Drow Faerie Fire, Darkness & Blindfight [Archive] - Wizards Community

Drow Faerie Fire, Darkness & Blindfight [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Kilsek of Sheverash
12-13-05, 05:27 PM So I've been reading about a drow's three racial spell-like abilities, faerie fire, darkness, and dancing lights.

I'm made up some fighter type NPCs with Blindfight to use in conjuction with faerie fire and darkness at the start of an encounter. I thought the two would combo well together, giving the drow concealment and negating any of their enemies' concealment (faerie fire), especially if they drop a darkness spell on their weapons and then move towards the faerie fire'd PCs.

But I'm no longer sure this is how a drow encounter is "supposed to start" after reading the two spells and the mention of how darkness is affected with regards to faerie fire.

Could someone please clarify how these two racial spells work or don't work together?

And when exactly would they use dancing lights? Not really for combat, just when they want to explore deeper than their 120' darkvision out of combat, right?
cwslyclgh
12-13-05, 05:34 PM I am not going to touch the darkness/faerie fire thing, mostly because I can't stand anything about the way 3.5 darkness works and try to have as little to do with it as possible.

as to the dancing lights, I would say that they probably use it to set up ambushes alot... hide some place and then create dancing lights "over there" to attract the attention of thier targets into the ambush site, etc.
Cathon
12-13-05, 08:10 PM What people often fail to recognize about light in D&D is that often the best use is to stay in darkness and light up the enemy. A drow hidden in the darkness can use dancing lights to search for his enemy at medium range. He can therefore attack from total concealment at a target with no concealment. (Of course, this is less useful for drow than say gnomes, since drow have 120' darkvision, and the range on dancing lights isn't much beyond that until higher levels. Gnomes normally have no darkvision, but have low light vision, so dancing lights illuminates twice as much terrain for them and even if they have been granted darkvision from an item or spell it is probably no more than 60'.

Oh, and Faerie Fire is a 1st level spell of type evocation[light] so it would not operate within the confines of a darkness spell.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Kilsek of Sheverash 12-13-05, 05:27 PM	So I've been reading about a drow's three racial spell-like abilities, faerie fire, darkness, and dancing lights. I'm made up some fighter type NPCs with Blindfight to use in conjuction with faerie fire and darkness at the start of an encounter. I thought the two would combo well together, giving the drow concealment and negating any of their enemies' concealment (faerie fire), especially if they drop a darkness spell on their weapons and then move towards the faerie fire'd PCs. But I'm no longer sure this is how a drow encounter is "supposed to start" after reading the two spells and the mention of how darkness is affected with regards to faerie fire. Could someone please clarify how these two racial spells work or don't work together? And when exactly would they use dancing lights? Not really for combat, just when they want to explore deeper than their 120' darkvision out of combat, right?
cwslyclgh 12-13-05, 05:34 PM	I am not going to touch the darkness/faerie fire thing, mostly because I can't stand anything about the way 3.5 darkness works and try to have as little to do with it as possible. as to the dancing lights, I would say that they probably use it to set up ambushes alot... hide some place and then create dancing lights "over there" to attract the attention of thier targets into the ambush site, etc.
Cathon 12-13-05, 08:10 PM	What people often fail to recognize about light in D&D is that often the best use is to stay in darkness and light up the enemy. A drow hidden in the darkness can use dancing lights to search for his enemy at medium range. He can therefore attack from total concealment at a target with no concealment. (Of course, this is less useful for drow than say gnomes, since drow have 120' darkvision, and the range on dancing lights isn't much beyond that until higher levels. Gnomes normally have no darkvision, but have low light vision, so dancing lights illuminates twice as much terrain for them and even if they have been granted darkvision from an item or spell it is probably no more than 60'. Oh, and Faerie Fire is a 1st level spell of type evocation[light] so it would not operate within the confines of a darkness spell.