I'm waiting for the litmus test for the antithesis of this idea to be trotted out...

So if WotC had some hypermasculine deity, bless his followers hypermasculine traits alongside another female deity that had hyper-feminine traits, would they do it?

Of course not (not that I would want or require it any more than I require this dumb virtue signal). But they wouldn't because:

 1) SJW's don't believe in those distinctions.
 2) Those that do, believe that masculinity is toxic
 3) They don't actually know what it means to be masculine in the first place.

So I would only ask this simple question: In what way does it make the game better aside from virtue-signalling? Other than the purely cosmetic fluff-aspect of it that has cultural implications - what purpose does it serve *the game*?

Corellon is a greater god in D&D anyhow. He/She/It can *change* shape at will. It's never been a *thing* because all Greater Gods can do this since the 1e Deities and Demigods book. This is why this whole thing is a stupid conflation for the purposes of virtual signalling.

I care less about the Blessing than I do about this:

"Dark elves find this ability to be terrifying and characterize it as a curse, for it could destabilize their entire society."

So I'm gonna go out on a limb here and ask WHY? Why in the *hell* would any Drow think of this as a Curse? Because if you look at the  "blessing" as a virtue signal - then the implication by saying it's a "curse" insinuates that the Drow view gender as binary. The meta-implication that such views are culturally "evil".

But on its face WHY would it be a "curse". Drow society is traditionally an evil Matriarchal Theocracy (but not always) and being *female* is a huge benefit. It would be more of a chance to remain safe. There is nothing attached to the blessing as written that has any mechanical benefit other than being able to change your plumbing daily. For female drow it would be a huge advantage too. It's a cutthroat world among the Drow, being able to pass unnoticed like a servile male would be beneficial for the tactically minded.

No, I'm willing to bet this isn't what they were thinking at all.

Oddly enough, the part I find most ill-fitting is the way they shoehorned the Eladrin and Shadar-Kai into the elven mythology. It's like they just had to find a way to cram 4e ideas back into 5e and the worlds that were largely set before that time. I would have been fine if Eladrin were just a sect of elves that swore to serve archfey and Shadar-Kai were just some weird cult of Shadowfell-dwelling elves, but I would have preferred if they were non-elf races. Instead, we get the worst of both and they are full-on elven subraces. I know FR once had many subtypes of elves, but I don't really see a need for all of those to creep back into the game.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1040270Oddly enough, the part I find most ill-fitting is the way they shoehorned the Eladrin and Shadar-Kai into the elven mythology. It's like they just had to find a way to cram 4e ideas back into 5e and the worlds that were largely set before that time. I would have been fine if Eladrin were just a sect of elves that swore to serve archfey and Shadar-Kai were just some weird cult of Shadowfell-dwelling elves, but I would have preferred if they were non-elf races. Instead, we get the worst of both and they are full-on elven subraces. I know FR once had many subtypes of elves, but I don't really see a need for all of those to creep back into the game.

Shadar-Kai being elf/fey was definitely a 3e thing and 4e made them very separate from fey sources.

Quote from: KingCheops;1040233It kind of smacks of the "Black Panther was the first ever black superhero movie!" bullshit.  I'd also point out that Zeus and Loki were known to get their swerve on in non-human forms too.  Mythology isn't LGBTQ it's Pan-Sexual!  :eek:

.

...And Loki gave birth to an eight legged horse.

I have no problem with metrosexual gender-queer elves because it kinda fits with most Pre-Tolkein portrayals of them and is amusing.

But this book was a lemon. Waaaaaaay too bloated and wordy. So much wasted paper. The Blood Wars and the Githyanki, the two most METAL things in D&D, both of which really deserved a Lamentations of the Flame Princess/Maze of the Blue Medusa-style punk-art treatment, just get very weak 2nd-edition-esque coverage. The only monster I was excited to see was the Derro. So many generic demons and devils that are just more powerful and/or weaker versions of existing critters. I blew fifty ducats for this?  The only thing I really see myself using regularly in my game are the new PC races, and those are scattered throughout the book instead of being in one section.  Lame.

The rarest of these blessed elves can change their sex whenever they finish a long rest

What does this actually mean?

Does the elf's hair change? Or just their dicks, tits and vaginas?

Do their clothes still fit?

How does the rest of the universe react when they meet the elf between changes? Is that broken down by alignment?


The DM decides whether an elf can manifest this miracle.

That's odd. Why not make it a feat and let the players' decide. Why put it on the DM?

If a player wants a blessing for their PC, this should be a player decision.

If a DM doesn't want an option inside their campaign, that's the DM's decision.


And most importantly...

WHY is this "blessing" so wimpy? Corellon changes shape at will...and the god's rarest divine blessing ONLY switches your pant's junk?

Why not "Alter Self" once per day? That's a blessing worth a feat and fits Corellon's mythos FAR better.  

Oh wait...that only adds a fun option to the game and doesn't virtue signal.

Quote from: tenbones;1040269So I'm gonna go out on a limb here and ask WHY? Why in the *hell* would any Drow think of this as a Curse? Because if you look at the  "blessing" as a virtue signal - then the implication by saying it's a "curse" insinuates that the Drow view gender as binary. The meta-implication that such views are culturally "evil".

More reasons to tell WotC to go fuck itself.

Quote from: tenbones;1040269But on its face WHY would it be a "curse". Drow society is traditionally an evil Matriarchal Theocracy (but not always) and being *female* is a huge benefit. It would be more of a chance to remain safe. There is nothing attached to the blessing as written that has any mechanical benefit other than being able to change your plumbing daily. For female drow it would be a huge advantage too. It's a cutthroat world among the Drow, being able to pass unnoticed like a servile male would be beneficial for the tactically minded.

Absolutely.

And long before this SJW bullshit, wouldn't Alter Self or Polymorph Self be used by the Drow to move through secretly through their societies?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1040304The DM decides whether an elf can manifest this miracle.

This, I believe, could potentially set up an in-game v.s. out-of-game conflict.

Let's say a player would like the DM to allow his elf PC have the ability to change from male to female once per day. And let's say that the DM until recently has been running a campaign in which this ability was unheard of (not unlikely considering how new this book is). The DM is concerned that since this ability is relatively rare, it could be used as a means of disguise. He rules that, no, this blessing would grant the PC an unfair advantage. The  player, at this point, protests: now while in-game reasons are the DM's call, the player brings in out-of-game reasons of "inclusiveness".

The DM can say "but this is my perogative as the DM" but his/her credentials as DM are now not the focus of the debate: i.e. it is not whether the DM gets to choose, but why he/she has chosen not to. His/her gaming reasons (unfair free abilities) v.s "inclusiveness" and game balance v.s. "fun-for-everyone"is a no-brainer, right?

So the DM, not wishing to be known as a bigot IRL, capitulates and the player gets the free ability. Of course, players being players, this ability is quickly used as a means of disguise and the DM decides to counter it in-game. He/She rules that the miracle is now prettty common and that it is well known that elves change sex all the time and people are on the lookout for it. The game goes on but now elves are all gender-fluid whether or not the DM intended that at his/her campaigns's creation. "Well maybe that is a good thing" and "We have all learned something" is the consensus.

Later, a player decides to play an elf. He/She is not interested in the sex-changing ability because he/she has a Legolas/Tauriel concept in mind. The DM tells the player that recently the elves are now equipped with this power as standard, but the player is free to opt-out. The new player chooses to play an elf with a fixed gender but within the campaign this is now regarded with "why can't you?" questions. Out-of-game the player is asked the same but with the implication that he/she is rejecting the new "inclusiveness". Capitulating, the player asks the DM to have the miraclous ability and the DM says okay. However the player avoids changing because he/she originally did not envisage the  Legolas/Tauriel type as being gender-fluid. Once asked a few times out-of-game why he/she didn't change sex regularly, the player retires the character to play a dwarf.

OTOH, having the ability to change sex as a Feat like any other would avoid this.

DMs would have game balance issues met and players not wishing to play gender-fluid elves can simply say, "cos I wanted Feat XYZ instead".

Simple, really. And yet not written that way.

I also find it disappointing that the elf section went into some detail on the drow of Eberron, but not on the two groups of "surface elves" (Aerenal and Valanar or something like that). I was not a big fan of Eberron, but if you're going to include the dark elves of the setting, why not also spend some words on covering the types of elves most PCs might play. I guess it might be because these guys are ancestor worshipers rather than followers of our-person-of-the-indefinite-plumbing and thus wouldn't quite fit the current narrative. On the other hand, with the Eberron drow, they more or less just dismissed the differences (god of scorpions, goddess of spiders... whatever) and avoided that whole 'slaves of the giants' bit.

Honestly I dont mind it being a blessing of some deity. Long as it makes sense in context and with prior data on the being in question. I could definitly see a fertility based deity granting this sort of quirk and not just to elves. In fact that was one of the possible gifts that could be gained from my own books fertility deity.

What does come across as oddball though is how some seem to think this is new or groundbreaking. How far back do those Girdles of Femininity/Masculinity go for example? Tomb of Horrors with its gender flipping trap goes all the way back to 78. And I believe it was Selune who transformed Elminster into a girl in one of the novels. Also the aforementioned transforming in Return of the Eight.

Mike the Mage, if they did it your way, then people could opt out of it without being called out on it.  In their way of thinking, that is to be avoided at all costs.  Whether those costs are artistic, mythical, player and GM ease of use, or even basic logic.  The point is not to make it an option.  The point is to make it mandatory in all "right thinking" groups.  It's the logical outgrowth of people that feel (I refuse to dignify what they do with "think") that "tolerance" is a first-order virtue, and is manifested by telling people how to act.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1040356Mike the Mage, if they did it your way, then people could opt out of it without being called out on it.

Precisely. And it is not as if my proposal is very innovative. In fact such an ability is typical of a Feat. It is rather, the developers who have made an exception in this case and proposed the rather arbitary and atypical "well it's up to the GM" whether a PC at chargen receives an ability for free.

In any case, I think that if I were asked to run a D&D 5, I would either say "core 3 books only" or rule it as a Feat with the reason that it is written as a rare blessing and the rules ought to reflect that.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1040356In their way of thinking, that is to be avoided at all costs.

Certainly so far a similar proposal has been met with unexplained reluctance. While I can't say for sure whether what you say is true, I would assume it were I not given a very clear reason NOT to class this ability as a feat.

Alls I know is I flipped through it at the FLGS, saw a bunch of stuff about demons and thought "I've got 20 books like this by now", and put it back on the shelf.

I watched a few flick thoughs and I was very very underwhelmed but hey, there is always a new generation of gamers that have never seen this kind of fluff-on-splat before.

The Elves of Cults of Chaos and Lion & Dragon are way cooler.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1039942Given how Drow culture is usually shown, they would say "no more" very briefly.

"In Soviet Union, you have right to free speech.  Once."
-Yakov Smirnoff