D&D General So how do Half-Elfs feel different to Elfs?

[Yaarel]

Are you suggesting you have elven heritage…?

Huh. Actually yes. My family includes ancestry from Haraldr (Fairhair). If I recall correctly, his family includes descent from the alfar. Obviously, his pedigree would be to shore up his own prestige to be king, by connecting himself with various prominent families. Being a literal descendant of a nature being is a normal part of Norse animism. Individual families remember this kind of tradition.

 

[Charlaquin]

Huh. Actually yes. My family includes ancestry from Haraldr (Fairhair). If I recall correctly, his family includes descent from the alfar. Obviously, his pedigree would be to shore up his own prestige to be king, by connecting himself with various prominent families. Being a literal descendant of a nature being is a normal part of Norse animism. Individual families remember this kind of tradition.

Ok… I’m just going to back out of this conversation now…

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, the Norse alfar are fates, and the alf women are explicitly nornir. But all elves are forces of fate, in the British traditions too. Because both are "fates" and both are superhumanly beautiful, are why Brits merged the Norse alfar and the Celtic sidhe (sith, shee).

The word "Fey" means fate.

[Lat. fatum "fate" > fata "a decider of fate, a fate, a norn" > OF. faie, feie > E. fay, Fey. Related to ME. faie -erie, faierie, feierie, faerie, fairie, fairy, of various spellings "the realm of fey, the activity of fey", whence the original term for "magic"]

Elves are prescients who foretell the future, speaking magic to alter and navigate the future. They are fateful magic manifesting a human shape.

Elves are nonhuman forces of sunlight, fate, and magic. But they entangle human fates, including birth, blessings, sexuality, love, children, success, and time of honorable death. Whence they adopt human forms. All of this fate-fey activity is magic, speaking words to foretell and alter reality.

The British elves are more about fertile soil rather than sunlight, because of the sidhe merger, but the rest of the concept is roughly the same.

That's pretty cool if that's how you run them in your game, but when folks are talking about elves in a D&D thread, typically they are talking about D&D elves which are not that way in the D&D lore.

 

[Yaarel]

That's pretty cool if that's how you run them in your game, but when folks are talking about elves in a D&D thread, typically they are talking about D&D elves which are not that way in the D&D lore.

D&D elves include very many different kinds of things.

Meanwhile, D&D also values occasional returns to mythological accuracy. Also more recently D&D seeks to represent cultural heritages more considerately.

The 5e 2024 Elf can do more to emphasize the fate aspect, but it leans hard into the magic - and this feels right.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Elves are a reallife cultural heritage. Reallife folkbeliefs.

Isn't a real life folk belief literally an oxymoron?

 

[Laurefindel]

(…) those opinions that view elves as archconservative traditionalist xenophobes who hate change and do nothing but wait, are appalling.

Appaling or not, this view is closer to the classic depiction of elves in D&D.

These are the opposite of the reallife lore about elves.

Elves are about the future. Not the past.

But that’s the thing, D&D’s elves are not folklore elves. They’re closer to Tolkien’s elves, themselves inspired but not copy of folklore elves, and who were all about the past.

Don’t get me wrong, I think your elves are very cool, I usually like your stuff in general, but this is not how elves are. They’re what you like them to be.

 

[Maxperson]

D&D elves include very many different kinds of things.

Yes, and to date, none of them are Norse. We did get Norse dwarves in 3.5e, though.

Meanwhile, D&D also values occasional returns to mythological accuracy. Also more recently D&D seeks to represent cultural heritages more considerately.

Sure, but it has not done so for elves. Doing so is homebrew and really has no place being stated as "How elves are" in a discussion of D&D elves.

The 5e 2024 Elf can do more to emphasize the fate aspect, but it leans hard into the magic - and this feels right.

But it isn't, because the lore doesn't back you up. As I said, it's fine for your homebrew and pretty cool, but it's not how D&D elves are.

 

[Charlaquin]

Isn't a real life folk belief literally an oxymoron?

I’m pretty sure he means it in the sense that there were (potentially are?) real-life people who genuinely believe it.

 

[Yaarel]

I’m pretty sure he means it in the sense that there were (potentially are?) real-life people who genuinely believe it.

There are still people alive today who have had an encounter with a troll, such as a hulder, and so on.

But even for most Norwegians who are modern and secular, the sense of the sanctity of nature is alive and well. The Norse traditions are culturally sacred, part of identity, and a way of characterizing nature.

 

[Charlaquin]

There are still people alive today who have had an encounter with a troll, such as a hulder, and so on.

But even for most Norwegians who are modern and secular, the sense of the sanctity of nature is alive and well. The Norse traditions are culturally sacred, part of identity, and a way of characterizing nature.

Not gonna touch that