The Complete Guide to Drow is a PDF produced by Goodman Games and published online by Natural 20 Press. I purchased this book the moment I saw it was available, due to my previous experience with Natural 20 products. The Complete Guide to Drow is 52 pages long, not counting cover, table of contents and OGL. The artwork and layout is good. The spells and feats contained in the PDF are OGL, but not their names.
A brief introduction sets out the purpose of the guide- to serve as a DM's reference to role-playing the drow and their society. Next a history of the origins and physiology of the drow follow: drow are particularly arrogant and violent mountain elves driven underground during the "Kindred Wars" by the combined forces of Elves, Dwarves and Humans.
The first section covers the social structure of the drow. After a short discussion of the role of family in drow society, we are given an extensive table of drow names, including male, female and family names. Not a single "z" in the male names, however, and none of the house names has an apostrophe. The names are elvish in style (especially the female names), but occasionally a bit harsher than is normal for elves- almost dwarven at times.
Next comes a pantheon of 6 drow gods. Several versions of the drow spider god are found here. There is the raving Spider Queen, who lurks in her demonweb in the Abyss. The "Stone Spider, the Eight Legs of the World, and the Queen of the Damned" is a calmer alternative, possibly the Spider Queen in a rare lucid moment. A drow might be a devotee of the Spider Princess, who is associated with the untamed deep wilds, and is even more chaotic and evil than the Spider Queen. Rounding out the pantheon is a neutral evil god of magic, a militaristic god of tyranny and war, and a deified drow heroine who has become a goddess of death and the undead. Not all the deities are given alignments.
Shortly after a brief discussion of drow cities and trade is a very juicy section entitled Drow at War. It includes a fast method of determining typical house armies (by house size) and their command structure. It even includes stats for the drow equivalent of tanks: the animated conveyance and spider ballista. One is undead, the other a construct: both climb the walls and shoot blasts of force energy. Six new poisons conclude this section. These poisons cover the basics from aiding in interrogations (one causes Intelligence and Wisdom damage) to incapacitating enemies (one does Dexterity damage, the other is a sleep poison), to killing them.
The next section concerns Drow Characters. This is a quite conservative interpretation of the drow, with spell resistance, spell-like abilities ([i]dancing lights, faerie fire[/i] and [i]darkness[/i]), and gender differences (females have 2 to Charisma, males have a -2 to charisma). The social status of the drow character can be randomly generated- for example the drow might be an escaped slave, a craftsman, a disgraced noble or a merchant. It appears that the Drow are intended as NPC's only; no ECL is given, but the CR is 1.
A number of drow mutations are given. These are primarily cross-breeds between the drow and other species. While the text says that the drow/mind flayer cross is a "naturally born half-drow mutation," it seems to me that it is more plausible as the result of an insane lab experiment. Oddly enough, the drow/mind flayer is said to be blind, but the racial traits do not mention this fact.
The game statistics for a drider is given, though these "cursed drow" seem to receive a lot of benefits. Given that they failed certain tests of drow piety, it seems strange that they have cleric as a favored class.
The orc/drow cross are said to be natural leaders among the orcs. They are certainly strong, dexterous and intelligent enough. But I can't see how they could lead ants to a picnic, given their -4 Charisma pnealty. And with -2 to Wisdom it seems that they should be easily manipulated by others.
A demon/drow crossbreed is given, which is apparently not of tanar'ri stock- it has no special resistance to lightning or poison. It has a favored class of blackguard. This is an odd choice of favored class; prestige classes are automatically favored.
Finally, a drow/goblin cross is described. These crazed goblinoids are suicidal combatants, and are commonly used as practice victims in drow torture chambers. Their favored class is barbarian. They are small in size, and have 30 ft. base speed.
An alternate druid class and five prestige classes follow. The adamantine soldier is a fighter who learns new tricks with his artificial limbs (a magic item described later). The blood druid gains a diabolic companion, wild-shapes into fiendish animals, and summons fiends. Very high level blood druids have (among other abilities) something called earth resistance, which is not described in the text.
The Dark Blade either has an unusual BAB progression, or there is an error in the advancement table; the BAB begins at 0 at first level and goes to 9 at 10th level. A dark blade gains spell-casting much like an assassin, sneak attacks (up to 5d6), weapon specialization, evasion, improved evasion, ranged sneak attacks (no 30 ft. restriction), 4 combat mastery abiities (rather like rogue special abilities) and the ability to shadow walk. The dark blade seems rather over-powered: d6 hit dice, 4 skill points per level, good reflex and fortitude saves, spells, and 18 special abilities over 10 levels. The alignment requirements are any neutral, and it needs to have the Track feat. A ranger/rogue of 3/3 level could qualify easily.
The Keeper is a demonologist who can summon demons (but not control them) once per day, and use various binding spells up to 15 times per day (as per the [i]binding[/i] spell). Contact other plane can be used up to 5 times a day (at 9th level). At 10th level he gets a 10 to certain knowledge checks, 5 natural armor bonus, damage reduction 20/ 2, 5 to spell resistance, and can command demons as an evil cleric commands undead. Reflex and will are good saves, and he has full spell-casting progression.
The Soulless is a drow whose faith is being tested. The character has received the god's favor, but now all spell-casting ability has been withdrawn. I could see it as being a very dark, angsty class. The big benefit of the class is a bonus to SR- up to 8 at 9th level. They are pretty much immune to spells from casters of an equal level. At 10th level they get their cleric abilities back (at the current character level) and gains the fiendish template.
The Weaver of Power is a craftsman prestige class; these are the guys who make all the adamantine limbs. Automatic masterwork quality items and a 20 to craft checks are some of the perqs of this class. A weaver of power gets 1 to a spellcasting class each level.
Fourteen new feats are given. Some, like Improved Alertness and Rapid Healing, seem balanced. Most seem too powerful; one feat gives 2 to attack rolls, damage, initiative, skill checks and saves. This feat is granted only if someone has performed a truly exception service to the drow gods (i.e. DM discretion). Combat Intuition ( 2 to all initiative checks and armor class) however has no restictions, and seems quite a bit above what a balanced feat should be. Enhanced Spell Resistance gives double what the equivalent epic feat gives. If you thought that epic feats were too weak, you might like these ones.
Drow items and magic items follow. There are several exotic weapons like the scissor-bladed longsword or the spider-fanged dagger. I am not very good at evaluating weapons, so I couldn't say if these are balanced or not. The scissor-bladed longsword is medium-size, costs 30 gp, does 1d8 damage and has a critical of 19-20/x3. The spider-fang dagger has a well that can hold up to 10 does of poison, is small, costs 150 gp and does 1d4 damage plus poison. Its critical is 18-20/x2. It can be thrown. There are various kinds of artificial limbs- some allow one to control undead, some give enhanced spell resistance or a boost to strength, and so on. Only three limbs will provide magical enhancements at one time. DM's are encouraged to come up with other varieties. I wasn't able to figure out how the items were priced.
For DM's who want to have drow items decay outside of the underdark, a handy table is provided. This will allow a DM to provide challenging encounters without burdening the party with an excessive number of usable magic items.
A lengthy section on spells follow. This includes several new domains, including drow (not at all like the one in FRCS), combat, spiders, poison and undead. Blood druids are given a spell list, and so are Dark Blades. 32 spells follow. Most have the theme of shadow, poison, spiders or radiation. Many are variants of other spells- shadow hands is like burning hands, but cold and dark. Wall of spikes is rather like wall of thorns, but made from stone.
The concluding section of the book is entitled "Campaigns." It gives some ideas on using drow outside of a fantasy setting (space pirates, cyber-punk, street samurai, etc.). There is some discussion about drow motivations and adventure hooks. A very useful sectionon designing drow families (including rivalries, factions, house rank, symbols and special abilities) round out the section. This complements nicely the earlier material on drow armies.
Finally an appendix sets out 7 new monsters; the spider ballista and animated conveyance mentioned previously, three types of golems, a soul spider demon, and the venom zombie (in three sizes).
The soul spider has a special ability that ignores saves and spell resistance- it is a touch attack that stores the victim's soul in the soul spider's web, but is otherwise like a trap the soul spell. It can be used 4 times a day.
The carapace golem is slowed by fire and cold based effects and is healed by sonic effects. It is covered with spikes, which it uses to impale the creatures it grapples. The rockslide golem has a magic missile ability (1/round, at 16th level), and the spell immunities of a clay golem. The spider golem uses poison and has the magic immunity of a stone golem. This is quite odd, since the spider golem is made out of metal, but is still subject to [i]stone to flesh[/i] and [i]rock to mud spells[/i]. Venom zombies are covered with contact poison and can also spit poison every round. But they don't spit poison unless they are desperate or frustrated. Who knew zombies had such an emotional range?
[b]Conclusion[/b]
As a resource for DM's to challenge their players, this book provides lots of options. There are various incongruities in the rules and text which I would have liked to see cleaned up. Most are minor (the alignments of the gods can be guessed at in most cases), others are more serious (I think the soul spider's ability is too hard to avoid), and some are just peculiar (the alignment restrictions on the dark blade, the three limb rule for artificial limbs, the blood druid's earth resistance ability, the susceptibility of the spider golem to stone to flesh spells, etc.). There are a few gaps- torture seems a natural topic to include, as would recreational or enhancement-type drugs. A bit about drow handling of prisoners would have been handy in case PC's were captured by drow. Do drow like to hold for ransom, or do they torture all their prisoners, or do they put them into the gladiator ring, or what?
As a resource for PC's I find much of the book (especially the "crunchy bits") to be so over-powered as to be unusable. Normally this would not make a difference in a resource aimed at the DM and focused around NPC's, but if you want to use this book for PC's, or if you think that NPC's should play by the same rules as PC's think carefully before buying it.
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