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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6434641" data-attributes="member: 42582">Are you asking about 4e? If so, the answer is yes: Ghaele, Bralani, Coure etc were present in the Monster Manuals, under the Eladrin entry. A player who wanted his/her PC to obtain those sorts of abilities would have to take the right paragon path or epic destiny.In AD&D they look different and have different stats.And if the analogy is meant to be drawn to Tolkien's elves, in that case the differences are both familial and metaphysical, depending upon who has seen the light of the Two Trees.But anyone who regarded the differences among elves as purely cultural, and who wanted to play 4e that way, was free to ignore eladrin and just use elves to cover the lot!EDIT:In Tolkien, the Noldor are the High Elves - in LotR this is Elrond (in part - he is half-elven) and Galadriel. They originally went to Aman (a divine realm) and then returned to Middle Earth in exile. The significance of Galadriel's refusal of the ring is that it lifts her banishment from Aman, enabling her to sail from the Havens.The Wood Elves are those elves who answered the summons to Aman but didn't make it past the vale of the Anduin. In LotR these are the elves of Mirkwood (Legolas's people) and of Lothlorien (Galadriel and Celeborn's people).The Grey Elves (Sindar) are those elves who answered the summons to Aman but didn't make it past Beleriand (a part of Middle Earth that has mostly sunk beneath the waves by the time of LotR). Because the Noldor, in their exile, returned to Beleriand, there was a significant degree of cultural mixing and intermarriage between the Noldor and the Sindar.The leader of the Wood and Grey elves travelled as an individual to Aman before returning to Middle Earth. This made him metaphysically superior to the people they rule, and that metaphysical superiority rubbed off on the Grey Elves who lived under his rule in Beleriand. (But not on the Wood Elves, who were on the other side of the mountains.) Thranduil (Legola's dad), Celeborn (Galadriel's husband) and Cirdan (the shipwright and lord of the Grey Havens) are the most important Grey Elves at the time of the LotR.Although the rule of Rivendell, Elrond, is Noldor (a high elf), many of the elves there would be Sindar (Grey Elves). In the time of the LotR there is no significant difference between the Noldor and the Sindar.These divisions in LotR are fairly different from those in D&D (eg in D&D Grey Elves are "higher" than High Elves, unlike LotR - the LotR elves closest to D&D Grey Elves are called Vanyar and play little role in any of Tolkien's stories - they live on Aman and came back to Middle Earth only to fight in the war that resulted in Beleriand sinking into the sea). And they are not particularly connected to the Rivendell/Mirkwood/Lothlorien geography - Mirkwood and Lothlorien are both the same types of elves (Wood Elves) ruled by the same types of superior elves (Sindar, and also a Noldor in the case of Galadriel).</blockquote>

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