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

In regards to that *specific* drow, IDK I actually kinda like him. He has more delicate features, a more pointed face than a lot of the models. Sure, he doesn't have the 'elven eyes' but that's more an issue in the art direction with all the elven heads in the game. As for eyelash and eyebrow color, that doesn't throw me for too much of a loop. Sure, according to Ed Grenwood black hair is the least common hair color among drow (compared to white, red, Silver etc), but the drow do utilize cosmetics-glow in the dark eyeshadow is a thing. Coloring their eyebrows and eyelashes doesn't strike me as too extreme. (lore-accurate radioactive glowing green makeup for drow when Larian? ;))

Skin color though? That's a complicated issue. The art of the drow has been remarkably inconsistent over the decades. Even as authors basically universally refer to their skin color as 'ebony' or 'obsidian' in the novels and sourcebooks, artists were given much more free reign. So you get stuff like Mustachio'd drow and pale-skinned drow early on because some artists looked at the original illustrations for inspiration and misinterpreted the lighting. Or you got brown-skinned drow because the artists got the prompt 'black-skinned' and thought TSR meant that in regards to what that descriptor meant IRL with humans. Or even later when artists would just draw them with purple or grey skin because actual black skin was difficult to execute well. When you have talent like Brom or Rebecca Guay working for you, are you really going to mess with a good thing and reprimand them when Kiaransalee is blue-skinned or Quenthel Baenre is purple when both canonically had obsidian skin?

5e's direction is....different though. It started off more or less business as usual-reused art from previous editions, artists bringing their own interpretations. Somewhere around....Mordenkainen's or Tasha's (I don't recall which) though, all the art switched to the style showcased by MelivySilverRoot. Some have connected this sudden switch to the controversy around the 'Drow Blackface' episode of Community..there was a thread on ENWorld that covered the art shift.

Now putting political discussion on that to the side....now personally I am not a fan of the 'grey drow' aesthetic-I think the art style of drow in general for 5e is pretty bland overall, and it feels weird to me that Moon elves (known for being extraordinarily pale) having the 'blue tint' layer up while the Drow (known for their obsidian skin) were lightened to the point where some moon elves are darker skinned than the drow, making them difficult to tell apart. Artistically, it's much more homogenous as well. Although I have always preferred the (at the time) official 'ebony skinned' variety, some of my favorite drow art has depictions that are not. Some artists had very inspired and interesting takes for the drow, which I miss in a lot of the modern, more tightly dictated art direction.

All of this is moot though, since that aforementioned art shift is unfortunately not a matter of just art direction, it's canon. Drow are no longer canonically 'obsidian skinned' they are 'slate grey'-All official descriptions of them state their skin color as being grey now. Even RAS in his newer books now describes drow as grey-skinned. While I'm very much upset with this switch, Larian is very much playing with WOTC's rules, and this one doesn't fall on them. In fact, I'm very happy with them for giving players the option to have drow with the traditional ebony skin-tone as well as the purple/blue/brown skin tones popular in depictions from earlier editions, as well as the 5e-specific 'canon' look of the drow. It's also something that will likely be much easier to mod than changing face shapes IMO-Chubblot has done similar changes in his modded playthroughs.

While in 2nd Edition, Ed Greenwood wrote that Drow were uniformally jet black, that changed in 3rd Edition where the variety of skin colors started to come about with the Drow. No longer was Drow skin tones just jet black, it was dark color hues varying between blues, purples, and greys.

The biggest problem right now is that Elves should have more angular features. As the early editions of D&D showed, Elves should have angular features (the below images actually showed up in 2E's Book of Elves). That's the real problem you see with the Elves right now, the elven males have too square a jaw (they shouldn't) and a couple of the elven female pre-sets have too rounded a look to the face.

Yes. Elves should, according to a lot of people, appear as you've shown. However, again, there are also plenty of other artistic renditions that show elves looking more like humans with pointy ears.

So, can we agree that they need more options and shouldn't take away any? Please more elvish faces like the above pics but don't get rid of any current models for those people who want an elf that looks like a human with pointy ears.

Did you read my post that you are quoting? I pointed out that the 'canonical' look for drow didn't always line up with the art depictions. You are talking about the art direction and canonical skin color as if they were one and the same. They were not*. Much like the canonical elven body proportions and facial features, which haven't always been terribly faithfully followed by artists working for WoTC/TSR (less so than drow skin color, but other posters have been keen to point out instances where elves were just 'pointy-eared humans').

The distinction is that afaik, there is absolutely no controversy with elven facial features like there is with drow skin color, and afaik no directive from WOTC to make the elves pointy-eared humans, it arguably hurts the game much more, since-as has been pointed out-it's very hard to tell elves and half-elves apart in this game. Where if you don't like the skin color of drow in this game you have the ability to change it, no such luck with elven body/facial proportions/shape. Plus, Larian's elves in DOS2 were positively alien, so it seems like a weird art direction pivot to make them so mundane in BGII. There just doesn't seem to really be a reason for elves looking as they are in-game.

* Here's what 3rd edition says about drow skin color: "All drow have black skin. This is not the dark hue common to some humans, but true black, the color of onyx or pure darkness. Skin tone varies only slightly from individual to individual, perhaps appearing a shade lighter on one, or faintly violet-tinged on another when viewed under very bright light; in any case, these distinctions are both subtle and rare. " Drow of the Underdark -It didn't change in 3rd edition, the art direction was just inconsistent, same as with 2nd and 1st. That very same book has a blue-skinned drow on the cover. Hell, 4th was the same, going so far as to depict the same family of drow- the Baenre's as grey skinned, pointy-eared humans in one illustration, and with the canonical ebony skin and elven proportions in another...in the same book. Drow having a standardized art direction only really took route halfway through 5th edition.

I would also like to point out that this thread is of course about character creation, but it is more than that as well. It is about elves/Drow in general throughout the game - characters you CAN'T change. Now, I like Halsin as an exception to the elven race, but when you have ALL elves looking like humans with pointy ears, that is a bit more of an issue, and it's one players have no control over.

Not that they're likely going to change the NPCs at this point, but...

That seems about right; the overwhelming majority of Drow are going to look black...literally black. There are some oddities, but that's to be expected. Problem is, modern WOTC seems scared to death of portraying D&D's Dark Elves as genuinely dark.


Absolutely not; I see a human pretending to be a Dark Elf. If you believe that specimen to be a perfectly acceptable representation of an average Dark Elf, then something has gone seriously wrong. Best case scenario, they are - at most (barring the ears, obviously) - one-quarter Elf.


You don't agree that there should be a baseline appearance? Anything goes as "normal"? The name of the race means nothing?

How come we are stuck with only the Wood elf, Dark Elf (Drow) or the High Elf as Elven races to choose from?

What happened to all the other Elven races of the Forgotten Realms, the Avariel, Lythari, Moon elf, Sea elf, Star elf, Sun elf and Wild elf?

Is there some sort of legal/copyright prohibition against Larian using them or will they (or only some of them) be implemented when the game is officially launched?

I enjoyed playing a Moon Elf whose skin tones and hair colour made her appear superficially like a Drow. This would often cause other surface elves as well as many other surface races to get very worried when they encountered her.

Fond memories of my tabletop RPG games come flooding back now I have mentioned this.

Guess I am hoping for too much.

Moon and Sun elf were rolled together, and Wood and Wild Elves were rolled together. Asterion is specifically mentioned as being a Moon Elf, Kahga is pretty obviously a Sun Elf too, but both are 'High Elves' in the game.


I can kinda forgive the wild elves, since they are super rare and reclusive, much like the Lytheri, Avariel and Star Elves. But in regards to Sun/Moon elves, it's a bit of a shame IMO, because after reading the novels, I really can't see Sun and Moon elves as interchangeable like they are treated in this game.

Thanks for the response.

My question has been answered and now I am sad!

My Moon Elf Blade Singer is now a holdover from a time when differences created roleplaying opportunites.

That consolidation is a shame! I like the Moon Elf/Sun Elf divide.

Man OP is really clear and honestly this gets +1 from me.

But question regarding half-orcs.How human should they look like?
Like is it supposed to be closer to the various fan arts where they look like buff green elves or are they supposed to look like the unholy monstrosities from the Elder Scrolls Oblivion?

They're not supposed to look green at all for starters. Faerun orcs are grey and half-orcs are also grey or just really pale. And if Larian are going to follow their traditional depiction, then we should expect bulky grey-skinned humans with flat noses, slightly pointy ears and variety of fangs.

I imagine they are going to look like this ->

I am hoping for something close to this mod, it looks so gorgeous :
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/215

Making the monstrous races more attractive/humanlike is a kind of cheat.

I'll argue that half-orcs should look as foreign from a human as half-elfs are, so this depiction fits perfectly to me.

Orcs are ugly; Half-Orcs may look better than a full-blooded Orc, but they'd still - on average - appear unattractive by Human standards.

Half-orcs from what I recall can vary quite a bit in terms of appearance. IIRC in 3.X there was mention of orc tribes sometimes using half orcs to pose as half-elves for espionage purposes. I think Ed Greenwood is on record saying that in some of the orc/human barbarian tribes of the north there really isn't much of a distinction between orcs and humans and they have children together readily. Probably why Uthgardt etc barbarians all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.


Most of them look distinctly orc-like though, and not just a human with little pointy teeth, going by the art.

In AD&D 1e, "10% of Half-Orcs can pass themselves off as the other half." I don't know if later editions revisited this "racial" trait. Still, these half breeds are taking a hit to Charisma; even if they do look human, it's an unattractive Human (most of the time).

And just out of curiosity ...
How would you define general atractivity ... since that is strongly subjective matter?