D&D 5E DMG Excerpt: Creating a New Race

[aramis erak]

Does any edition other that 4th edition even described what generic eladrin are or how the formation of them is. Because before 4e, I don't remember seeing generic eladrin. Don't remember a form hierarchy like demons, devils, slaads, and mordons. Maybe the planscape style eladrins do the "too yong to go outside town" thing like woodelves.

Anyway. I hope there is a guide to races from scratch. Hobgoblins lack a PC PHB race to start from. Same with gnolls. And satyrs. And dryads.

I mean I could figure it out. But the work is icky and long.

Late 2E Planescape materials in Dragon(#235) reference Eladrin in the article on doing planescape using the Skills and Powers rules.
3.0 references them in the PH on the Racial Alignments table, and in the Gate spell, and in the MM has an entry for two kinds of Eladrin.

Reference time to find this? 5min. PDF searches are wonderful things.

 

[Jester David]

Seriously? You think the difference between Tolkien elves isn't confusing? Almost no one can tell that Legolas and Galadriel are different subraces of elf unless that person is very steeped in Tolkien lore. Most people can't even tell that Galadriel and her husband are different subraces. There is so little real difference between elf types if you asked 100 random people off of the street who've read Lord of the Rings what the differences are between Galadriel, Elrond, Cirdan and Legolas are I'd be shocked if you could find five who could do so correctly they are so minor.

I'm not a Tolkien expert having only read the books a couple times, but it seems pretty darn obvious. The way the elves are presented is wildly different.
Just look at the two:

We have natural fibers, earth tones, and a bow versus ethereal grace.

Even if you look at the king of the Mirkwood elves (whom Google tells me is Thranduil) he's in dark colours and wearing a crown of branches and leaves.

And then there's their kingdoms:

vs

So, yeah, telling the differences is super not hard, not any more than identifying an eladrin or elf from art. The elves are presented almost (but not quite) as different as Rohan and Gondor.

The problem is one of naming and high vs grey just doesn't work. But high vs wood works just fine (as would grey and wood for that matter).

 

[Nellisir]

I'm not a Tolkien expert having only read the books a couple times, but it seems pretty darn obvious. The way the elves are presented is wildly different. ...

So, yeah, telling the differences is super not hard, not any more than identifying an eladrin or elf from art. The elves are presented almost (but not quite) as different as Rohan and Gondor.
The problem is one of naming and high vs grey just doesn't work. But high vs wood works just fine (as would grey and wood for that matter).

So Rohan and Gondor are different races?
Honestly, I knew that there were different races of elves in LotR, but I still can't tell you who is who and which is which. Or even what they are. Although isn't someone a Half-Elf? I certainly wouldn't have made the leap just because they dressed differently. A town in Idaho and Manhattan are pretty dissimilar places too.

It's trivia.

 

[Jester David]

I don't think they're very different. I also don't know why you call them "monstrous" - the only sense in which they are monsters is the technical D&D sense, and in that usage angelc eladrin are also monsters.

They're "monsters" because the weakest has six hit dice, they're celestial beings surrounded by nimbus of light, can turn into whirlwinds, and shoot lightning. They're as akin to elves as angels are akin to humans.

Both sorts of eladrin are elven in nature. They are both nature/fey-inclined. (Look at the Ghaele's spell list on d20 SRD - it's full of animal and weather stuff. They also teleport without error at will, which is more often, and further, than most 4e eladrin can teleport.) Eladrin live on Arvandor, which is an idealised Sylvan plane, much like the Fewyild.

Which is why they went with that name rather than otyughs I imagine. It's easy to justify the faerie angels being the ancestors of elves.
But making them a PC race, renaming the plane, and generally completely changing the lore and background of the race is awkward.

For me, the changing of orcs from LE to CE - which happened in 4e - is quite a big deal, far bigger than putting the supernatural, celestial elves into a more consistent and coherent cosmological framewokr. But no one else seems to have even noticed the orc change, judging from the amount of comments I see on it (ie basically none). Which just goes to show that claims about degree of difference are relative to individual concerns and interests.

The switch from LE to CE happened in 3e. Or at least 3.5 (I don't have my 3.0 books any more.)

(Linking back to [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]'s post - when they announced the LE to CE change at the launch of 3E, they talked about how "we had all been playing our orcs as wild and chaotic, and so this change was just regularising that state of affairs". Well, I hadn't. For a long time I had treated orcs and hobgoblins as the same militarisitc, highly disciplined peoples. Does that mean that WotC were "insulting me" or "telling me how to have fun"? Not at all - they're just writing, publishing and marketing their game in a way that they think best suits their commercial interests, incuding the aesthetic aspects that feed into those commercial interests. I can do my own thing witout getting in trouble from them.)

Your example is minor. Tiny. You can ignore it by ignoring two small letters. It doesn't affect the portrayal of orcs in the past, change much of the lore, or affect your world.

But what if they had instead said that the differences between orcs and hobgoblins were too minor, that because people couldn't tell the difference orcs as we knew them never existed.
And they instead they introduced a new monster, let's go with the orog, that would fill the narrative gap left by the orcs. But now the orogs originated in the shadowfell. And that all worlds would now consider orcs orogs and have to retcon orc invaders as having originally come from the shadowfell.

That's insulting because they're telling YOU that YOU cannot tell the difference between hobgoblins and orcs because some theoretical person might have trouble. So rather than make it easier to tell the difference, they make the decision for YOU.

 

[Jester David]

So Rohan and Gondor are different races?
Honestly, I knew that there were different races of elves in LotR, but I still can't tell you who is who and which is which. Or even what they are. Although isn't someone a Half-Elf? I certainly wouldn't have made the leap just because they dressed differently. A town in Idaho and Manhattan are pretty dissimilar places too.

It's trivia.

Rohan and Gondor are as different of races/cultures/ethnicities as high and wood elves.

 

[Minigiant]

Considering it took 30+ years to fix the "elf" problem, I can excuse 4e for its bad fix of it when every other edition failed to fix it. Renaming high elves into eladrin wasn't the best solution but the designers were forced to address it. Sadly 4e had to created to popularize cantrips in order for the thought to give high elves cantrip to develop.

I mean if warlocks were core in 3rd and the default fluff wasn't fiendish, I think a 4e designer might have got the idea to give "high elves" wizard cantrip and the feywild link never might have been needed.

Still don't know if old eladrin are formed from mommies and daddies or just plop into existence.

____
So....

Cantrip of choice + 1 Langauge = 2nd level Spell 1/rest = Cantrip + 1st level spell 1/day + 2nd level spell 1/day

So do you think 1st level spell of your choice 1/rest is a fair swap as well?

 

[Wrathamon]

Rohan and Gondor are as different of races/cultures/ethnicities as high and wood elves.

What???

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Does any edition other that 4th edition even described what generic eladrin are or how the formation of them is. Because before 4e, I don't remember seeing generic eladrin. Don't remember a form hierarchy like demons, devils, slaads, and mordons. Maybe the planscape style eladrins do the "too yong to go outside town" thing like woodelves.

Anyway. I hope there is a guide to races from scratch. Hobgoblins lack a PC PHB race to start from. Same with gnolls. And satyrs. And dryads.

I mean I could figure it out. But the work is icky and long.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eladrin

That should answer all of those questions.

That depends on how much the "afterlife" aspect mattered in any given game. I've used demons and devils in my fantasy RPGing for years, with Gygax's MMs as my templates for most of those years, and the afterlife issue has come up maybe once or twice, when the PCs encountered a Lemure.

True, how much it matters is campaign dependent. But we could really say that about anything. For those (like me) who like to have a consistent multiverse to place my D&D stories in, it can matter.

For me, the changing of orcs from LE to CE - which happened in 4e - is quite a big deal, far bigger than putting the supernatural, celestial elves into a more consistent and coherent cosmological framewokr. But no one else seems to have even noticed the orc change, judging from the amount of comments I see on it (ie basically none). Which just goes to show that claims about degree of difference are relative to individual concerns and interests.

I definitely noticed the orc change. I also noticed the goblin change from LE to NE. I approved of both of them. They better represented what players in general wanted out of those races, I think. I mean, it was just weird that all of the common evil humanoids were lawful. It felt off. I think the reason no one has mentioned it (and your post is about the first time I've seen anyone else indicate they noticed it!) is that it was a very well received change that didn't much affect many campaigns or settings. It was apparently so well received that the oddity of the orcish afterlife being on the LN plane of Acheron was given a feeble explanation in canon and everyone (who thought about D&D afterlife) just thought, "sure, good enough for me." If they had previously emphasized the lawfulness of orcs, rather than just writing "LE" on the monster entry and then ignoring it, it may have offended rather than passed unnoticed.

By the way, keeping their afterlife on Acheron is a great example of doing it right. If they had decided to retcon them into Pandemonium, that would likely have caused some disgruntlement.

They were fae-like, but considered celestials, basically a type of angel. Elf angels.

Elf angels is a good way of putting it.

They're "monsters" because the weakest has six hit dice, they're celestial beings surrounded by nimbus of light, can turn into whirlwinds, and shoot lightning. They're as akin to elves as angels are akin to humans.

Which is why they went with that name rather than otyughs I imagine. It's easy to justify the faerie angels being the ancestors of elves.
But making them a PC race, renaming the plane, and generally completely changing the lore and background of the race is awkward.

Yes.

 

[Jester David]

What???

The differences between a high elf, grey elf, and wood elf are largely cultural. They're ethnic differences. They're as similar as a Scotsman, a Swede, and a Spaniard.

Well... dependant on world.

 

[Jester David]

Does any edition other that 4th edition even described what generic eladrin are or how the formation of them is. Because before 4e, I don't remember seeing generic eladrin. Don't remember a form hierarchy like demons, devils, slaads, and mordons. Maybe the planscape style eladrins do the "too yong to go outside town" thing like woodelves.

They're the CG version of angels. The elfin angels of nature gods. They're in the 3e MM.

But in 4e angels could be any alignment, which is likely one of the reasons the name became available and was co-opted.
It's close. They work as high fae.