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TheHobgoblin
I agree strongly the Elf is primarily a Charisma race. In comparison, Dexterity is a dispensable auxiliary. The idea is to split away the Drow (Elf) from the Eladrin (Elf), thus using the Drow as the inheritor of the Dexterity tradition, allowing the Eladrin to develop more fully and coherently the Charisma aspects of the Elf flavor. Given a split between two kinds of Elf - Eladrin v Drow - it is important that they compare well to each other.
Notice, many of the race traits are delayed until higher levels, using the format of the PH Drow Elf. The intention is, all player races will be able to unlock potent traits at higher levels.
D&D is a combat-centered game, so it is important to think clearly about combat implications, especially when thinking about balance.
It really doesn't matter if the abilities are delayed. If you build them entirely out of combat abilities to be equal or better at first level and then you freely hand out additional powerful abilities as subsequent levels, the race is not going to be well-balanced. A character can hit 5th level before you know it.
D&D need only be a combat-centered game if that is how you choose to use the system. However, the very fact that the races were built without consideration to other parts of the game is what I was attempting to address with the additional abilities.
I agree the insertion of weapon and armor proficiencies is pointless for a race design. Its a D&D ‘tradition’ that is hard to overcome, because some of the weapon associations have become iconic for the race. For example, many players automatic think Drow when they see a handbow or think longsword when they see an Elf − even in contexts where that wouldnt make sense.
Since I prefer elegant design, I will personally dispense with weapon/armor proficiencies, and let the fighting styles of various classes handle them − as they do anyway.
It is silly to do things simply because it is "tradition". Really, looking at elves across different fictional worlds, even those specified as "high elves" and even within the artwork specifically made to depict D&D-- I have to say that the connection between high elves and long swords is tenuous at best. It isn't like 'you can't possibly be a real elf if you are wielding any other weapon' like forcing it as a racial trait for all elves of all possibly imaginable worlds that the D&D system could be used to depict. If one needs to literally invent a whole new subrace whole-cloth just because your elves happen to have an attachment to some other weapon means that the race was defined too narrowly. What I want to do is narrow this down to proscribe only what is at the center core true about the race, that universally defines it across nearly all depictions in fiction while allowing enough flexibility that it could reasonably be used to pretty well depict the kind of elves one would find in just about any world.
And, to the point-- no, I have never once associated Drow with hand crossbows. Not even once. That has never been necessary or core to the concept of a dark elf. If I go to Google and type in the word "Drow" into the search and look at the image results, you know how many Drow are depicted with hand crossbows in the first 200 images?... 3. That's how "iconic" and "core" it is to the Drow concept-- exactly 3 of the top 100 most popular images for the race contain that weapon. Slightly more than 1%. Far more often they are depicted with longbows, swords (usually curvy ones), staffs, flails, and daggers.
So, no-- hand crossbows are not particularly necessary to the concept of Drow. 98.5% of Drow are depicted with 0 reference or implication of being remotely associated with a hand crossbow.
And, you know what? I type in "High elf" and while the results show plenty of them with long swords, plenty more are depicted with staffs or spears or polearms. And those that do have longswords are pretty clearly the kinds of classes that would have proficiency in martial weapons anyway. So despite the fact that the race was given a bonus for swords in D&D in nearly all editions, it just isn't that core enough to the definition of the race as to actually be necessary to the identity of the race at all.
Regarding your point about the Elf that creates an abundance of food. The design space where I want to see this is Backgrounds. Each race should have its own set of iconic backgrounds that establishes the cultural flavors peculiar to that race.
I want Backgrounds to become a more central feature of the D&D game, most of which happens outside of combat.
Okay, I get it. You only use D&D for combat. I am guessing your entire D&D experience revolves around arena games exclusively. Thus, anything that doesn't immediately and directly to killing the other PC in front of you is garbage you just want to toss. That is why you want to relegate anything that doesn't increase your damage or give you more powers to blow people up to backgrounds so you can entirely disregard them.
Here is the thing though-- not only are you trying to force things onto players universally across all possible realms of D&D-- something as silly as "you can use this shape of wood and metal to kill someone, but you are utterly incapable of using that other shape of wood and metal to do so.." and you think this is somehow absolute essential core to the concept of the race, that unless you have a handcrossbow then one cannot possibly be an actual Drow or if you don't have a longsword then there is no way one could possibly actually be a high elf.... despite each being depicted the majority of the time without that weapon you want to force into every single last player's hands.
Are you even trying to justify your use of these weapons by claiming there is something unusual about the shape of elven physique that they must absolutely use your particular preference of weapon and your arbitrarily decided choice of weapon alone or not be a "real" elf? It there something about the elven soul that dictates long sword and long sword alone and never halberd or mace? I imagine not. I imagine you would admit that your insistence upon dictating to players of the race what particular weapon they
must use would be described as motivated by the culture of the race... but yet despite the fact that this would absolutely be a cultural artifact-- one that would only necessarily be true about one particular culture on one particular world-- you somehow
don't feel that this entirely cultural artifact should be relegated to a background trait.
And why? I would wager to guess because it directly contributes to killing potential.
But you know what actually
is universally true about all depictions of cultures of elves across all media ever? The fact that if you take one and drop them in the middle of the woods, they will not get lost and starve to death like a human would be likely to do. That their entire people manage to live and thrive in numbers and comfort in the forest in a way that humans would need to clear-cut that forest and convert it all into farmland to achieve the same end. And this is true of all elves-- it doesn't matter if within elven society you are an acolyte or a charlatan or a criminal or an entertainer or a folk hero or so on... literally every possible background, so long as one is an elf then we can be quite sure that surviving in the forest is going to be perfectly fine. We don't need a special "elven" version of every imaginable background in order to repeat the sentiment endlessly across all of them. It is an absolutely core essential to being an elf that getting on fine in forest areas is just not something you need any special experience or class training in order to do.
One way for a DM to help players invest in the setting is to have them decide why the party members are working together. Maybe they are all students at a local wizard school, or hired as the bodyguards of a particular noble, or hands at a particular farm, or whatever. By deciding this at the time of character creation, the players are thinking about where their characters fit in in the world ... and by extension what their ambitions might be that they want to accomplish within this world. Most of this is entirely outside of combat.
And that has nothing to do with the race are handled and is also an entirely terrible idea in general.
You want all PCs to start off as the same class with the same training? You do understand that the point of classes is that they specialize at different things and you are supposed to have a mix of classes with different specialties in order to have an ideal experience and tackle the various challenges that are to arise in an adventure.
And if every single PC has the exact same abilities and skills as people trained by the exact same master together from day 1 would-- then whichever PC is most min/maxed is just absolutely going to steal the show and the others are going to have to sit at the table doing little and barely able to engage in the game. Every time an opportunity to roll a skill comes up, the min/maxed character is always going to be rolling it with the highest bonus.
If you want players to have fun at the table, giving them all identical characters is probably the single worst thing you could do. The more I read this post of yours, the more I am absolutely certain you must have only engaged with the game as a PvP arena battle game. I can't imagine anyone else who has much experience with the game wouldn't have run into the situation where they sat down at the table realized that someone else has the exact same class with nearly the exact same skill lay out and is much more streamlined and effective and found themselves having a terrible time because if felt like there was no way for them to contribute.
In order for the group to have fun, then they should have different characters with different specialties and there should be time when each one can get the spotlight during the adventure because their unique skills and abilities that possibly only they in the group have get to be used. So giving the races abilities that allow the players of them to have the spotlight under certain conditions without entirely undermining the challenges DMs might put before the players (as abilities like flight and teleportation tend to do) or making the race entirely about combat damage output (honestly, if you are playing D&D cooperatively, it really doesn't matter which character did 18 damage during the encounter and which did 32).
