IMO Wood Elves are a really useless race on forum, due to their perks being kind of a moot point and their disadvantages being somewhat crippling? Occasionally I've toyed with the idea of making one, but to my mind the drawbacks outweigh their benefits, especially now that one has the chance as a human to become a Transcendent.

Let's break it down;

First up; Elemental limits.
Basically, if you're a Wood Elf you can only use Nature, Light, Wind, Water and Arcane types of magic. That's 5 types. Out of a possible 10. So basically you go elf, you're only able to use half the possible elements out there in the world, despite the fact that Elves are supposed to be a more spiritual and magically inclined race.

One might argue that their inherent strong resistance to nature type offsets this, and maybe it does to an extent. Unfortunately in my experience nature type mages, especially ones that have offensive skills (it's a natural type for paladins), are a pretty rare thing on site and that seems to make this aspect largely irrelevent?

Personally, I think if Wood Elves are limited to a select number of magics, they should get a boon in these. Maybe a reduction in spell cost or a greater proficiency in these magics, like them being able to use these at one rank higher due to their lack of range in type availability.

10% Enhanced Constitution/Speed
Fine on paper... It makes sense that the graceful elf would be quicker and their connection to nature gives them a more resilient condition. However, I generally think % based stat boosts are kind of useless. Like, whatever your range of stats an extra 10% isn't going to push you across the barrier between ranks unless you're already pretty much knocking on the door anyway?

Personally, if we're trying to capture that Elven grace and agility, maybe it would be better to go the route of giving them the inherent agility/acrobatic ability of a rogue? And/Or maybe a full soundless ability like vampires possess? Perhaps even letting their stats in these areas receive double the boost from potions might be a better idea than some meaningless tiny percentage based increase?

Bow Weapon Mastery
A fine addition, lowering the word count requirement for elves due to their natural inclination toward bow type weaponry, but... What if they don't wanna be a class that has this as their options? Like literally, the only classes that allow for normal use of a bow are ranger and rogue. Literally no magic classes allow it, so if you wanna benefit from this you can have no magic.

I would say a better approach would be to either allow elves to have a bow weapon regardless of class with no penalty to reflect their cultural training, or allow them to start one level ahead. Like level 1 weapon mastery of a bow is inherent, since wood elves would likely be taught this from a young age, simply because of their racial inclination and ranges.

No Stat Boosts

Humans gain double stats as they level up, which is an inclination that also benefits the half elf to an extent, but wood elves gain nothing like this. While you might argue that their other benefits offset this (probably not given the points I've just made), if they are a more magically aligned creature with better potential for spirituality and magic... Why not make their boon the opposite of humans?

Where humans on the whole gain a greater boost physically from levelling up in their stats, maybe Wood Elves would be better to get a bigger boost in terms of Mana? To me that makes more sense than throwing around proficiency training you may never use, or saying "Oh well they can eat leaves and shit all day"?

No Super Sand

With Transcendent's in the mix, it feels like every race except Elves now have some form of super boost they can achieve to strengthen their characters temporarily... But Wood Elves don't? I mean it would be easy to give them one as well, some kind of 'Natures Wrath' or other form of Manaboost where they can draw upon the mana around them in the air and in the ground to enhance their form?


Pretty much in my eyes, the only reason to take them on is for the flavour of maybe having a really old character who looks really young, and to do that you basically have to cripple yourself with abilities so what's the point?

Anyway, that's my point of view on the lacking viability as a race I see in Wood Elves. Given their rarity on site these days (do we even have any active users?), I doubt I'm the only one who feels they're pretty much redundant these days. So why not weigh in if you feel this is valid?

The main problem with elves is that you can't become one, you have to app as one. And no one does that or bothers that much for an alt. And if they do, they usually don't care about power that much since it's just an alt. They might not be as powerful as other races like vampires, but they are free at least so people can live out their elf fetish dreams and roleplay as an elf for the sake of it. We did offer Dark Elves for a long time with better boni but no one ever bothered to get that either because it was too expensive for an alt.

Even as an Alt, when you're perpetually a mark behind everyone else when you're an elf, making it seem a bit pointless unless you go pure social?

I'd like to see the race boosted to something a bit more competitive to encourage people, myself included, to take them?

Possibly even if you wanna keep elves free, offering some kinda 'transcendent equivalent' to work toward might make them just a bit more appealing?