So we have a question for those who play elves out there. One of my players would like to know, what is the canon description of Grey elves? Specifically Grey elves. The MM is a bit confusing on this point.
(FYI MM pg104 has the description in question)
If it makes a difference, the campaign setting is Greyhawk.
Thanks in advance - Roth
:-)
1st ed. MM, p. 39: "Grey elves have either silver hair and amber eyes, or pale golden hair and violet eyes. The latter sort are generally called faeries. They favor white, yellow, silver, or gold garments. Their cloaks are often deep blue or purple."
I just wonder how they grew in size ?
I can´t remember that they were "nearly as tall as humans" back in 1st or 2nd Ed.
In Greyhawk, specifically, only the Valley Elves are as tall as humans, and that is a major difference from other elven races.
Stefan
Director of Narrative
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Grey Elves, from what I can remember, are very isolationist, even more so than elves in general. They are also haughty and elitist. I tend to recall that they do no have the affinity for elaborate homes in the trees and forests and tend to dwell in fortresses in the mountains or something like that.
I'd check some of the references from previous editions regarding them. Maybe that Complete Book of Elves from 2nd ed might help.
What people have said already is most of the official stuff on grey elves -- the physical appearance given in the MM and their aloof, isolationist ways.
Any reference to being significantly taller than high elves has no basis in Greyhawk canon, and likely originated from an author that was either confused (perhaps with valley elves) or adding their own pet characteristics.
Regards,
Jack
God, I hate all the elven subraces. Stop the elfin proliferation!
Seriously. I hate all the elven subraces, save drow. As a matter of fact, I hate all player character subraces other than the drastically different ones (svirfneblin, duergar, drow, etc.). Two different groups of humans can be as different as night and day, but they use the same abilities.
Nope! This race of dwarves is 2.7689 inches taller than normal dwarves, and like to drink coffee, and wear red, so they get a radically different set of abilities! This halfling tribe prefers monkeys over oranges, so there's another set of stats!
WHAT THE HELL? "Ooo, I want to play something like that race, but TOTALLY DIFFERENT, and with a bunch of other modifiers, because I want classes X, Y, and/or Z and don't want to have to choose something any less than suboptimal to do it, or find another way to build the thing using the rules as written, so I'll just make the equivalent of a whole new race! Blaaaagh!"
Do they not make other human subraces out of tradition, or fear of political correctness? Some might say it'd be hard to anticipate all the different cultures that might be designed for different worlds. Oh, really? Harder than it is to anticipate all the different cultures and histories of the other races, each of which gets a new subrace for each word of difference between their racial biographies?!
Gah! Down with subraces!
Pretend you were reading Place Your Rant Here.
Do they not make other human subraces out of tradition, or fear of political correctness?
My money is on political correctness - you wouldn't be able to vary human abilities by "race" without offending someone. Culture maybe, but not race, and culture should only affect skills, not ability scores.
For what it's worth I agree totally, except that I also hate drow. It really irks me that their skin colour doesn't follow the rules of nature or magic and I think they look stupid. If they were pasty and sinister but otherwsie identical I reckon I would like them. Funny that.
Duergar OTOH are cool. I've often toyed with deleting ordinary Dwarves and making Duergar the default and only Dwarves.
For what it's worth I agree totally, except that I also hate drow. It really irks me that their skin colour doesn't follow the rules of nature or magic and I think they look stupid. If they were pasty and sinister but otherwsie identical I reckon I would like them. Funny that.
No worries about political correctness there! lol
Kahoolin spits it like he sees it.
No worries about political correctness there! lol
Kahoolin spits it like he sees it.
Er... since this is an online forum, I'm not sure what you mean by that, so perhaps I should add this caveat to my previous post:
Me finding pale skin more spooky than dark skin has nothing to do with real-world ethnicities, and I should also add that drow are not the same colour as anyone in real life anyway,and do not represent any particular ethnicity. In fact, one of the things I object to about them is that of all elves, the evil ones are black?
I hope I didn't cause any misunderstandings. Racism is vile and er... elves aren't real. I am genuinely sorry if I offended anyone.
PS I am also sorry if I didn't offend anyone, and I am now being too humourless :)
Er... since this is an online forum, I'm not sure what you mean by that, so perhaps I should add this caveat to my previous post:
Me finding pale skin more spooky than dark skin has nothing to do with real-world ethnicities, and I should also add that drow are not the same colour as anyone in real life anyway,and do not represent any particular ethnicity. In fact, one of the things I object to about them is that of all elves, the evil ones are black?
I hope I didn't cause any misunderstandings. Racism is vile and er... elves aren't real. I am genuinely sorry if I offended anyone.
PS I am also sorry if I didn't offend anyone, and I am now being too humourless :)
Oh God, dude. I'm sorry. I was just noticing the implication you never made, how it ironically tied back into 'political correctness,' and exploited it for a goof. Of course you didn't mean anything. Me was just playin'.
"My dad was a militant black man... maybe too black. When I was a kid and we went to the supermarket together he'd take me to the cereal isle and say 'Cocoa Puffs... why he gotta be cuckoo for cocoa puffs? Why a black man gotta be crazy? And look at Cap'n Crunch on the shelf above him. He's a slaveship captain I'll bet..." --some comedian whose name and face escape me.
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I remember I was on k.p. in basic training. There was this mean mean mean mean mean scary Drill Sargent on the detail. I wasn't in his platoon, but the guys who were insisted he was the devil given flesh.
He kept saying, "d.r.o. .... d.r.o. ...." in this monotone voice to whichever one of us he was summoning, then he'd go into this frenetic screaming fit if we didn't scuttle unto him quick enough. "Clean this (blank) up, you (blank) Pffft-rivate!!! He was freaky scary. I remember thinking, "dro...dro...why is he calling us drow elves? Does he play d&d? oh... d.r.o.--dining room orderly."
He also liked to sing, "I've got friends in low places" by Garth Brooks while he had 5-8 of us dropped for pushups. And I think he was tone deaf; he just kinda sang it all in an eerie self-pleased monotone. Then he'd yell at you like he was going to start beating you at any second. He sounded like a growling klingon when he was yelling at you.
But then, I was drawing some stuff on front desk detail, and he caught me drawing, and I thought I was in deep kaka. Instead, he got me to draw stuff for this and that; posters and whatnot, and I was off the hook. I was a drawin' guy then.
Anyway, that's why I kinda like drow elves.
That's a cool story. It would make a good scene in a movie. The twist on expectation and all that.
Oh God, dude. I'm sorry. I was just noticing the implication you never made, how it ironically tied back into 'political correctness,' and exploited it for a goof. Of course you didn't mean anything. Me was just playin'.
"My dad was a militant black man... maybe too black. When I was a kid and we went to the supermarket together he'd take me to the cereal isle and say 'Cocoa Puffs... why he gotta be cuckoo for cocoa puffs? Why a black man gotta be crazy? And look at Cap'n Crunch on the shelf above him. He's a slaveship captain I'll bet..." --some comedian whose name and face escape me.
Cool, I thought so, but you never can tell with the internet ;) Just erring on the side of caution...
Stupid drow elves.
Great posts all, thanks for the help! Both my players and I were quite confused when we read in the MM description:
"This humanoid is slender and nearly as tall as a human. It is pale skinned and DARK-HAIRED, with pointed ears."
But it then went on to say they only had either SILVER hair amber eyes, or GOLD hair and violet eyes.
Thanks again, Roth
:-)
I do have a suggestion on the subraces question. With the subraces that have ability score adjustments that vary from those of the normal race make the race a hybrid like half elves or half orcs. For instance, the FRCS write up of wood elves shows +2 STR +2 DEX -2 CON -2 INT -2 CHA. (For some reason, in the MM the CHA penalty is missing.) This is identical to normal elf and half orc ability score adjustments stacked together. Hence if you wanted to wood elves could become elf orc hybrids with tweaking of the non ability score racial modifiers such as skill bonuses and special qualities. Similarly, wild elves could be elf laika (Savage Species web enhancement) hybrids, grey elves could be hybrids of elves and 3.0 vanaras OA (although for the 3.5 update in 318 the ability score adjustments for vanaras were removed) etc. Just a possible way to work around this sense of overly straining credibility
That suggestion works, but I've got one that's even simpler. Drop them. No more of these crazy subraces.
High and wood elves are separated by culture and roleplaying, not stats. Sea elves and drow continue to exist so I can throw them into adventures as I see fit. Wild elves, grey elves, valley elves, cinnamon elves, mochachino elves, puce elves, all gone.
Forest gnomes? Gone.
Tallfellow halflings? Gone.
Lord knows that there's enough humanoids in the various monster manuals that if you are HELL BENT on playing something with similar abilities to those races I just squished, you can play one of those. Try a kenku instead of one of thirteen imperceptable variations of elf or dwarf or whatever. Hell, I'd even prefer to change the adjustments on kobolds and goblins to make them more respectable before I start throwing out half a dozen subraces for every option in the PHB.
Few things here..
1. The various subraces of humanoids exist for the purpose of defining their culture and way of life. Grey elves are big into magic and intellectualism (may not be a word but sounds good). While Wood elves are hardier and more warrioristic (probably another made up word).
2. Why in the world wouldn't you create "sub-races" for humans? You can't tell me that the standard run of the mill city dwelling human should have the same stats as the artic tundra dwelling human. However, the bonus feat human get can do alot to "define" the subrace. As a DM you can do one of two things. 1 - Make it so that the bonus feat must be used in one of the feats that give bonuses to different skills. 2- have set areas of your game world that the different "sub-races" come from, and assign ability +/-. For instance, the City race would have no bonuses, but the artic race would get like a +2 to Con and a -2 to Cha or Int.
These are things I have done in my own campaigns. Again, just thoughts and ideas.
Well, getting rid of the subraces is a concession to the fact that humans can be as different as can be, but not have sub-races, while any other group of peoples gets a new set of modifiers for every slight difference. I find there to be too many subraces, of too minor variation, to justify their existence.
However, subraces in general make more sense if you open to field to humans also having subraces. Most campaign settings draw upon real world cultures to some extent, but there are often enough "fantastic" elements that making new stats for such peoples wouldn't cause any eyes to raise. Most D&D players seem to be of a tolerant nature, anyway.
I'm still in favor of getting rid of sub races, however. I like to emphasis different cultures and behaviors amongst various races, and even ethnicities within a race, but I don't think you necessarily need new racial adjustments to accomplish that.
All that is purely my subjective opinion, however.
I have to admit, while I get where you're coming from Saern, and I appreciate your points, I have to admit a certain fondness for gold dwarves.
I guess it's just because I started playing second addition, and I always think of dwarves with a bonus to con, and a penalty to dex like they were back then. Of course, I tend to get all uncomfortable with dwarven wizards and sorcerors too, so...I guess I'm still somewhat stuck in second edition.
But yes, the insane proliferation of subraces is kind of silly. Although I will admit that some of them have some interesting abilities that make them very different from the standard. The one that most comes to mind is star elves from Unapproachable East. They're kind of neat.
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That suggestion works, but I've got one that's even simpler. Drop them. No more of these crazy subraces.
High and wood elves are separated by culture and roleplaying, not stats. Sea elves and drow continue to exist so I can throw them into adventures as I see fit. Wild elves, grey elves, valley elves, cinnamon elves, mochachino elves, puce elves, all gone.
Forest gnomes? Gone.
Tallfellow halflings? Gone.
Mochachino elves are pivotal to my campaign.
Yes, in their citadels filled with stars and male deer. All fear the might of the mochachino elves!
And then there's of course Santa's elves...
I do agree with Saern, I would make subraces only cultural issues, not corresponding to stats. Of course elves and other races have then specific skill bonuses, weapon proficiencies and such which should be changed from culture to culture...while humans don't have set bonuses like these.