D&D Beyond: Rise of the Eladrin

[gyor]

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.

Honestly the 5e spin on Corellon is very different from previous editions, there was no evidence of this absent parent crap so either he grow out of it, or they messed him up to make Lloth look better which I don't like.

 

[Ancalagon]

The Tolkien narrative was immensely better than this...

 

[Yaarel]

Heh, I guess the moral of the story is, the game works better without the great wheel.



In any case, I am probably going to like the eladrin elves. I look forward to the feywild as a Harry Potter wizard world. Those muggle elves can keep their bows!

 

[MechaTarrasque]

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

So far there is a pretty definite list of types and subtypes; fey and humanoid are both types, but neither is a subtype. That might change with MToF's, but right now your options are either humanoid or fey. Now elf is a subtype, so fey elves would work in the current typology (and they have already established celestials with the elf and dwarf subtypes so it isn't like subtypes are limited to one type), but there is also no indication that those would be a playable race.

 

[Sunseeker]

So far there is a pretty definite list of types and subtypes; fey and humanoid are both types, but neither is a subtype. That might change with MToF's, but right now your options are either humanoid or fey. Now elf is a subtype, so fey elves would work in the current typology (and they have already established celestials with the elf and dwarf subtypes so it isn't like subtypes are limited to one type), but there is also no indication that those would be a playable race.

Not that I expect them to figure out their typology any time soon, it took MTG nearly 20 years to get where they are and they're still working on it. Not sure if I'd want creature types written like that though. Undead Native Outsider Fey Elf Vampire, gets to be a little wordy...even if accurate.

 

[gyor]

Heh, I guess the moral of the story is, the game works better without the great wheel.



In any case, I am probably going to like the eladrin elves. I look forward to the feywild as a Harry Potter wizard world. Those muggle elves can keep their bows!

Why is the moral of the story things work better without the great wheel?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Honestly the 5e spin on Corellon is very different from previous editions, there was no evidence of this absent parent crap so either he grow out of it, or they messed him up to make Lloth look better which I don't like.

Did the same with Dwarves and Duergar, IMO, barring something different in the actual book. By the video, Dwarves are uncompromising fanatics who will turn on their kin for “letting themselves” get manipulated and enslaved. The vid made me want to play a Duergar, but also made me only want to ever play a dwarf in a game where the DM ignores MToF.

Not as bad with the elves, though. Corellon as indifferent t the elves is weird, but even in 4e Llolth had some sympathetic story elements in terms of the origin story, even though she turned full evil by the end of it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So far there is a pretty definite list of types and subtypes; fey and humanoid are both types, but neither is a subtype. That might change with MToF's, but right now your options are either humanoid or fey. Now elf is a subtype, so fey elves would work in the current typology (and they have already established celestials with the elf and dwarf subtypes so it isn't like subtypes are limited to one type), but there is also no indication that those would be a playable race.

I didn’t mean “Fey humanoid” as in having both types in some kind of mechanical keyword sense, just that they are mortal humanoids (which seems to be code for “player race”) of Fey origin.

 

[QuietBrowser]

Why is the moral of the story things work better without the great wheel?

I can't speak for Yaarel, but for my answer, it's because the lack of a need to fill out every square in an alignment-based grid ironically leads to greater ideas and diversity. This whole mess we've seen in this video is the result of desperately struggling to reconcile the Feywild, a workable and enjoyable Plane of Faerie that has finally forced itself into the default planar setup, with the Great Wheel's setup, where Eladrin were nothing more than Chaotic Good angels who happened to look like elves.

By trying to make Eladrin closer to their Planescape depiction, yet at the same time not invalidate their superior 4e depiction, where they are the original strain of elf and Planescape style eladrin are simply Eladrin Paragons who have attained royal titles and through it access to great magic, you get this clumsy mishmash of lore that is... well, it's not as blatantly elf-supremacist as their lore in the Complete Book of Elves, so it has that going for it, but that's about all it has going for it.

 

[Azzy]

I can't speak for Yaarel, but for my answer, it's because the lack of a need to fill out every square in an alignment-based grid ironically leads to greater ideas and diversity. This whole mess we've seen in this video is the result of desperately struggling to reconcile the Feywild, a workable and enjoyable Plane of Faerie that has finally forced itself into the default planar setup, with the Great Wheel's setup, where Eladrin were nothing more than Chaotic Good angels who happened to look like elves.

By trying to make Eladrin closer to their Planescape depiction, yet at the same time not invalidate their superior 4e depiction, where they are the original strain of elf and Planescape style eladrin are simply Eladrin Paragons who have attained royal titles and through it access to great magic, you get this clumsy mishmash of lore that is... well, it's not as blatantly elf-supremacist as their lore in the Complete Book of Elves, so it has that going for it, but that's about all it has going for it.

There likely wouldn't have been all this hoop-jumping, if there had been no need/desire to reconcile 4e's depictions with prior editions' depictions. Had 4e used a different name than eladrin for its new fey-elves rather than used that of a preexisting creature from previous editions, this wouldn't be an issue. There's a lot of interesting turns of fluff in 4e, but it's really a shame that they used the names of previous edition creatures for new creatures. Now we're reaping that harvest. :/