I don't dislike elves.
I just don't think they're all they're cracked up to be.
Use all the reasoning of the ephemeral forces of nature you'd like, they're still pansy little wus-boys. Not in terms that they can't swing a sword. But they can't take a hit. They run like portly fourth-graders.
My resoning is a biological one. Elves live in forsests. They climb trees and like to use branches as walkways. It's a lot easier to use the trees as your floor if you're not heavy, thus elves have been bred to be lighter, so they can walk on trees. The disadvantage is that they can't take a hit and they break like stick-men.
They're also obnoxious superiorists. They regard dirt, scum, and anything not-pretty as an anathema. The elves, they are pretty and everything else is not. Ergo, they have to take pains to preserve their beauty against outside influence. This mindset leads them to be rather compulsive about cleanliness. Not to much of an extreme (they're primarily naturallists, after all), but to enough of one that they have little contact with the outside. They're easily susceptible to disease and hardship that they aren't used to experiencing. Getting sick isn't pretty. Sweat isn't pretty.
But dancing and singing and looking good are.
Think of it as limp wrists with some muscle behind them.
Of course, they *can* be more fit. But the base stat of 10 or 11 represents a human average. And elves, on this scale, are less hardy then average.
Thus, compared to most other main races, they go down faster (doesn't hurt that a lot of them are spellcasters), take less hardship, and cry more easily (all about the open display of emotion).
This love of beauty has other reprocussions IMC. Elves are known bisexuals, and their males are rather female in appearance. They seek beauty above strength, and find most practices of other races (such as sweating, working hard, smelling like they've been spelunking in crypts) as supremely distasteful. Because other races don't find these things distasteful, they are obviously inferior.
I mean, sure, elvish barbarians wielding greataxes can exist. But they're going to be rather exceptional in more ways than one. Certainly no elvish city would condone the lack of literacy. Many would probably blame the guy for being unbalanced. Relatives would raise eyebrows in a "Yes, my brother's a hick, please don't think badly of the family" way. He'd be primitive....dirty....and swinging around a stick that takes no skill and no artistry (in the mind of elves) to produce. It's a club with big spikes on it. Elves like to *show off* that they know how to make things purdy.
Thus, they're not exactly what people think of when they think "Elf." They think of bisexual bigots with limp wrists who love to hug trees. They think of people 100 years old who aren't more than 18 mentally. They think of guys who like to party, but who get drunk off of berry wine.
They're as capable of pumping out barbarians as any orc tribe, but it's the social and mental setting of the people, the elvish culture of magic and nature, that regards barbarians as undesirable.
Fun? Sure.
But it's not exactly typical.
Frankly, I think Forrester has the right idea on elves. They've become all things to all people, and they shouldn't be. I mean, come on. What kind of war god wears mascara and uses rainbow fletching?
An elvish one, for one.
