D&D Beyond: Rise of the Eladrin

[gyor]

The designers made an effort to make the eladrin elves an overtly ‘magical people’. If this kind of elf is Charisma-Intelligence, then the mechanics will match the flavor, and I will be happy, no matter what.

Feystep/Mistystep guarantees the eladrin will be mechanically viable.

Regarding the D&D Beyond video, my interest is the setting assumptions. I worry that 5e is baking too much setting flavor into the core rules. I prefer core rules of D&D to be setting-agnostic, so that any kind of setting is possible using D&D rules. I personally dislike polytheism, so dislike the ‘great wheel’, so am uneasy about ‘celestial’ mechanics.

In the case of the eladrin, I simply want to understand what the designers are saying about the setting implications.

Crawford said there is more than one origin story − more than one ‘myth’ about the origin of the elves. Unfortunately, he said all of the ‘myths’ have the elves be the ‘offspring of a god’. Thus the D&D brand seems irredeemably committed to polytheism.

Even so, the possibility of multiple ‘myths’, includes the possibility of D&D settings that lack polytheistic gods.

I hope D&D rules support the possibility of settings that dont require the worship of polytheism.

D&D has been committed to Polytheism long, long before this, that is not new.

That being said there is nothing mechanically that forces you to make home brew settings polytheistic, but you can home brew monotheistic settings too

 

[MechaTarrasque]

If you havent ever been anywhere else, then living in the feywild kinda does make you fey. If anything, the eladrin are ‘fey with celestial ancestry’.

"What we explain is that there are certain Eladrin who over the millennia have been so saturated by the magic of the fey wild that they have actually reverted to being fey" suggests that living in the feywild is insufficient in itself to make you fey.

 

[Charlaquin]

"What we explain is that there are certain Eladrin who over the millennia have been so saturated by the magic of the fey wild that they have actually reverted to being fey" suggests that living in the feywild is insufficient in itself to make you fey.

I think he meant “reverted to being Celestials.”

 

[Yaarel]

4e has clearer mechanics to distinguish ‘planar origin’ from ‘creature type’.

In a 5e context, the ‘origins’ are:
• material (aka natural)
• ethereal
• fey
• shadow (aka undead)
• elemental
• astral
• celestial
• infernal (aka fiend)
• aberration

The ‘creature types’ are:
• beast
• construct
• dragon
• giant
• humanoid ( ≈ player character race)
• monstrosity
• ooze
• plant



In other words.

• Eladrin Elf (fey AND humanoid)
• Wood Elf (material AND humanoid − with fey ancestry)
• Ghaele (celestial AND humanoid − with fey ancestry)



The confusion happens because the narrative makes Corellon both ‘celestial’ and ‘fey’, even tho he has nothing to do with the fey plane, and it is unclear why the creatures of this plane and the celestial Corellon would both be ‘fey’.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I think he meant “reverted to being Celestials.”

I would be good with that, as I have said ever since the DMG came out that I would be good with celestial elves, as long as they had a little more power than regular elves (and that description would suggest they do).

I am not opposed to eladrin being de facto fey instead of humanoids, but the devs seem to be working with the notion that PC race=humanoid*, even in the case of the UA revenant and UA warforged, so I think that any PC that is an eladrin is going to be humanoid even if there are fey or celestial eladrin out there.

If we were in 4e, there would be a paragon path or epic destiny to change the PC into a fey or celestial, but in 5e, so far all we have are epic boons for stuff like that.

* For the good reason of minimizing having to keep track of all the magic/effects that only affect some of the PC's.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Probably because this is not the edition of "forcing players to play a certain way". Imagine if you wanted to play a Spring elf, but the campaign was set in Winter. You'd never get to play they elf you wanted to. 5E is very light on "the players must XYZ because *reasons*." And they had to reconcile that with adding four more types of elves to the game.

Right. So one player can play a Winter Eladrin, full stop, while another can change seasons based on how the character is responding emotionally to what’s going on.

Also, it’s not four personalities, it’s four moods. Real people act differently when they’re angry, depressed, excited, or super comfortable at home. Eladrin are just more pronounced in that difference, and their magic reflects it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

"What we explain is that there are certain Eladrin who over the millennia have been so saturated by the magic of the fey wild that they have actually reverted to being fey" suggests that living in the feywild is insufficient in itself to make you fey.

As in, no longer mortal humanoids, but truly magical Fey, while other Eladrin are Fey Humanoids, still mortal.

 

[Yaarel]

Translating the narrative into mechanics looks more like the following.

Elves are essentially outcast celestials.
• Elves are originally clones of the mutable Corellon, a celestial.
• These mutable elves preferred to keep humanoid forms.
• Shying away from mutability insulted Corellon.
• Corellon forced them out of the celestial − and dispelled their mutably.
• Locked into humanoid forms, the elves took refuge in the fey wild.
• These humanoid forms are diverse. For example, sea elves exist in the feywild.

At this point in the narrative, all elves are ‘fey humanoids with celestial ancestry’.
• Some elves remain in the fey wild evolving there into eladrin elves.
• Some elves leave the spirit world of the fey wild, materializing into the material.
• Shadar-kai elves immigrated to the spirit world of the shadow fell, thus are shadow humanoids.

At this point, those elves that are material humanoids have both celestial ancestry and fey ancestry.

The eladrin and the shadar-kai are incorporeal spirits.

(The fey wild and the shadow fell are both spirit realms. They seem to be ‘deep’ in the ethereal plane.)



Suppose Corellon voided any connection of his clones to the celestial, in which case, these former clones are now elves in the fey wild, who are strictly fey. If there is no trace of their celestial origin, then the eladrin are fey only. Other elves are material with fey ancestry and so on.



Elves who return to the celestial as tulani, ghaele, fierre, etcetera are celestial (again) but now with fey ancestry.

But note Corellon, an ‘absentee parent’ to his clones. More than that, by driving his clones out, Corellon turns out to be a highly abusive parent. His alignment as ‘good’ seems doubtful.

Elves who are healthy survivors of the trauma, would have nothing more to do with Corellon.

Elves who return to the celestial to stay with Corellon are dysfunctional, and the situation there is disturbing.

Corellon seems non-good and unlikable.

 

[Ancalagon]

The link in the OP's post is a transcript of what was said.

Thank you...

...but that transcript was hard to read too! Very rambly

 

[gyor]

Thank you...

...but that transcript was hard to read too! Very rambly

Your welcome .