Will you make transsexual Elves canon in your games ?

[Ancalagon]

I would be willing to change this in a future campaign, but I wouldn't want to change an ongoing one midway. This has consequences.

It pretty much is the only way. The terms are completely different.
The elves in this instance possesss magical sequential hermaphroditism, biologically switching from male to female. How that affects gender in elves is unknown. (As gender is a social construct.)
Meanwhile, transgender individuals have a gender identity that does not match their biological sex. They can be called “transsexual” if they medically transition to the sex that matches their gender.

Exactly - cis and trans gendered may have no meaning at all in elven society. It will require some serious thinking to figure out how this affects their society and culture. We also don't know the details - are elven children born one gender, or agendered? Is the ability to switch always there, or only appears at puberty?

Heck, are there secondary sexual characteristics at all? Or cultural/behavioral ones? Can humans even tell a "currently male" from a "currently female" elf without close examination?

This really pushes forward the ideas of gender and orientation fluidity... but it's fundamentally different from the human experience of many.

 

[Jester David]

We will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Think of it like this, if they introduced a mechanic, such as a feat, that gave elves a unique ability that they previously did not possess, and flavoured it as being tied to a rare noble family or lineage blessed by a god, would that be a retcon?

Blood of the Ancients
Prerequisite: Elf
You are immortal and have inside you blood of kings. You have no rival, and no one can be your equal.
When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you automatically stabilise. On your turn, you can choose to roll a death saving throw, but do not die no matter how many failures you roll. You can be killed if you suffer a critical hit from a melee weapon that deals slashing damage while you are at 0 hit points.

Is that a "retcon"? I'd say no, it's additive and not revisionary. It takes what we know of elves and adds additional lore on top of what was previously known. It doesn't take what was established and change it in any way, altering any characters or events.

Now... if a character previously killed were said to be alive with this feature, that would be a retcon. A retcon via the feat, but not the feat itself.

 

[MarkB]

The only reason I'd consider disallowing it is as niche protection for Changelings. They had the ability to change sex at will as far back as 3.5e Eberron.

 

[Lanefan]

No.

The whole change-gender-on-the-fly thing is something I added to Orcs in my games a long time ago, to differentiate them a bit from all the other humanoid types. Happy with this. Elves don't need it.

 

[Yaarel]

If a person ‘switches’ from one gender to an other, it means, the culture has strong gender division. Males and females strongly differ from each other.

Otherwise, there would be no gender to switch to, and no point in having an ability that could.

If the sex of elves were difficult to tell apart, who cares if one could switch? It wouldnt matter.

The Blessing of Gender only makes sense if there are male elves who are very masculine, and female elves who are very feminine.

Of course, some individuals are in the middle of the gender spectrum. (Just like there are humans in between the gender spectrum.) But most elves will be towards the extremes of each gender, so elf society has a strong sense of each gender.

 

[Yaarel]

Similar to orientation.

If an individual male sexually prefers a male, it means, males generally have characteristics that distinguish them from females.

The stronger the preference, the greater the gender difference.

Homosexuality (as opposed to bisexuality) presumes strong gender differences.

 

[gyor]

I'm not sure I've grokked all of your idea there, but it seems cool nonetheless .

Okay a Divine Soul has a shard of divinity in it from a God or Godlike being that powers their Divine Sorcerer magic.

In this case the divine shard retains a measure of the personality of the Goddess.

With the male elfs permission the Shard of Divinity expresses itself, shaping his body into hers.

 

[Yaarel]

Anthropologically, the Blessing of Gender assumes, the males are masculine, the females are feminine, and the androgynes are distinctive and sacred.

 

[Caliban]

Sure, why not. If it makes the player happy and has no negative impact on the game world, I don't see a reason not too. It's not like elves haven't been seen as fairly androgynous for most of their D&D history.

 

[jgsugden]

Dangerous waters are sometimes worth the swim.

The scientific term for the closest real world parallel to these exceedingly rare Blessed of Corellon is sequential hermaphroditism. There is no real world human equivalent, so there is no spot on term for it in real life, and applying real world terminology to it as a 'rough fit' may anger some people - so tact is recommended where this is included in a game. You may have players that see this as a story option merely, players that exlore it as part of a more personal exploration, or players that are using it to belittle others. You'll need to consider how it is being used and how to help all players be comfortable with the use of the mechanic.

As others have noted, gender changing is not new to D&D. The Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity has been around since the 1970s. Changelings have had the ability, off and on, in various sources. However, it was often handled in the past in a manner that would displease many applying modern sensibilities. As such, I'm not so sure I'd focus on the history of the ability as any type of template for this ability.

In my games, I likely won't focus on it as I don't put a lot of significance on gender in general, but if a player asked to have it for their character or I saw a relevant place for it in a storyline I would include it.