Elf Thread

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But that's armor.

>not playing Elves as worse than 3rd world Muslim refugees who breed like rabbits, live until 300, and refuse to assimilate into a society's culture

Maybe the archetypes of the arrogant douche elf is overplayed, but elves have enough versatility to be useful for any setting and I don't see any other any other fantasy race filling the niche of the magical dex race.

I would like to see them going back to their roots as fighter/mage hybrids and I would like to see more manly elves instead of cuty animu girls.

So, curry-flavoured elves?

>animu elves in Skyrim glass armour

What a weird piece of fanart.

kek, but hagbane is the best choice for cataclysm where as drakefire and conflag are pretty terrible. Whoever made this is a shitter

Dragon age does alright elves. The had much more powerful magic but had no immunity to human disease so Tivinter kicked their asses.

Now they're either poor and weak manlets or xenophobic racist nomads who don't even speak their own language half the time.

It was made when it was first out, when Hagbane was a one way trip to TPK, and Conflag hadn't been nerfed.

I never used Drakefire, but It seems like a cheap combo of Beam staff and Brace

Have you seen the massive amount of models-altering mods out there? There's like a fuckton that gives the characters that exact look, so it wouldn't surprise me if it is actually an arranged screenshot of some sort as opposed to just fanart

Beautiful creatures with an elegant and sensual culture, but they shit on the street or in bags they hurl as far as they can. The Elven forest literally reeks of shit and travelers have to beware not walking on shit or getting a thrown shitbag on the head.

I've always liked how Games Workshop do elves. It's a shame they never made new high elf spearman models because the art looks great and they did a good job of the Dark Elf ones.

GW seems to have taken the Noldor as inspiration, unlike all the other Tolkien-copies, made them ridiculously badass, with ridiculous mounts and ridiculous helmets. They nailed the fey-like nature of the wood elves pretty well. Don't know a lot about dark elves, they seem to me like anti-high-elves.

I strongly disagree.

I have no strong feelings one way or another

Same as dwarves, orcs, giants, goblins, gnomes, haflflings and dragons.

>Oh look, I subverted a trope
So why don't we also make dwarves the roaming barbarians and orcs the highly advanced mage race?

Manlets on suicide watch.

my fave character played is also an elf.

I didn't subvert every trope. He was a cg-ish wizard for hire who was really racist (campaign was set in a not-viking renaissance era mash far from the elf homeland) who basically did all sorts of insane wizard stuff and tried to use his fame to mutate viking society into some bastardized version of his own.

Stuff like doing necromancy for good despite the heavy sanction against it, turning goblins into 2nd class citizens instead of genociding them after the war (our dm was pretty solipsistic about alignment) and capturing wyverns for animal husbandry.

It was a good group: had an emo, in-the-shadows-constantly, depressed sniper rogue, a heroic paladin who was always looking for excuses to take off his cuirass and show off his pecs, and an insane dwarf cleric of an insane dwarf stone age god amongst others.

to be fair to that user, a lot of that works kinda well with traditional elf tropes. Long lived, chauvinistic culture, etc. Just make them magical, long lived muslims, and you kinda have fresh but not absurd elves. I'm actually gonna steal that.

Base them on medieval-ish muslims and they work pretty well in a generic medieval-ish fantasy setting, and also managed to hit a lot of traditional elf tropes.

During the "golden age of Islam", the Arabs possessed a considerably more detailed understanding or mathematics and science than the Europeans, and had managed to preserve more of the writings of ancient philosophers (European monasteries also preserved many classical texts, but a lot had to be translated from Arabic, as no originals had survived to copy or translate from), which fits with your typical high elves being portrayed as having an advanced society with detailed understanding of the arcane. Also classical Arabic architecture style shares a lot of elements with what I'd consider typical high elf architecture (both seem to love their minarets).
Throw in some other traits inspired by the Islamic society (such as having strictly defined and enforced societal roles, a large number of rules governing what is the "clean" and "unclean" way to eat, dress, etc.).

yeah its all coming together. agree about the al-andalus stuff, thats exactly what i was thinking. I wonder how they would view half elves etc, if i make humanoids able to interbreed like in normal dnd, path, lotr, etc.

They have to accept and assimilate into Elvish society, or else face ostracization (or punishment, depending on how authoritarian you want your elves). Mirrors accepting or converting away from Islam.

word. lol islam sucks so bad.

If elves are so great, why do they never have empires and such?
Why do they just live in forests?

I'm making a setting where elves are not!Romans and I'm wondering why.
TES is the only one I can think of.

Usually they had one, but the trope demand that it's lost.

Isn't this the same guy who got bitchslapped in single combat by the dwarf king and died crying for his life? The one who is considered an idiot by his own people? The one who lost the elvem crown forever?

Probably not too well, although it might depend on circumstances. Given how their society had a big focus on doing thing the "proper" (ie. how it says in the Quran) way, it's not particulary surprising the Arabs didn't view people who didn't follow their rules very kindly. The Quran has a lot of rules that make a clear distinction between how you're allowed to treat other Muslims versus non-Muslims. Like, slavery was allowed, but normally only on non-Muslims. Christiand and Jews were kind of a weird case, though, as Muslim scholars concluded that they were similar enough (all three religions share a lot of religious canon, and technically worship the same god) that they couldn't really be considered "pagans". As such, a lot of the stuff that applied to other non-Islamic religions didn't apply to them, and they were even allowed to practice their own religion in Arab-ruled lands, as long as they paid an extra "you're not Muslims" tax.

I'd imagine humans would probably fall into a similar category to the elves as Christians did to Muslims. Not "clean" but not quite "unclean" either, so they're tolerated as long as they're not doing anything dumb like declaring crusades on you. Essentially, humans in elven lands would be second-class citizens that wouldn't have all the right as the elves, but also wouldn't be used as slaves or killed on sight like, I don't know, orcs or something. Sleeping with one and producing half-elves still seems like it'd be a very "unclean" thing to do, though (but would no doubt still keep happening even if publically denounced).

Without an original prompt these threads should be banned tbqh

Not really sure what kinda autist you are to keep making them

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>I posted it again!

So, in a meta-post, I've got to wonder. Why does "Excuse me Commissar" generate butthurt accusations of forced meming, and not these threads?

This actually generates content, and isn't complete shit.

Because there are not five of these up at the same time.

Elves in my homebrew setting are germanic DEUS VULT types with crossbows and polearms.

They're racist douchebags that would murder the shit out of any of the other races if they showed a second of weakness. Sort of like an entire race made up of that one douchebag who will only play humans and insists that all other races should be killed off.

As said, they've usually lost it at some point.
The reason being probably that humans are usually at least nominally the "viewpoint race" of a setting, due to most readers and players being humans and all. If the elves had a massive empire that ruled the known world, that'd kind of make them the main players of the setting, pushing humans to the sideline. As such, if they had an empire it's usually destroyed before the story began, giving room for humans to be major players.

Tolkien elves are leaving the world, and thus are largely in the sidelines while humans and a few dwarves and hobbits fight the forces of evil, Warhammer high elves used to have colonies around the world but after repeated wars with Chaos, dwarves, dark elves, and more Chaos, they've largely given up on that stuff and hang around in their homeland unless somebody threathens them. Warcraft elves had a huge empire that got blown up when demons invaded and nearly destroyed the world. Dragon Age elf empire got beaten by the human empire. Etc.

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Because this isn't a forced meme. It's just a thread about elves.

There's no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive. No one's spamming this in order to make it the next EPICMEMEXD!, nor are they doing it just to piss off people.

And, while you can easily have a discussion without spamming bad photoshops, this thread is kind of what it is. You can't exactly have an elf thread without elves, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to discuss a fantasy race.

Make sense?
Now, stop drawing attention to that shitty spam already.

You kind of need those mods, because Skyrim's default face are fucking hideous.

I see your point.

I'm having an elven empire in my setting so that humans are the underdogs. My players will be shown the extent of human potential and that they are destined to rule. Though their rule will be rocky.

I'm thinking of
Elves - Roman Empire
Humans - Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, et cetera

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3.5 game that turned 5e after the first GM quit when he couldn't take my bants and the new guy took over.

He was also not very elven in the traditional "stuck up asshole" sense, since being raised by a ranger and druid with the motto "Nature will kill you. I'm nicer nature, learn to tough it out" gave typical elven pride and demoralization a bad taste in his mouth. Most of the time he's just a naive idiot that knows about nature and can make a sane parallel to it at the negotiations table. That's not to say that he's lost his elven nature of being "that guy that you hate but all his points are correct", which shows just about any time he talks to another elf or just anyone that thinks they're superior/a jackass. He just actively tries to be extremely friendly because he doesn't like being a jerk, mostly for the reasons of "making people not like you usually makes them not be willing to assist" and "it feels too good to be a douchebag, and I don't want to get addicted to the feeling".

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A fucking LEAF.

Do you think Elves have to shave?

I always played them as pretty much China with super empires randomly popping up.
>Massive bureaucracy
>Emperor is a demi god to his people and has hordes of concubines and sons vying for power
>Elves regularly field armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands, absolutely massive population
As for the latter part
>Elf Emperor whose a military genius akin to Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great, or Genghis Khan
>Has centuries to conquer before they die
>If a human king is actually a military genius who can defeat them they can just outlive them and invade when they die
>Every 3000 years or so an elf emperor conquers 90% of the world before he dies
>Only thing keeping Elves from maintaining their world conquest or conquering the world more frequently is internal politics.

I remember reading somewhere that they are practically hairless except for the head.

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Not any worse than Christianity at the time with the wars against the Saxons, Pomeranians, Prussians, and Lithuanians, as well as forced conversions against various pagan Norse and Saxons before the Saxon wars ever happened.

Besides Muslims were mostly cool as long as you paid your extra infidel tax.

1) Excuse me threads rely on ignoring what is blatantly stated to get (you)s

2) Excuse me threads, despite willfully avoiding answers to their questions, give the air of someone who is giving a masterful evisceration of the subject

3) It's a /tv/ waste product. Yes, even /tv/ rejects this shit.

4) This is a general thread about a subject that touches on the interests for the vast majority of the board

5) What the fuck meme do you think this is forcing, you colossal retard?

Veeky Forums is too stupid and uptight that they only want stuff like elf in tree threads. It's an autistic paradox.

>Purposely ask retarded and obvious question
vs.
>Lets talk about a race that is very common in fantasy

You might have had a point had OP said something like "Why would you ever use elves in your setting? They are just pointy eared humans."

There was some Japanese thing where everything was not!europe and Elves occupied the exact same role as Arabs, right down to holding the holy land.
Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Might be Zero no Tsukaima you're thinking about, but I could be wrong.

Forgot to change back to user. Whoops.

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This question doesn't deserve it's own thread. Does anyone have a source on description of elf tits? Here me out, I'm asking because not only once I argued that elves should have smaller or at least modest boobs compared to humans, whenever the very pornography and japanese cow tits elves show up, because they are always described as thin, slender and harder to pin down things like graceful and lithe, which in my opinion doesn't support them dragging some giant funbags around.

Western elves are generally slender with smaller tits, yes.
For Japan, elves = exotic, and big tits are also exotic.

Honestly, if it's your setting, do whatever the fuck you like.

Actually the reason they stopped being immortal is because the fade was locked out of reality behind the veil so the world stopped being as magical.

>For Japan, elves = exotic, and big tits are also exotic
That doesn't make it much sense when the usual anime girl has big tits.

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Anime girls also tend to brightly-coloured hair and eyes, and pale skin, though.

Can't think of any "respectable" source, although I'm sure if I'd dig through all of Tolkien's work I could find at least one description of a female elf detailed enough to give you at least basic idea of their proportions.

Personally, I also don't think huge tits really fit elves, since as mentioned they're typically describe as very slender. On the other hand, they're usually described as very attractive looking and most men want at least some kind of boobs on women.

Tolkien usually doesn't spend much time talking about the looks of his characters and fantasy races, as far as I remember. I also spend some time, on the internet though, searching for descritions of his elves and didn't find anything good.

Mind you I don't think they should be necessarily DFCs. My problem with cowtits elves is that their beauty is supposed to be more than just secondary sexual characteristics, otherworldy, coming from the way they move, talk, often with a very melodic voice. Big tits overshadow this in my opinion.

They're are two named elves in Tolkien that have beards, they can only grow beards during their "third cycle of life" (Tolkien never explained what the fuck that meant), Mahtan being the exception and Cirdan is old as shit.

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He does describe Legolas' appearance at one point at least, making it veyr obvious that LotR elves aren't like your typical weedy -Con generic fantasy elves. Legolas is described as muscular even as he is lithe, and is very strong and tough, characteristics that are explictly mentioned to be typical for elves.

This was kinda a reaction because everyone assumed the opposite, for reasons I don't know. He basically got a bit butthurt, but he didn't describe him like this in the book.

>everyone assumed the opposite, for reasons I don't know
I'm not sure where the idea of elves being physically weaker than humans comes from either. The generic fantasy elf is at least indirectly based on the way elves are described in Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien elves are pretty much pointy-eared superhumans who genuinely are better than you at most everything (both in good and bad ways; they might be stronger, smarter, faster, and more handsome than you, but when they fuck up they tend to fuck up on a far larger scale than mere humans, and god help everybody when an elf swears a blood oath about getting back some shiny stones).

I think DnD desciption of elves having less constitution than humans might have something to do with it (a lot of generic fantasy elves are probably more based on things inspired by Tolkien, like DnD, rather than Tolkien directly), but I'm not sure where they go it. Might have been a purely game balance reason, as the elf character was originally a hybrid martial/magic user, and making them somewhat more fragile than the (human) fighter would have been a tradeoff for being able to use spells as well as fight in melee.
In general RPG elves are probably weaker than humans due to race balance, so elves aren't better than everybody else at everything. Since being very agile, keen-sensed and intelligent are all very typical elf traits, strength and toughness are about all you have where you can make elves worse than average while still being obviously elf-like.

>I'm not sure where the idea of elves being physically weaker than humans comes from either
I read somewhere that it comes from DnD who needed to balance gameplay and therefore made Elves physically weaker

I would love to go back to the fighter/mage hybrid, it suits them very well in my opinion and the lack of CON can be balanced through magic.
>a lot of generic fantasy elves are probably more based on things inspired by Tolkien, like DnD, rather than Tolkien directly
You are absolutely right on this, Gygax may deny this, but they based the elves more or less on Legolas and the Sindarin only. We would probably have a lot more Warhammer High Elves like elves if they would have based them on the Noldor for instance.

And yet, for instance in 2ed, wood elves have - 2 INT, but +2 DEX, average STR and CON, which makes them physically superior to humans.

>I would love to go back to the fighter/mage hybrid, it suits them very well in my opinion and the lack of CON can be balanced through magic.
That's what I'm trying to do with my ranger, get enough martial power to not die if caught in a brawl, then spec into casting for a bit of utility usefulness when the class progression starts losing its "oomf".

Multiclassing is your friend. Elves are not supposed to overspecialize, but try to experience and learn all kinds of different things. At least this is something that I heard about faerun elves.

If humans lived as long as elves, what kind of ramifications would that realistically have on the world?

Change; political, economic, cultural, and even scientific, would happen much more slowly. People in power would stay in power. If they still bred as fast as we naturally do, probably lots of wars too.

I wouldn't call them humans anymore.

This elf-thing keeps coming back-back. Take-seize it, quick-quick.

That would be him. Basically the elf responsible for dooming the world.

To be fair, he didn't start the war.

The dwarves did when their ambassador started spitting and screaming at the king he was supposed to be addressing.

This is how I'd do elves, along with a elven and human allaiance

Credit goes to the author of this stoy. What you think?

Ou know how empires only do well while they're expanding and shrink when they don't grow?

Now imagine every member of your society knowing they'd live to see the end of the Empire. How much traction do you think an Alexander or temujin would get?

everyone meet my Level 1 Alchemist

Currently getting ready for a pathfinder campaign and I'm playing an elf cleric that was raised in human lands and became an apprentice blacksmith. Still working out story details like like elves in this setting are native american-esque and and wear masks signifying their personality and growth as well as why he still follows those traditions. Other then that I think I'm gonna have fun with him.

Does he or does he not make cookie bombs? Or at least cookies laced with potion ingredients or the potion itself?

You should read up on Irish mythology user, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatha_Dé_Danann.

The Tuatha Dé Danann were demigod elves that ruled over Ireland before being forced into hiding by the human Milesians that invaded Ireland by way of Spain.

I also recommend watching Hellboy 2

I've already gotten him up to level 10 so he can already conceivably survive on his own like a good ranger, going to give it a level or two more to finalize some of the good class features before speccing into transfiguration wizard to gish out, pick up some utility, and get a few character-specific fluff spells. Already got a character that does extra damage if the enemy isn't at full health, I can be lenient with spell choices.
I think the cookies would be a sort of stabilizing agent, like dynamite and nitroglycerin. When you eat the cookies, the digestion breaks it down, the ingredients combine with the stomach acid, and the effects are bestowed on the consumer in a delayed fashion, as opposed to the instant effects of potions.

Google Project Aunt Jemimah.

Edible explosive flour. Still useable as explosive after being cooked into pancakes, etc.