Hello all!
In my custom campaign setting, Cevryn, the three prominent races of elves are the High Elves, Wood Elves and Dark Elves. In a Pathfinder conversion, they are represented by the High Elves as the default Elf race from the Core book; the Dark Elves are represented as the Drow from the Bestiary with minor tweaks (the Dark Elves have transcended the underground cliche, for instance); the Wood Elves are the "original" elven race, with a deep rooted respect for nature and being predators of nature and men. I need help tweaking the base Elf race to reflect the Wood Elves better.
Here is the default Elf from the PRD:
+2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, –2 Constitution: Elves are nimble, both in body and mind, but their form is frail.
Medium: Elves are Medium creatures and have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Normal Speed: Elves have a base speed of 30 feet.
Low-Light Vision: Elves can see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light. See Additional Rules.
Elven Immunities: Elves are immune to magic sleep effects and get a +2 racial saving throw bonus against enchantment spells and effects.
Elven Magic: Elves receive a +2 racial bonus on caster level checks made to overcome spell resistance. In addition, elves receive a +2 racial bonus on Spellcraft skill checks made to identify the properties of magic items.
Keen Senses: Elves receive a +2 racial bonus on Perception skill checks.
Weapon Familiarity: Elves are proficient with longbows (including composite longbows), longswords, rapiers, and shortbows (including composite shortbows), and treat any weapon with the word “elven” in its name as a martial weapon.
Languages: Elves begin play speaking Common and Elven. Elves with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Celestial, Draconic, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Orc, and Sylvan.
Wood Elves favor the Ranger and Druid classes, which is thematic for their way of land in their forest domain and their spirituality in tune with nature.
I want to alter their racial ability scores to +2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom and -2 Constitution to represent this. They are the finest archers in the campaign after all and have a deep rooted understanding of the world around them.
The Elven Magic racial trait needs changed the most in my opinion, something that is universally useful for all wood elves. Any suggestions? Silent Hunter and Woodcraft appear thematic to me for the nature of the class, with Silent Hunter being a little too focused. I think Woodcraft is great.
Can anyone suggest a Favor Class option for Druids?
The Languages will be changed to reflect the setting.
The weapon familiarity will be updated as well.
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How about something related to Knowledge checks regarding creatures of nature, such as treating it trained even when untrained, Take 10 on these knowledge checks at any time, a +2 on those checks, or some combination (take a page out of the bard book). Relevant creatures would be animals, plants, vermin, magical beasts, maybe humanoids and monstrous humanoids.
... not to troll...
but why is it that people are always making some new race of elves?
humans come in all shapes and colors but they are all the same. elves that live in a forest vs a cave? totally different animals.
to address the topic... is it not possible that the difference be entirely Role play? like all stats are the same but high elves tend towards magic while wood elves tend toward divine?
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to answer your question. the +2 wisdom is fine.
and maybe just retool the arcane affinity to a divine affinity.
In my setting, the elves were created by the goddess of nature. The race fractured when the god of the underworld lured a portion of the elves away and later other elves left to follow the goddess of magic. I'm actually still working on diversifying the human ethnicities because all different races have different offshoots. For instance, there are dwarves who have developed a very large trading/merchant network who hail from a certain region while there are more traditional dwarves who dwell in a cold, northern setting.
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but why is it that people are always making some new race of elves?
humans come in all shapes and colors but they are all the same. elves that live in a forest vs a cave? totally different animals.
Because elves are not simply humans with long ears. There is a long tradition in fantasy (blame it on Tolkien) that human variances are short-lived variances of culture, while elven variance is a long-lived variance that has developed into, or is the result of, fundamental differences in the make up of what makes them elves.
... not to troll...
but why is it that people are always making some new race of elves?
humans come in all shapes and colors but they are all the same. elves that live in a forest vs a cave? totally different animals.
to address the topic... is it not possible that the difference be entirely Role play? like all stats are the same but high elves tend towards magic while wood elves tend toward divine?
....
to answer your question. the +2 wisdom is fine.
and maybe just retool the arcane affinity to a divine affinity.
While I do understand where you are coming from, the elves have a static ability bonus, where as a human gets a +2 to any one ability score like a half-elf to represent there varied nature.
(+2 Strength for a tribesman, of Nordic background and so on)Humans adapt very quickly, (as well as half-elves for being part human) elves on the other hand don't change much over time, they are a long lived race but very set in there ways, so for those that have adapted to a different environment they would be well suited to it and be different from other elves with there own static ability bonuses and traits came into play.
I kind of favor the racial attribute modifers that Night Elves got IN D20 WOW.
+2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom, and -2 Charisma. It's a good model for a subrace of elves that's attuned to nature and generally reclusive and aloof when dealing with others.
Also LazarX I would agree on this more than the constitution seeing as how wood elves would be more of a reclusive race compared to high elves, and well suited to roughing it out in the wilds, they wouldn't be a frail as a high elf, but would suffer when it came to interacting with other races.
I kind of favor the racial attribute modifers that Night Elves got IN D20 WOW.
+2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom, and -2 Charisma. It's a good model for a subrace of elves that's attuned to nature and generally reclusive and aloof when dealing with others.
I think this would be the best way to go.
Also, I think Woodcraft fits very well.
Default Languages: Common, Elven, Sylvan?
Druid Favored Class Bonus: +1/2 to Wild Empathy checks or +1/2 to DC to save against druid spells or +1/2 to caster level checks to overcome SR with druid spells (only against animals/magical beasts/fey?)
definitely not +1/2 to DC. That's even worse than the human favored class bonus.
The constitution racial penalty is felt by elves, even though the race most often goes into a class that isn't a front-line fighter. The penalty has impact. You're still getting +2/+2/-2. But a charisma penalty on the wood elf? That's never going to matter. Doesn't seem fair to me.
The only kind of campaigns where charisma penalties don't have an impact, are those without any form of roleplaying interaction whatsoever. This should also be extrapolated to impact on the wide scale. Wood elves generally tend to have contested relationships with humanity at best, being more intend to open up discussions with loggers by an arrow to the knee.
I'm with you, ideologically.
Thanks everyone! I think that Woodcraft is going to be the best way to go.
Languages: Wood Elves begin play speaking Common and Elven. Elves with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Sylvan, Threa, Dwarven, Orcish, Wood Elf Sign Language
In Cevryn, Threa is the language of the Threatu, a race of nomadic all female warriors. Everything else is fitting based on the setting.