Holiday Present - The Elf PHB entry

[Pbartender]

Racial Traits: Fine by me.

Elven Accuracy: I like it. The reroll won't show often enough to be annoying... "Augh! I rolled a 2 for my Sneak Attack! I reroll!" would be the typical scenario, I'd suspect. That aside, it's nice to see a racial ability that isn't just unique, but also isn't a simple bonus or Spell-like ability.

Group Awareness: It doesn't bother me. First, in general, whenever character are this close, they seem to share the "Perception" roll of whoever rolls the highest -- if one character notices, he warns the rest. Second, it's only a +1 bonus, which only rarely makes a signicicant difference when rolling a d20. Third, most games will simplify the range of the power to "with the elf", or "without the elf".

Fluff: "They never cut living trees" is the only problem I see, since effective bows and arrows cannot feasibly be made from deadwood, it being typically too brittle for the purpose. Fortunately, it easy enough to fix the fluff by allowing them careful husbandry of forest resources, as suggested by Bagpuss above.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

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.

I agree. Sure, with magic they may be able to help mold the tree into whatever shape/style they want but "to never cut living trees" seems... extreme and causes problems of its own.

What if a treant goes nuts and causes trees to attack the village? Does the treant itself count in this (or are there other monsters that would classify as "trees")? What if a tree becomes ill and can't be cured (thus spreading the disease or falling over on the village when it dies)? I'm sure there are a bunch of other issues as well but I'm not thinking clearly on this Friday morning.

"Sustainable Forester" is definately the way I would want to go with this.

 

[Anthtriel]

Very nice. Glad to see that most of my wishes have come true, i.e. no 1000 year old elves, no easy attack boni (No one wanted to believe me that BAB is evil).
Not so glad to see that aura in.

By the way, for statements like "Reroll is about +3 or +2 to attack": No, it isn't. The math works very differently. I made an Excel file to illustrate the difference. Rerolls, as long as you don't have too many (which makes them annoying), work a lot better than straight attack boni because they have a stronger effect when in small quantities, but a weaker in large quantities.
So rerolls are not as often insignificant, and not as often overpowering. Their downside is that they require additional time, so they are perfect for racial powers.

 

[Clavis]

I hate the new elves.

I hate their short life spans. I hate the suggestion that elves now make "good clerics". I hate how they've lost their resistances to charms and paralysis. I hate how, given the new height and weight, every Elf would look like a Holocaust survivor.

I can't tell from the illustration whether or not they're still the ugly bug-eyed aliens of 3rd edition. Given what I seen so far, I have little hope.

About the only thing I can stand is the description of elven personality, which is close to how I always played them anyway.

I also hate listing movement in "squares", but that's another issue.

If this is 4th edition, consider me gone, WOTC. And I know I'm far from alone.
I hope you're satisfied with the "New Coke" you've made.

 

[Plane Sailing]

- End of stat penalties and two stat bonuses, looks like some significant power creep here. Not sure that's a terrible thing, but it is a thing.
...

- Not keen on the implementation of "Elven Accuracy". I would have preferred a flat +2 (or whatever) bonus with bows. A lot of my opinion of this will depend on how many 'reroll powers' characters acquire. As long as they only ever have one or two, I suppose it's fine, but more than that is likely to become a bookkeeping nightmare.

In Races and Classes they explain that they have given all the standard races a bit of a boost in power to make it easier to include other races which in 3e might have had a +1 or +2LA penalty.

Effectively it is a design decision to up the base effectiveness of all races, which is a good thing when across the board IMO.

re: that second point, they used rerolls vs flat bonuses extensively in SWSE for two very good reasons.
1) it dramatically reduces the chance of having a really poor roll
2) it prevents them busting the 'expected' DC cap for their level. They can't do 'better than their best' but they are much more likely to get close to their best. It also helps prevent masses of small bonuses stacking up so that impossible feats are regularly achieved.

Cheers

 

[Driddle]

Love the elf entry info! Pure elfgasm goodness!

What if a treant goes nuts and causes trees to attack the village?

Fortunately, you'll be able to predict pretty easily which trees will go nuts in which seasons. I say this from experience -- we've got a big pecan tree over our house...

 

[DaveMage]

I hate the new elves.

I hate their short life spans. I hate the suggestion that elves now make "good clerics". I hate how they've lost their resistances to charms and paralysis. I hate how, given the new height and weight, every Elf would look like a Holocaust survivor.

I can't tell from the illustration whether or not they're still the ugly bug-eyed aliens of 3rd edition. Given what I seen so far, I have little hope.

About the only thing I can stand is the description of elven personality, which is close to how I always played them anyway.

I also hate listing movement in "squares", but that's another issue.

If this is 4th edition, consider me gone, WOTC. And I know I'm far from alone.
I hope you're satisfied with the "New Coke" you've made.

Don't worry - 3.5 works just fine AND you can get the books really cheap these days!

It's all good!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I had a quick scan through it, and this was the first thing that bugged me. And, as others have mentioned on this thread, it's going to be a pain to keep track of.

I think 90% of the time, if you're not in a combat situation, your party members are going to be withing 5 squares of the elf. So my default assumption will be "you're close enough" unless something specific seems to counterindicate that.

 

[Anthtriel]

I think 90% of the time, if you're not in a combat situation, your party members are going to be withing 5 squares of the elf. So my default assumption will be "you're close enough" unless something specific seems to counterindicate that.

By itself it's not much of a problem, I agree. It starts to become a problem if you have a dozen similar auras. Given the insight the designers have shown so far in regards to BAB and ridiculos elven age (which will probably only be widely considered a problem once people see the game work without them), I'm confident they will avoid the pitfall of giving every character lots of small, barely significant auras and boost spells, but we don't know that for sure yet.

 

[StarFyre]

house rules

I like the longer life span thing since we've changed how the aging works anyways...

I wonder if I will bother house rule the resistance to sleep, etc...

I think not having it kinda makes more sense anyways....same with the detect secret doors.

Sanjay