Remathilis
Legend
With four elves races under their belt at this time (astral, eladrin, sea, shadar-kai) you'd think the easiest race to nail would be elf. Somehow, they bungled that.
So, all elves get some common traits: darkvision, fey ancestry, keen senses, and trance*. We'll call those the common traits and they aren't going to be a factor except where an elf has a difference in this trait. So lets look at what the elf races get:
Astral: Teleport prof/day, bonus light-themed cantrip, floating skill proficiency
Eladrin: teleport prof/day with four different riders at 3rd level (damage, move ally, charm, or frighten)
Sea: water breathing, swim speed, talk with fish
Shadar-kai: necrotic resistance, teleport prof/day with rider at 3rd level (half-damage for 1 round)
So what does the UA elf get? First, they all share a single race (unlike the others which are technically four separate races that all count as an elf) and all of them get the same racial ability (a cantrip, a 1st level spell, and and 2nd level spell determined by lineage) plus a ribbon-like extra ability (double darkvision, +5 movement, swap your cantrip). Compared to the diversity of the other MotM/SJ elves, this feels wildly uninteresting. You get either the classic drow SLAs, a few generic arcane spells (plus misty step, meaning yet-another teleporting elf, except this one uses a spell and spell slots rather than prof/day) or a few movement-enhancing primal spells. It feels lazy and very grid-filling, whereas the previous ones feel they have unique abilities and not just a bunch of SLAs.
Ignoring for the moment that the UA elf doesn't get trance proficiencies (What?), I feel the drow is in a good place (they were always the elves with SLAs) but the high elf feels uninspired, and wood-elf feels like a grid-filler. Why can wood elves keep some variant of their "hide in woodlands" or some non-SLA ability to ignore difficult terrain? Likewise, high elves feel like a weak eladrin. I'm not sure how exactly you fix them, but detect magic isn't interesting and misty step is just a weak and boring version of what the astral, shadar-kai and eladrin are doing.
My suggestions:
1.) Give each elf a separate racial traits block. Yes, it's repetitive and will eat up extra space, but the fact that four other elves exist as separate write-ups and the three core elves are crammed together in one race looks terrible.
2.) Give wood elves woodland abilities that aren't just spells.
3.) Give the high elves something other than detect magic and misty step. I like the rotating arcane cantrip, but I think something else could be done to give them an arcane feel while being mechanically distinct.
4.) Drow are good as is.
5. Update the Trance ability to give the two weapon/tool proficiencies like all other elves (save astral, who get a unique version) get.
Right now, there is absolutely no reason to go with the UA elf over the MotM/SJ elves. When the survey goes live, I plan to address this, but I want to voice now how underwhelmed I am with the elf design at the moment.
So, all elves get some common traits: darkvision, fey ancestry, keen senses, and trance*. We'll call those the common traits and they aren't going to be a factor except where an elf has a difference in this trait. So lets look at what the elf races get:
Astral: Teleport prof/day, bonus light-themed cantrip, floating skill proficiency
Eladrin: teleport prof/day with four different riders at 3rd level (damage, move ally, charm, or frighten)
Sea: water breathing, swim speed, talk with fish
Shadar-kai: necrotic resistance, teleport prof/day with rider at 3rd level (half-damage for 1 round)
So what does the UA elf get? First, they all share a single race (unlike the others which are technically four separate races that all count as an elf) and all of them get the same racial ability (a cantrip, a 1st level spell, and and 2nd level spell determined by lineage) plus a ribbon-like extra ability (double darkvision, +5 movement, swap your cantrip). Compared to the diversity of the other MotM/SJ elves, this feels wildly uninteresting. You get either the classic drow SLAs, a few generic arcane spells (plus misty step, meaning yet-another teleporting elf, except this one uses a spell and spell slots rather than prof/day) or a few movement-enhancing primal spells. It feels lazy and very grid-filling, whereas the previous ones feel they have unique abilities and not just a bunch of SLAs.
Ignoring for the moment that the UA elf doesn't get trance proficiencies (What?), I feel the drow is in a good place (they were always the elves with SLAs) but the high elf feels uninspired, and wood-elf feels like a grid-filler. Why can wood elves keep some variant of their "hide in woodlands" or some non-SLA ability to ignore difficult terrain? Likewise, high elves feel like a weak eladrin. I'm not sure how exactly you fix them, but detect magic isn't interesting and misty step is just a weak and boring version of what the astral, shadar-kai and eladrin are doing.
My suggestions:
1.) Give each elf a separate racial traits block. Yes, it's repetitive and will eat up extra space, but the fact that four other elves exist as separate write-ups and the three core elves are crammed together in one race looks terrible.
2.) Give wood elves woodland abilities that aren't just spells.
3.) Give the high elves something other than detect magic and misty step. I like the rotating arcane cantrip, but I think something else could be done to give them an arcane feel while being mechanically distinct.
4.) Drow are good as is.
5. Update the Trance ability to give the two weapon/tool proficiencies like all other elves (save astral, who get a unique version) get.
Right now, there is absolutely no reason to go with the UA elf over the MotM/SJ elves. When the survey goes live, I plan to address this, but I want to voice now how underwhelmed I am with the elf design at the moment.