AD&D Elves
It's largely understood that D&D elves are a rip off of Tolkein elves, but I think they were well along becoming their own thing even in the earlier editions of D&D that were straight up calling halfling 'hobbits.'
Anyway, they have the typical hominid thing of appearing in numbers of 20-200, and they have 1+1 HD by default, a hobgoblin equivalent. Multiclassing is explicitly their thing, and not just magic-user fighters- Cleric-Fighter is the explicitly mentioned combo. Once you get to 100+ elves or a lair, a bunch of high level multiclassed elves show up, in the form of fighter/MUs mainly but also a fair few fighter/MU/Clerics. Female elves are mentioned as 'appearing in equivalent numbers to the others' and there being 1 young per 20 elves, because it wouldn't be a real gygaxian entry on humanoids without casual sexism and a reminder to kill all the children.
Elves are woodland dwellers with a 65% chance to have 2d6 giant eagles guarding their 'lair' which is probably just token tolkeinism. Gear for the warrior elves is 10% with sword and bow, 20% with sword and spear, 20% with sword, 5% with 2-handed sword, 30% with spear, and 15% with bow only, with most in chain-adjacent armors and shields. This may be extra relevant because all the 'levelled' elves have a 10% per level per class of having a usuable magical items for the class and MUs of above level 4 have 1d4+1 magic items instead of just one.
1/20 elf bands will have 5d6 female fighters (called elfmaids) mounted on unicorns so I guess spoke too soon earlier, sexism in D&D is dead and Gygax killed it on page 39 of the AD&D MM. Just like he killed all the demihuman younglings
As some minor mechanical notes, elves have +1 to hit with swords and bows, a 4-in-6 chance to surprise in woodland settings (and being invisible in such setting so long as they don't attack), and a 90% chance to resist sleep and charm. They can also move, fire their bows, and move back all in the same round, making them basically unbeatable with hit-and-run guerrilla warfare against conventional foes.
In addition to their scads of magic items, they have a decent treasure type of G, S, and T in lair, which is basically dragon hoard-lite with extra scrolls and potions, and elves carry the only worthwhile individual treasure type N, which is1-6 platinum pieces each. In short, elves are stuffed to the gills with magic loot and it's no surprise people oft use elves as stand-ins for old-money capitalists.
Bonus Subtype Round
Aquatic Elves are friends with dolphins and enemies to sahuagin and sharks and 'attack either if the elves outnumber them.' This is poorly thought out because while 'they(elves) do not use magic and cannot forge underwater,' the Sahuagin have 2+2HD by default, superior senses and intellect, 3-5 unarmed attacks, natural armored hides, and clerics, so I see no possible way they would survive if their strategy was to attack with such a feeble advantage as 'numbers.'
They also have blue or green hair and greeny silver skin, which should be useful when describing Sahuagin furniture.
Drow only got their own proper entry in the Fiend Folio, and here are just blathered on about being mysterious and wicked, with I assume all the spidery matriarch stuff showing up in later publications. As a brief note on that later entry, suffice it to say they have altogether too many abilities for my liking, having a bunch of magic items (which decay in sunlight to prevent ridiculous power creep) magic resistance, stealth, a bunch of magic abilities based on either gender and/or level AND class levels and abilities to keep track of on top of all that does not appeal greatly to me.
Grey elves, noted as 'faerie' in parentheses, are 'noble' 'rare' 'powerful' but apart from bigger brains and some giffons/hippogriffs, are not actually the fey beings seen in, say, A Midsummer Night's Dream. They're just double-elves with the oddly specicified sub-subtypes of silver hair and amber eyes (grey elf) or golden hair and violet eyes (Faerie).
Half-Elves (Or Helves if u ask me) are noted mainly in terms of how player characters play them.
Wood Elves are the dumb hunks of the elves, having extra strength but less intelligence and hang out with giant owls and lynx and have assorted pointless changes to weapon percentages and appearance.
While the Drow became wildly popular, there are some other sad elf subtypes in the later books I'll go over briefly-
Grugach- This pointless entry describes slightly buffer even more xenophobic Wood Elves who are also druids and trap-setters who make up 20% of 'wood elves'.
Valley Elf- The peak of pointless elvish palette swaps, these elves are gray elves from a Greyhawk location called the Valley of the Mage. With trivial improvements like AC4 instead of 5 and HD 1+2 instead of 1+1, it is impossible to say how many trees perished to bloat the Monster Manual II with this entirely unnecessary half-page of minutiae.
3.5 Elves
Largely a repeat of prior entries, with a sharp change in focus from the elves as 'band of humanoids to be encountered' to 'this is how your stats change if you play one as a character.' Apart from the drow entry being thankfully condensed and streamlined (though admittedly, also lacking in details), the only thing I find notable here is that Aquatic Elves are further doomed to become chum with a -2 intelligence score.
Ettin- See Giant entry later in this series. AD&D proclaims them to be closely related to Orcs, rather than just being two-headed giants, which is clearly a load of bunk that I shan't entertain a moment longer.
Floating Eye- In nethack, these creatures paralyze you when you smack 'em, and years later I'm still mad that I accidentally hit one while trying to clear out a monster zoo and was eaten by a lynx while paralyzed. In AD&D, they are weird monocular fish that paralyze you if you look at 'em and then you get eaten by predator fish companions. While I am not against 'paralyzing but weak eyeball monster' having them be wholly harmless (rather than, say, disgustingly parasitic) seems a lost opportunity, as does having them be a salt-water monster.
Eye of the Deep- A weird lobster-clawed aquatic beholder without the interesting facing-based magical death rays, instead just having a flashbang central eye and smaller eyes that can cast hold person or hold monster on their own, or an illusion together. I am curious as to whether anyone has ever used this creature instead of simply saying 'underwater beholder,' and what would motivate them to use the lobster knockoff instead of the classic.
Sunset Realm Elves
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I've gone over elves already a little bit here and have sat on this post so long I'll just rush through a quick history of elves in the realms.
Elves show up in the 2nd age around the fall of the Serpent Empire. They team up with animals and fight a horrifying war of fire and plague against the ghuls and dragons, eventually triumphing (this is where elvish immunity to ghul paralysis comes from). They then work with other early hominids(Svarts, Ningen) to create the Alfstar, the 3rd sun, in the intersolar period after Yg-A, the 2nd sun, is trapped at the center of the earth. Thusly situated, they laze around and stop being ash-clad muscle-barbarians and over centuries become jaded aesthete sorcerer-elites ruling over humans. Internal instability rises and the Witch-Queens overthrow the increasingly malevolent Alves, trapping them in the Iron Moon(the broken husk of the Alfstar) and forcing retreats to dream realms as humans gain dominance over the sunlit realms. Elves retreat to stagnant cities of silver and crystal to reincarnate endlessly through eternity, while the corrupted Alves scheme to regain their lost glory in culturally distinct ways depending on if they became the Seasonal Courts in the dreams of trees (Summer/Spring/Autumn) or ice (winter) or within the Iron Moon (Fomorians).
Quibbles over the details include whether the elves came from the outer darkness and are alien visitors, if they are just serpent-designed overengineered apes, or if they just developed alongside humans but 'won' the tech race, essentially being neanderthalesque.
Also in question is if the fall of the Elf Empire was really from civil war and an uprising of the human servant class, experimentation with darkness that retroactively altered those involved across space and time into hyperbolic fey A-holes (fay-holes?) explaining the Elf/Alf split, or if it was really just an embarassing economic collapse caused by an overeliance on fake leprechaun gold.
In any case, elves exist in part because it's expected. They're in the book, after all, not just in the monster section, but right there at the beginning, almost as sacred a cow as STR/DEX/CON/INT/WIS/CHA. Maybe they'll vanish from the realms someday like they never were, but for now, you can have a few elves. As a treat.
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