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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haldrik" data-source="post: 8085813" data-attributes="member: 6694221">Elven Gifts"Variant: Blessing of the FirstbornSome elves—and their descendants—have the miraculous ability to manifest the gender mutability possessed by the elvish gods. At the GM’s choice, a character can also have the gift Blessing of the Firstborn in addition to their other heritage gift.Blessing of the Firstborn. Whenever you complete a long rest, you can change your sex. If you are pregnant when you change your sex, you can keep your pregnancy while changing your sex outwardly. This allows you to detect whether or not you have conceived, even if the pregnancy is too early to detect through other means."• Sex-shifting seems an interesting trait, appropriate for fantasy settings. It has been an explicit theme in D&D since 1e with the Girdle of Gender Change, albeit as a cursed item that was involuntary. It has also been possible at high level with Shapechange, and low level with Alter Self. Here the concept of the Elf Gift is voluntary, can alternate back and forth between the various genders, and is a blessing.• I am unsure why the GM permission is necessary. How is it different from any character that chooses male or female for the sex of the character? I wouldnt ask my GM for permission to say my elf character was male. To say, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes androgynous, sometimes nonbinary, seems not really different in principle.• Rather than referring to "elvish gods", it seems more accurate to refer to "elven ancestors". Also, it helps to avoid baking in cosmological assumptions, such as the existence of gods, into feature descriptions for heritage or class, that might be used for different settings, or even different genres.• I like the reference to keeping a pregnancy inward. Altho less likely to come up during gameplay, it is a vivid way to define how the blessing works.• My main question is, does the gender transformation grant a mechanical benefit for gaming encounters? I am unclear about this. For example, are the alternate gender forms all recognizably the same person, or does the change imply an effective disguise, similar to a changeling character? In any case, I would like more clarification about what the Gift can or cannot do.</blockquote>

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