The drow Drizzt Do'Urden is one of Drizzt was even supposed to be in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves before rights issues necessitated scrapping him from the script and replacing him with the character of Xenk. His enormous popularity belies his smaller beginnings, however.

Drizzt Do'Urden, with his array of powers and abilities, is one of the best-written and fleshed-out characters in the entire Dungeons & Dragons pantheon. His backstory and history are rich and detailed, and his adventures and relationships have filled thousands of pages. As much time has been spent on crafting Drizzt's arc as on any fictional character. Care that deliberate is even more impressive considering there wasn't much thought put into the initial creation of his character – that focus on him only came after.

Drizzt Do'Urden Was Created On A Whim

He Was Invented In A Hurry

As it turns out, the creation of Drizzt wasn't a long process or something that had been in the works for a long time before he appeared on the page. There wasn't even a plan for him to exist at all until R. A. Salvatore was in a bind and needed a new character in a pinch, in fact. Salvatore's explanation of Drizzt's conception in an interview in 2004 (via GameSpy) shows just how unlikely it was that the character would grow to be so popular:

"I'd quit writing and start creating characters to sell to other authors. Drizzt was created on a whim, under pressure, while at work at my day job in finance. I had to come up with a sidekick for (a Forgotten Realms character named) Wulfgar and had this sudden thought. I don't know where it came from. I guess that Gary Gygax just did such an amazing job in creating the Drow elves that something about them got stuck in the back of my head. Thank God!"

While it might be a little disappointing for some to learn that Drizzt wasn't created as a ion project or because Salvatore had a long-burning desire to see the character brought into the world, from another perspective, it makes it even cooler that the character stuck around and made such an impact. In a way, it's entirely fitting: in the books, Drizzt has no business surviving the Underdark, much less thriving outside of it, and the same could be said of his real-world popularity. It's a neatly symbolic parallel.

Why Drizzt Is One Of The Biggest Dungeons & Dragons Characters Ever

He's A Hero's Hero

Since his creation, Drizzt Do'Urden, with his iconic dual scimitars and panther Guenhwyvar, has become the face of Forgotten Realms, and a strong argument could be made for him being the face of D&D itself. Like any good, popular character, Drizzt has his detractors – few characters are universally beloved, even the largely beloved ones. But it's a small minority. Undoubtedly, the Forgotten Realms campaign made Dungeons & Dragons more accessible to a wider audience than ever before, particularly with the 5th Edition, and Drizzt was a big part of that growth.

Drizzt is easy to love as the drow is a pure force of good, everything a hero should be: noble, brave, charismatic, and always striving to be better. That's not to say tropes don't creep into his character from time to time, but he was (and still is) relatable in a way so many other stock high fantasy Dungeons & Dragons characters simply are not. His books were the first to really tackle real-world issues and themes, including racism, religion, and found family in D&D and he made the world feel more lived-in and real. He's not a perfect character, but for starting as a hurried thought, Drizzt is about as perfectly crafted a character as you could ask for.