D&D 5E MTOF: Elves are gender-swapping reincarnates and I am on board with it

[UngainlyTitan]

Is it just me or does anyone else think that the "Blessing of Corellon" solves some of the issues of elves being super long lived mammals?

The mutability indicates that switching on and off their fertility is not much of a stretch and I always reckoned that they must be able to, otherwise why is no D&D world buried underfoot with a swarm of hungry elves. However, now that they can switch gender instantly, for practical purposes, they can now recover pretty rapidly from a major environmental or military disaster. In fact they can do so more rapidly than any human population.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Well, I go camping for one weekend and this happens. I got a lot of stuff to reply too.

How do you explain the presence of Glorfindel at Rivendell in the Third Age after he fell fighting the balrog in the First Age?

Canonically? The exception that proves the rule. More accurately? Tolkien re-using elf names for different tales and the reconciling them.

D&D has been doing alternatives to Tolkien Hobbits for quite a while.

DRAGONLANCE - they're called "Kender", and they are...

A lode stone for a-hole players.

But realistically, it would be exceedingly rare for a hermaphroditic Orc who wins the mating battle to choose to be female.

Oddly I could see an orc that is very concerned with having the greatest warrior spring from their loins, so much that they wish to take a more direct role in bringing life to their offspring.

Core rules for the cleric class description state: ‘If a cleric is not devoted to a particular deity, he still selects two domains to represent his spiritual inclinations and abilities.’

It seems to me that you are so attached to that sentence that you are vehemently opposed to doing hand-waving, which is literally doing nothing, to have the same result in 5e.

I fail to see how such a stance improves your quality of life, but to each their own.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Oddly I could see an orc that is very concerned with having the greatest warrior spring from their loins, so much that they wish to take a more direct role in bringing life to their offspring.

I think that would be an excellent way of framing that decision, but I do maintain that it would be an exception, not the rule.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I think that would be an excellent way of framing that decision, but I do maintain that it would be an exception, not the rule.

Likely true.

 

[Hriston]

Canonically? The exception that proves the rule. More accurately? Tolkien re-using elf names for different tales and the reconciling them.

Ah, I never knew that he was sent back specifically by the Valar, and may have accompanied the wizards. Good stuff!

 

[Sunseeker]

Is it just me or does anyone else think that the "Blessing of Corellon" solves some of the issues of elves being super long lived mammals?

The mutability indicates that switching on and off their fertility is not much of a stretch and I always reckoned that they must be able to, otherwise why is no D&D world buried underfoot with a swarm of hungry elves. However, now that they can switch gender instantly, for practical purposes, they can now recover pretty rapidly from a major environmental or military disaster. In fact they can do so more rapidly than any human population.

I just always kinda assumed elves didn't have the drive to breed like rabbits. If two elves have two children over the thousands of years of their lives, population growth will, on a yearly level, still essentially be zero.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Is it just me or does anyone else think that the "Blessing of Corellon" solves some of the issues of elves being super long lived mammals?

The mutability indicates that switching on and off their fertility is not much of a stretch and I always reckoned that they must be able to, otherwise why is no D&D world buried underfoot with a swarm of hungry elves. However, now that they can switch gender instantly, for practical purposes, they can now recover pretty rapidly from a major environmental or military disaster. In fact they can do so more rapidly than any human population.

I thought somewhere- probably the AD&D age category chart- it states that it takes hundreds of years for elves to mature to adulthood. Dwarves were also slow in maturing, but not so much as elves. That by itself is going to impact birth rates.

Add in gender mutability...well, summer flings get more complicated.

[video=youtube;WDswiT87oo8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDswiT87oo8[/video]

 

[Lanefan]

I just always kinda assumed elves didn't have the drive to breed like rabbits. If two elves have two children over the thousands of years of their lives, population growth will, on a yearly level, still essentially be zero.

Better make that three children, as one of them will doubtless become an adventurer and painfully die before reproducing...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Better make that three children, as one of them will doubtless become an adventurer and painfully die before reproducing...

Well...unless he/she takes an arrow in the knee.

 

[Sunseeker]

Better make that three children, as one of them will doubtless become an adventurer and painfully die before reproducing...

Elves do tend to plan ahead....

"Honey I think we should have another."
"Already? Our youngest is only 254."
"I know, but what if they stop learning how to play the same note on the piano for 5 years and become an adventurer?"
"Ah, good thinking, alright, lets get busy."
***a few weeks pass***
"Honey, I don't think it took."
"You mean we have to do it again?" *grumbles* "Stupid low fertility rates."