D&D 5E DMG Excerpt: Creating a New Race

[Wolfskin]

Whether the guidelines are enough are not, how do folks feel about the fact that in the DMG example Eladrin have their darkvision, perception and charm resilience revoked?
Sorry, I don't have the PHB in front of me so I can't remember precisely what the other elf benefits are called.

They don't have any of these things revoked- they're presented as a subrace of Elves, so they get everything the rest of the Elvish races get. They're basically the same as High Elves with Misty Step in lieu of a Cantrip and an extra Language.

 

[bogmad]

They don't have any of these things revoked- they're presented as a subrace of Elves, so they get everything the rest of the Elvish races get. They're basically the same as High Elves with Misty Step in lieu of a Cantrip and an extra Language.

Ah yes. I knew I was missing something by not comparing and looking through the PHB.

 

[Tzarevitch]

They never forced it no. Unless you used Eberron or the Realms, in which case you were asked to accept a major retcon.

I'm not sure the elf subrace thing really needed to simplified. Warcraft managed to have elven subraces just fine, and no one got confused by how Legolas was different from Galadriel.
I like eladrin and the addition of a high fey race to D&D but the reason they did so was rather insulting to our intelligence.

Seriously? You think the difference between Tolkien elves isn't confusing? Almost no one can tell that Legolas and Galadriel are different subraces of elf unless that person is very steeped in Tolkien lore. Most people can't even tell that Galadriel and her husband are different subraces. There is so little real difference between elf types if you asked 100 random people off of the street who've read Lord of the Rings what the differences are between Galadriel, Elrond, Cirdan and Legolas are I'd be shocked if you could find five who could do so correctly they are so minor.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

This twigs to one of the lessons I hope 5e has truly learned (and it seems that they have, in general): It's not the publisher's place to tell us what's fun and then have us do it and have fun. Rather, it is the publisher's place to supply fodder for what we think is fun.

Lots of people think 4e eladrin are fun, so it makes sense to include them. They might've even been a lot of fun in 4e as an option. But as a replacement, they didn't fare so well. It is not the publisher's place to tell us that eladrin are more fun than the old D&D high elves so here's eladrin and you don't need high elves anymore (and if you really want 'em, there's no Fun Police, but no way we're going to give 'em to you). It is more their place to say, "this view of elves might be a lot of fun!"

Examples of that were written all over a lot of (especially early) 4e: let us tell you what is fun, what you need to have fun, what is the most fun, what D&D is really about. Early 5e has a LOT in the opposite camp: do what you want, make a ruling and keep going, here's some ideas, the game isn't a fragile little snowflake that can't take some weirdness, do as thou wilt, whatever feels right to you. They're explicit about it now.

Which is part of why I'm really looking forward to the DMG perhaps the most out of any of the three 5e initial releases. If there's anything that exemplifies the freer-wheeling "here's a thing, have fun with it" style of 5e, it'll be in the options and expansions and other tweaks the DM can bring to the system. It's the best place to present the "do as thou wilt" philosophy, to show that we've moved on from 4e's more...paternalistic...style.

This blurb shows that in spades. The game wants you to make new subraces and races. It's easy to do. Here's some advice. Make the game your own. We won't tell you how to have fun.

I get where you're coming from, but at the same time, that sort of thinking leads to a less interesting and innovative game. for example, i loved the RP "side effects" of warlock incantations in the playtest. (Like, learning a word of power might make you stutter.) I thought they were a great way to inspire interesting characters, and any group that didn't want them could hand wave them easily. But apparently that felt too much like telling people how to play, so now it's gone.

 

[pemerton]

I think folks might be reading a bit too much into the existence of eladrin here. It's an example of how to do a subrace, nothing more.

<snip>

there's no indication here that folks who are playing PS or who otherwise don't like the blink elves need to embrace the 4e-style eladrin.

I don't really disagree with your post, I'm just puzzled by your use of "need". How could WotC bring it about that thos who like PS need to embrace 4e-style eladrin?

I don't really like halflings in my D&D. In over 30 years of GMing I've been lucky to have no halfling PC since about 1984. I've GMed Greyhawk campaigns for years and never used a halfling NPC that I can recall. The fact that the mecanical systems I've used (AD&D, Rolemaster) have presented halflings as a default part of the campaign world hasn't been a problem - I've just disregarded that suggestion.

Now if a player wanted to play a halfling of course I'd have to grin and bear it. But that wouldn't change if the halfling appeared buried somewhere in an "optional" part of the DMG. The DMG can label something optional, but that's of little relevance when it comes to a player and GM compromising over what story elements will be part of the game.

If GMs don't like eladrin, just don't use them! If they have players who nevertheless want to play them, it seems to me to make no difference to those negotiations that WotC put the rules for them on this page of this book rather than on that page of that book.

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Exemplars were afterlife beings--they were formed of the souls of dead people of that alignment. (Some souls could have other fates, but this was one of the big ones that many souls went to.) They were your final reward or punishment. They were supernatural in the strongest sense--they were in no way natural "races."

Switching that to just another breed of elf is an extreme change.

That depends on how much the "afterlife" aspect mattered in any given game. I've used demons and devils in my fantasy RPGing for years, with Gygax's MMs as my templates for most of those years, and the afterlife issue has come up maybe once or twice, when the PCs encountered a Lemure.

When I first encountered eladrin reading the 3E Monster Manual, what I noticed is that they are supernatural, celestial elves. If the book even mentioned that they are "afterlife beings", it made no impact on me as I don't remember it.

Monstrous eladrin are very different being angelic beings rather than fey. It's just a recycled name.

I don't think they're very different. I also don't know why you call them "monstrous" - the only sense in which they are monsters is the technical D&D sense, and in that usage angelc eladrin are also monsters.

Both sorts of eladrin are elven in nature. They are both nature/fey-inclined. (Look at the Ghaele's spell list on d20 SRD - it's full of animal and weather stuff. They also teleport without error at will, which is more often, and further, than most 4e eladrin can teleport.) Eladrin live on Arvandor, which is an idealised Sylvan plane, much like the Fewyild.

For me, the changing of orcs from LE to CE - which happened in 4e - is quite a big deal, far bigger than putting the supernatural, celestial elves into a more consistent and coherent cosmological framewokr. But no one else seems to have even noticed the orc change, judging from the amount of comments I see on it (ie basically none). Which just goes to show that claims about degree of difference are relative to individual concerns and interests.

(Linking back to [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]'s post - when they announced the LE to CE change at the launch of 3E, they talked about how "we had all been playing our orcs as wild and chaotic, and so this change was just regularising that state of affairs". Well, I hadn't. For a long time I had treated orcs and hobgoblins as the same militarisitc, highly disciplined peoples. Does that mean that WotC were "insulting me" or "telling me how to have fun"? Not at all - they're just writing, publishing and marketing their game in a way that they think best suits their commercial interests, incuding the aesthetic aspects that feed into those commercial interests. I can do my own thing witout getting in trouble from them.)

 

[Tzarevitch]

I'll probably make them a rare breed of elves that never left the feywild unlike true elves. They are more "fey" then even high elves, and think themselves paragons of elfiness but even then are lesser beings compared to the Greater Eladrin who are their masters. An eladrin in a city would then be akin to a drow in terms of rareness; they just are better at passing themselves off as true elves.

That's basically what they were in 4e. They are the original high fey; the sidhe from myth and legend. What humans call "elves" are decendents of the eladrin who left the feywild and came to live in the mortal world. There is a very cool backstory for this in Eberron. The novel "Fading Dream" is a pretty good read and tells the whole story.

 

[Beleriphon]

That's basically what they were in 4e. They are the original high fey; the sidhe from myth and legend. What humans call "elves" are decendents of the eladrin who left the feywild and came to live in the mortal world. There is a very cool backstory for this in Eberron. The novel "Fading Dream" is a pretty good read and tells the whole story.

We're monsters like Ghaele Knights presented as the monster block version of eladrin as well? Just higher up the fey courts heirarchy than the PC version could be?

 

[Dire Bare]

Does any edition other that 4th edition even described what generic eladrin are or how the formation of them is. Because before 4e, I don't remember seeing generic eladrin. Don't remember a form hierarchy like demons, devils, slaads, and mordons. Maybe the planscape style eladrins do the "too yong to go outside town" thing like wood elves.

Original eladrin, if I remember correctly, were an invention of the 2E Planescape campaign and were carried over into various 3E Monster Manuals. A strict hierarchy did not exist, but there were many "subtypes" of eladrin, with the noble tulani eladrin being the rulers. They were fae-like, but considered celestials, basically a type of angel. Elf angels.

The 4E eladrin was a major change in D&D canon . . . which would only matter in your game if you were both aware of the canon and cared about it. 4E eladrin were reimagined high elves (and grey) and also borrowed literally from the fantasy trope of an "elder race". Eladrin also sounds a lot like "eldar" which is what some other fantasy games and settings have called similarly concepted elves.

So, different, but similar in some ways between editions. Not impossible to reconcile if you like aspects of "classic" eladrin and "new style" eladrin.

I kind of like to think of the word "eladrin" as the elvish word for "elf"! All elves are eladrin of one sort or another, with wood elves being the "lowest" form, the 4E eladrin being next up the ladder, and with many "higher" forms of eladrin existing in the feywild and in Arborea (ghaele, shiradi, coure, etc). Not really a hierarchy as such, but rather which subrace is more elfier and magical with the tulani eladrin and Seldarine at the top.

Not unlike how I see the word "hin" as the halfing word for "halfling"! Which I suppose is official canon in the Realms and also Mystara (because Ed wrote the book on Mystara halflings in the 90s).

 

[Dire Bare]

Here's the difference:

"Sidhe" start with 12+ HD and have extensive innate spellcasting.
"Eladrin" start at level 1 and have the ability to fey step occasionally.

In other words, it's the PC-minotaur problem. Usually a PC is considered to be among the best of his race. But in some cases, such as Dragonlance's minotaur race, turned out to be far weaker than the run of the mill.

While I do kinda remember a "sidhe" entry in a Monster Manual as a high HD elfy creature, sidhe is simply a mythological name for elves and is used widely in myth and fantasy literature. Eladrin fit the fantasy trope of the sidhe, an ancient, magical, elfy race.

Not really a PC minotaur vs NPC minotaur type of problem, really. Not that I put much stock in that type of issue anyway, as low-level PC minotaurs were, in my campaign, simply younger and less experienced minotaurs. After a few levels though, they could go toe-to-toe with the MM statblock and maybe earn their own maze!

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't really disagree with your post, I'm just puzzled by your use of "need". How could WotC bring it about that thos who like PS need to embrace 4e-style eladrin?

Basically, default effects.

[sblock=sideconvo!] If you wanted to play the game that WotC is supporting during the 4e era, you're playing with elfaporting. If you DIDN'T want to play that game, no one's going to stop you, except the inertia and hassle of having to write over those bits of the game and/or prepare newcomers and/or the twinge you get in your neck whenever you open your newest D&D book and see bits about eladrin. It's a lot of mental effort to expend. ESPECIALLY when there's a competitor right next door that doesn't make you go through that mental effort 'cuz it doesn't presume you're playing a game with 4e-style eladrin ('cuz it doesn't have them).

5e can avoid that fate -- even with halflings! -- by ensuring that they aren't precious about their story. The drow don't have to be the drow in the PHB if they're drow from Eberron. The cosmology doesn't have to be the one from the DMG if we're playing a game based on ancient Japan. The story for genies in the MM doesn't have to be the story for genies in Al Quadim. Eladrin can be celestials in 5e Planescape and feywild elves in the 5e DMG. 4e went the other way (which has some branding benefits): eladrin are always the same thing, and are always present, unless you make the effort to exclude them.

I don't really like halflings in my D&D. In over 30 years of GMing I've been lucky to have no halfling PC since about 1984. I've GMed Greyhawk campaigns for years and never used a halfling NPC that I can recall. The fact that the mecanical systems I've used (AD&D, Rolemaster) have presented halflings as a default part of the campaign world hasn't been a problem - I've just disregarded that suggestion.

Now if a player wanted to play a halfling of course I'd have to grin and bear it. But that wouldn't change if the halfling appeared buried somewhere in an "optional" part of the DMG. The DMG can label something optional, but that's of little relevance when it comes to a player and GM compromising over what story elements will be part of the game.

Sounds a lot like halflings are a nuclear option in your games (as David Noonan, one of 4e's big brains, goes on about here): you don't want to deal with it, your players respect that, and no one plays one, and everyone has fun. Halflings don't add to long-term fun around your table, to cop Noonan's phrase.

Clearly, if you're designing a game, you want to avoid introducing things that don't add to long-term fun around the table. And you want to keep things that do add to it! Halflings have been shown to add long-term fun to a lot of tables (they've been in the game and reasonably well-liked by the players since OD&D), so for the designers, you'd probably want to consider keeping them in, even if some players hate 'em. It's clearly not much of a deal-breaker for current players, and a lot of people have fun with 'em! But elfladrin were a gamble at 4e's launch: maybe they'd pan out, maybe not. And by removing other options to make room for eladrin, they were telling players who wanted to play the game supported by WotC that these eladrin should add more long-term fun to your table than the options they removed.

Turns out, they were right in some places, and wrong in others. And they were wrong, perhaps predictably, in regards to a lot of "hardcore" D&D players, who left for PF or the OSR. And where they went, people down the pyramid followed, because network effects.

If GMs don't like eladrin, just don't use them! If they have players who nevertheless want to play them, it seems to me to make no difference to those negotiations that WotC put the rules for them on this page of this book rather than on that page of that book.

To me, it's less about the page of a book (though that is a bit of it), and more about an attitude toward remixing. Historically, part of the big appeal of D&D has been relentless and creative remixing of fantasy tropes. Conan and Aragorn and Merlin and Elric go explore the Land of Oo and punch out Cthulu and everyone's having a good time. 4e, especially in the early days, took a more brand-focused view of what, say, an Eladrin could be, and this was speaking for the whole game, far and wide. Eladrin had One True Story, and it was important that no one attempt to redefine them, officially. And 4e did not. I believe if you looked through everything ever printed for eladrin in 4e, you'd find that it was consistent and unilateral and definitional.

At an individual table level, sure, do what you want. But when you're working against the system anyway, you can compare the systems that make it easier or harder to work against them. 4e told you how you should play guitar. PF was a lot more open to whatever you wanted to bring to its hippie drum circle. You could play whatever kind of elf you wanted to in either one, but only one was going to tell you that you were doing it wrong if you didn't do it their way. The other one passed you the OGL and told you to have a good time.

I must admit that 4e wound up as my game of choice in part because I'm a contrary, stubborn bastard.
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