Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Elves are not Elven - Tel-quessir feed back ;)

So does Astarion look enough like an Elf?

I feel like Mods should merge the two elf threads. Kinda weird having two threads for essentially the same topic.

+1
first post folks - be gentle

No, please. This one has zero drama, lol. The other one is 8 pages, but probably 4 of which people throwing accusations at each other.



No problem, dear! Welcome to the forums

As for your question, I wouldn't know. Perhaps it has something to do with the scripting of the game, perhaps it has to do with the fact despite being elves, they are very, very different, far beyond a matter of subrace. I do remember in NWN2 there was a 'Planetouched' section with tieflings, genasi, and Aasimars if I recall correctly, but we do not know yet if those races will be included at all in this game. We shall wait and see.

D&D 5e phb has the example elf shown as Drizzt. A number of elves in the books refer to some specific drow characters as "elf", they're still elves and from a lore perspective, the only real thing that separates them is the curse put on them for their choice to follow Araushnee after her final betrayal of Corellon due to their slow manipulation by Wendonai. The Lady penitent trilogy had a bunch of drow have their curse be lifted due to them not having the mark of wendonai and their abandonment of the drow ways, similarly, at the end of the most recent drizzt book "relentless" there is another event that shows how similar they still are really. Wont say more than that due to spoilers.

p.s. fair point against the merge, it's just I put a reasonably detailed rundown of the subraces for elves in the other one

In Forgotten realms there are quite a few
High Elves
- Sun Elves: Regal looking, typically bronzed skin, they have hair colours of brown/red/copper/gold typically and their eyes are usually black, gold or silver
- Moon Elves: Pale skin, often with a blue or purple hue, hair colours covering all human ones plus silver and blue, their eyes are usually blue or green with gold flecks
- Star Elves: pale skin with gold, silver or red hair and tend to be particularly slender, their eyes are similar to moon elves

Wood Elves
- Copper Elves: tend to be broader and sturdier, tan or bronzed skin, copper, brown, black or golden blond hair with eyes of green, hazel or brown. Wood elves are technically one of the only races of elves native to Faerun, the reason for this is they come from intermingling of Wild Elves with other elves over many generations.
- Wild/Green Elves: tend toward darker skin tones from tanned to dark brown, usually have darker hair colour and eyes similar to copper elves.

Eladrin: Eladrin are Elves native to the feywild still, their appearance literally changes with the seasons, they look a lot like Sun Elves in terms of their regal appearance, but their hair, skin and eye colours change with the passing of each season, as does their personality.

Drow
- Lolthian Drow: Shorter than surface elves, they're graceful and regal looking, their skin is almost always shades of obsidian, purple, grey. brown or blue undertones differentiate them though, their eyes are almost always red, with violet and amber being rare exceptions, their hair is always white or off white. Their colouring is part of a curse put upon them by Corellon for their actions around the early crown wars.
- Dark Elves (Seldarine drow in this game): These drow have had Corellons curse lifted due to actions shortly before the spellplague. They have reverted to their original colourations (NOT how they're shown in the game) and look a lot like Wild/Green Elves for colouration.

Lythari: Esentially a unique non-evil breed of Elven werewolf that doesn't have a hybrid form, they're usually depicted as pale with grey or white hair both in elf and wolf form. But they're usually found in Wood Elf lands, so in theory make more sense to match their colouring to some extent.

Avariel: Winged Elves, their features are even more delicate than other elves, with eyes that are larger than most too, their eyes tend to be bright blues, greens or even purple, their skin colour isn't really described anywhere but the only art of them shown has been pale/tanned. Their hair and wings tend to be black/white/silver. Though the most well known Avariel, Aerie from BG2 has blond hair. Avariel are noted as being shorter than High or Wood elves in the same way that drow are.

Aquatic Elves: their build is probably the most sturdy of all the elves and tend to be tall. Their skin tends toward blues and greens, but sometimes browns or even silvers, their hair is usually blacks, greens, blues, browns or even red. Their eyes are usually black, blue, white, green or very rarely silver.


Regardless of the kind, they all have the angular features, almond eyes and pointed ears. None of them can grow facial hair or have body hair.

If Larian really want to include human ethnicities in the different elves, they should at least try and correlate the human ethnicities to those subraces and go from there. Right now the Elves are just /wrong/ and it's crazy because there are EXCELLENT resources available for multiple editions of D&D describing all the above.

Most notably for D&D 5e, Sword Coast Adventurers Guide which should honestly be a default inclusion for this game anyway, considering the setting.

The source for the above is Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide for 5e + Races of Faerun for 3/3.5 plus in the case of "Dark Elves" just my observations from lady penitent

Mmh! I do find it curious the large masses of people claiming that elves are 'white and blonde' and 'too caucasic'. Then you read the descriptions and you find out that the vast majority of them aren not actually white and blonde. There are so many possible combinations, from blues and green hues to very dark skin. Wood elves per instance are said to be the most populous of elves, and they're tan, and dark haired mostly.

On your thoughts about giving subraces ethnic hints, a random thought that occured to me was this elven depiction of 5e Player's Handbook:



She has the classic angular features, but also... Do I have a big imagination, or she kind of looks like Rihanna? :'D This is an excellent example of an ethnic looking elf, in my opinion.

I think using inspiration from African ethnic groups would work well for Wild Elves, Copper Elves would probably be more like mixed background people because Copper Elves are exactly that, a mix of Wild Elves and the other Elven types. Greek ethnic inspiration seems like a good fit for Sun Elves IMO. Moon Elves and Star Elves physically are probably the ones to give the more anglo caucasian appearance. If the were to branch out further, I'm not sure about "asian" (which is a very generic term sadly) inspiration for any of them, Eladrin might be an interesting one to consider tying a bit of Japanese influence to, considering their art in Volo's Guide. Drow would potentially fit following the same pattern as Wild Elves, considering their background as the Dark Elves were originally from the same regions as the Green/Wild Elves.

However, with all the above, I think you'd still want to:

• adjust eyes to be more almond shaped
• add sharper, more angled, more defined jawline and cheekbones
• make the nose a little narrower
• reduce chin width to accent the more angled jawline
• increase the angle of brows slightly
• make the face a bit more slender

I like your ideas and would be happy to see something like this in-game in the future

Responded in the other thread, and actually a few posts earlier in this one to this question.

I feel like Mods should merge the two elf threads. Kinda weird having two threads for essentially the same topic.

By the way, did you notice that all Elves in the game are as tall as human?

My understanding is in the older tales and histories elves were always taller, thinner and "more ethereal" than stumpy humans.

Elves should be as tall as humans or even taller like in Norse mythology and Tolkiens work DnD felt Elves were to perfect so they made them manlets but everyone rightfully ignores it.

Also, true, but these are Realms (D&D) elves we are talking about, and they have been very thoroughly described and illustrated for abour 30 years now, and one of the biggest reasons why they don't just look "like beautiful humans" is, that they are literally alien to Abeir Toril... like dwarves, they have no genetic ancestry with the planet's native humans, hence why they only vaguely resemble them, at most.

Contrary to, for instance, LotR, where the ancient Elves basically originated all intelligent live... even Orks and Goblins.

Forgotten Realms is not Tolkien.

If you've been paying attention to illustrations in DnD you'll know that no two editions have the same kind of art style, and even within a single edition you'll find a wide variety of depictions, and no two are identical.