Elves in Rifts/Palladium

[SirLitimus]

There are two types that I know of: Elves and Asgardian elves. Normal elves are found on page 90 of the Conversion One book, while Asgardian Elves are found on page 167 of Conversion Book 2. Stock elves are typical of most fantasy campaign settings: They were the best until a big war broke them into a shadow of themselves (along with the Dwarves). They have no kingdoms, no cities, just wandering around the world waiving their hands in the air and waving like they just don't care. Despite being normally arrogant and egotistical as always, they are nothing compared to the snobbishness of the Asgardian Elves who takes this to the ultimate level. Let's compare the two:

Stock elves have bonuses in basic math, a +2% on wilderness skills, an additional bow attack, and a base 5D6 PPE.
Asgardian elves have much better attribute bonuses, are MDC beings, bio-regeneration, and bonuses in initiative.

As a player of elves in the D&D/Pathfinder systems, I feel that once again, our brethren are undervalued, and come off as watered down and just a half step better than humans. Why? Here are my arguments:

Elves are supposed to have highly superior senses, along with being sneaky gits. They should have some sort of benefits to Prowl, initiative, and/or perception.
Elves are supposed to be magical creatures. Sure, they get a base PPE but I feel they should have a connection to magic. Sense Magic and/or stronger magical bonuses would be appropriate.
Elves keep getting taller and heavier compared to First Edition AD&D elves. Why?
Elves are highly intelligent (minus the arrogance), and strives to do things to their utmost abilities. In addition, they have the long lifespans to learn more things than the lesser beings (do you sense that elven arrogance here?). Therefore, they should have bonuses to all or some skills sets.
Elves are so athletic, their agility and speed would shame Olympic athletes. Why do they not have bonuses that show this?
Finally (I could go on but naaaaa), I mentioned how they are a disorganized bunch. Why haven't they tried to regroup, reorganize, rebuild, restructure, and reinvent themselves?

Where are my fellow elves? Who feels the same way? Shall I commission myself to create a better elf in the next Rifter? Or just "Deal with it and play on"? Let the debate, commence!

[taalismn]

Or perhaps the Dwarves in the last big Elf/Dwarf war cast so many curses(back when they had the capability) on their elven rivals that the cumulative effect was basically bringing down of the great Elven attributes.
"Your sex won't be as fun, and your kids will be whimps! Take that!"

[glitterboy2098]

just chalk it up to "our elves are different"
palladium system isn't D&D, so their take on the classic fantasy races are going to be different from D&D's.

[Grazzik]

just chalk it up to "our elves are different"
palladium system isn't D&D, so their take on the classic fantasy races are going to be different from D&D's.

This.

But, SirLitimus, if you are looking for something a little different, you may want to check out...

Jungle Elves (WB6 pg 57) - high MA, so super nice folks, and naturally magical and psionic to boot. Plus no physical stats listed, so if you like your elves vertically challenged, go nuts.

Star Elves (DB5 pg 44) - similar to Asgardian High Elves except that, as part of the UWW, it is conceivable that entire planets, colonies, and space stations could be populated with Star Elves... epic centers of elvish culture, but with magical spaceships (more on this in DB13 pg 87-98).

[ShadowLogan]

Elves are supposed to have highly superior senses, along with being sneaky gits. They should have some sort of benefits to Prowl, initiative, and/or perception.

Perception is a rather "recent" addition to the Rifts game, introduced with the RUE revision. As such it is possible that your version of the Conversion Book(s) haven't been updated to reflect RUE's alteration to things since RMB (which did not have perception).

As for senses, they have Nightvision (which is on the high end for range).

Elves are supposed to be magical creatures. Sure, they get a base PPE but I feel they should have a connection to magic. Sense Magic and/or stronger magical bonuses would be appropriate.

Maybe in other games they are a Creature of Magic, but in Palladium they do not qualify as a Creature of Magic, just accept it as one of Palladium's many unique takes on the matter.

Finally (I could go on but naaaaa), I mentioned how they are a disorganized bunch. Why haven't they tried to regroup, reorganize, rebuild, restructure, and reinvent themselves?

Probably for the same reason the Dwarves haven't really. In terms of Rifts they aren't native to Earth, they hail from another world (the Palladium Fantasy) which had a massive war between them and the Dwarves that shattered both races.

But, SirLitimus, if you are looking for something a little different, you may want to check out...

Jungle Elves (WB6 pg 57) - high MA, so super nice folks, and naturally magical and psionic to boot. Plus no physical stats listed, so if you like your elves vertically challenged, go nuts.

Star Elves (DB5 pg 44) - similar to Asgardian High Elves except that, as part of the UWW, it is conceivable that entire planets, colonies, and space stations could be populated with Star Elves... epic centers of elvish culture, but with magical spaceships (more on this in DB13 pg 87-98).

I'd also toss out using the Alien creation tables in DB2 might also work resulting in a custom Elf-based race to ones own liking.

[Grazzik]

Elves are supposed to be magical creatures. Sure, they get a base PPE but I feel they should have a connection to magic. Sense Magic and/or stronger magical bonuses would be appropriate.

Maybe in other games they are a Creature of Magic, but in Palladium they do not qualify as a Creature of Magic, just accept it as one of Palladium's many unique takes on the matter.

Too true. Though, despite the preponderance of evidence that say they are not CoM, which I agree with, I could have sworn I read somewhere an obscure line in one of the books that described elves as CoM. I ignored it and chalked it up to bad editing. Not going to bother looking for it.

Finally (I could go on but naaaaa), I mentioned how they are a disorganized bunch. Why haven't they tried to regroup, reorganize, rebuild, restructure, and reinvent themselves?

Probably for the same reason the Dwarves haven't really. In terms of Rifts they aren't native to Earth, they hail from another world (the Palladium Fantasy) which had a massive war between them and the Dwarves that shattered both races.

There are a number of dwarf variants in Rifts (Asgardian Dwarves, Nuhr Dwarves, Anvil Dwarves, etc.) that aren't the result of the PFRPG Elf-Dwarf war and are far from needing to reorganize and rebuild. Though of them all, the dwarves of Columbia (WB6 pg 16) - about 150k of them - have likely integrated into Rifts Earth society the best and doing rather well. Much better than the couple thousand elves of Camargo who live in their own section of the city.

As a side note, one of the things I liked about the UWW histories in the 3G books was that the Elf vs Dwarf trope was ignored, as the Star Elves and Anvil Dwarfs fought together against the Splugorth and this led to the formation of the UWW. Kind of like humans, elves, and dwarves being part of the Wolfen Empire in PFRPG, it shows that people don't always have to play to tired stereotypes.

[EltonRobb]

To help my wife, I had to basically invent my own elf race based off the Martians of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom -- or Mars to be exact. And combine them with Lothlórien elves from the Lord of the Rings. They are different than the basic elven race from D&D/Pathfinder. I figured they came from a dimension when Mars was inhabited by elves. Or they came from a planet in the Three Galaxies that are inhabited by elves.

So, my elves are different, yep.

[taalismn]

Humans are insanely diverse in the megaverse....followed by elves, dwarves, and other humanoids.
Good reasons for the Mechanoids and StarHunters to hate the hell outa us.

[Prysus]

There are two types that I know of: Elves and Asgardian elves.

Greetings and Salutations. As others have pointed out, there are a few other types of Elves as well. And I won't address all the points, but I'll try to touch on some since I'm here.

Elves are supposed to be magical creatures. Sure, they get a base PPE but I feel they should have a connection to magic. Sense Magic and/or stronger magical bonuses would be appropriate.

Maybe in other games they are a Creature of Magic, but in Palladium they do not qualify as a Creature of Magic, just accept it as one of Palladium's many unique takes on the matter.

Too true. Though, despite the preponderance of evidence that say they are not CoM, which I agree with, I could have sworn I read somewhere an obscure line in one of the books that described elves as CoM. I ignored it and chalked it up to bad editing. Not going to bother looking for it.

As others have stated, there's evidence clearly indicating they cannot be Creatures of Magic (at least not as they are now). With that said, a quote that some may be thinking of comes to mind from Palladium Fantasy Second Edition main book, page 290.

"Some enemies of the elves have suggested that they are ancient creatures of magic and as such, should not be trusted.
Are elves creatures of magic? Unlikely ...

This provides the equivalent of a rumor, and then says it's "unlikely" but doesn't actually rule the possibility out. I used this possibility (and the existence of other types of Elves, such as Asgardian Elves) to write a small article: The Magic of Elves.

The concept is that they're not (standard) Creatures of Magic, but they have the ability to absorb large amounts of magical energy which may transform them into Creatures of Magic (though it's a bit unpredictable, at least without breeding from the results).

Elves are highly intelligent (minus the arrogance), and strives to do things to their utmost abilities. In addition, they have the long lifespans to learn more things than the lesser beings (do you sense that elven arrogance here?). Therefore, they should have bonuses to all or some skills sets.

That is not the logical conclusion. Long life spans and doing the most with your abilities would mean you are more likely to reach high level in an O.C.C. and/or multi-class. Player characters (in general) are considered near the beginning of their career/journey, not at the end of it.

Giving them bonuses because they have the potential to live long and develop more than a human is about the same logic that a human can reach mid to high level by the age of 40 (or earlier), so that means humans should be level 3 O.C.C. by the age 5. This logic also ignores things like Dragons, Demi-Gods, Altess, etc. that all have greater life spans without the bonuses you propose for the (comparitively) short lived Elves.

Elves are so athletic, their agility and speed would shame Olympic athletes. Why do they not have bonuses that show this?

They have a high P.P. to reflect this fact. Anything beyond that sounds more like personal preference without any actual book support (which is fine, as long as you're aware you're not discussing the same topic as others).

Finally (I could go on but naaaaa), I mentioned how they are a disorganized bunch. Why haven't they tried to regroup, reorganize, rebuild, restructure, and reinvent themselves?

*Takes a long, deep breath.* That's a complicated answer. First, we should address the fact there's more than one type of Elf, and not all Elves will have the same answer. With that said, I'll answer from a Palladium Fantasy (my preferred setting)/Rifts Conversion Book One perspective.

I'll do some of their quick timeline just for context.

100,000 Year Ago: Elves help defeat the Old Ones. The Age of Light begins and this is actually the start of the Elven Empire.
18,000 Years Ago: The Age of Elves is said to truly begin. (But, from what I can tell, the difference here really is more of instead of being "a" major player, they were "the" major player.)
10,000 Years Ago: Elf-Dwarf War begins.
8.000 Years Ago: Elf-Dwarf War ends, and Millennium of Purification begins.
7,000 Years Ago: Millennium of Purification ends.
6,000 Years Ago: The Time of Man begins (marking humans becoming the more dominant power).
2,800 Years Ago: The Timiro Kingdom rises to power.

So, the Elves have kingdoms for around 80,000 years. Then, they become the major race of the world, and decide to start a cold war with the Dwarves. When that doesn't work, they start an actual war. The war has a massive impact on other races (like reducing Titans, another survivor of the Old Ones) to a mere handful of survivors. Gnomes and many other races get severely impacted from the War, many of which were not actually involved (just collateral damage). When they finally stop fighting, they decide to wipe out all magic from the world (or at least they try). When they got tired of that, they settled into what would become the Timiro Kingdom and set up a new kingdom for a few thousand years, until the humans basically got fed up with the Elves being total jerks and overthrew them (which is the "Timiro Kingdom rises to power" 2,800 years ago).

So let's put this into a different context. You're an influential Senator in the U.S. government. Everything is going more or less fine. You decide to run for President of the United States, and win! Once president, you decide England has something you want. Sure, England is an ally and trading, but you're the U.S., and you want it to yourself. So you start a war. In the war, both sides launch some nukes. Parts of the world are now uninhabitable wastelands. You also decide to enact some biological warfare, and engineer a deadly virus that wipes out about 70% of the population of the entire world (countries that had nothing to do with the war included). Deciding you've gone too far, you decide to set things right by ... waging a war on science. Yup! Science created the virus, so you have to destroy all science because it's too dangerous. You attempt to purge every vaccine and piece of medical equipment as well, because, you know, science is bad. Clearly things have gotten out of hand, so now you enact martial law and a national curfew. People are extremely unhappy and starting to riot. Do you think: "Hey! I should run for 4 more years!" or maybe think: "Hey, maybe I should let someone else give it a try?"

Now, that might be a little exaggerated (but not much) for comedic effect (and emphasis) and condensed, but basically that's the reign of Elves. Basically, every time Elves have been in charge, they make others unhappy until there's a war or revolt against them. Honestly, the Elves not trying to run things sounds like one of their smarter moves.

With all that said, the Elves on the Palladium World do actually have some cities and towns they run/control (despite what Rifts Conversion Book One states), just none of major power on their own. So they might not rule a kingdom, but they can run independent towns and such. But Elves (overall) have decided not to try and rule their children (humans, who have already stood up and slapped the taste out of their mouth), but to advise them and hope their heirs (humans) do better. Hope some of that helps. Farewell and safe journeys.

[SirLitimus]

Good stuff, loved the input without anyone flaming others. I commend you all. Seems the brethren isn't so broken after all. When there's an elf, there's a way.

Game on, my friends.

[Aermas]

Wait til you hear about Sea Titans... Sea titans are humans(ish) that are better than Elves

[drewkitty ~..~]

Wait til you hear about Sea Titans... Sea titans are humans(ish) that are better than Elves

Better way to discribe them is that they are supernatural humans to get a closer to the idea that is Sea Titans. Even that dose not cover the whole idea

[Fenris2020]

There are also Space Elves in the Three Galaxies. They're tougher than the Asqardian Elves.