A minor rant: the Elf spectrum

[Brennin Magalus]

On a side note, I'd prefer that they keep sea elves...

Please no.

 

[Jhulae]

They just need to better organize all the different elves. Instead of what they have now, there should be:

Urban elves, country elves, forest elves, mountain elves, desert elves, jungle elves, subterranean elves, freshwater elves, seawater elves, ethereal elves, and if the setting supports it, space elves.

Yep.

 

[Aldarc]

It's not crazy. It's quite meaningless. There is no aspect of the game that's adversely affected by a race being distinguished as elven.

And eladrin aren't elves. Eladrin are eladrin.

But I think the orc guess is a pretty good one. A race for brutes.

And drow aren't elves. Drow are drow. You see, it really does not work very well, because a rose by any other name is still a rose, and an elven subtype by any other name is still an elf.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I love Elves ... cooked appropriately. (Pak'ma'ra humor, Reference: Babylon 5 The Lost Tales)

Give me more elves. They taste like chicken.

 

[Felon]

And drow aren't elves. Drow are drow. You see, it really does not work very well, because a rose by any other name is still a rose, and an elven subtype by any other name is still an elf.

You actually have said nothing with any substance to demonstrate that "it really does not work very well". Obtueness is not evidence.

You have one race that's ephemeral, sophisticated, and pristine, spending their existence in vast libraries perfecting the art of magic. You have another race whose people are creatures of the wild, stealthy hunter-gatherers that clothe themselves in animal pelts and living in trees. One race is called eladrin and one is called elf. Explain the glaring similarities.

Fact is, they're polar opposites in many respects.

 

[Anthtriel]

You actually have said nothing with any substance to demonstrate that "it really does not work very well". Obtueness is not evidence.

You have one race that's ephemeral, sophisticated, and pristine, spending their existence in vast libraries perfecting the art of magic. You have another race whose people are creatures of the wild, stealthy hunter-gatherers that clothe themselves in animal pelts and living in trees. One race is called eladrin and one is called elf. Explain the glaring similarities.

Fact is, they're polar opposites in many respects.

Unless Wizards drastically changes their design, people will recognize High Elves when they see them, even if they are called Eladrin instead.

 

[Felon]

Unless Wizards drastically changes their design, people will recognize High Elves when they see them, even if they are called Eladrin instead.

Meh. Few people have trouble identifying gnomes and halflings as distinctly separate races, despite them sharing the same defining physcal characteristic (smallness). Will people mistake eladrin for elves in the short term? Sure, people can be thick and slow to adapt (some even take pride in these qualities). But in years to come, most will make the disctinction. In 10 years, we'll be telling new players "yeah, folks used to confuse eladrin and elves", to which their reaction will be "how? they're kind of the opposite of each other".

 

[Umbran]

...Great, now I'm visualizing rainbows made of elves.

Hm. With what they've said so far, mechanicall the mixed-race characters are perhaps not very difficult. If race benefits are spread over a character's life, picking up abilities and qualities as they rise in level - the easy way to do a X/Y crossbreed would be to allow the character to mix those abilities. So the traditional half-elf has half his racial qualities from the human side, half from the elf side.

Basically, mixed-race becomes akin to multiclassing

 

[Aeolius]

Please no.

Who else are my water dwarves going to play with?

 

[The Little Raven]

Unless Wizards drastically changes their design, people will recognize High Elves when they see them, even if they are called Eladrin instead.

That's the point. Veterans of the game will recognize them for the role they're supposed to play, and have a point of reference. New players see them as distinctly different, but related to elves, without having all the <blank> elf names. It also allows WotC to separate them a bit more in terms of how they relate to eachother, since they're not as closely related as they were before.