D&D 5E Elves, Elves, Elves, Elves, ... Elves, Elves, Elves, Elves, ...

[hejtmane]

As long as it is not gnomes all is right in the world

 

[Mercule]

How can there be a "hold-over" from rolling for attribute stats, that is the core assumed rule in D&D...? Point buy is an optional variant, not the rule.

So it is. How unfortunate. Well, having racial mods makes sense, then.

Clearly, I've moved further from "core" on ability scores than I realized.

 

[Parmandur]

So it is. How unfortunate. Well, having racial mods makes sense, then.

Clearly, I've moved further from "core" on ability scores than I realized.

If I recall correctly, 4E made point buy or the array standard, but the Next playtest brought D&D back to random attributes.

 

[pukunui]

Personally I don't think we have enough Elven subraces yet, could use another dozen or two just to be safe, make sure we didn't miss anything.

And while they're at it, they should update all the other niche subraces too: whisper gnomes, air gnomes, chaos gnomes, ice gnomes, aquatic/wavecrest gnomes; deep dwarves, wild dwarves, arctic/frost/glacier dwarves, aquatic dwarves, badlands/desert dwarves, dream dwarves, half-dwarves (muls); aquatic/shoal/water halflings, deep halflings, Athasian/jungle halflings, tallfellow halflings; Deep Imaskari humans, aquatic humans, neanderthal humans .....

 

[Parmandur]

And while they're at it, they should update all the other niche subraces too: whisper gnomes, air gnomes, chaos gnomes, ice gnomes, aquatic/wavecrest gnomes; deep dwarves, wild dwarves, arctic/frost/glacier dwarves, aquatic dwarves, badlands/desert dwarves, dream dwarves, half-dwarves (muls); aquatic/shoal/water halflings, deep halflings, Athasian/jungle halflings, tallfellow halflings; Deep Imaskari humans, aquatic humans, neanderthal humans .....

Part of me suspects that we might see some of these in the coming months.

 

[pukunui]

Since it's pretty obvious we'll be getting some kind of Manual of the Planes soon, I expect that they will also give us 5e stats for the following: bariaurs, rogue modrons, bladelings, formians, mephlings/para-elemental genasi,* Bytopian gnomes, Arborean elves, Arcadian dwarves, Acheronian hobgoblins and orcs, etc etc.


*All two dozen of them (ice genasi, lightning genasi, mud genasi, positive energy genasi, soup genasi ...)

 

[Mercule]

If I recall correctly, 4E made point buy or the array standard, but the Next playtest brought D&D back to random attributes.

I skipped 4E, for the most part. But I think you're right. They must have made a big deal about bringing rolling back because my group actually tried it for our first characters. The only player who liked it was the one who rolled nothing lower than a 14. Everyone else was reminded, with fair regularity, why we'd adopted point buy way back when. The halfling wizard was better at most things than anyone else in the group, just by virtue of good stats.

Note: I don't have any issue with rolling stats for a certain play style. That style just isn't one that I usually use.

 

[Mercule]

I don't think I actually shared my thoughts on elves.

There were even more elven subraces in AD&D. At some point, I just decided that the entire race tended to evolve/mutate fairly quickly to make up for their long lifespans. So, if a high elf moved to the tundra, their grandchildren were likely to be ice elves (or whatever).

 

[pukunui]

I skipped 4E, for the most part.

FWIW 4e presented the standard array, point buy, and rolling for stats as three equally valid methods of generating your ability scores. It's just that they were presented in that order, with rolling as the third and last option, so it'd be easy to see why it was assumed that array/point buy was the default.

There were even more elven subraces in AD&D.

Add to that some of 3e's niche subraces, like the "fire elves" from Unearthed Arcana, and the star elves and lythari from FR (not sure if they date back to AD&D days or not), and you'll be good to go.

 

[Li Shenron]

Or get rid of racial ability modifiers entirely. That'd fix it.

We definitely did not need those, but I think they were largely wanted by the gamer base.