The Eladrin of the D&D Multiverse

Jeremy Crawford: So the Eladrin are a family of elves that are native to fey wild and many people often wonder, well, how did they connect to other types of elves and more importantly, why is it that we so often say, including in the Player's Handbook, that all elves have fey ancestry? So all of that story is tangled up and it goes way back to the origin on the elves, which is something we dig into in some nice depth in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. That's where we finally lay out for you where do all of these different families of elves come from? How were they created at the beginning of time? Of course, as we delve into that, we then go specifically to this question of the Eladrin. So in the beginning, when Corellon gave rise to the other elves, and I use those words carefully because the elves are, in a way, offshoots of Corellon. One of the myths is that when Gruumsh stabbed Corellon, blood spurted out and elves rose up and there are other myths as well.

But what is common to all of the stories is that elves are literally the offspring of a god and Corellon is this glorious being of changeable nature. It's said that Corellon can appear in any form and not just any humanoid form, but might appear as a golden waterfall or a beautiful fawn, a unicorn, a cloud, a rainbow and it is said that at the beginning of time, all elves shared this mutable nature and they were able to cavort around the D&D multiverse as these fey beings experiencing everything, going in any environment, whether in the sky or below the sea and really feeling at home anywhere because of their divine heritage. Now Eladrin came about when the elves were fractured. Now here, I'll have to go in a little bit of the story of the Drow. But we can talk about the Drow in greater depth in a different video.

Lolth, who was one of the other elven gods, looked at the changeable nature of the elves and said, "This is fine and all. We have this playful existence. But what if we wanted the things to call our own, bodies to call our own, kingdoms to call our own?" The elves heard her call and this is a bit of the elf story that comes into greater focus in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, that it wasn't just the Drow who listen to Lolth. All of the elves did because they realized that as glorious as their existence was, they were really the children of an absent parent. Corellon, in a way, was no more attentive to them than the wind would be or the pond that they slept by, certainly a beautiful god, certainly lovable for the divine glory that surrounded Corellon, but not a god who would nurture you and these semi-divine beings wanted to be seen and then also wanted to have power and to have possession and to have bodies to call their own. So they listen to Lolth and they began to have fixed forms. They began to adopt particular forms, depending on various preferences.

So this is how we started to see the rise of things like sea elves, wood elves, etc. Well, the story goes that the elves realized that Lolth was going to betray Corellon and actually seek to become the chief god of the elves in Corellon's place and so the elves balked. They had a doubt and many of them, listening to the other elven gods, who basically said, "We must be faithful to our parent," they pulled back and so it was only the Drow who remained faithful to Lolth and when the elves were fractured, they went off with her into the darkness. But here's the thing. The other elves, because of their momentary betrayal of Corellon, they were all cast out. Corellon in sorrow pushed all of the elves away from his divine presence and they began to become mortal and they began to be trapped in those fixed forms that they started to adopt and then they were also cast out from Arvandor, which was the divine realm specifically that belonged to the elves.

So when those first elves were cast away and began to lose some of their divinity, the first place that they went to was the fey wild and so these fey beings went to this place that reminded them a bit of home. Like Arvandor, the fey wild is a place of deep emotion, of splendid beauty, of great extremes, where the colors are the brightest versions of the colors, where the darkness is the darkest version of darkness and so for a long time, the fey wild was the new home of the elves as many of them began to transition from being these divine fey beings into being humanoids and then over the millennia, they began to scatter and they left from the fey wild, which is connect sometimes directly and other times indirectly to nearly every world in the D&D multiverse. They began to spread out and began to appear in all of the worlds of the multiverse, except some of them stayed and those are the Eladrin. The Eladrin are the elves who arrived in the feywild when they were first cast away from Corellon and decided, "We're going to keep this as our home."

Because they have stayed there longer than any of the other elves, the fey magic of the fey wild has seeped into them and has begun to shape them because remember, in their original form, elves were mutable and so you put an elf that is the child of this magical being into a place that is a riot of magic. If they're there enough centuries, that magic begins to shape them and so the Eladrin bare the mark of the fey wild upon them, upon their very bodies. They can change with the seasons, not just seasons in the fey wild, but seasons governed by their own moods. In the book, it's now possible to play sort of a more full fledged version of the Eladrin. We did an experimental version in the Dungeon Master's Guide, simply as a, "Here's an example of what an Eladrin might look like." Well, in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, we give you sort of the fully fleshed out version of the Eladrin that you can play and that version, each day when you finish a long rest, you have the option to change which season you're associated with.

That season association can effect of some of your fey magic, specifically it has a little kicker that it adds to your fey step. Eladrin have this fey step ability, which they can use to teleport around and if you are currently associated with the season of winter, your fey step does something different from an Eladrin who's currently associated with the season of autumn. Now we previewed a version of the Eladrin in Unearthed Arcana and that is not actually how any of this worked. Based on the play test feedback, we actually redesigned the Eladrin so that the season association specifically flavored your fey step and some of them are combat related and some of them are non-combat related. One of the options is you teleport and the fey magic of it actually charms people around you, whereas the summer one, which is associated with fire, that one deals damage to people around you when you fey step. So there are some interesting options.

We also changed things so that rather than being able to change your season sort of on a dime, it's now at the end of a long rest so that people could sink their teeth into roleplaying a particular season longer. We also point out in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes that some Eladrin never change their season. Some Eladrin are winter Eladrin, for instance, their entire lives. So it's really up to the player of an Eladrin to decide are they changing seasons based on their mood or do they feel a strong allegiance to a particular season and to a particular arch fey associated with that season? Now some people ask, "What about the Eladrin that in previous editions, especially back in second edition, who were in Arvandor and were with the elven gods and were considered celestials?" Well, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes actually delves into that part of the story also. What we explain is that there are certain Eladrin who over the millennia have been so saturated by the magic of the fey wild that they have actually reverted to being fey.

So over the years, there have been special Eladrin, sometimes called the Gale and others that fully embody the power of a particular season and the story is they have become so splendid and so powerful that the elven gods have looked at them and said essentially, "You're so glorious, we want you to come home," and so those Eladrin have been given the grace of returning to Arvandor and dwelling among the elven gods. Sometimes because they're kind of amusing, but also because in other cases, the gods actually want their company and so what we reveal in the book is that some Eladrin are humanoid and other are fully fey because again, others have drunk so deeply from the magic of the fey wild that they have been transformed like the original elves that could originally transform and so really in sort of summary, you can imagine Eladrin as being, pardon me, the most like the original elves in having this mutability, this power to be able to change your association with the season, which not only gives you certain magical abilities, but even can alter your appearance.

If you change to autumn, for instance, your hair might take on autumnal colors. Your skin color might change. If you change to winter, you might have a blueish complexion. You might even have some icicles in your hair because, again, you are a creature of magic and you are like the first elves back before they were cast out and lost most of their divine nature.

Todd Kenreck: That's perfect. Why do you like the Eladrin?

Jeremy Crawford: I really like Eladrin because of how otherworldly they are. They really embody the side to elves that appeals to many people who are drawn to play elves and many, many people like to play elves. We know looking at player statistics, in some ways, Eladrin are like the elfiest of the elves because, again, of that otherworldly-ness, because, in a way, they wear their magic on their sleeve. We often have said over the decades in D&D that elves are a people of magic. It's often said they make great wizards and they have beautiful cities that sometimes defy physics. You look at it and it's like, "Oh, clearly, they were only able to build this thing because of magic." In the Forgotten Realms, they are known with the mythals to have these mighty magical works that survive for thousands of years. Yet, despite saying all that, often, it's easy for an elf to basically come across as a very refined human with pointed ears and so one of the things I like about Eladrin is there is no mistaking that these are a people of magic who are descended from a god because they can teleport around.

They look like a fey being. You can imagine walking in a fairy tale, into a strange snow-filled glade with this beautiful elven being playing his harp and think, "Oh, I might be beguiled by him and beware of any bargain he tries to make with me," and so Eladrin in a way straddle the line, somewhat between what we normally think of as a player character and what we might think of as a monster. They're starting to drift over towards creatures like satyrs and dryads. They're, in many ways, like Drow and Shadar-kai in this way that also are kind of on the line. You can play them. But they're less recognizably human than some of our other playable species. You look at a halfling, for instance and certainly, they are different from human. But they have many characteristics like humans and even many high elves and wood elves, their personalities are a bit different. Living for centuries certainly gives them a psychology that is different from other folk.

But as soon as you get, again, get to folk like Eladrin, Drow and Shadar-kai, then you really start getting into the realm of the truly alien and that's part of what I like about them because they, again, they are on the sort of beautiful, vibrant side of that alien spectrum and I think there's a lot of juicy roleplaying opportunities there and storytelling opportunities.