D&D 5E So Shadar-Kai are now a subrace of elves: Huh?

Nevvur · Jan 28, 2018

bedir than said:
Mountain Dwarves are also a sub-race of Elf

I knew it!

QuietBrowser · Jan 28, 2018

Corpsetaker said:
I'm not understanding this move to make the Shadar-kai into a subrace of elves. They have always been described as "human like" so I don't get this. Why not introduce the Lythari?

Shadar-kai were originally introduced in 3e's Fiend Folio as a race of fey that left the Material Plane for the Plane of Shadow out of elitist disdain for mortals, only to find that their nature reacted badly with the "void" elemental affinity of their new home, causing them to start fading away into nothing unless they subjected themselves to constant pain, with a particular favored implement being shackle-like bracers whose interiors were lined with vicious spikes. Needless to say, they blamed the mortal races for what happened to them and sought revenge on anyone who was a humanoid.

4e took these rather bland enemies and turned them into a tribe of humans who sought immortality through a pact with the Raven Queen, and sort of got what they wanted, acquiring powers over shadow and prolonged lifespan, but also the need to seek out constant stimulation lest they fade into nothing.

I'd like to be charitable and presume the 5e version was an attempt to meld these two disaparate identities into one, but it's probably just because the writer was lazy.

Dannyalcatraz · Jan 28, 2018

Personally, I don’t have a cooshee in his fight, but I’ve felt for years that we don’t need elves to be ubiquitous. (And I play a lot of elves.)

It just seems to me that if there is a mystical humanoid taken from legend or even created anew for the game, the designers’ hands stay real close to the big “Elf” inkstamp...

Corpsetaker · Jan 28, 2018

My problem is now that Forgotten Realms is their flagship, and default, setting then they are going to try and incorporate that into the setting where it won't make a lot of sense given all the previous we have doesn't indicate the Shadar-kai were in any way associated with elves. Now if they somehow write them as coming from a different world and are now new to the Realms then I could possibly see it, but trying to make it as if they've always been around just doesn't make sense.

Einlanzer0 · Jan 28, 2018

Yeah, I prefer the idea that they are a human subrace rather than an elf subrace. There are plenty of elf subraces, and it fits better into existing lore.

Tales and Chronicles · Jan 28, 2018

Its probably linked to the fact that, IIRC, Mearl or other devs are now trying to work the Raven Queen with a ''dark archfey'' angle rather than a divinity. Shadar-kai being the chosen people of the Raven Queen, if she's an archefey and haunt the Feywild, I think it makes sense that Shadar-kai should have a fey-heritage. To me, she's still a non-racial godess of the Nentir Vale setting, whatever they want to do with her.

Remathilis · Jan 28, 2018

vincegetorix said:
Its probably linked to the fact that, IIRC, Mearl or other devs are now trying to work the Raven Queen with a ''dark archfey'' angle rather than a divinity. Shadar-kai being the chosen people of the Raven Queen, if she's an archefey and haunt the Feywild, I think it makes sense that Shadar-kai should have a fey-heritage. To me, she's still a non-racial godess of the Nentir Vale setting, whatever they want to do with her.

QuietBrowser said:
Shadar-kai were originally introduced in 3e's Fiend Folio as a race of fey that left the Material Plane for the Plane of Shadow out of elitist disdain for mortals, only to find that their nature reacted badly with the "void" elemental affinity of their new home, causing them to start fading away into nothing unless they subjected themselves to constant pain, with a particular favored implement being shackle-like bracers whose interiors were lined with vicious spikes. Needless to say, they blamed the mortal races for what happened to them and sought revenge on anyone who was a humanoid.

4e took these rather bland enemies and turned them into a tribe of humans who sought immortality through a pact with the Raven Queen, and sort of got what they wanted, acquiring powers over shadow and prolonged lifespan, but also the need to seek out constant stimulation lest they fade into nothing.

I'd like to be charitable and presume the 5e version was an attempt to meld these two disaparate identities into one, but it's probably just because the writer was lazy.

This. Except I don't think it was laziness as much as it was an attempt to reconcile the human-ones of 4e with the fey ones of 3e. Feedback seems to be negative though, so I wager they'll probably not go with the elf-subrace thing and instead make a new race that keeps the same idea but scrubs the word "elf" from the mix to avoid near-reflexional elf-hatred. Be prepared for some wheel-reinventing.

Parmandur · Jan 28, 2018

Charlaquin said:
It was just an Unearthed Arcana. And if the response here is any indication, they got a whole lot of feedback saying, "Yeah, sure, the mechanics are cool, but why tf are they elves?"

Forum posts are not necessarily representative of the overall feedback that they got.

Parmandur · Jan 28, 2018

Corpsetaker said:
My problem is now that Forgotten Realms is their flagship, and default, setting then they are going to try and incorporate that into the setting where it won't make a lot of sense given all the previous we have doesn't indicate the Shadar-kai were in any way associated with elves. Now if they somehow write them as coming from a different world and are now new to the Realms then I could possibly see it, but trying to make it as if they've always been around just doesn't make sense.

Forgotten Realms isn't the default setting, though: see the treatment of the Yuan-Ti in Volo's Guide, for example, which ignore the FR specific version completely.

Parmandur · Jan 28, 2018

Remathilis said:
This. Except I don't think it was laziness as much as it was an attempt to reconcile the human-ones of 4e with the fey ones of 3e. Feedback seems to be negative though, so I wager they'll probably not go with the elf-subrace thing and instead make a new race that keeps the same idea but scrubs the word "elf" from the mix to avoid near-reflexional elf-hatred. Be prepared for some wheel-reinventing.

Do we have any indication that the feedback is broadly negative? The forum "consensus" and the actual UA survey results do not seem to match much of the time.