Drow of the Underdark

The Drow of the Underdark, just by its name, had a lot to live up.

As with this type of sourcebooks (focusing on a specific race or race subsets), chapter 1 kicks off with a discussion about the drow and drow culture. It explores the drow pysche, and what makes a drow civilization tick, and especially how a culture filled with infighting and backstabbings could even survive, let alone thrive in such a hostile environment. I would've loved to be a fly on the wall when all this lore discussions and brainstorms had taken place. It was all quite well-reasoned and well-explained. Unfortunately, this was the high point.

Chapter 2 presents the character options - the usual feats, variant levels, spells, invocations, etc. While there are some new drow-specific options, there were some rehashes. I didn't find it particularly inspiring (the drow bard was especially weird - mechanics conflicting with flavour text).

Chapter 3 goes into prestige classes, which I also found to be particularly disappointing. Forced flavour that don't really jive with the content in chapter 1, and a greater-than-usual amount of conflict between flavour vs mechanics - most noticeable in Cavestalker, Insidious Corruptor, and Kinslayer. It felt like a checklist, as opposed to any true inspiration of something that truly belongs.

Chapter 4 is on drow equipment and tools. There are some very interesting bits here, like protective equipment, the poisons, and special materials. This would have been a chance to really shine the light (pun intended) on the Underdark or unique devices for living underground. Wish there was a lot more of this.

I found chapter 5 to be quite a waste of space. It wants to showcase monsters of the Underdark, but it contains a lot of rehashes and variant monsters with class levels (although with flavouring specific to drow culture).

Chapters 6 and 7 bring the bar back up slightly as it provides a lot of information to support a drow campaign. Numerous adventure hooks, motivations, sample locales, and an entire city to place a campaign in. But personally, given my own understanding of drow culture, especially Lolth-centric ones, such a city cannot exist - from a drow's perspective. Outsiders are allowed too much freedom. But at least, there's quite a lot of meat to it, so there's that.

All in all, it was quite disappointing that there wasn't more about the drow - I mean, the title is “Drow of the Underdark”. What I found most glaringly missing is a discussion on the drow pantheon. The drow is a culture so controlled by religion that its an injustice to not discuss about the other deities - especially since the writers decided to discuss about drow manipulating surface societies (an area where the other drow deities are particularly active).

Other bits I thought could have been more would be more on how the drow actually thrived in the unique underground environment, more on how living such a place is different from surface societies - the customs, the daily life of commoners, the unique tools and concepts, etc. It's not like they haven't done these bits for other “race” products (that were focused on multiple races), and yet it felt like they did less of it for a sourcebook focused wholly on a single subrace.

I basically found the product to be underwhelming from a lore and flavour standpoint. Mechanics-wise, it's adequate I guess. As a campaign support, as long as you're willing to accept some inconsistencies between chapter 1 and chapter 7, there's quite a lot of material that can be used to drow-focused campaigns, whether with the drow as allies or antagonists.