Dude, you could have saved a bunch if time by just saying, "Elves suxxorz!!1!"
Only to someone who is either too stubborn or small-minded to accept or too dumb to understand the criticism.
Otherwise "Elves suxxorsz!!!1!" is merely a random non-sequitur without any presented evidence. It remains merely a baseless opinion.
My criticism illustrates how elves fundamentally, if everything written about them in each edition is to be taken at face value, in fact do check off every single box on the "identifying a Mary Sue character" check list.
If you had never heard of Elves before and someone approached you.
"So my character is like this race of people who look just like humans except they all have super model/porn star bodies and otherwise the only distinguishing feature is pointed ears and sexy eyes. And she is totally the most beautiful girl in every room she is ever going to enter because this race is more beautiful than all humans. And she looks only 15, but she has actually been around for 100 years just like... totally hanging out in her races perfect Utopia as basically a princess because all of the girls of this race are all equal but all so like princesses because no one ever has to work, they can just study and do art and stuff. So she has more experience and knowledge to draw on than even the oldest member of the party. Also, she never has to sleep, so you can never catch her off guard or ambush her. Also, she inherently knows magic and all of her people know how to use the best single-handed melee weapon and best ranged weapon in the game because they totally practice at that being the idealistic, peaceful civilization they are. Also, she can see and hear better than everyone else, especially at night. And her people are respected and idealized throughout the whole land and recognized as the ultimate good people. Especially magical creatures love them and will always listen and regular peasants will always act like she is a celebrity. Oh, and she can totally have babies with humans if she wants unlike every other race in the world. And her people have exclusive access to the best magic and the best metal and the best craftsmanship in all of the world, everyone aspires to have something made by her people as it is always the best. Also, there is like a subgroup of this race perfectly suited for each and every class in the game and they have slightly different skin tones. Naturally I am the subrace ideal for my class."
If you had never heard of this race before, you would decry this being called a "race" immediately. It utterly fails in every regard that would make a race well... a RACE. Its just a flat-out wishlist for someone who wants a super human character. There is no wonder it is the second most often chosen race in the game.
The fact that this gets a pass simply because "It was in Lord of the Rings" is the worst possible "filter" to use. I would suspect anyone who plays and elf and has actually put any thought into what being an elf by D&D standards means would be far more of a disruption than someone who wants to play an Orc or a Shifter or a Warforged or a Goliath. At least all of those imply an actual culture that could feasibly exist in the world as presented and come with significant drawbacks and flaws in exchange for whatever superior abilities they might confer. The Elf, as presented over the editions of D&D, utterly fails in that regard. Not because "Elves suxxorz!!!1!" but because when you actually compare what the race confers aside from the actual numerated mechanics, it is a Mary Sue race and it utterly fails the test of what would make a good race.
Could you take the basic idea of Elves and do something better with it?
Sure. To start with, they aren't necessarily "beautiful" but rather have features that could or could not be taken as attractive.
They don't have exclusive access to the best metal, because they are forest dwelling people who don't actually do any mining.
The majority of the elves live as peasants in their society, maybe it is just economically equitable enough that they don't necessarily feel like peasants, but are still expected to spend most of their time working for the benefit of their society in actual tangible ways (i.e. building, gathering food, etc.) or, alternatively, they use some sort of slave labor system (possibly of seemingly non-sentient magical creatures) to see their needs are fulfilled.
They are not naturally morally and ethically superior to humans in all ways, but rather they have particular vices and sins and faults that are quite common among their people and this makes them distrusted and disliked.
They don't just live for hundreds of years, never sleeping, always gathering knowledge and experience. Instead, perhaps they can put off sleeping for weeks, even months, and then have to catch up with that sleep all in one long go. Maybe their spirits are even carried to another realm and interact collectively with other elven spirits. And while asleep they do not need to eat or drink nor do they age or change. Sleeping could even be addictive and they might sleep for decades if another doesn't wake them, only to wake up lost and confused and with only the vaguest recollection of what their lives were like before that. Thus, they may well live for centuries, but only a portion of that time is spent active and they tend to lose their memories and experiences and even sometimes much of their own identity.
Sometime like that could still be recognizable "Elf" and actually be flawed enough to make up for its benefits and be an actually interesting element to have in the world.
Elves don't necessarily HAVE to suck, but as presented in D&D with their massive list of benefits that aren't on the actual character sheet and their lack of a properly conceptualized culture, they are perhaps the single most disruptive race a player could play despite the fact that they are a "standard race."
Just to refresh your memory:
- in older versions of D&D elves have limits on what classes they could be
- in older versions of D&D elves have limits on what levels they could reach
- in older versions of D&D there was a racial preference table, and not every race liked elves!
- in older versions of D&D elves could not be raised from the dead by 'normal' means
Happy to help
They had fewer limits on classes and a higher cap on every class they could be than literally every other race but human and half-elf. In other words, when comparing the non-human races, they had the LEAST restrictions. Since we are talking about non-human races here, that just demonstrates one more additional benefit elves were given over all others.
I don't recall any racial preference table, but I do recall how one could flip through the monster manual and nearly every "good" monster would specify it preferred elves to all other peoples or, in the very least, it wouldn't deal with anyone but an elf or possibly a human.
So the Raise from Dead thing is the only legitimate drawback. Granted, it could be a pretty significant one given how often characters died in those editions.
