How do you handle age, race, and class?

[GreyBlack]

Before I begin, all information taken from the Pathfinder SRD. Please direct any complaints there.

So, in recent years, I have hit something of a wall in terms of my suspension of disbelief, specifically regarding age in adventurers. Basically, per rules as worded and traditional lore, we are expected to accept that exceptionally long-lived races accumulate similar knowledge to the shorter-lived races over a significantly longer period of time. What takes a human between 17 and 27 years to learn, a dwarf requires between 46 and 82 years. Elves even longer.

In addition, taking into account significantly longer life-spans, characters can often only ever learn a certain amount of knowledge. If we accept that a character can only ever achieve a relative level of 20, then characters are capped at a certain level of possible achievement. Even stranger, a human is capable of achieving these heights of power at a remarkably fast rate, especially when compared with their peers races. This is, of course, excluding epic levels, though allowing for epic levels only exacerbates the problems.

So, my question becomes what causes this sort of pedagogical imbalance? By RAW again, we know that long-lived races achieve physical maturity in a similar time frame to their shorter-lived counterparts, but logic also dictates that they should, after mental and physical maturity, gain knowledge in a similar time frame to their shorter lived counterparts. After adolescence, then, why do elves learn at the same rate as half-orcs? Assuming that a half-orc cleric and Elven cleric join the same group (at ages, let's say, 20 and 140, respectively), they would reach achieve level 20 in a similar time frame, assuming similar side quests.

So, my question to the playground is how you account for this in your gaming. Do you have any answers in your DMing experience, some rationale baked into your world? Or do you just go with it and try not to think too hard about it?

[weckar]

Growth in D&D is measured in experience. As in: experiencing new things. There are only so many unique things one can experience, no matter their lifespan.

[Morcleon]

For long-lived races, they take longer to mature, which means that they simply aren't capable of learning some things at that age. After all, you wouldn't expect a toddler to be capable of mastering calculus. :smalltongue:

In terms of learning things over the course of a life, note that adventuring gives the most XP with the same rate for everyone. Beyond that, I just treat it as most longer lived races having more experience than most humans, rather than run with RAW.


Growth in D&D is measured in experience. As in: experiencing new things. There are only so many unique things one can experience, no matter their lifespan.

Not really? Each person is unique and each event brings new experiences. Even in medieval stasis, new developments are made in art and magic, and D&D worlds tend to be a small push away from apocalypse, so there are always new things to defeat.

[Telonius]

As far as learning goes, it helps me to think of it as a matter of storage capacity. Taking an example from the most recent season of Dr. Who: Ashildr (Lady Me) is a human who gained immortality. But, because she still has a regular-human brain, she can't remember most of what happened to her, and she has to write it down and revisit it from time to time if she wants to remember it. So an Elf who lives to be 900 is going to have a vast amount of experience ... that can't really be accessed most of the time. They'll remember the things that stuck out most.

Extra-long childhoods would just be a matter of physical maturity being very slow.

[D.M.Hentchel]

As far as learning goes, it helps me to think of it as a matter of storage capacity. Taking an example from the most recent season of Dr. Who: Ashildr (Lady Me) is a human who gained immortality. But, because she still has a regular-human brain, she can't remember most of what happened to her, and she has to write it down and revisit it from time to time if she wants to remember it. So an Elf who lives to be 900 is going to have a vast amount of experience ... that can't really be accessed most of the time. They'll remember the things that stuck out most.

Extra-long childhoods would just be a matter of physical maturity being very slow.

Nailed that on the head.

Elves likely have decades of their life forgotten, but retain the muscle memory for that one month in their 120s where they saved the world from certain destruction.

Though for non-adventurers the progression of EXP is much more gradual, so the average Elf is probably a higher level than the average Human.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Well in Pathfinder, it's noted that elves (and other races that have high starting ages) physically mature at the same rate as humans, but they are still considered children until their listed 'adulthood' phase.

[zergling.exe]

Well in Pathfinder, it's noted that elves (and other races that have high starting ages) physically mature at the same rate as humans, but they are still considered children until their listed 'adulthood' phase.

And when you think about it, even in our world different countries treat you as a child until different ages. The USA has 18, parts of Europe at least are 16, and Japan until recently was 20. So it's not as different as it might seem.