Elves - Love em or Hate em?

[Thunderfoot]

DOH!! Timed out double post! - I just hate that

 

[Thunderfoot]

I love elves - especially if they are marinated in fey wine sauce and slow roasted for 17 hours. Tastes like - well - slow roasted elf marinated in fey wine. (You thought I was gonna say chicken didn't ya.) They go well with salads - obviously.

 

[Orius]

I've been fine with the elves as generally presented in the PHBs. What bugs me are the million and one variants the invariably show up. I don't need or want sun elves, moon elves, or laser-beam-eye elves.

That annoys me to some extent too. I'd rather portray what D&D uses subraces for as differnt cultures or social classes, not something that is completely different. I don't need gray elves/high elves/wood elves to have different stat modifiers to make them different. Same thing applies to stuff like hill dwarves/mountain dwarves. There are some exception to this such as drow (but as NPCs only!), but otherwise, I don't really care much for subraces.

 

[Orius]

UH??

Dwarven berserkers are pretty much an oxymoron -- it's an image I've never understood, at least as "normal" or in D&D. Dwarves are LAWFUL, as a race. They have a tendancy toward stability, self-control, and even-temperedness; which is pretty antithetical to berserking. If anything, Barbarian should be a restricted class to dwarves (automatic -20% XP?).

There are always those that don't fit into the rest of society. Dwarves are smart enough to unleash the more unstable elements of their society upon orcs, goblins, and elves rather than have them undermine that stability.

The inverse is true about elven paladins, which is also an odd notion.

I've never been bothered by the idea of an elf paladin.

 

[Ibram]

I dont mind elves who think they are superior, I do mind when they are superior. Drow bite, I'll take Warhammer Dark Elves any day of the week for my evilness.

People, stop listening to the Elves, they are lying.... all that stuff about how much better then us is a load they use to keep us down. Rise up, fight the power.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

People, stop listening to the Elves, they are lying.... all that stuff about how much better then us is a load they use to keep us down. Rise up, fight the power.

Rise up ... yes, those female elves are hot

Dwarves are LAWFUL, as a race.

Isn't that like saying Japanese people are lawful? Stereotypes are stupid, IMO. There might be more lawful dwarves than lawful humans, but they are definitely not all lawful.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Mysterically, there are no great outcries about them...

You underestimate the "pretty" factor. Elves can be l33t n1nj4 ancient magical sorcerous sneaky mysterious powerful beter beter katana wonderkind.

Dwarves can hit things hard. Dwarves take their blows. Dwarves work hard for their ability. They are powerful and technologically masterful, but they ain't pretty. They aren't going to look like a badass cutting down swaths of goblins. No self-respecting dwarf would ever shield-surf. They are comic relief at best.

There's no outcries against dwarves because even if they ARE mechanically superior (which is certainly not a universally accepted truth), they ain't pretty.

It's like the Cleric Complex. Dwarves are powerful so that people will have a reason to chooes them, just like clerics.

Elves don't need to be powerful. If elves were blind quadrapeliegics, people would be lining up to play them because "Legolas is kewl!" and "I want a mythral shirt!"

I have had lycanthropes, orcs, unicorn-people, ettins, fey, elementals, and beholders as PC's. I have had maybe one dwarf. I have had over 20 elves.

I don't hate current D&D elves, however. I mean, they're no longer Humans++ in the game. And IMC, they *definately* are closer to being fey and prankster than any of the pseudo-demigod Tolkien crap. Which works fine for his story, but is a pain to deal with in the game, IMXP.

 

[carolina]

Elves hate em

But not as much as I despise the idea of half-elf, or half-anything, for that matter. Half-lings might be an exception, but I may even have misgivings about them.

The thing is ... drow make such great villains. So some elves are OK, I guess. The evil ones.

Muhahahahahaha.

 

[lukelightning]

Another reason to hate elves is that they tend to have Secret Ancient Evils of Unspeakable Secret Evilness that pop up from time to time and threaten to destroy the world. Baldur's Gate 2, anyone?

 

[Mercule]

Isn't that like saying Japanese people are lawful? Stereotypes are stupid, IMO. There might be more lawful dwarves than lawful humans, but they are definitely not all lawful.

Depends on how much you subscribe to the notion of dwarves having an actually alien mindset, rather than being stocky, bearded humans.

Myself, I see no reason to have non-human humanoids if they don't actually have different psychologies.