D&D 5E So How Many Different Kinds of Elves Can There Be? A Thread on Subraces

[Nellisir]

Dwarf: Hill, Mountain/Deep, Duergar*

I never really bought into deep dwarves either. I think they were introduced in 2e, but didn't get traction until 3e. They never had a distinct identity, and weakened the dwarf/duergar conflict by putting another dwarf race square into the duergar territory.

Gnome: Rock, Forest, Snirfneblin*

Unlike some people, I've never had an issue making gnomes memorable (my single Dragon mag. article was on gnomish magical items), and I've grown accustomed to the rock gnome/forest gnome divide (steinneblin and forstneblin were the terms I used), but I don't like it. Too reminiscent of Tallfellows and stouts. A fey/tinker split would work better for me. That said, in my campaign I've added a race of dark gnomes, who construct great cities glittering with golden illusion beneath the hills, and kidnap children to act as servants, at least until the children get too tall and are turned loose on the surface again.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I like 4e's three-and-a-half elven races: wood elves of the forest, high elves from the seelie court, dark elves from

Spoiler

the underdark

the unseelie court, and half elves...you know, I could do without half elves, myself.

Three subraces are about as many as I want any one race to have.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Gnome: Rock, Forest, Snirfneblin*

I'm liking how they're doing this in 5E, with Forest Gnomes filling the mythic trickster role and Rock Gnomes doing the tinker thing. I wouldn't mind seeing the Derro rolled into the Svirfneblin race, with the good guys being called Terros.

 

[Zireael]

I like the three levels of complexity mentioned by Nellisir, and I'll chime in to say my favorite number of subraces is on the low-end of the scale.
Let's see:
Dwarf - Hill/Gold/Duergar
Elves - Gold/Moon/Sylvan/Drow
Half-elves - Half-elves/Half-drow * might make these separate races*
Humans - N/A
Gnome - N/A
Halfling - N/A, although I might be inclined to accept the Tallfellow/Stout split as a nod to Tolkien

Also, that brings me to another point: subraces are fine if they are grounded in a setting and really distinct. If they are not (wood/wild elves; forest/rock gnomes), they don't belong.

 

[Alzrius]

Personally, I like subraces. As a rule, I think that more is more, rather than less being more, and prefer options to restrictions (though when applied as setting elements, restrictions can be a lot of fun too).

In regards to issues of "what constitutes a subrace?" I think that we need to take a step back and redefine what we're talking about here. The different races you can choose for your character aren't "races" at all - they're species.

Ergo, questions of "subraces" are actually questions of subspecies, and those are quite easy to quantify; subspecies are members of a species that have different (usually do to evolution, though for D&D we can't rule out magical alteration or divine intervention) morphological features, but can still cross-breed.

"Culture" therefore has nothing to do with it, which nicely eliminates instances of "my high elf was raised by drow, so he has spell resistance."

Now, there's a counterargument to be made that this doesn't reflect the nuances of real-world taxonomic classification - e.g. "well, different (human) races could be considered sub-species, so does that mean you think they should have different abilities under the rules?" - but I think that that argument is beside the point here. While they don't use taxonomy to classify the difference between dwarves and elves, it is (I believe) not unreasonable to say that what the game rules present as different species and subspecies (that is, the character races and subraces) are tautological; the reason that different elves are subspecies with different modifiers, whereas different humans have no such different modifiers is because those differences are of such minor cosmetics as to not rise to the level of being a subspecies, is simply because the rulebook says they are.