Does anyone else have the feeling that half-elves are severly underpowered? One of my fellow DMs actually abolished them from his campaign, he thought they were so useless. I didn't like that thought, so IMC I made the following changes.
+2 Cha, -2 Con: They are physically frail like elves, but the mix of races lets them blend in and get along well with almost anyone, despite often having inner feelings of isolation. That, and the fact that both humans and elves are highly magic-oriented, and half-elves often have some natural arcane abilities (sorcerer levels).
+1 skill point/level: Half-elves adapt almost as fast as humans, but not quite enough to get another feat.
+2 Bluff, Diplomacy, and Gather Information: Again, half-elves are good people people.
Favored class: Bard (this lets gnomes keep Illusionist without losing bard as a favored class for any race altogether).
They also retain the +1 Listen, Search, and Spot, and the +2 save vs. enchantments.
I wanted them to be best as rogues or bards. My fellow DM (who banned half-elves) doesn't like the change, as he thinks they shouldn't get a bonus to a "mental" stat, siting that no PHB race gets one and they are too powerful. I reminded him of FR's sun elves, which aren't level adjusted and work just fine, but he still doesn't like the changes. I did feel that the penalty to Con somewhat outweighed the bonus to Cha, and thus the numerous other abilities (some of which stack with the Cha bonus).
Has anyone else made some changes to the half-elves, or does anyone care to comment on what I did with them? I feel that it could probably be refined a bit; I'd like to capture more of the generalist aspect, but in a valuable way that is different from humans.
You can always use the skilled half-elf variant from Unearthed Arcana: half-elves stay as they are but get additional skill points as a human. I feel this makes up for the obvious advantages of playing an elf over a half-elf without upsetting game balance by changing ability scores.
Have Goblinoids kill off all the elves (no elves = no half elves) in my campaign world and disallow the race.
Rule #1 at my table...NO ELVES.
I would *definitely* play a half-elf in your campaign. Which probably means you have made them unbalanced in their favor.
You took away favored class: any, and gave them extra skill points.
The Con -2, Cha +2 is cool... maybe too cool, but definitely adds flavor. Suddenly they make the best Sorcerers, and great clerics, bards, and paladins, also long as you can live with the Con-2.
They are already great diplomats, and you have made them even better.
In the interest of full disclosure, I already play a Half-Elf with the standard rules, for roleplaying reasons, but your version is significantly stronger.
BTW, your friend probably doesn't see the value of skills in general and roleplaying-focused skills in particular if he thinks Half-Elves are so useless.
Well, I gotta say I've always found that half-elves were never that appealing in 3E or 3.5E.
I really like your +2 CHA and -2CON. It's an off-balance exchange, so I can't see how this could make the race overpowered. And, it does reflect their more-frail-than-humans' bodies, while playing on how they must become diplomatic because neither elvish nor human cultures fully accept them.
The humans' extra skill points help reflect their human blood, but I don't like the +2 bonus on skill checks... they already get +1 to all CHA checks due to their +2 CHA bonus (compared to standard half-elves, at least).
I've done away with the favored class system in my campaign, so I dunno what to say on that factor. Maybe they could keep the Favored Class: Any.
All in all, I like where you're taking the half-elves. It's definately as appealing as humans or elves, and I really don't think it's any less balanced than any other standard race.
Good stuff!
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In a campaign long ago, some friends and I abolished all elves (and half-elves, Drow, Driders, etc) from our homebrew world. It was actually part of a major storyline where the PCs were looking for what happened...did they withdraw? If so, where? Were the eraticated? If so, how and who did it? It was a neat change of pace (especially since we opened a few of the monster races up for PCs).
In general, I like your suggestions, but I do think that the full +2/-2 is a bit stiff. Maybe looking at half-elves as a blend, the bonus should be a bit more dilute, as well. Maybe only a +1 CHA/-1 CON to reflect the thinning of the elf blood. I also think that the extra skill point per level is a great addition to account for the human broadness, but not the full broadness of getting an extra feat.
Thanks for the input! The half-elf hexblade with maxed out Diplomacy in my AoW campaign has proven the additional Cha skill bonuses overpowering, so I'll take that out, but I think everything else works well.
I've also toyed with modifying full elves. I really don't like their ability to find secret doors. It's like the designers just said: Elves need another ability; how about finding secret doors for no apparent reason? I think that and their Dex bonus would gear tehm more towards rogues than wizards. Elves also sleep in my campaigns, so they aren't immune to it.
With the loss of those two abilities, I was looking for something to replace them; something that would gear them more towards being an arcanist without being overpowering. Ideas bounced aroudn between my playgroup and I so far include:
+1 on checks to overcome SR when using arcane spells
OR
+2 to Decipher Script and Spellcraft checks
OR
+2 Int, -2 Wis (in addition to +2 Dex, -2 Con; I don't really like this one, as I don't invision elves as being so aloof and whimsical as to lose Wisdom, but I could make it work if needed)
Anymore thoughts?
Saern, I've adopted a half-elf very similar to the first one you posted. While I was comparin' the changes to the other standard races, I started thinkin' about humans... they really suck.
I mean can an extra feat and a coupla extra skill points really balance out with the elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, or half-orc? Not at all. Not even close!
So... after re-tooling the half-elf, I went to work on humans.
I found some ideas in Unearthed Arcana about environmental traits for races, made up a bunch of my own specifically for humans. I'll give any human character the choice of traits as long as it makes sense compared to their homeland regions. It really adds a lot of flava to the humans!
Any ideas?
Halfelves are great for roleplaying purposes, but for pure stats they suck by comparison to the other races. In real games, you rarely if ever see "players" choose that race. Somewhere between 0-1%.
I originally added the human skill point bonus to the half-elf. But even that didn't raise a peep of interest.
Lately, I give half-elves the core half-elf traits, plus the human's skill point bonus, plus the elf's bonus weapon proficiencies. I find these two additions to be minor perks that make the race a bit more attractive to players, while at the same time not causing any major issues with balance or adaptation to existing game supplements or adventures. Works for me!
Actually, my group finds humans to be perfectly well balanced- considering that everyone else only gets 7 feats (barring class features) until 20th leve, the addition of another one is very nice in our eyes. Also, one always finds oneself just one or two skill points less than what one would like, and humans help that a lot (and now half-elves do, too!).
I thought about adding human traits based on region, but I think my players would protest if I gave humans anything else (and they like power-playing!).
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Any race, no matter what their stats, benefits, etc, has the potential to make a great character. It all depends on the player, and how much effort he is willing to invest in that character. I have a friend who plays half-elves almost exclusively, and every one he has ever had has been a great character, because my frined cared enough to make them great.
That being said, one of the beautiful things about D&D is that the folks who put the game out have a great system for assimilating customer feedback. So if enough people think that the rules for half-elves need to be changed to "beef them up" a bit, then you might actually see the company do something like that.
Yeah, WotC are pretty good for recognizing what their core demographic demands. And, they've already showed that they kinda think that Half-Elves need a boost. Why else would they have put that little side note in Unearthed Arcana?
Any race, no matter what their stats, benefits, etc, has the potential to make a great character. It all depends on the player, and how much effort he is willing to invest in that character. I have a friend who plays half-elves almost exclusively, and every one he has ever had has been a great character, because my frined cared enough to make them great.
That being said, one of the beautiful things about D&D is that the folks who put the game out have a great system for assimilating customer feedback. So if enough people think that the rules for half-elves need to be changed to "beef them up" a bit, then you might actually see the company do something like that.
For your first paragraph of wisdom, i must agree. I've played a blind gnoll ranger with a thing for bows, a kobold ninja, and a couple of other nigh-upon unplayable charachters, like the 1-foot gnomish barbarian with the 5-foot fullblade. If you know how to play it, you can play it no matter how bad it is. I find that half-elves make very good characters, though perhaps better NPCs.
In a campaign long ago, some friends and I abolished all elves (and half-elves, Drow, Driders, etc) from our homebrew world. It was actually part of a major storyline where the PCs were looking for what happened...did they withdraw? If so, where? Were the eraticated? If so, how and who did it? It was a neat change of pace (especially since we opened a few of the monster races up for PCs).
In general, I like your suggestions, but I do think that the full +2/-2 is a bit stiff. Maybe looking at half-elves as a blend, the bonus should be a bit more dilute, as well. Maybe only a +1 CHA/-1 CON to reflect the thinning of the elf blood. I also think that the extra skill point per level is a great addition to account for the human broadness, but not the full broadness of getting an extra feat.
as for all the different posts about elves being absent from a campain, i do have to admit it would be a nice change from the pansy in the group always being a high elf wizard because he thinks it's "cool", the satanist in the group always being a drow necromancer because he wants to kill the other characters and make them into zombies, the macho-man always being a drow fighter, rogue, or ranger because he wants to make a thinly disguized Drizzt clone, the spineless one being a wood-elf ranger because everyone else says they need one, the stubborn idiot wanting to play a "dark" avariel and demanding a make a drow version of avariels with bat wings, and the idiot trying to make a character that can hide behind the pansy and necromancer at the same time, and creating a CN grey elf bard and the whole lot insisting that I think of a way that all of these idjits can meet up and have adventures together. And creating extra subraces does NOT help. Trust me, I know. Thing is, if you get rid of elves, nobody wants to play, and if everyone's an elf, the party sucks. So whenever somebody realizes that, they have to make a character of a race they hate to play to stabalize the party. People just likes elves too much. They don't realize the weaknesses. They insist on having their elven wizards sneak around, their elven rogues cast be master swordsmen, and their elven fighters cast spells. It bloody well annoys me.
Wow- our party is deffinately not that bent on elves. The times I play rather than DM, I'm generally the only one who has an elf, and he sticks to wizardry and has no delusions about any form of physical combat or stealth ability, save invisibility spells, and then only when desperate and the rouge is not available to go sneak himself.
My group is not the most literate in the world when it comes to established campaign cannon (in fact, most of them know practically nothing). They know who Drizzt is, of course, but otherwise have little concept of elves as anything other than wizards foremost, with good options as rangers or rouges.
Correction: There is one other player who likes elves. His first character was an elf ranger named Jherrith, and he fell in love with that one (because we read the Manyshot feat COMPLETELY wrong for about two months, turning him into a machine gun of +1 flaming arrows; that, and he jokes that Jherrith almost became a god due to an orc captive named Gruhm that Jherrith "converted", by force, to worshipping him. Unfortunately, the party's paladin then killed Gruhm since he was still your normal CE orc). From time to time, he'll revist the elven ranger concept in homage of Jherrith, but makes sure that each has a twist so they aren't just clones.
Otherwise, humans and gnomes seem to be my group's favorites.
as for all the different posts about elves being absent from a campain, i do have to admit it would be a nice change from the pansy in the group always being a high elf wizard because he thinks it's "cool", the satanist in the group always being a drow necromancer because he wants to kill the other characters and make them into zombies, the macho-man always being a drow fighter, rogue, or ranger because he wants to make a thinly disguized Drizzt clone, the spineless one being a wood-elf ranger because everyone else says they need one, the stubborn idiot wanting to play a "dark" avariel and demanding a make a drow version of avariels with bat wings, and the idiot trying to make a character that can hide behind the pansy and necromancer at the same time, and creating a CN grey elf bard and the whole lot insisting that I think of a way that all of these idjits can meet up and have adventures together. And creating extra subraces does NOT help. Trust me, I know. Thing is, if you get rid of elves, nobody wants to play, and if everyone's an elf, the party sucks. So whenever somebody realizes that, they have to make a character of a race they hate to play to stabalize the party. People just likes...
One of the benifits of a long established campaign world. When we sat down to play theird edition I noted that everything was being run in my established homebrew and that the world has no elves. Pretty much there was no trouble from my players on this point sense the vets new this and the rest simply accepted it. Personally I have two real problems with elves in the campaign world.
One is that having them leads to the realm of endless fantasy cliche's. Something I just don't find with the other races. Once one has Elves one almost ipso facto has a certian kind of world with a certian look and feel and I did not want that. If I had being plying Darksun I'd have allowed Elves.
The second problem is that Elves live to long. Thats a problem in terms of myths etc. for the campaign world and even the players. I don't want to have to deal with a player that has been alive for 200 years before becoming 1st level - it leads to issues regarding information flow. The Elf player was around 180 years ago when X event took place in teh distant past so all of a sudden I have to deal with what this player knows just from having grown up in that era. Furthermore the players parents etc. where around 600 years ago - stories lost to myth and legend just arn't for elves - they where there.
That discussion also came up between my fellow DM and I; not about campaign feel, but about the logic problem that elves seem to learn far too slow and were around for too many events in the past. One way to remedy this is make sure there are lots of wars involving the elves, leading to many of them getting killed off.
Also, IMO, elves DO learn slower than humans, not because of any form of retardation, but because they "choose" to. Think if you had a lifespan of 700+ years. Would you be in much of a rush to do anything? Your initial answer may be yes, but with a little thought, it's easy to see where an entire culture with that long of a lifespan would say "no." Elves can learn as fast as humans, or at least they can eventually achieve that speed, but their society merely doesn't move that fast.
Finally, to stop the elves from knowing everything over the last 150 years or more, have them isolate themselves. Tolkien did this a lot, and most elves in Dragonlance were this way. Have the elves' wanderlust come in relatively short burst every century or so. Otherwise, they're locked away in their forest kingdoms, not caring so much what the rest of the world is doing.
And why should they? Despite common good alignments, they have very different views from dwarves, and so long as the races can trade wood and metal, they've little reason to talk. The elves don't particularly need to keep up on current dwarf events, since dwarves don't change very frequently at all, and the same is true form the dwarven view due to the elves' long lives. Humans are, in most settings, the ones responsible for a lot of elven habitat loss. As their cultures expand, they cut down forests, driving elves ever further back. Humans also look frivolous and futile to elves; they run around with abysmally short, chaotic lives and get quite worked up about things far faster than they should, at least from an elven view.
Obviously there are exceptions to this isloationist rule, but they are just that. So long as there are a few major elven kingdoms in the world, there should be enough exceptions to make elves in human society uncommon, but not overly strange.
Obviously, these are highly opinionated views of how to explain elves. They may not work for someone else's view of the race, but if anyone else out there is having trouble explaining the logic of elves to their players, this might solve the problem.
Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew. Of course you could always just sit on them and squash them into jelly.
You guys got it good. My players are young so all the characters are elves drow and half elf. sometimes a new race will pop its head up (hafling, Elan, Human, gnome) but there mains are all elves! Then if I would do something like abolish elves, they dont think I have that much power and will start there own world and characters. It's hard to be young.
One way to remedy this is make sure there are lots of wars involving the elves, leading to many of them getting killed off.
I'm not really following how a high attrition rate among the elves does much to solve the problems...unless the idea is that old elves are more likely to die then young ones. Even so unless I have a society where the idea of an elf living beyond say 250 years old without getting itself killed is perposterous I still end up with much the same problem - though I guess the rarer I make elders the more capable I am of simply not allowing players any access to them.
Also, IMO, elves DO learn slower than humans, not because of any form of retardation, but because they "choose" to. Think if you had a lifespan of 700+ years. Would you be in much of a rush to do anything? Your initial answer may be yes, but with a little thought, it's easy to see where an entire culture with that long of a lifespan would say "no." Elves can learn as fast as humans, or at least they can eventually achieve that speed, but their society merely doesn't move that fast.
And what do I do with players that make energetic 'live life in realtime' Elves? Refuse to allow them? Inform them that I'm the DM and I can control their players beliefs, attitudes and actions if I want? Obvously the answer really is 'no' I can't reasonably do that. Furthermore players will likely take fairly fast action elves - How many truely laid back Elves are there in fiction or at the gaming table? Especially in a game where, in something already insane, like two years players will probably go form 1st to 20th level.
Finally, to stop the elves from knowing everything over the last 150 years or more, have them isolate themselves. Tolkien did this a lot, and most elves in Dragonlance were this way. Have the elves' wanderlust come in relatively short burst every century or so. Otherwise, they're locked away in their forest kingdoms, not caring so much what the rest of the world is doing.
This works some of the time - however some events would have been of interest to the elves as well and for those events the Elvish player would have been present. In anycase I concede that the problems can be overcome - if the DM and player are willing to go with it players can take full Celestials as characters. Furthermore the same problems apply to some Fey and Treants. They too may have been around hundreds of years ago - but I don't as a DM have to deal with Treant players - not normally anyway. Hence most of the time the Elf makes a better NPC race then PC race. But at this point you can't make them an NPC race - if they are anywhere players might start clamouring to play them so to remove the temptation I just killed them all off.
And why should they? Despite common good alignments, they have very different views from dwarves, and so long as the races can trade wood and metal, they've little reason to talk. The elves don't particularly need to keep up on current dwarf events, since dwarves don't change very frequently at all, and the same is true form the dwarven view due to the elves' long lives. Humans are, in most settings, the ones responsible for a lot of elven habitat loss. As their cultures expand, they cut down forests, driving elves ever further back. Humans also look frivolous and futile to elves; they run around with abysmally short, chaotic lives and get quite worked up about things far faster than they should, at least from an elven view.
Again this fails to address the problem that, from the players perspective, his elf is going to act with just as much urgancy as the rest of the humans around him. In a way players have a fairly easy time role playing most of the races but when it comes to elves - I've never seen something I thought was convincing - D&D and the whole Treasure Hunting XP grubbing system rewards a mentality that should be the opposite of Elven nature. So players maybe should be bubbly know nothings that have spend the last 150 years composing love songs - but you know thats not the elf your players are going to make. Composing love songs won't be part of the Modus Operandi of that you can be sure.
Also its troublesome come the time when players are making their character background. You mention that some elves might be found in human society - I'd expect that players would gravitate to such Elves as their background. So know I have an Elf thats probably been wandering around my human lands for the last 200 years - again I end up with an information flow problem. Even if I insist that he has been locked in the forest the player will likely come up with some kind of time line of the things he has been doing for the last 200 years - and I have been playing the lute by moonlight is not a common background.
I actually did this myself once as a dirty trick in a game in which I was a PC (partly to prove this point to a player who had complained about the lack of elves).
Most players have their charcters be orphans - I had as my background that I was on great terms with my parents and my grand parents and their grandparents as far back as I could push it. Need to know what the skinny is on an event that took place 1500 years ago? No problem - I'll ask grandpa.
Note that just this sort of thing almost forces one to make a really old campaign world. With elves aroudn old is no longer 2000 years ago - all of a sudden if you want something to be 'old' it has to 10,000 years ago.
Obviously there are exceptions to this isloationist rule, but they are just that. So long as there are a few major elven kingdoms in the world, there should be enough exceptions to make elves in human society uncommon, but not overly strange.Obviously, these are highly opinionated views of how to explain elves. They may not work for someone else's view of the race, but if anyone else out there is having trouble explaining the logic of elves to their players, this might solve the problem.
I guess my issues where not how to explain this stuff to my players but to deal with what happened when my players refused to explain this version of events to me. In the end however I just came to feel that Elves make a better NPC race then a player race and I've never missed not having them at my table. Elves are the ultimate walking cliche - remove them and you loose that annoyance as well as any logic problems associated with Elves.
Finally my campaign deals with a theme of a kind of reverse Wild West. Goblinoids are slowly pushing back the collective peoples of the world. It adds emphasis to that notion when Elves and Half-Elves are no longer legal classes because they became the first causalty in this this struggle. Plus all of this comes with a major bonus. I can now have Elven ruins full of ancient Elven treasure and Ancient Elven Magic. I've actually been using Elven cities and background material from other sources like Greyhawk, Dragonlance and the D&D known world as the basis for these ruins. Take what was once a living thriving land and re-imagine it as one that is know dead and fallen into ruin - makes a great place for adventure and the haul for the players is cool as well.
As I said - no regrets here about disallowing the elves.
A lot of interesting ideas have been forwarded about half-elves and elves on this thread. Some of the changes mentioned by people make sense, some don't.
In my campaign few people play half-elves because they are seen as being slightly weaker than the other races. I think Saern's thoughts about changing them are quite valid, but every change needs to be thought about carefully.
The modification to stats is an interesting one. In terms of an equal exchange losing Charisma is not as bad as losing Constitution simply because every character needs hit points, but not every character needs a good Charisma. You just have to look at a typical fighter or monk NPC to see that. Making the racial stat modifiers +1 and -1 is dumb, because it depends on a player's dice rolls (and therefore luck) as to whether the racial modifiers actually have an impact on their statistics. Rolling a 14 on Charisma and then getting a +1 to it simply makes the Charisma 15. That's not enough to allow any modification to skills or abilities until the character reaches 4th level. Of course, the points buy system gets around this problem, but then that heavily favors the player because they can manipulate the racial modifiers to their advantage.
Giving any creature a racial bonus to a mental stat, then giving them a bonus to mental related skills is a double whammy that should be avoided unless you have a reason for doing so. If you want to make half-elves the best bards and sorcerers then so be it, but people are going to question your choices. Of course, if the half-elf becomes a barbarian or monk the bonus to Charisma and Bluff, etc. is not really an issue. I think making their favored class bard is a very good one considering the changes you have made, but I wouldn't go back to making illusionist the gnomes favored class. That's stubborn 1st and 2nd edition thinking that should be turfed from the game. I would make the favored class for gnome sorcerer, since making it illusionist almost forces multiclass gnomes to take up a specialist class. Something than no other race has to.
If you have read the Dungeon Master's Guide II section on NPCs, you will be aware of how much of a difference an extra feat and a "few skill points" can make to a character, particularly at higher levels. This advantage of humans actually makes them the one of the best races in the game.
I like all these people who have removed elves from their campaigns because they are just too hard to run, roleplay, or whatever. I have been faced with this issue in multiple campaigns without needing to resort to such extreme measures. It just sounds like you have put the question of elves in the "too hard basket". What about designing your campaigns to be flexible enough to allow elves, but still deal with the problems (through inventive world creation, etc.)?
Everyone who has contributed to this thread should get their hands on the various Races books. It helps to answer a lot of questions, and gives DMs fresh and new ideas about how to handle demi-humans (as well as humans).
Treant players.... why did you have to bring that up? I still don't know how the monk pulled it off, but it made sense at the time....
I like all these people who have removed elves from their campaigns because they are just too hard to run, roleplay, or whatever. I have been faced with this issue in multiple campaigns without needing to resort to such extreme measures. It just sounds like you have put the question of elves in the "too hard basket". What about designing your campaigns to be flexible enough to allow elves, but still deal with the problems (through inventive world creation, etc.)?
Everyone who has contributed to this thread should get their hands on the various Races books. It helps to answer a lot of questions, and gives DMs fresh and new ideas about how to handle demi-humans (as well as humans).
I have no doubt that the issue can be dealt with. As I pointed out - if you really want full on Celestials and Treants can be played. I suspect that most campaigns have little trouble with elves because the logic incongruities are glossed over. Thats not really that big an issue - logic incongruities are a dime a dozen in this game.
Still they really are a jarring race. In my post above I errounously said they must have been composing love songs for 200 years before they started adventuring but thats obvously crock. They can't have been doing that unless they are a bard because they don't have any skills in poetry or musical performance or anything. In fact in 200 years they have learned less then a 20 year old human. Sure we can say they are inatly really really lazy but I don't think that we've really come to terms with just how stunningly lazy this must make them. I mean they must spend decades picking lint or something to have managed to learn so paltry amount in such a huge length of time. Especially considering that they don't even sleep - if a human where to only sleep 4 hours a night we'd expect him or her to have picked up more information and to have learned more - not an Elf though. Of course all of this totally ends when the player takes control of the Elf - now its rush rush rush and get some more experiene. Its clearly some kind of Elven mental disorder.
I don't have the 3rd edition race book on Elves but I certianly had the 2nd edition one and essentially it just kind of glossed over this.
I've always liked halfelves...with a lemon basil glaze.
I've always hated the Favored Class: X
I do not use it in my game.
I also think that multi-classing builds character and makes PCs more interesting to play.
Races...I stick with the PHB. Most of the others just draw out Munchkins.
ASEO out
I've always liked halfelves...with a lemon basil glaze.
I've always hated the Favored Class: X
I do not use it in my game.
I also think that multi-classing builds character and makes PCs more interesting to play.
Races...I stick with the PHB. Most of the others just draw out Munchkins.
ASEO out
I completely agree with stinking to the PHB races. One of my players will not settle with creating a "standard" character in the sense that he always has to play some race from the Monster Manual or make up one. Argh! It annoys me so!! And now he is playing an imp, and he wants to be able to take a feat to give him a supernatural ability of a form he takes. Basically, if I let him, he would get True Seeing at will for 1 feat. And earlier in my same campaign, he played a minotaur (I had no problem with his race), but made a completly cheap character. Even earlier, he made up a diminuitive race which might have been a warlock, and was crazily cheap. Now, I know I have to start cracking down on him making up races and just stating a policy of no races from the MM unless they are humanoid, like kobolds, lizardfolk, or minotaurs, but he is definitely the power gamer type who sits around looking through sourcebooks for cheap combos. Arghhhhh!!!!!!
WaterdhavianFlapjack
The DM has the power to say no to any suggestions to play non-standard races. Just because level adjustments are given doesn't mean they have to be used. I had the exact same problem when I started out, but finally said no after the wearbear gnoll samuari. Luckily, it had run its course by then, and the player is content with coming up with bizarre class/PrC/feat combos.
As usual, I thought of the perfect answer to the elf learning question a while after I left the message board for the night. You can give an 8 year old instructions in high school math, but they aren't likely to understand, no matter how patient you are. Yet, by the time most people graduate high school, things such as basic algebra are fairly easy. It's a matter of developmental speed. Elves don't sit around and pick daises or , as I erroneously stated earlier, choose not to learn fast. They can't.
This isn't the same as retardation, but basically, they have a child-like mentallity for a length of time equal to 1 1/2 to 2 human lifespans. Now, many elves continue to live at a slow pace when they get older, but the PC elves don't have to. However, the problem of other elves knowing too much info or being too high level since they've been around for so long is also explained by the fact that elves can choose to live slow, especially since they fall under the DM's purview. If they grow their houses from trees using spells from the PB, it would take a very long time (by human standards) to get proper sized houses, but the elves have all the time in the world.
This is still a logic problem, but that's a better solution than what I had.
The DM has the power to say no to any suggestions to play non-standard races. Just because level adjustments are given doesn't mean they have to be used. I had the exact same problem when I started out, but finally said no after the wearbear gnoll samuari. Luckily, it had run its course by then, and the player is content with coming up with bizarre class/PrC/feat combos.
You're right. Next time, he is not going to be able to play any but the most basic monstrous races, which can easily be explained, like bugbears, goblins, kobolds, etc.
Thanks for the advice.WaterdhavianFlapjack
As usual, I thought of the perfect answer to the elf learning question a while after I left the message board for the night. You can give an 8 year old instructions in high school math, but they aren't likely to understand, no matter how patient you are. Yet, by the time most people graduate high school, things such as basic algebra are fairly easy. It's a matter of developmental speed. Elves don't sit around and pick daises or , as I erroneously stated earlier, choose not to learn fast. They can't.This isn't the same as retardation, but basically, they have a child-like mentallity for a length of time equal to 1 1/2 to 2 human lifespans. Now, many elves continue to live at a slow pace when they get older, but the PC elves don't have to. However, the problem of other elves knowing too much info or being too high level since they've been around for so long is also explained by the fact that elves can choose to live slow, especially since they fall under the DM's purview. If they grow their houses from trees using spells from the PB, it would take a very long time (by human standards) to get proper sized houses, but the elves have all the time in the world.
This is still a logic problem, but that's a better solution than what I had.
A very Piagetian answer. Actually I like this concept more then most. Essentially Elves go through operational stages where there brains become capable of understanding more complex thoughts and yntil they have passed through all teh developmental stages they can't learn things the way an adult can.
That said even if we decide that this is the corrct answer its not reflected in any Elf society I have ever seen. It has to have a pretty profound impact on your society when your children litterly are not mentally mature enough top understand adult concepts for nearly two centuries. Still there is definitly soemthing amusing about the concept of having the PCs come into contact with an elf thats been alive for 150 years and yet simply does not understand that if you pour a glass of water from one glass into another you still have the same amount of water no matter what the shape the glass.
This does also somewhat solve the memory issues. One tends to have only very fuzzy memories of pre-operational mental states and then only of the most powerful or tramatic events. So we can just say that the Elf has basically no memory of 180 of the last 200 years. All the above being the case however and I wonder if one really still has Elves?
My next campaign will have no demi-humans in it at all. I'm definitely going to run an Iron Heroes Campaign based on a homebrew world. Thanks again for the suggestion in the other Thread, Waterdhavian Flapjack!
I don't dislike elves or half-elves...just want to try a campaign without them.
The trouble with saying that elves aren't developed mentally and physically until they reach 150+ years of age sounds fine on the surface, unfortunately it doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary or practical standpoint. If elves took so long to mature mentally and physically they would have been wiped out by other races, environmental factors, etc. millenia ago. I'm not being facetious, but pragmatic. If elves really took so long to mature their culture would have collapsed before it got started.
People have been correct when they point out that elven culture has not been presented in this way (it certainly isn't in any of the published settings). These campaign settings tend to overlook the big problems that Jeremy and co. are so perplexed and annoyed by, but this does not solve the issue.
One way in which I have addressed the problem with elves is by changing their age. In one of my campaigns elves mature as quickly as humans and die out by the time they reach 350. The Dark Sun campaign did this, and from what I can remember no one really seemed to have a problem with it.
Another way I have addressed the problem is by making elves two distinct races. Up until the age of 120-150 elves have the fey type and are similar in form to sprites (frivolous, capricious, child-like fey). At some point certain numbers of these sprite-like creatures undergo a complex magical ritual to transform them into elves. For the next 10 years these elves are taught the ways of the world before being let loose. It's not a perfect system, but its worth a shot and solves some of the problems people have concerns with.
My next campaign will have no demi-humans in it at all. I'm definitely going to run an Iron Heroes Campaign based on a homebrew world. Thanks again for the suggestion in the other Thread, Waterdhavian Flapjack!
I don't dislike elves or half-elves...just want to try a campaign without them.
Just make sure that you have a reason for throwing a number of fantastic or magical monsters the PCs way. Iron Heroes is light on magic (of all sorts), so your PCs shouldn't be battling all sorts of bizarre monsters when you have thrown out all of the demi-humans. If I was a PC in your campaign and constantly came up against ogres, trolls, dragons, mind flayers, beholders, etc. I'd be a bit quizzical about the absence of demi-humans.
Yes, elves still present many logical problems. THat's one of the problems with D&D as a whole- it seems to want to create as realistic an experience as possible, with givens such as magic and strange creatures, but at some point defies logic.
I spent about a month trying to work out how in the world all these various creatures could exist together without completely throwing off the ecosystem. The Earth's (and thus the basis for D&D's) biosphere is extremely fragile and exists only when carefully balanced. The introduction of even a couple of the races from the Monster Manual, and not even big things like dragons, but let's say, trolls, would completely devastate whatever ecosystem they were added to, and all those around it.
Then I smacked myself in the face and reminded myself that it was a fantasy game. If the PCs are really that perplexed about it, the answer for bizarre things in most fantasy settings is "it's magic". If that's still not good enough, let them try and research exactly how this works- it might make for an interesting research-based campaign that gives the DM tons of opportunities to let the players explore the world they're in, whether it's homebrew or published.
All of the opposing views to elves are completely valid and I sypathize with them. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your view, my players aren't that inquisitive. And, in the end, the game will defy logic in many places so that it remains fantasy, even though this causes many people, myself included, a great degree of frustration.
I say leave half-elves the way they are.