I like the "elves" from the old stories about Finn McCool and others;
forces of nature were those sidhe; not people with pointy ears who were your buddies because the orcs are about in massive numbers.
They were dangerous like magic or nature. And there wasn't quite the divide between magic and nature in those stories. To have brookings with these folk was perilous in and of itsself to men.
I feel that that has been diluted. I think it possible that may be part of the problem.
EXACTLY!!!! Birthright kind of touched on this in 2nd ed. Elves lived forever, hunted humans who entered their forest, etc.
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Well I for one think Pathfinder's elves might be quite interesting thanks to... Pathfinder's Ghouls!
Those Wayne Reynold's ghouls look mighty cool with their long tongues, sharp claws, lithe bodies and pointy ears.
Hearsay? Pointy ears!Ghouls are linked to elves? Seems logical given the fact that elves are immune to a ghouls paralysis. Seems so darn logical I wonder why nobody else made that logical before!
So.. ghouls were elves?
Would be cool if elves would be a cursed folk.. that -2 con WILL make you sick one day, or heck, all the time.
Gloomy sickly frail olvenfolk, plus they DONT SLEEP! (didnt knew that now did ya?)
Interesting. I like your thinking and plan to implement in my games.
Thoth-Amon
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Honestly I would love to see a reimagining of all the PC races, similar to the goblins and ghouls we have seen so far.
Maybe elves as totemic barbarians, still in touch with nature but not the goody goody types they usually are.
dwarves... hard one I like them as is :)
Gnomes...I don't like the little prankster illusionists niche they get stuck in. I have always thoght of gnomes as engineers, always interested in solving problems then making the dwarf build the contraption they come up with.
Halflings... ok the days of Tolkien halflings are officially over, but the nomadic gypsy thing doesn't work for me. If they need to be roguish for class preference and nomadic, maybe a bit more agressive, you wander into their territory and hordes of halflings descend upon you shooting first and questioning the survivors.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘reimagining’, but that may just be my definition of the word. Reimagining the races is what gets you stuff like dinosaur-riding halflings and medium-sized gnomes. I think what the races need is just a refreshing view of what makes each race tick. In other words, I’d like to see some fluff based on the crunch, not just new crunch to justify the fluff.
For example, elves are all proficient in sword and bow. There’d better be a good reason for that, even if it’s just something like a citizen soldiery concept of militias or something. Dwarves, as an entire race, get bonuses to attack orcs and goblins. That sounds like something that should be tied into their history or culture.
It’s amazing how something as a simple as ‘goblins hate and fear dogs’ adds so much to the goblins as a whole, so it probably wouldn’t even take too many ideas to really spruce up the ol’ standards, as long as the ideas were fresh.
For elves, it might just be a mention of the high elf nation being governed by a senate-like body of lords who, rather than maintain a standing army, depend on trained citizenry for defense. Meanwhile, the elf king who was deposed when the senate came to power has founded his own, woody elf kingdom with elven “throwbacks” who’ve settled in a forest region and established a culture there. Or something like that.
That covers the high elves and wood elves, and you could even go into all the details about wild elves, drow and aquatic elves if you needed to.
Halflings, meanwhile, should have a history or culture that explains why some of them take on elven or dwarven traits. You get the idea.
I like the ideas you just offered Fletch, that kind of 'tinkering' with the races is just what they need to come alive.
Reimagining the races is what gets you stuff like dinosaur-riding halflings
At least the dinosaur-riding halflings in Eberron have an identity, and one that isn't cribbed from an overrated novel.
Well I for one think Pathfinder's elves might be quite interesting thanks to... Pathfinder's Ghouls!
Those Wayne Reynold's ghouls look mighty cool with their long tongues, sharp claws, lithe bodies and pointy ears.
Hearsay? Pointy ears!Ghouls are linked to elves? Seems logical given the fact that elves are immune to a ghouls paralysis. Seems so darn logical I wonder why nobody else made that logical before!
So.. ghouls were elves?
Would be cool if elves would be a cursed folk.. that -2 con WILL make you sick one day, or heck, all the time.
Gloomy sickly frail olvenfolk, plus they DONT SLEEP! (didnt knew that now did ya?)
Maybe the elves were gouls.
Reimagining the races is what gets you stuff like dinosaur-riding halflingsAt least the dinosaur-riding halflings in Eberron have an identity, and one that isn't cribbed from an overrated novel.
I think they should have just left well enough alone after they reimagined them as little bloodthirsty cannibals (Well I guess their not really cannibals - they don't eat halflings after all).
Ewoks ought to get the same treatment.
Reimagining the races is what gets you stuff like dinosaur-riding halflingsAt least the dinosaur-riding halflings in Eberron have an identity, and one that isn't cribbed from an overrated novel.
True dat. I didn't even hate the cannibal-esque halflings from Darksun. What they mean, though, is that the writers thought they had to change the races to make them interesting rather than build interesting stories around the already existing rules. In other words, they made crunch to support their fluff rather than fluff inspired by the crunch.
Y'know considering how often this topic comes up, I'm suprized how surly everyone is being about it. I figured it would come up, especially with the current atmosphere of "tell us what you want--all we have is the SRD" going around recently. Elves tend to be one of the big irritations for a lot of people. I don't see it as strange logic that someone exposed to a bunch of really ostentatious elf characters could still like D&D but still be bothered by elves because of the bad portrayal.
Truth be told though, the strength of the new Pathfinder setting is to refine what's classically good about D&D, not to take it in crazy weird directions. There's a lot of "neopolitan multicolor dragons with death ray eyes" strangeness being suggested. Frankly the setting will be best if they stick very close to the classic ideas. Now I guarantee there will be some new spin and flavor to everything in Pathfinder. Elves will probably get a touch of the magic flavor too. I can't say it will turn an elf hater into an elf lover, but I am certainly anxious to see how things will be different.
Even with the SRD, things are different. For example, as far as I can tell there's no rule in the SRD that says that elves meditate for four hours instead of sleeping. Maybe Paizo will stick with what D&D does, but maybe they'll come up with something different. There are lots of examples of this sort of thing, and I think it's worth finding out how they'll handle them. :)
If the elven nations are of a warrior caste with militaries led by Samurai warlords and shoguns, you will not hate them...
I'd probably hate them just as much if not more. I mean Samurai Elves just perpetuates everything I already hate about Elves. Ultimate swordsmen Elves is just the same - race that has no weakness and endless strengths - that is already the problem. Except know with two swords, fancy armour, and a cultural reason to explain why he should try and smugly bask in his superiority and lord it over everyone else. At least when they live in the figgen forest one can avoid forests.
Reimagining the races is what gets you stuff like dinosaur-riding halflingsAt least the dinosaur-riding halflings in Eberron have an identity, and one that isn't cribbed from an overrated novel.I think they should have just left well enough alone after they reimagined them as little bloodthirsty cannibals (Well I guess their not really cannibals - they don't eat halflings after all).
Ewoks ought to get the same treatment.
Speaking of Star Wars and Halflings, I think Halflings should be like Jawas - little dudes in ratty cloaks who go around in caravans stealing your junk and selling it back to you.
Well I for one think Pathfinder's elves might be quite interesting thanks to... Pathfinder's Ghouls!
Those Wayne Reynold's ghouls look mighty cool with their long tongues, sharp claws, lithe bodies and pointy ears.
Hearsay? Pointy ears!Ghouls are linked to elves? Seems logical given the fact that elves are immune to a ghouls paralysis. Seems so darn logical I wonder why nobody else made that logical before!
So.. ghouls were elves?
Would be cool if elves would be a cursed folk.. that -2 con WILL make you sick one day, or heck, all the time.
Gloomy sickly frail olvenfolk, plus they DONT SLEEP! (didnt knew that now did ya?)Interesting. I like your thinking and plan to implement in my games.
Thoth-Amon
This is actually quite amusing. A couple of years ago I also wondered about the similarity between the appearance of ghouls and elves and did something about in my last campaign world (which has sadly passed away).
Aside from normal ghouls and ghasts (which were unchanged, though were more popularly called corpselickers by the common folk) I introduced ghuls as monsters in my game. Ghuls were twilight elves who succumbed to a curse brought down upon the race aeons ago (which also reduced the age of twilight elves to half-elf standards). In essence ghuls were living ghouls of twilight elf ancestory (rather than the Arabian ghuls presented in Al-Qadim).