Will you make transsexual Elves canon in your games ?

[SkidAce]

Ret-cons add a change to a previously depicted scene or event. It changes the past. This doesn't change anything previously written and just adds to it. It's not retroactive continuity, it's just regular continuity.

Doesn't affect me. In no place in my campaign setting had I written that elves could not change sexes.
If someone wants to take that option, I have no strong feelings against it. It could be fun and lead to some interesting scenes and moments.

But I'm sure someone out there is super, super happy with this option and idea. So I'm happy for them.

This ^

 

[Lychee of the Exch.]

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.

A very interesting take on the topic.

 

[Lychee of the Exch.]

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.

Now I grok it.

 

[the Jester]

I really like the idea, at least for npcs, but I actually have two (very) small reservations with it for pcs.

The first is that the ability to change sex is actually a small bit of a buff. For example, you might be able to use it to aid in some kind of con, scam, disguise, or impersonation.

The second is that this sort of devalues a custom cantrip in my campaign, genderbend, which lets you change your sex.

That said, if a pc wanted to play with this option, I would probably allow it, with a chance of "roll dice to check your sex each morning" type shenanigans. (I'd talk this over with the player first, but I like the idea better if it isn't strictly under the player's control- that alleviates all my, admittedly minor, concerns about it.)

 

[the Jester]

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.

It might matter for biological reasons, e.g. who is carrying the child to term?

Which brings up a host of other, interesting, questions- if an elf that can change gender gets pregnant while female, what happens to the fetus or unborn child if the elf later changes her body back to male before giving birth?

Also, how do elven pronouns work vis-a-vis gender?

 

[Yaarel]

I really like the idea, at least for npcs, but I actually have two (very) small reservations with it for pcs.

The first is that the ability to change sex is actually a small bit of a buff. For example, you might be able to use it to aid in some kind of con, scam, disguise, or impersonation.

The second is that this sort of devalues a custom cantrip in my campaign, genderbend, which lets you change your sex.

That said, if a pc wanted to play with this option, I would probably allow it, with a chance of "roll dice to check your sex each morning" type shenanigans. (I'd talk this over with the player first, but I like the idea better if it isn't strictly under the player's control- that alleviates all my, admittedly minor, concerns about it.)

If focusing on the mechanic utility in regard to certain narrative adjudications, the gender-swap ability seems at most as useful than a skill proficiency (or the normally redundant elf sword proficiency or bow proficiency). Exchanging a proficiency for the gender-swap seems fine.

 

[Warpiglet]

I don't plan to write it into my campaign and do not think anyone in the campaign would ask for it. The same can probably be said for a campaign I play in.

If someone wants it it's fine. They could say their character is exceptionally close to corellon or whatever. It just doesn't scream cool to me but then neither do gnomes or bards and I would not ban them.

 

[the Jester]

If focusing on the mechanic utility in regard to certain narrative adjudications, the gender-swap ability seems at most as useful than a skill proficiency (or the normally redundant elf sword proficiency or bow proficiency). Exchanging a proficiency for the gender-swap seems fine.

I actually think a proficiency is probably more valuable than the ability to change gender 1/day. But now that you have suggested it, I like the idea of allowing an elf pc with the gender change ability to start off with gender randomly determined each day and the option to learn to control it via downtime.

But I love downtime. I love the passage of time in the campaign. And I am pretty liberal with training for proficiencies during downtime- I allow skill, language, tool, weapon, and armor proficiency training. And sometimes specific special abilities or techniques under the right circumstances (e.g. a monk can learn the Falling Star Strike special ability from the old monk hermit).

 

[Yaarel]

Hmmm.

It might matter for biological reasons, e.g. who is carrying the child to term? Which brings up a host of other, interesting, questions- if an elf that can change gender gets pregnant while female, what happens to the fetus or unborn child if the elf later changes her body back to male before giving birth?

A pregnant elf who switches to male:

The uterus vanishes, and the placenta attaches to and draws nutrients from the intestinal tract. The father requires a caesarean section if not switching to female at the time of delivery.

Also, how do elven pronouns work vis-a-vis gender?

There is probably three pronouns: masculine, feminine, and androgynous.

He, she, and ... ‘thy’ (?).

The ‘thy’ might work since the androgynous gender is explicitly a sacred category. An individual switches between any of these three depending on current gender.

‘Thy’ also works as a stand in as a gender-nonspecific singular of ‘they’ (?).

 

[the Jester]

There is probably three pronouns: masculine, feminine, and androgynous.

He, she, and ... ‘thy’ (?).

The ‘thy’ might work since the androgynous gender is explicitly a sacred category. An individual switches between any of these three depending on current gender.

‘Thy’ also works as a stand in as a gender-nonspecific singular of ‘they’ (?).

Not to get too deep into the weeds here, but this has gotten me thinking on this on what is probably far too ridiculous of a level of detail.

So first of all, to define terms, "sex" is what the body is right now, "gender" is the psycholodgical identity of the elf. I can see sex falling into at least four categories- male, female, and at least two categories or hermaphroditic/dualsexed, with the possibility of an asexual body type as well in some cases (though I don't think there is any canon support for that). But I think there's a strong likelihood of more levels of differentiation in elven bodies, and therefore in pronouns. There's also a chance that different pronouns exist for elves who shift sexes and those who don't.

Elven gender might not even really exist as a construct. I have always seen both elven gender and sexual preference as, typically, highly fluid; so if there is such a concept in elven society, it's probably very well-developed and detailed, accounting for lots of variants. So for instance, the pronoun you use for an elf might vary for an elf who changes gender when it changes sex, vs. one whose gender remains male regardless of its sex.

This is turning into a deep ramble... but yeah, I could see dozens, maybe hundreds, of different pronouns in Elvish. Of course, I also have the view that non-elves typically never learn more than advanced babytalk in Elvish due to its complexity; the long-lived elves have plenty of time to elaborate their language in ways that require deep experience to untangle. So a human who spoke Elvish would probably only use the most basic three or eight or something pronouns.