Elves

Long-Lived

What if you lived longer than anybody else? Not just a little longer, how about five times longer? What if you were in the middle of your lifespan right now and you were born in 1800? Would such a condition affect the way you behave in life? Towards yourself? Other people? Your choice of activities? Your value system?

Such is the situation of the Elves. Another way to look at it is what if everyone around you lived in dog years? Fifteen years tops. The impact of something like that is huge. This is something to keep in mind when playing the Elf. Everybody non-Elven is simply so ephemeral. I would expect Elves in an adventure party would tend to have a closeness to each other not so much because they are of the same race but because they will simply be around when the rest of the party are long gone (except for the Dwarves).

Lovers of Woodlands

I was about to say "Lovers of Nature" but the Rulebook seems to imply Elves as being fond of forest areas, not mountains or deserts. The Rulebook also says they tend to become attached to their environment. The other side of that coin would be that Elves would be uncomfortable in an underground tunnel setting or a icy waste setting, partly because those are uncomforable places but also partly because they are used to their home environment.

This begs the question why would an Elf be joining an adventure party seeing as that most of the others are short-lived maybe frivolous creatures and they would most likely be going out of the woodland setting. The Rulebook says that Elves become adventurers to discover lost history or reclaim forgotten magic. The last one seems to be the most likely reason as we shall soon see.

Magical Adepts

Not only do Elves get a +2 to Intelligence, they also get immunity to sleep spells and have a saving throw bonus against any other spell. Not only that, they have +2 racial bonuses when spellcasting and a +2 racial bonus to the Spellcraft skill.

This race was built to cast spells.

Elves as PCs

We're most likely looking at an aloof and formidable wizard character here.

Next: Gnomes