Confusion on Lifespans

[Karthull]

I'm new to dnd and am used to other fantasy settings like lotr, WoW, and dragon age. I'm finding the lifespans of races to be very confusing.



Dwarves live for hundreds of years? Shouldn't they just be a little more then humans, at most twice as long?

Gnomes too? if anything shouldnt gnomes live maybe shorter then humans, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans then larger ones. Gnomes being good at anything other then tinkering just seems hilarious.

Elves dont live for thousands of years? Just like twice as long as dwarves?

Dragons dont live forever barring slain by adventurers?

And weirdest of all someone please tell me why being part dragon, the longest living species in the world, makes a dragonborn have a SHORTER lifespan then humans?


Edit: I understand that these are averages, and there wwill be outliers, and perhaps high infant and child mortality along with aggressive lifestyle of dragonborn might reduce average, but I assumed old age of 80ish being if they lived safely, shouldnt an old age dragonborn be older or at least closer to an elf, or does dragonblood just make them die young?

[DizzyWood]

I'm new to dnd and am used to other fantasy settings like lotr, WoW, and dragon age. I'm finding the lifespans of races to be very confusing.



Dwarves live for hundreds of years? Shouldn't they just be a little more then humans, at most twice as long?

Gnomes too? if anything shouldnt gnomes live maybe shorter then humans, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans then larger ones. Gnomes being good at anything other then tinkering just seems hilarious.

Elves dont live for thousands of years? Just like twice as long as dwarves?

Dragons dont live forever barring slain by adventurers?

And weirdest of all someone please tell me why being part dragon, the longest living species in the world, makes a dragonborn have a SHORTER lifespan then humans?

Well I tend to look at it in a few ways first off these are AVERAGE life spans so there is a large amount of wiggle room.

Dwarves -- In a magical world when a race is generally that stubborn maybe the gods of death just take that long to convince them it is time to die.

Gnomes -- naturally magic and tied to the world around them. Also many wizards in the Gnome population, so even a few of them using magic to extend their life span bumps up the average.

Elves -- CAN live for thousands of years (but only the "powerful" ones) but most choose not to (providing no accidents) life gets boring and they start to age and die.

Dragons -- YA I don't LIKE this one at all.

Dragonborn -- they are aggressive and prone to brashness. Probably lots of fights leaving many of the young dead keeping the average way down

I am sure there are many other explanations those are just what I tend to think of

[smcmike]

Dwarves live for hundreds of years? Shouldn't they just be a little more then humans, at most twice as long?

Dwarves on LOTR lived about 250 years. D&D Dwarves live a bit longer, but it's the same general idea.



Gnomes too? if anything shouldnt gnomes live maybe shorter then humans, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans then larger ones. Gnomes being good at anything other then tinkering just seems hilarious.

I don't think there is any universal rule that smaller things live shorter lives. Smaller dogs live longer than large dogs, on average. Also, tinkering is only one of many tropes that have been attached to gnomes over the years. I think they have to be long-lived in order to fit the "wizened old gnome" trope.



Elves dont live for thousands of years? Just like twice as long as dwarves?

Yeah, I like the old fluff, but functional immortality can be problematic for world-building.



Dragons dont live forever barring slain by adventurers?

Yeah, dragons shouldn't die of old age. Or maybe know one should know if they do.

[Millstone85]

And weirdest of all someone please tell me why being part dragon, the longest living species in the world, makes a dragonborn have a SHORTER lifespan then humans?I am not sure the human "less than a century" is meant to be more optimistic than the dragonborn "around 80".

But then, figuring out the health care of pseudomedieval fantasy human societies is difficult. The PHB might be intentionally vague here.

[Naanomi]

Historically... dwarves live a long time because they are 'tough' and disease resistant. Elves are magic, their long life comes from that. Gnomes are a combination of the two factors.

Dragons are almost wholey magic, their longevity has nothing to do with biology. Though not all of them live forever, some eventually grow weary and 'fade' back into the world; or hibernate the centuries away

Dragonborn are a 'newer' race so it is hard to cite precident; but as a 'servant' race I suspect longevity wasn't an important factor in their creation

[imanidiot]

You're allowed to change all of that to fit your campaign.

[Karthull]

My main observation about shorter things living shorter, is that generally smaller species live shorter and reproduce more often then larger ones, generally, but as for smaller dogs living longer then larger ones, shorter members of the same species, including humans, tend to live longer then larger members of the same species, likely bodys having an easier time supporting their weight

[smcmike]

My main observation about shorter things living shorter, is that generally smaller species live shorter and reproduce more often then larger ones, generally, but as for smaller dogs living longer then larger ones, shorter members of the same species, including humans, tend to live longer then larger members of the same species, likely bodys having an easier time supporting their weight

Humans live longer than horses. Cats live longer than dogs. Badgers live longer than wolves.

There are extremely long-lived fish and birds and reptiles that aren't all that big.

[Karthull]

Didnt realize about badgers and wolves and surprised there are any long lived birds. I was taking my reasoning mainly from elephants and whales living so long and most smaller things living shorter I suppose I was mistaken in that regard.

[Willie the Duck]

I'm new to dnd and am used to other fantasy settings like lotr, WoW, and dragon age. I'm finding the lifespans of races to be very confusing.

Do you mean confusing, or do you mean that your expectations, formed from these other IPs--which D&D is under no obligation to conform to, is different? If it is the former, the response is basically, what's confusing about it? The book lists a lifespan. That's the lifespan the authors think works for said race. If it is that latter, the response to you is to reiterate that D&D is not LotR, WoW, and Dragon Age, and the fact that you are familiar with those IPs does not mean that D&D is the weird one, since the folklore and mythology that these races come from is all over the place (to the point of rarely being self-consistent themselves).

However, as always, you are free to adjust the lifepans to fit your expectations in your own D&D games.

But let's go into each of your points--


Dwarves live for hundreds of years? Shouldn't they just be a little more then humans, at most twice as long?

Sure, why not? There is no real universal (or even longstanding, perhaps going back at least to the Brothers Grimm or something) agreed-upon conception of dwarves that suggests exactly how long dwarves should live.


Gnomes too? if anything shouldnt gnomes live maybe shorter then humans, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans then larger ones. Gnomes being good at anything other then tinkering just seems hilarious.

Again, sure, why not? What precedence is there for this over that, other than individual expectations?
Yes, IRL smaller creatures tend to live shorter lives than larger creatures (except for all the exceptions, parrots and certain tortoises will be outliving elephants, for instance). Beyond that, it would be completely arbitrary to enforce this one bit of realism in a game that routinely break any and all other forms of realism such as the squared-cube law for large creatures and weight-to-wingspan laws for fliers, and so forth.

By the way, gnomes being more of 'the tinkerer race' than say dwarves or elves pretty much made up whole-cloth by dragonlance, a D&D setting. So don't laugh too hard at the idea that D&D allows for gnomes to do things other than tinker, them tinkering in the first place only exists in the cultural mind-space because of D&D.


Elves dont live for thousands of years? Just like twice as long as dwarves?

And elves also aren't 3" tall. Nor 18" tall and live in trees making cookies. Nor living at the north pole making toys for Santa Claus (who himself may be tall and skinny or fat and rosy cheeked, and may or may not be saint Nicolas). Nor did the Queen of Elfland carry off Thomas the Rhymer for seven years of servitude and gift him with prophecy but the inability to lie. There are a near-infinite number of interpretations of what it means to be an elf--and about half the time, those same interpretations are equally attributed to something not-called-an-elf(instead brownie, troll, dwarf, or even goblin),-but-somehow-the-same-thing. D&D decided on one version of elf, those other properties chose others.

The lifespan thing fpr elves has actually changed quite a bit throughout the game. AD&D had elves live nearer to 1000 years. 2e had them live that long, but earlier (up to about 750 years) they were "called away" to NPC-hood or something. Now they are as you said maybe 4x human or so. So even within D&D, the lifespans have shifted about for little or no reason (especially now, when there is little in-game effect of lifespan).


Dragons dont live forever barring slain by adventurers?

Dragons being timeless has never been part of D&D. The age of a dragon has always played a part in how powerful a dragon is.

Within folklore, dragons being timeless is about as common as that being true of elves, dwarves, gnomes, and trolls (which is to say haphazardly and inconsistently).


And weirdest of all someone please tell me why being part dragon, the longest living species in the world, makes a dragonborn have a SHORTER lifespan then humans?

That is strange and of unclear origin. Perhaps something about the dragon and human blood (/genetics, if genetics exist in your conception of the D&D world) not mixing well. I will say that the dragonborn, of all the PC races, appear to be the ones that the designers don't seem to know what they wanted to do with. This lead to an interpretation that looks like a writing-room tug-of-war.

[Unoriginal]

Dwarves live for hundreds of years? Shouldn't they just be a little more then humans, at most twice as long

Why should they? What about the dwarves should make them live this long rather than hundreds of years?


Gnomes too? if anything shouldnt gnomes live maybe shorter then humans, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans then larger ones.

There is no correlation between the size of magical-descended beings and their lifespans.



Gnomes being good at anything other then tinkering just seems hilarious.

Why?



Elves dont live for thousands of years? Just like twice as long as dwarves?

Yes, elves are long lived, but not ridiculously so.


Dragons dont live forever barring slain by adventurers?

Why would they live forever?



And weirdest of all someone please tell me why being part dragon, the longest living species in the world, makes a dragonborn have a SHORTER lifespan then humans?

They have lifespans more or less similar to humans. And being part dragon doesn't necessarily gives you a long lifespan, just ask the Kobolds.

Also the longest living species is the Aboleth.


I'm finding the lifespans of races to be very confusing.

Don't see what's so confusing about them.

[Tanarii]

Gnomes too? if anything shouldnt gnomes live maybe shorter then humans, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans then larger ones. Gnomes being good at anything other then tinkering just seems hilarious.
D&D gnomes were based on elemental mine spirits with a sense of humor and magic. Basically Dwarves + magic + humor.

The tinkering thing didn't really come about until Dragonlance was released IIRC. So until the game/gnomes were almost a decade old in 1984. Then of course the Warcraft series of games / mmorpg drove their steampunk version into fantasy 'lore' permanently.

[Karthull]

Alright thanks everyone I think I'm satisfied with all the answers (although dragonborn still doesnt make sense - guess the genes just dont mix well) guess I'm just to accustomed to other medium and to expecting of it to be more of a universal.

[ZorroGames]

Alright thanks everyone I think I'm satisfied with all the answers (although dragonborn still doesnt make sense - guess the genes just dont mix well) guess I'm just to accustomed to other medium and to expecting of it to be more of a universal.

No sweat, when I came to 5e after skipping most of 2e, 3.x e, and 4e versions of D&D there things I had to just accept and adjust to that were different from OD&D/1e D&D.

Heck adjusting to OD&D after Disney as a kid was twisty-bendy at first.

[Jophiel]

D&D gnomes were based on elemental mine spirits with a sense of humor and magic. Basically Dwarves + magic + humor.
Yeah, originally gnomes seemed half designed just to give dwarves a magic option without actually giving dwarves a magic option, hence illusionist gnomes. Plus the mischievous aspect to balance the dour and gruff dwarf folks.

The fact that there's stories of truly ancient dragons, the type that sleep 99.95% of the time on massive gold piles, with milky blind eyes and creaking bones older than elven cities, makes me assume that they must eventually shuffle off their mortal coil. After all, the concept of a really geriatric dragon trying to gum you to death as it clings to its mockery of immortality is kind of pathetic.

[Slipperychicken]

You're allowed to change all of that to fit your campaign.

This. It's just lore, you can change it up if you want.

[GlenSmash!]

I'm new to dnd and am used to other fantasy settings like lotr, WoW, and dragon age. I'm finding the lifespans of races to be very confusing.



Dwarves live for hundreds of years? Shouldn't they just be a little more then humans, at most twice as long?

Gnomes too? if anything shouldnt gnomes live maybe shorter then humans, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans then larger ones. Gnomes being good at anything other then tinkering just seems hilarious.

Elves dont live for thousands of years? Just like twice as long as dwarves?

Dragons dont live forever barring slain by adventurers?

And weirdest of all someone please tell me why being part dragon, the longest living species in the world, makes a dragonborn have a SHORTER lifespan then humans?


Edit: I understand that these are averages, and there wwill be outliers, and perhaps high infant and child mortality along with aggressive lifestyle of dragonborn might reduce average, but I assumed old age of 80ish being if they lived safely, shouldnt an old age dragonborn be older or at least closer to an elf, or does dragonblood just make them die young?

Hi! Welcome to D&D. Please note that these numbers probably assume you will be playing in the Forgotten Realms. Another setting could have different Lifespans for the same creatures. if you are running a homebrew setting you can make them whatever you want.

Taking that into account, why should Dwarf lifespans be equal to some other dwarves you have seen in WoW or LoTR or DA, the Forgotten realms is neither of those settings. Likewise Elves.

There was one "Old age Dragon" in Dragonlance, but I can't think of many other example in D&D of senior citizen dragons. It's certainly plausible that they could live forever unless slain.

Also, dragonborn are not necessarily descended from Dragon's and People. Their origins are uncertain. It could be they have shorter lifespans for the simple reason that that is what their creators wished.

[Aett_Thorn]

Without the possibility of dying of old age, you'd never get a Dragon to risk turning into a Dracolich. If they're immortal anyways, what would be the main draw?

[GlenSmash!]

Without the possibility of dying of old age, you'd never get a Dragon to risk turning into a Dracolich. If they're immortal anyways, what would be the main draw?

Good point. Dracoliches are fun enemies.