How do you reconcile all the races having the same ability to gain levels?

[semi]

First: I think this would be the best forum for this question, if not let me know or the moderators to move/delete it. thanks.

My question is this:

The sort version:

How do you/d&d/etc. reconcile the ability of a human and a gnome to achieve the same level as a magic user in the D&D universe.

The long version:

I am working on developing a world and I think I would like to add a level of racial/xenophobic tension based on the notion that gnomes are the supreme magic using species (I know it’s always called race, but it is species, right?) and the only group that are able to achieve epic levels, skills, spells, etc. (Of course there are the rare specific individuals of other races that are the typical phenomenal talent) but humanity keeps trying to achieve similar levels of ability.

I’m more than happy to fall back on the tried-and-true reasoning of “Hey, I’m the DM, this is my world and suck it, this is just how it is. Gnomes are teh l33t spell casters, humans are stuck riding in the back of the bus, unless they wanna be sorcerers (again an idea I’m playing with).”

I also think the normal reason is something like this… humans and gnomes (or any of the longer living species) do live to different ages but they typically ‘adventure’ for around the same amount of time and it is this adventuring that offers experience (both XP experience and actual ‘experiences’) that they use to level up.

Of course my question is, well what if instead of adventuring for the same number of years (say 30) they decide to adventure for the same percentage of years based on their life span. Then you have gnomes running around for what? 3 or 4, maybe 6 times as long as a human? If that’s how they roll, then gnomes should pick up at least a couple more levels (on average) than a human right?

Again, I’m more than happy to fall back on “It’s my way or the highway” (although I’ll say it a bit more diplomatically than that) but I’m wondering if I’m missing a key aspect or idea that I’m not thinking about that would have ramifications for me/my world I’m thinking about developing.

Thanks for your help.

[Calemyr]

The best reconciliation I've heard is from Viconia in Baldur's Gate II, or possibly a mod for it (hard to tell). I don't remember it exactly, but here's what I got out of it. She claimed that humans scared her. They somehow manage to fit as much living in less than a century as an elf manages in more than a millenia, and their short life spans just make them more ambitious, adaptable, and desperate. She goes on to say that if the drow had any more in common with humanity, they would have conquered the world ages ago and would now be looking around desperately for something else to conquer.

Frankly, I like this view of humanity. Their short life spans give humanity an insistant sense of immediacy and a restlessness that drives them to exceed the accomplishments of creatures with ten times their life spans. It also leads them to a drastically increased reproduction rate, which instills in them an unprecedented diversity and chance to produce geniuses (and idiots) who refashion the universe with their slightly off-kilter perception of it.

Of course, there's a difference between individual capacity and cultural capacity. Human cultures are so fluid and dynamic that they may not be able to achieve the same ultimate heights of craft, magic, or technology as the dwarves, elves, and gnomes. In that sense you can shift the balance in favor of different groups by making things like scrolls and training more available in certain cultures, while still giving each character the same ability.

(This is ironic, I know, due to the massive amount of gaping holes Baldur's Gate creates itself by allowing you to be a 20-year old adult elf fighting a possibly 10 year old adult half dragon. It would have been nice if they'd attempted to explain it, like "Bhaalspawn age at human rates, and it took Bhaal decades to impregnate that many women". Still, I liked that particular conversation and it seemed like it could help you.)

[jiriku]

Just assign level tiers to the races. For example, you could state the following:


90% of humans, half-orcs and halflings are levels 1-6 in various classes
90% of gnomes and half-elves are are levels 4-9 in various classes
90% of elves and dwarves are levels 7-12 in various classes


PCs can be assumed to be exceptional individuals who break the normal stereotypes, or you can actually set those levels as the minimum level at which a character can enter play (e.g. elves of levels 1-6 are considered children, apprentices, and students, and can't be selected as a player race until the group reaches level 7).

[paddyfool]

The best reconciliation I've heard is from Viconia in Baldur's Gate II, or possibly a mod for it (hard to tell). I don't remember it exactly, but here's what I got out of it. She claimed that humans scared her. They somehow manage to fit as much living in less than a century as an elf manages in more than a millenia, and their short life spans just make them more ambitious, adaptable, and desperate. She goes on to say that if the drow had any more in common with humanity, they would have conquered the world ages ago and would now be looking around desperately for something else to conquer.

Frankly, I like this view of humanity. Their short life spans give humanity an insistant sense of immediacy and a restlessness that drives them to exceed the accomplishments of creatures with ten times their life spans. It also leads them to a drastically increased reproduction rate, which instills in them an unprecedented diversity and chance to produce geniuses (and idiots) who refashion the universe with their slightly off-kilter perception of it.


The corollary of this, of course, is that all of the long-lived races (gnomes, dwarves, elves, elans...) must be incredibly lazy and incredibly infertile by human standards. It's a problem born of meshing fantasy (e.g. Tolkein) in which humans have to get by in the company of "ancient" races who are individually much more powerful than any but the very best of humanity with a balanced game.

About the best fix I found for this for elves (for whom it's most often brought up) was that they grow to maturity at similar rates to humans (as per races of the wild), but don't start adventuring until much later because of a very strong social pressure to reproduce while young, possibly because of a short window of decent fertility. So your typical 100-year-old elven adventurer has already raised their grandkids, and being still in the flush of youth physically and mentally, but finally bored of the limits of his own society, is now off to see the world. Which still doesn't explain being level 1, or, for that matter, why all of the 200-year-old elves aren't epic.

[Hyooz]

I don't reconcile them.

Sure, maybe gnomes find casting easier because of some natural connection to X or Y and humans lack that so magic is harder for them, but I'm not about to limit my PC's options because of a silly general flavor concern. Their human is an exception, he's obviously exceptional in his aspirations as he adventures around. I might not include many magic human NPCs, and I'd have people in the world react in an appropriate way to something rare and unusual, but outside of entirely irreconcilably differences, I'll find a way to explain it or handwave it away to let my players play the character they want.

[Telonius]

Suggestion for how long-lived races treat it ...

Most elves' lives progress fairly peacefully. Their abilities unfold slowly, growing like a farmer's crops, bearing fruit in the appropriate time, and then slowly declining. That's the usual way of it. But every once in a while, an elf's spirit will try to emerge fast and early. This process is incredibly dangerous - only a minority of these so-called "adventurers" survive, just like an early ear of corn is quickly eaten by a crow. But if it does survive, it takes deep root and grows taller and better than all the others.

[DaTedinator]

I don't reconcile them.

Sure, maybe gnomes find casting easier because of some natural connection to X or Y and humans lack that so magic is harder for them, but I'm not about to limit my PC's options because of a silly general flavor concern. Their human is an exception, he's obviously exceptional in his aspirations as he adventures around. I might not include many magic human NPCs, and I'd have people in the world react in an appropriate way to something rare and unusual, but outside of entirely irreconcilably differences, I'll find a way to explain it or handwave it away to let my players play the character they want.

QFT. If Gnomes are adventuring six times as long, just have more gnomes of higher levels. No reason to tell players that they aren't allowed to reach the higher levels if they can get the experience to do it.

[Milskidasith]

Another note: If most of your gnomes, or at least a good chunk, are high level casters, make sure the errands they send your guys out on actually make sense... for instance, delivering a package through dangerous territory is stupid if they have access to teleport.

[Lapak]

I think the simplest solution is the best for the game and the game world both: the vast majority of people spend their lives without gaining adventuring-relevant XP, and the vast majority of the people gaining such XP die.

99%+ of elves, gnomes, humans, and everybody live lives of quiet obscurity and don't gain levels, because they don't perform heroic tasks and survive life-threatening challenges. A 150-year-old gnomish farmer is still just a farmer; he's probably a fantastic farmer but he's no great shakes as a warrior. Bookish wizards might gain skill very, very slowly, but diminishing returns on studying theory probably cap out all but the most talented book-learning magicians by level 6ish. (Disclaimer: I lean towards an E6 world even in games where the PCs have no such limits.)

And most adventurers, who face life-threatening situations on a regular basis, do in fact die sooner or later. A longer adventuring career is just giving Fortune more and more time to catch up with you, and most gnomish/elvish/whatever adventurers who survive settle down after a good decade or two of adventuring to become famous sages or guard captains or whatever and stop increasing in power. Pretty much all those who push their luck get caught out and done in.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The corollary of this, of course, is that all of the long-lived races (gnomes, dwarves, elves, elans...) must be incredibly lazy and incredibly infertile by human standards. It's a problem born of meshing fantasy (e.g. Tolkein) in which humans have to get by in the company of "ancient" races who are individually much more powerful than any but the very best of humanity with a balanced game.

About the best fix I found for this for elves (for whom it's most often brought up) was that they grow to maturity at similar rates to humans (as per races of the wild), but don't start adventuring until much later because of a very strong social pressure to reproduce while young, possibly because of a short window of decent fertility. So your typical 100-year-old elven adventurer has already raised their grandkids, and being still in the flush of youth physically and mentally, but finally bored of the limits of his own society, is now off to see the world. Which still doesn't explain being level 1, or, for that matter, why all of the 200-year-old elves aren't epic.

The Races of the Wild book actually outright states elves reach physical maturity at roughly the same time as humans. While a human finishes filling out at around 20 an elf doesn't until 25.
Its just they don't usually leave home tell after a century.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I've found that the default campaign style of 3.x (lots of concentrated adventuring in a short space of time) lends itself to everyone in the player party levelling really quickly. That seems to be where the issues come from. If everyone levels up to 20th within a month of game time, what's the point of living forever?

In the original campaigns I played in and ran for BECM D&D (we played the "all races level up to 36th" variant) and AD&D, the default setting seemed to be that PCs would spend ages just hanging around, making magic items, running domains and stuff in between adventures - partly because adventures were more episodic and less directly story based - and as a result, it made sense that the long lived races had more awesome folk in their ranks: because they lived longer.
Humans got old before they got to the highest levels. For a human to be 25th or higher, he generally had to be in his 40s and 50s.
Over the same time span, the dwarf was still just a youth.

TLDR: Put a month of downtime between adventures.

[Corporate M]

Long post ahead, so I'll seperate them by spoiler theories...

Theory 1:
Could be metaphysical. There's alignments in D&D, it might piss off some players, but imagine if alignment dictated your level.

Not so much "good is more powerful then evil", but "whilest you're contradicting yourself, you're missing out". Those that accept pure evil, good, chaos, law, tend to be in better sync with the universe and are capable of leveling.

Elves, despite all their talk of being artsy, freespirited, and one with nature. Can't seem to manage to distance themselves from confined orders. If they were really one with nature they'd be far more tribal and brutal like the orcs. Their good/evil mojo may not be conflicting, but their law/chaos mojo is...

Humans on the other hand, tend to be pretty self assured about their own moral integrity. (Even the dumbasses that claim moral relativism) Because they have less doubts and less hesitance, their souls are more balanced so to speak, allowing them to level in the amount of time it would take elves a hundred years to workout the kinks to their karma knot...

The xenophobia comes in that races tend to have cultural alignments. (As described in the monster manual) This doesn't mean individuals possess that sortof ceartainty. But thats how come social movements only happen in small doses, and why society advances where as most people just barely getby... Cultural alignments can have feuds with other societies, and individuals may feel out of place.


That theory makes sense, but then it also kind of punishes roleplaying. A character should have complex emotions and conflicting world views to challenge his own sense of self and develop his character. A good story contradicts the laws of the universe, and people are to be one dimensional if they want to get anywhere in life...


Theory 2:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnequalRites

Imagine the magic vs psionics arguments in D&D actually meant something...

There were gods that favored ceartain races. You have pretty much a deity for every race, except for humans who just seem to commonly worship Pelor or Henierous.

Instead, (and seeing as humans need to create over 9000 denominations or reject religion entirely) humans have no deity that favors or fathers them, and instead are a rogue species (much like abberations) whom draw their power from themselves... This is why they can evolve rapidly and "level". Because gods have expectations of their followers, other races are completely dependent upon their deity's mercy, love, and motive to make them more powerful. Humans are limited only to their will. To overcome obstacles and their own doubts and inihibitions...

Alignments mean alot less here, mostly deities don't care as long as you follow their orders, and humans/alot of other sentinent creatures lack alignment or even divine drive and just kind of shoot for the ubermensch...

Humans/Abberations are the only ones who can be psionic classes.
Races with a racial deity are the only ones who can be divine classes.
Half-elves/half-orcs/half-whatever can be both. (Finally... the half races get something to help balance them!)


This campaign idea, though explained much more throughly, is actually nothing new...

http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/gurren/shades.jpg
Some sortof psionic bard, possibly an ardent or divine mind...


The second theory creates xenophobia the same way Gurren Lagaan did. Beastmen and anti-spirals worry about hummanity's reckless behaivor and limitless potential that could cause entropy. However, non-human races tend to "draw upon The Force" with their own private god as The Force. So what you're going to get is a high magic campaign of jedi versus naruto philosophically... (Personal chakra and secular tribes versus republic theocrats divided by many denomomations)

Also, it suggests humans despite their "short age" were one of the first species. (Maybe...) All deities had to be a psionic species, but not all psionic species are humans... Why they age rapidly is their power is internal, so it's a mess. Because this only addresses the mortal plane, it does not address the deities relation to eachother or their higher planes... (Demons/Devils bloodwar could be the result of extradimensional religious wars rather then strictly alignment)


I would love to play in such a campaign, some classes might be forbidden however.

Arcane classes is obvious. Warlock and Binder might be allowed, under the pretense they still worship their deity just differently. I could see a binder as basically a base class version of the ur-priest. Hacking into deity's accounts and withdrawing power...

Tome of Battle classes might be justified for humans/abberations, but thats a big maybe and should be taken with care.

Less magic oriented classes like scouts, fighters, barbarians, could exist for either side, but I imagine noone would take them do to spells and psionics being thrown around so liberally...

Dragon Shaman and Dragonfire Adept might have to be reptillian only races like lizardfolk, troglodyte, and kobold to befit the campaign style.

[erikun]

Because adventuring is dangerous, and the vast majority of people attempting to reach 15th level wind up dead rather than alive. When you get eaten by a dragon, it doens't matter if you had 50 years left to live or 900 years.

Actually, this helps to explain why there are more high-level humans than other races. Your average elven family will produce 5 children over 1000 years, over about three generations. Your average human family will produce about 60. Assuming that only around 1% of the population makes it to 15th level, that means each elven family should expect a 15th level character one ever 20,000 years. Human families get one every 1,600 years, and there are typically more human families in the world than elven ones.

[Another_Poet]

Out of all the things that my players have ever questioned, this one has never come up.

I think it is such a refreshing and important change from previous editions, so central to game balance and pacing, that it is accepted without question.

If a game reason is needed, I would just chalk it up to all of the raced being sentient and sapient, and those with different ability adjustments havbe different learning styles.

Also, the difference between the races is noticeable in other ways than levels. A Wiz5 with 18 int is not the same kidn of wizard as a Wiz with 18 base int and a +6 racial int adjustment. They may have the same "level" but one is clearly superior.

[Knaight]

The long version:

I am working on developing a world and I think I would like to add a level of racial/xenophobic tension based on the notion that gnomes are the supreme magic using species (I know it’s always called race, but it is species, right?) and the only group that are able to achieve epic levels, skills, spells, etc. (Of course there are the rare specific individuals of other races that are the typical phenomenal talent) but humanity keeps trying to achieve similar levels of ability.

The easy method here? Drastically more common Adepts. Wizards, Sorcerers and such appear in all races, but these people are either talented and highly trained (Wizards, arcane prepared casters.), or downright savants (Sorcerers, other arcane spontaneous casters.), and few and far between enough to not be worth considering. Humans are tying to catch up constantly, with serious magical research and such, but still behind in the creation of Adepts.

Varying levels is unnecessary, as the vast majority of the population works fine as level 1. If 1% of humans are adepts, and 4% of gnomes are, then the gnomes have a serious magical advantage, particularly if one of those 4 is 2nd level. Toss in the basic racial spells on top of that, and gnomes have the magical power advantage.

In more general terms, the vast majority of people are always commoners, adventurer types are so few and far between as to be largely irrelevant, so the amount of adventuring done is also largely irrelevant. Gnomes are feared because magical ability is so common, the gnomes worry about certain more warlike sections of humanity with disproportionately high rates of capable warriors (Warrior 1, not Commoner 1. Call 2% default here, these guys might have 5%).

[Ashtagon]

Long-lived races have less motivation to become adventurers. Because let's face it, adventuring is dangerous work, and it's likely to result in a premature death as often as not. A human gets 70 years, of which only 30 are full of health and vigour. An elf gets over ten times that. Elves have a lot more to lose, which makes them less willing to gamble it all on an adventuring career. Other long-lived races have the same issue, in proportion to their natural lifespans.

[Ouranos]

The best way to reconcile who is better at magic, etc isn't about racial bounds. Magic is magic. Harnessing it just requires time and dedication, and the talents of the individual matter more then their race. And yes, rac,e not species. Because Elf would be a species, drow, is a race, get it?

[Kaje]

I don't bother. It's a game. Just like I have no problem with a level 1 character being a grizzled veteran who's been adventuring for years.

[Set]

QFT. If Gnomes are adventuring six times as long, just have more gnomes of higher levels. No reason to tell players that they aren't allowed to reach the higher levels if they can get the experience to do it.

Yeah, best solution here.

NPC wizards of high level will be gnomes. If a PC wants to play a human wizard, he's going to find, as he progresses in levels, that more and more of the wizards of his level are gnomes, and almost all of the 4th and higher level spells are named stuff like 'Fizzlebin's Nacreous Tentacular Appendages' or 'Wisterinian's Alacritous Construction of Iron Fortification' since spells of the level of Black Tentacles and Wall of Iron were designed by Gnomes.

The PC non-gnome wizard will be one of those super-rare exceptions that they write books about.

As it should be!

[Doppelganger]

If you're not just wondering how to balance the society, party balance is easy. If it's not a group of nothing but arcane spellcasters, and the wizard wants to be a human, let him. Maybe he's a one in a million freak who can effectivly use arcane magic. Now you've already got a plotline, as wizards of both species try to capture him and figure out how he gets his powers. The wizard will get some powerful enemies, and for the first few levels the party can try to keep him safe. Then, maybe the party figures out the reason everyone's so frantic is that there's a prophecy about a magic wielding human, etc....