The Poison Elves of Drew Hayes' comic book series differ in several significant ways from their D&D counterparts:
- they are immune to poison (although they can still develop an addiction and suffer the side effects of withdrawal)
- they are mostly immune to disease (although this resistance is lessened in the middle-aged and elderly elves)
- they have big, pointy ears (presumably only a cosmetic difference)
- many Poison Elves (Luse in particular) have not had the sylvan upbringing that is typically assumed of the High Elves, Wood Elves, and other varieties of D&D elf. Rather, they spend their entire lives in human cities, avoiding the outdoors as much as possible.
I think that they would make a great player character (or NPC) race, but I'm having a few problems translating these qualities into D&D 3.5 mechanics. The biggest problem is what Level Adjustment would be appropriate, and whether or not to water down "immunity" to a large saving throw bonus (thereby reducing the ECL of Poison Elf characters).
Best Answer
As my copy of savage species is absent, I'll be using the variant race rules from Unearthed Arcana and some inspiration from Races of Destiny.
The first task is to find an urbanized elf. While they don't exist, the various guidelines from the terrain/environmental races is useful, and basically says "exchange abilities for equal value."
The Elf is:
A con penalty doesn't seem appropriate for a "poison resistant" race. So we'll swap out con for -2 strength.
Base speed is fine.
We'll trade immunity to magic sleep effects and +2 racial against enhancment for:
"Immunity to nonmagical poison and poison effects, and a +2 racial saving throw bonus against magic poison, and all kinds of disease."
Drop the weapon proficiency line, due to the scope of the posion versus sleep. (Force the player to take a class/burn a feat for that like everyone else)
And I think it's quite fair as a race. Useful for those who want to use poison, but not horribly broken unless designed that way, and certainly no more broken than most other elves.
Poison Elf: