The Elven Subraces
Available Classes
Elves can be:
In addition, elves may Multiclass in the following combinations:
- fighter/mage
- fighter/thief
- fighter/mage/thief
- mage/thief
Note: Elven clerics and speciality priests may not multiclass.
Elven Height & Weight by Subrace
Elf Subraces: Height (in inches)
Base: Male/Female
| Subrace | Base | Modifer |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic | 50/50 | 1d8 |
| Dark (Drow) | 50/55 | 1d10 |
| Gray | 60/55 | 1d12 |
| High | 55/50 | 1d10 |
| Sylvan (Wood) | 60/55 | 1d12 |
Elf Subraces: Weight (in pounds)
Base: Male/Female
| Subrace | Base | Modifer |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic | 85/75 | 2d12 |
| Dark (Drow) | 80/95 | 3d10 |
| Gray | 85/75 | 3d10 |
| High | 90/70 | 3d10 |
| Sylvan (Wood) | 95/80 | 3d12 |
Elven Subraces
A player character created from a specific elf subrace will have a number of adjustments to the standard character abilities. These are defined as follows:
Ability Score Adjustments. Adjustments to be added to, or subtracted from, the base ability scores when creating characters in a subrace.
Ability Scores. The minimum and maximum scores characters of a subrace may have after the initial adjustments have been made. A character who does not meet the minimum requirements of a subrace cannot be a member of that subrace. Scores over the maximum must be reduced.
Recommended Languages. The languages members of a subrace typically know. Elves may speak either a specific form of Elvish or "Elvish common," depending on the campaign. Even if they are speaking a specific form of Elvish, elves can usually understand most of what is being said in another dialect; pronunciation and usage of some of the words may be different, but Elvish is basically Elvish.
Infravision. The range of the subrace's infravision.
Special Advantages. Abilities of a given subrace that set them apart from others.
Special Disadvantages. The disadvantages of a subrace that offset its advantages.
Additional Experience Cost. The penalty for playing a naturally powerful subrace. Because certain subraces have a number of advantages that other subraces do not, they must work harder to become better in their chosen professions. Experience adjustments for high ability scores cannot be taken by races with additional experience costs.
A +10% experience cost means that a character of that subrace must earn an additional 10% of experience points normally required to increase in levels. Multiclass characters must gain the necessary points per level plus an additional 10% for each class. As with any multiclassed PCs, they may advance in one level while remaining fixed in another.
Each elf subrace has different talents and hindrances in an adventuring career. Each achieves levels differently and at a different rate than the others.
Some, such as the drow, have a large number of benefits while suffering few disadvantages. (Of course, the major disadvantage to being a drow is being a drow.) Subraces that have more advantages require more experience points to advance to the next level than those with few advantages.
Gray Elves
Gray Elf Minimum/Maximum Ability Scores
| Ability | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 3 | 17 |
| Dexterity | 7 | 19 |
| Constitution | 5 | 16 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 20 |
| Wisdom | 3 | 18 |
| Charisma | 8 | 18 |
Grey Elf Starting Ages
| Base Age | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 115 | 5d6 |
Ability Score Adjustments: Gray elves are the most intelligent of all the elves and are more dexterous than most. They receive a +2 bonus to Intelligence and a +1 to Dexterity. However, because they spend so much time studying, their physique is frail. They have a penalty of –2 to Constitution and a –1 to Strength.
Recommended Languages: Gray Elvish and all other languages requiring speech or gestures. Since gray elves spend so much time in their libraries and with their sages, they can learn virtually any language they desire.
Infravision: 60 feet.
Special Advantages: Gray elves have unlimited access to their own libraries and sages. Any information the gray elf council determines to be good for the elf race may be furnished to gray elf PCs for a cheaper price than they would find elsewhere. This is purely discretionary on the part of the DM and should be played accordingly.
Special Disadvantages: Because of their haughtiness and arrogance, gray elves receive a –3 on all reaction adjustments when dealing with non-elves. Their disdain, whether intentional or not, communicates itself to others and leads to very poor relations.
With other elves, gray elves suffer a –1 on reaction adjustments. This adjustment reflects their irritating and condescending attitude, even toward other elves. With other gray elves, of course, there is no reaction adjustment.
Additional Experience Cost: 15%.
Dress
Gray elves wear very complex and flowing wool tunics of pure white, sun yellow, silver and gold lamé set off by polished leather of contrasting colors and highlighted by jewels. Over these, they wear cloaks of dark blue or purple. Their dress alone often makes them the most striking of the elves.
See also Gray Elves
High Elves
High Elf Minimum/Maximum Ability Scores
| Ability | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 3 | 18 |
| Dexterity | 6 | 19 |
| Constitution | 7 | 17 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 18 |
| Wisdom | 3 | 18 |
| Charisma | 8 | 18 |
High Elf Starting Ages
| Base Age | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 105 | 5d6 |
Ability Score Adjustments: The most common type of elf, the high elf has only the standard ability adjustments, which are a +1 to Dexterity and a –1 to Constitution.
Recommended Languages: High Elvish, other forms of Elvish, dwarvish, gnomish, halfling, common, orcish, hobgoblin, and goblin.
Infravision: 60 feet.
Special Advantages: None.
Special Disadvantages: None.
Additional Experience Cost: None.
Dress
High elves prefer light pastel shades over the colors worn by grey elves, adding blues, lilacs, and purples to the more natural forest hues. Since they rely on hunting and woodsmanship, they often wear cloaks of green, brown, russet, or tan for camouflage in forests.
See also High Elves
Sylvan (Wood) Elves
Sylvan Elf Minimum/Maximum Ability Scores
| Ability | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 6 | 19 |
| Dexterity | 6 | 19 |
| Constitution | 7 | 17 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 18 |
| Wisdom | 3 | 18 |
| Charisma | 7 | 17 |
Sylvan (Wood) Elf Starting Ages
| Base Age | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 100 | 5d6 |
Ability Score Adjustments: Because their lives are spent in constant exertion, wood elves are stronger than other elves. However, they are less sociable because of their upbringing. They have bonuses of +1 to Strength and Dexterity and penalties of –1 to Constitution and Charisma.
Recommended Languages: Sylvan Elvish, High Elvish, centaur, pixie, dryad, treant, and other woodland creatures. Wood elves only rarely learn common; they are trying to keep humans and others away from their woods, and they think learning those languages would just encourage visitors to their realm.
Infravision: 60 feet.
Special Advantages: Sylvan elves have an instinctive, natural connection to the land. Their skills in dealing with the woodland are surpassed only by rangers, whose bonds with the forests are legendary.
Sylvan elves easily befriend natural woodland creatures. Unlike rangers, however, wood elves can only perform this trick with woodland creatures; against a desert lion, they must be as careful as any other being.
With the natural creatures of the woodlands, the wood elves' power is especially useful. Unless the animal is already hostile, sylvan elves can automatically shift its reaction by two categories. This ability applies only to natural forest creatures. It is not a charm spell and cannot be used to enthrall creatures of the forest. Creatures friendly to the elf will not accompany him unless persuaded somehow. The ability does not work on monsters.
Special Disadvantages: Because of their primitive lifestyle, wood elves have no special abilities with secret doors. They have no experience with this sort of door and do not gain the typical bonus for finding them.
Above all, wood elves never try to leave their forests. They withdrew into the woods to escape the outer world, and whenever they leave they rediscover why they withdrew in the first place. Wood elves take a dim view of those who try to forcibly remove them.
In general, wood elves are unfriendly and unhelpful. Any wood elf PC who is friendly to people he or she has just met (within the past five years or so) should be docked experience points for bad role-playing.
Finally, wood elves have an aversion to most settings that are not of the woods. They hate the sea (although they can travel on lakes) and will not willingly board a seagoing ship. They hate the underground and become claustrophobic beneath the soil.
These elves are even worse in the cities and lands of other races, including those of other elves. Sylvan elves regard cities as a perversion. They cannot deal with technology and civilization, for it was civilization that drove the wood elves into their isolation.
Additional Experience Cost: None.
Dress
Elves of the Sylvan ilk dress similar to The Suel, except their colors are pale tints of green, fawn, ecru, and dove gray. All elvenkind wear cloaks, especially when traveling. These garments are neutral gray or gray-green.
See also Sylvan Elves
Dark Elves (Drow)
Dark Elf (Drow) Minimum/Maximum Ability Scores
| Ability | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 3 | 18 |
| Dexterity | 8 | 20 |
| Constitution | 7 | 17 |
| Intelligence | 9 | 19 |
| Wisdom | 3 | 18 |
| Charisma | 6 | 16 |
Dark Elf (Drow) Starting Age
| Base Age | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 76 | 4d6 |
Ability Score Adjustments: Drow are extraordinarily dexterous and intelligent. They gain a bonus of +2 to Dexterity and a +1 to Intelligence. However, their personalities can be described as grating at best (although not usually to their faces), and they have the typical elf Constitution. Thus, they have a –2 penalty to Charisma and a –1 to their initial Constitution scores.
Recommended Languages: Drow Elvish, Elvish, duergar, svirfneblin, deep dwarf, illithid, undercommon, sign language, kuo-toa, bugbear, orcish.
Infravision: 90 feet.
Special Advantages: Once per day, all drow can use the spells Dancing Lights, Faerie Fire, and Darkness (the reverse of light. They achieve this through force of will, rather than spell components. A 4th-level drow can cast Levitate, Know Alignment {Wizard Spell}, and Detect Magic once per day. In addition, drow priests can cast Clairvoyance, Detect Lie, Suggestion, and Dispel Magic once a day.
At the start, drow are 50% magic resistant, and every level they rise increases the resistance by 2% (to a maximum of 80%). Multiclassed drow use the higher level to determine this bonus.
In addition to their high magic resistance, drow also receive a +2 bonus on all saves involving magic. This includes those devices that emit magical effects or are powered by magic. This magic resistance does not hamper their ability to use magic themselves, however.
Special Disadvantages: The major disadvantage of the drow is their inability to see in bright light. Any light greater than that of torches or continual light spells (including bright sunlight) will blind them and severely affect their ability to fight. Wan light, like that of a light spell, does not trigger this disadvantage.
Bright light causes the drow to suffer, temporarily, –2 to Dexterity. Attack rolls are made at a –2 penalty, and opponents gain a +2 save against drow spells if they are within the light. When a drow is in darkness and his opponents are in the light, he retains his Dexterity and surprise advantages but still suffers a penalty on attack rolls.
If the drow spends more than two weeks away from the subterranean caverns of the Underdark, the special advantages fade at the rate of one power a day. This starts from the most innate spellcasting and works down to the least powerful. Thus, a drow priest would first lose dispel magic, followed by suggestion, clairvoyance, and detect lie. Drow magic resistance is lost at a rate of 10% per day. This process can be halted and the powers regained if the drow returns to the Underdark and spends one day there for each week spent aboveground.
Finally, all other elves hate the drow, and reactions to them are with at least a –4 penalty. This modifier is cumulative to any kits the drow player might be using. Only after a particular elf comes to accept a particular drow as a friend, does this penalty disappear.
Additional Experience Cost: 20%.
Dress
Drow, like their surface cousins, are experts at camoflauge. When in the Underdark, drow tend to cloak themselves in all black, and when they move aboveground, which is rare, they adopt the greens and browns of their surface cousins to help hide them when they have to be out in daylight (which causes them great pain), but they will use greens and browns to help them hide when forced to move in the daylight. Because of the daylight, drow will stay within thick forests when they can.
See also: Dark Elves
Children of the Spider GoddessAquatic Elves
Aquatic Elf Minimum/Maximum Ability Scores
| Ability | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 3 | 18 |
| Dexterity | 6 | 19 |
| Constitution | 8 | 18 |
| Intelligence | 7 | 17 |
| Wisdom | 3 | 18 |
| Charisma | 8 | 18 |
Aquatic Elf Starting Age
| Base Age | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 96 | 4d6 |
Ability Score Adjustments: Aquatic elves, because they need the ability to move quickly underwater, gain +1 to their Dexterity. However, since their undersea world is fundamentally one-dimensional, they suffer a –1 penalty to Intelligence.
Recommended Languages: Aquatic Elvish, kuo-toa, sahuagin, dolphin, merman, abovesea common, undersea common.
Infravision: 360 feet.
Special Advantages: Aquatic elves have gill slits that enable them to filter air from water. Impure water, like fouled air for surface dwellers, is difficult for them to breathe.
Special Disadvantages: These elves cannot be out of water for extended periods because their gill slits close when exposed to air. This offsets their underwater breathing ability. They do not gain a +1 to attack rolls with bows. Since bows are ineffective underwater, they have had no chance to learn the intricacies of these weapons. Only an elf who has traveled to the upper lands may learn the use of the bow, and even then this does not gain the bonus conferred by a lifetime of practice.
Additional Experience Cost: None.
Dress
Aquatic elves, living underwater, don't wear a lot, if anything at all. Modesty is not a trait found amongst the aquatic elves. Besides, bulky clothing makes it difficult to swim, as does armor.
See also: Aquatic Elves
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