Alternative class features are ways to customize a class by selecting abilities that best reflect a racial choice and character concept. Similar to substitution levels, they offer an option to the class features granted at a particular level. Alternative class features have no prerequisites; you simply select them at the proper levels in lieu of selecting the standard class features. If you already have reached or passed the level at which you are eligible to take the feature, with your DM’s permission, you can swap one ability for an existing one. Alternatively, if you have Player’s Handbook II, you can use the retraining option.
The format for alternative class features is summarized below.
The ability’s description and why you might want to consider it are given in the first paragraph.
Level: You can select the alternative class feature only at this level.
Replaces: This line identifies the ability that you must sacrifice to gain the alternative class feature.
Benefit: This section describes the mechanical effects of the new ability. Unless otherwise mentioned, the class feature is an extraordinary ability.
When adventurers think of drow arcanists, they picture the horrifically deadly drow wizards or the demonically imbued warlocks. The bard would almost certainly be at the bottom of the list of arcane classes associated with the drow. What surface-dwellers fail to realize, however, is that the drow have an ancient bardic tradition — one that transforms the travelling entertainer, trickster and storyteller of the surface into one of the most horrific taskmasters and assassins of the Underdark.
Drow bards do not travel the world, and thus do not gain the broad range of understanding other bards have. Instead, they study a means of death-dealing normally associated with other classes.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not gain the standard bard’s bardic knowledge ability. In addition, you can use your bardic music one fewer time per day than other bards (minimum 1).
Benefit: You are trained in the use of poison. You never risk poisoning yourself when applying poison to a weapon.
Everything you do, everything you are, is devoted heart and soul to Lolth: to spreading her power across the Underdark, and, of course, to cementing your own base of power among the drow. How better to honour the Weaver of Webs, after all, than to ensure that so potent and loyal a servant as yourself can direct her minions?
Spiders — the favoured of Lolth and the totems of your race — respond to your call, bowing before you as they do before the divine mistress you both serve.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not gain the standard cleric’s ability to turn or rebuke undead.
Benefit: You can rebuke or command vermin as an evil cleric rebukes or commands undead. When commanding spiders, you gain a +4 bonus to your effective turning level. This ability otherwise works exactly as rebuke undead. You can use this ability in place of turn or rebuke undead for the purpose of qualifying for divine feats.
Druids are rare among drow communities. Most drow spellcasters pursue either the faith of Lolth or one of a variety of arcane paths. However, a rare few exist who seek a different, more natural connection between themselves and their subterranean environment.
Drow druids forgo the ability to assume animal forms, preferring the shape of their revered totem: the spider.
After extensive indoctrination by drow priestesses, you usem wild shape to assume the form of vermin.
Level: 5th.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not gain the ability to wild shape into an animal at 5th level.
Benefit: Beginning at 5th level, you can turn yourself into any Small or Medium monstrous spider. You are not mindless, and thus do not gain immunity to mind-affecting spells and abilities.
You can take the shape of a Large monstrous spider at 8th level, a Tiny monstrous spider at 11th level, and a Huge monstrous spider at 15th level.
This class feature otherwise functions as the normal wild shape ability.
It doesn’t affect your ability to wild shape into plant creatures or elementals (gained at 12th and 16th level, as normal).
Special: Because they have a stronger connection to scorpions than to spiders, drow in the Eberron campaign setting who select this alternative class feature instead gain the ability to wild shape into monstrous scorpions.
Viewed with a combination of awe and jealous hatred by other drow, the favoured souls of Lolth hold substantial power in their society, but also occupy a truly precarious position. As Lolth’s “elite”, favoured souls are expected, even more than others, to be able to defend themselves and their positions from other drow who seek to take them. Otherwise, they clearly weren’t worthy after all, were they? Favoured souls often compete with clerics for positions in the priesthood and other high offices.
The Weaver of Webs has graced you with the predatory senses of her favoured minions. Although you are no longer as resistant to damage as other favoured souls, it is almost impossible for the enemy to hide from you.
Level: 5th.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not gain the standard favoured soul’s energy resistance at 5th, 10th and 15th level.
Benefit: Three times per day, you can use a standard action to gain tremorsense out to of 5 feet for 1 round per class level. This is a supernatural ability.
At 10th level your tremorsense extends to 20 feet, and at 15th level to 30 feet.
Drow fighters strike fast and melt away before their opponents have a chance to mount a counter-attack. Rather than using heavy armour or picking feats that emphasize direct assaults, drow fighters employ techniques that exploit their natural advantages.
In exchange for a fighter’s access to heavy armour, a drow fighter gains strong first-strike capability.
The drow specialize in guerrilla warfare, picking off their foes with poisoned bolts and slipping away into the darkness. Each attack wears their opponents down, until their numbers are so reduced that the drow can sweep in and capture them. If you select the hit-and-run tactics class feature, you sacrifice some AC, but make up for the loss with improved reflexes and accuracy when attacking unsuspecting foes.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: By selecting the hit-and-run alternative class feature, you give up proficiency with heavy armour and tower shields, even if you already have those proficiencies from another class. You can’t gain either of these proficiencies by multiclassing later, but you can gain them by selecting the appropriate feats.
Benefit: At 1st level, you gain a +2 bonus on initiative checks.
In addition, when attacking a flat-footed opponent within 30 feet, you can add your Dexterity bonus (if any) as a competence bonus on weapon damage rolls.
Rogues are common in drow society, fewer in number only than clerics and wizards. They are silent killers, spies and informants. It falls to them to gather intelligence about rival houses and to eliminate challengers within the hierarchy. For these tasks, drow rogues cultivate the ability to safely utilize poison.
Poison is used widely in drow society. For the dark elves, it is a vital tool in the race for survival. From the popular drow sleep poison to the bevy of spider venoms extracted from Lolth’s favoured creatures, drow have mastered a variety of toxins that wreak havoc with their opponents’ bodies.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not gain the trapfinding ability gained at 1st level.
Benefit: You are trained in the use of poison. You are never at risk of accidentally poisoning yourself when applying poison to a weapon.
The drow swashbuckler fills an interesting niche in dark elf society. Their culture of treachery and betrayal offers opportunities for those with wit and skill to rise far. For drow, the swashbuckler class is usually a male pursuit, and well-born sons of the great houses are the most likely to cultivate the abilities this class offers. A rare few drow swashbucklers are renegades: outcasts from drow society, bucking the traditions and loyalties to the matriarchs to seek their own fortunes.
Drow swashbucklers give up some of their mobility across difficult terrain to gain a more tactical understanding of movement.
A drow swashbuckler who wields two weapons gains the ability to better maneuver around his opponents.
Level: 7th.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not gain Acrobatic Charge at 7th level.
Benefit: When wielding two weapons, if you hit at least once with each weapon in the same round, you can take a 5-foot step as a swift action.
This doesn’t count against your normal limit of one 5-foot step per round, and you can use this ability even if you’ve already moved in the round.
Warlocks among the drow occupy an oddly dichotomous position. They have strong links to the Abyss and to Lolth, but those ties more directly bind them to Lolth’s servants — her demons — than to the Spider Queen herself. Thus, although warlocks can occupy positions of power and even become priestesses, drow expect them to be serving the church and the great houses rather than running them.
The fluids within your body become like the venom of the spiders themselves. Those who would feast upon your flesh have cause to be sorry, and the poison within renders you resistant to poisons from without.
Level: 8th.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not gain the standard warlock’s fiendish resilience at 8th, 13th and 18th level.
Benefit: At 8th level, you gain a +5 bonus on saves against poison.
At 13th level, your blood becomes poisonous. Any creature that damages you with a bite attack, or that swallows you whole, is exposed to this poison (contact; Fort DC 10 + ½ your warlock level + Charisma modifier; 1d3 Str/1d3 Str). You are immune to your own poisonous blood.
At 18th level, you can bring the poison of your blood to the surface of your hand and apply it to a held weapon or to your next eldritch blast. It requires a move action to manifest and apply the poison, and you can do so three times per day. In this more concentrated form, initial and secondary damage are 1d6 Strength each. The poison lasts until you make an attack with the weapon or eldritch blast or until the start of your next turn, whichever comes first. Applying the poison to your eldritch blast doesn’t prevent you from applying eldritch essence or blast shape invocations as normal.
Wizards are among the most feared and admired non-divine members of drow society. Despite their innate resistance to magic, the drow have great respect for both the spells and the knowledge available to these masters of the arcane arts. Although they are not directly tied to Lolth in the way divine casters and warlocks are, their devotion to the Spider Queen — and indeed, their very upbringing within society — has led to the development of race-specific wizard traits.
Most wizards who choose to specialize do so in a specific school. Many drow wizards instead focus on a variety of spells closely linked to the powers and objectives of the Weaver of Webs. The basic mechanic for specialization is the same, but the specifics differ.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: If you select this class feature, you cannot specialize in a school of magic, and you lose the ability to cast spells from a prohibited school.
You must select one school of magic to serve as your prohibited school, and you can never cast spells from it or use spell completion and spell trigger devices connected to it, as per normal specialist rules. You may not select divination as your prohibited school.
Benefit: You are considered specialized, but not in a specific school. Rather, you gain all the benefits of specialization with a group of spells that includes all those of the following subschools and/or descriptors: chaotic, compulsion, darkness, evil and fear. You gain all the standard benefits of specialization as applied to this group of spells, as though it were a school unto itself.
Source: Drow of the Underdark (Page 57)