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View Full Version : Can anyone think of an example of elves being legit villains.



blackspeeker
2012-06-15, 06:49 PM
So I'm going to preface this by simply stating I hate elves, I hate how most of the time they're granola eating hippies or immortals who have the wisdom that comes for living for millenia.

Anyway, I know there are elves who are villains, it does happen Vol is the example that comes to mind. But I was wondering if somewhere in fiction elves had the upper hand in things (rather than a typical human dominated campaign setting), were the "evil" empire of some sort. This stems from an article I read about this other player who hates elves and a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago about how some elves really wouldn't care about the suffering of other species since they've been around forever since they can't cry every human/orc/halfling that dies because that would be like you crying over every squirrel/bird/turtle you hit with your car.

Anyway, I kind of want to run a campaign where elves are uber-powerful and unplayable, rule the world. So how would you stat them up (I kind of like the idea of aging them like dragons, excluding size) and how would you re-fluff them, or would you even really do that much re-fluffing.

Yukitsu
2012-06-15, 06:54 PM
Their natural precursors, the Sidhe are pretty much all of that ramped up pretty hard.

Gamer Girl
2012-06-15, 07:56 PM
The Croymanther setting, from way back in 2E D&D had the 'evil' elven empire that ruled the world. If you can find the book, it's full of great role-play stuff.

Anderlith
2012-06-15, 08:12 PM
I ran something like this. I made an evil empire of slave trading demon worshiping elves. They were a magocracy & drank demon blood to give them power. I would add the Fiendish Template or the Half-Fiend Template to buff them up

navar100
2012-06-15, 08:13 PM
Elves are elitist racist snobs. Every time, all the time, every campaign, every game, everywhere. The only difference they have with Drow is that the Drow are honest about their prejudices. They are already the greatest villain of them all because they have snookered everyone but dwarves into thinking they're the good guys, but now even the dwarves are starting to be swayed.

No, I'm not joking. No blue lettering.

Emmerask
2012-06-15, 08:14 PM
Anyway, I kind of want to run a campaign where elves are uber-powerful and unplayable, rule the world. So how would you stat them up (I kind of like the idea of aging them like dragons, excluding size) and how would you re-fluff them, or would you even really do that much re-fluffing.

Well, actually Faerun was ruled by elves before mankind and hunted and killed humans pretty hard when they "arrived" in Faerun, so from the perspective of the first humans those elves certainly where evil and they ruled pretty much everything having dethroned the dragons which where the first rulers. (Cormyr Saga)

The most important thing I think would be to have the elves "reproduce" faster.
It must not be quite at human birth rates but something close to that.
Coupled with their extreme long life expectancy and power they then would have no problem at all to rule the world.

shadow_archmagi
2012-06-15, 08:16 PM
In Baldur's Gate 2, the big bad is an evil elf? Or half elf. Not sure.

As for elves as a whole being evil, they're total jerks in the 40k universe (Everyone is total jerks in the 40k universe though.)

In Eberron, the Valenar Elves, are impatient and want to earn their immortality by being extreme warriors, and as such have invaded the mainland and started fighting with anybody that'll fight them. Their hope is that after they die they'll have proved awesome enough to get to become Undying, which are special undead.

Frenth Alunril
2012-06-15, 08:22 PM
Ask "Thedarksaint" ...

Every game I played in with him had Elves as the villains.

Here's how you make an Elf a Villain. The are pompus, self interested racists who believe that all other humanoids are inferior. They live at one with nature, but prohibit the dirty races from being a part of it, because all they do is destroy. This sets up a direct desire to undermine all organized society because the dirty races should be nothing more than animals, if that, they are a blight upon the land... etc etc, you have Elvish Hitler leading the pure bloods on a blitzkrieg of any well maintained society you wish to portray.

But he usually didn't get so deep into the racism.

Dr.Epic
2012-06-15, 08:23 PM
Ever drow that isn't Drizzt.

The villain from Hellboy II.

The Glyphstone
2012-06-15, 08:26 PM
Isn't the Elven Empire in Spelljammer a bunch of tyrannical jerks?

blackspeeker
2012-06-15, 09:28 PM
Wow thanks for the responses these will help, I guess I need to brush up on Forgotten Realms I didn't know that they had an old elven empire of evil. Although if it's just drow I dont count that, mainly because any setting where I play in where drow exist I tend to ignore for the most part.

I'll give Hellboy 2 a watch I guess, and @ shadow I'll look into the valenar and I guess 40k elves even though I don't know if they'll helkp me any.



Isn't the Elven Empire in Spelljammer a bunch of tyrannical jerks?

Another reason for me to play this setting.

Keep all the info coming if you can guys.

NM020110
2012-06-15, 10:26 PM
From a certain perspective, and at certain times, the Lord of the Rings certainly counts. Especially during the Silmarillion, with Feanor and his sons. It gets worse when you realize that the orcs are also elves...

Gamgee
2012-06-15, 10:36 PM
Witcher 2 hints at an extra dimensional evil Elven Empire that abducts people on a spectral cavalcade of wraiths and their horses. Why do they do this? We don't know yet, but hopefully we'll get to find out in Witcher 3.

Edit

Ever drow that isn't Drizzt.

The villain from Hellboy II.
Ah yes, Prince Nuada (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxadxFjx_2Q&list=FLUL8rKGRHr6kt4HRJT6bpww&index=64&feature=plpp_video). The really badass villain. I think he ranks up there as one of my favourite of all time.

Zazax
2012-06-15, 10:43 PM
To answer your first question, there's plenty of examples. In addition to the ones everyone else has listed, you can always default to the Thalmor from Elder Scrolls. They make good standard racist, snobby, 'superior' imperialist elves.

So to your second question, not a clue, sorry. Still a newbie here.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-06-15, 10:49 PM
While I don't really do this with elves (My hate of elves is such I prefer to leave them out entirely. They don't deserve to have any cool villains!), I like to have Dragons serve this role instead.

Extremely arrogant, practically immortal, and flat-out better than humans in every way (except this is actually justified since they're big awesome dragons instead of just having pointed ears), the absolute best treatment they give to non-dragon sentients is that of a housepet.

Works a lot better than having elves do it, I think.

Dienekes
2012-06-15, 11:15 PM
My first real campaign had elves as the villains. Though instead of them being the evil empire they were almost the opposite. The elves took a bit of note from Tolkien's elves in that they once had been the most powerful race in the world. They once held sway through all the good wooded lands, with their fine cities in the trees and mountains. But their time had passed, and now it was obvious that humans and halflings were pushing them steadily out of relevance.

And like any former power, that made them pissed. Even more so since almost the entire race could remember when they were treated as demigods from the lesser species.

The entire campaign was basically about an elven demagogue who was determined to either win back the old elven empire, or have the race be wiped out in a final moment of glory, taking out as many of the usurpers as he could. I think what made him fun was that I was determined to make him at the same time frightening, but deeply pathetic. A threat, but never one the heroes could respect.

deuxhero
2012-06-15, 11:18 PM
Morrowind has the nearest thing to a villain in the story as a former elf, with a bunch of elfs as henchmen.

Starwulf
2012-06-15, 11:19 PM
The Elves in the Elvenborn Trilogy, are cruel evil slavemasters that go out of their way to cull their half n half children when a human concubine gets pregnant. And if they happen to keep the child, it's instantly fitted with a magic suppressing metal collar. Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton wrote it, however the series was left unfinished with the untimely demise of Andre Norton :-(.

DaMullet
2012-06-15, 11:25 PM
In the Discworld, elves are Always Chaotic Evil, but mechanically speaking they're closer to fae as far as weakness to iron and so forth runs. Depends on what you mean by elves, I guess.

Admiral Squish
2012-06-16, 01:35 AM
Elves in my campaign setting were xenophobic guerrilla warriors who were intent on destroying every 'unnatural' being in the world, which is literally everything not human or animal.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-06-16, 05:50 AM
Elves in my campaign setting were xenophobic guerrilla warriors who were intent on destroying every 'unnatural' being in the world, which is literally everything not human or animal.

...So they were out to destroy elves too?

Zazax
2012-06-16, 06:26 AM
Alternatively, if you're going for 'evil, but slightly amusing, and very satisfying to kill off', you could always turn to Dwarf Fortress. Standard arrogant, hippie, we're-better-than-you Elves who freak out and go homicidal if they see anything made using plants (from paper to charcoal to wooden shields), but still use plant products themselves (and brush you off if you point out this hypocrisy).
Bonus points for being psychotic cannibals.

comicshorse
2012-06-16, 06:36 AM
In Shadowrun the Elves who run Tir Na Og ( formerly Ireland) are a bunch of tyranical, racist bastards. They believe in reincarantion and that a soul has only reached perfection when he is re-born as an elf. What race a person is shows how developed their soul is with elves on the top then (in descending order) humans, dwarves, trolls and, very last ,orcs.
This is used to justify their rule and treating the other races as scum and enforcing their rule with secret police and ( its strongly hinted) death squads.
The elves of Tir Taingire are slightly better but mainly because they are surrounded by enemies.
In a Shadowrun game of mine an elf P.C. always refered to those type of elves as 'pixie stormtropers', often to their faces.

Morghen
2012-06-16, 07:25 AM
Here's a setting where all of the elves are evil necromancers because their average lifespan is 30 years and they can extend it by eating babies or something.

http://rpggeek.com/rpg/1741/warlords-of-the-accordlands

Seharvepernfan
2012-06-16, 09:09 AM
Anyway, I kind of want to run a campaign where elves are uber-powerful and unplayable, rule the world. So how would you stat them up (I kind of like the idea of aging them like dragons, excluding size) and how would you re-fluff them, or would you even really do that much re-fluffing.

You might make them native outsiders, similar to angels or eladrin. Or, maybe take that template from the MM3, "spellwarped" I think? Give them that and have every normal elf be a 6th level beguiler or spellthief or something, with all "leveled" elves be gestalt until after 6th. That beats out racial HD any day.

As for fluff, you just have to take them from "do what you will, if it harm none" isolationists to Aryan Nazism.

Ravens_cry
2012-06-16, 09:51 AM
The Gold Elves in Forgotten Realms are known for a high level of jerk-tastic behavior, up to and including villainy.

Archpaladin Zousha
2012-06-16, 09:53 AM
From a certain perspective, and at certain times, the Lord of the Rings certainly counts. Especially during the Silmarillion, with Feanor and his sons. It gets worse when you realize that the orcs are also elves...
Yes, I was actually going to bring up The Silmarillion. Elves like the House of Feanor are a great kind of villain, one whose passion and greed (face it, despite all their airs, they're still vulnerable to mortal foibles) makes them willing to commit massacres, against their own kinsmen no less, simply for getting in their way. Give your elf villains a goal, and have the majority of their atrocities being cause by their unwillingness to compromise their mission for anyone or anything, writing the dead off as collateral damage that's negligible compared to the goal of recovering the Silmarils (or whatever they're after).

Ason
2012-06-16, 10:44 AM
The Giant wrote a whole article on creating good villains from a roleplaying perspective, and the villain he generated as an example was a half-elf using other elves as minions. The Fire King (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/rTKEivnsYuZrh94H1Sn.html)

Grollub
2012-06-16, 10:58 AM
Isn't the Elven Empire in Spelljammer a bunch of tyrannical jerks?

Yes, they run the Imperial Navy.. basically a group of self-righteous arrogants , who impose their sense of "right and wrong" on everyone. In Star Trek terms... think of the Federation.. where you aren't part of it. :smallcool: or the Vulcans from Enterprise.

Starshade
2012-06-16, 11:13 AM
The Warhammer Fantasy setting got elves who sometime fight the humans, thus being the villains in some cases, from a human point of view.

Friv
2012-06-16, 11:40 AM
In the Death Gate cycle, the elves of the 'air' world became a tyrannical aristocracy over the other races through their long lifespans and magic.

comicshorse
2012-06-16, 12:56 PM
The Warhammer Fantasy setting got elves who sometime fight the humans, thus being the villains in some cases, from a human point of view.

Even more so if you're a dwarf, the War of the Beard still rankles.

But yes High Elves tend to kill anybody who goes into the area of sea they consider theirs. Not that they bother telling anybody where that is of course

Sampi
2012-06-16, 01:58 PM
On Discworld: read Lords and Ladies.

On Spelljammer: the Elven Imperial navy got up to using bioweapons against the goblinoids in the unhuman wars. Cleanup was never finished. Nice people, eh?

Science Officer
2012-06-16, 02:11 PM
In Magic: The Gathering's Lorwyn setting, the elves are villains. They value only beauty (http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/cardart/lrw/imperious_perfect.jpg)and will kill those they deem "eyeblights". (http://img.aegen.nl/LRW/Eyeblight%27s%20Ending.jpg)

Libertad
2012-06-16, 03:34 PM
Silvanesti Elves of the Dragonlance setting are really jerkish and live in a very unequal, caste-based society. They can't stand other elves, and even enslaved the Kagonesti Elves at one point as a form of forced assimilation.

The Forgotten Realms deity Sheverash is solely driven by hatred of the drow. He wants to kill all of them, and told his followers to never smile or feel joy until this goal is accomplished. Revenge is cyclical; is Sheverash really going to change and be happy once the drow are all dead? What about other threats, real or perceived, to elvenkind? Hatred knows no bounds: it doesn't stop at one group, one race, one religion. When your entire life is filled with hatred, it bleeds through into your worldview and how you perceive others. What's one more enemy to add?

Also, the 2nd Edition Complete Book of Elves is a great piece of propaganda art. The in-game flavor text of elves describing their culture is full of fallacies and rationalizations of problems in elvish society; it usually equates to "you're not an elf, so you can't possibly understand us. What you perceive as flaws is just shortsightedness on your part."

And the Gray Elves enslave other elves, and the in-game text goes out of its way to tell us that "these slaves are happy."

I'll admit that I don't own the book myself and heard this through other people, but I wouldn't be surprised if the above description is right.

SgtCarnage92
2012-06-16, 05:33 PM
In the Tad Williams trilogy "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" the main baddies are ancient elves who used to use the humans as slaves. I only made it through the first book but i assume they carry through the series.

WalkingTarget
2012-06-16, 06:29 PM
It takes a bit of reading, and it's never really come up in the series this way, but Steven Brust's Dragaera setting could be set up this way from the perspective of the Eastern kingdoms.

The Dragaerans are the setting's "elf" stand-ins. They are all really tall (like 7 feet average) and live for a few thousand years. They have an empire that spans most of the main continent, pushing the humans into the lands to the east. They all have the ability to use Sorcery (but the average peasant generally doesn't have the resources/time to practice it much).

The main series follows the story of a human living as a minority citizen in this Empire (humans can get in by either pledging fealty to some lord and joining the peasant House, buying their way into the criminal House, or , I think, winning a series of 17 duels against warriors against the House that highly values personal glory through arms). There's a lot of "elf"/human racism inherent in the setting, although it's mostly within the empire rather than dealing with it from an outside viewpoint. The potential is there, though.

Man on Fire
2012-06-16, 06:58 PM
So I'm going to preface this by simply stating I hate elves, I hate how most of the time they're granola eating hippies or immortals who have the wisdom that comes for living for millenia.

Somebody finally understands me!


Anyway, I know there are elves who are villains, it does happen Vol is the example that comes to mind. But I was wondering if somewhere in fiction elves had the upper hand in things (rather than a typical human dominated campaign setting), were the "evil" empire of some sort. This stems from an article I read about this other player who hates elves and a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago about how some elves really wouldn't care about the suffering of other species since they've been around forever since they can't cry every human/orc/halfling that dies because that would be like you crying over every squirrel/bird/turtle you hit with your car.

Anyway, I kind of want to run a campaign where elves are uber-powerful and unplayable, rule the world. So how would you stat them up (I kind of like the idea of aging them like dragons, excluding size) and how would you re-fluff them, or would you even really do that much re-fluffing.

I have two campaing setting ideas I never developed based on giving Elves evil empire. While one involves also making humans and other clasc races evil and Orcs and Goblins good, there is this other one I rather abbandonned:

The continent that story takes place on was once ruled by Drow Empire. Drows have come from behind the sea, conuered whoever lived there and enslaved them. But Drows, being Drows, were backstabbing little idiots who ended destroying their own civilization. On it's ruins, over the course of thousands years, other races started building their little kingdoms. Standard things - Dwarfs, Gnomes, Kobolds and Goblins took undergound for themselves, Humans, Halfings, Lizardmen, Orcs and others took surface, none of races liked others very much. And for thousands of years it was like this, kingdomes were rising and falling, wars were waged, technological progress had led them to standard fantasy middle ages, normal stuff.

Then the Elves came.

Elves come from the land beyond the sea, they waged war with Drows and forced them to run away. Now Elves have been exiled themselves - turns out that awakened race of humanoid beasts who once lived in the continent-sized jugnle Elves made their kingdom haven't gone extinct, but went into sleep for so mny years Elves weren't even there, when it happened. And once awakened, they weren't happy to see some people calling themselves children of their mother nature build disgusting cities in their forest. And so Elves were defeated and had to run away from basically a race of druid werewolfs. And now they come to the continent Drows fleed to. And they see ruins of their mighty empire and on them living some disgusting creatures. And Elves decide to take it all for themselves. And those current inhabitants? They should be dealt with as any pests. They should be Exterminated.

So now, as a race of highly advanced both in technology (I would give them something like XVIII-XIX century tech) and magic comes to whipe them all out, all other races must join forces and fight for survival. There is a lot of racism and mistrust, races have a lot of bad blood between them, so it's up to heroes to enforce their cooperation, or everybody are going to die.

Also, this setting was rather high on banning mixed-breed races, I didn't wanted "Orc Rape" Half-Orc backstory be accompained by "Elf Rape" Half-Elf backstory, as amusing as it would be.

Also, I remember that 4chan once cooked up a setting in which humans have died for plague and monster races took their place. Elves used magic to jump into the future and now are kidnapping monsters to experiment on them in an attempt to find a cure. They have become fantasy version of aliens.

vartan
2012-06-16, 09:39 PM
My namesake was an elf in the old Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comic that became possessed by his god (labelas enoreth) during the Time of Troubles. I don't remember exactly why, but labelas was deadset on returning to the celestial realms at any cost. Nearly killing the whole party in the books.

Man on Fire
2012-06-16, 10:37 PM
Witcher 2 hints at an extra dimensional evil Elven Empire that abducts people on a spectral cavalcade of wraiths and their horses. Why do they do this? We don't know yet, but hopefully we'll get to find out in Witcher 3.

Wait 'till they publish last novel of the series, because boy, Elves in those are a**holes.

Also, in Elric Saga main character's race are pretty much Evil Elves. This is a series where main character says words "Farrewell. I was thousand times more evil than you.". They were probably main inspiration for Drows.


In the Discworld, elves are Always Chaotic Evil, but mechanically speaking they're closer to fae as far as weakness to iron and so forth runs. Depends on what you mean by elves, I guess.

Prachett never misses a chance to remind us that word Elven comes from "Eldritch (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EldritchAbomination)"


In Shadowrun the Elves who run Tir Na Og ( formerly Ireland) are a bunch of tyranical, racist bastards. They believe in reincarantion and that a soul has only reached perfection when he is re-born as an elf. What race a person is shows how developed their soul is with elves on the top then (in descending order) humans, dwarves, trolls and, very last ,orcs.
This is used to justify their rule and treating the other races as scum and enforcing their rule with secret police and ( its strongly hinted) death squads.
The elves of Tir Taingire are slightly better but mainly because they are surrounded by enemies.
In a Shadowrun game of mine an elf P.C. always refered to those type of elves as 'pixie stormtropers', often to their faces.

See also Earthdawn, from the same creators. Elves from Blood Forest, or how it's called are cruel, imperialistic basards covered in thorns.

Grundy
2012-06-16, 10:43 PM
Have you read Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flames series? The elves in it were nasty, and didn't look at life like humans do. The fey in that series were more capricious, as well.

NikitaDarkstar
2012-06-16, 11:29 PM
Look into the elves from the Warcraft setting. Especially the night elves. Sure in WoW they're kinda nice, friendly hippies more or less, but read up on their lore. They're immortal (or used to be) xenophobes responsible for some of the most destructive moments in that settings history. One quick example from the top of my head. The orcs show up on their continent recently having gotten free from their masters and pretty much being aliens to that world. They need somewhere to settle and cuts down some trees to build their home. Turns out that those trees were sacred to the night elves (the orcs didn't even know they existed), but instead of listening to an explanation and accepting an apology they decide it's better to try to kill every single orc.

They're very, very different lore wise from how they are inside of WoW nowadays, and while perhaps not natural bad guys they're definitely jerks and a--holes that can easily be used as a base for a bad guy. (And several clear bad-guys and evil races has spawned from the night elves...)

Deadmeat.GW
2012-06-17, 03:02 AM
Oh God, one of the Night Elves named characters was such a bastard when the Horde raided we would give directions to his place and fight them tooth and nail if they went for the Priestess :).

I wanted to kill that git :).

horngeek
2012-06-17, 04:36 AM
First, I actually like elves, so let's look at it from my perspective…

I'm not going to give examples where they're unplayable antagonist races, because I'm of the strong opinion that you should be able to play examples of most things with civilization, dragons being one of the only exceptions.

On an individual basis: Elven villains should generally have a motivation that's somehow related to Elven relations with other races. The elves do tend towards arrogance or being separate from everyone else- bump that up to wishing to dominate or genocide 'lesser races'. If I were doing it, he'd be in the minority.

Yanagi
2012-06-17, 05:46 AM
In the current day Forgotten Realms, there's a group called the Eldeth Veluthra that are pretty much the Klan but for elves. One of the hooks left out there for DMs is that one of their leaders is a druid tinkering around with biological warfare against humans and other races.

Generally in the FR's past there's a lot of elves acting horribly and/or stupidly, guided by pride. During the era when the drow descend both the drow-precursor dark elves and the gold elves are basically engaged in ethics-free lording over of the lands they control. There's also an ongoing trend of elves building and using (magical) weapons of mass destruction--another thing that happened during the Descent period. And one time they committed genocide versus a human civilization, Jhaamdath (by tsunami).

Another big plot point is that turns up over and over is that individual pride (or family pride) has lead elves to go beyond "normal" intrigue and do truly horrible and treasonous things to elevate themselves within their own community.

Indeed, hubris...or at least the kind of arrogance that blinds you to moral failure...seems to turn up a lot.

Edited to add: While elves tend to set up the drow as "other"--that is, not elves--in a lot of ways the drow are like the exposed id of surface elves. The same vices--arrogance, conspiracy, bigotry--are just given voluptuous expression amongst the drow. Sort of like the difference between a flat-out foul-mouthed racist versus the pseudo-intellectual types that concoct half-baked "reasons" for what is really just a bias.

Morph Bark
2012-06-17, 01:27 PM
In my homebrew setting, Elves are mad scientists, racist, Imperialist bastards who engineered the effective genocide of the gnomes (partially by forcing many gnomes to marry into their noble families so that their half-elven offspring would possess their magical knack to bring the elves one step ahead of other races, partially to eliminate a competitor for the "master race") and who caused the creation and spread of deserts and the disappearing of the Sea of Leaves, an inland sea with many tree-dotted islands turned into a salt desert. The only ones currently preventing further spread of their maniacal Empire? A paranoid lich who presides over a city-state, a lecherous human king who leads a secret planar alliance and a loosely allied armada of pirates.

DiBastet
2012-06-17, 11:04 PM
Did anyone mention The Elder Scrolls? Just look at the whole elven part of the story of the setting, and you got your villains.

ZakRenning
2012-06-17, 11:18 PM
I played in a campaign that had Elves as the original rulers of the continent until the Humans took over.

We began playing in the "past" that is when the Elves were in control.

They weren't so much evil as much as meddlesome. Thinking they were in charge of everything that ever happened. My character was an elf, and he was just an aloof scoundrel who wanted all the magic power in the world.

The Grue
2012-06-17, 11:34 PM
Legend of Dragoon's Winglies are basically elves. They conquered the world and enslaved all the intelligent species prior to the events of the game.

So there's that, at least.

Archpaladin Zousha
2012-06-18, 12:35 AM
First, I actually like elves, so let's look at it from my perspective…

I'm not going to give examples where they're unplayable antagonist races, because I'm of the strong opinion that you should be able to play examples of most things with civilization, dragons being one of the only exceptions.

On an individual basis: Elven villains should generally have a motivation that's somehow related to Elven relations with other races. The elves do tend towards arrogance or being separate from everyone else- bump that up to wishing to dominate or genocide 'lesser races'. If I were doing it, he'd be in the minority.
Basically like how Tolkien handled villainous elves. Elves weren't universally bad guys, and the target of their ire, Morgoth, was much worse, considering he basically CREATED the concept of evil in Arda. But Feanor and his kin took their hate and obsessions to extremes, even going so far as to kill other elves.

In my opinion, especially since I too like elves, when used as villains it's better for them to be decent, if sometimes snooty, people driven by some obsession to insane extremes. That normally elves aren't like this, but their cultural arrogance has rendered them myopic in this one instance. They won't accept your help because you can't understand what they're going through, and if you're in the path between them and their target, or if they even THINK you are, they'll bulldoze you without a second thought.

So I guess what I'm saying is, you want a legit elven villain who's NOT been flanderized into a baby-eating monster by the general dislike the Internet has for them, you look at the House of Feanor and the ruin their Oath brought to both them and the world.

Yora
2012-06-18, 05:58 AM
Did anyone mention The Elder Scrolls? Just look at the whole elven part of the story of the setting, and you got your villains.
Or the Highborn from Warcraft. Interestingly, they are pretty much the same as the orc warlocks. Some spirit asks them "would you like some of my magic power" and they say "sure, I take as much as I can get". And BAM: Demon Invasion.

They're very, very different lore wise from how they are inside of WoW nowadays, and while perhaps not natural bad guys they're definitely jerks and a--holes that can easily be used as a base for a bad guy. (And several clear bad-guys and evil races has spawned from the night elves...)
Which is why I love Warcraft 3. If you try to apply alignment to any faction, the only thing you can say is "Well, the Scourge is definitiely evil". And that's as far as you'll get. :smallbiggrin:

Driderman
2012-06-18, 06:29 AM
If I remember correctly the old Birthright AD&D setting had a couple of elvish kingdoms of the classic, Chaotic Neutral Alien Fey variant. They weren't dominant though, as they'd been pushed back by human expansion but they were definitely still powerful realms in their own right, and very inspired by the gaelic mythology Sidhe.

Megasaber4000
2012-06-18, 07:10 AM
I can agree with some of your hatred for elves.
I really hate the immortal elf thing and the elves being more advanced than other races In fact my GM made them live only 30 more years than humans and made sure they don't act all upper class.
i really like it when its not just humans getting corrupted and stuff.

JustSomeGuy
2012-06-18, 09:08 AM
Elves vs. werewolves from Dragon Age 1 had some flavours of evil.

blackspeeker
2012-06-19, 01:49 PM
You guys have been really helpful. I love the idea of The Spelljammer elves and their genocide of Goblinkind. I actually really like the idea of spelljammer anyway and now want to rework it so that elves did some shady stuff and got booted to some planet (like legend of the spidermoon drow) and that anything on that planet with them is sealed up too, but then the elves take over and become big fish in a small pond. Imma write something up, see what my groups main DM/storyteller thinks

obryn
2012-06-19, 02:27 PM
Is it too late to mention that Dark Sun's elves are very useful as antagonists?

After my group got almost-sold-into slavery by elves, raided for supplies, and betrayed by them a few times, they started to take a perverse glee in tearing their ears off.

-O

Driderman
2012-06-20, 04:43 AM
Is it too late to mention that Dark Sun's elves are very useful as antagonists?

After my group got almost-sold-into slavery by elves, raided for supplies, and betrayed by them a few times, they started to take a perverse glee in tearing their ears off.

-O

Oh yes, Dark Sun elves. All the oldfashioned biases against jews and gypsies come true :smallbiggrin:

Yora
2012-06-20, 04:55 AM
Elves vs. werewolves from Dragon Age 1 had some flavours of evil.
Well
one evil elf. But you don't know that until the end. The other elves completely support him and most of them probably wouldn't complain if told the truth, though.

Barkafürth
2012-06-20, 06:51 AM
Did anyone mention The Elder Scrolls? Just look at the whole elven part of the story of the setting, and you got your villains.

Speaking of the Elder Scrolls elves.
Man are some of them EVIL! There are some who have no redeeming qualities whatsoever like the dwarves, they enslaved the snow elves and fed them poisonous fungi to weaken their eyesight and then keep them underground to make them blind and they eventually degenerated into blind goblin people.

obryn
2012-06-20, 08:45 AM
Oh yes, Dark Sun elves. All the oldfashioned biases against jews and gypsies come true :smallbiggrin:
It's amazing how much scarier a Dark Sun encounter can be when the "monsters" basically avoid engaging at all costs and instead focus on stealing your kanks/crodlu and running off with your supplies. :smallsmile:

-O

Lapak
2012-06-20, 04:42 PM
Speaking of the Elder Scrolls elves.
Man are some of them EVIL! There are some who have no redeeming qualities whatsoever like the dwarves, they enslaved the snow elves and fed them poisonous fungi to weaken their eyesight and then keep them underground to make them blind and they eventually degenerated into blind goblin people.Well, yes, but the lesson of history in the Elder Scrolls is pretty much that power corrupts and every group that rises to power puts their boot on the neck of the rest of the world and leans down, hard. Usually because they were being oppressed up to that point, and they aren't about to let it happen again. The elves do it (Ayleids enslaved everyone, Dwemer betrayed the Snow Elves, Dunmer enslaved the beast races) did it, the humans do it (rebels wiped out the Ayleids and slaughtered most of the elves, Empire conquered everyone they didn't like by force of arms and turned a blind eye to the Dunmer slavers, the Stormcloaks are openly racist xenophobes who put down non-Nords and/or leave them to terrible fates), the Argonians did it (hey, the Dunmer are left wide open due to utter catastrophe? Time to invade and get revenge for centuries of enslavement!), everyone does it.

That said, yes: the Ayleid Empire, the Dunmer in Morrowind, and the Thalmor all make good examples of Elven oppressor-kingdoms.

Lhurgyof
2012-06-20, 04:52 PM
So I'm going to preface this by simply stating I hate elves, I hate how most of the time they're granola eating hippies or immortals who have the wisdom that comes for living for millenia.

Anyway, I know there are elves who are villains, it does happen Vol is the example that comes to mind. But I was wondering if somewhere in fiction elves had the upper hand in things (rather than a typical human dominated campaign setting), were the "evil" empire of some sort. This stems from an article I read about this other player who hates elves and a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago about how some elves really wouldn't care about the suffering of other species since they've been around forever since they can't cry every human/orc/halfling that dies because that would be like you crying over every squirrel/bird/turtle you hit with your car.

Anyway, I kind of want to run a campaign where elves are uber-powerful and unplayable, rule the world. So how would you stat them up (I kind of like the idea of aging them like dragons, excluding size) and how would you re-fluff them, or would you even really do that much re-fluffing.

Check out Dark Sun. Elves are sneaky, lying, cheating, no good rats. They're also very unlike standard elves (while some tolkein is in their design, they are really different)

blackspeeker
2012-06-20, 10:30 PM
Question about darksun, when you say check it out, will any edition do? Or did they refluff some the elves (I know changes were made from AD&D to 4e, I'm not quite familiar with them) I also remember a dungeon or dragon article/issue about running darksun for 3.5, maybe I can find it again.

obryn
2012-06-21, 12:44 AM
Question about darksun, when you say check it out, will any edition do? Or did they refluff some the elves (I know changes were made from AD&D to 4e, I'm not quite familiar with them) I also remember a dungeon or dragon article/issue about running darksun for 3.5, maybe I can find it again.
The 2e and 4e fluff are largely identical, but there's a lot more of it available for 2e. I'm freely mixing & matching it for my 4e game.

There's a 2e book called Elves of Athas or something of the sort, which has some pretty good insight on them.

3.5 has a wealth of fan-created content, much of which is pretty great.

-O

Khedrac
2012-06-21, 07:43 AM
Another fantasy example is actually The Hobbit! Less-so at the end when they join in the Battle of the Five Armies, but when they hold the dwarves prisoner...

Now the original post actually asks for stat suggestions, so looking at the description provided I would think about using http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/leshay.htm as the elves that rule the world.

LibraryOgre
2012-06-24, 12:17 PM
Have you read Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flames series? The elves in it were nasty, and didn't look at life like humans do. The fey in that series were more capricious, as well.

I wouldn't classify the Therranj as a priori evil, however. Alien, but not strictly evil.

Now, the Mercedes Lackey and the late Andre Norton had a great series called "The Halfblood Chronicles" where elves fled from a war on their home world and took over a human world, enslaving most of the people. Elves in that series were rigidly magocratic (which worked out to a blooded aristocracy, since their magical power followed strict heredity). Humans had native mind magic, but it was rigidly suppressed.

Into this, you threw prankish, shape-changing dragons, whose claws were deadly poison to elves (even a scratch could make them ill), and half-elves, who tended to have large amounts of both human and elven magic.

QuidEst
2012-06-24, 01:21 PM
If I made evil elves, I think I'd go for a very legalistic version. Deals and contracts would be very important, and elves would take advantage of human short-sightedness. A human's firstborn would be common for a "miracle"- some piece of magic only possible to those with decades of study at their disposal.

Humans and other races are not discriminated against in theory. Positions in government are chosen without bias- they consider only the experience and qualifications of the candidates. If elves have had a longer life to gain that experience, winning them a position to earn more experience, then surely any inequality is only in the interest of the country?

Murderers are punished in accordance with how much life has been taken. If an elf kills a human, it is only just that he be imprisoned for the normal duration of that man's life, or to serve the family as a slave for that time. If a human kills and elf, however, how can he pay such a debt? Even killing him would only make some fifty years he has remaining. He should be made to suffer for what time his short life affords, or if the family of the victim is gracious, he and his offspring should be slaves until the time is paid back. If an elf were to kill an elf, their punishment would be no different. Slaves would only be those who deserved it, or those whose blood relatives placed them in that position. Slave trade as a business would be illegal and carefully policed- all buying and selling of slaves would be between individuals.

All this would give an advantage to other long-lived races, of course, but gnomes are too flighty to hold positions for very long. I would make dwarves and elves be on good terms- elves tend to move in political circles as well as civic positions like the head of the watch or judges, while dwarves take less contested roles maintaining an efficient city and bureaucracy. (Dwarves would often buy up slaves or slave-debts from elves, seeing them as a good investment, and put them to much harder labor than they would have faced otherwise.)

Scarlet-Devil
2012-06-24, 08:42 PM
Has anyone mentioned Irenicus?

Bluepaw
2012-06-24, 10:57 PM
My first real campaign had elves as the villains. Though instead of them being the evil empire they were almost the opposite. The elves took a bit of note from Tolkien's elves in that they once had been the most powerful race in the world. They once held sway through all the good wooded lands, with their fine cities in the trees and mountains. But their time had passed, and now it was obvious that humans and halflings were pushing them steadily out of relevance.

And like any former power, that made them pissed. Even more so since almost the entire race could remember when they were treated as demigods from the lesser species.

This is great. For anyone inclined to translate real-world issues and conflict patterns into rpgs to put meat on campaign bones, you could continue to fluff this towards the elves being colonialist throwbacks in a post-colonial setting, for example, imagine aging, wealthy, British expatriates in Turkey or India. If elves in your setting had been a former superpower who no longer run the show, they can still exert a huge amount of rhetorical or political influence, pulling connections, throwing wealth around, and making things very difficult for passing parties who show insufficient respect...

Crossblade
2012-06-25, 02:46 AM
I'd count the "Fey" in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning as Elves. Corrupt with power because of their life span. Granted, I've only played the game's demo, so I don't know the extent of their ploys... but they seemed to be evil because they supposedly were reborned after they died... but were still afraid of death for some reason.

Starwulf
2012-06-28, 03:08 PM
I wouldn't classify the Therranj as a priori evil, however. Alien, but not strictly evil.

Now, the Mercedes Lackey and the late Andre Norton had a great series called "The Halfblood Chronicles" where elves fled from a war on their home world and took over a human world, enslaving most of the people. Elves in that series were rigidly magocratic (which worked out to a blooded aristocracy, since their magical power followed strict heredity). Humans had native mind magic, but it was rigidly suppressed.

Into this, you threw prankish, shape-changing dragons, whose claws were deadly poison to elves (even a scratch could make them ill), and half-elves, who tended to have large amounts of both human and elven magic.

HEY! I already mentioned that! :) Back on page 1, though I didn't go into specifics, just that they were evil and enslaved human kind and had evil slave collars to nullify potential human magic.

LibraryOgre
2012-06-28, 04:13 PM
HEY! I already mentioned that! :) Back on page 1, though I didn't go into specifics, just that they were evil and enslaved human kind and had evil slave collars to nullify potential human magic.

Ah, missed that.

Werekat
2012-06-28, 10:30 PM
Since either no one mentioned this or I missed it: Changeling: the Lost might be a good inspiration.

Grelna the Blue
2012-07-05, 04:37 PM
Regarding literary references, there is the extinct race of Valheru (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midkemia#Valheru) from Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar books. Although they look elven, they aren't exactly elves, being far more powerful, but they created the elven race to be their servants/slaves. The Valheru were a very very nasty bunch.

In my own game world, elves aren't an always evil race, although plenty of them are as individuals, but even the good ones generally put elven welfare before human welfare. They used to own just about everything before the Great Racial Wars against the other elder races (nagas and elder trolls). Although they won those wars, they were greatly diminished in numbers and power by the end of the conflict, which gave the younger races room to spring up and thrive. Given the inherent conflicts between a long-lived, slow breeding race of nature lovers that believes their territory has been stolen from them and a bunch of johnny-come-lately's who multiply like rabbits and despoil the natural settings the elves love, it is perhaps not surprising that the elven people have been preparing centuries for a war in which they plan to forcibly resettle humans to other planes of existence. They have allowed, even covertly encouraged, the younger races to go to war with each other, and plan to move in to pick up the pieces and sweep the board when they are all weak and punch-drunk. This fact isn't generally known, but no one actually trusts elves. "Their ways are not our ways--their goals are not our goals" is a truism in my game.

Lhurgyof
2012-07-05, 07:44 PM
The 2e and 4e fluff are largely identical, but there's a lot more of it available for 2e. I'm freely mixing & matching it for my 4e game.

There's a 2e book called Elves of Athas or something of the sort, which has some pretty good insight on them.

3.5 has a wealth of fan-created content, much of which is pretty great.

-O

That's pretty much it, really. I haven't seen much of the 4e fluff, but I reckon it's good.

athas.org is a good resource for 3.5 Dark Sun Material.

Synovia
2012-07-06, 09:21 AM
From a certain perspective, and at certain times, the Lord of the Rings certainly counts. Especially during the Silmarillion, with Feanor and his sons. It gets worse when you realize that the orcs are also elves...

Saying orcs are elves is like saying people are chimps.

Elves, with their long lives, operate on a completely different time scale than human beings, and operate in a completely different moral frame.

An Elven king could be doing something that he believes will improve the world, but is going to take several generations of humans to complete. The human only sees the immediate impact, and not the long term ramifications.

Any story where the big bad does something terrible for the greater good/future/etc is a good candidate for elves. Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men takes an elven point of view: Its more important that <national security/big picture/etc> than that the little guy's rights are observed <petty lives of shortlived creatures>


Elves think of humans (and the other shortlived races) like we think of local wildlife. Nobody seems to mind that every time we build something we destroy something's habitat.

VanBuren
2012-07-07, 06:16 AM
Saying orcs are elves is like saying people are chimps.

Are you implying that people are tortured, twisted, evil, and corrupted versions of chimps? Because I'll have you know, chimps aren't usually that well-mannered. You have no idea how many hours it took us to get him to wear that suit.

Worth it, though.

Man on Fire
2012-07-07, 07:51 AM
Actually, I think that te problem with Elves lies pretty much in that perception - they think they're more cultured or civilized than humans, just like we think we're better than monkeys, while we really aren't. In other words, Morris Desmod's "Naked Monkey" might be inspiration for seeing elven perspective and ripping it apart.

JohnnyCancer
2012-07-08, 11:38 PM
Elves are elitist racist snobs. Every time, all the time, every campaign, every game, everywhere. The only difference they have with Drow is that the Drow are honest about their prejudices. They are already the greatest villain of them all because they have snookered everyone but dwarves into thinking they're the good guys, but now even the dwarves are starting to be swayed.

No, I'm not joking. No blue lettering.

This isn't really true, though it's usually the case. I've been working on a homebrew where Elves are the descendants the human followers of a hero-deity who thought that making them long-lived would give them incentive to be good people, because they would live long enough to see the consequences of their actions. Their appearance is just a matter of his own artistic license and preferences.

Now as for making your typical elves villains, I'll go back to the whole "live long enough to see the consequences," bit. Come up with some horrible future event that not even a young dwarf would live to see in his old age. Your posse of villainous elves will live to see it, and would rather it not happen. The only way they can think of to avert this future catastrophe involves a great deal of atrocious deeds in the present and near future.

Kholai
2012-07-16, 08:28 PM
Remove the fantasy-race glass ceiling.

Elves live for centuries, isolated from the world at large. Most elves devote themselves to the learning of a single craft, whilst other dilettante elves move from role to role over the years.

Elves are every bit as intelligent as humans. They remain fertile for about two centuries, and even with their constitution penalty, they still have access to ten thousand years of magical lore to offset disease, blight or any other severe population limitters. Their young reach physical maturity at around twenty-five, but spend at least fifty years being trained before they are even considered to be adults in elven society.

The elves of Nasijamani, a Large Elven City of 20,000 souls, have been united under a ruthless and malevolent ruler, an undying king Derfiuror who started their campaign plans with one primary command: Breed.

For a thousand years, elves considered it their sacred duty as elves to have children as soon as their first child reaches physical maturity at the age of 25. They start at around a hundred years old, so every quarter of a century about half of the existing couples have another child, and about three quarters of those children survive into adulthood.

Upon reaching physical maturity, each elf is taken into the youth camps, where they are judged for their aptitudes and separated by ability. About ten percent are capable mages, five percent are recruited into religious professions, another two percent are Psionically gifted. Twenty percent are taken into the various military institutions, leaving two thirds of the population working as artisans, farmers, hunters and in the service industry.

Each elf gains approximately one level every five years of training (as they are mentally equal in capacity to a human, this could be more, but the training isn't quite as rigorous as full on adventuring would be). This means by "maturity" at 75, each elf leaves their academy at level 10, trained in the field of their choice and educated to be completely loyal to Derfiuror. Most continue to gain levels after this point, but drastically more slowly, at only one level every twenty years. Would be elite forces are sent out on special covert "adventuring" parties to rapidly progress their experience accumulation.

By the end of the thousand year preparation, there are now approximately ten million adult elves (not including a large number of venerable elves who presumably count a few thousand epic level septicentennial wizards and clerics in their number). Of these, approximately half are level ten or better. Magic is used to maintain the massive population without harming the local forests (which have long since been magically converted, with elven cities built within the very trees themselves), and most importantly, without expansion - elves remain a rarely sighted species with only a few isolated individuals being allowed to be seen, and specially built "elven villages" of a few dozen members being placed comparatively conspicuously in woodlands frequented by wandering adventurer types and traders.

The next few decades signal the start of their expansion, by annihilating all nearby tribes of orcs, kobolds, goblins, and other "undesirables", and moving any survivors to special reservations, where their numbers are routinely culled to maintain them as a non-threat, all whilst playing them off against one another to compete for food and resources to stay alive, purely to ensure that no cohesive movement can be brought to bear against their supreme elven overlords. This process which takes the elven Stohmtaropas of one hundred level ten combatants - ten wizards, five bards, two psions, five clerics and the remainder Rangers or other martial classes, approximately ten years to accomplish, if that.

Envoys are sent to surrounding "friendly" nations of humans, dwarves, halflings and the like informing them of this victory over this undesirable element with their "massive elven army of fifty allied villages", whilst all nearby elven settlements not currently aligned with them are persuaded to join the elven empire, to become one people under a single united banner against their enemies.

With the peoples about them complacent and the elves united under a single dominant force - the Nashinalso Shalist empire, another hundred years pass - Derfiuror is a patient immortal overlord after all, and the short-lived races tend to forget over something as short as a century the brutal and systemic extermination of entire races of greenskins.

Finally, the elves strike the dwarves, the only other race that might reasonably oppose them, turning their entire mountain range into mud in a devastating display of magical superiority, before baking the mud into a desolate plain of molten volcanic rock beneath a rain of fireballs that lasted for hours. The night of bubbling glass leaves untold generations of dwarves drowning under the liquid weight of their ancestral home, crushed by any rock that remained unconverted, and then conveniently baked into ready-made mass graves.

Simultaneously, Elven Stohmtaropas entered every town across the continent in a single fell swoop, planned over the course of the last five decades, firmly, but decisively removing local authority from the original inhabitants. Those towns that resisted were utterly destroyed, wiping them from the map and allowing nature to reclaim their land. Halflings and other "sub-elves", such as Gnomes and any surviving surface Dwarves receive the same brutal treatment as the goblins and orcs, their populations decimated and then forced onto special reservations, where as second class citizens they require permits to even be allowed access to the outside lands.

For humans, the only race with serious numerical superiority over the elves, things take a different approach, with each town separated and isolated from its neighbours except for strictly controlled trade. Expansion is thoroughly suppressed, and across the entire continent lives beneath the quasi-benevolent rule of their elven overlords, whilst stories of the (absolutely fictional) human empire of Viyallize planning to liberate them are routinely circulated every few years. Humans that display remarkable prowess or ability "escape to Viyallize", never to be seen again.

By enforcing that the populace live their lives in a manner that has a minimal carbon footprint, smithing has been all but wiped out, along with most industry. Due to the restriction on the amount of farmland available, most towns are heavily dependent on Elven priests, who are responsible for feeding the masses with sacred manna. In their absence, the woodlands have once again begun to reclaim the land, growing thick and primeval across the continent.

Routinely humans are taken from their towns and villages to breeding camps, where elves that have fallen out of favour with Derfiuror are subjected to the indignity of breeding with the "lesser" race, creating half-elves, faster breeding shock troops trained until they're only fifty (approximately level 5), and used to garrison the cities and towns of the conquered, instilled with fanatical loyalty to Derfiuror. Such a program is the only way of social mobility for humans, with elevated status being granted to the parents and siblings of these half-elven children, whilst half-elves are encouraged to remain with their own half-bred kind.

In the long-term, humanity will willingly breed itself into extinction, and the elves can afford to wait.

...

The moment you forget the absurd notion that a hundred year old elf can be a level 1 Wizard alongside a twenty year old human, when you account for the depths of schemes which can be wrought across periods of time too long for humans to ever remember, and when you stop and realise that the elves should probably have already entered, and passed through, their equivalent to the industrial revolution (and all that entails), it's hard to see exactly how they wouldn't be ruling the world with an iron fist. It's just a question of how. Personally I went for animated magical golem mecha, magical spell-slinging firearms (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=9048.0;wap2) and air strikes.

LibraryOgre
2012-07-16, 11:38 PM
I can't help but read that as "Once you change elves until they are no longer recognizably (D&D) elves, they make great villains." The elves you describe seem more like long-lived hobgoblins, what with the extreme LE.

Kholai
2012-07-17, 03:27 AM
I can't help but read that as "Once you change elves until they are no longer recognizably (D&D) elves, they make great villains." The elves you describe seem more like long-lived hobgoblins, what with the extreme LE.

If there were an evil population of ale swilling, murderous dwarves, who rampage across the land in service of their Raubritter, using superior tactics and an underground network of tunnels to effectively paralyse the country's economy with their incessant banditry.... would that make them "not dwarves"?

If you can't picture elves being a well organised evil empire, I'd suggest that that is possibly your primary hurdle to recognising them as a credible villainous race. If you choose to have all your races be walking, talking stereotypes then elves couldn't really be the villains at all, since I assume that they would be too busy being chaotic good and helping people.

This said however, pretty much any non-alignment point still stands, they live for hundreds of years, they should probably start out adventuring either at physical maturity (25), or about level 10 (75). They have three hundred years to improve after that to improve, and to have about three or four children each who will each grow up to be level 10 or so. The bizarrely unfounded notion that they need an extra fifty years to reach level one, for no additional benefit. The same applies to Dwarves and every other long-lived race.

A nation of about a million people in a thousand years of prep time (assuming only one couple in two has a successful child every twenty-five years) can still easily become a world conquering power under the highly important principle "Light Elf's Burden", where as non-dark elves it is their important duty to conquer the rest of the world, as the non-elves are clearly too uncivilised and barbaric to comprehend the concept of self-governance, and therefore need to be enslaved for a few millennia until they learn to stop being so short-sighted.

LibraryOgre
2012-07-17, 07:54 PM
If you can't picture elves being a well organised evil empire, I'd suggest that that is possibly your primary hurdle to recognising them as a credible villainous race. If you choose to have all your races be walking, talking stereotypes then elves couldn't really be the villains at all, since I assume that they would be too busy being chaotic good and helping people.

D&D elves? Those aren't a well-organized evil empire. They don't terribly do well-organized. The examples of evil elves that work are generally not D&D elves... and, so far as I can tell, they seldom meet all the criteria. In Brust's Dragaera, they're not particularly evil (racist and callous, but not actively, hand-rubbingly evil). In the Halfblood Chronicles, they're not particularly organized.


This said however, pretty much any non-alignment point still stands, they live for hundreds of years, they should probably start out adventuring either at physical maturity (25), or about level 10 (75). They have three hundred years to improve after that to improve, and to have about three or four children each who will each grow up to be level 10 or so. The bizarrely unfounded notion that they need an extra fifty years to reach level one, for no additional benefit. The same applies to Dwarves and every other long-lived race.

Only if you go with the assumption that elves reach maturity at 25, immediately begin reproducing, can and will obsessively and regularly reproduce, and would choose to do so... which is not the case in all D&D. Your system also assumes that few die in that time period, and that they are left free of external and internal pressures for that time... external pressures which will, if game worlds are anything to go by, tend to be fairly catastrophic... especially when you're letting those who are physically but not mentally mature fiddle about with the fundamental forces of the universe.

In human terms, it's like saying that we can conquer anyone in the world if we start having every 13 year old get married and have children, while simultaneously training them to be Delta-force commandos.

As for "bizarrely unfounded notion"... elves and dwarves are not human. In most game cosmologies, they're not even natural creatures in the way we think about it... they were not created with selection pressure in mind, so there's no reason for them NOT to take longer to reach physical maturity. If you're going to make something that lives forever, why not give them nearly a century as a child?

Kholai
2012-07-18, 03:41 AM
D&D elves? Those aren't a well-organized evil empire. They don't terribly do well-organized. The examples of evil elves that work are generally not D&D elves... and, so far as I can tell, they seldom meet all the criteria. In Brust's Dragaera, they're not particularly evil (racist and callous, but not actively, hand-rubbingly evil). In the Halfblood Chronicles, they're not particularly organized.

Hm. Let's step back. Why do you believe that D&D elves cannot be well organised? Are they physically incapable of uniting into a single cohesive body of individuals? Are they incapable of rallying behind a single charismatic leader?

Or is it just that you can't see elves being racist, scheming bigots who don't tolerate other races and think that the world would be better off if there were more trees in it?

I know they're not "elves" as such, but I'm fairly sure Eldar make a decent example of "not Chaotic Good".


Only if you go with the assumption that elves reach maturity at 25, immediately begin reproducing, can and will obsessively and regularly reproduce, and would choose to do so... which is not the case in all D&D.

Actually let me break it down:
The assumption was that Elves reach physical maturity at 25 (which, on wiki-ing it seems correct). The original assumption as stated was that they begin having children at approximately a century of age. Since the wiki also says they reach emotional maturity at 125, I've pushed this back twenty five years, which changes the end population down by a few hundred thousand.

As to choosing to do so, a real world example would be ~1949 China, where the population was convinced by a popular and charismatic leaders that it was their duty as a people to breed.

Where humans in this case bred so fast and hard that they had to reverse the policy within twenty years, the elven equivalent is by having, on average, "~2 children per century". For survival purposes, a net result of around two thirds of this number survive or grow to be useful - meaning about one third of elven couples have a successful child that progresses to into adulthood.


Your system also assumes that few die in that time period, and that they are left free of external and internal pressures for that time... external pressures which will, if game worlds are anything to go by, tend to be fairly catastrophic... especially when you're letting those who are physically but not mentally mature fiddle about with the fundamental forces of the universe.

In human terms, it's like saying that we can conquer anyone in the world if we start having every 13 year old get married and have children, while simultaneously training them to be Delta-force commandos.

Whilst I confess my system doesn't include external pressures, it actually assumed that huge numbers died during this time, that the reproductive age of elves was ~100-300 and all other members died immediately. Were I to include a growing population of older elves, then the final population would approximately double.

Considering that the population of Evermeet is 1.7 million, where this starts out from a fairly small population of ~20,000 individuals, I believe a possibly more accurate statement is "A race of incredibly long-lived, civilised humanoids with a ten thousand year head start on *everybody* can conquer the world if they stop being arbitrarily and unrealistically incompetent because they're being constrained to simple human thought".


As for "bizarrely unfounded notion"... elves and dwarves are not human. In most game cosmologies, they're not even natural creatures in the way we think about it... they were not created with selection pressure in mind, so there's no reason for them NOT to take longer to reach physical maturity. If you're going to make something that lives forever, why not give them nearly a century as a child?

It does take them longer to reach physical maturity, it takes them quarter of a century. Now they are physically adults, walking among people who have been learning for two hundred years longer than they have. It takes them one hundred years of learning and growing as individuals until they are considered fit to walk in elven society.

Unless Elves are mentally incapable of learning until the age of 114 - which is an absurd claim, then one can take "physical maturity" to mean just that - that the elf has finished becoming an elf, that their brain has finished growing, and that they are basically a puny human in their ways of thinking, and are societally unfit to enter adult society.

In more human terms, this would be "you're an adult at fifteen, but you can't vote until you're eighteen, drink until you're twenty-one, or stand for office in the Athenian senate until you're thirty". Maturity is not the same as physical maturity, and it's high elven standards that determine this limit.

So a hundred years, a hundred years of learning and improving *just to fit in with the regular population of bicentennials*. It's a strange concept for a human to wrap their head around, but elves practice and study getting into their chosen vocation of choice longer than most humans live before they're considered good enough by elven standards.

As I said already, the only change necessary is to remove the fantasy glass ceiling that means a hundred and fourteen year old elf and a forty-three year old dwarf are *worse* than a 16 year old human at swinging a sword... When they've all three of them been practising since they were old enough to hold one.

Zale
2012-07-18, 04:38 AM
Anyone post this yet?


"Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad".
— Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies


Khoai.

Elves tend towards being Chaotic.

Chaotic creatures rarely ascribe to that level of discipline or hierarchy.

I mean, look at the Drow. Almost everyone of them suffers from chronic backstabbing disorder. It takes a huge outside threat to get them to work together at all.

Normal Elves are even more unlikely to do what you're talking about. They're usually Chaotic Good.

Chaotic Good creatures don't train their children from birth to genocide the rest of the world. If there was some big tyrannical army to fight, it might galvanize them into action- causing them to form small roving bands of freedom fighters or whatever, but rarely a single and cohesive effort.

Man on Fire
2012-07-18, 04:43 AM
D&D created or helped to promote most of stereotypes that are prevalent in fantasy and should die off long time ago. It's a genre where we should allow our imagination to run wild, but bullmanure like "Elves are three-loving and are better than you" has polluted it with thousands clones of the same old, same old.

Now, I really like Blood Elves from Earthdawn, who have all things I usually hate about Elves - they're beutiful, ong-living, proud, elegant, great in everything, isolationist - while also being selfish jerks, covered in thorns.

Zale
2012-07-18, 04:48 AM
You know how someone who's just getting into writing will probably end up making a Mary Sue by accident?

The same thing happens with Gods.

Elves were the first born race of the world.

Do the math. :smalltongue:

Dr. Yes
2012-07-18, 08:21 AM
All of the things that make normal D&D elves cool to the point of being the Mary Sue race also make them into soberingly credible and dangerous villains. There was this indie fantasy comic called ElfQuest that I read in high school where the villains were your classic High Elf society: waifish, magical, long-lived, haughty; scions of an ancient and powerful heritage. Their ruler was all of those things up to eleven, with a healthy dose of the Vamp (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheVamp) thrown in, and she was terrifying.

Zale
2012-07-18, 08:24 AM
It would be terrifying to go up against someone who has the narrative on their side.

Absolutely so.

Telonius
2012-07-18, 08:49 AM
Feanor and his kids have already been mentioned. But there's an even better instance within Tolkien's works: Eöl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C3%B6l). The wiki says more than I can sum up quickly. His nickname is "The Dark Elf" (and that should tell you something). He's a creepy, creepy guy. While Feanor & Sons at least have a blood feud to explain their actions, Eöl doesn't even have much of a motivation other than jealousy, desire, and pettiness.

dsmiles
2012-07-18, 09:00 AM
Haven't read the whole thread, but has anyone mentioned the "elves as eco-terrorists" shtick yet?

Kholai
2012-07-18, 09:06 AM
Anyone post this yet?




Khoai.

Elves tend towards being Chaotic.

Chaotic creatures rarely ascribe to that level of discipline or hierarchy.

I mean, look at the Drow. Almost everyone of them suffers from chronic backstabbing disorder. It takes a huge outside threat to get them to work together at all.

Normal Elves are even more unlikely to do what you're talking about. They're usually Chaotic Good.

Chaotic Good creatures don't train their children from birth to genocide the rest of the world. If there was some big tyrannical army to fight, it might galvanize them into action- causing them to form small roving bands of freedom fighters or whatever, but rarely a single and cohesive effort.

Whilst I wasn't thinking of just D&D, since this isn't the D&D section of the forum, do remember that "Usually" does not mean "Always" by any stretch of the imagination, especially when Always doesn't even mean always. This fantasy stereotype that non-human races are somehow mode-locked into disorganised do-gooders is just another part of the fantasy glass ceiling. How can you have legitimate villains if they're designated heroes?

Again, take the Eldar, space elves who dedicate themselves to mastery of a single aspect, think nothing of the extermination of billions of lesser races to preserve a single Eldar life, have schemes that extend almost literally forever, and are about as lawful as you can get, on pain of absorption into everlasting chaos.

Personally I was rather fond of my campaign with the Ashkarn, Nordic styled snow elves united as the ruling class of a desolate icy wasteland who devoted their lives to ruling and defending the lesser races in their domain from ice monsters. Despite living in the snow, using long spears rather than bows, worshipping the Dread Raven and having a strict and brutal feudal system, they did not cease being elves, even with the lack of trees.

Even in D&D, Elves are free to be any alignment, and their children are free to trend towards their parents, who are in turn lead by their society. They can have paladins, they can have blackguards, separate societies can trend towards Chaotic, Lawful, Neutral, Good or Evil separately based on their leadership. In this case, the Neutral Evil Derfiuror, a charismatic despotic monster who believes that personal freedom for elves tends to be a good thing, whilst personal freedom for other races is the cause of all of life's problems.

Secondly, there's no particular "training from birth" here, we've simply removed the illogical assumption that all that training that elves go through *anyway* is useless. Without this assumption, the absolute youngest adult elf you see has trained at their chosen profession longer than most humans do before they *retire*. The only time you'd expect to see a level 1 elf in any class would be if you were in one of their villages and spying on a few 30 year old whelps who aren't considered good enough to be allowed out on their own (after all, they're a 25 year investment with a Con penalty, would you let them out before they were ready?).

I'm not sure if being really good at something "because you've practised for a hundred years" is a Mary-Sueish trait, but the moment you stop with the artificial competitive balance thing that D&D implemented is the moment when Elves stop being "informed badasses".

Zale
2012-07-19, 12:56 AM
Whilst I wasn't thinking of just D&D, since this isn't the D&D section of the forum, do remember that "Usually" does not mean "Always" by any stretch of the imagination, especially when Always doesn't even mean always. This fantasy stereotype that non-human races are somehow mode-locked into disorganised do-gooders is just another part of the fantasy glass ceiling. How can you have legitimate villains if they're designated heroes?

I was under the impression you were talking about D&D Elves.

If not, then whatever you say.

I still think the things you are suggesting fly in the face of nearly every way that Elves are usually depicted in D&D.

Kholai
2012-07-19, 06:41 AM
I was under the impression you were talking about D&D Elves.

If not, then whatever you say.

I still think the things you are suggesting fly in the face of nearly every way that Elves are usually depicted in D&D.

You're right, because people are wont to generalise them as the heroes. However....

As already mentioned: Jon Irenicus. Soul stealing gent who keeps a vast prison where he tortures and imprisons people, leads an army of undead, and has long, involved and geniusly played out schemes to become a god - and succeeds - by absorbing the energy from a forest in a goal to destroy it utterly.

Alignment? Neutral Evil.

Vaarsuvius. Barters with demons, slays an entire family line akin to pretty much genocide. Arrogant insufferable sod.

Alignment: Probably not Chaotic Good. My money's actually on Lawful Neutral.

Wood Elves in general: Alignment: "Usually Neutral".

Fey'rri: Created by a group Sun Elves willingly and vigorously "consorting" with demons.

Presumed alignment of those who consort with demons? Probably Chaotic, but unlikely to be Good.

Elves: Far sighted, wiser than humans, patient, racist, prideful, waifish, and generally infused with cosmic magical power. Capable of any alignment.

So what exactly do you consider D&D elves to be that disqualifies them from being even moderately well-organised (one common racial trait is that they actually rather appreciate "strong leadership"), or is it that they're incapable of being bad guys unless they're black?

LibraryOgre
2012-07-20, 12:46 PM
Hm. Let's step back. Why do you believe that D&D elves cannot be well organised? Are they physically incapable of uniting into a single cohesive body of individuals? Are they incapable of rallying behind a single charismatic leader?

In D&D, elves are inclined towards Chaos and Good. It is the default alignment for elves, to the extent where even 3.x acknowledges that half of elves are going to be that. Since they are the special creation of a deity who is likewise CG, that is unlikely to change significantly on a statistical level... you may have elves of all alignments, but, from a D&D perspective, it's going to be unlikely that you will have a significant population of Lawful Evil elves.


Or is it just that you can't see elves being racist, scheming bigots who don't tolerate other races and think that the world would be better off if there were more trees in it?

Oh, I have no trouble with that. Most elves are racists.


I know they're not "elves" as such, but I'm fairly sure Eldar make a decent example of "not Chaotic Good".

This is a fine line to walk, and part of what I was talking about, earlier. D&D elves are pretty specific. When you expand beyond D&D, you get a lot more varieties of elves, but I cannot think of an example of LE elves. Two of the previously mentioned "legit villain" elves (the elves of the Halfblood Chronicles and those of Brusts Dragaera) are pretty much CN/E... self-focused, rather than organization focused.



Actually let me break it down:
The assumption was that Elves reach physical maturity at 25 (which, on wiki-ing it seems correct). The original assumption as stated was that they begin having children at approximately a century of age. Since the wiki also says they reach emotional maturity at 125, I've pushed this back twenty five years, which changes the end population down by a few hundred thousand.

Complete Elves has them in childhood until 65. In 1e and 2e, the youngest PC elves were more than a century old. LotR has you seldom encountering elves under a millenium.



Where humans in this case bred so fast and hard that they had to reverse the policy within twenty years, the elven equivalent is by having, on average, "~2 children per century".

This assumes that elves are physically capable of bearing children at that rate, which I don't see as supported. If they were, you'd see it in populations like Wild Elves, drow and the grugachan... subraces with higher selection pressures... and even they're seldom as frequent as more than 1 child per century.



Considering that the population of Evermeet is 1.7 million, where this starts out from a fairly small population of ~20,000 individuals, I believe a possibly more accurate statement is "A race of incredibly long-lived, civilised humanoids with a ten thousand year head start on *everybody* can conquer the world if they stop being arbitrarily and unrealistically incompetent because they're being constrained to simple human thought".


That's part of the problem right there. You're thinking of them as long-lived humans. They're not. They don't think like humans. They don't learn like humans. They go through a far more leisurely learning process possibly because, unlike humans, they don't learn quickly. Humans, especially young humans, absorb knowledge like sponges. Older humans slow down in absorbing new knowledge, but elves remain unwise a lot longer than humans... 1e DMG puts grey elves at being -1 to Wisdom Young Adults for more than a hundred years, whereas humans get over it in six.

Simply put... it's possible that elves are idiots, who slowly grow to humanlike understanding.


It does take them longer to reach physical maturity, it takes them quarter of a century.

Or, you know, a century.



As I said already, the only change necessary is to remove the fantasy glass ceiling that means a hundred and fourteen year old elf and a forty-three year old dwarf are *worse* than a 16 year old human at swinging a sword... When they've all three of them been practising since they were old enough to hold one.

Or for elves to not be humans. For them to not age and advance on human scales, because they're in no way humans, who did not develop with selection pressure, instead being the creation of a deity in situ. For them to have developed relatively few technologies, instead taking the gifts of deities and the work of other races, perfecting without innovating.

Once you set aside 3.x's assertions about elves, and look at their history, they become pretty sensible.

Kholai
2012-07-20, 01:54 PM
In D&D, elves are inclined towards Chaos and Good. It is the default alignment for elves, to the extent where even 3.x acknowledges that half of elves are going to be that. Since they are the special creation of a deity who is likewise CG, that is unlikely to change significantly on a statistical level... you may have elves of all alignments, but, from a D&D perspective, it's going to be unlikely that you will have a significant population of Lawful Evil elves.

As a general, though admittedly real world consideration, it is safe to say that most soldiers who commit atrocities are in fact "Neutral" - see the Milgram experiment. It isn't necessary for a population to be generally Lawful or Evil to operate under the belief that having many children is a good thing, that their racist beliefs are justified, and that they are doing the lesser races a favour by keeping them from expanding....

And this doesn't take into account the actual, tangible effects of the society they're raised into (it sounds beyond unfeasible to suggest that elves have brains that override environment).


Complete Elves has them in childhood until 65. In 1e and 2e, the youngest PC elves were more than a century old. LotR has you seldom encountering elves under a millenium.

I'm currently consulting the 3e book "Races of the Wild". Before we go on, could anyone provide any guideline about providing excerpts from books? I don't want to go too far with it, but I'm feeling constrained in getting us on the same page here, where quoting about one full paragraph from the book should cover everything I'd like to cover here.

Is a paragraph fine, or should I break it down into a few bullet points?


Once you set aside 3.x's assertions about elves, and look at their history, they become pretty sensible.

That's actually largely a lot of what I'm suggesting, but I'll go into this next post once I know if I need to provide a synopsis or can simply send put up a paragraph excerpt.

Math_Mage
2012-07-20, 02:00 PM
M:tG Lorwyn block (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/feature/422) featured elves that were villainous, if not villains outright.

LibraryOgre
2012-07-20, 02:14 PM
And this doesn't take into account the actual, tangible effects of the society they're raised into (it sounds beyond unfeasible to suggest that elves have brains that override environment).

If elf personality is all brain; the evidence of the afterlife implies that it is not.



I'm currently consulting the 3e book "Races of the Wild". Before we go on, could anyone provide any guideline about providing excerpts from books? I don't want to go too far with it, but I'm feeling constrained in getting us on the same page here, where quoting about one full paragraph from the book should cover everything I'd like to cover here.

Is a paragraph fine, or should I break it down into a few bullet points?

I've got the same source. I've just got other sources that I prefer.

The Mod Wonder: Generally, a clearly sourced paragraph for reference purposes will be fine for fluff; I suggest using a quote box, with the name of the book and the page number as the author of the quote. If you use either the Chicago Manual of Style or Turabian, I will laugh, and possibly give you a cookie. For actual rules data (i.e. spells, feats, etc.), it is better to summarize. In all cases, a simple page reference is never going to get you in trouble, unless the page is otherwise problematic (i.e. explicit artwork).


That's actually largely a lot of what I'm suggesting, but I'll go into this next post once I know if I need to provide a synopsis or can simply send put up a paragraph excerpt.

But you're still embracing the "elves are humans who live a long time and mature slowly, with humanlike rates of learning."

AgentofHellfire
2012-07-20, 05:43 PM
.

Here's how you make an Elf a Villain. The are pompus, self interested racists who believe that all other humanoids are inferior. They live at one with nature, but prohibit the dirty races from being a part of it, because all they do is destroy. This sets up a direct desire to undermine all organized society because the dirty races should be nothing more than animals, if that, they are a blight upon the land... etc etc, you have Elvish Hitler leading the pure bloods on a blitzkrieg of any well maintained society you wish to portray.


This is what I do a whole lot of the time, actually. XD

Kholai
2012-07-20, 07:45 PM
It may be facetious of me to say it, but isn't the usual rule of thumb "most recently printed"? ;)


Though an elf reaches mental and physical maturity at the
age of 25, very few elves become parents until much later in
life. Elves rarely feel that they’re ready to settle down and
begin families before they’re at least 100 years old, and most
stop having children soon after reaching the age of 200. Elf
children are not as numerous as one might expect, given the
length of an elf’s child-rearing years, because elves are less
fertile than humans and other shorter-lived races. A typical
human couple might have one to four children over the
course of a decade, but an elf couple might take fifty years
to have the same number of children.

I presume in AD&D the maximum age of elves was still ~750 years, with Venerable status still ~350, and Middle Age ~175, with the main difference being a longer childhood.

Four children over fifty years is substantially more than I've assumed, and implicitly, this is a "typical" elven couple. I'd suggest that I've been fairly conservative. Contrarily, by your 1 / century notion, no wonder the elves are dying out, they're lucky to even break even at 2 children before they're Venerable.


I've got the same source. I've just got other sources that I prefer.

My google fu reveals this thread:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?626446-Let-s-Read-The-Complete-Book-of-Elves/page18

Third post from the bottom is a story about a woodself with four children. Is this actually a story from the book? If it is, then I'd suggest that your source considers four children that are children in the same period of time to mean either two sets of twins, quadruplets, or that elves can actually have children quite close together (in the single to low double digit years between each).

I'm not even going to go into what it implies about those four elves' alignments.


But you're still embracing the "elves are humans who live a long time and mature slowly, with humanlike rates of learning."

I believe I've been misrepresented here, but do bear in mind before continuing: Elves do not have a penalty to Exp gain. They definitely are capable of humanlike rates of learning, and an elf and a human on an adventure together will reach level 10 in tandem, potentially even reaching epic levels before the human turns 30.

Now why do I believe I've been misrepresented?

Because nowhere did I say human rates of learning. The plan was: Over the course of fifty years of training, an elf reaches level ten. Since you state that elves are children until sixty-five, then that would drop it to level 7, assuming ~5 years per level.

Fifty years of training, just like the story I've linked to (if I'm barking up the wrong tree and that's not the same book, then feel free to say, but I'd suggest my statement is still not unworldly).

Do you accept the possibility that a child soldier (human), put into intense training might be higher than level 1 at age 15? What about by age 17?

By the actual game mechanics, it's pretty much accepted that a level 1 character of any race could reach level 2 within fairly short order - correct me if I'm wrong, but my old EOTB game had a party of four up to level two within about an hour or so of solid adventuring, so I assume that's also correct for AD&D.

Arbitrary game concept #1: A PC human who is age 16 and just starting out is level 1, and a 19 year old will also be level 1. Within five days they are both level 2.
Arbitrary game concept #2: A PC human who is age 16 and just starting out is level 1, and a seventy year old PC Dwarf is also level 1.

Since the issue clearly isn't learning speed, one assumes that it must be opportunity, and until they hit level 1, they just aren't doing anything that gives experience.

If we split that further, that demonstrates the Fantasy Race glass ceiling. Clearly those four elf children spent fifty years training pretty hard, and by the end of it, they were capable of - each working solo - getting a ring of regeneration, tracking down a bounty hunter, and subduing him. Even retired, he presumably is at least level ~4-6 even if he's the laziest bounty hunter ever, and -1/-1 from being "Old" isn't going to make him unable to smackdown four level 1s.
With his beard.

I'm sure the counter statement would be "Oh they adventured a lot before they got there immediately after setting out at level 1", but I'd say that just proves my point - Fifty years of exposure to information. Dedicated, diligent training to learn about tracking.

As to thinking like long-lived humans... Can you wrap your head around spending ten years simply examining how different footprints appear in different types of soil? Learning every type of tree in an entire forest? That's not "thinking like a human" at all, that's explicit elf-fluff, that's how they roll. When they learn something, they learn it hard. They spend weeks, months working on a work of art, a decade spent composing a sonnet to get it absolutely right. Apply that level of dedication to learning magic, or swordplay.

Every elf is, according to fluff, more dedicated and determined that any Chaotic creature has any right to be. And this applies to everything they do, they spend the time learning to do it perfectly.

They have all the time in the world, they can learn more in their lifetimes than any human could ever possibly fit into their tiny monkey brains, the absolute youngest member of their race considered able to leave the house has picked up 25-75 years of accumulated knowledge in however many fields have taken their interest.

Stepping outside of D&D, how many rookie elves did you spot in LotR? Pretty much zero. By the time they're allowed out of the house, they're Legolas-level badass or better. In other settings? There's an entire trope on it. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter)

How on earth would a hundred year old elven adventurer, who's been practicing with the sword presumably for at least a decade or two minimum before they got left home, have trouble fighting a house cat?

With elven children being about a fifth as frequent as human children, how the heck would they

Removing the artificial limiter designed around making sure that humans are the best (pretty much what 3.5 has done), and removing the arbitrary "competitive balance" designed around making sure elves and dwarves and humans can all hang around together in a great big happy family (to be fair, a fairly necessary game construct that is only no longer necessary if you no longer need elves to be PCs), and you have elves actually achieving what their fluff is supposed to be - a bunch of highly skilled arrogant pretty-boys who are almost always better than humans at pretty much everything, purely by having the hundred years of living account for something.

Elves: Starting age ~100, start about level 6 - being very conservative here.
Dwarves: Starting age ~60, start about level 4.
Humans: Starting age ~17, start at level 1.

Lower levels? Lower starting age. A 32 year old elf would still be level 1, young, naive (for an elf), and probably has his parents out looking for him, because there's no way they'd let a level 1 elf with a con penalty wander the world after all that work conceiving.

With that in place, and suddenly elves actually up to what they're supposed to be by their own fluff. Elves don't need to be "super special" or anything, you just never meet one who isn't already at a standard where they're beyond the Heroic gameplay range.

From my self-inflicted Tv-Trope trail, it seems like this is similar to the Burning Wheel method - Elves are skilled but learn slower (or require more Exp to do so), so other races catch up comparatively quickly.

After you've stripped away the inconsistency and logical flaws, all that's left is an evil leader (all heil Derfiuror (Imfranklyamazednobodysgotthispun)), a society of elves (Wood Elves are Usually Neutral, so let's go with them as being suitably corruptible for Nasijamanni), a motivation (racial purity, uniting all nations with a shared Elven language, keep them out of their pretty forests, and of course, the extermination of those tree destroying, fortress dwelling, tasty dwarves), and you have a dangerous, credible group of villains who are actually just as AoH just quoted Frenth saying back on page 1.

LibraryOgre
2012-07-20, 10:35 PM
It may be facetious of me to say it, but isn't the usual rule of thumb "most recently printed"? ;)

Hackmaster Players Handbook started getting delivered this week. And the 1e AD&D reprints came out this week, too. :smallbiggrin:


I presume in AD&D the maximum age of elves was still ~750 years, with Venerable status still ~350, and Middle Age ~175, with the main difference being a longer childhood.

Nope. High elves (most common type of elves), per 1e DMG, most recent D&D source:

All high elves start at +1 Dex, -1 Con, before aging modifiers. Aging modifiers are cumulative.
Young adults from 100-175 +1 Con, -1 Wis
Mature Adults from 176-550 +1 Strength, +1 Wisdom
Middle Aged until 875 -1 Str, -1 Con, +1 Int and Wisdom
Old until 1200 -2 Str, -2 Dex, -1 Con, +1 Wis
Venerable until ~1600 -1 Str, Dex, Con, +1 Int, Wis



I believe I've been misrepresented here, but do bear in mind before continuing: Elves do not have a penalty to Exp gain. They definitely are capable of humanlike rates of learning, and an elf and a human on an adventure together will reach level 10 in tandem, potentially even reaching epic levels before the human turns 30.


But the elf wouldn't have learned enough to be 1st level until he was more than a century old. It's not an XP penalty... it's that they learn very slowly in childhood.



Fifty years of training, just like the story I've linked to (if I'm barking up the wrong tree and that's not the same book, then feel free to say, but I'd suggest my statement is still not unworldly).


Absent experience, how do they gain levels? You can't gain levels simply by training forever.



Do you accept the possibility that a child soldier (human), put into intense training might be higher than level 1 at age 15? What about by age 17?

If he has the experience? Sure.


When they learn something, they learn it hard. They spend weeks, months working on a work of art, a decade spent composing a sonnet to get it absolutely right. Apply that level of dedication to learning magic, or swordplay.

Alternative explanation: They learn it slow. Humans pick these things up in a few years; they learn general principles and apply them as they go. Elves take decades, repeating lessons, going over countless use-cases, in what would be brain-numbing detail for the human who already got it.



Every elf is, according to fluff, more dedicated and determined that any Chaotic creature has any right to be. And this applies to everything they do, they spend the time learning to do it perfectly.

Chaos doesn't imply a lack of dedication, simply a lack of acceptance of coercion. DMG, page 23.

Simply put, your "elves learn thoroughly" argument can likewise be "elves learn slowly, and apply generalities poorly." Given that they take 175 years to reach the maturity of a 21 year old human, I think it's as valid a way of viewing it.

Raimun
2012-07-20, 10:36 PM
Warhammer has Dark Elves. They're pretty much one of the strongest contenders for being the most ruthless bunch of heartless killers for that setting. Of course, they are not the only elves.

Warhammer 40k has the Eldar, "the space elves". They are a dying race and they'd rather let millions of human beings die than sacrifice a single one of their own. These are the nicer elves of that setting.

8-bit theater has elves too and they are horrible, elitist, sons of... classy ladies with no redeeming qualities. They're kind of making me feel bad about playing an elf nowdays.

There's the drow, of course, but who really pays any attention to them?

Oh, and the bad guy of Hellboy 2 was an elf and kind of a jerk.

Kholai
2012-07-21, 06:29 AM
Nope. High elves (most common type of elves), per 1e DMG, most recent D&D source:

Did you.... Did you just change your source because I quoted where your original source agreed? :smallconfused: I was referring to your original "Complete Elves". Upping their lifespan only works in favour of a long term training regime by giving the elves four hundred years to improve.

And please note, I didn't ask what First Edition ages were, I asked what AD&D ages were. If we start going back to a system where every elf could decide to be a Fighter or a Wizard once per day, things start getting a little kooky.


But the elf wouldn't have learned enough to be 1st level until he was more than a century old. It's not an XP penalty... it's that they learn very slowly in childhood.

I believe this is something where we cannot agree. The notion that children learn less than a thousandth as quickly as adults is biologically unfeasible.

What you appear to be saying is that elves are a race of mentally handicapped individuals who barely reach human levels of intelligence.

And that this fits the idea of "elves" better than a race of long lived preternaturally skilled individuals whose skills and wisdom outstrip all their lesser races due to their long age.

Arbitrary fantasy glass ceiling.


Absent experience, how do they gain levels? You can't gain levels simply by training forever.

Arbitrary game concept. Again. Why wouldn't training with a sword for two years make you better than someone who just picked up their sword two months ago?

However, if you want to play it that way... Each child intended for military service groups into a team of four. They are armed with bows and swords, and unarmed kobold slaves are released towards them one at a time. Even at 1 kobold / 4, a few level 0 elves will eventually level up to 1, and can move up to more dangerous targets. If level 0 elves cannot successfully take down lone Kobolds, then they are mixed into high level

Next, they need to solve mazes, climb walls, engage in roleplaying exercises in persuasion, negotiation, compete against each other in unarmed combat...

Getting XP in D&D involves.




Chaos doesn't imply a lack of dedication, simply a lack of acceptance of coercion. DMG, page 23.


Unlike the Humans, the Dwarves, and the Small Ones, we Elves are not so much shaped by our heritage as by the way we are taught to live. Tales of Dark Elves who who have the heart of High Elves exist, as do tales of treachery and deceit among High Elves. While both cases are rare, they have happened--and will happen. Always, we attribute these to the way in which the Elf was raised, for we know that is more important than blood.

Zale
2012-07-21, 06:41 AM
I fail to see how that quote relates in any way to what he said.

Prime32
2012-07-21, 06:56 AM
Not technically elves, but their setting's closest equivalent: Lunarians (http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Lunarian).

Let me put it this way: their prisons contain multiple non-evil gods.

comicshorse
2012-07-21, 07:20 AM
Warhammer has Dark Elves. They're pretty much one of the strongest contenders for being the most ruthless bunch of heartless killers for that setting. Of course, they are not the only elves.

Warhammer 40k has the Eldar, "the space elves". They are a dying race and they'd rather let millions of human beings die than sacrifice a single one of their own. These are the nicer elves of that setting.



And 40K has the Dark Eldar who regard torture as their racial sport

Kholai
2012-07-21, 08:34 AM
I fail to see how that quote relates in any way to what he said.

Two-fold.

1: The original response indicating that a nature of being Chaotic Good overrode "nurture".

2: Education from birth and the society one lives in clearly do have a huge role in how an elf ends up. This infers that "Chaotic Good" is a result of the vast majority of elven societies imparting and holding to this attitude.

If elven children are raised in a human environment by humans, then they will behave more similarly to humans (and probably lose their minds since they weren't trained to handle longevity). If they are raised to be lawful, then they will probably trend more towards lawful and accept a more rigid social structure. Society is a self-sustaining worldview.

Zale
2012-07-21, 10:02 AM
Two-fold.

1: The original response indicating that a nature of being Chaotic Good overrode "nurture".

2: Education from birth and the society one lives in clearly do have a huge role in how an elf ends up. This infers that "Chaotic Good" is a result of the vast majority of elven societies imparting and holding to this attitude.

If elven children are raised in a human environment by humans, then they will behave more similarly to humans (and probably lose their minds since they weren't trained to handle longevity). If they are raised to be lawful, then they will probably trend more towards lawful and accept a more rigid social structure. Society is a self-sustaining worldview.

It's kind of pointless debating this with you, isn't it?

They. Are. Usually. Chaotic.

They could be Lawful if things were different. But at the present, it's likely a combination of natural tendencies, cultural influences and how they are raised.

Man on Fire
2012-07-21, 10:48 AM
It's kind of pointless debating this with you, isn't it?

They. Are. Usually. Chaotic.

They could be Lawful if things were different. But at the present, it's likely a combination of natural tendencies, cultural influences and how they are raised.

D&D Alignment system is interesting on personal basis, but trying to asign it to entire species, no matter if as "always" or "usually" or anything like that, is, was and forever will be dumb, dumb idea that breaks the suspension of disbelief and exist only to don't make players feel bad about killing Orcs. Assuming anything on it's basis is doing nothing more but spreading it's stupidity. Not a single species is all always or usually anything.

Tantaburs
2012-07-21, 11:35 AM
Lorwyn elves killed you if you were ugly.

Zale
2012-07-21, 12:51 PM
D&D Alignment system is interesting on personal basis, but trying to asign it to entire species, no matter if as "always" or "usually" or anything like that, is, was and forever will be dumb, dumb idea that breaks the suspension of disbelief and exist only to don't make players feel bad about killing Orcs. Assuming anything on it's basis is doing nothing more but spreading it's stupidity. Not a single species is all always or usually anything.

Actually, according to what's written in the books, they will have tendencies.

Even Always doesn't mean 100%, but it does mean you're unlikely to run across a kind and generous Balor or a cruel and tyrannical Angel.

If you have problems with that, then by all means change it. I support the idea that the alignment system doesn't work very well when you apply real-life situations to it.

Now, if you would please excuse me while I go away and wonder why I bother posting in this thread.

Kholai
2012-07-21, 01:41 PM
It's kind of pointless debating this with you, isn't it?

Well, I'd prefer it if you debated a little more adroitly to be honest. It doesn't really count as debating when you basically ignore every source I provide demonstrating the possibility, ignore the vast majority of everything else, then complain that your masterful one sentence "argument" doesn't persuade me.

If you'd like to debate, I'll be happy to break it down into something easier for you to deal with if you like.

1: I'm proposing an evil nazi-reminiscent elf society which is approximately neutral evil (nothing proposed is particularly lawful). It oppresses lesser races, and uses magical devastation to wipe out any opposition, and forces them to live in harmony with nature.
Until it is ready, it lives in isolation with decoy villages to hide the true extent of their peoples.

Now you should try coming up with something that addresses each of these points, ideally with sources, and with something a bit stronger than a "usually" alignment that doesn't even apply to every race of Elves, especially not when you step outside of strict D&D to Spelljammer or any of the many, many other examples some of these fine people have provided.

Bear in mind that your alignment argument is incredibly weak anyway. It's infinitely less likely for a Succubus Chaotic Evil demon, who actually is an embodiment of Chaos and Evilness, to be a Lawful Good Paladin, and as has been mentioned, alignments are a bit iffy at the best of times in D&D.

Hopefully you could come up with something that actually argues that elves:

Cannot plan ahead.
Do not like nature.
Are not racist teabags.
Are not capable of unleashing magical devastation on their foes.
Are incapable of internal cohesion.

You should probably provide evidence to support this claim, since that's a lot of critical fluff you're contradicting.

2: I'm stating that elves are encouraged to marry and have children soon after the age of around 100, have a moderate (actually fairly low) population increase and grow in isolation to expand the size of their community, in order to become a sizeable and credible threat to

Since I've supplied two sources indicating that this is actually a pretty conservative estimate, I'm not sure you could argue against this one, but you could probably say that in many circumstances (which this does not need to be), outside influences would stop most settlements from increasing in size.

3: I'm stating that considering 3.5 fluff states that elves are physical and mental adults as of 25, they are perfectly capable of entering specific and dedicated training during this time.
I'm also stating that D&D fluff in general is inconsistent with its own crunch, and that the option with the most verisimilitude would actually be to expect the population of elves that reach adulthood to have a few levels under their belt.

Now, RAW you can definitely debate this, but I believe the best thing you can hope to do is, like Sirrah Hall, is to try and suggest that this is "unreasonable", at very least in terms of verisimilitude. Since this is likely to be a matter of opinion at its very core, the best you can really hope for is to deepen your understanding of the issues which you're going to, I presume, begin to debate.

Too long, didn't read?

You need to work against the internal consistency of the opposing argument on all fronts to demonstrate that it is "unreasonable". If you care about the topic title, then the more constructive and mature thing to do would be subsequently to work towards a compromise or alternative that better allows a credible elven villain. If you don't care and are actually posting out of a desire just to be right of course, then I'd agree that you would find more fulfilment by ceasing to post, since you won't end up being right any time soon in this type of discussion.

Zale
2012-07-22, 07:45 AM
Well, I'd prefer it if you debated a little more adroitly to be honest. It doesn't really count as debating when you basically ignore every source I provide demonstrating the possibility, ignore the vast majority of everything else, then complain that your masterful one sentence "argument" doesn't persuade me.


You are very amusing. With your smug superior attitude. It's a adorable.



If you'd like to debate, I'll be happy to break it down into something easier for you to deal with if you like.


Oh, there it is again! Implying that I'm less intelligent that average. It made me giggle.



1: I'm proposing an evil nazi-reminiscent elf society which is approximately neutral evil (nothing proposed is particularly lawful). It oppresses lesser races, and uses magical devastation to wipe out any opposition, and forces them to live in harmony with nature.
Until it is ready, it lives in isolation with decoy villages to hide the true extent of their peoples.


Actually, that does carry Lawful undertones to me. It appears to set up a tyrannical government with a clear goal, and utilizes disciplined troops and set stratagems to annihilate anything that does not comply.

However, it could just as easily be considered Neutral Evil.



Now you should try coming up with something that addresses each of these points, ideally with sources, and with something a bit stronger than a "usually" alignment that doesn't even apply to every race of Elves, especially not when you step outside of strict D&D to Spelljammer or any of the many, many other examples some of these fine people have provided.


If you present a scenario based on D&D, then object when someone mentions an aspect of the rules of D&D something is wrong.

If we are discussing some splinter faction of elves, then it can make plenty of sense. After all, it is easily possible that a small faction of the evils would take the usual xenophobic tendencies they possess to extremes.



Bear in mind that your alignment argument is incredibly weak anyway. It's infinitely less likely for a Succubus Chaotic Evil demon, who actually is an embodiment of Chaos and Evilness, to be a Lawful Good Paladin, and as has been mentioned, alignments are a bit iffy at the best of times in D&D.


I am aware of the idiocies of D&D Alignment. However, unless someone tells me that it is not relevant to whatever we are discussing, I am forced to assume it will be involved.



Hopefully you could come up with something that actually argues that elves:

Cannot plan ahead.
Do not like nature.
Are not racist teabags.
Are not capable of unleashing magical devastation on their foes.
Are incapable of internal cohesion.


Elves are more than capable of planning ahead and considering their long lives they likely have more experience with it.

They do, of course, appreciate nature.

And everyone is aware of their pride and tendency to look down upon the other races.

Though, technically, their crunch does not really confer any advantage to them with magic, at least with 3.5. Other than Elven Generalist.

Fluff-wise they are known for their skill with magic and ranged weaponry.

Now I think a problem is that Elves would not go to war in the manner you suggest. They would tend more to guerrilla tactics than to jack-boot militarism.

Let us examine their advantages and disadvantages, shall we?

Elves are, in general, fleet and skilled with ranged weapons. They are often adept with magic and have excellent knowledge of local terrain.

They usually lack the endurance and staying power of other races, and the organized hierarchy required for mass troop movement would likely seem somewhat alien to them.

So, they would work better in small-to-moderately sized semi-autonomous groups utilizing guerrilla tactics. Suddenly striking out of nowhere, unleashing a barrage of magic and arrows, then melting back into the terrain. It would only be a matter of time before any opposition was whittled down. After all, the Elves have a great deal of time available to them. Why rush?




2: I'm stating that elves are encouraged to marry and have children soon after the age of around 100, have a moderate (actually fairly low) population increase and grow in isolation to expand the size of their community, in order to become a sizeable and credible threat to

Since I've supplied two sources indicating that this is actually a pretty conservative estimate, I'm not sure you could argue against this one, but you could probably say that in many circumstances (which this does not need to be), outside influences would stop most settlements from increasing in size.


Of course, it makes sense that they would want to increase their numbers and indoctrinate more people.



3: I'm stating that considering 3.5 fluff states that elves are physical and mental adults as of 25, they are perfectly capable of entering specific and dedicated training during this time.
I'm also stating that D&D fluff in general is inconsistent with its own crunch, and that the option with the most verisimilitude would actually be to expect the population of elves that reach adulthood to have a few levels under their belt.


Just because they are physically and mentally adults does not make them adults culturally. It could easily be considered inappropriate for them to do so.



Now, RAW you can definitely debate this, but I believe the best thing you can hope to do is, like Sirrah Hall, is to try and suggest that this is "unreasonable", at very least in terms of verisimilitude. Since this is likely to be a matter of opinion at its very core, the best you can really hope for is to deepen your understanding of the issues which you're going to, I presume, begin to debate.


It seems to break verisimilitude for you if Elves don't start at an earlier age?

That seems reasonable.

It, however, breaks verisimilitude for me if you posit that Elves should act in like Nazis.



Too long, didn't read?


Veiled insults again. How nice.



You need to work against the internal consistency of the opposing argument on all fronts to demonstrate that it is "unreasonable". If you care about the topic title, then the more constructive and mature thing to do would be subsequently to work towards a compromise or alternative that better allows a credible elven villain. If you don't care and are actually posting out of a desire just to be right of course, then I'd agree that you would find more fulfilment by ceasing to post, since you won't end up being right any time soon in this type of discussion.

Once again, we arrive at smug superiority and veiled insults.


Let's keep in mind that an antagonist need not be evil to work counter to good heroes.

Let us posit that an Elvish and a Human kingdom border each other. Their position with each other was rather lukewarm, simply because both kingdoms were to concerned with several large tribes of orcs to the north.

However, due to the actions of certain heroes, those Orcs were rendered leaderless and the tribes dissolved into hundreds of smaller groups. It will likely be decades before their warring with each other ceases.

Without the threat of invading orcs looming over them, the kingdoms were able to focus on their economic efforts.. wherein our problems begin. Lumber harvesting from the Human kingdom had begun to close in on the border, which caused a certain degree of objection from the Elves.

Normally, this would have been peacefully resolved, but the Elves had political problems brewing. Their last Queen had died during an skirmish with the aforementioned Orcs. This, combined with certain radical factions of the higher ranking Elf nobles made the rather minor act of lumber harvesting a grand offense.

The new Elvish King, desperate to keep his authority, declared war on the Humans.

Which resulted in the aforementioned Elvish Tactics.

Kholai
2012-07-22, 10:50 AM
You are very amusing. With your smug superior attitude. It's a adorable.

Actually, I'm neither smug, nor concerned with being superior. I'm aware that I tend towards lengthy wall of text posts which make it harder than average to cover all aspects. Since you implied you wished to start debating, I was sincere in my attempt to make things simpler for you, since it makes things rather more interesting and productive.

As for your intelligence, this I make no judgements on, you are merely as your behaviour indicates.

I will say however, that if that sort of thing makes you giggle, then you may wish to work on that, because that sounds like a pretty socially awkward trait.


Actually, that does carry Lawful undertones to me. It appears to set up a tyrannical government with a clear goal, and utilizes disciplined troops and set stratagems to annihilate anything that does not comply.

However, it could just as easily be considered Neutral Evil.

This is part of the issue with alignments. Chaotic is not necessarily less strategic, disciplined or forward thinking or driven than Lawful. There is such a scale of the possible ramifications of alignment towards something so fundamental that there are probably more arguments out there about it than there are words in this thread. If you are content with the idea that their being Neutral Evil is unusual but not a show stopper, then I don't see this as an issue.


If you present a scenario based on D&D, then object when someone mentions an aspect of the rules of D&D something is wrong...

"Rules of D&D" is a strong statement considering when you step outside of core 3.5 as well. Spelljammer is Dungeons and Dragons, and features Lawful Neutral (bordering on evil) Elves. It is not that I consider the argument irrelevant in general (note I am not saying that all elves everywhere necessarily behave this way), but that it is not a strong enough argument on its own.

Note that if this were an Empire of Solars then this argument probably would be strong enough alone to be a major argument.

However I will say that considering part of my given goal is to remove or correct parts of the rules that I believe are artificially limiting elves (and are part of the reason it's hard to take them seriously as viable threats), I'd suggest that going strictly by RAW arguments in this endeavour would be counter-productive.

I am however, content with the statement that in regular D&D settings these elves would not make up the majority of a population of all elves. The concept begins with a small "city" (20,000 individuals) who then expand, and with that expansion, their viewpoint expands with them until they theoretically consume even the majority of outsider elves into their society (and any they can't consume are generally too apathetic towards the lesser races to help anyway).

Since there's not really much disagreement left here if you accept that an evil empire could develop from a smaller offshoot, and I accept that the majority of the elven population worldwide could remain largely Chaotic Good. In fact, a good potential campaign start would be a party of "lesser races" being recruited by one of these Chaotic Good groups to try and take down Derfiuror and hopefully destabilise the Empire, since Elves seriously want to avoid inter-elf conflict.


Now I think a problem is that Elves would not go to war in the manner you suggest. They would tend more to guerrilla tactics than to jack-boot militarism.
...

This is certainly possible. There is the problem that guerilla tactics are fairly poor at controlling an entire world, at least without being slightly more proactive than what might be considered "normal" guerilla tactics.

What about elven druids making huge forests sprout up around a city and snipers eliminating anyone who tries to leave. Active, uses magical support combined with elven dexterity.

At the same time, Elven Clerics would come with Create Food and Drink spells for the population, increasing their dependency on their evil overlords, so any attempt to break free from these "Unnature Preserves" would have an entire population that was suddenly starving because of the lack of farmlands.

Manipulation is certainly an elven enough way of doing it.

I'd still imagine it definitely within their remit to have a force of mobile "problem solvers" however, since sticking with their remit of magic/mobility, mages with teleporting squads of elven guards removes a lot of the problems from troop movement, whilst supply can be handled through Druids and Clerics.


Just because they are physically and mentally adults does not make them adults culturally. It could easily be considered inappropriate for them to do so.

It seems to break verisimilitude for you if Elves don't start at an earlier age?

That seems reasonable.

It, however, breaks verisimilitude for me if you posit that Elves should act in like Nazis.

Honestly yes, it breaks verisimilitude that Elf society would think that a level 1 Elf was allowed to leave home. Culturally, you have a group of individuals (fluffed at generally being older and more "experienced" than humanity), who don't consider a mentally and physically mature elf to be an adult yet until they have eight more decades of experience.

Would those same elves consider anyone for whom a common housecat posed a not insignificant threat to be self-sufficient and ready to leave home? Remember - a century of investment here.

Even if it breaks verisimilitude that an entire evil empire of elves might develop, I'd suggest the first, most important aspect to making a credible threat out of them would be to allow their race to hold a simple yet tangible advantage in this manner. After you have elves being a legitimate threat, then you can have elves being a legitimate antagonist or villain.


Veiled insults again. How nice.

tl;dr is not an insult, it is a courtesy. Especially when you have sentences as long as I do.


Once again, we arrive at smug superiority and veiled insults.

Regardless of how you decided to take it, you have successfully made a post where you've come up with a reasoned response to my points, made some good counter-suggestions, and essentially come out with a better debate as a result. Thank you, I do appreciate it.


Let's keep in mind that an antagonist need not be evil to work counter to good heroes.

This is true, and does not discount many possibilities where the elves are simply warring with a neighbouring kingdom who is also not evil. I suppose I would consider "antagonist" to be different from "villain" however. Elves could obviously be a primary antagonist against an evil party, but this doesn't make them "villains".


Let us posit that an Elvish and a Human kingdom border each other. Their position with each other was rather lukewarm, simply because both kingdoms were to concerned with several large tribes of orcs to the north.
...
Which resulted in the aforementioned Elvish Tactics.

A reasonable scenario, and I could see them pulling off a lot of the same tricks. But note the OP:


Anyway, I kind of want to run a campaign where elves are uber-powerful and unplayable, rule the world. So how would you stat them up (I kind of like the idea of aging them like dragons, excluding size) and how would you re-fluff them, or would you even really do that much re-fluffing.

Uber-powerful, unplayable and rule the world. And from earlier in the post an "Evil" empire.

We've gone into my method, refluffing them to be even more extreme in their racial prejudice for the motivation/villainosity aspects, and restatting them only to have their adult racial average level be higher.

How could your premise be extended to a powerful, world-ruling body. How would you have them be "evil", or at least "not very nice at all" whilst also successfully controlling the majority of a planet?

Man on Fire
2012-07-22, 03:02 PM
Actually, according to what's written in the books, they will have tendencies.

D&D Rulebooks says a lot of stupid things and when it comes to Alignment they say the biggest idiocies. I would like you guy to stop arguing - you are discussing the dumbest idea in entire game like it's worth a damn.

JetThomasBoat
2012-07-23, 09:35 PM
I noticed throughout skimming all of these debates and whatnot (since I forgot what the original point of them was) that people consistently speak of elves being unused to working cohesively as a big group, such as an expanding empire. I see this as a poor argument because...well, with creative control of it, you could easily make it reasonable for them to get over that awkwardness.

As is, the model is basically that elves will come together to form a sort of militia, when the community is threatened, and using guerilla tactics. Not unlike the Americans in the Revolutionary War. But after so many times of having to form militias and using geurilla tactics, they may eventually decided to call for more of a formal army, as the United States did. Possibly due to a Civil War (Like the American Civil War or the civil war between the followers of Corellon and the followers of Lolth when she chose to go underground).

Either way, you can change history to suit your needs and there are plenty of instances of this within pre-existing campaign settings, although my two big ones come from Forgotten Realms. First, when the Dragons ruled everything. This was one of the very early times when the elves had to come together to work elven high magic to create the Mythallar that caused the Dragon Rage that left the empire of the dragons ripe for the picking. I don't know how many mages had to come together to create the Mythallar, but it was obviously not done by a couple good friends that already knew each other. And this wasn't the only display of elven high magic. They came together to flood some human empire with a tsunami and there were others things at other points.

Another example is the fall of Myth Dranor. It didn't fall because they didn't have any idea how to organize a defense, it fell because there were a LOT of demons or whatever the bad guys were. I forget.

Anyway, the point is, after having several of these situations, despite the books saying that they aren't that inclined to be organized into massive hoards, their tendencies wouldn't make them so dumb or stubborn or so "chaotic" or whatever that they wouldn't be willing to gather a standing army if need be.

They just need a big enough push. No one thought the chaotic good followers of Corellon would end up betraying their kin and fleeing into the Underdark with their Spider Queen, as their tendency was toward chaotic good.

I'm just saying. Write in what you need to change things up enough. It's your world, you can shape it as you please. And it doesn't even have to come from the elves. As pretty and wise and long lasting as they are, there are more clever things that live longer than they do. They aren't complete immune to malevolent influence, as well. Maybe they are led to war over a long long time by a demon with a grudge against humans. Or maybe a trickster devil just decided to plant a seed of paranoia.

Just saying.

Popertop
2012-08-15, 11:31 PM
The Croymanther setting, from way back in 2E D&D had the 'evil' elven empire that ruled the world. If you can find the book, it's full of great role-play stuff.

I second this, the Cormanthyr is a great place to start. Extreme high magic elite society followed immediately by catastrophe and a series of wars. You know, the whole large-scale elven kind.

Ravenica
2012-08-15, 11:40 PM
Elder scrolls series if it hasn't been mentioned
2 seperate Evil Elven Empires of different Era's (Ayleid and Aldmeri)

Beleriphon
2012-08-16, 11:27 PM
In Eberron, the Valenar Elves, are impatient and want to earn their immortality by being extreme warriors, and as such have invaded the mainland and started fighting with anybody that'll fight them. Their hope is that after they die they'll have proved awesome enough to get to become Undying, which are special undead.

That's not quite it, the Valenar at birth are given an ancestor that is associated with them. They then live life emulating said ancestor to the fullest. Did that ancestor kill a bunch of hobgoblins? Guess what the current one is going to go out of their way to kill hobgoblins. That said the entire group of them nominally rules a nation, but spend most of their time goading everybody else into a world war so they can emulate their warrior ancestors better.

The Undying are actually powered by the collective belief of the Aereni elves. Either way, yes Valenar are a bunch of jerks.

toapat
2012-08-17, 12:50 AM
Isn't the Elven Empire in Spelljammer a bunch of tyrannical jerks?

i think the elves are played both ways in spelljammer, both being absolute ***** and erradicating Orcs until they became the Scro, but also functioning as the peacekeepers and only Truely good spacefaring faction.


Oh God, one of the Night Elves named characters was such a bastard when the Horde raided we would give directions to his place and fight them tooth and nail if they went for the Priestess :).

I wanted to kill that git :).

Good news, Staghelm is a raidboss

Bad News, hes a raidboss.


Did anyone mention The Elder Scrolls? Just look at the whole elven part of the story of the setting, and you got your villains.

The elves? Hell, take a look at the official Creation lore, Tamriel was a crapsack world at creation.

The Elfnazis are pretty bad though


A good story of Elfnazism

Im not going to comment on the story, that is already in my snip space,

What i will comment on is: I agree, it doesnt really make sense that the elves in the campaign settings havent conquered the world, except for one swift kick to the balls summury of the PHB Flavor: Elves dont give a ****.


Complete Elves has them in childhood until 65. In 1e and 2e, the youngest PC elves were more than a century old. LotR has you seldom encountering elves under a millenium.

so V was really bad at getting pottytrained?

Techwarrior
2012-08-18, 12:47 AM
I'm surprised noone has mentioned the creation myth with the 'standard' DnD 3.x pantheon. I can't for the life of me remember where this was from, but here you go.

The Cliffs notes
In the beginning the gods set about creating the world. There was to be a random drawing of straws (or somesuch) to decide who would choose where their race would make their home. Each god would choose in the order of their straw.

Now the elf god, Corellon Larethian, did not want his people to be in a bad area, and he did not want his rival, Gruumsh, to have his people in a particularly good place either. He saw an opportunity to set Gruumsh up for downfall, and himself up to reap the benefits. Gruumsh would have drawn the first straw, and so he cheated, his was the first choice, and Gruumsh was to be last.

"My people shall be called the elves, and they shall live in the forest." So spoke Corellon.

"My people shall be the dwarves, and they will claim the mountains as their domain." Said Moradin, the Soul-Forger.

The other gods made their selections, and finally it was left to Gruumsh to choose. Only, there was nowhere left. Gruumsh knew that he had been cheated by Corellon, but he had no proof. So this is what he said.

"My people shall be the orcs," and he thrust his spear into the ground, causing a forest to turn into a deathly swamp. "They will live here." He thrust his spear into the world again, crumbling a mountain range into loose stones and steppes. "And here." He thrust his spear once more into the ground, causing the plain to blacken and wither. "And here. My people shall live here, in the places too horrible for your pitiful peoples. They shall remember that this day, they were cheated of a land to call their own, and they shall hate you for it. They will bring you war, and take from you the land that should have been theirs."

krossbow
2012-08-18, 01:01 AM
I actually find it weird that elves being Villains is in the minority; I've always thought of them as naturally migrating towards villainy when done well.



Simply put, having Elves be Racists who view other races as beneath them and view themselves as the epitome of perfection is a good way to go; Think the eldar in 40k, or High elves in Warcraft. Works wonders.

HKR
2012-08-19, 07:45 AM
I ran something like this. I made an evil empire of slave trading demon worshiping elves. They were a magocracy & drank demon blood to give them power. I would add the Fiendish Template or the Half-Fiend Template to buff them up

That sounds a bit like the dark elves from Warhammer. I always loved those but could never fit them in one of my dnd campaigns.

Some of the Tolkien elves from the Silmarillion (the Noldor) would make good villains. Of course they are not really evil, but they´re driven by a terrible oath and would literally do anything to fulfill it. I guess that makes them a tragic kind of villain. I would like that in a game.

Masaioh
2012-08-19, 07:16 PM
I actually find it weird that elves being Villains is in the minority; I've always thought of them as naturally migrating towards villainy when done well.



Simply put, having Elves be Racists who view other races as beneath them and view themselves as the epitome of perfection is a good way to go; Think the eldar in 40k, or High elves in Warcraft. Works wonders.

I'd like to add the Thalmor from Skyrim (Elder Scrolls). They are the best example of villainous elves in recent memory. They are essentially an empire of nazi elves.

Water_Bear
2012-08-19, 11:59 PM
The problem with Elves as villains is that, at least in D&D, Elves suck.


Elves are impossibly slow learners.
For everyone talking about elves training to be masters of a specific craft over centuries... we actually have (at least in 3.5, probably similar statistics in other editions) breakdowns of level/class by population.

The vast majority of elves will be Commoners, almost all of them first level, for their entire lives. About 10% will become Warriors, and a tiny fraction of those will break 3rd level. The tiny portion who get PC classes will be distributed at the same ratio as any other PC race, despite their long lives.

Combine that with the "125 years until emotional maturity," well the obvious answer is that Elves are just slow learners. Seriously, the Human bonus Feat and Skill point represent how much better we are at learning than everyone else, and our 15 year age of maturity backs that up. Think about the dumbest human you ever knew. How long did it take him to figure something out? Multiply that by 10x, that's your average elf.

There are hardly any Elves.
Remember how the Elves have the same ratio of PC classes at any given level to every other race? Now consider that Humans (and Dwarves, and Gnomes, and Halflings...) have a pretty serious leg up in terms of population.

So what happens when two groups produce the same percentage of their population as decently leveled PC class potential enemies, and one has a much much larger population? There is just no way the Elves can compete, in terms of quantity or quality.

They live for centuries. So what?
The obvious answer to the 'slow learning' and 'tiny population' arguments is to say, "Well their long life-spans mean the few high-level PC-class Elves will have a much longer shelf life, which will make up for their other disadvantages." But the problem is, immortality is easy in D&D.

Let's ignore the obvious route; that any idiot can become a Vampire or a Lich if they want to. It's too easy. Okay, so what are some non-Undead means of immortality?

Well, there are spells which enlarge your lifespan by draining other people's ability scores once a month, spells which make you into a highlander as long as you have a necklace on you, spells which turn you into ageless creatures like Elans, spells which reincarnate you even after the 'natural death' limit into a brand new adult body, even Magic Jar can be abused to bodysurf.

Any 12th level or higher spellcaster ought to be solid; if you want immortality, you can pretty much take it wherever you fall on the alignment scale. Even a mundane character can blow a bit of WBL for a scroll or just pay a caster of the right level.

Even this is ignoring all of the weird templates and items and rituals WotC puts out designed to let powerful people escape the bonds of time. So the Elf with their not-even-a-millennium lifespan can go die in a fire.

Morithias
2012-08-20, 12:16 AM
The problem with Elves as villains is that, at least in D&D, Elves suck.

*Snip*

Marry me please.

Edit: Actually can you source me the "population statistics" book?

Also you forgot one major thing in dragon magazine "Wedded to history" feat. Take it at level 1 and you no longer gain penalty or bonus for ageing, you're literally immortal, and there's no prerequisites

So literally one generation the entire human race RAW could spend their "useless feat" and go "We're going to live forever Gha hah ha ha ha"

Water_Bear
2012-08-20, 11:00 AM
Actually can you source me the "population statistics" book?

It's the DMG; on page 137-139 there are rules for generating communities from Hamlets of a few dozen people to Metropolises of hundreds of thousands. This includes formulas to determine the number of NPCs of any given class and level combination.


Also you forgot one major thing in dragon magazine "Wedded to history" feat. Take it at level 1 and you no longer gain penalty or bonus for ageing, you're literally immortal, and there's no prerequisites

Actually, one of the spells I mentioned is from that Dragon Magazine issue; there is a spell, forgot the name, which basically gives you the benefit of the "Wedded to History" feat as long as you wear a necklace which is created by the spell.

Technically the custom magic item creation rules let you do the same thing, but all custom magic items require DM approval so it isn't fair to bring them up in this kind of discussion.

Morithias
2012-08-20, 12:56 PM
It's the DMG; on page 137-139 there are rules for generating communities from Hamlets of a few dozen people to Metropolises of hundreds of thousands. This includes formulas to determine the number of NPCs of any given class and level combination.

Actually, one of the spells I mentioned is from that Dragon Magazine issue; there is a spell, forgot the name, which basically gives you the benefit of the "Wedded to History" feat as long as you wear a necklace which is created by the spell.

Technically the custom magic item creation rules let you do the same thing, but all custom magic items require DM approval so it isn't fair to bring them up in this kind of discussion.

Thanks. Also I knew the spell was from the same article, but I figured it was still worth a mention.

vasharanpaladin
2012-08-20, 04:56 PM
Don't know if he's been mentioned yet, but Feal-thas in DragonLance was an elf and the White Dragon Highlord, as well as Telarian, the main antagonist of Stardeep.

There's also a few in the Magic storylines, turning up most notably in Ravnica (Momir Vig), Time Spiral (any Skyshroud elf), Lorwyn (any elf) and Scars of Mirrodin (Glissa). A case can also be made for Nissa, who set the Eldrazi loose on Zendikar.

Ironlion45
2012-08-20, 10:20 PM
So I'm going to preface this by simply stating I hate elves, I hate how most of the time they're granola eating hippies or immortals who have the wisdom that comes for living for millenia.

Anyway, I know there are elves who are villains, it does happen Vol is the example that comes to mind. But I was wondering if somewhere in fiction elves had the upper hand in things (rather than a typical human dominated campaign setting), were the "evil" empire of some sort. This stems from an article I read about this other player who hates elves and a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago about how some elves really wouldn't care about the suffering of other species since they've been around forever since they can't cry every human/orc/halfling that dies because that would be like you crying over every squirrel/bird/turtle you hit with your car.

Anyway, I kind of want to run a campaign where elves are uber-powerful and unplayable, rule the world. So how would you stat them up (I kind of like the idea of aging them like dragons, excluding size) and how would you re-fluff them, or would you even really do that much re-fluffing.

This may have been mentioned, but in many of the settings there are elves of at best dubious moral goodness. Even in the Forgotten Realms settings, where non-Drow elves were pretty typically good aligned, there were ancient elven empires which weren't all that nice.

IF you want good inspiration, it may be worth looking to other fantasy settings. Of particular note are the Mordhel, of Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar series of books. They are Elves who follow a dark path and are bent on world domination. They sometimes have beards, too.

More familiar to most would be the elves of The Elder Scrolls mythos. They are very much like humans in almost every way, and thus often can be real jerks.

But I'd like to add that well-done elves aren't necessarily cliched and irritating. Very few elves I've role-played are either the over-experienced immortals or granola-eating hippies.

In fact, the Anti-Eldar sentiment is getting to be cliched in today's fantasy, which tends to strongly prefer a grittier low-fantasy feel. So much so, that It is even a Trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScrewYouElves).