[Forked from the Escapist Magazine Interview Thread] What implications does E...

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Well. Given that Eladrin are the Magickey McMagicson race that they are, I would assume (and the canon does) that any place like Evermeet, Evereska, Myth Drannor, or any of the Feywild cities would have 1 or more 21st level + Archmage, fully capable of level 18 (and higher) rituals, haunting their grounds.

I would assume that, but I was thinking of a city in the natural world, and didn't know we were thinking of FR. Certainly a big eladrin city like Evermeet would have plenty of paragon and epic casters. (The "generic" eladrin in the MM1 are level 19 to 21 or so! Dark Sun has much more reasonably-leveled eladrin,. around 8th-level.)

 

[Manbearcat]

I would assume that, but I was thinking of a city in the natural world, and didn't know we were thinking of FR. Certainly a big eladrin city like Evermeet would have plenty of paragon and epic casters. (The "generic" eladrin in the MM1 are level 19 to 21 or so! Dark Sun has much more reasonably-leveled eladrin,. around 8th-level.)

I was just trying to think of the D&D stock Eladrin homes that are the equivalent of Rivendell. I know FR a bit and I know the magical Feywild cities and any of those would seem to be standard fair Eladrin cities that you could sensibly port to any game/setting. They all seem to run off the same canonical assumptions; uber-magickey Vulcan people.

The Dark Sun situation is a little bit interesting. I think if I ran Dark Sun, I wouldn't want Eladrin there because the mystical nature would spoil the pseudo Mad Max with a smattering of high fantasy mood/genre conceits. There should be a fair measure of desperation and a race of folks of a (roughly) Vulcan disposition (hence emotionally/mentally removed from that struggle even if still physically challenged) would seem out of place/incoherent and potentially spoil the mood. Same deal for Githzerai. Both of those races' cultures seem to occupy a fair bit of the same emotional/philosophical space. A bit discordant for the apoc genre for my tastes.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The Dark Sun situation is a little bit interesting. I think if I ran Dark Sun, I wouldn't want Eladrin there because the mystical nature would spoil the pseudo Mad Max with a smattering of high fantasy mood/genre conceits. There should be a fair measure of desperation and a race of folks of a (roughly) Vulcan disposition (hence emotionally/mentally removed from that struggle even if still physically challenged) would seem out of place/incoherent and potentially spoil the mood. Same deal for Githzerai. Both of those races' cultures seem to occupy a fair bit of the same emotional/philosophical space. A bit discordant for the apoc genre for my tastes.

They got it to fit. In Dark Sun, the fey and elemental planes have been devastated even worse than the natural world by defiling magic. They're filled with insane spirits (there's even a paragon path relfecting that). In effect, those places (especially the Feywild) are about to end. The eladrin come to the natural world because their old world might not exist next week. That leaves them incredibly desperate.

I don't know about Vulcans. Depending on setting, eladrin can be less or more emotional than humans.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was just trying to think of the D&D stock Eladrin homes that are the equivalent of Rivendell. I know FR a bit and I know the magical Feywild cities and any of those would seem to be standard fair Eladrin cities that you could sensibly port to any game/setting. They all seem to run off the same canonical assumptions; uber-magickey Vulcan people.

The Dark Sun situation is a little bit interesting. I think if I ran Dark Sun, I wouldn't want Eladrin there because the mystical nature would spoil the pseudo Mad Max with a smattering of high fantasy mood/genre conceits. There should be a fair measure of desperation and a race of folks of a (roughly) Vulcan disposition (hence emotionally/mentally removed from that struggle even if still physically challenged) would seem out of place/incoherent and potentially spoil the mood. Same deal for Githzerai. Both of those races' cultures seem to occupy a fair bit of the same emotional/philosophical space. A bit discordant for the apoc genre for my tastes.

I think of eladrin as less like Vulcans and more like the Eldar/Melniboneans/etc of Moorcockian fantasy. An ancient and magically gifted race which hails from a time and place lying in the past. Their greatest power and glory is passed but they are still in possession of vast resources of knowledge and arcane power. Far from being unemotional and detached their personalities are quirky and intense. They are essentially Fey, creatures who might easily decide they feel like being amused by polymorphing you into a pig for a year and a day, or a bug and pulling your legs off, and who probably don't really think the 'young races' are really their equals.

I think THAT race can fit quite well in DS. More clearly than the mundane races they see the ultimate death of the world coming, and they just no longer really care. Eat, drink, and be merry because the world ends tomorrow! Only the eladrin idea of eating, drinking, and being merry is a bit cocked.

 

[Manbearcat]

They got it to fit. In Dark Sun, the fey and elemental planes have been devastated even worse than the natural world by defiling magic. They're filled with insane spirits (there's even a paragon path relfecting that). In effect, those places (especially the Feywild) are about to end. The eladrin come to the natural world because their old world might not exist next week. That leaves them incredibly desperate.

That would do the trick to invest them with the required desperation, to be sure. I had heard that 4e did a great job with that setting. That sounds like pretty good stuff.

I don't know about Vulcans.

I think of eladrin as less like Vulcans and more like the Eldar/Melniboneans/etc of Moorcockian fantasy.

You guys' take is certainly more than fair. I think I get my take on them from from a few different sources:

1) I associate them with the past edition "Int Elves"; cloistered away from the world in their hidden magical vales, detached from the world, content to study high magic and the secret mysteries and histories, and master sword and spell in defense of their ancient redoubts. The "Retreat Elves".

2) Elrond's disposition, the LotR elves and Rivendell.

3) Their pictures provoke me toward that otherworldly, vulcan nature.

4) Finally, the PH and Essentials stuff (and probably some stuff from HotF) such as:

Long-lived and strongly tied to the Feywild, eladrin have a detached view of the world. They often have difficulty believing that events in the mortal realm are of much importance to them, and they consider courses of action that can last for centuries. Some of the oldest eladrin see the world as a distraction—a source of unwanted intrusions, needless fearmongering, and meddlesome people of other races. If they could, they would shut down every gate between the Feywild and the natural world.

and

Eladrin live by an aesthetic philosophy common to the Feywild and personified by Corellon, the god of beauty and patron of the fey. Eladrin seek to exemplify grace, skill, and learning in every part of life, from dance and song to swordplay and magic. Their cities are places of stunning beauty that shape and guide their natural surroundings into elegant forms.

and

Eladrin Characteristics: Aesthetic, deliberative, detached, free, graceful, magical, otherworldly, patient, perceptive

The aesthetic, long view, contemplative/deliberative, detached, otherworldly, graceful, magical, patient, perceptive, trance stuff and the Arcana & History bonuses, borderline xenophobic, and the warrior monk sort of nature drives my perception of them as being "Vulcanish" versus the more relaxed and "frolic under the boughs of the ancient trees elves". Of course, there is the caveat that some of the young Eladrin do the standard counterculture thing, rebelling against the establishment so there is room for different versions of individual Eladrin PCs. I'm just talking about establishment stuff and the general bent of a culture.

 

[DDNFan]

And as has been pointed out almost all of those problems can be dealt with with a few seconds of imagination. You have to be either pretending the magical world is exactly like the real one or having people who take no account of magic for those tricks to work. Arrow slits just need shutters (blocks LoE) or someone to be standing by them (can't teleport into an occupied square).

I care not whether you believe your imagination is better than mine, I just think you're rationalizing shoddy and lazy work. I read the comments in this thread a few times and all the ideas here weren't written in a few seconds, but if you roll your eyes at some event or scenario in an adventure, the problem isn't with the players, it's the designer's fault. Lay blame at the feet of those responsible.

If some nonsense defense like a keyhole into a vault is in an Eladrin home city, my only conclusion is that a) the designers were phoning it in for an easy paycheque or b) the vault is a trap for thieves. Ooops, it wasn't, our rogue stole a whole bunch of stuff in that town, it was so easy that he didn't believe that city could not have subsisted itself like that. It's like leaving the vault wide open.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I care not whether you believe your imagination is better than mine, I just think you're rationalizing shoddy and lazy work.

The only shoddy and lazy work I see is the idea that because people can do something we should ignore all the rules around it. It is, to me, shoddy and lazy work to say that buildings would automatically be built so the inhabitants would need a five minute rest just to avoid climbing a single flight of stairs.

I read the comments in this thread a few times and all the ideas here weren't written in a few seconds, but if you roll your eyes at some event or scenario in an adventure, the problem isn't with the players, it's the designer's fault. Lay blame at the feet of those responsible.

That depends what the designers have actually done. The ideas I am rolling my eyes at areyours. The idea of an Eladrin city without stairs is ridiculous.

If some nonsense defense like a keyhole into a vault is in an Eladrin home city, my only conclusion is that a) the designers were phoning it in for an easy paycheque or b) the vault is a trap for thieves.

And my conclusion is that unless the vault specifically says that the keyhole reaches right the way through it doesn't. On my keyring there are currently six keys. Only one of them (the gate key) lets you see right the way through. So the mere presence of a key does not imply a keyhole that can be seen right through.

Indeed the presence of a keyhole that reaches right the way through the door implies something very specific. It implies that you expect people to use keys on both sides of the door - and normally that you expect people to leave the door unlocked while it is in use. (Doors onto back gardens being the obvious case here). It implies that most of the time there is little difference between the two sides of the door. A lock that is generally intended to keep people out only needs to be opened from the outside so there is no keyhole needed on the inside; you just turn it. (This sort of door normally has a wedge shaped rather than flat bolt so if the door is closed it will lock automatically unless someone latches the bolt).

And there is literally no reason a vault key should ever let you see through it. I've used the Wikipedia picture of a bank vault below - and as should be obvious you can't actually see through the keyhole. Indeed I'm trying to see one vault door on google image search where you can see through the keyhole.

Ooops, it wasn't, our rogue stole a whole bunch of stuff in that town, it was so easy that he didn't believe that city could not have subsisted itself like that. It's like leaving the vault wide open.

To me the blame for that is squarely on the head of the DM. As the Google Image Search shows, by default bank doors are solid objects where you can not see through the keyhole. You see to a metal panel at the back, not into the vault. By default you would therefore expect fantasy bank doors to be the same way.

Unless the writer deliberately wrote the vault doors as having a keyhole, your DM changed an assumption from the real world (that vault doors and many other lockable doors have keyholes only on one side). Your DM changed things in this manner despite this breaking the setting - and it's the module writer you accuse of shoddy and lazy work?

 

[I'm A Banana]

...curtains...

Sure. But on a warm summer's night...or during the day....and curtains are known for having rips and tears and gaps...and most aren't flush with the window, so maybe you can teleport into the space between the window and the curtain?

4e otoh, rarely bothers with mechanical solutions to this sort of thing and just leaves it up to the DM.

Which is why there can't be One True Answer to this. It's fine to have eladrin drastically change the world, it's fine to not. It's fair to have an issue with it, it's also fair to have no issue with it. There's no incorrect reading of the rules either way, it's just a different interpretation. Which means that the point in the OP is valid, at least for that person.

Which is ultimately my point. Just because someone has an issue with eladrin teleportation doesn't mean they're an Edition Warrior with a hate-on for 4e. I mean they might be that anyway, but one's response to blink elves and their blinking doesn't really inform that one way or the other. I'm fond of the things as an archetype and as a character type, myself (even though they run screaming headlong into like seven of the annoyances I do have with 4e), and I've got no problems with the bamf but also no real love for it, and it's fair for others to imagine differently.

Is there anywhere in the 4e rulebooks that say that eladrin toddlers can teleport?

Isn't that the idea behind exception-based design? "It's like X, unless the rules specify an exception." 4e doesn't have rules for toddlers, so there is not a toddler exception, so RAW, toddladrin can teleport, yeah? Heck, newborn eladrin might be able to teleport. Which must make cutting the umbilical cord a cautious process (unless that counts as being grappled? maybe newborn eladrin need to teleport in order to stop being grappled by their umbilical cords? hehehe).

But that's just really just for whackiness. Worldbuilding shenanigans. From a practical standpoint, a DM will make up their own rules, which means there's no One True Answer, which means it's fair to go either way, which means, yeah, it's a possible ramification of unlimited teleportation, which is my mantra here. It's not bad faith, it's just not maybe the way everyone would play things. It's fine to take issue with unlimited teleportation. It's fine not to.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Isn't that the idea behind exception-based design? "It's like X, unless the rules specify an exception." 4e doesn't have rules for toddlers, so there is not a toddler exception, so RAW, toddladrin can teleport, yeah? Heck, newborn eladrin might be able to teleport. Which must make cutting the umbilical cord a cautious process (unless that counts as being grappled? maybe newborn eladrin need to teleport in order to stop being grappled by their umbilical cords? hehehe).

But that's just really just for whackiness. Worldbuilding shenanigans. From a practical standpoint, a DM will make up their own rules, which means there's no One True Answer, which means it's fair to go either way, which means, yeah, it's a possible ramification of unlimited teleportation, which is my mantra here. It's not bad faith, it's just not maybe the way everyone would play things. It's fine to take issue with unlimited teleportation. It's fine not to.

Eh, I wouldn't take 'exception-based design' too far. It is intended to apply to the RULES, not to the GAME ELEMENTS, which are different. A race or a monster is a game element, it has what the rules say it has and nothing more or less. It may also have some defaults, but even those are situational and up to the judgement of the DM. One assumes if a monster is a humanoid with a speed of 6 that it walks, but that doesn't mean you would literally expect that a crippled legless human beggar will be walking and while he might have a stat block he could just be a statless 'bystander' NPC and clearly the DM will say "nope, that guy only crawls".

So, likewise the DM is free to determine what an eladrin toddler can do, or for that matter a minor NPC eladrin. While there are many stat blocks and race rules for PCs of the eladrin race, and AFAIK they all have Fey Step its nowhere stated that ALL ELADRIN have Fey Step, or even most. Many of the rules that apply to adventurers and their ilk and to creatures with stat blocks may or may not apply to their entire race. In fact we can find cases where clearly a given ability does NOT extend to the whole race. So no 'exception' is needed if the DM wants to say "the shopkeeper can't teleport, in fact NO shopkeepers can" because there's no rule to be making the exception to. The only rule is "if its on the statblock/character sheet then the character can do it", or its a 'default', and there's never been a definitive list of default characteristics of creatures (nor would one make sense).

DMs are clearly entitled to their opinions and ideas, but it seems pretty inflexible for a DM to say "I have this terrible issue with this one aspect of a setting which aspect I in fact extrapolated as being the case and could change trivially at the drop of a hat." Its not so much that I feel like I have an issue with said DM as much as I just can't help rolling my eyes when these things come up.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Eh, I wouldn't take 'exception-based design' too far. It is intended to apply to the RULES, not to the GAME ELEMENTS, which are different. A race or a monster is a game element, it has what the rules say it has and nothing more or less. It may also have some defaults, but even those are situational and up to the judgement of the DM. One assumes if a monster is a humanoid with a speed of 6 that it walks, but that doesn't mean you would literally expect that a crippled legless human beggar will be walking and while he might have a stat block he could just be a statless 'bystander' NPC and clearly the DM will say "nope, that guy only crawls".

You can make that distinction. Or you might not. Folks approach the game in different ways.

So, likewise the DM is free to determine what an eladrin toddler can do, or for that matter a minor NPC eladrin. While there are many stat blocks and race rules for PCs of the eladrin race, and AFAIK they all have Fey Step its nowhere stated that ALL ELADRIN have Fey Step, or even most. Many of the rules that apply to adventurers and their ilk and to creatures with stat blocks may or may not apply to their entire race. In fact we can find cases where clearly a given ability does NOT extend to the whole race. So no 'exception' is needed if the DM wants to say "the shopkeeper can't teleport, in fact NO shopkeepers can" because there's no rule to be making the exception to. The only rule is "if its on the statblock/character sheet then the character can do it", or its a 'default', and there's never been a definitive list of default characteristics of creatures (nor would one make sense).

Well, look, tripping oozes doesn't make sense, and square fireballs don't make sense and HP-as-morale doesn't make sense but this doesn't stop them from being rules in the game. Heck, dragons don't make sense and wizards don't make sense and the Feywild doesn't make sense and healing magic doesn't make sense and...

What one chooses to "make sense" in their world can be different from table to table. Is Eladrin teleportation something every eladrin can do from birth or is it only a facet of training elite eladrin or something else you want to make up as some excuse for why this doesn't affect the world (and if that's the case, why isn't there an option for a PC to swap it out?)? Choices like this inform the world you make in interesting ways, and there's no one right and true answer that should be the case at every table.

DMs are clearly entitled to their opinions and ideas, but it seems pretty inflexible for a DM to say "I have this terrible issue with this one aspect of a setting which aspect I in fact extrapolated as being the case and could change trivially at the drop of a hat." Its not so much that I feel like I have an issue with said DM as much as I just can't help rolling my eyes when these things come up.

So, first of all, consumers pay for the game and if the game they pay for doesn't deliver the experience they want, then that game has failed to deliver value to them, and they get to criticize it. At the very least, the design team has failed to properly telegraph what this element is for and how to use it to that player, and it's a chance to learn where the failures happened and how to improve the design in the future for how it is actually going to be used rather than how the team intends it to be used. Experiences aren't right or wrong, they are experiences, and play experiences are worth analyzing if you want to improve your game. And bad play experiences are especially valuable for that.

Second, this is only inflexible if your end goal is to have a game with teleporting eladrin in it. Not everyone is invested in that goal. Not everyone CARES about having teleporting eladrin in their game. If your end goal is to have a fun game experience, you may not need teleporting eladrin, so it's actually quite flexible to say, "Screw that, no Eladrin in my games." That's adapting the rules to your needs as a DM or player -- you don't like it, so they're out. No one HAS to play a D&D game with blink elves if they don't want to. They're not important. They can be useful, but lots of things can be useful, so that's not really very special.

My point is that it's legitimate, as legitimate as any other complaint about D&D has ever been over the lifespan of the whole friggin' game. And people can disagree about legitimate complaints -- if they share them, if their experiences are different. Dismissing it as edition warring or rolling your eyes or saying that it's an "incorrect application of the rules" is an attempt to say "Your experiences don't matter. They're not legitimate experiences. You're making it up to push an agenda, or you're doing it wrong." And that's just not the case.

Some folks imagine eladrin teleportation would be huge for a world, and don't like it because of that, and that's OK. They don't have to believe otherwise.