New Subrace: Bright Elf
This content can now be found at its most updated version in The Elements and Beyond, a free 246-page compendium that you can download right here, filled with 23 subclasses, 8 spellcasting feats, 134 spells, 213 spell variants, 85 monsters, 30 magic items, 4 races plus 12 new subraces each with racial feats, and even more goodies for both players and DMs!
Links: PDF | D&D Beyond: Bright Elf
Bright elves are a new subrace for elves intended to give players an option for radiant damage resistance, an option for a more celestial and cosmic-feeling elf subrace, and an option to just feel like you’re in one of the lens-flare elf scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies! In some worlds, these elves are authoritarian and prejudiced, seeking to isolate themselves from the other elves and humanoids or even, sometimes, to dominate and command them as lessers. In many worlds, however, the bright elves simply have exacerbated the natural elven aloofness and now live in their golden towers and gleaming cities without any inferior races to dim the great light of their unified civilization.
Since they still have the elven Fey Ancestry trait and also the Celestial Nature trait, the bright elves have a complicated legacy. They are humanoids and celestials and they also are basically half-fey. While this matters for most worlds, for some, the distinction is largely immaterial. Bright Elves were designed to fill a void that was defined by Tolkien himself: elves that are connected to the light and song of creation itself.
The upcoming compendium The Elements and Beyond contains a number of new races and subraces alike, including the Bright Elf. Most of these are focused on one element or pseudo-element. The “Beyond” part of the compendium’s title refers to all the themes that aren’t included in the four elements, whether that’s styles of magic such as plant spells or shielding spells or damage types like acid or radiant damage, so the compendium includes a number of new races that focus on these themes. The bright elf is one of two new racial options that enable players to build non-aasimar characters with racial resistance to radiant damage.
Links: PDF | D&D Beyond: Bright Elf
