Wood Elves

Wood Elves, also called Green Elves, Wild Elves, and Forest Elves, have keen senses and intuition, and fleet feet carry them quickly and stealthily through their native forests. Wood Elves are reclusive and distrusting of non-elves. Their skin tends to be copperish in hue, sometimes with traces of green. Their hair tends toward browns and blacks, but it is occasionally blond or copper-colored. Their eyes are green, brown, or hazel.

Wood Elf Traits

Wood Elves are a subrace of Elves, for the sake of clarity the following racial stats are Elven after choosing the Wood Elf subrace. Your Wood Elf character has the following racial traits. Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity score increases by 2 and your Wisdom score increases by 1. Age: Although elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood and an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 750 years old. Wood Elves usually exist in the middle of this range however can lean either direction. Alignment: Elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, so they lean strongly toward the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others’ freedom as well as their own, and they are more often good than not. Size: Elves range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium. Speed: Your base walking speed is 35ft. Darkvision: Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray. Keen Senses: You have proficiency in the Perception skill. Elf Weapon Training: You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow. Mask of the Wild: You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena. Trance: Elves don’t need to sleep. Instead, they meditate deeply, remaining semiconscious, for 4 hours a day. (The Common word for such meditation is “trance.”) While meditating, you can dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive through years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep. Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and Elvish and one extra language. Sea Elves also have their own language called Aquan spoken among the various aquatic races.

Culture

Shared customary codes and values

Wood Elves see themselves as the protectors of the forest. As a people, Wood Elves are largely seen as calm and level-headed. Arousing strong emotions in Wood Elves is not easily done, although many do have a strong aversion for large cities. To Wood Elves, the trappings of civilization, including the mightiest of fortresses or tallest walls, were transient and impermanent things that would eventually be overcome by the long processes of nature. To many, this attitude seemed condescending, weakening the bonds between them and other races.

Art & Architecture

Wood elves commonly felt that they were in harmony with their natural surroundings and an examination of their art helped to justify this belief. Wood Elves did their best to have a minimal impact on their natural surroundings, a fact reflected in their architecture. Frequently, Wood Elven homes were made of natural fieldstone or carefully furnished wood, but on occasion they were known to do without even these creature comforts, living in the limbs of mighty trees or sheltered caves, rejecting furniture or any possessions they couldn't carry with them. So close did Wood Elven villages resemble their surroundings that Humans were occasionally known to wander through one without even noticing.

Ideals

Relationship Ideals

Wood elven romantic and sexual relationships were often polyamorous in nature, with members of the race freely engaging or ceasing relations with new partners. Feelings of jealousy and possessiveness were as a result viewed by the race as reasons for teasing or mockery. As a result of these perspectives on love, High Elves often believed that any relationships engaged with wood elves would be destined to fail from the start. This also lead to Wood Elves being the Elf parent of first-generation Half-Elves.