Recent content by Hriston

Thanks! I've included elves in Homo sapiens for a long time now, under Tolkien's influence, and, when I read Paracelsus' book describing undines, I recognized some of the folkloric elements Tolkien used to create his elves, such as their beauty, and how they of all the "spirit-men" most closely...

Personally, I lump humans in with elves as types of undine (trans. waveling) associated with the element water because of the physical resemblance of undines to humans according to Paracelsus.

This is basically the Paracelsian setup, except Air is "Sylphs", i.e. Wild Men/Wood Woses, i.e. Ents, and Humans partake of all four elements in equal amounts because they are the center of creation. I'd lump Goblins in with Orcs under Fire as types of domestic/hearth spirits.

For a product under the D&D brand name, I would basically ignore most of D&D's publishing history (because I'm not all that interested in most of it) and produce a heavily "Appendix N" influenced version. Here are my current race choices for that project: Man - no explanation required except...

I'm unsure why this is a reply to me. Are you arguing against the "Children of Different Humanoid Kinds" sidebar in the 2022 "Character Origins" UA by comparing it to the absolutely abhorrent Jim and Jane Crow era "one-drop rule" racial classification legal principal of most of the first...

Something that could make the half-elf stand out from the bog-standard elf is to lean into the touch of divine ancestry which makes JRR Tolkien's lineage of the Half-elven special, basically make them explicitly extraplanar. A fey-touched variant could be standard, like the descendants of...

Creatures of the Ethereal Plane are what's commonly referred to as "spirits" (i.e. disembodied spirits, because they lack materiality), whether they be fey spirits, elemental spirits, or undead spirits. D&D doesn't have a single creature type for these. As for a fifth type of elemental, in my...

That's what the dotted line is for, to show that generations are being skipped over. Also, there's the statement that Aragorn is "ultimately descended" from Elros. Apparently, for Tolkien, there was no minimum percentage of elven ancestry needed for someone to be considered Half-elven. The...

That's not my point. I'm not saying and don't agree that Aragorn is recognizing Elrond as human. I'm saying that Aragorn is recognizing himself as Half-elven. When he says "our race", he is talking about the race of the Half-elven of which he (Aragorn) is a member. For reference, here's a link...

You seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. I was positing that the quote shows that Aragorn regards both Elrond and himself as part of the same "race". I.e. that there is a Half-elven lineage that runs from Eärendil and Dior down through Aragorn and Arwen and their descendants. And I was...

An alternative to seeing half-elves as stuck between two peoples and as outsiders to both is to see them as members of a lineage that shares both elvish and human ancestry, like the House of Elros. As Aragorn says in LotR, Book 5, Chapter 8 (p 863 of my copy): 'Would that Elrond were here, for...

As the Rankin/Bass Hobbit shows, half-elves can grow beards!

Where I think my play reports might lack some detail is in combat. Here's an excerpt from a report of a D&D 5E game in which I tried to include as much detail as I felt was warranted: I think the main point of omission in this report is what's happening fictionally on a hit or a miss which I do...

Multiclass capitalist/employer, lol But seriously, I think Paladin (Knight)/Rogue (Detective) would be fitting.

Right, and, while I don't have any data on this besides my own experience, I think that's probably true for a lot of people who play RPGs. What I find odd about this thread is the contention that the participants in a session can receive this "stuff" (i.e. the events happening around the...