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Elves have become the true and awesome avatars of Armok

71 (48.3%)

It's hard to be worse than the where...

18 (12.2%)

I like the idea, but the're unbalanced now.

41 (27.9%)

ARRGH THEY ARE EATING MY BRAIN AND I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT

17 (11.6%)

Total Members Voted: 147

[Neonivek]

"Good and evil are a matter of perspective. To the elves, humans are animal murdering, tree slaughtering fiends that deserve to be punished for the atrocities they commit"

This is one of the MANY flaws with the Dungeons and Dragons Allignment system (A system so broken that the makers of the game themselves constantly break the system)... However if I was to refer to the system that makes sense.

Ps. I have no idea if DnD 4.0 fixed the allignment but I doubt it...

The Elves are Lawful Evil, they wish to destroy all civilisation and sentient races in the world.

The reason Elves don't take over the world most of the time are two fold
1) They can only build in forests limiting their ability to travel
2) They can be taken down early (though if they are not, it is unlikely they will ever fall again.

[Erk]

By the way. Elves aren't supposed to like sex that much.

I've seen a few reams of half-elf characters that would have to disagree with that.

Regarding alignment debates: *le sigh* is all I really have left for those (and neonivek: 4e "fixed" the system by removing all those annoying shades of grey like chaotic good and lawful evil. Alignment is a 1 dimensional slider now: Lawful good > good > unaligned > evil > chaotic evil. So if you didn't like d&d alignment before, 4e is probably not going to appeal much at all.)

[Alfador]

You'd think that civilizations' morality on various issues could be more... well, variable. If you've got a treaty with cannibalistic elves and you want to keep that treaty, you're going to run a top-notch PR campaign to convince people that those elves eating our defeated dead aren't really all THAT bad, honest! "To them, eating somebody is as respectful as we think a decent burial is, so we really shouldn't want to kill them over this unthinkable travesty!" Not to mention elven diplomats allowing us dwarves to cut just one more tree so we can perform our cultural duties of smelting steel weapons to stab them in the back with.

That and slight differences in morality could be just as much justification for intra-species hostility as religion-sphere differences. In our own real human history, there have been wars over religious ideas, and over non-religious cultural ideas.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

It makes sense that a political movement could change a culture's morality on various issues, or that contact with another culture could change their morality. Does this happen currently?

[Erom]

It's funny: Elves dominate large maps, but on Pocket worlds they get absolutely curbstomped, every time. 90% of the maps I've genned, the elves are extinct by year 200, and I've yet had a world where they took down another race.

I do love the new flavor - I would vote to change almost nothing, but slow down their breeding so they are less successful zergers.

[Neonivek]

"on Pocket worlds they get absolutely curbstomped"

It is because Elves need space to dominate... They are VERY weak at the start and will get their buts whooped for 100-200 years until they turn the tide and start to dominate the map themselves with their excessively high birthrates and their immortality. (The cause of such is that Heros of the civilisation that became legendary off Elf kills will die of age leaving only unskilled soldiers). They survive by spreading themselves rather successfully in Forests.

Along with this Elves have a very high "Run away" rate and very few of them ever get absorbed into Human take overs and thus simply ban together and continue the attack.

In a Pocket World they are simply defeated early and never get the chance to use their main advantages...

[Frankmanic]

I find the new Cannibalistic Holocaust Elves to be such a good idea that I'm taking up creature modding just to make them even more evil and terrifying. Or, well. Not evil, per se... Erm... Well, Evil if you're a dwarf. Crazy ass wood wearing pointy eared psychos that come swinging through the trees to slaughter good little dwarfs in their beds.

Speaking of which, how do I give the leaf-eared cannibals obsidian swords?

[umiman]

It would probably be against their ethics as obsidian swords have wooden handles.

My major beef is that if they are so widespread and populated, why can't they send larger caravans?

[Erk]

It would probably be against their ethics as obsidian swords have wooden handles.

My major beef is that if they are so widespread and populated, why can't they send larger caravans?

Wooden swords also have wooden handles.

[penguinofhonor]

I just saw some elven magic in one of my generating worlds:

There was an elven settlement on the edge of some woods, and then suddenly the plains that bordered the woods became forests. Crazy. They could use that to summon trees as walls during sieges. Especially once multi-tile trees come in.

Imagine: your archers are shooting at the elves, but the elves put up a wall of trees that are 3 stories tall, forcing your archers into another position that you're not as able to defend, or making you use your melee troops, which will become pincushions because elves love bows.

[JoRo]

Whoa, the elves just accepted a camel leather mitten in a trade.
Edit:  And a skull totem, made from an elk my hunter killed.

[Red Jackard]

These are the best elves ever, they just need a bit toning down.

[Dasqoot]

I've honestly not seen yet any of the massive scale elf/human wars people are complaining about. Maybe it is because I am running my games to around year 1000 rather than 5000 or higher, which doesn't allow the immortal elves to breed out of control.

My world is at year 200, and the elves have done some pretty twisted crap. Their leader has destroyed 2 of the closest human towns 9 TIMES EACH, and has already eaten over 50 humans by herself, she ate 16 in one year! She has buried alive or drowned about 40 more.

I sent a group of 3 swordsmen to probe their defenses and kill as many as possible. I got about 12 before the air was thick with brain-piercing arrows. The defenses were light for a group of ambushers to be sent in, I thought.

I sent a group of 2 swordsmen, 2 axemen and a wrestler to try to take out their druid leader and found her almost instantly. All 5 dwarves got ridiculously owned at the same time in unarmed combat. Each punch was almost a guaranteed "explodes into gore!" I never did land a hit on her.

I'm currently numbering adventurers who try to kill this insane lady. I'm on number 10...#4 did manage to kill her youngest daughter, of about 7 daughters, and this daughter had 16 kills on humans before we took her out, and she killed 4 of my guys with a mortal wound before bleeding to death, making her a 4-times-ace.

I really like the new elves, they are a horrific enemy.

[Zerox]

The elves are so Zergie.
Imagine if they had the babysnatcher tag.

For I am the queen of blades!
(Of grass)

Seriously though, Elves rock now!

[Deathworks]

Hi!

While I have no general thoughts on the new elves, I am a bit worried about their tendency to require masses in order to survive. I have experimented with civ population caps, and when you drastically reduce it, elves seem to be the first race to be extinct, even on medium worlds.

Personally, I think it would be good if the elven race could survive even if there were relatively few of them. After all, using mass attacks and wasting lots of people sounds more like a goblinoid tactic. And I also feel that this tendency for extinction is short-changing them as they are really reduced to push-overs by world generation.

Deathworks