Eladrin vs. Elves

[The Human Target]

I've never ever seen anyone talk about how "important" eladrins are in DnD until this whole argument started.

 

[Nifft]

I've never ever seen anyone talk about how "important" eladrins are in DnD until this whole argument started.

I've never seen an Eladrin in D&D, period.

Cheers, -- N

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

And, admittedly, the name "Eladrin" muddies waters enough, with its reference to a race of immortal, celestial beings from Arborea, that we might be getting entirely the wrong idea of what the new Eladrin actually *are*.....simply by virtue of the use of their name.

Banshee

Too true. All of my postings regarding the role of eladrin are pure conjecture.

 

[The Human Target]

I've never seen an Eladrin in D&D, period.

Cheers, -- N

If WotC had removed Eladrins from the 4E MM, and didn't announce the move, I doubt anyone would have noticed for months.

 

[fuindordm]

I really like the idea of Eladrin, given that I know almost nothing about them.

Faerie is an enormously powerful archetype, and entirely appropriate for the "pseudo-Medival Europe" milieu.

And yet, the fey have gotten little support or development in any edition of the game. We have a random assortment of monsters, but no hint as to their organization or society. Shouldn't the Monster Manual, for example, have a "Fey" section with Brownies, Dryads, Nixies, etc. all grouped together and related to one another through the flavor text?

I can only hope that if WotC is giving us a fey or near-fey PC race, it means that they're expanding on the role that Faerie plays in the campaign.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If WotC had removed Eladrins from the 4E MM, and didn't announce the move, I doubt anyone would have noticed for months.

"Hey, what happened to those guys? You know the guys that I mean."

"Yugoloths?"

"No, but I thought there used to be more of them. No, I meant the guys from the upper planes."

"Solars?"

"No, no, not them."

"Guardinals?"

"No, they had, like, the pointy ears and they were always about the singing and the dancing and the prancing."

"Celestial elves?"

"I want to say no, but I'm not quite sure ..."

 

[Plane Sailing]

See, I'm in the opposite cap. I dislike the notion of "sub-races" entirely. If the races are different, I think they should be different, both flavor-wise and mechanically. Otherwise, I see no point to treating them as different races at all; they're just different cultures within the same race.

I'm with the undead nocturnal mouse.

And I love the idea that there could be a conceptual thread running from Elves to Eladrin to certain celestials. Not least because it matches very closely to the 'elves' in my last campaign who were renamed aasimar and renamed half-celestials

 

[Lurks-no-More]

It seems to me to be co-opting an otherwise useful monstrous NPC race of use in order to create the illusion that it's not just a subrace.

In my experience, the eladrin were the least-used celestials by far. Even guardinals showed up more often!

 

[jasin]

In my experience, the eladrin were the least-used celestials by far. Even guardinals showed up more often!

In our AoW campaign, eladrin are the most-used celestials! A ghaele can be incorporeal, invisible for scouting, she has CLW at will (so out-of-combat healing is free), she has SR to match that of a balor, DR 10/evil and cold iron (very rare for opponents to have cold iron weapons)... I love using eladrin!

BTW, has anyone noticed how the 3.5 SRD uses the two eladrins from the MM, but doesn't actually use the word "eladrin"?

 

[Nifft]

BTW, has anyone noticed how the 3.5 SRD uses the two eladrins from the MM, but doesn't actually use the word "eladrin"?

Yeah. I figured it was product identity. Seemed silly, but now they're using it for something cool.

Cheers, -- N