 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy, and today I'm gonna be breaking down the elf for all of you D&D nerds that don't wanna look stupid coming to your sessions with the wrong race-class combo. Of course, the golden rule is that there is no wrong race-class combo, and you should really just pick whatever feels like a fun time, but this guide is meant to help new players who don't have time to hypothesize about the nuance of fictional fairy tales pick out the class that'll give them the best odds when they're going into their first sessions. If you have any tips for playing the elf, feel free to share them in the comments, and as always keep in mind that a lot of what I say here is just my opinion, so if you don't wanna play an elf ranger but instead want to port over an Eldar Space Marine from Warhammer 40k, feel free to play your game's workshop however you want, but with that out of the way, let's begin. Just real quick, I'd like to give a brief shout out to my new patrons this month. MaxFish555, EvanGerrardWilson, John Robin's favorite uncle, QueenShirt, LordFingers, TheCrizz. Thank you all so much for pledging to my Patreon, you are all funding my dreams of being a cook, and also funding all of the food that gets burned. So the elf is a dex-based race, which immediately makes it one of the most versatile races in all of 5e, because literally everything except for paladins and some fighters can benefit from an increase to dex. Sure you can build certain classes without dex in mind, but the point is that you'll never have a hard time fitting it into your concept unless you go out of your way to be obstinate. You also have Fey Ancestry and Dark Vision, both of which are universally good abilities that anybody would want to have, and in the case of Dark Vision, they probably already do. As far as trance goes, it may seem like a really big advantage to just vibe with the universe and cut your long rest time in half, but trust me when I say that it's mostly gonna be forgotten about, since no dungeon is going to wait four hours for you to have your beauty sleep and not be willing to wait the full eight so that everybody can look as pretty as the elf. The only real benefit to trance is when you're being attacked at night, in which case congrats you're all rested and ready to kick ass. Hopefully your friends can make do with the hit dice. Technically trance leans more towards classes that don't benefit much from short rest, so not the warlock or the fighter, but believe me it's not gonna make a huge difference. Beyond that, the elf has an absolute elf ton of subraces, all of which are spread throughout the three different books because if there's one thing that Wizards of the Coast knows we're suckers for, it's customizing our elf OCs. Breaking down the standard player handbook ones first, the high elf's bonus to intelligence is why you don't really see anybody playing a high elf unless they're a wizard or they're just doing it for the meme. You don't get a lot of benefits from intelligence and information rolls usually trigger a wave of dice from everyone, or if the information is important to the plot, the DM will probably just tell you anyway, so it's not to say that intelligence is useless, but it's just a stat that is so left up to the DM that most people get uncomfortable with it. If you don't want to play a wizard or an artificer, you're not totally out of luck, since the high elf gets one free wizard cantrip and proficiency with a few martial weapons, so you've got sort of a grab bag of everything, but that grab bag is gonna stretch you real thin. Martial classes will appreciate the very limited flexibility of the cantrip, but they'll almost always have proficiency in the weapons already, so that's pointless. And magic classes will like the extra cantrip, but unless you're playing a Gish character, you have magic. You don't need a sword, you don't need those proficiencies. In either case, the extra magic will scale off of intelligence no matter what, so be aware that you'll have to either pick a roleplay spell, put points into a single damage cantrip, or just have that one spell that will fall off after a little while. Like I said, you don't see high elves played often. Wood elves, on the other hand, are played a lot, sort of both because they're the best choice for the most amount of things, and also because until the expansion books came out, they were your only not dumb choice. But remember, play what you want. As far as what elves go though, the increase to wisdom instead of intelligence while still being a mental stat provides more utility in the long run. Wisdom gives perception, insight, all sorts of things, and coupled with decks means that you'll probably have an easy time picking your class. The game wants you to pick Druid or Ranger, but clerics and monks are just as well. And if you want to move beyond that, literally any class will benefit from the slightly increased movement and the Mask of the Wild. Elf weapon training will run into the same issues with the high elf, but having one boring skill and a group of very versatile ones is not an issue. The only time you don't want to play a wood elf is when you like the abilities of another sub race more, but the versatility of the sub race means that if you don't find another flavor of elf that suits you, you can always try some wood. The final standard choice is the Drow, a sub race that would be really good if it weren't for literally one ability that takes the dinner plate of the Drow and chucks it in the hallway. You start out with a bonus to Charisma. Nice. Everybody loves Charisma. It's the most role play stat. Then you get double dark vision. Also nice. People need to see. You get to see more. You get some Drow weapon training, which is cool, but ultimately not a deal breaker. It does give you a hand cross with those so you can pretend you have a gun and then you get magic on top of all that. So that's dancing lights, fairy fire, and darkness all at no cost except for one thing. Sunlight sensitivity is the worst trait in the world. If you, your target, or just whatever you want to interact with is in direct sunlight, boom, disadvantage. No questions asked. This is fine indoors, but if you're out and about, you've got some problems to work on. Luckily for you, the negative hype around sunlight sensitivity isn't actually as awful as the community wants you to believe, but it is pretty restrictive. For starters, Charisma is amazing for role play, but it doesn't scale well except on spellcasters that cast with it. This is actually a blessing in disguise for you, since you will basically only want to play a spellcaster anyway. Martial characters are boned due to the sunlight sensitivity, because all of your attacks are suddenly at disadvantage whenever you have a beach episode, but sorcerers, warlocks, and even bards can make the most of it, because the lucky thing about spells is that a lot of them force your target to make some sort of save, and that completely bypasses the disadvantage rule, meaning you will be semi-limited in the spells that you can take, but since so many of them call for saves instead of attack rolls anyway, you can reliably play a draw without having to feel gimped as soon as someone opens up the curtains. I still wouldn't suggest the Paladin, because even though it's a Charisma Caster, we all know what the Paladin is about, and your flashes of holy radiant smite light are just not going to hit as often. That being said, if you want the challenge, feel free to play whatever class you want. It's not like the entire game will be outside, and if you're worried that it is, ask your DM. If you want a weird, cheesy way around it, take mounted combatants so that you can get advantage on all attacks against things that are smaller than your mount, canceling out the disadvantage, and better yet, you can start a trend of players who join games with their Drow characters and creep out the other party members with their giant pet riding spider. So, with the introduction of Mordenkanen's, the seed of the elves was spread even further, doubling their subraces from three to six, and instantly giving them the most subraces out of everybody, except maybe the Dragonborn if you consider the different colors subraces. Starting with the most obscure subrace, the amount of people who play the CELF is equal to the amount of people who remember that it exists, and by that I mean zero, which is hilarious considering the elf was actually reprinted in Wildemount, but I guess the D&D community isn't trying to see that. This isn't due to its constitution bonus, which even more so than dexterity is the universal stat that 100% of classes want to increase. The problem with the CELF is that their weapon proficiencies have the same problem as all the other subraces, and their other two features focus almost entirely on the water, which despite making up 71% of the earth, still shows up in 10% of campaigns. A swimming speed is useless when you're not in the water, unless you plan on blowing up a swimming pool in the middle of each fight, and if we have learned anything from the boys, it's that talking to fish is a dumb power. Hell, even their languages suck! You get common and AWKWIN! Yeah, good luck finding somebody who speaks AWKWIN! Be sure to bring a glass of water with you so that you can get the pronunciation right. It's ironic, really. The CELF is the second most well-rounded subrace that you can pick out of all the books. Its features and traits literally work with anybody, but if your campaign isn't happening in the C or C-adjacent, then congratulations, your character is going to flounder. Get it? Because that's a C button. C, what I did there. I get paid for this. Anyway, remember when I said that the CELF is the second most well-rounded subrace? That's because the first one also comes from Mordenkanen's, and the only restriction is that you have to play Marilyn Manson to get it. The Shadarkai is something that you'll pick more for the flavor than for its stats, and that's because there isn't a single ability that the Shadarkai gets that doesn't work with literally any class. They get the almighty bonus to constitution, they get resistance to necrotic damage, and they get a spoopy teleport that gives them resistance to everything for a short while. This makes the Shadarkai very easy to step into crunch-wise, so the struggle will really be in deciding whether you want to sacrifice your emotions and melanin in exchange for ultimate edgy power. On the opposite side of the coin, of course, is the elven mood ring of the Eladrin, which has a little bit more variety going for it at the expense of spreading itself a little bit more thin. The main gimmick for the Eladrin is that they have a teleport ability similar to the Shadarkai, but instead of getting resistance to everything, they get one of four different benefits based on their ability to change which season they want to represent them after every long rest. The teleportation abilities scale off of Charisma, which happens to be the stat that you get an increase in. Lucky you! This means that if you want to get the most out of being an Eladrin, you want to play a class that loves Charisma, or otherwise just max out the stat because you don't mind being lower in something else. Obvious choices are the Charisma Caster family as well as the fighter, since it gets two more ability score increases than everybody else, or the Rogue, since they get one more. Charisma is still the best social roleplay stat, so you'll be fine boosting it on any class, but if you don't want to worry about going mad over all this multiple ability dependence, you can always forgo boosting Charisma and stick to the spring season, since the teleport benefit for spring doesn't care what your Charisma is. Even then, winter and autumn, both proc wisdom saves, and there's always the chance that somebody rolls middling to low, so don't feel like you're restricted to spring just because you don't want to be a social butterfly. And then, the last Elvin subrace that we have to talk about comes from the Explorers Guide to Wildemount, which also has the CELF in it, but yeah, let's focus on the Paladelf instead. With the power of a wisdom bonus, advantage on intelligence and insight rolls, and the unlocking of spells, such as light sleep and invisibility, the Paladelf works wonders as a compliment to the Rogue, especially if you wanted to play an inquisitive or an arcane trickster with a detective bent. I know that arcane tricksters scale off of intelligence, but let's be honest, it's not the craziest subclass in the first place, so any benefit of spells that it can get is a good thing. Of course, you're not restricted to a row. You can pick any class and turn them into a private eye, and since wisdom is a stat that anybody can make good use of, picking the Paladelf comes down to what type of role play you want to have, and not particularly what class you want them to be. Ask yourself the question, are investigation and insight skills that you intend to build your character around? Are light sleep and invisibility spells that you want your character to have? They're good spells, so don't worry about picking something you're not going to use. The question is just whether or not this is the direction you want to take yourself. If the answer is yes, then go for it. This is probably the most mechanically powerful subrace for the elf, and if your DM is letting it into their games, then you can play your albino pixie dream elf however you want. But that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, check out my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can get a surgery to point my ears because it's 2020 and my brain is deflating. But yeah, dabby out.