I hadn't really thought about it, but I agree that Elves are generally overdone by WotC. They get much more attention than most other races and I can completely understand why someone can get irritated by this.
People want to feel that their character choices can be played out. When one race has a dozen or more sub-races and another has 3 or less, that can make it more difficult for them to build their own character concept out. More variety available in the written rules makes it easier to choose something which fits your character concept, or even to find something around which to build a character concept. It is easier to build an individualised character concept around an Elf than it is around a Dwarf, for instance, because it is easier to find a sub-race which is closer to what you initially wanted in the first place.
That said, at least they are not quite as bad, in terms of favouritism, as Wizards....
I believe folks just like adjusting elves to suit their own vision. It seems Mountain and Hill Dwarves work fine, along with Druegar. Only one or two halflings seem to cover everything folks want. But for some reason, elves have to come in more flavors.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
As for the 'reason elves haven't taken over everything', there are several reasons. First, they likely lack the resources. Second, they are chaotic good, and they value others' freedom as much as their own. Second, they are relatively reclusive and don't necessarily want to deal with all manner of other people all the time. Third, it is kind of hard to get a lot of people to agree on one thing, and given how individualistic elves are in particular, even someone who they respected might lose respect if they suggested something like that. Finally, they would gain little, and many lives would be lost. They don't need anything that they could get from world domination that they couldn't get by less violent means.
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Establish boundaries. And if anyone crosses them, speak up. If they don’t listen, there’s always cloudkill …
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Make up your mind. Is it not about the movies? Or is it all about certain scenes that only happened in the movies?
And as for the Elves being isolationist, EVERYONE is isolationist and has to be prodded into action. The Rohirrim are isolationist because they are tricked into inaction. The Elves are in ever reducing numbers and also feel under siege. Gondor is under literal siege, its defences constantly being tested. The Ents are ruddy trees and think like trees, not thinking much beyond their own forest and only rise up because their forest is being clear cut. The Dwarves are isolationist because they picked a fight with a God and lost most of their numbers and their primary home over it. They also lost a secondary home to a Dragon (although that is regained in The Hobbit).
The hobbits only contribute because a God showed up and personally asked one of them to be a thief (without even any explanation why a thief would be needed).
This may come as a shock but some of us grew up with the books, long before the movies. This game that we are talking about now is a quarter century older than the first movie in Peter Jackson's trilogy.
Also if it is all about the movie, why aren't Dwarves more popular? Also please explain where in Tolkien's writings you will find Drow (pattered vaguely after Norse mythology, actually) or Sea Elves or Ravenloft Elves`? There are a lot of depictions of Elves outside of LoTR, which is far more likely the explanation for the wider variety of Elves.
Sure, but my point is not about the movies, really. It's about the depiction of elves in LotR and the Hobbit, movie or book. In fact, the movies somewhat mitigate the issue because they invented an elf legion for the Helm's Deep battle, and invented a fight between Elrond and some Nazgul. Strip Orlando Bloom from my comment and it's still true. The vast majority of people who have read LotR and The Hobbit will likely never attempt the Silmarillion. As a result, those books will be more influential in the popular conception of elves.
You're still not reading my posts. The comment about Orlando Bloom was just tongue-in-cheek. I literally said that the comment would apply without him because the LotR books and movies both portray elves in a boring way in the comment you quoted. I mentioned the scenes in the movies to underscore my point that the books portrayed the elves poorly.
Yeah everybody is isolationist, but the Rohirrim, ents, etc. still fought when prompted. Theoden and the Rohirrim responded to the red arrow despite having had his land ruined. The ents fought to avenge their forest. The hobbits could all have returned to the Shire. The elves are the ones who were prompted and decided to just peace out to Valenor.
I won't really discuss the dwarves because it's off-topic, but the dwarves are at least portrayed as interesting, flaws and all.
Second, they are chaotic good, and they value others' freedom as much as their own.
If elves ARE chaotic good, how did the Drow come to exist? It may be that elves are generally CG, or in average CG, but they cannot be (or at least are highly unlikely to be) ALL CG without exception.
That's without getting into debate over whether a society could actually form made up of only chaotic individuals.
This is precisely the kind of thing I dislike about the assignment system. It encourages thinking in absolutes, and discourages thinking about the individual (let alone thinking about things from the perspective of another person). If elves have free will, it is highly unlikely that all will be of the same alignment. Some will be cruel, some will want to aid society and follow rules...
This is the same as thinking that all Orcs or Goblins are evil. You cannot make that assumption if they have free will, and if they don't have free will then can they really be evil?
This is the same as thinking that all Orcs or Goblins are evil. You cannot make that assumption if they have free will, and if they don't have free will then can they really be evil?
If I may, 5e has a definite take on this: "The evil deities who created other races, though, made those races to serve them. Those races have strong inborn tendencies that match the nature of their gods. Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc gods, and are thus inclined toward evil. Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life. (Even half-orcs feel the lingering pull of the orc god’s influence.)"
You might not like it, but it is consistent. They have less free will (they have it but they feel the influence, so it's actually not bad in terms of roleplay and very well integrated in the genre book / movies), and because their gods are evil, they are pushed into committing evil acts with evil intent (corruption / influence / The One Ring / Sauron / etc.), and are therefore evil. But you can still play a NG orc struggling against the influence of his gods (which may or may not be part of his nature).
I know it's not fair that all races are not equal in this respect, but this is a fantasy game, and so much of the genre is based on this that a game built to simulate that genre has to have this kind of bias to be faithful.
Again, I find this reasoning.... Problematic.
I can understand the idea of "evil societies", in which the majority of the population commit and/or condone acts which the outside world would consider evil (human/same species sacrifices, slavery, genocide etc). That is the way I see, for instance, Sauron: He has built up a society around him full of people who commit, accept and condone his "evil" acts. This includes humans. It doesn't mean that the humans in his society are fundamentally evil: They probably view their own actions as Good (which is also likely the case with Sauron).
When it comes to "that's how their God made them"... Many societies and religions have their creation myths. That doesn't mean they are true. Orcs, and even the rest of society, may believe that some big bad God created them, but we have no reason to trust that any more than we can that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world while drunk one day. I view the religious beliefs listed in the game manuals as describing what the people believe, but that doesn't make them hard, indisputable facts.
I can understand that a race/species whose society admires strength and violence may tend towards acts which would be considered evil by most other societies. It also makes sense that they would worship a deity which valued strength and violence, whether that was real or one made up by the society. It would also make a lot of sense in such a society that the vast majority would be strong and violent, because those who were not would be unlikely to survive. And, given all of this, it would make sense that most other people in the world would consider the race to be "naturally evil", but that doesn't make it true. It also doesn't mean that the race themselves think of their actions as evil.
Edit: This reasoning also holds for Elves. They are a society who values intellectual pursuits, caring for others etc, so it makes sense that most of their people are Good. Those who don't follow that path would be considered criminals etc, and bad behaviour would be trained out of most. However, obviously some did not agree with this, because some of the race "followed an evil god" and became the Drow.
When it comes to "that's how their God made them"... Many societies and religions have their creation myths. That doesn't mean they are true. Orcs, and even the rest of society, may believe that some big bad God created them, but we have no reason to trust that any more than we can that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world while drunk one day. I view the religious beliefs listed in the game manuals as describing what the people believe, but that doesn't make them hard, indisputable facts.
Well of course. It is up to the DM as to the cosmology of their campaign. However in most campaigns, Gods actually do exist. If your DM says that a big bad God made any given thing a certain way, sure you can insist otherwise, but it is not your decision as to what really is the truth in that campaign.
Period.
And if you keep insisting that you know the DM's world better than the DM, you need to find another DM or DM yourself and never play.
I'm not insisting I know another DM's world better than them or telling anybody else how to play their own game. I'm saying how I DM, how I like to play, and how I tend to play my characters.
I have fundamental problems with "This race is good/evil coz their god made them that way", the least of which is that I find it a very lazy and boring concept. I wouldn't normally want to play at a table which insisted on this and made it a fundamental part of the game, but as long as it isn't a big deal in the campaign (one of the major themes or similar) I can do some mental gymnastics around it in a way which doesn't interfere with the DM's world (e.g. I am thinking as my character, whose own personal beliefs say that no creature is fundamentally evil or good).
At a table where I am DM, or where I would normally play, such absolutes are not certain. Some characters in the world may believe in such things, but they are just their beliefs with no way to tell whether they are true or not.
There is another problem with Elves. Their age. If you think about it, anyone playing a young elf is going to have a character around 100-150 years old. At level 1. It gets even worse if you want to play an older elf.
After 100 years (Okay, maybe seventy, I don't expect for elves to be training their toddlers) of doing anything you're probably gonna be pretty darn good at it, especially if your backstory is all about their training. The problem with this, is that most other PCs are around 20-40 but you all have pretty much the same power level.
By rights, elves should start at a higher level, but that would ruin game balance.
Again, I still like elves and I don't really care, it's just something to think about.
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“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
So much kvetching and hate just because something is popular.
The three main elf types (high, wood, dark) are kind of important, because they actually represent different fantasy archetypes.
The high elves are your standard, arrogant, better-than-human elves. These are the types of elves that Tolkein had. In many ways, they're basically just a Witch species.
Wood elves are more of the fae-spirit-of-the-wilderness types. They're thematically related to creatures like nymphs and dryads. Unlike high elves, they're not necessarily arrogant or vain. Lots of people like mixing them up, but they're really different beings.
Dark elves are the Fair Folk. They're the scary fae nobles that kidnap you and force you into slavery, or whimsically ruin your lives, or call a Wild Hunt (aka drow raiding party) to track you down. Even the D&D developers have flat out admitted that the drow are the Fairy Lord archetype.
These three different variatiants of elves have actual narrative weight, as opposed to, say, halflings, who are just small humans. And I'm not being hyperbolic - when Tolkein made the hobbits, he made them as a pun. They're the smallfolk (aka lowborn peasants) literally made into small people. Lorewise, hobbits are actually the descendants of Men; they're people with dwarfism got together and made a community.
Which is a different point to consider. Elves tend to combine everyone under the same umbrella name. Other "races" like humans? How many basically-human-with-a-quirk variations are there, just under different names?
This is why, without even getting in on the details, intellectual and good elves could be corrupted to evil by an outside force, a magical one, a divine one.
And for the orcs, it's not only a distant creation myth that might or might not be true. It's a daily influence of a divine power who bends them to his will and to his evil.
If it takes the "daily influence of a divine power" to keep Orcs evil, I would suggest it would take the same to keep Elves good. If that's true, then obviously that influence can be subverted by another divine being, as it was when the Drow were corrupted.
If this is all the case, the what is to say that there are not groups of Orcs who have been saved/redeemed by another deity and turned to the cause of another alignment, free of the influence of their old evil God. By making the assumption that all Orcs are naturally evil and must struggle against their innate tendencies to be anything else, there is the real possibility that you will come across a group of Good Orcs who have been redeemed by a Good Deity and therefore become innately good, and just slaughter them because "they are all naturally evil".
Exactly. After that, you could into very philosophical questions as to whether a free willed creature is by definition good, evil or neutral, but for me one of the major benefits of the influence of deities - especially in the case of evil - is that it prevents asking questions about inherently evil races, which is always a problem in this day and age, especially when discussing races like orcs or drows. They are not inherently evil, but have been perverted / corrupted.
I think, for me, this whole concept is only ever usable if you dismiss or severely constrain their free will. If an entire race or large group has been corrupted to be evil, or is being actively "redeemed" by a deity which makes them good, then they have lost their free will. If they have to fight against it to do anything else, then they have little free will. This makes them a bad choice for a PC, and not much more than animals following instincts, robots following a program, or slaves following the orders of their master. A Chaotic Good deity would not do this to their followers, even placing a constraint on them to make them tend toward CG would be more control than a CG deity should. Even a CE deity should have trouble with this concept.
In addition I would expect good characters, especially CG, to work to free them from this bondage and allow them their free will back. If a bunch of slaves were being forced to attack you, you may kill some of them to save others, but you would want to get rid of the masters who were forcing this action or break their control. You would not see a bunch of those slaves and instantly say "They are all evil, let's kill them all!"
This brings us back to the concept of good and evil actions in reference to free will. I would say a creature without free will cannot be considered good or evil. It can do things which are good or evil, but it is the deity/whatever which has forced it to do so (just as a good character being controlled and forced to do evil things through something like dominate person doesn't become evil). A creature with heavily constrained free will which has inherrent good/evil/chaotic/lawful tendencies and just follows those tendencies would actually be neutral. Those who fight them, or actively attempt to enhance them, can be said to have another alignment... It all becomes very complex and silly, especially because it is really born of laziness. It is there purely so the reader/player doesn't have to think about killing/trusting a character, and the DM/storyteller doesn't have to do any work on the motivation to do so. "This character is evil and holding a sword, let's kill it!", or "This character is good and telling us about a good thing, so he's telling the truth and we should do it". Yaaaaawn!
I'm pretty sure this has been gone over elsewhere, but here goes: the drow are just as innately good as anyone else, but growing up in a deeply prejudiced and estranged society, that normalizes slavery and worse, is what turns most to evil. Basically, some of the ones that didn't realize how terrible Lolth is were corrupted by her. Later, the other elves threw them out, so the elves that became the first drow taught their kids that other elves were evil.
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Establish boundaries. And if anyone crosses them, speak up. If they don’t listen, there’s always cloudkill …
I've never understood why elves always seen to have more subspecies than other races. It's not just like that in DnD. Other fantasy does it too.
When a long living, slow reproducing species would actually speciate far slower than a faster breeding species like orcs or goblins. Which should be much more rapidly adaptable to new environments as each generation is far shorter.
I've never understood why elves always seen to have more subspecies than other races. It's not just like that in DnD. Other fantasy does it too.
When a long living, slow reproducing species would actually speciate far slower than a faster breeding species like orcs or goblins. Which should be much more rapidly adaptable to new environments as each generation is far shorter.
I think it's generally assumed that there are more factors at play here than IRL speciation. For example, generations of living in the Underdark might infuse you with some qualities of the Underdark. Magical realms affect the creatures within them.
But mostly I think it's just because there are so many versions to pull from in our own culture and they want to cover all those bases.
I've never understood why elves always seen to have more subspecies than other races. It's not just like that in DnD. Other fantasy does it too.
When a long living, slow reproducing species would actually speciate far slower than a faster breeding species like orcs or goblins. Which should be much more rapidly adaptable to new environments as each generation is far shorter.
The subspecies' differentiating qualities are largely cultural rather than genetic. Cultural evolution goes much faster than biological evolution.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hmmmm. Orcs are hotter than elves, eh? I kind of think that's an entirely different thread, but ok. [REDACTED]
“Desitutus ventis, remos adhibe”
When the Winds fail you, row.
I hadn't really thought about it, but I agree that Elves are generally overdone by WotC. They get much more attention than most other races and I can completely understand why someone can get irritated by this.
People want to feel that their character choices can be played out. When one race has a dozen or more sub-races and another has 3 or less, that can make it more difficult for them to build their own character concept out. More variety available in the written rules makes it easier to choose something which fits your character concept, or even to find something around which to build a character concept. It is easier to build an individualised character concept around an Elf than it is around a Dwarf, for instance, because it is easier to find a sub-race which is closer to what you initially wanted in the first place.
That said, at least they are not quite as bad, in terms of favouritism, as Wizards....
I tend to like elves so it doesn't bother me, but would like to see other races get more.
I believe folks just like adjusting elves to suit their own vision. It seems Mountain and Hill Dwarves work fine, along with Druegar. Only one or two halflings seem to cover everything folks want. But for some reason, elves have to come in more flavors.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
As for the 'reason elves haven't taken over everything', there are several reasons. First, they likely lack the resources. Second, they are chaotic good, and they value others' freedom as much as their own. Second, they are relatively reclusive and don't necessarily want to deal with all manner of other people all the time. Third, it is kind of hard to get a lot of people to agree on one thing, and given how individualistic elves are in particular, even someone who they respected might lose respect if they suggested something like that. Finally, they would gain little, and many lives would be lost. They don't need anything that they could get from world domination that they couldn't get by less violent means.
Establish boundaries. And if anyone crosses them, speak up. If they don’t listen, there’s always cloudkill …
-Tasha
Elves can't grow beards, so they're just inferior to everything else in my mind.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
- Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert
You're still not reading my posts. The comment about Orlando Bloom was just tongue-in-cheek. I literally said that the comment would apply without him because the LotR books and movies both portray elves in a boring way in the comment you quoted. I mentioned the scenes in the movies to underscore my point that the books portrayed the elves poorly.
Yeah everybody is isolationist, but the Rohirrim, ents, etc. still fought when prompted. Theoden and the Rohirrim responded to the red arrow despite having had his land ruined. The ents fought to avenge their forest. The hobbits could all have returned to the Shire. The elves are the ones who were prompted and decided to just peace out to Valenor.
I won't really discuss the dwarves because it's off-topic, but the dwarves are at least portrayed as interesting, flaws and all.
If elves ARE chaotic good, how did the Drow come to exist? It may be that elves are generally CG, or in average CG, but they cannot be (or at least are highly unlikely to be) ALL CG without exception.
That's without getting into debate over whether a society could actually form made up of only chaotic individuals.
This is precisely the kind of thing I dislike about the assignment system. It encourages thinking in absolutes, and discourages thinking about the individual (let alone thinking about things from the perspective of another person). If elves have free will, it is highly unlikely that all will be of the same alignment. Some will be cruel, some will want to aid society and follow rules...
This is the same as thinking that all Orcs or Goblins are evil. You cannot make that assumption if they have free will, and if they don't have free will then can they really be evil?
Again, I find this reasoning.... Problematic.
I can understand the idea of "evil societies", in which the majority of the population commit and/or condone acts which the outside world would consider evil (human/same species sacrifices, slavery, genocide etc). That is the way I see, for instance, Sauron: He has built up a society around him full of people who commit, accept and condone his "evil" acts. This includes humans. It doesn't mean that the humans in his society are fundamentally evil: They probably view their own actions as Good (which is also likely the case with Sauron).
When it comes to "that's how their God made them"... Many societies and religions have their creation myths. That doesn't mean they are true. Orcs, and even the rest of society, may believe that some big bad God created them, but we have no reason to trust that any more than we can that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world while drunk one day. I view the religious beliefs listed in the game manuals as describing what the people believe, but that doesn't make them hard, indisputable facts.
I can understand that a race/species whose society admires strength and violence may tend towards acts which would be considered evil by most other societies. It also makes sense that they would worship a deity which valued strength and violence, whether that was real or one made up by the society. It would also make a lot of sense in such a society that the vast majority would be strong and violent, because those who were not would be unlikely to survive. And, given all of this, it would make sense that most other people in the world would consider the race to be "naturally evil", but that doesn't make it true. It also doesn't mean that the race themselves think of their actions as evil.
Edit: This reasoning also holds for Elves. They are a society who values intellectual pursuits, caring for others etc, so it makes sense that most of their people are Good. Those who don't follow that path would be considered criminals etc, and bad behaviour would be trained out of most. However, obviously some did not agree with this, because some of the race "followed an evil god" and became the Drow.
I'm not insisting I know another DM's world better than them or telling anybody else how to play their own game. I'm saying how I DM, how I like to play, and how I tend to play my characters.
I have fundamental problems with "This race is good/evil coz their god made them that way", the least of which is that I find it a very lazy and boring concept. I wouldn't normally want to play at a table which insisted on this and made it a fundamental part of the game, but as long as it isn't a big deal in the campaign (one of the major themes or similar) I can do some mental gymnastics around it in a way which doesn't interfere with the DM's world (e.g. I am thinking as my character, whose own personal beliefs say that no creature is fundamentally evil or good).
At a table where I am DM, or where I would normally play, such absolutes are not certain. Some characters in the world may believe in such things, but they are just their beliefs with no way to tell whether they are true or not.
There is another problem with Elves. Their age. If you think about it, anyone playing a young elf is going to have a character around 100-150 years old. At level 1. It gets even worse if you want to play an older elf.
After 100 years (Okay, maybe seventy, I don't expect for elves to be training their toddlers) of doing anything you're probably gonna be pretty darn good at it, especially if your backstory is all about their training. The problem with this, is that most other PCs are around 20-40 but you all have pretty much the same power level.
By rights, elves should start at a higher level, but that would ruin game balance.
Again, I still like elves and I don't really care, it's just something to think about.
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
So much kvetching and hate just because something is popular.
The three main elf types (high, wood, dark) are kind of important, because they actually represent different fantasy archetypes.
The high elves are your standard, arrogant, better-than-human elves. These are the types of elves that Tolkein had. In many ways, they're basically just a Witch species.
Wood elves are more of the fae-spirit-of-the-wilderness types. They're thematically related to creatures like nymphs and dryads. Unlike high elves, they're not necessarily arrogant or vain. Lots of people like mixing them up, but they're really different beings.
Dark elves are the Fair Folk. They're the scary fae nobles that kidnap you and force you into slavery, or whimsically ruin your lives, or call a Wild Hunt (aka drow raiding party) to track you down. Even the D&D developers have flat out admitted that the drow are the Fairy Lord archetype.
These three different variatiants of elves have actual narrative weight, as opposed to, say, halflings, who are just small humans. And I'm not being hyperbolic - when Tolkein made the hobbits, he made them as a pun. They're the smallfolk (aka lowborn peasants) literally made into small people. Lorewise, hobbits are actually the descendants of Men; they're people with dwarfism got together and made a community.
Which is a different point to consider. Elves tend to combine everyone under the same umbrella name. Other "races" like humans? How many basically-human-with-a-quirk variations are there, just under different names?
If it takes the "daily influence of a divine power" to keep Orcs evil, I would suggest it would take the same to keep Elves good. If that's true, then obviously that influence can be subverted by another divine being, as it was when the Drow were corrupted.
If this is all the case, the what is to say that there are not groups of Orcs who have been saved/redeemed by another deity and turned to the cause of another alignment, free of the influence of their old evil God. By making the assumption that all Orcs are naturally evil and must struggle against their innate tendencies to be anything else, there is the real possibility that you will come across a group of Good Orcs who have been redeemed by a Good Deity and therefore become innately good, and just slaughter them because "they are all naturally evil".
I think, for me, this whole concept is only ever usable if you dismiss or severely constrain their free will. If an entire race or large group has been corrupted to be evil, or is being actively "redeemed" by a deity which makes them good, then they have lost their free will. If they have to fight against it to do anything else, then they have little free will. This makes them a bad choice for a PC, and not much more than animals following instincts, robots following a program, or slaves following the orders of their master. A Chaotic Good deity would not do this to their followers, even placing a constraint on them to make them tend toward CG would be more control than a CG deity should. Even a CE deity should have trouble with this concept.
In addition I would expect good characters, especially CG, to work to free them from this bondage and allow them their free will back. If a bunch of slaves were being forced to attack you, you may kill some of them to save others, but you would want to get rid of the masters who were forcing this action or break their control. You would not see a bunch of those slaves and instantly say "They are all evil, let's kill them all!"
This brings us back to the concept of good and evil actions in reference to free will. I would say a creature without free will cannot be considered good or evil. It can do things which are good or evil, but it is the deity/whatever which has forced it to do so (just as a good character being controlled and forced to do evil things through something like dominate person doesn't become evil). A creature with heavily constrained free will which has inherrent good/evil/chaotic/lawful tendencies and just follows those tendencies would actually be neutral. Those who fight them, or actively attempt to enhance them, can be said to have another alignment... It all becomes very complex and silly, especially because it is really born of laziness. It is there purely so the reader/player doesn't have to think about killing/trusting a character, and the DM/storyteller doesn't have to do any work on the motivation to do so. "This character is evil and holding a sword, let's kill it!", or "This character is good and telling us about a good thing, so he's telling the truth and we should do it". Yaaaaawn!
I'm pretty sure this has been gone over elsewhere, but here goes: the drow are just as innately good as anyone else, but growing up in a deeply prejudiced and estranged society, that normalizes slavery and worse, is what turns most to evil. Basically, some of the ones that didn't realize how terrible Lolth is were corrupted by her. Later, the other elves threw them out, so the elves that became the first drow taught their kids that other elves were evil.
Establish boundaries. And if anyone crosses them, speak up. If they don’t listen, there’s always cloudkill …
-Tasha
I've never understood why elves always seen to have more subspecies than other races. It's not just like that in DnD. Other fantasy does it too.
When a long living, slow reproducing species would actually speciate far slower than a faster breeding species like orcs or goblins. Which should be much more rapidly adaptable to new environments as each generation is far shorter.
I think it's generally assumed that there are more factors at play here than IRL speciation. For example, generations of living in the Underdark might infuse you with some qualities of the Underdark. Magical realms affect the creatures within them.
But mostly I think it's just because there are so many versions to pull from in our own culture and they want to cover all those bases.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
The subspecies' differentiating qualities are largely cultural rather than genetic. Cultural evolution goes much faster than biological evolution.
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Gimli, son of Gloin
Dwarf tossing ptsd...