Building a "special" elf

[John Q. Mayhem]

Yeah, but I've never really seen a reason why.

It's because, if you have odd stat changes, you can hack it to give you no penalty and a bonus. F'rex: You have +1 Dex and -1 Con. Your scores are 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. You put your 15 into Dex, which increases to 16; your modifier increases from +2 to +3, a good bonus. You put your 13 into Con, which decreases to 12; your modifier stays the same. Unless you put your every-4th-level stat bonuses into Con, it's not a penalty at all. With even ability changes, this doesn't happen.

 

[Palskane]

Thanks for the input everyone!

I decided to use a regular point buy with no mods, basically using the half-elf as a guide. I dropped the low-light vision and opted for 60' darkvision as a half-drow. Does this seem ok? I looked over the various stat mods for avariel and drow both, but wasn't really happy with any of them...

 

[RisnDevil]

First off, are you playing in FR or just using the source material? If you are playing in FR, I do not remember where, but it states that when elves breed ONE of the types overshadows the other so you don't really have say a half sun/half moon elf. You can of course ignore this for flavor affect.

Second, I don't think you can give any creature wings without giving it a LA. Just can't...unless they are TOTALLY unusable.

Third, even if he has a LA, that does not mean that he will be more powerful than your lvl 1 pc's. Unless it is a ridiculous amount of stuff gained (i.e. half-dragon among a lvl 1 party) the differences aren't really all that great. For example, if he has usable wings that's great. But most creatures will attack the winged elf making himself a flying target in the air. Or, put them in situations where he cannot effectively fly. A dungeon with low ceilings so he can't really fly. It is all in how you present it to the party...

 

[Palskane]

No, he certainly cannot fly at all. His avariel mother made sure of that when he was born. He can't even glide if he needs to. That was something I made my mind up about when I created him. I also thought about using the system in Savage Species, where you kind of "grow" into a monster class. But I didn't want to do that either.

I'm so picky!

 

[CountPopeula]

If you're the DM, (which I assume you are, since you said he's going to be an NPC), I wouldn't worry too much about the exact mechanics. Look at what the party has, and put him a bit lower than them. It's not like your players are going to proofread it, after all.

Give him Darkvision equal to what one of the PCs have, and don't worry about racial modifiers. Just push his stats to where you think they should be to go with his personality. From the sounds of it, I'd say lowish Charisma and Strength, higher on Wisdom and Constitution, since he did survive having his wings cut off. I wouldn't give him any Dexterity bonus since his wings should have been a balancing factor for his body structure, and without them he would have more trouble moving quickly. Something he would have learned to deal with and as such wouldn't incur a penalty, but would prevent him from getting a bonus. I wouldn't give him a Jump check bonus either.

Wings that don't work have about as much game effect as his shoe size, so I wouldn't even think about them. I wouldn't give him any Spell Resistance at all. It always felt like, at least to me, that was tacked on to make them more menacing as villians, which you shouldn't have to worry about. For good measure, let him use the drow spell-like abilities once a day at class level. They're not exceptionally powerful, and they'll remind the players that he's part drow.

And just for flavor purposes, does he have hollow bones or solid, marrow-filled bones? I would go with solid, having to with having the Constitution to survive having his wings sliced up at a young age.

Just my thoughts, hope they're useful.