Elf - DND 5th Edition (2024)

Elves are a magical people of otherworldly grace, living in places of ethereal beauty, in the midst of ancient forests or in silvery spires glittering with faerie light, where soft music drifts through the air and gentle fragrances waft on the breeze. Elves love nature and magic, art and artistry, music and poetry.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.

• 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 and an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 750 years old.

• Alignment. Elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, so they lean strongly towards the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others' freedom as well as their own, and are good more often than not. 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.

• Darkvision. Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 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.

• Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can't put you to sleep.

• Trance. Elves do not sleep. Instead they meditate deeply, remaining semi-conscious, for 4 hours a day. The Common word for this meditation is "trance." While meditating, you dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive after years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep.

• Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Elven.

Dark Elf

Descended from an earlier subrace of dark-skinned elves, the drow were banished from the surface world for following the goddess Lolth down the path to evil and corruption. 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 black skin that resembles polished obsidian and stark white or pale yellow hair. They commonly have very pale eyes (so pale as to be mistaken for white) in shades of lilac, silver, pink, red, and blue. They lend to be smaller and thinner than most elves.

Drow adventurers are rare, and the race does not exist in all worlds. Check with your Dungeon Master to see if you can play a drow character.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.

• Superior Darkvision. Your darkvision has a range of 120 feet, instead of 60.

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

• Drow Magic. You know the Dancing Lights cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the Faerie Fire spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the Darkness spell once and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

• Drow Weapon Training. You have proficiency with rapiers, shortswords, and hand crossbows.

High Elf

As a high elf, you have a keen mind and a mastery of at least the basics of magic. In many of the worlds of D&D, there are two kinds of high elves. One type (which includes the gray elves and valley elves of Greyhawk, the Silvanesti of Dragonlance, and the sun elves of the Forgotten Realms) is haughty and reclusive, believing themselves to be superior to non-elves and even other elves. The other type (including the high elves of Greyhawk. the Qualinesti of Dragonlance, and the moon elves of the Forgotten Realms) are more common and more friendly, and often encountered among humans and other races.

The sun elves of Faerun (also called gold elves or sunrise elves) have bronze skin and hair of copper, black, or golden blood. Their eyes are golden, silver, or black. Moon elves (also called silver elves or gray elves) are much paler, with alabaster skin sometimes tinged with blue. They often have hair of silver-while, black, or blue, but various shades of blond, brown, and red are not uncommon. Their eyes are blue or green and flecked with gold.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1.

• Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the Wizard spell list. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for it.

• Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.

• Extra Language. You can read, speak, and write one additional language of your choice.

Wood Elf

As a wood elf, you have keen senses and intuition, and your fleet feet carry you quickly and stealthily through your native forests. This category includes the wild elves (grugach) of Greyhawk and the Kagonesti of Dragonlance, as well as the races called wood elves in Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. In Faerun, wood elves (also called wild elves. green elves, or forest elves) are reclusive and distrusting of non-elves.

Wood elves' skin tends to be copperish in hue, sometimes with traces of green. Their hair tends toward browns and blacks, but it is occasionally blond or copper-colored. Their eyes are green, brown, or hazel.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.

• Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.

• Fleet of Foot. Your base walking speed increases to 35 feet.

• 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.

Pallid Elf

The pallid elves are a mystical and insightful people with skin as pale as the surface of Exandria's largest moon. They emerged from the Pallid Grove this century and wander the world with childlike curiosity.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.

• Incisive Sense. You have advantage on Investigation and Insight checks.

• Blessing of the Moonweaver. You know the Light cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast Sleep once, and it recharges after a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast Invisibility (Self Only) once, and it recharges after a long rest. You do not need the material components required of the spells. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Mark of Shadow

If you're an elf with the Mark of Shadow, you have this subrace, with the following traits.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1

• Cunning Intuition. Whenever you roll a Dexterity (Stealth) check or a Charisma (Performance) check, roll a d4 and add the number rolled to the total ability check.

• Shape Shadows. You know the Minor Illusion cantrip. Starting at 3rd level, you can also cast the Invisibility spell with this trait. Once you cast either spell with this trait, you can't cast that spell again until you finish a long rest. Charisma is your Spellcasting Ability for these spells.

• Spells of the Mark. If you have the Spellcasting or Pact Magic class features, the spells on the Mark of Shadow Spells table are added to the spell list of your spellcasting class.

Mark of Shadow Spells

Astral Elf

Source: Astral Adventurer's Guide

Long ago, groups of elves ventured from the Feywild to the Astral Plane to be closer to their gods. Life in the Silver Void has imbued their souls with a spark of divine light. That light manifests as a starry gleam in an astral elf's eyes.

Because nothing ages on the Astral Plane, astral elves who inhabit that plane can be very old, and their longevity gives them an unusual perspective on the passage of time. Some are prone to melancholy, while others might display an absence of feeling. Many look for creative ways to occupy themselves. Whether they choose to live in quiet contemplation or strike out to explore the reaches of the multiverse, astral elves tend to see things through the lens of time as having little or no meaning to them. Astral elves who don't dwell in the Astral Plane can live to be more than 750 years old.

• Ability Score Increase. Increase one ability score by 2, and increase a different one by 1, or increase three different scores by 1.

• Creature Type. You are a Humanoid. You are also considered an elf for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be an elf.

• Size. You are Medium.

• Speed. Your walking speed is 30 feet.

• Astral Fire. You know one of the following cantrips of your choice: Dancing Lights, Light, or Sacred Flame. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it (choose when you select this race).

• Darkvision. You can see dim light within 60 feet of yourself as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in darkness only as shades of gray.

• Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself.

• Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

• Starlight Step. As a bonus action, you can magically teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

• Astral Trance. You don't need to sleep, and magic can't put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you remain conscious. Whenever you finish this trance, you gain proficiency in one skill of your choice and with one weapon or tool of your choice, selected from the Player's Handbook. You magically acquire these proficiencies by drawing them from shared elven memory and the experiences of entities on the Astral Plane, and you retain them until you finish your next long rest.

• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate.

Bishtahar/Tirahar Elves

Elves who dwell in the forest and countryside are known as the Bishtahar. Most live in isolated communities away from other races, though they still trade with them. In fact, much of Kaladesh’s food supply is grown by elves. Bishtahar cultivators grow food, decorative flowers, wood for building, and elaborate living sculptures in their meandering gardens and fields. They use the plane’s ubiquitous technology to foster the growth of plants and animals, utilizing automatons as gardeners and herders, and employing elaborate, nearly invisible systems controlling heat, water, and nutrients.

Elves who forsake technology entirely are called the Tirahar. Some elves with Tirahar sympathies live within cities or farms, but most simply withdraw to the wilder areas of Kaladesh. No more than one in a hundred elves is counted among the Tirahar, and many members of other races are unaware that these reclusive elves even exist.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.

• Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.

• Fleet of Foot. Your base walking speed increases to 35 feet.

• 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.

Vahadar Elf

The Vahadar are elves who dwell in the cities of Kaladesh. They are comfortable with technology, and work as planners, architects, aether-seers, or inventors. Some of them use the techniques of Bishtahar cultivators to grow food on rooftops, towers, and greenways. The Vahadar are generally integrated into the rest of society on Kaladesh, living in cities dominated by the other races (though, as in Ghirapur, many of them live in specific garden-like neighborhoods) and engaging in trade.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.

• Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.

• Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the Druid spell list. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for it.

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

Zendikar Features

Elves are strongly associated with nature, the magic that flows through their forest homes. Their shamans and druids channel this magic of life and growth, communing with the land or the spirits of the departed. Striving to live in harmony with nature, they celebrate the ties between their communities and their connection with the broader world around them.

The elves of Zendikar have much in common with the elves of other worlds. Your elf character has the following traits.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 2.

• 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 and an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 750 years old.

• Alignment. Elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, so they lean strongly towards the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others' freedom as well as their own, and are good more often than not. 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.

• Darkvision. Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 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.

• Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can't put you to sleep.

• Trance. Elves do not sleep. Instead they meditate deeply, remaining semi-conscious, for 4 hours a day. The Common word for this meditation is "trance." While meditating, you dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive after years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep.

• Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Elven.

Tajuru

The Tajuru nation is the largest of the three main elven nations, concentrated in Murasa and spread across other parts of Zendikar as hundreds of far-flung clans. Tajuru elves are the most open to people of other races, seeing their skills and perspectives as valuable new tools for survival. The Tajuru are also more open to new lifestyles, be it living in a mountaintop citadel or roaming grassy plains.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.

• Skill Versatility. You gain proficiency in any combination of two skills or tools of your choice.

Juraga

The elves of the imperious Joraga nation of Bala Ged have little respect for any other race of Zendikar — or even for other elves. The survival of their nation and its traditions is the Joraga elves’ only goal, and they view the influence of others as a weakness. The Joraga eschew the goods and habits of others, even avoiding the pathways blazed by the Tajuru when possible. Many view the nomadic Joraga clans as little more than bands of roving murderers, but a complex culture hides behind those clans’ aggressive exterior.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1.

• Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.

• Fleet of Foot. Your base walking speed increases to 35 feet.

• 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.

Mul Daya

Elves of the Mul Daya nation of Bala Ged are set apart from other elves by their relationship with the spirits of their elven ancestors. To the Mul Daya, the spirit world and the mortal realm are different only in terms of their tangibility. Death and the spirits of the dead are as much a part of the lives of the Mul Daya as is the natural world. This is not a macabre sentiment to the elves; they simply view it as the truest sense of the natural order.

Mul Daya elves can often be recognized by their face painting and tattooing. Many Mul Daya decorate their skins with an enwrapping vine motif, and make use of poisons and acids collected at great cost from strange creatures and plants in the depths of Kazandu.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 1.

• Superior Darkvision. Your darkvision has a radius of 120 feet.

• 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.

• Mul Daya Magic. You know the chill touch cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the hex spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the darkness spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

• Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.

Avariel Elf

Source: Unearthed Arcana 46 - Elf Subraces

The avariel are winged elves. These rare creatures were more common when the worlds of the multiverse were young, but frequent conflicts with dragons much reduced the winged elves’ number. Still, a few colonies persist here and there in the Material Plane and on the Plane of Air.

• Flight. You have a flying speed of 30 feet. To use this speed, you can't be wearing medium or heavy armor.

• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Auran.

Gurgach Elf

Source: Unearthed Arcana 46 - Elf Subraces

The grugach of the world of Greyhawk shun contact with other folk, preferring the solace of the deepest forests and the companionship of wild animals. Even other elves draw their suspicion.

The grugach tend toward chaos and neutrality. They feel no special duty to anyone beyond their own folk and the forest that is their home. Troubles beyond their borders are best kept there. At the same time, they harbor little ambition beyond a peaceful coexistence with nature.

If anyone is fool enough to disturb a grugach realm, these elves take to arms and fight in earnest. Grugach master the basic weapons needed to hunt and forage in the wood. Every copse of trees becomes a sniper's nest, and each forest meadow is an ambush point. The grugach set pits filled with stakes, snares that leave an intruder helpless to grugach arrows, and other snares designed to kill rather than capture. The grugach fight to the death to preserve their realms.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 1.

• Grugach Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the spear, shortbow, longbow, and net.

• Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the Druid spell list. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for it.

• Languages. Unlike other elves, you don't speak, read, or write Common. You instead speak, read, and write Sylvan.

See also: Eladrin (lineage)