Elf

With their unearthly grace and fine features, elves appear hauntingly beautiful to humans and members of many other races. They are slightly shorter than humans on average, ranging from well under 5 feet tall to just over 6 feet. They are more slender than humans, weighing only 100 to 145 pounds. Males and females are about the same height, and males are only marginally heavier than females.
Elves can live well over 400 years, giving them a broad perspective on events that might trouble the shorter-lived races more deeply. They are more often amused than excited, and more likely to be curious than greedy. They tend to remain aloof and unfazed by petty happenstance. When pursuing a goal, however, whether adventuring on a mission or learning a new skill or art, elves can be focused and relentless. They are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. They reply to petty insults with disdain and to serious insults with vengeance.
Like the branches of a young tree, elves are flexible in the face of danger. They trust in diplomacy and compromise to resolve differences before they escalate to violence. They have been known to retreat from intrusions into their homes, confident that they can simply wait the invaders out. But when the need arises, elves reveal a stern martial side, demonstrating skill with sword, bow, and strategy.

Elf Traits

Ability Score Increase

You have 2 points to increase your Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma scores. You have 1 point to increase any ability score.

Age

Although elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood around the age of 100 and can live to be 450 years old.

Alignment

Elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, so they lean strongly toward the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others’ freedom as well as their own, and they are more often good than not. The drow are an exception; their exile into the Underdark has made them vicious and dangerous. Drow are more often evil than not.

Size

Elves range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Low-Light Vision

Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light.

Fey Ancestry

You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed.

Elf Sleep

Elves experience sleep differently than most other humanoids. Their version of sleep is similar in that it is a restful period devoid of physical or mental strain. It differs in that elves only require 4 hours of sleep and have much more lucid dreams that are directed by their subconscious self, experiencing more of a trance rather than sleep.

Additional Traits

Select 2 of the following options:

Keen Senses

You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Fleet of Foot

Your base walking speed increases to 35 feet.

Magical Study

You know one cantrip of your choice from the wizard spell list. Choose Intelligence or Charisma as your spellcasting ability for it.

Elven Focus

Choose one skill in which you have proficiency. You gain expertise with that skill, which means your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make with it.

Elf Weapon Training

You have proficiency with weapons associated with your specific ancestry:

• High Elf: longswords, shortswords, longbows, and shortbows
• Wood Elf: longswords, shortswords, longbows, and shortbows
• Sea Elf: short spears, war spears, tridents, light crossbows, and nets
• Drow: rapiers, shortswords, and hand crossbows.

Subraces

High Elf

The term “High Elf” is not actually based on genetics but rather a cultural term representing the groups of elves which are most prevalent and influential in the world. They see themselves as the closest representation of the elves of old which came from the feywild long ago. There are two main kinds of high elves: sun elves, and moon elves.
Sun elves tend to have darker skin tones, from tan to brown, as well as darker colors of hair, with eyes ranging from blue, green, yellow, silver, brown, and occasionally black. They tend to be haughty and reclusive, believing themselves to be superior to non-elves and even other elves.
Moon elves often have paler skin, occasionally with hues of light blue, violet, or grey, have hair that tends to be very light or very dark, and have blue, violet, grey, or black eyes. They are more common and more friendly, and often encountered among humans and other races.

Extra Language

You can speak, read, and write one extra language of your choice.

Wood Elf

Wood elves are a more reclusive, and primal kind of elf. They tend to live in small communities rather than large settlements, and live in nature reminiscent of the exaggerated landscapes of the feywild. Many wood elves are very territorial and do not take kindly to outsiders wandering through their lands.
Wood elves often have darker skin and hair, but occasionally have lighter skin or hair in shades of red or green, and eyes of green, blue, yellow, and sometimes black.

Mask of the Wild

You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.

Sea Elf

The rarest of elves today, sea elves fell in love with the wild beauty of the ocean in the earliest days of their existence. Over the millennia, they have become in tune with the water itself. Today, they live among other elves and in small, hidden communities in the ocean shallows.

Child of the Sea

You have a swimming speed of 30 feet, and you can hold your breath for up to an hour at a time.

Drow

Descended from an earlier subrace of elves, the drow were banished from the surface world for following the goddess Lolth down the path of evil. Now they have built their own civilization in the depths of the Underdark, patterned after the Way of Lolth.
Also called dark elves, the drow have darker purple-ish grey skin with varying shades of blue as well. They typically have very light hair and red, black, violet, or yellow eyes. They tend to be smaller and thinner than most elves.

Darkvision

Living deep underground, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 120 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Sunlight Sensitivity

You have disadvantage on attack rolls and on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight when you, the target of your attack, or whatever you are trying to perceive is in direct sunlight.