Editing Elf (section)

===3rd Edition===
Elves are one of the core races of 3e. Like all the PHB races that weren't Human and Dwarf, Elves were really lame. They sacrificed constitution for dexterity, which is an awful deal for any class that doesn't like going splat (which is all of them). Their only other abilities were better-than-average visual acuity, proficiency with four weapons any class that should be using a weapon and isn't a Cleric (which they are poorly suited for) can use some/some of already, and immunity to magical sleep effects. In fact, they don't need to sleep at all, instead going into a meditative trance for four hours. Since everyone else needed to sleep and they could only regain spells after 8 hours of rest, even if they didn't need 8 hours of rest, the only use for this outside of all-elf groups was the elf was stuck with night watch duty. Also for some reason this was buried in their fluff (under "physical description", paragraph two. I checked), and never put in their stat block, so nobody actually remembers they have it. Since it wasn't in the stat block, it wasn't added to the SRD (though elves not sleeping remains in the description of the Dream and Nightmare spells), and therefore no OGL based system includes it either.

Unlike most of the PHB races, Elves didn't have to wait before they stopped being worthless. In the Monster Manual (still core) the subrace ''Gray Elf'' was briefly detailed. They get the normal elf traits, but +2 Intelligence and -2 Strength in addition to the standard elf traits. This gave them total adjustment of -2 str, +2 dex, -2 con, +2 int. These adjustments shoehorned them into one thing, [[Wizard]], which they did moderately well but it was ''something'' they were useful for without leaving core, which is more than most PHB races could claim. Unfortunately, only NPC elves could benefit from this, since the races in the Monster Manual didn't get level adjustments to make them playable until 3.5e (or the FRCS, in the case of Duergar, Drow, and svirfneflbibbles).

Eventually, because Third Edition was shitting out books at an average rate of one every month, sometimes even releasing two or three in a single month, the elves came to have at least 20 different subraces, including 3 underwater variants, a flying variant, and ''albino half-drow''. Surely at least one of them must have been good for something.