Holiday Present - The Elf PHB entry

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Arrows perhaps, but bows generally require long straight pieces of wood that come from the trunk. It also needs to dry correctly which isn't going to occur with deadfall.

Well, they could make laminate bows out of a bunch of composite pieces. Or, as someone else has said, trusty bone and sinew composites.

Or, or, they are real actual tree herders and can actually garden trees so that they die in the right way to become good bow material.

With a 200 year lifespan and good enough forestry you can perform miracles of resource managment.

 

[Zweischneid]

Personally I think I'll have them more as sustainable foresters than never cut living trees. They use the natural environment, but they don't go felling huge sections to make arable farm land, like humans.

QFT, that'd be the direction to go.. plant a new seed for every tree you fell, add the odd special tree that's revered and not to be touched (and fiercly avenged by the elven community) and have them use woodcraft normally (or even exceptionally) otherwise.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't know if this article so much blew my mind as made me have an elfgasm.

 

[Zweischneid]

Or, or, they are real actual tree herders and can actually garden trees so that they die in the right way to become good bow material.

With a 200 year lifespan and good enough forestry you can perform miracles of resource managment.

But even herders kill from their herd. That's the entire point of herding it in the first place, though of course you'd have to ensure sustainability by not killing more of your flock than what is born to the herd (and lives to a reasonable age).

 

[Zweischneid]

I'm not too excited by the stat-creep.

What's the point of havin a rogue with Dex 18 or a Barbarian with equally exceptional strenght, if every wizard and his dog clock in at 14 to 16 in those stats aswell. Ultimately, it'll just lead to less diversity among players in stats and makes it an overall less usefull tool in character design and development.

If you don't intend to use the entire bandwidth of 1 to 20 (or 2 to 18) on a regular basis, why not redo the whole thing to a scale thats actually meaningfull or alternatively take out the whole thing and mimik differences in strenght, resiliance and similar things through feats and talents (re-rolls, bonuses, etc..)?

 

[Green Knight]

Well, they could make laminate bows out of a bunch of composite pieces. Or, as someone else has said, trusty bone and sinew composites.

Or, or, they are real actual tree herders and can actually garden trees so that they die in the right way to become good bow material.

With a 200 year lifespan and good enough forestry you can perform miracles of resource managment.

Well, there's that and the likelihood that Druids make up a respectable portion of the Elven populace. There's probably some low-level Druid spell that helps in the creation of bows and arrows without cutting the tree. After all, Elves "build their homes in close harmony with the forest, so perfectly joined that travelers often fail to notice that they have entered an elven community until it is too late". That's something they likely do through the use of Druid magic. And if they can build entire communities like that, then making a sizeable quantity of bows shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I'm not too excited by the stat-creep.

What's the point of havin a rogue with Dex 18 or a Barbarian with equally exceptional strenght, if every wizard and his dog clock in at 14 to 16 in those stats aswell. Ultimately, it'll just lead to less diversity among players in stats and makes it an overall less usefull tool in character design and development.

If you don't intend to use the entire bandwidth of 1 to 20 (or 2 to 18) on a regular basis, why not redo the whole thing to a scale thats actually meaningfull or alternatively take out the whole thing and mimik differences in strenght, resiliance and similar things through feats and talents (re-rolls, bonuses, etc..)?

You do use the whole range, though. Just not for player characters. But they never have really.

If the point buy system stays the same, then it is still possible to have an elven fighter with a con of 8 using this new system. With rolling is is possible to have a con of 3 even.

I don't see how it could have less diversity. If you are a rogue, you play a halfling to get the pluses to dex and put an 18 in dex giving you 20 total (or more for all we know in 4th). If an elf is a fighter, they might put a 12 into dex and get 14 total. There's still a difference though.

Especially if they use the same stat bonuses as you get from Saga Edition, where you get +1 to TWO stats at every 4th level instead of just one stat.

 

[Intrope]

Interesting: a quick copy-paste into Word shows that the new write up is longer than the old one (by about 50%!). Of course, the old write up had zero whitespace and is kind of hard to read because of it.

This is also better, because the crunchy bit that you'd be trying to look up on the fly is at the front of the writeup, and has enough whitespace to be distinct from the body of text.

Elven Accuracy is a neat little power; if used 'blindly' on initial rolls of 1-10, you'd get an average of a +5 bonus. Of course, if you've already gotten an idea of how high you need to roll, you may get more use out of the power. The feat expands this range to 1-12, so it's a pretty decent feat. If you have a good, 1/encounter attack this would be a very nice piece of insurance:

PC: Fear my Arrow of DOOOOM!
Rolls: *1*
PC: Blast!

 

[Pssthpok]

Average Height: 5' 7"-6' 0"
Average Weight: 100-130 lb.

6' tall, 130 pounds?! Anorexia nervosa should also be a 'racial power'.

On another note, I'll bet the Eladrin short-range teleport jumps the character up to 5 squares. I also bet that they have +2 Intelligence/+2 Charisma, +2 to Arcane and Knowledge skills, and a lifespan greater than the Elf (but I might have heard that somewhere).

 

[Zweischneid]

Interesting: a quick copy-paste into Word shows that the new write up is longer than the old one (by about 50%!). Of course, the old write up had zero whitespace and is kind of hard to read because of it.

This is also better, because the crunchy bit that you'd be trying to look up on the fly is at the front of the writeup, and has enough whitespace to be distinct from the body of text.

Elven Accuracy is a neat little power; if used 'blindly' on initial rolls of 1-10, you'd get an average of a +5 bonus. Of course, if you've already gotten an idea of how high you need to roll, you may get more use out of the power. The feat expands this range to 1-12, so it's a pretty decent feat. If you have a good, 1/encounter attack this would be a very nice piece of insurance:

PC: Fear my Arrow of DOOOOM!
Rolls: *1*
PC: Blast!

I can see the rational behind all this. But since it so drastically reduces the chance of failure, the question arises if it is economical to still roll dice at all. Might just do..

Elven Accuracy + Perception: Once per encounter, by using this ability one of you're arrow hits!

.. and get on with the story.


Also, it seems a strange tie to make this racial. Why not include this feat in some archer talent-path for the warrior/ranger/whatever. By tying this so closely to elves, you've just made archers from all other races a whole lot less attractive.