Spider Bitches of Gor!

Inspired by a digression in this thread, the question arises: Who would win if the ass-kicking female Drow took on the ultra-macho Goreans (I don’t say “misogynistic”. That’s a topic for another thread in itself)? Der Trihs plainly favours the Drow, and I’ll argue the Gorean corner out of a certain fondness for John Norman’s indifferently-written prose. (Not that the average D&D potboiler is appreciably better.)

For a start, let’s rid ourselves of the foolish notion that a single fireball from a high-level Drow wizardess would spell ruin for the Gorean. If we’re comparing like with like, the Gorean in question is presumably someone of the calibre of, say, Tarl Cabot himself, or any one of a number of others such as Marlenus of Ar, Kamchak of the Tuchuks, Rask of Treve, Ivar Forkbeard, Clitus Vitellius, or Jason Marshall, to name but a half-dozen. Any of these would be considered a high-level fighter in the D&D game system, and as such the Drow runs up against the unfortunate fact that the spell maxes out at 10d6 damage. That’s a trifling 18hp if the Gorean successfully saves for half damage, and a high-level fighter can stand six or seven of those before it starts getting serious – and meanwhile is handing out plenty of hack and slash to the arrogant Dark Elf.

Initially it struck me that the Priest-Kings of Gor would be quick to stamp out such perceived infractions of their weapons technology as any obvious manifestation of destrctive magic, or even the armour that Drow habitually go clad in; Goreans themselves are not allowed even the least effective of firearms, or any personal protection save a helmet and shield, and there is no second warning and but one penalty. But as Der Trihs points out, the Spider Queen herself might feel compelled to step in if her worshippers started to suffer the Flame Death. Now I don’t feel it’s anything like a foregone conclusion that she either would go toe-to-toe with all the might of the Sardar, or that she would triumph if she did; and the penalty for failure would be steep. She might though be able to bluff the Priest-Kings into an exemption clause in exchange for respecting the sanctuary of the Nest, and perhaps the intellectual exercise is more interesting if we assume this is so. In Gorean the words for “stranger” and “enemy” are the same; and the words for “unarmoured Drow with no magic” and “toast” would likewise be homologous. :stuck_out_tongue:

So where does that leave us? In “civilised” Gor, by no means everyone is a Warrior; that is only one of the five High Castes, and a small fraction of the population. For all that, the proportion of warriors in the general population of a city is no doubt higher than in any civilised nation on Earth; every city you can think of seems to be able to field thousands of Warriors of all sorts. In the “barbarian” populations, the Drow’s task seems to be harder still. Whether the Wagon Peoples of the southern plains, the marauders of Torvaldsland, or the Red Savages of the Barrens, every able-bodied man seems to be expected to be a man-at-arms first, no matter what his nominal occupation. So the Drow must deal with a huge armed population, and one that is constantly exercising itself against its nearest neighbour. It is a Gorean saying that causes exist in order that men may fight.

It seems then that, comparing like with like, we will find as many high-level fighters on Gor as we will find high-level wizards and priestesses among the Drow; as many mid-level as mid-level; and tolerably few pushovers. And rendering these Goreans into their D&D equivalents, it seems only reasonable that the game system compensates them for their repudiation of armour. There is more than enough flexibility built into 2nd and 3rd Edition alike – hit point bonuses, saving throw bonuses, combat adds – to ensure that Gor would be, quite literally, a world of hurt to any Drow who thought that they could teach the Goreans not to go around enslaving poor, helpless females. The mere fact that the Drow can do magic doesn’t make the contest a walkover.

Opinions? :smiley:

eyes glaze over

This is like those cricket teams you were telling me about. No, sorry, it was rugby.

No contest. One look at a manly-man of Gor, and the Drow will be begging to realize their inner slave-girls. :smiley:

The Drow are at a significant disadvantage: theyt have a -2 level adjustment, os it takes them mucho XP to even start throwing those fireballs. That’s all going into barbarian for Gor, baby.

Drow and Goreans in a single thread? Dangit, where’s Evil Captor when you really need him?

The Gorean’s toast.

Not only is it Fighter vs Cleric single combat, which is always unbalanced in the Cleric’s favour, it’s a Drow vs Human single combat.

Aside from a Cleric’s abilities and magics, standard accoutrements for a Drow noble give them the ability to levetate and cast Darkness, so she’d be throwing those fireballs at him from out of his reach, and without him even able to see her.

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeks!

Hey, no-one forced you to come in and read the thread. 'Sides, I thought you could RPG-geek along with the best of them. Never mind. Don’t you worry your pretty little short attention span about it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Tengu, you’re falling into the trap of assuming the fight’s taking place on the mathematically infinite featureless plain - and forgetting that standard accoutrements for a significant number of Goreans include a tarn, which offers its rider much more mobility than a mere levitate spell. :slight_smile:

Let’s leave aside the fact that the drow clerics can levitate and rain destruction from the night skies. Let’s ignore that there are spellbooks full of spells to aviod Flame Death, and if one high-level drow priestess manages to gate in a marilith, the Priest-Kings are royally, royally fucked. Let’s leave aside the magical abilities, and look at the psychology.

Drow frequently undergo periods of captivity and torture far longer and more intense than anything a Gorean is capable of dishing out. This does not cause them to become capture-bonded. It makes them angry. The first (and second, and so on) Gorean to sleep with a drow chained to his bed won’t wake up again. The Goreans might be able to kill the drow off, depending on numbers and magical intervention, but they simply don’t live long enough to break them.

Actually, mathematically, the Drow cannot win. Even if it takes around 70 Gor to kill one Drow (which is definitely not the case, as Drow don’t have higher average levels than anyone else according to the books), the Gor are winning and the Drow are dead. In a mano-a-mano fight, I thik the Goreans will hit often enough to disrupt any spellcasting. Sure, the Drow can try to levitate. The OGr iwll just jump on and start with the smashing.

I have not read any of the Gor books, but I’m highly suspicious that the Gorean society could simply march in and take over. How the heck are a bunch of warrior-fighters going to get to, let’s say, the Astral Plane?

Given the relatively common ability for wizards and/or clerics to go to other dimensions, it seems as if the Drow could retreat without loss to another plane — defeating the Goreans on the PMP might be trickier, depending on how the DM deals with epic wish spells.

Nonsense. I am, in fact, assuming it takes place in the Underdark, or similarly cavernous area. IE, the only sort of area you’re likely to find both humans and Drow. (Aside from the occasional exile, free-thinker, or victim of a misfired teleport.)

So, the Tarn is a liability, not an advantage for the Gorean, in a typical situation for this fight. The Tarn is a huge bird, and pretty much useless in this sort of situation - they don’t have the room to maneuver, and they still need to see, so Darkness is going to bother them as much as the rider - and when the Tarn is inevetably killed, or knocked out - either by the Drow, her summoned monsters, or running into the landscape, the Rider’s now plummetting. This is ignoring that even if this is taking place in a situation where a Tarn is useful, ‘significant number’ is completely different than ‘all’.

The Gorean needs to HIT the Drow to disrupt her spellcasting. And she needs to fail her Concentration check. This is nowhere near as easy as you seem to think it is - even if you make the inexplicable assumption that the Drow won’t actually USE her racial advantages.

If you assume the fight takes place in a logical situation - the Goreans stumble on the Drow, or the Goreans attempt to invade a Drow city, the advantage goes to the Drow.

In massive combat - the invasion scenario - the Gorean population might be larger, but any true advantage of numbers they would have is eliminated by the complete uselessness of the women as warriors. Every adult or adolescent Drow noble is a Fighter, Wizard, or Cleric. The Wizards and Clerics can also bolster the Drow ranks with summonned monsters.

It’s possible to skew the fight in the Gorean’s favour, but it’ll be a unique situation. Vhaeraun-worshipping Drow attempting to take a Gorean city would be either a fair fight or in the Gorean’s favour, depending on a lot of variables on both sides of the equation. Gorean’s attempting to take a community of Elistraeeans would be a walk on numbers alone. But these aren’t typical Drow, in typical situations. Lolth-worshipping Drow would be in strange situations, if the landscape didn’t skew things in their favour.

Single battle between a Drow Fighter and a Gorean Warrior would be more even, as, aside from the Levitation and Darkness, the Drow’s racial advantages aren’t much use in a Fighter/Fighter fight.

What’s a Drow?

Wikipedia to the rescue !

this may be the single nerdiest thread ever on these boards

I seriously doubt it’s even in the top ten.

No, start something on snowboarding, and then we’ll see nerdy! :stuck_out_tongue:

The major problem with the entire premise is that on the whole neither side would have much reason to encounter the other. Goreans aren’t that interested in dungeon-crawling (i.e. they have never been observed to) and Drow probably don’t want to get into the kind of pitched battles top-side that the Goreans excel in.

As for enslaving Drow females, a few Goreans might try it for the challenge, but on finding that Drow make bad slaves, would likely give up for good. It is not biologically natural for Drow females to submit even to dominance by their own males, let alone an alien species; and Goreans tend to be happy with plain ordinary humans.

The uselessness of Gorean women in combat would be offset if the battle were taking place on the Gorean PMP of course - in which (like ours, and unlike yer typical fantasy world) all females are considerably smaller, weaker and much less aggressive than males (by all you’re understood to be comparing like with like, so you must compare female Olympic weightlifters with male ditto, not with a 100lb weakling dragged in off the street). AD&D was slated as a “sexist” FRPG for putting an upper limit on female strength that was lower than the male maximum. It was in fact astonishingly accommodating - or else all females of all classes would routinely be dinged two or three points of strength. IOW, on Gor the Drow females would be physically weak too. :smiley:

Even if I give you that, it’s irrelevant. The female drow are loathe to enter any face to face combat unless they know they can win. Male to male combat is keenly encouraged, but we’re talking just the drow females, right?

First we’ll have to assume that the drow are all there and focused on their target, not opportunistically killing each other, and that Lloth or their principal deity approves. I’ll use Lloth since I’m most familiar with her, and I know she would smile on thrashing some Gorean male chauvanist ass.

Instead of having a classic front line of their own soldiers, they would be likely to use summoned creatures. Rather than charging, they would likely take up a defensive position in order to protect the spellcasters. In typical drow style, they would want to toy with their prey and cause disharmony and chaos. Fireballs? Pfft.

Every drow noble has the innate power to cause spheres of darkness, and besides which darkness is a very easy spell. If there aren’t enough nobles, just pass out ioun stones with 6 darkness spells. Drop them over every torch and light source in the enemy lines simultaneously. Not only can the drow now see and the enemy can’t, but they can also communicate silently with their sign language.

At this point, they want to cause panic and fear. They start sowing charm and confusion spells among the ranks, targeting the weakest warriors who would appear likely to fail their saving throws. In the darkness, they start to attack their friends. Chaos ensues. For even more delightful fun, they can use their innate faerie fire to highlight various charmed and crazed individuals, causing more fear as the others see warriors turning on each other and killing each other.

Just as this chaos is taking hold, the drow priestesses make liberal use of Stone to Mud and turn the battlefield ahead of them into a muddy bog. The Goreans fall in, trying to avoid each other and working against each other, causing few to escape. After watching the chaos, they turn the mud back to stone, lodging the unfortunate Goreans in the mud and allowing the female drow to play with them at their leisure.

What could the Goreans do against a scenario? Sure, they would attempt to drive through the lines quickly before the spells could go off, but considering equal numbers of drow to Gorean, you could have dozens or hundreds of spells cast in the first round alone. Web and grease spells – both low level – could be used to delay any charge. Considering that the front lines could easily be demons or handmaidens of Lloth, I doubt they’re going to get to charge through in one or two rounds – and of course the nobles behind the lines, the most powerful, would be levitating.

The drow, of course, in their long lives, have many useful magical items with them. Even low level drow could afford a few ioun stones, packed with the spells of their matron mothers, for healing, charms, or whatever seemed useful. Boots of spider climbing would make it simple to just move to the ceiling if their lines were broken. Heck, you can pretty much assume that any non-good aligned spell ever created is likely in their repetoire somewhere; seriously, how could they lose?

curls hair around finger, chews gum Hey, you guys are all really smart! What are you guys tal- hey, something shiny!

Having encountered this thread (and the commentaries in the other thread that inspired it), I assumed these “Drow” were from some fantasy novel or series of novels I never read. I was mistaken. They are from D&D scenarios. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drow Gaming culture has now reached the point where its characters and cultures can be discussed, at least in this kind of forum, on equivalent terms with the Goreans, who come from an actual series of novels.

This says something about the current state of evolution of popular culture, but damn if I know what.