight and exposed to the radiations of the drow underworld for one week out of every four, it will retain its properties indefinitely.

Any gear he brings with him from the Underdark should be okay on Sigil, but unless he knows of a portal that leads directly to the Underdark so he can periodically recharge the gear, it will eventually become de-powered (but won't completely disintegrate).

The MM also says:

All dark elves receive training in magic, and are able to use the following spells once per day: dancing lights, faerie fire, and darkness. Drow above 4th level can use levitate, know alignment, and detect magic once per day. Drow priests can also use detect lie, clairvoyance, suggestion, and dispel magic once per day. (See also Wizard Spells, Player’s Handbook)

Perhaps it is the common use of magic in drow society that has given the dark elves their incredible resistance. Drow have a base resistance to magic of 50%, which increases by 2% for each level of experience. (Multi-classed drow gain the bonus from only the class in which they have the highest level.) All dark elves save vs. all forms of magical attack (including devices) with a +2 bonus. Thus, a 5th-level drow has a 60% base magic resistance and a +2 bonus to her saving throws vs. spells that get past her magic resistance.

However, the Complete Elves' Handbook claims:

If the drow spends more than two weeks away from the subterranean caverns of the Underdark, the special advantages fade at the rate of one power a day.  This starts from the most innate spellcasting and works down tot he least powerful.  Thus, a drow priest would first loses dispel magic, followed by suggestion, clairvoyance, and detect lie.  Drow magic resistance is lost at a rate of 10% per day.  This process can be halted and the powers regained if the drow returns to the Underdark and spends one day there for each week spent aboveground.

So it sounds like your Drow may be nerfed a bit, as a result.  But maybe that's a good thing.  Brings him down closer to the other PCs' power level.

[Ezeze]

Fine with me.

I'm more after the flavor than anything to do with crunch. I haven't played an evil character in...


.... Actually, just a little less than nine months...

But before Chuda Rui it had been years. Close to a decade.

[Daos]

I've never played an evil character, ever.  Unless you want to count NPCs.

I once had a TN character.  That was the closest I ever came.

[Ezeze]

My interpretation of "evil" tends to be much more subtle than other peoples'. Less a ravening maniac looking to kill people, more someone entirely selfish who has no issue at all causing pain and death to further their goals.

The GM for the game in which I played Chuda Rui had two evil NPCs in play; a blood-mage and the scion of a dark god out for revenge. They liked to corrupt their students with magic and tortured people for fun.

Rui wasn't homicidal the way they were, but they were family (figuratively in the first case, literally in the second) - so she defended them, and protected them from scrutiny, and made sure they had everything they needed to keep advancing the cause. In a highly political game she made herself indispensable to the Emperor. She whispered very bad ideas into his ear but always made them sound so reasonable.

Before the time the game was over she willingly, gladly scarified dozens of her subordinates, people who adored her and looked to her for protection, to save the blood-mage because she had fallen in love with him.

I took it as a great compliment that, in a long-running campaign with elder gods and malicious ur-spirits from the end of time, the person the other PCs were most scared of was my soft-spoken diplomacy-minded character who any one of them could have killed in a fair fight - because they knew that if they betrayed her she would find out, and that she'd hurt everyone they cared about in retaliation then sleep well that night.


Now, that is not the character I'm proposing for the Planescape game The drow will be perpetually sullen, paranoid, masochistic, simultaneously demanding and intensely resentful of any help he receives. He will have his reasons for acting the way he does, I'll make sure to keep him sympathetic enough that Daos 's character won't even consider turning him out (you're still planning on playing a martyr-type, right? ), but that doesn't make him any less evil.