Race Elves

The long-lived elves are children of the natural world, similar in many superficial ways to fey creatures, though with key differences. While fey are truly linked to the flora and fauna of their homes, existing as the nearly immortal voices and guardians of the wilderness, elves are instead mortals who are in tune with the natural world around them.

Elves seek to live in balance with the wild and understand it better than most other mortals. Some of this understanding is mystical, but an equal part comes from the elves’ long lifespans, which in turn gives them long-ranging outlooks. Elves can expect to remain active in the same locale for centuries. By necessity, they must learn to maintain sustainable lifestyles, and this is most easily done when they work with nature, rather than attempting to bend it to their will.

However, their links to nature are not entirely driven by pragmatism. Elves’ bodies slowly change over time, taking on a physical representation of their mental and spiritual states, and those who dwell in a region for a long period of time find themselves physically adapting to match their surroundings, most noticeably taking on coloration that reflects the local environment.

Elves value their privacy and traditions, and while they are often slow to make friends at both the personal and national levels, once an outsider is accepted as a comrade, the resulting alliances can last for generations. Elves take great joy in forging alliances with races that share or exceed their long lifetimes, and often work to befriend dragons, outsiders, and fey. Those elves who spend their lives among the short-lived races, on the other hand, often develop a skewed perception of mortality and become morose, the result of watching wave after wave of companions age and die before their eyes.

Physical Description: Generally taller than humans, elves possess a graceful, slender physique that is accentuated by their long, pointed ears. It is a mistake, however, to consider them weak or feeble, as the thin limbs of an elf can contain surprising power. Their eyes are wide and almond-shaped, and filled with large, vibrantly colored pupils.

The coloration of elves as a whole varies wildly, and is much more diverse than that of human populations. However, as their coloration often matches their surroundings, the elves of a single community may appear quite similar. Forest-dwelling elves often have variations of green, brown, and tan in their hair, eye, and even skin tones.

While elven clothing often plays off the beauty of the natural world, those elves who live in cities tend to bedeck themselves in the latest fashions. Where city-dwelling elves encounter other urbanites, the elves are often fashion trendsetters.

Society: Many elves feel a bond with nature and strive to live in harmony with the natural world. Although, like most, elves prefer bountiful lands where resources are plentiful, when driven to live in harsher climates, they work hard to protect and shepherd the region’s bounty, and learn how to maximize the benefit they receive from what little can be harvested.

When they can carve out a sustainable, reliable life in deserts and wastelands, they take pride as a society in the accomplishment. While this can make them excellent guides to outsiders they befriend who must travel through such lands, their disdain of those who have not learned to live off the scant land as they have makes such friends rare.

Elves have an innate gift for craftsmanship and artistry, especially when working in wood, bone, ivory, or leather. Most, however, find manipulating earth and stone to be distasteful, and prefer to avoid forging, stonework, and pottery. When such work must be done within a community, a few elves may find themselves drawn to it, but regardless of their craftsmanship, such “dirt-wrights” are generally seen by other elves as being a bit off. In the most insular of elven societies, they may even be treated as lower class.

Elves also have an appreciation for the written word, magic, and painstaking research. Their naturally keen minds and senses, combined with their inborn patience, make them particularly suited to wizardry. Arcane research and accomplishment are seen as both practical goals, in line with being a soldier or architect, and artistic endeavors as great as poetry or sculpture. Within elven society, wizards are held in extremely high regard as masters of an art both powerful and aesthetically valued. Other spellcasters are not disdained, but do not gain the praise lavished upon elven wizards.

Relations: Elves are prone to dismissing other races, writing them off as rash and impulsive, yet on an individual level, they are excellent judges of character. In many cases an elf will come to value a specific member of another race, seeing that individual as deserving and respectable, while still dismissing the race as a whole. If called on this behavior, the elf often doesn’t understand why his “special friend” is upset the elf has noticed the friend is “so much better than the rest of his kind.” Even elves who see such prejudice for what it is must constantly watch themselves to prevent such views from coloring their thinking.

Elves are not foolish enough, however, to dismiss all aspects of other races and cultures. An elf might not want a dwarf neighbor, but would be the first to acknowledge dwarves’ skill at smithing and their tenacity in facing orc threats. Elves regard gnomes as strange (and sometimes dangerous) curiosities, but regard their magical talent as being worthy of praise and respect.

Halflings are often viewed with a measure of pity, for these small folk seem to the elves to be adrift, without a traditional home. Elves are fascinated with humans, who seem to live in a few short years as full a life as an elf manages in centuries. In fact, many elves become infatuated with humans, as evidenced by the number of half-elves in the world. Elves have difficulty accepting crossbreeds of any sort, however, and usually disown such offspring. They similarly regard half-orcs with distrust and suspicion, assuming they possess the worst aspects of orc and human personalities.

Alignment and Religion: Elves are emotional and capricious, yet value kindness and beauty. Most elves are chaotic good, wishing all creatures to be safe and happy, but unwilling to sacrifice personal freedom or choice to accomplish such goals. They prefer deities who share their love of the mystic qualities of the world.

Adventurers: Many elves embark on adventures out of a desire to explore the world, leaving their secluded realms to reclaim forgotten elven magic or search out lost kingdoms established millennia ago by their ancestors. This need to see a wider world is accepted by their societies as a natural part of becoming mature and experienced individuals. Such elves are expected to return in some few decades and take up lives in their homelands once more, enriched both in treasure and in worldview.

For those elves raised among humans, however, life within their homes—watching friends and family swiftly age and die—is often stifling, and the ephemeral and unfettered life of an adventurer holds a natural appeal. Elves generally eschew melee because of their relative frailty, preferring instead to engage enemies at range.

Most see combat as unpleasant even when needful, and prefer it be done as quickly as possible, preferably without getting close enough to smell their foes. This preference for making war at a distance, coupled with their natural accuracy and grasp of the arcane, encourages elves to pursue classes such as wizards and rangers.

Male Names: Caladrel, Heldalel, Lanliss, Meirdrarel, Seldlon, Talathel, Variel, Zordlon.

Female Names: Amrunelara, Dardlara, Faunra, Jathal, Merisiel, Oparal, Soumral, Tessara, Yalandlara.

Adulthood	Intuitive1	Self-Taught2	Trained3
110 years	+4d6 years (114 – 134 years)	+6d6 years (116 – 146 years)	+10d6 years (120 – 170 years)

¹ This category includes barbarians, oracles, rogues, and sorcerers.
² This category includes bards, cavaliers, fighters, gunslingers, paladins, rangers, summoners, and witches.
³ This category includes alchemists, clerics, druids, inquisitors, magi, monks, and wizards.

Gender	Base Height	Height Modifier	Base Weight	Weight Modifier
Male	5 ft. 4 in.	+2d8 in. (5 ft. 6 in. – 6 ft. 8 in.)	110 lbs.	+(2d8×3 lbs.) (116 – 158 lbs.)
Female	5 ft. 4 in.	+2d6 in. (5 ft. 6 in. – 6 ft. 4 in.)	90 lbs.	+(2d6×3 lbs.) (96 – 126 lbs.)

Relics & Rituals: Excalibur

© 2004 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. Distributed for Sword and Sorcery Studios by White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

By Evan Jamieson, Lizard, Aaron Rosenberg, Christina Stiles and Relics & Rituals: Excalibur team

As near human,

….Elves maintain woodland kingdoms that are none the less recognizable and comprehensible to man. There is a touch of magic in all they do, but only a touch they bleed as red as any mortal man when wounded, and while their heraldry tends to leaf patterns rather than colored geometry, their knights are easily identified.

There is an Elf King to whom all the Elf-Princes swear fealty, and a grand tourney is held in a huge clearing in the deepest woods each year, to which the very bravest of human knights, and the Knights of the High King’s Table, are always invited. During these fairs, much elven mead is consumed, leading many otherwise great knights to miss the tourney due to being face down, and many fair elvenmaids and squires use their charms to ensnare a human, leading to half-elven bastards who invariably have intriguing destinies.

The winner of the tourney, each year, is invited to join the Table of the High King, and thus, several of those seated at the table wear armor of golden leaves and bear swords of unearthly fineness.

As the otherworldly,

……Elves are akin to the description above, but…… The elves live in kingdoms of light and music, and a human cannot easily touch, or even see, their houses. Elvish mead does not merely put a hearty knight down for a few hours; it enchants and bewitches him, filling his head with strange visions and, like as not, drives him mad.

The grand tourney of the elves does not include humans or any other race by default, but a human knight, alone except for his entourage and paramour, may dare to challenge for his right to entry. There are no elves at the High Kings table and if an elven knight is seen riding from the deep woods into human lands it is an ill omen.

Game Rules: Otherworldly elves gain the ability to cast prestidigitation 1 time/ day, at will.

They are deeply imbued with magic, and use it casually for trivial tasks.

Standard Racial Traits

• Ability Score Modifiers: Elves are nimble, both in body and mind, but their form is frail. They gain +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, and –2 Constitution.
• Size: Elves are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
• Type: Elves are Humanoids with the elf subtype.
• Base Speed: Elves have a base speed of 30 feet.
• 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. See the Linguistics skill page for more information about these languages.

DEFENSE RACIAL TRAITS

• Elven Immunities: Elves are immune to magic sleep effects and gain a +2 racial saving throw bonus against enchantment spells and effects.

FEAT AND SKILL RACIAL TRAITS

• Keen Senses: Elves receive a +2 racial bonus on Perception checks.

MAGICAL RACIAL TRAITS

• 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.

OFFENSE RACIAL TRAITS

• 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.

SENSES RACIAL TRAITS

• Low-Light Vision: Elves can see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light.

Racial Subtypes

You can combine various alternate racial traits above to create subraces or variant races, such as the following:

• Arctic Elf: These elves were born and raised in the frozen lands of the far north or south, and have dealt with freezing deserts, nights that last for weeks, and the horrors that roam the cold terrain. These elves have the darkvision, desert runner, and elemental resistance alternate racial traits.
• Dusk Elf: Rather than being tied to the terrain around them, some elves are linked to the night itself. Though not tied to demon worship and evil as drow are, these elves are similarly attuned to the magical concepts of darkness and shadow. These elves have the arcane focus, darkvision, dreamspeaker, and silent hunter alternate racial traits.
• Savage Elf: In lands where every day is a constant struggle to survive and the niceties of civilization are rare, elves adapt to depend on swift strikes and lifelong vigilance to keep their families alive. These elves have the eternal grudge and fleet-footed alternate racial traits.
• Tower Elf: Some elven institutions of magical learning date back centuries, and entire clans of elves have lived for generations as caretakers, students, and instructors of these self-sufficient schools of wizardry. These elves have the arcane focus and urbanite alternate racial traits.

Aging Effects

Subrace	Adulthood	Middle Age	Old	Venerable	Maximum Age
High elf	110 years	175 years	263 years	350 years	+4d% years
Dark elf	80 years	140 years	210 years	280 years	+3d% years
Grey elf	120 years	210 years	315 years	420 years	+5d% years
Mist elf	140 years	230 years	345 years	460 years	+5d% years
Sea elf	100 years	160 years	240 years	320 years	+3d% years
Sky elf	90 years	150 years	225 years	300 years	+3d% years
Wanderer elf	105 years	170 years	255 years	340 years	+4d% years
Wild elf	100 years	160 years	240 years	320 years	+4d% years
Wood elf	105 years	170 years	255 years	340 years	+4d% years

Random Height and Weight (male / female)

Subrace	Base Height	Height Modifier	Base Weight	Weight Modifier
High elf	4′ 5″/ 4′ 5″	+2d6	85 lb. / 80 lb.	x (1d6) lb.
Dark elf	4′ / 4′ 5″	+2d6	75 lb. / 90 lb.	x (1d6) lb.
Grey elf	4′ 10″ / 4′ 5″	+2d8	80 lb. / 70 lb.	x (1d6) lb.
Mist elf	4′ 10″ / 4′ 5″	+2d8	100 lb. / 95 lb	x (2d4) lb.
Sea elf	4’/ 4′	+2d4	80 lb. / 70 lb.	x (2d4) lb.
Sky elf	4′ 10″ / 4′ 7″	+2d8	75 lb. / 70 lb.*	x (1d6) lb.
Wanderer elf	4′ 7″ / 4′ 5″	+2d8	90 lb. / 85 lb.	x (2d4) lb.
Wild elf	4′ 3″ / 4′ 3″	+2d4	85 lb. / 80 lb.	x (2d4) lb.
Wood elf	4′ 5″ / 4′ 5″	+2d8	90 lb. / 85 lb.	x (2d4) lb.

* weight without wings. The wings weigh half as much as the elf.