I have to admit Grim, you've got a point. This is probably the first non-mechanic thing I like about 4E. Odd, the edition that deathknelled Greyhawk, mutated FR, said that I am a fool for liking the previous edition and is making every freelancer/3rd party publisher nervous and starting to look elsewhere has good elves.
Yeah, that would have been great, wouldn't it? Yeah, except from what I've been seeing most recently that's totally NOT what they're doing. Instead, it looks like the Eladrin are just an opportunity to have even MORE infuriating, fancy pants elves from the Faewild who are even more nausiatingly elfy than elves. Ugh...
And I had such high hopes.
But really: Will making two of the races in the PHB be elf1 and elf2 - and using up twice the space they used to - really help against the elf hate? I think it's the opposite: Elf bashers will get new ammo.
I've found that with a lot of the "cool and arrogant" stuff out there (you see this argument with regards to anime "jerk-heroes" too) that there's really two firm camps. There's the people who get furious about it and just can't stand them. Then there's folks who really love and get behind them and think everything they do is awesome and that people should just understand that they really are that cool and awesome and that if anything the stats should be rewritten to make them even MORE cool and awesome. Darn that game balance! That's elves in spades. I love that the stats are underpowered for how they're described. That makes them tolerable. It makes their platitudes about how awesome and wonderful they are funny and flat-sounding rather than true and abhorant.
Will elf1 and elf2 help? It turns out no. If they were doing what I was hoping they were, then it would have been awesome. But as it turns out, it's not even elf1 and elf2 (which still might have been okay) it's elf and elf-squared. Now folks who hate elves are going to just want to tear the faces off eladrin.
Oh well.
'elf hate comes from low 'elf esteem.
Now see, that's cool.
I've always struggled with this. I WANT dwarves to be the best in beer, but how? I don't see them growing barley on the mountaintop; they're all, "Let's find mithril and iron ore," not, "Lets plant flowers for hops." But it's still cool.
My dwarfs drank vodka made from potatoes. They ate a lot of potatoes as well. I even had a vendor who sold french fries cooked in lard (YUM!)
I think it's the opposite: Elf bashers will get new ammo.
Oh boy new ammo. Sign me up.
I despise elves. The entire race is essentially a Mary Sue device and if the world has 31 flavours of Elves its even worse.
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While a very plausible reason for dark skinned drow has been offered previously, there is another explanation. From the early days the underdark is supposed to have a particular radiation. In second edition, this caused drow equipment to fail after long exposure to the surface (it decayed when removed from the source of the radiation). Since the skin protects from radiation we can see (light) and some we can't (ultraviolet) it is possible that the radiation in the Underdark explains the dark skin of the drow, as well as that of the Duergar and Derro. (If they have dark skin as I have been led to believe).
As for the multiple species of elves - I just don't need them. I can't believe that a race that has generations that last hundreds of years (or more) evolve more quickly than humans to suit each environment they're exposed to.
I'm also of the opinion that elves should be 'cooler' than they are in standard D&D. I'm hoping that my gestalt race option will address that. It will also make humans and dwarves cooler. Which brings me to my next point.
Elves shouldn't be encountered at low levels. A 1st-level-warrior? Probably not. Due to their smaller numbers most elves that could be encountered would be highly trained (and thus high level). The XP system doesn't adequately represent this (but that's a whole other problem). Basically, in normal D&D a blacksmith can't get better at blacksmithing unless he kills something now and again. Since we know that the 'real world' doesn't work that way, I'm prepared to accept that people can level by training even if they didn't kill anything to prove the training took.
So, elves have a higher average level (since they're older and have trained harder than the other races) as do dwarves (but not as high) while the vast majority of humans (more than half anyway) are young adults.
Basically, I think of elves as a rather 'linear' population curve. There are nearly as many that are 500 years old as there are that are 100 years old, which is almost as many as there are who are 20.
Humans, on the other hand - more than 1/2 are under 20. More than 75% are under 40. More than 99% are under 100. So, more than 1/2 the population is probably 1st or 2nd level. People that are 40 or so probably tend to be 5th-8th level or so (for the most part).
Those are my thoughts, anyway.
The entire race is essentially a Mary Sue device...
Totally! Rawrgh!
...what's a Mary Sue device?
As for the multiple species of elves - I just don't need them. I can't believe that a race that has generations that last hundreds of years (or more) evolve more quickly than humans to suit each environment they're exposed to.
You're one of the "uber-science" crowd, huh? I dunno. I really have a problem trying to push scientific doctrine into D&D. I don't think it makes it a stronger game by applying real world science to it, and a lot of stuff seems to fall apart under that kind of scrutiny (partly because it's written largely by folks who don't have in depth science backgrounds, partly because scientific pretext isn't even that consistent in sci-fi where it's supposed to be backed up by science).
On the other hand, fortunately, I am not of the "bah--it's magic, it don't gotta' make no sense" crowd either. Rather I'd prefer to go with the thought that while scientific investigation could proceed in a D&D setting, the results of that research would inevitably have differences. Chemical reactions that don't do a thing here, yield fantastic alchemical results there like tanglefoot bags and sunrods.
Were you to do a double-blind test to attempt to isolate magic and break it down by school-particle, no doubt you would succeed and form a brand new science. The stuff that makes beholders fly and dragons breathe lightning all have their own internally consistant explanations--but there's no scientists yet to think to examine the reasons why, and not enough testable common ground between our world and theirs to answer all the questions completely.
Honestly my favorite was Spelljammer, where they assumed that Ptolemy was right--that there are crystal spheres with the world ant the center and an aether of glowing phlogeston. I would love to see more of that kind of science, where in D&D everything you knew is wrong. Maggots do come from rotting meat, and sweat and grain yeild mice. Well okay, maybe not THAT different--not sure where I'd draw the line really, but certainly there are lots of situations where something would test false in our world and true in D&D, or totally the other way around.
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I've never understood elf hate. I think it comes from people playing them badly; if your character is hundreds of years old, and very knowledgeable, then of course he must be an arrogant snob! And a weed. And (most insidiously and distastefully of all) a bit gay - which as we all know is icky wrong!
Bam. The proverbial nail has been hit on its proverbial head.
In second edition, this caused drow equipment to fail after long exposure to the surface (it decayed when removed from the source of the radiation).
This is, I believe, a holdover from AD&D. Possibly from the Fiend Folio, but almost definitely from a book no newer than Unearthed Arcana...I'm confident of this because I used to design endless Drow characters. Oddly enough many were Chaotic Good (my preferred alignment) and some were Rangers (my favorite class). This was years before I'd heard of any famous Drow other than Leda/Eclavdra.
Anyway, items of Drow manufacture (hand crossbows, chainmail, etc.) had to be carefully protected from sunlight and/or "recharged" by repeated exposure to the energies of the Underdark to keep them from losing their bonuses. Careful containment would delay their ruin, but only for a short time (a few months?).
As for elf hate...That's why if my homebrew ever goes forward there's two races of Elf: Elf and Drow. There will be no High, Wild, Wood, Sea, Sun, Moon, Grey, Silver, Gold, or any other variety. Just "Elf" and "Drow". And Dwarves are "Dwarf" or "Duergar".
I, for one, have never had any problem with subraces. It just makes sense to me. Humans have tons of ethnicities, and it had always seemed a little off to me that while there can be "asian" looking folks, "irish" looking folks, "middle-eastern" looking folks, "native american" looking folks or whatever, that somehow all elves, dwarves or whatever should all look just the same?
I see the various "subraces" more as ethnicities, the breakdown of what looks exist within the color palette of one race or another. As such I like it a lot. It just seems to make sense. Certainly the opposite would seem weird to me. Granted I do like it a lot more when the various subraces are pure cosmetic differences--maybe a regional feat here and there, rather than huge stat differences.
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Granted I do like it a lot more when the various subraces are pure cosmetic differences--maybe a regional feat here and there, rather than huge stat differences.
For me, this is the central problem with subraces. A feat or skill choice is the difference between humans from the desert, the frozen tundra, the deepest jungle to the tallest mountain. Humans live on boats at sea for a thousand years - they're still human. And there are not stat adjustments (though there may be different stat placements) between a 5' 120 lb Asian man and a 7'3" 325 lb black man.
If the full spectrum of humanity fits into one 'race' with no difference in racial adjustments, why so many flavors of elf?
An elf with a +2 Dex and -2 Con is MORE DIFFERENT than an elf with +2 Dex, -2 Int, -2 Chr (Kagonesti from Dragonlance) than the humans in the preceeding example. It sounds a lot like the difference between humans and chimpanzees (98%+ genetically the same).
Personally, I think it is lazy design. Stat adjustments should be the exception, not the rule to differntiate subraces. Basically, it seems like they're taking just about every other race, putting pointy ears on it, calling it an elf so some fanboy can have the mechanical adjustment he wants and still be an elf.
I think that's why there is elf hate. Personally, I love elves. I'm trying to rework them to be the badasses they should be (along with the other races). But I'm not doing it with different racial adjustments to the 30+ flavor of elves.
I think it's the opposite: Elf bashers will get new ammo.Oh boy new ammo. Sign me up.
I despise elves. The entire race is essentially a Mary Sue device and if the world has 31 flavours of Elves its even worse.
I rest my case.
Elf bashers will love 4e: It gives them more excuses for their outrageous claims. If they didn't have anything new to go on, they'd die in frustration :D
My unbridled hatred of all elven races stems from one player we had in our group that ALWAYS played some kind of elf. And he played it poorly, to the point that we (The rest of the party) always found ways to get rid of him. Selling him into slavery, killing him, letting him get killed, or other various forms of removal. The DM encouraged it because we'd already given him plenty of chances to work around it, but it always failed.
Until finally we just hated all elves. Now Elves that we come across are almost synonymus with Idiot, Emergency Food Ration, Disposable allies, One round speed bumps for various Monsters, Pack Mules, and Walking gold pouches.
The only thing we hate more then Elves, are Drow.
My unbridled hatred of all elven races stems from one player we had in our group that ALWAYS played some kind of elf.
I don't want to ruin your irrational ranting here, but wouldn't it have been better to just unbridledly hate that one player you had? That would have had the added benefit that you could have code reded the guy. In real life.
Seriously! Swear off your irrational hatred of all things elven and go badger the guy ruthlessly. Tape it. Put it on youtube. Post the link. That way, we all benefit of it!
...what's a Mary Sue device?
Here's the Wikipedia entry.
I had a nice post about it, but clicked the wrong button and lost it. Still the wiki is pretty thorough.