Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7307805" data-attributes="member: 58172">The Monster Manual and other bestiaries present the ‘Elves’ as a creature that has many magical cultures, and lists a separate entry for each of them.Curiously, the Monster Manual only lists the Drow. Drow, Wood, and High cultures are all player races, but the Elves of the spider-demon Drow culture are especially suitable as threats that players will face while adventuring. In this sense, the ‘Elves’ entry organizes in the same way as other variegated creature entries. Other examples with this format include, ‘Genies’, ‘Demons’, ‘Giants’, ‘Dragons’, ‘Dinosaurs’, and so on. There are many different kinds of Dinosaurs, and each gets its own writeup with its own entry, all within the Dinosaurs entry.Notice, when the bestiaries list a creature that comprises several entries, the entry is plural. Genie-S, Demon-S, Giant-S, and so on. The plural indicates the entry has multiple entries for this variegated creature.So, Elve-S.The other variegated bestiary entries seem to intentionally avoid the word ‘types’, ‘kinds’, ‘species’, and so on. For example, they describe the Dinosaurs as having ‘many sizes and shapes’, but each one is a ‘Dinosaur’ rather than a ‘type of Dinosaur’. I kinda like this approach. Even so, where the reader understands that Dinosaurs differ because of their evolutionary biological speciation, the Elves differ because of the diversity of transformative magical cultures.Elves differ from each other extremely. Like other variegated entries, the separate entries for Elves can differ from each other extremely. Some Elves have extraordinary Dexterity (Drow, Avariel), while other Elves have mundane Dexterity (Sun). Some Elves exhibit extraordinary Charisma (Eladrin, Half, and inferably from their official narrative as social and artistic bards, Sun and Moon), while other Elves have mundane Charisma (Wood). Allow each Elf entry within Elves to have its own stats, as appropriate.It harms the D&D tradition to try force all of these Elves to conform to a single one-size-fits-all set of abilities. It would be like forcing all the different kinds of Devils to use the same stat block.Allow each Elf culture to have its own stat block that fully expresses it. Whatever is most appropriate for that unique concept.I feel it is more interesting when the comprehensive ‘Elves’ entry presents the creature as fully ‘Fey’, rather than ‘Fey Ancestry’. Fey is its planar origin, being creatures of that spirit world. It is ok some Elves entries are emigrants to other planes, such as Wood, Elf, and Drow are inhabitants of Material plane, Shadar-Kai are inhabitants of the Shadow plane, and so on. Traditionally, the Half Elf with some Human ancestry is its own entry that appears in the Elves entry.I also view ‘Goblinoids’ as a Fey creature, being a distinctive more-malevolent variety of Fey sprites. Personally, I would call the entry that includes Hobgoblin, Bugbear, etcetera, as ‘Goblins’ rather than ‘Goblinoids’. The specific ‘Goblin’ entry can also use this name within the Goblins entry, or possibly call this one a ‘Bogey’.I also like the tradition that emphasizes the Elemental origin of Giants.Regarding the ‘Fey’. British folkbelief primarily associates the fay with the fairy, namely the childlike nocturnal fertility spirits that especially associate with lush plant life and the wellbeing of animals. Whence in D&D, there is a sometimes unconscious assumption that all Fey are plant-animal associates, moreorless identical to a Druid. But Fey is any kind of animism, including the minds of skies and rocks. There is not necessarily an affinity with plants and animals. For example, Norse alfar are animistic sky spirits who live in the ‘skies’ (himmel) in the upper atmosphere. It seems one saga mentions a group of elves returning home from a visit to the land, by shapechanging into swans and then flying home. But otherwise, they have little to do with animals. Their associates are magic (all kinds, Spa, Seidr, Galdr, Hamfari, etcetera), the winds, and the sunlight, where ‘sunlight’ (solar corona, sunbeams) seems to be a concept that is separate from the omnipresent ‘daylight’. Likewise, D&D Fey are the mind of *any* natural feature, possibly such as sunlight. Plants and animals are only pertinent to some Fey creatures, while other Fey creatures have nothing to do with plants and animals. It is easy to imagine a culture of D&D Elves who live in the upper atmosphere of the Feywild, in floating sunlit cities. Let each Elf culture be unique.Note, there can be more than one Drow culture. The most prominent culture is of course the spider-demon culture, under the tyranny of Lolth, featuring female Cleric and male Wizard, while all being dexterous light-armor warriors. But Forgotten Realms includes odd references to other cultures of Drow who become Good, that either preexist the spider culture, or self-exiled from it. If I remember correctly, one Drow culture has brown skin and another culture has blue skin. Perhaps they go by the name Dark Elf, while reserving the name ‘Drow’ for the spider culture. But in 5e, Drow Elf is a playable character, and presumably, most of these ‘Drow’ are non-spider. So the name Drow can apply more generally. The narratives of recent editions seem to evolve a breakaway Drow culture of merchants and Warlocks. How to represent these differing traditions? Old-school spider Culture exhibits crazy high Dexterity and ambidexterity, and all the mental abilities are high, as appropriate for Cleric and Wizard. 4e likewise stats high Wisdom in a nod to Cleric tradition. Yet the new-school Drow culture seems to emphasize Dexterity and Charisma, whence the Warlock merchant culture. One is high wizardly Intelligence with perceptive clerical Wisdom, and the other is high warlockly Charisma. If one or more of these non-spider concepts of Drow find interest for D&D 5e players, then there is every reason to list more than one entry for Drow cultures, if necessary. Currently this thread only lists the old-school Drow stat block, with the same set of ability minimums for all Drow, since all Drow traditions have superhuman Dexterity, and old school already exhibits the high Charisma. As far as I can tell, this enough to represent all of the Drow traditions in D&D. Any intra-Drow variance is easily done by DMs and players choosing different ‘traits’ for their own cultures and characters. As far as I can tell, it is appropriate to consolidate all of the Drow traditions with one entry, despite the surprisingly different versions across the editions, because this one entry seems genuinely able to represent each of these different versions.In sum, the ‘Elves’ entry (plural) in D&D includes different entries for different Elf cultures. Allow Elves to have very different cultures and capabilities, where appropriate. Let each one be unique. This ‘permission’ for Elves to be different from each other allows D&D 5e to better represent the D&D traditions about Elves across all editions.</blockquote>

Verification