Unearthed Arcana Four New Elf Subraces in Unearthed Arcana

This month's Unearthed Arcana article gives us four new elf subraces to playtest. "After the positive response to the eladrin a couple of months ago in Unearthed Arcana, we decided to explore four more elf subraces: avariel (winged elves), grugach (the wild elves of Greyhawk), sea elves, and shadar-kai (deathly servants of the Raven Queen)."

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[IchneumonWasp]

Superficially, these subraces might give players more options, but I think different new races would in many cases add more meaningful choices than these sub-races. We already have a winged race, we already have a few aquatic races (triton, water genasi etc.). Meanwhile, we don't have stats for something like a thri-kreen.

 

[Perun]

The winged races with flight movement may break the balance of power in low levels. How to explain it better? Do you remember the videogame "the mirror's edge"? Now let's imagine the main character, Faith Connor, with flight movement. Can a pitfall trap hurt a flier humanoid?

I know there are (probably) no hard rules for this, but yes, it can, if it's a winged race. If you've got a 10-foot wingspan, you probably can't fly in a 5-foot wide pit trap. If I were the DM in such a situation, I could theoretically allow for a half-damage, as the character could use their wings against the sides of the pit to slow or stop the fall entirely, and the resulting half-damage could represnt the damage to the wings.

But these are just my thoughts

Regards.

 

[Leatherhead]

The winged races with flight movement may break the balance of power in low levels. How to explain it better? Do you remember the videogame "the mirror's edge"? Now let's imagine the main character, Faith Connor, with flight movement.

As a counterpoint, I have been playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 recently. They have flight in that game, and they have like a half dozen different ways to teleport. Flight isn't broken if you actually plan on people being able to move like that.

Can a pitfall trap hurt a flier humanoid?

We just got additional rules for falling in XGtE: the answer is Yes.
Provided the pit is 500' deep or less, and they are not flying at the time the pitfall is triggered.

 

[gyor]

As are 5e's half-elves and half-orcs.

No. The spiked chain must remain in 3e where it belongs.

Uh, I'd say it was the other way around. The stereotypical drow female of past editions looks just like a dominatrix.

FR has wood elves *and* wild elves, so why not have the grugach stand in for the latter, and let the PHB wood elves stand in for the former?

You mean AL play, of course.

Spiked Chains were also in 4e, they are the iconic weapon for Shadar Kai.

And Drow like pain, but Shadar Kai need pain.

 

[Andrew C]

Always amusing that sea elves and tritons don't get dark vision whe. It's 101 basic knowledge that light from the sun doesn't penetrate the ocean very far. I can imagine elves, tritons, and saughhuins bumping into each other all the time inthe dark ocean depths.

 

[Mephista]

So much elf hate, makes me laugh. "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful!"

 

[Remathilis]

Always amusing that sea elves and tritons don't get dark vision whe. It's 101 basic knowledge that light from the sun doesn't penetrate the ocean very far. I can imagine elves, tritons, and saughhuins bumping into each other all the time inthe dark ocean depths.

Sea elves get darkvision as part of the core elf package

 

[Parmandur]

Superficially, these subraces might give players more options, but I think different new races would in many cases add more meaningful choices than these sub-races. We already have a winged race, we already have a few aquatic races (triton, water genasi etc.). Meanwhile, we don't have stats for something like a thri-kreen.

Give it a couple months, is my guess. Thri-Kreen we're one of the tier one most requested playable races when they did a big survey about that back when: Thri-kreen, Goblins and Aasamir, so we we are two out of three so far.

 

[Chaosmancer]

there will now be 12 variants of elves in the game with this UA, and that is insanely stupid. Not only because it has never been explained why elves sleep on a purple rock or something and spontaneously have an all new subspecies, but because this is a ton of work being devoted to a fantasy race that already has titanic presence in the hobby and culture at large. Why do we need so many damn elves,

I find myself agreeing with this. Sure, elves are cool, but after a certain point you have enough variants of elves that you realize they are the most adaptable race instead of humans, because humans tend to be much the same across various environments while elves change to match that environment.

But also, I'm kind of done with elves. If a fantasy world has any race other than human as an "ally" it is generally elves. Sure, you'll see a dwarf occasionally, maybe a half-ling or something similar. But you have to look for those, while you could toss a dart at a bookshelf of fantasy novels, miss and hit the cooking section, and still probably find elves somehow in the story. It gets a bit tedious.

And, none of these are interesting in their own right to me. The Shadar-KAi ability is interesting, but beyond that, none of it appeals to me. It's just bland.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I always thought Shadar-Kai were a culture which was granted special qualities by the Raven Queen (or similar shadowfell deity/force). I used to think that the idea that Shadar-Kai weren't comprised of more than one racial type seemed a little odd to me, so the idea of elven Shadar-Kai makes sense from my own interpretation (but it also still needs Shadar-Kai humans).