Editing Drow (section)

===3rd edition===
3E managed to make it almost a whole year before caving in and making the Drow a full and proper player character race in the 2001 ''Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting''. They had the usual elf boni and flaws, plus: +2 Int, +2 Cha; Darkvision 120' instead of elf-normal lowlight vision; Spell resistance of 11 + character level; +2 to will saves against spells; the ability to cast dancing lights, darkness, and faerie fire as spell-like abilities 1/day; proficiencies with hand crossbow, rapier, and shortsword instead of elf-normal; sudden bright sunlight will blind a drow for 1 round; and the drow will be dazzled until they leave the bright light.  Male drow have [[wizard]] as their favored class, female drow have [[cleric]] (of [[Lolth]]) as favored class.

The larger array of spell-like abilities they had in AD&D, such as Levitation, are retconned in this edition as being exclusive to drow nobility only. That's not to say mechanics to let a PC have access to these powers were completely unavailable.

They had an article on their culture in [[Dragon Magazine]] #298 that really emphasized the darker side of drow culture. Want a sample? According to this lore, drow don't die out because, despite their tendency to murder and torture each other, they're as fertile as [[orc]]s, with females normally conceiving twins and triplets. They normally only birth a single baby, though, because the strongest usually kills and absorbs the others in the womb; these prenatal struggles actually produce orgasms more intense than anything a drow female might feel elsewhere. This sensation, ''chad-zak'', is explicitly called out as the main reason why drow women are willing to get pregnant at all, considering the selfish power-hungry bitches they generally are.

[[Eberron]] has a drow sub-race called the Umbragen, who possess strange, mystical powers connecting to the darkness. Mechanically, this is represented by replacing their spell saving throw bonus with a + 2 racial bonus to Hide & Move Silently checks, swapping their weapon proficiencies for longbow, shortbow, longsword & rapier, and making their [[Favored Class]] into [[warlock]], plus a racial-restricted set of variant abilities for [[soulknife]] and a bevy of racial feats. All of this appears in [[Dragon Magazine]] #330.