







Munchkin power-gamers always go right to the elf, and considering that in most of our DM worlds, the Elf is getting pushed out by men, in a death heavy campaign you’d think that eventually you’ll have all of the elves accounted for in the world. In my opinion, those that choose to power-game with the elf are never role-playing them, and just chose them for the crazy amount of bonuses that they get.





Elves were in the original CHAINMAIL rules, and have stayed with us through every edition of the game. In the early rules there was a nice restriction placed upon them which defined them not as a race, but as a class. Say what you will, as a mechanic this works! At the start of a gaming session, a PC elf could choose to be either a fighting man or a magic-user, this was changed in later updates: More powers were granted to the race, and the disadvantages were minimized. In the 2e rules, the only mechanical disadvantages are class restrictions (which honestly don’t effect them much), and level restrictions (which also aren’t very restrictive, as not many campaigns even get to high levels of play). In later editions, even these small restrictions were lifted, completely removing any incentive to play humans who are supposed to be the dominant race.





What do humans get in 2e? Humans can advance 5-8 levels higher than elves, and humans can be “Duel Classed” instead of the multi-classed options given to demi-humans. Duel Classing is a very strange rule, and one that most tables choose to ignore because it is confusing. A human cleric can choose to become another class, but he can not use any cleric abilities until his new class is higher than his previous, and he can never go back and improve his cleric abilities. There is a strategy to creating a Mage/Fighter, but WOW does that take a long time! I would be interested to hear from folks who have actually done it. I tried once but found the whole process to be frustrating; but I’ll probably touch on this in later posts.





The goal of this article is to “Fix” the elf, and balance it out. The danger with this is obvious, it will affect the NPC elves and the Monstrous Manual: We don’t want to over-correct, but as things sit, the elf is just too imbalanced for me.





MORE DM CONTROL





Sub-races of elf are within the domain of DM control. We are the ones that place them, thus the easiest method of controlling the over-balance is to keep them where they belong, and don’t let them stray away. If your adventure is started 8,000 miles away from the nearest elf village, PC elves are not possible.





The problem with this is that players might get mad, and the other demi-human races would suffer as well, however the other demi-humans do enjoy more trade with the humans than elves do.





Another possibility is to have those that really want to play elves create a very good back-story and be subject to very critical Role-playing judgments. This would require a Dungeon Master being very precise as to how the Elf sees his world and what his function is within it. It would also be desired to have better control over the elf’s alignment.





DISTRIBUTION OF POWERS





Player may pick a few special abilities from the list of bonuses given to elves. This of course would alter the NPC elves if you let it. Probably the preferred method would be to equally distribute the abilities between the sub-races of elves. Drow would get infravision, wood elf a bonus to bow, high elf an automatic chance of finding hidden doors . . . etc.





ALTER THE XP SYSTEM





We can create an alternative XP system for elves which dramatically slows them down. I’d say that it would be fair to double or triple the XP needed to gain a level. This would be harsh if an elf is multi-classed, so perhaps the best fix would be to force all elves to multi-class and just run it that way.





LOWER THE LEVEL RESTRICTIONS





This is another possibility. I know that many DMs have allowed high ability scores to affect the level that an elf can max out at, if we lower the level limit to 9 and allow a system of ability to raise the number fairly, this would keep the elf in check.





NON-WEAPON PROFICIENCY PENALTIES





Demi-humans must pay for bonus abilities by taking specific non-weapon proficiencies, such as cooking, singing, instruments, etc. Alternatively, the DM can create a list of NWP that are only available to elf races; strip all powers away and add them as NWP so that a player must spend his slots on them.





Or, we can go the other way, Humans get bonus proficiency slots or alternatively, their available proficiency slots can equal 3, non-elf demi-humans count as 2, and elves only count as 1; this wouldn’t give more bonus proficiency slots, they just count as more when checking them during play.





These things won’t make munchkins happy, but they might even the playing field a bit. The core rules didn’t specify too much in regards to their place in the world, which leaves this job up to the DM, to develop them in a more advanced way that reflects their cultural differences. One thing that is evident, or implied, is that the elves of today are mere shadows of what the race used to be. It was probably them that had built much of the advanced technology, which is evident in the ruins, but was lost from unknown tragedy. Elves aren’t just humans who don’t need sleep and can see in the dark; they demand to be role-played differently, with more power comes more difficulty in playing that individual, and it isn’t cool for munchkins to refuse to role-play them. If players are capable of running them as they were intended to be ran, and the DM treats them as elves instead of just another adventurer, then there probably isn’t any problem with the system as written, but alas, if only we lived in a perfect world.





Some things don’t make all that much sense when we look at it, though much of that could have something to do with the old Appendix: N, but this would imply that we are playing like Gygax, which we might not be. Perhaps we want to play elves as more Tolkien flavored, or play a breed that is more fairy in nature? While the rules over elves are considered as CORE, there is nothing stopping us from modifying them and asking exactly why a mechanic is there.













I’m not going to go through the entire list, just some of the things that glare at me.





INFRAVISION





While I can see a Drow needing this ability, as well as dwarves, and other demi-humans that prefer living underground, the normal elf lives above ground and doesn’t care too much for the confinement of the underdark, so why would he be able to see in the dark? Elves get a bonus against being surprised, and an auto-bonus to find hidden and secret doors; I think that it is safe to say that we can remove this power from his innate abilities.





MAGIC RESISTANCE TO CHARM AND SLEEP SPELLS





This is a hold-over from Chainmail rules that people have just kept putting in there over and over. It isn’t even a true MR so we can get rid of that too.





+1 While Using A Bow





Why is this even here? The elf should have to buy specialization like everybody else, no free-bees, this one can go too, or at least give all elves the ability to spend weapon proficiency slots on specializing if they wish, but only for the bow.





OVERVIEW





If we remove these abilities (or even just a couple of them), then the elf becomes more balanced with the rest of the races, but one can also look at the other races and make them more or less appealing as your campaign world dictates. Perhaps the problem isn’t that the elf is over-powered at all, but the rest of the races are under-powered?





Further Reading:

















Today I’m going to step on some toes, but it is something that I feel needs to be addressed. The game as it sits is fundamentally flawed in regards to races, and for whatever reason later editions chose to further widen this gap instead of tightening it. I speak of course of Elves and all of their super powers that they never really have to pay for. The other demi-human races have their own bonuses, but they are limited, and appear to be in balance with the system, but elves, for whatever reason, are seriously overpowered! They get way too much for free, and there doesn’t seem to be much incentive to not play them.