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

[Wrathamon]

so ... a swede is smarter then the spaniard but the spaniard is more charismatic than the scotsman who has a higher wisdom then both of them?

yah ... let's not go there.

 

[Remathilis]

so ... a swede is smarter then the spaniard but the spaniard is more charismatic than the scotsman who has a higher wisdom then both of them?

yah ... let's not go there.

Surely the Scotsman has a lower wisdom, but higher constitution. I mean, have you SEEN Haggis?

Remathilis, 1/4 Scot

 

[Minigiant]

They're the CG version of angels. The elfin angels of nature gods. They're in the 3e MM.

But in 4e angels could be any alignment, which is likely one of the reasons the name became available and was co-opted.
It's close. They work as high fae.

I mean how they are formed and how they organized (which they don't). The Planescape Monster book didn't say if they are born or if they are created or if formed out of dead CG people (Or I didn't remember reading it).

And the eladrins just being CG angel variant who look like smushed elves and sprites. The flavor wasn't strong outside of Planescape. Eladrin for the most part served only 2 roles before 4th: an enemy for evil PCs to spice up their adventures and to sot fill the CG paragon.

They were so easy to co-opt. Same with Archons. In Planescape, they were important. Everywhere else..... eh.
So the designers probably saw the gamble was worth it. Make them fey, make the PC version the novice version of eladrin, and run with that. Couldn't be worse that a dozen types of elves, right? Or having dwarves be better wizards than PHB elves again, right?

Oh elves. You are so bad, elves.

 

[Nellisir]

Rohan and Gondor are as different of races/cultures/ethnicities as high and wood elves.

So they're the same subrace but different cultures? Or different cultures but the same subrace? And elves are racially diverse and ethnically identical?

Those words are not actually interchangeable.

And I still can't name Tolkien's subraces or which elf belongs to which group, so from my point of view, it's clearly not obvious.

 

[Nellisir]

Surely the Scotsman has a lower wisdom, but higher constitution. I mean, have you SEEN Haggis?

Remathilis, 1/4 Scot

And eaten it. Yummy.

Nellisir, 1/2 Scot. 1/4 Swede. 5/4 coal-mining, potato-eating, kilt-wearing, cloth weaving, Viking bastard.

 

[Mistwell]

I thought the men of Gondor were more pure blood descendants of Dúnedain blood than those of Rohan and therefore the men of Gondor have some differences from the men of Rohan. Like for instance they live longer.

Hobbits are considered as much a race of men as any other race of man.

 

[Tzarevitch]

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?

Yes.

 

[Tzarevitch]

So Rohan and Gondor are different races?
Honestly, I knew that there were different races of elves in LotR, but I still can't tell you who is who and which is which. Or even what they are. Although isn't someone a Half-Elf? I certainly wouldn't have made the leap just because they dressed differently.

Trivia: The men of rohan are ordinary men. The men of Gondor are descendants of Elrond's brother Elros; they have some elf blood and some angelic blood (maiar). That's why Aragorn could kick ass like he did.

 

[Jester David]

So they're the same subrace but different cultures? Or different cultures but the same subrace? And elves are racially diverse and ethnically identical?

Those words are not actually interchangeable.

It really doesn't matter.

In an RPG game set in the last years of the third age with the only races being men, halflings, and elves there could totally be two or three human ethnicities portrayed as different races. I've seen many RPGs do that with different types of human.
Or they could all be human and different subraces.
Or they could be human and the differences cosmetic.

That really doesn't matter because it's mechanical representation. How you want to portray the difference between men of Rohan and men of Gondor doesn't change what men of Rohan are compared to Gondor in the context of the world.

My issue with eladrin (which I presume this relates to) is that the change in the mechanics - how the two types of elves were distinguished - caused a dramatic change in the lore. Which is like the game saying that men of Rohan are a different race than those of Gondor, and all have a new superpower which they have always and all of them really come from somewhere else than has always been believed.

And I still can't name Tolkien's subraces or which elf belongs to which group, so from my point of view, it's clearly not obvious.

Have you read the books or seen the movies?

I can only differentiate them by their location: Mirkwood, Rivendale, and Lothlorien. I'm assuming than those equate with wood, high, and grey elves respectively. But I don't know the in-world names. I'm sure they do. And I'm sure they have more differences. But really the differences seem to be ranger elves in Mirkwood, magic elves in Lothlorien, and a mixture in Rivendell, or possibly clerical. I'm trying to cram the round peg of game terms into a square hole of narrative.

 

[Jester David]

I mean how they are formed and how they organized (which they don't). The Planescape Monster book didn't say if they are born or if they are created or if formed out of dead CG people (Or I didn't remember reading it).

And the eladrins just being CG angel variant who look like smushed elves and sprites. The flavor wasn't strong outside of Planescape. Eladrin for the most part served only 2 roles before 4th: an enemy for evil PCs to spice up their adventures and to sot fill the CG paragon.

Their flavour was a little weak in the MM, but I haven't read Planes of Chaos or some of the other Planescape lore. They could have been greatly fleshed out in that setting.
There could be tonnes of eladrin lore I just don't know because I'm a Ravenloft and Dragonlance guy.

They were so easy to co-opt. Same with Archons. In Planescape, they were important. Everywhere else..... eh.

Which isn't a great excuse.
"Hey, drow are only really big in the Realms and no other settings. Let's dump them and squish them together with shadar-kai

So the designers probably saw the gamble was worth it. Make them fey, make the PC version the novice version of eladrin, and run with that. Couldn't be worse that a dozen types of elves, right? Or having dwarves be better wizards than PHB elves again, right?

Oh elves. You are so bad, elves.

Honestly, the co-opting of the outsider eladrin wasn't a *big* deal. It's odd but it's arguably an additive change. They're taking this fairly little used race and saying "hey, these dudes also have low level guys the same power level as PCs. And they might be the origin of elves."
Okay, that's cool. Because it doesn't really change anything. Not really. Because all the old stuff still exists and applies and the new stuff is just added to the mix.
And then the game says "oh, and eladrin can now all teleport. That's their thing." Okay... little more odd. I'm sure it wrecks someone's eladrin storyline somewhere or a prepublished adventure, which relies on an eladrin being trapped in a box. It's a revisionary change, but it's not a big revision as that's likely a very minor part of the experience.
"And eladrin live in the feywild now." Well... also not much of a change. Arguably they could live in two places; humans sure seem to live everywhere. Eladrin could have originated in the feywild. Sure.

All that is good. It's a change and addition, but none of that is really problematic. And even if they had said "hey, we want a new fey race in the game that's an elf plus. And it's a weaker variant of eladrins." Okay, that's still workable.

The problem, the only problem, comes when the game came and said that all high/grey elves were and always had been eladrin. That eladrin were the one and only wizard elf. Because that's a whopper of a change.