Are Drow considered "Fey".....? Why or why not?

[Tuzenbach]

Can you clarify the difference between a "humanoid" and a "demi-human"?

Do you mean "humanoidish".....? IIRC, I've taken great pains to specifically NOT use the word "humanoid", but instead use "humanoidish".

 

[Voadam]

Can you clarify the difference between a "humanoid" and a "demi-human"?

In AD&D humanoids were evil man-like things and demi-humans were from man-like races not inimical to humans. So goblins and orcs and gnolls are humanoids while dwarves, elves, and halflings (and gnomes) are demihumans. Evil subraces of, and evil individuals of, demi-human races are still possible and do not change their classification. Same with non-evil humanoids.

 

[gamerprinter]

To be honest though, I feel like your pursuit of one, universal, definitive answer which applies to all players of D&D everywhere is...unreasonable? The game changes far too much, simply from one table to another, to say nothing of one edition to another or even other systems (e.g. retroclones). DMs should have the freedom to call their game "D&D" as long as they play by more-or-less the same rules, even if it means that there cannot be a universal taxonomy of races. I say, if you'd prefer to have Drow be fey, declare them fey, and see to it that they have the necessary qualifications (fiction is creationist, after all). If you'd prefer that they not be fey, then I recommend you declare them so and ensure they fail to meet the requirements in some way. If you truly have no opinion yourself, and would prefer to hear the community's opinions...debate seems, to me, like an inefficient way to gather those opinions.

And if you're seeking a discussion to determine a definitive answer, I don't think you're going to have much luck, since there are definitely some people whose favorite way of doing things is one you consider anathema.

Consider that I am developing a setting for Pathfinder built upon an alternate American Old West called Gothic Western and it is humano-centric, that is the only player race you can be is human. There are no demi-human races. There are some humanoids, mostly monstrous humanoids, but not that many. Of course there are many alternate human racial traits - farm grown, city born, plains raised, desert dwelling, etc.

 

[Umbran]

In AD&D humanoids were evil man-like things and demi-humans were from man-like races not inimical to humans. So goblins and orcs and gnolls are humanoids while dwarves, elves, and halflings (and gnomes) are demihumans.

How quanitly humanocentric.

Consider that, really, they may all instead be demignomes and gnomoids. Or koboldoids and "those big hairy guys we poke with sticks".

 

[gamerprinter]

How quanitly humanocentric.

I know this wasn't pointed at me, but when i use the term humanocentric (as I did in my last post), I mean "human only".

 

[Umbran]

I know this wasn't pointed at me, but when i use the term humanocentric (as I did in my last post), I mean "human only".

Technically, it means "centered on humans". I was merely pointing out that the term "humanoid" only makes sense from a human's point of view. No gnome or elf would refer to them as "humanoids", except maybe as a racial slur.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well to me humanoid is a meta term used by players and GMs, not any kind of description that any race would refer to itself, or perhaps what one race might call another, but certainly not something they call themselves.

 

[pemerton]

LoL, are you assuming I believe in the relevance of 4E?

You're the one who tagged your thread "all D&D". What edition are you asking about?

There actually IS a definition for Fey. It is in the MM P. 6. "Fey are magical creatures closely tied to the forces of nature. They dwell in twilight groves and misty forests. In some worlds, they are closely tied to the Feywild, also called the Plane of Faerie. Some are also found in the Outer Planes, particularly the planes of Arborea and the Beastlands. Fey include dryads, pixies, and satyrs."

From the reading of the full entry of Fey and the lack of an entry for Fairy, I would consider Fairy in the category of Fey. I agree that if 4e has some other definition for Fey then it really may depend on the version of D&D that is being played.

What you have quoted is more-or-less identical to the 4e definition: fey are fairies, ie spirits of faerie.

It often seems like "fey" in D&D is just short-hand for "good-aligned monster with magical powers". There are very few hostile or wicked ones.

In 4e there are evil/wicked fey (eg gremlins, boggarts). Some of these creatures go back to AD&D 1st ed.

I'm looking for a Universal definition of "Fey" which is applicable to ALL editions, not just what is considered the "current" standard

Various posters - [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] in most detail - have pointed to cross-edition conceptions of what sorts of creatures are fey in D&D over the years. No one has yet mentioned the Faerie/Sylvan encounter table in the 1st ed DMG, but if you look at it you'll see many of the same creatures (elves, gnomes, dwarves, pixies, dryads, satyrs, etc - interestingly ogres and trolls but no orcs or goblins).

I remain confused about the source of your confusion.

 

[GreenTengu]

In 4e there are evil/wicked fey (eg gremlins, boggarts). Some of these creatures go back to AD&D 1st ed.

Some, yes, because the monster manual is primarily designed for presenting foes for you to combat.

But if you had to just sort of estimate raw percentages....

About what percentage of monsters labeled "fey" would you suppose were aligned evil?
And about roughly what percentage of things that appeared in monster manuals that were aligned good were fey?

My estimation is that the answer to the first is less than 25% and the answer to the second is probably above 50%-- but only because of all the various metallic dragons and the 4 good-aligned demi-human races making up a lot of those.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

BINGO!!!!!!!

IMHO, it's the constant, "throw everything out every seven years and have all players buy more stuff & have more arguments" that is ........"unreasonable"......

Well, it helps if you don't cut out the extremely critical second half of that sentence, where I specifically talk about it changing from table to table. Yes, I allowed for variations from edition to edition (or even between different systems entirely), but the main point was that two different DMs can both "run D&D" while having vastly different cosmological, "biological," and theological elements in their games. There's also a wide variety of well-loved campaign settings, each with its own particular spin on things. Consider Dark Sun, where Halflings are, or at least may be, the only "original/native" species of Athas, and there are insectoids as well as atypical hybrids like mul.

When it is perfectly, 100% accurate to say "I am playing D&D" to describe playing in Oerth, Krynn, Mystara, Athas, Toril, Azeroth, Iomandra, Planescape, Ravenloft, the world of Nerath, and the innumerable homebrew worlds/campaign settings DMs come up with (such as @gamerprinter's setting-in-development)...coupled with the fact that D&D has always re-molded mythology, history, fantasy, and sci-fi to fit its own tastes (one level of Castle Greyhawk had Martian white apes!)...it just seems silly to expect anything remotely like "universal" or even "consensus" definitions for anything.

Heck, in some settings, humans are what you get when an elf and an orc have a kid! And that's still just as D&D as Greyhawk or Blackmoor or Khorvaire or Nentir Vale.

Do you mean "humanoidish".....? IIRC, I've taken great pains to specifically NOT use the word "humanoid", but instead use "humanoidish".

The question was asked as intended. When you responded to statements about the term "humanoid," you made it clear that Gnomes qualify as "humanoidish" because they have a roughly human body plan but do not necessarily conform to the proportions of real-world humans. Thus, unless there are additional requirements you did not state, "humanoidish" was sufficiently well-defined for me to not have any questions about it.

That and other posts of yours, however, make it clear that you see a very sharp distinction between "humanoid" and "demi-human." Thus, I am curious what qualities (whether presence or absence thereof) distinguish "humanoid" from "demi-human" as you would define the terms. I appreciate @Voadam's response, as it is straightforward enough, but it is heavily subjective. You have professed a desire for "scientific" terms, by which I assume you mean something primarily objective, so I wanted to hear directly from you what differences you see between the "humanoid" and "demi-human" classifications.

(Though I have to admit, I find the term "humanoidish" somewhat...well, silly. "Humanlikelike," or "having the characteristics of having the characteristics of humans." It's similar to having a genre called "roguelike"--how do you describe a game which has just a few characteristics of a roguelike? A roguelike-ish game? A roguelite? A rogueoid--no, I can't even stomach that quadruple vowel. A roguesque? Actually that last one isn't so bad-sounding, though technically that should be the narrower rather than broader category, linguistically speaking! )

Edit:
Also, Tuzenbach, you never really answered the question I asked.

If Gnomes are "humanoidish" beings who have had, in several editions, innate magical abilities, are they fey? And if they are not fey, what disqualifies them?