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

[Yaarel]

For a long time now, in my settings, extreme Elf diversity is because the Elf cultures intentionally evolve magically. The are fantasy versions of ‘designer babies’, genetically altered at birth.

Typically, the parents who choose to give birth, literally undergo a magic ritual. Sometimes the birth itself is natural and sometimes it is magical (such as mixing multiple parents to produce a single child, gestating in a ‘nest’, bringing a statue to life, or so on). The magical ritual that shapes the development of the Elf child can be reversed as the Elf child grows older, but this rarely happens.

As an Elf community enters into a new environment, the group decides together how to use magic to willfully adapt to it.

 

[Warpiglet]

If total customization, what is the differentiation? I am all for choice, but do we want them to be as dwarfy as a dwarf orcy as an orc, etc.?

I vote for some limits as a default so that there is some sort of shared identity and assumptions.

You could be really freaky in your world, of course. Like have beards with elves and dwarves that don't drink beer.

(shudder) cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!

 

[ro]

Rather than drop all racial ASIs, what about dropping the +2 ASIs and have the only benefit come from subraces? This would almost always be +1 and should have a somewhat negligible impact on optimizing. Further, to replace that +2, you could either give a racial feat (@Wulffolk) or boost point-buy to 31 points with a maximum score of 16 which costs 12 points. Race and class would be much less closely linked, power level would be the same, and the maximum starting score would still be a 17 (except for Mountain Dwarves).

 

[Chaosmancer]

Does that come from somewhere other than the 'Aldryami' (elves) of RuneQuest (c1978)?

D&D has had plenty of plant-creatures, of course, the only playable ones that immediately leap to mind were the Wilden...

I've never played RuneQuest, actually the only place I can explicitly remember seeing this was the webcomic Guilded Age, but I feel like it showed up in a few novels here and there that I've read.

It's not common though.