I ’m increasingly dissatisfied with “race” as a mechanic in D&D. I don’t take exception to the term itself but rather that “race” is a named set of mechanical features that have some amount of impact on character creation, a small impact on light in dungeons and no consequence for role-playing. In my opinion if Elves (and others) have no differences in culture, faith or government then they’re humans in costumes.

For the sake of brevity I’ll be focusing on Elves for the rest of this article but my observations are the same for dwarves, halflings and others.

In Basic D&D (Basic, B/X, BECMI) race was treated like class. Elves in this system were type-cast as magical warriors (Fighter/Magic-User) with a set of recognizable elvish abilities (infravision and so forth) and a unique advancement table. Mechanically elves in these editions were type-cast into that singular role and balanced against human classes by experience points. The rules enshrine elves as a kind of magical-warrior mono-culture that would be revised in later editions. This solution is notable because the typical case for much of fantasy and science-fiction entertainment is to depict humans with many diverse and rich cultures and everyone else with mono-cultures.¹

AD&D separated race and class keeping a set of recognizable elvish abilities as part of the race mechanic. Elves could now access a limited number of classes and could be multi-classed; an option not available to humans. Balance and mechanical enforcement of “elf” was achieved with class and level limits, minimum and maximum ability scores and even a table indicating the elvish point of view on other races. These limits were in-part a way of keeping humans an attractive option since they could achieve unlimited levels in any single class. These rules may seem arcane, but they were of little practical impact since most games seem to have ended by 10th level.

D&D 3.0 removed these limitations allowing any race to be any class and favoring a suite of benefits for all races including humans. This would continue to be the case for D&D.

Elves are described in mechanical terms only in the AD&D PHB² where Basic and 2E+ books endeavor to describe their communities, appearance, preferences and so forth. This is however tantamount to flavor text since D&D provides no mechanic or benefit to role-play. Practically speaking players are far more inclined to get along with their friends than to role-play the aloof elf for no advantage.

At best, we can conclude that AD&D leaves defining “elf” to setting guides³ or individual DMs and other rule books strive for a more complete definition of what their content describes.

We must also conclude that “elf” is merely a set of mechanical features plus flavor text.

I find this depressingly boring.

In my own lightly visited setting I find my view of elves influenced by The Dresden Files, Into the Wyrd and Wild and the “Other Religious Systems”⁴ entry in the 5E DMG. The idea is that elves are alien to humans in body and mind which should be personified by NPCs and players.

As observed above the D&D game (regardless of edition) has no mechanic that rewards role-play. So I’m questioning whether setting guides are enough to encourage players to take on personifying an alien point of view or if some other game (or cribbed mechanic) would be a better or if a game where the player characters are only human is the solution.

Foot Notes

1. The residents of any planet visited for a single episode of Star Trek for example.
2. Gary Gygax, Elves: PLAYERS HANDBOOK (Lake Geneva: TSR Games, 1978), 16.
3. Perhaps Mr. Gygax preferred his descriptions from the Gold Box?
4. Many, Other Religious Systems: DUNGEON MASTER’S GUIDE (Renton: Wizards of the Coast LLC., 2014), 11.