Hello adventurers! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the sixth episode of our half-elf subrace series. Today we’re going to be going over the wood half-elf which is for all intents and purposes the last of the official half-elf subraces. At least currently i have very little doubt that wizards of the coast will be adding more in the future.
However you know presently this is all we really have to work with and much like a lot of the other half-elf subraces the wood half elf is found in the sword coast adventurers guide. If you’d like to see the full series or check out all of the race articles pleasde do click on the link given. In any case let’s dive right into the wood half-elf by taking a look at its traits.
Traits
Half-Elf Variant: A half-elf of wood elf descent could forgo the Skill Versatility and instead select the wood elf’s Elf Weapon Training (You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.), Fleet of Foot, or Mask of the Wild.
Fleet of Foot: The walking speed increases to 35 feet.
Mask of the Wild: You can attempt to hide even when you are the only lightly obscured.
Elf Weapon Training:You have the proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow and Longbow.
The wood half-elf is actually set up very much like the high half-elf would be. So it provides you a list of options that are found on the full elf version of whatever the half-elf is in this case wood elf and then you select one of them in exchange of your versatility trait.
It’s okay i guess the wood half-elf it’s not as mechanically detrimental as the high half-elf was, however it’s still not really a good trade in my opinion. There are certain flavor elements that you may be able to benefit from mask of the wild in particular is probably the best thing to pick from a mechanical, as well as a role-playing angle.
However i suppose, it depends which kind of a build you want to run with. However you know an extra five feet of movement it’s not gonna make or break most builds and weapon proficiencies are cool and they’re really interesting for certain builds. However, the classes that they synergize best with already have access to these proficiencies.
So it’s like you know outside of flavor there are better things to go with you know at least more times than not. That being said though, once again if you’re going for a really particular build or you want to experiment with something, i suppose this is a good way to do it and at least provides more options and customization than a lot of the other sub races do I’m with some obvious exceptions of course like the simic hybrid which is kind of based around customization.
But still you know you have three options and four if you include the versatility trait so it is okay! I guess all things considered. Now let’s move on to my personal thoughts.
Personal Thoughts
Overall i feel very much the same about the wood half-elf as i have. Virtually all of the other half-elf subraces with the exception of the marked half-elf and the aquatic half-elf because the aquatic half-elf i think alomst everyone would agree wasn’t really all that thought out and had relatively little effort put into it, then again i mean just picking one of the elf traits isn’t very high-effort either so.
Maybe my commentary is more on the lack of ingenuity than the actual subrace itself. I feel like there’d be a lot of ways to re-flavor this perhaps. Maybe giving them something like innate spellcasting might be a little bit better things like shillelagh or druidcraft like lower level spells but still quite useful for a variety of build something like that would make a lot more sense than what is currently provided.
I don’t know it’s complicated because by raw it’s quite limiting but the general idea of a lot of these half-races is. Quite good! you know if you have a lenient dungeon master it might be worth having that conversation with them just be like you know, i was reading through this and this doesn’t really seem like a fair trait to me so instead could we try something like this.
Like it’d be a relatively easy conversation to have at a session zero and most dungeon masters i know would be pretty okay with something like that as long as it was well thought through you know. That is, that is something you could try i guess but by raw you’re better off just picking the sub-race in name only and sticking mechanically the exact same with the i’m just base half-elf.
And that’s true with almost all of them with of course the exception of the marked half elves which are for their own reasons i guess a little bit better to say the least.
Conclusion
That being said! Let me know what you think down beneath in the comment section. Maybe i’m right, maybe i’m wrong you know i can really do is give my anecdotal evidence you know but i think most people would agree with me especially about the mechanical things so. I don’t know let me know what you think down beneath in the coment section of course. That being said! I hope you all have a great day and as always happy adventuring everyone.