D&D 5E MTOF: Elves are gender-swapping reincarnates and I am on board with it

The ‘Blessing of Gender’ mechanic also allows elf characters to self-express as hypermasculine.

Hopefully, we see a better range of elf depictions, including more muscular masculine elves.

In that sense, the Blessing of Gender probably helps the elf fit better in a diversity of settings.

Hiya!

JPL said:

Seriously. It's 2018, and I'm ready for elves that aren't just two or three familiar Tolkeinesque subraces or 1990s drow cliches. If you're chaotic good and enjoy several hundred years of youthful vigor, you're gonna want some variety, and if you were a different gender, or a tree, in your last life . . . you're just not gonna get hung up on this kinda stuff, right?

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So you don't think elves are different than humans? That's what it sounds like. Elves are NOT HUMAN. Why to some people keep equating all "playable races" as basically humans with funny suits? A creature that lives for several hundred years would likely have a significantly different outlook on life and the world. Maybe the DM wants them to be as 'free as the wind' and go the whole "unpredictable Fey" route. Maybe another DM wants them to be a "rooted firmly in tradition" route. And maybe a third DM wants them to be "basically human", but where an elves personality/sense-of-being 'dies' every 75 years and the elves "personality/mind" is reborn as a new, well, 'person'. This is another reason why I don't like/want/need "Sourcebooks" like MToF; the so-called designers aren't "expanding" a games capabilities...they are reducing them. Now, weather or not you use MToF in your game, when you talk to someone at a game store, for example, there's a good chance that they are now talking about how elves "are" because they read it in MToF. Now that person has a reason to "not like" what you are saying...just on the point of not seeing elves the same way. Look at how modern society, especially Western society of late, has become more and more polarized. If you don't like X, then you are Z; there is no Y. Sourcebooks like MToF, imnsho, don't "add" to the game as a whole...they codify and dictate. This is anathema to the whole "a game of imagination" bedrock of what an RPG is.

You want boring? Have elves be nothing more different than "...if a human lived for hundreds of years...". THAT is boring. IMHO,obviously.

JPL said:

3rd Edition dragons had this stuff figured out already. Anything from an angel to a kobold, a 3rd edition dragon will shrug and say, why not? And bam, slap a half-dragon template and an ECL +2 on that baby.

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*shudder* Don't even bring 3e's "ECL Template" wackadoodle rule into it. Please, anything but that! It was and absolutely horrible way to just "1-up" a creature/monster. Yuckko!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Heh, its almost like I wrote this!

pming said:

This is another reason why I don't like/want/need "Sourcebooks" like MToF; the so-called designers aren't "expanding" a games capabilities...they are reducing them. Now, weather or not you use MToF in your game, when you talk to someone at a game store, for example, there's a good chance that they are now talking about how elves "are" because they read it in MToF. Now that person has a reason to "not like" what you are saying...just on the point of not seeing elves the same way.

Look at how modern society, especially Western society of late, has become more and more polarized. If you don't like X, then you are Z; there is no Y.

Sourcebooks like MToF, imnsho, don't "add" to the game as a whole...they codify and dictate. This is anathema to the whole "a game of imagination" bedrock of what an RPG is.

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I share similar concerns.

I want D&D descriptions to encourage customizability of settings. Make the world ones own.
When referring to lore that is specific to an official setting, try to compartmentalize it. Make it so one can opt in, rather than go thru extreme efforts to opt out.

When making races, make them easy to customize, with flexible ability score improvements, swappable features, and so on.

Eh.

I see WoTC's offerings as some rules that have undergone more testing than I can be bothered to undertake. Likewise, their fluff is simply that - their fluff.

Granted, if folks are playing AL and don't enjoy the fluff, I can appreciate the problem. However, for everyone else, our table especially, we simply add our own fluff as and when.

I like what they're doing with elves, being a big supporter of them being alien ( and nasty, ala original myths with a dash of the late Prachett.)

But hey, I wrote out all the non-human races simply to avoid having to fuss over how multiple species co-evolved/existed over umpteen thousands of years without massacring/breeding/eating each other into extinction, so perhaps I'm not the best judge (tho I like to think I'm one of the laziest.)

Tho with regards to codification, I'm also of the camp that too much is not needed. It also makes folks more dependent on WoTC - off the shelf imagination rather than exercising their own tho of course I appreciate WoTC need to make bank somehow.

As they say, great artist steal but sometimes I do worry that folks are leaning too much on the shoulders of others rather than climbing atop them.

pming said:

Hiya!



So you don't think elves are different than humans? That's what it sounds like. Elves are NOT HUMAN. Why to some people keep equating all "playable races" as basically humans with funny suits? A creature that lives for several hundred years would likely have a significantly different outlook on life and the world. Maybe the DM wants them to be as 'free as the wind' and go the whole "unpredictable Fey" route. Maybe another DM wants them to be a "rooted firmly in tradition" route. And maybe a third DM wants them to be "basically human", but where an elves personality/sense-of-being 'dies' every 75 years and the elves "personality/mind" is reborn as a new, well, 'person'. This is another reason why I don't like/want/need "Sourcebooks" like MToF; the so-called designers aren't "expanding" a games capabilities...they are reducing them. Now, weather or not you use MToF in your game, when you talk to someone at a game store, for example, there's a good chance that they are now talking about how elves "are" because they read it in MToF. Now that person has a reason to "not like" what you are saying...just on the point of not seeing elves the same way. Look at how modern society, especially Western society of late, has become more and more polarized. If you don't like X, then you are Z; there is no Y. Sourcebooks like MToF, imnsho, don't "add" to the game as a whole...they codify and dictate. This is anathema to the whole "a game of imagination" bedrock of what an RPG is.

You want boring? Have elves be nothing more different than "...if a human lived for hundreds of years...". THAT is boring. IMHO,obviously.



*shudder* Don't even bring 3e's "ECL Template" wackadoodle rule into it. Please, anything but that! It was and absolutely horrible way to just "1-up" a creature/monster. Yuckko!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

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Not sure I'm tracking with you here. I think elves have always been presented as different from humans, but these new changes make them . . . more differenter. I like the changes because they build upon some existing lore (while contradicting some other stuff, I admit), they seem to reflect a world and a gaming community that has changed a lot since the early days of the game, they can drive some interesting stories and characters, and they are some twists on a Tolkien-by-way-of-Gygax version of elves which had become a little stale (to me).

Yaarel said:

Personally, I like the *addition* of a gender-fluid character concept.

I lament the *loss* of the kinds of D&D elves that I wanted to play. Namely, the magic race of Charisma and Intelligence, the Grey Elf, Sun Elf, Eladrin Elf.

Now the only magical races are monstrous (tiefling) or little people (gnomes).

There are no ‘jock wizards’ sotospeak, or even artist wizards.

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This loss never happened.

And The Elves are innately magical. With almost all of them have a bonus towards a caster stat.

pming said:

Hiya!



So you don't think elves are different than humans? That's what it sounds like. Elves are NOT HUMAN. Why to some people keep equating all "playable races" as basically humans with funny suits? A creature that lives for several hundred years would likely have a significantly different outlook on life and the world. Maybe the DM wants them to be as 'free as the wind' and go the whole "unpredictable Fey" route. Maybe another DM wants them to be a "rooted firmly in tradition" route. And maybe a third DM wants them to be "basically human", but where an elves personality/sense-of-being 'dies' every 75 years and the elves "personality/mind" is reborn as a new, well, 'person'. This is another reason why I don't like/want/need "Sourcebooks" like MToF; the so-called designers aren't "expanding" a games capabilities...they are reducing them. Now, weather or not you use MToF in your game, when you talk to someone at a game store, for example, there's a good chance that they are now talking about how elves "are" because they read it in MToF. Now that person has a reason to "not like" what you are saying...just on the point of not seeing elves the same way. Look at how modern society, especially Western society of late, has become more and more polarized. If you don't like X, then you are Z; there is no Y. Sourcebooks like MToF, imnsho, don't "add" to the game as a whole...they codify and dictate. This is anathema to the whole "a game of imagination" bedrock of what an RPG is.

You want boring? Have elves be nothing more different than "...if a human lived for hundreds of years...". THAT is boring. IMHO,obviously.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

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I respectfully could not agree with you less.

MonsterEnvy said:

This loss never happened.

And The Elves are innately magical. With almost all of them have a bonus towards a caster stat.

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In 5e, +1 ability score improvement is an *average* human. Mediocre. Mundane.

The high elf is below average in Charisma performance checks, and the eladrin is below average in Intelligence wizard DCs.

5e elves are disappointing at what in previous editions they are supposed to excel at.

delericho said:

I'm quite happy to see gender-fluidity in the lore.

I do wish it wasn't elves though. They seem to get everything.

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They aren't gender fluid, they can change their sex.

WotC are using the definitions where gender refers to social and cultural difference between different sexes and sex refers to the biological differences. For most people sex and gender match, some people suffer from gender dysphoria (the condition of feeling one's emotional and psychological identity as male or female to be opposite to one's biological sex).

Certain elves can willingly give themselves gender dysphoria, why they would want to is the real question. Unless elves only have the one gender but two sexes which is entirely likely.

They point out that any race can change its gender. Of course if changing gender was easy you wouldn't have people that suffer from gender dysphoria. So I do wonder what they meant by that.

Then there is the whole question of wardrobe... since changing sex will mean trousers get a little too tight in the crotch, etc.

Yaarel said:

In 5e, +1 ability score improvement is an *average* human. Mediocre. Mundane.

The high elf is below average in Charisma performance checks, and the eladrin is below average in Intelligence wizard DCs.

5e elves are disappointing at what in previous editions they are supposed to excel at.

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Do you remember what elves were like in older editions. There were near universally +2 dex -2 Con.

And no plus 1 ability score is good not average. Humans can get a +1 to anything cause they are the versatile race. Were as Elves are more dexterous and have a boost to a mental stat. High Elves having a bonus to charisma and Eladrin to Charisma.