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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haldrik" data-source="post: 8082355" data-attributes="member: 6694221">I like the elven tropes relating to beauty and art, creativity and elegance.The problem is, the words "grace" and "beauty" are currently meaningless, because they lack mechanics to express these tropes during gameplay.If a heritage is characterized as having tropes relating to being a "fierce warrior", then there are all kinds of mechanics to back these tropes up during gameplay, such as benefits in melee combat, bonuses to weapon attacks, resilience to fear, and similar.But when the elves are described as "beautiful", it literally means absolutely nothing, and has no gameplay implications whatsoever. It is literally a waste of ink or digital space, that only causes confusion from players who expect the description to mean something, when it actually means nothing.So, if something is beautiful, there must be mechanics to back it up. In D&D 5e, beauty has mechanics. Mechanics require high CHARISMA ability checks. Elves require (backgrounds with) high Charisma ability score improvement. Beauty relates to friendly social encounters, artistic appeal for the Performance and Persuasion skills. Elves can have an EXPERTISE bonus to Performance and Persuasion. Beauty relates to their charm spells and debuffing the saving throws versus them. Beauty relates to inspiring allies, whence buffing ally saving throws versus mind-affecting attacks from enemies.Physical beauty implies line of sight and being within visual range of onlookers. There can even be a "radius" of beauty. The folklore tropes of "elf shine" relate here, where the beauty of the elf is so "radiant", the beauty literally radiates light, and has an aura that glows in the dark. Perhaps magical benefits relating to beauty, happen while the elf is shining a radius of bright or dim light. Perhaps the benefits to charm magic, morale boosts, friendlier reactions during social situations, more enthusiasm from the audience of artistic performances such as songs and poetry, and so on, while this "elf shine" is turned on, and the elf is glowing.Flavor must come with mechanics. And vice versa. If the flavor is beauty, then it needs mechanics. Vice versa, many mechanics can be explained by means of expressing beauty and creating beauty. Especially in the sense of the beauty of artistic appeal, the elf must have a high Charisma score. Like a Bard. And be effective at the bard class. One of the tropes in this playtest packet is "songs" and "poetry". This is Charisma. This is the Bard class.It almost makes me angry. If the designers of a product seem to go out of their way to deny Charisma to elves, I will not purchase the product. Because the product would seem nonsensical, even sadistic. Such a product would come across has hostile against player sensibilities concerning the folklore traditions about elves according to reallife ethnic groups. A product does well to encourage player choice and player perception.Charisma for elves is a must. An elf player that chooses the path of Charisma, must excel at it in an exceptional and extraordinary way, with heightened benefit as an elf.Being beautiful sounds passive. But elves seek out beauty and actively INVENT beauty. Elf heritage has heightened senses and intense and sensitive esthetic perceptiveness. Elf culture celebrates artists. Elves are prolific artists and are effective at art. According to flavor, elves have the best bards in the multiverse. Even the bards of other heritages strive to learn from elven bards.Elves create magic items of beauty and power. The magic itself is a manifestation of the power of beauty. Elves revere elegant thinkers. Elegance in scientific formulations. The esthetic vision makes elves more powerful at magic.Consider Einstein who cherished beauty in the physical sciences. He felt that a mathematical formula that was too "ugly" was less likely to be true. The reallife universe has an elegance and a beauty to it. He was a powerful intellect because of the elegance of his thinking, e=mc^2, and so on. Minimalist formulations that had deep and broad practical applications. Beauty makes scientists better scientists.In the case of elves, the quest for intellectual beauty achieves deep insights into the nature of magic. In this case, the artistic beauty comprises all of the mental abilities: the Charisma of beauty, the elegance of Intelligence, and the sensitivity of Wisdom. All aspects of elf heritage and culture are of magic, by magic, and for magic. And the elven approach to magic, is by means of beauty.</blockquote>

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