D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

Yaarel said:

Mythals are rituals.

But it is fine for level 1 characters to breathe water.

Water Breathing is situational and modest. It is either worthless, or if useful meh.

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But Sea Elves don't use this thing that was invented here.

They have gills. They biologically breathe water. It is not something that can be dispelled.

Crimson Longinus said:

But perhaps apart Darksun and Eberron the old settings are just generic incoherent kitchen sinks, that have been mutated and altered countless times by different authors and lack any unifying creative vision. I really don’t see why current designers changing them further is any different.

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Because they are changing the existing past. I have explained this many times.

Add, don't subtract. Or make something new.

Micah Sweet said:

Because they are changing the existing past. I have explained this many times.

Add, don't subtract. Or make something new.

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And if they decided to add a dragonborn kingdom in the middle of the Bright Desert on Oerth (that sailed from beyond the Flaness) that's adding and not subtracting, right?

Remathilis said:

And if they decided to add a dragonborn kingdom in the middle of the Bright Desert on Oerth (that sailed from beyond the Flaness) that's adding and not subtracting, right?

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So long as there's no reason we would have known about it beforehand, yes, I have no objection to that. I like dragonborn.

Maintaining continuity is my priority with settings.

Micah Sweet said:

It stretched to accommodate those things, yes, but it was not designed to incorporate them. Because that's not how causality works.

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No, it was designed as a canvas that was ready to incorporate whatever TSR and DMs choose to add to the game. That's the way that most settings work. They are not there to limit you (with exceptions like Dark Sun, and to an extent Dragonlance and Ravenloft—that are actively designed to be different than the baseline).

OK, here again the classic conflict between coherence with the lore or the gameplay. And this is worse if Hasbro wants D&D to become a multimedia franchise, where keeping the continuity is a harder challenge. Maybe the setting could be totally rewritten by the screenwritter team who work for Paramount, any othe cinematographic producer or videogame studio. And if we are talking about videogame of LEGO: Dragonlance, then "turn off and let's go" (= there are nothing more to be said or done). In the middle of the story could appear the creatures from Gamma World (because the intention is you with a WTF face).

I miss Dark Sun but now WotC follows different rules. The crunch part could be updated to 5e, but the lore is "outdated", and the new generation of players want to add new crunch elements as PC species and classes. What if I wanted to play with a monk, a crusader (martial adept) or a totemist shaman (incarnum)? Or with a sharmind, a living construct who doesn't need food or water... (and that in DS would be practically a cheat).

Did you know it? If sharks stop to swim they would die from asphyxiation because they are the fishes with the higher metabolism, almost warm-blood and they need more oxygen. If a warm-blood animal or humanoid could breath water without magic help, it would be as hard as breathing in the top of a high mountain, there is not enough oxygen within the water.

Aquatic creatures could suffer colour blidness because in the underwater the red color can't be watched in long distances.

Animals with dark vision in the real life could suffer a relative color-blindnees. They wouldn't watch only white&black but close, no so good as humans.

Azzy said:

No, it was designed as a canvas that was ready to incorporate whatever TSR and DMs choose to add to the game. That's the way that most settings work. They are not there to limit you (with exceptions like Dark Sun, and to an extent Dragonlance and Ravenloft—that are actively designed to be different than the baseline).

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Also my favorite settings from TSR. Weird.

Yaarel said:

What does "natively" "biologically" mean in the context of Elves?

If an Elf casts the Gills cantrip innately at birth, then it is native, and the biology features gills.

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It means exactly that. Like, let's remind ourselves, aquatic elves aren't just every other elf you'll meet on the street. They're green, they've got webbed hands and feet, they very specifically have gills. They're not just "Standard elf but in water"

This 'Gills' cantrip isn't how they breathe water, nor is there any magic. They breathe water because they have a pair of gills on their neck that lets them. This isn't a cantrip, doesn't need a cantrip, doesn't need any complicated system any more than "You can breathe water" because, frankly, if we want to talk balance I'd be bringing the headman's axe out for halflings, satyrs and yuan-ti long before aquatic elves

Defiing elves as "Things that can cast a spell" is a very bad definition of what an elf is, and trying to shove every unique feature of theirs into a spell is not only over-complicating stuff, its going against the game's historical tropes regarding the species.

Mecheon said:

It means exactly that. Like, let's remind ourselves, aquatic elves aren't just every other elf you'll meet on the street. They're green, they've got webbed hands and feet, they very specifically have gills. They're not just "Standard elf but in water"

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Green skin etcetera is ethnicity.

Yes, Elves use magic to gain gills. They can use magic to gain wings. They can use magic to gain solid eyes. They can use magic to get spiderweb skin markings. They can use magic to have long ears or human ears. They use magic.

Mecheon said:

This 'Gills' cantrip isn't how they breathe water, nor is there any magic. They breathe water because they have a pair of gills on their neck that lets them. This isn't a cantrip, doesn't need a cantrip, doesn't need any complicated system any more than "You can breathe water" because, frankly, if we want to talk balance I'd be bringing the headman's axe out for halflings, satyrs and yuan-ti long before aquatic elves

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They have gills because Elves are shapechangers. Using magic to shapechange.

Mecheon said:

Defiing elves as "Things that can cast a spell" is a very bad definition of what an elf is, and trying to shove every unique feature of theirs into a spell is not only over-complicating stuff, its going against the game's historical tropes regarding the species.

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The only thing that defined Elf is that there are over a hundred different kinds of them.


The flavor of magic and spellcasting is what allows all of these kinds of elves to be true − and still part of one same species. While avoiding a racist worldview.

Yaarel said:

They have gills because Elves are shapechangers. Using magic to shapechange.

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Used to be. I think this is either the actual solution, or it is at least going to be mine.

Before, Elves could change shape, their form was magical. After the whole fight between the Elven Gods, that ability was taken away.

But it didnt happen immediatly. As the Elven diaspora moved out into the multiverse, they adapted, magically, to their new environments.

And that is why Sea Elves, are biologically distinct from Wood Elves, are biologically distinct from Astral Elves, are biologically distinct from Drow.

Because Elves were once magical, and as they went out to the multiverse, they adapted, before that ability was lost.

#ScribeCanon.