what are elf kids like?

[Rfkannen]

Players are going to a wood elf village, and it got me thinking about what elven kids are like, as there will probably be a couple in the village. Like, what does a 12 year old act like in a species that reaches physical maturity by 20 and dies at 750. For that matter, what does a 20 year old elf act like, do they still have the minds of childen or are they basically adults. More curious about the 12 and younger crowd though. Any idea what they act like?

How do you view elven children?

[Darth Ultron]

The elf years and human years are not one to one. ''20'' to a human is ''100'' to an elf, so it is like every 5 elf years is one human year.

So a 50 year old elf is like a 10 year old human.

Elven life is much slower, compared to a human. In effect things take five times longer.

[Nifft]

The whole elf race evolved the ability to never need sleep.

Think about how little sleep a human parent gets, and then consider that humans never needed to evolve the elven adaptation.

Elf kids are terrifying.




Alternately:

:thog: elf kids are delicious

[Celestia]

Elf kids are like regular kids but more uptight and elitist.

[Honest Tiefling]

Elf kids are like regular kids but more uptight and elitist.

Maybe the party never meets the kids. These are elves. They've lived a long time. They've probably seen adventurers before. Even if the party aren't murderhobos, they are probably not elfy-enough and WILL bring trouble in some form. Better to not let the children near them and to confine them to their magic lessons. That cantrip isn't going to learn itself, you know. And you! String that bow right!

[Keltest]

Elves don't have children. They go through a larval phase where they are short, plump, and have hairy feet. They are often sent to communities on the borders of human territory where they grow up among other larval elves, tilling the earth and learning about human culture, so they know what not to do. Once theyre in their early 100s they appear to die and are buried in the ground by their fellows, where they shed their larval form and become a proper elf, welcome to rejoin society.

[Quertus]

:thog: elf kids are delicious

I'd expect them to be a bit stringy, actually.

[Jaelommiss]

What are elf children like? Mostly strangled, I'd imagine. I cannot foresee anyone being a teenager for decades without pushing their parents to murder at least once. Perhaps that's why elves, in most settings, have very low reproductive rates?

[hamishspence]

In Races of the Wild, it makes the point that elves age at close to the rate of humans - it's just that 100-odd is the preferred age for leaving elven society and going adventuring.

In practice, a 25 year old elf is the equivalent of an 18 year old human.

[Kaptin Keen]

Obviously, elves are the most evil of races. Only they are the prettiest too, so they get away with it remarkably well.

It takes time and effort so cultivate an attitude and a mentality of 'we're better than everyone else', 'everything we do is right - and anything anyone else does is wrong' and 'when in doubt, see the first two'.

Elf children are very thoroughly shielded from the real world. They are carefully protected from doubt. They are taught at great length and in greath depth the merits of their own race, and their own way of life. At a later time, they are cursorily instructed of the many failings of other races, and how their wrong choices work against them.

Elves young and old live in a rigorously maintained regime of indoctrination.

Obviously, you disagree with all of this. But think about it for a moment.

The greenskins are kept in poverty and misery, and have no viable path for bettering their life than going to war. They have no fields to till, all the land belongs to other races.

The elves on the other hand are very much an overprivileged elite living in a gated community refusing to share anything with anyone, on pain of death.

If you look beyond alignment and fluff text, you'll realise the orcs are courageous freedom fighters, and elves are hateful bigots and tyrants.

=)

(Don't mind me - I play a goblin who very much subscribes to the above point of view)

[Anonymouswizard]

Elves don't have children. They go through a larval phase where they are short, plump, and have hairy feet. They are often sent to communities on the borders of human territory where they grow up among other larval elves, tilling the earth and learning about human culture, so they know what not to do. Once theyre in their early 100s they appear to die and are buried in the ground by their fellows, where they shed their larval form and become a proper elf, welcome to rejoin society.

I was hoping to make that exact joke.

I mean, the dwarven larval stage involves illusions, large noses, explosions, and strapping lasers to sharks' heads.

[Jay R]

Elves spend their first 100 years thinking emotionally about games, sports, politics, gossip, sex, etc., just as humans do.

They are not considered adults until they get past that nonsense and start behaving intelligently.

[El Dorado]

Have you ever watched Star Trek: Insurrection? The humans on Ba’ku. So, basically human.

[LibraryOgre]

If we're assuming 20 means physical maturity (which can mean a lot of things... after all, humans hit a second round of changes late-20s, early 30s, which in men involves putting on more muscle mass), I'd lean still lean towards elves keeping about human pace with mental age... but with the note that they're biased towards chaotic alignments. So, while a dwarf with a similar maturity rate will be looking at building families and structures (lawful bent), and a human will be starting that but not there yet (neutral bent), an elf will be exploring everything without wanting to settle down. They might be finding their art style in their craft, and still experimenting. They might be looking for where they will settle. They'll be less tied down, but also more likely to shrug responsibilities if it doesn't hurt anyone (they are, after all, biased towards good, as well).

[Kaptin Keen]

If we're assuming 20 means physical maturity (which can mean a lot of things... after all, humans hit a second round of changes late-20s, early 30s, which in men involves putting on more muscle mass), I'd lean still lean towards elves keeping about human pace with mental age... but with the note that they're biased towards chaotic alignments. So, while a dwarf with a similar maturity rate will be looking at building families and structures (lawful bent), and a human will be starting that but not there yet (neutral bent), an elf will be exploring everything without wanting to settle down. They might be finding their art style in their craft, and still experimenting. They might be looking for where they will settle. They'll be less tied down, but also more likely to shrug responsibilities if it doesn't hurt anyone (they are, after all, biased towards good, as well).

Or elves have stuff like ... open families? I don't think Lawful equates to settling down early, not that Chaotic should mean the opposite.

Sure, in a society or culture that trends that way, lawful would be following that norm. But what if an actually Chaotic culture just sort of treated family and children and relationships as 'stuff that comes and goes'?

Anyways. Just playing devils advocate, I guess =)

Does sound like something elves would do, tho. Promiscuous bastards.

[Tanarii]

What game? What edition of what game? Some of them have explicit maturing rates for elves, others don't.

For example, in D&D 5e, elves mature at substantially the same rate as humans, maybe a tad slower, being mature at age 20. After that they apparently slow down until they reach the age of 750. But they aren't socially considered adults until they are 100, at which point they get their "adult name".

100 for an elf lines up with about 30 equivalent human years old ... if they age at a prorated age from 20 to 750 that a human does for 20 to 100.

Dwarves and Gnomes work similarly, except for the name thing. Their "adult" time is likewise around or about 30 equivalent physically.

It's not specified, but this means physically adult but not socially adult elves (or dwarves or gnomes) are probably your typical adventurers. Then they go home when they ready to settle down and lead an adult life.

[Selene Sparks]

I've personally been attached to the idea that successful, reliable meditation is what defines an elf as being an adult. Essentially, since elves not just don't sleep, but can't sleep, an elf that can't meditate would behave a lot like a person that can't sleep, except that meditation is a learned skill, rather than a natural thing. So young elves have poor impulse control, massive memory problems, and so on, so regardless of physical maturity, they're not adults until they aren't incapable of basic decision-making and learning.

[Spore]

I second the way to interpret elf children as being basically humans with pointy ears until they have matured into an "adult" - or what we lowly humans would consider a wise old person.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Elves are exactly like humans, they just age slower because they take way too much time to do everything in a dramatic and fancy way:


It's really quite simple. Elves are perfectionists, and the 3e rules bear out the aging discrepancies.

In 3e, anything you can do is a skill or ability check. "Notice something large in plain sight" is a DC 0 Spot check, for instance--a check that cannot be failed by anyone with at least 10 Wis and no distractions, even if they're untrained, but a skill check nonetheless. Most of the time, you can ignore those checks, because they're impossible to fail, so humans and halflings and dwarves and all the rest simply take 10 on them. However, elves cannot abide doing anything less than perfectly, so they take 20 on every single check, which takes 20 times as long as making the check normally.

Every. Single. Check. Walking? DC 0 Balance check. Talking? DC 0 Diplomacy check. Eating? DC 0 Dex check. Using the bathroom? Er, you get the idea. That's why everyone sees elves as being the most beautiful, most awesome, etc. beings out there. Eating a sandwich will take them an hour where it would take a human 3 minutes, but by Corellon it'll be the most-gracefully-eaten sandwich you ever did see!

Now, this only applies when actually taking actions, so while elves trance they're taking no actions and therefore acting at "normal" speed. As well, it's very impolite to interrupt others while they're being awesome, and elves are very fair and equal-minded people, so they spend half their time being awesome at things and half their time patiently watching other elves be awesome at things. So for 1/6 of any given day they're trancing, and for 3/6 of any given day they're not taking any actions, and for the remaining 2/6 of any given day they're taking normal actions but taking 20 times as long to do them. (15 years to reach adulthood * 2/6 of the time taking actions * 20 "take 20" penalty) + (15 years to reach adulthood * 4/6 of the time not taking actions * 1 normal time) = 110 years on the dot.

When an elf leaves home, of course, he realizes that the terribly uncouth and uncultured non-elves don't tolerate such a thing or appreciate his awesomeness, so he has to get by with taking 10 on everything, and essentially starts living life on a human scale. This explains why non-adventuring elves are the mythically beautiful and graceful and awesome elves of legends, while adventuring elves are much more down-to-earth and seem a lot more like humans with pointy ears. The only chance they have to really indulge themselves is while they're out on an adventure--elves trance for 4 hours while his companions sleep for 8, so an elf has 4 hours per day to be the elfiest elf he can possibly be while no non-elves are there to watch and judge him.

According to the DMG, we can assume that there is a 10% chance of having a wandering monster/random encounter per hour. This means that there is a (1 - .9^4) chance that a random encounter happens while an elf is being elfy during the 4 hours he has to himself, or a 30% chance rounding to one significant figure. So he has roughly a 70% chance to be elfy for 1/6 of the day without interruption (sometimes much less, sometimes much more, depending on when he's interrupted, but we can assume it balances out), meaning he acts elfy roughly 1/8.5 of the time. Thus, while humans take 20 years to get from adulthood to middle age, elves take (20 years to reach middle age * 1/8.5 of the time taking elfy actions * 20 "take 20" penalty) + (20 years to reach adulthood * 7.5/8.5 of the time taking human-y actions * 1 normal time) = ~65 years to do so, which puts them at middle age at ~175 years, exactly what it says on the chart.
Conclusion: Given 3e RAW, elves must age at the given rates. So there. :smallcool: Yes, I put way too much thought into this. I was very bored.



But seriously, think of the difference in aging between elves and humans as being like the difference between modern humans and ancient humans. In the Medieval era, people could be tried as an adult at the age of 7, could be married in their early teens, and in general were viewed as being "ready for the real world" at a very young age. In modern-day America, people spend many years in school for compulsory education and might spend even more years in college, grad school, and beyond; don't hit legal adulthood benchmarks until 15 (learning to drive), 18 (can vote), 21 (can drink), and 25 (can rent a car on their own); and in general are viewed as being "ready for the real world" much later.

Why is that? Were Medieval humans much smarter than modern humans and able to prepare for adulthood faster and more easily? No, they just had a different standard of "adulthood" than we do, so a 20-year-old elf could have exactly the same education level, temperament, social experience, and the like as a 20-year-old human, but where the human is considered a fully competent adult socially and legally by fellow humans the elf is considered woefully uncouth and uncultured by fellow elves. And just like how modern humans aren't intrinsically smarter than Medieval humans--just better educated, better fed, etc. on the whole--elves aren't better than humans at the point they hit adulthood, they just can afford to take more time to grow up and become more well-rounded.

So you might expect a mid-20s wood elf to act like a mid-20s human who has graduated college but "failed to launch" with helicopter parents: well-educated, socially adept, articulate, and mature, but still living at home and still viewed as a child by parents, relatives, and society at large. How they act differently depends on what you decide they're spending all that extra time on--is it learning to be super fancy and graceful at everything? Spending time on long-timescale non-adventuring-relevant hobbies like gardening forests and sculpture-by-erosion? Learning useful skills but "switching majors" a half dozen times for a decade apiece to be absolutely sure they know what they want to do with the rest of their lives? And so forth.

[GungHo]

They all know how to use longswords and longbows as soon as they exit the birth canal, so I assume you really don't want to be on the bad side of a "I want my blankie now" tantrum.

[Segev]

They all know how to use longswords and longbows as soon as they exit the birth canal, so I assume you really don't want to be on the bad side of a "I want my blankie now" tantrum.

Nah, you just don't let them have a longsword or bow, either. I mean, you're keeping their blankie from them, so how hard is it to keep a weapon from them?



I, personally, like the notion that elves age proportionately slower than humans. if a 750-year-old elf is about as aged as a 75-year-old human (a very, very rough approximation for easy math), then elves would be small children until they were 180ish. So it's likely, using D&D terms, they would age at 1:5 rather than 1:10, letting them be ~20ish human equivalent by the time they're 100. Could be slightly slower, if ~20ish comes at about 120, so maybe 1:6.

In any event, that would mean they stay very small children for quite some time. A 30-year-old elf would, to a human, seem to be about 5 years old.

This would lead to them tending towards more "book learning" type knowledge, as well as generally more life experience, than some adult humans. In some ways, they'd seem wiser, or more cautious, than they should, in the manner of human kids who've had to "grow up too fast." But at the same time, they retain the emotional immaturity of their physical age, and are likely prone to allow emotion to overcome experience, and to be somewhat poorer at logic and delayed gratification. Less experimental on basic life lessons, but still prone to excess and foolishness when it comes to immediate rewards vs. long-term investment of effort. Likely to trust or distrust in the manner of their apparent age, but more likely to hold grudges or long-term respect due to patterns of past behavior.


One of my favorite concepts was one I didn't get to explore all that much, but was an elf adopted by a human family after his own family was killed tragically. He started as the older brother both in actuality and appearance to his adopted family's natural son, but since the human grew faster, he still looked ~10ish as his brother went from 8 to 18. Desperate not to be left behind, he studied wizardry at a human pace, so was a first level wizard only a little after his brother was adventure-ready, and they struck out together. He oft pretended to be a tall Halfling to try to avoid being treated like a kid. And tried very hard to act mature and calm.

[Aotrs Commander]

I, myself, I'm afraid, take the approach that Elves (and dwarves and anything ELSE that is basically a humanoid with a longer-than-human-life span (e.g. Asari)) will mature mentally and physically at approximately the same rate (ageist cultural biases - not unilaterally present in all elf (or aforementioned Asari!) cultures - notwithstanding). I simply refuse to believe that species-wide learning difficulties is a thing that exists. I.e., if an elf takes fifty years to be equivilent to a human child of ten, physically or mentally, that would be a pretty catastrophically serious disability in a human, and I just flat-out won't accept that being a viable model for evolution or divine creation (as appropriate to campaign racial origins) that could result in them not getting wiped out inside five minutes the first time they ran into something that wasn't so crippled. So, I, personally, when I am running things just outright ignore D&D (or anything else!) as and when it says things to the contrary as it sometimes has (e.g. Dragonlance novels) as being a bit bollocks (though apparently Races of the Wild deserves some credit for saying otherwise, which I didn't know).

[hamishspence]

I, personally, when I am running things just outright ignore D&D (or anything else!) as and when it says things to the contrary as it sometimes has (e.g. Dragonlance novels) as being a bit bollocks (though apparently Races of the Wild deserves some credit for saying otherwise, which I didn't know).

"D&D Elves spend decades in diapers" is usually played for comedy (OoTS Origin of PCs, Zogonia) I don't know of any source that plays it seriously. Exactly what did Dragonlance say about them?

[Joe the Rat]

What I did with elves is have them reach basic physical maturity at about 20, then spend about 80 years developing the emotional maturity and forethought to take on their roles in elf society.

Essentially, they spend several decades as high school seniors / college first-years. All self importance, bad judgement, and the urge to backpack across distant lands.

This is also where most half-elves come from.

[Segev]

I, myself, I'm afraid, take the approach that Elves (and dwarves and anything ELSE that is basically a humanoid with a longer-than-human-life span (e.g. Asari)) will mature mentally and physically at approximately the same rate (ageist cultural biases - not unilaterally present in all elf (or aforementioned Asari!) cultures - notwithstanding). I simply refuse to believe that species-wide learning difficulties is a thing that exists. I.e., if an elf takes fifty years to be equivilent to a human child of ten, physically or mentally, that would be a pretty catastrophically serious disability in a human, and I just flat-out won't accept that being a viable model for evolution or divine creation (as appropriate to campaign racial origins) that could result in them not getting wiped out inside five minutes the first time they ran into something that wasn't so crippled. So, I, personally, when I am running things just outright ignore D&D (or anything else!) as and when it says things to the contrary as it sometimes has (e.g. Dragonlance novels) as being a bit bollocks (though apparently Races of the Wild deserves some credit for saying otherwise, which I didn't know).

If they're actually kids, and can learn, but not grasp things that actually take more mature brains to grasp, I don't see a problem.

Though, if we want to get particularly alien in our perspective on elves, I like the notion that elves have a major defect in their learning functionality: they don't sleep. This is canon, mind, that they don't sleep. They meditate for four hours a night, instead.

The thing is, sleep is how creatures really engrain things they've learned. It's why "sleeping on it" is a good idea for a lot of things, especially studying. If elves don't sleep, they never really learn things beyond the skill that you can learn in one day.

They developed, ages ago, the meditation techniques they use to help them with this problem. They spend 4 hours each night meditating on the day's experiences, integrating them with past experiences, semi-consciously sifting through things to categorize, compartmentalize, and place new knowledge in proper context for future recollection.

The thing is, meditation is, itself, a learned skill. And, since elven children don't' know it, but still don't sleep, it's one of the first things mommy and daddy have to teach little Jonnathaian. And, because learning is very, very difficult without these techniques, it's a long, slow process. Even learning language is slow for them, at first, until mommy and daddy can teach their little baby how to do some mental tricks. Mnemonics, songs, color-games...

So, yes, elves, for a long swath of their childhoods, have a very severe learning disability. It's only when they learn to meditate - and it's a skill they're always working on, throughout their lives, so it's not a sudden "on" switch, either - that they start to learn other things at a more human rate. When an elf can meditate for about 4 hours a night is when he reaches social adolescence, and is considered ready for real serious teaching. He will refine his ability to meditate throughout his life, his memory and learning skills improving consistently, but by this point, he can learn well enough to keep up with a human child, so that by the time that human child is a 1st level adventurer, so, too, is our elf.

[BWR]

Mystaran elves are a product of the culture they are raised in. They age only marginally slower than humans until the age of 20 or so (being equivalent to 15-16 among humans), then their aging slows drastically, so 20-100 is their late adolescence/early 20s period. This explains why most elven adventurers are of this age. After that, they, like humans above a certain age, tend to settle down. Being longer lived than humans they tend towards taking a long term view of things compared to shorter-life races. Apart from that, they are quite similar to humans. The elven cultures of Alfheim, Belcadiz, Wendar, Meditor, Shadowelves, Blacklore, Gentle Folk, and Icevale (to name some) are all quite different from each other, with few similarities in outlook or habits. The elven children of these cultures will have more in common with other races raised among them than they would with elves from another culture. Elves raised in cultures where other races are dominant will be much like children of the other races there.

[Aotrs Commander]

"D&D Elves spend decades in diapers" is usually played for comedy (OoTS Origin of PCs, Zogonia) I don't know of any source that plays it seriously. Exactly what did Dragonlance say about them?

At least one of the novels about Tanis' background I read was playing exactly that way with Laulanthalassiheynonnoyno, y'know what'shername, Tanis future missus (no, I can't be arsed to look it up) as a person of some decades basically being a child.

[Mr Beer]

Never really thought about it, but I'd have them age the same as humans then stop.

There are way fewer elf children than humans otherwise population pressures build when everyone lives for 100s of years.

Elves are basically uppity hippies.

So I think elf children would be surrounded by a large community of ancient but physically fit and healthy, well-adjusted adults who love kids. I think their childhood would be absolutely freaking awesome and a non-trivial percentage would probably hate reaching physical maturity and be expected to stop ******* around and start contributing to the community.

[Tanarii]

At least one of the novels about Tanis' background I read was playing exactly that way with Laulanthalassiheynonnoyno, y'know what'shername, Tanis future missus (no, I can't be arsed to look it up) as a person of some decades basically being a child.
Pretty sure there's an r in there somewhere :smallwink:

In the main novels, she grew up mighty quick. Her childishness was mostly due to isolation and lack of experience with the world.

(It's entirely possible I missed a prequel novel where it's made clear she's both older than Tanis and less physically and mentally mature.)

[Tvtyrant]

I prefer the "stay children a long time" approach, and add functional immortality.

Elves have a very different pyramid then humans, with a tiny fraction of children and a massive population of adults to care for them. As disease and aging don't effect them their population is much more stable then other species, with just enough growth to offset losses to war.

Children are so heavily protected it would be unbearably stifling to other species, have almost no mortality rate and the loss of one is considered a collective tragedy the way a celebrity like Robin Williams was.

[Keltest]

At least one of the novels about Tanis' background I read was playing exactly that way with Laulanthalassiheynonnoyno, y'know what'shername, Tanis future missus (no, I can't be arsed to look it up) as a person of some decades basically being a child.

Lauralanthalasa, I think. Something like that.

And she isn't treated as a child like a third grader, physically she is about as mature as Tanis is. She's emotionally less mature than he is, being comparable to a 14 or 15 year old instead of someone in her mid 20s. And part of that is simply Tanis himself being forced to grow up faster than was healthy for him by the elves he grew up with.

[The Insanity]

Though, if we want to get particularly alien in our perspective on elves, I like the notion that elves have a major defect in their learning functionality: they don't sleep. This is canon, mind, that they don't sleep. They meditate for four hours a night, instead.
I like your idea, but how do they recharge energy before they learn to meditate? Just resting wouldn't be as good as sleeping, right? Unless no sleep also implies better resting?

[Segev]

I like your idea, but how do they recharge energy before they learn to meditate? Just resting wouldn't be as good as sleeping, right? Unless no sleep also implies better resting?

Eating, maybe playing quietly rather than rambunctiously for a time. Nothing says you have to shut down your brain to recover physical energy. They may also grow more slowly in part due to not sleeping, since humans and other animals use sleep as a time to focus energies on growth and healing. (This is why, if you get advice about building muscle and losing weight, sleeping sufficiently is a part of the advice they give: you burn more calories while exercising or otherwise being active than while asleep, but you also burn more calories while sleeping than while being generally sedentary while awake. And sleep is when your exercise pays off the most by letting your body focus on building itself up.) So maybe meditation also marks their acceleration into puberty because achieving it enables growth spurts they couldn't properly achieve before.

More in depth, I like to take this idea a little further with elven psychology, too. Elves have two contradictory reputations: ancient, wise, full-of-themselves know-it-alls; and frivolous, flighty, eternally-childish chaos imps. Their children embody the latter pretty well, but the adults CAN be little better.

As a race which doesn't sleep, they don't get tired - or rather, sleepy - the way other races do. They don't have the fog of drowsiness descend as they go longer without it. (They can get physically exhausted and need to catch their breath, but that is the only "tiredness" they feel the same way other races do.)

However, the whole point of their meditation is the ordering and contextualizing of their thoughts. An elf who has just meditated lives up to the first stereotype. His memories are clear, his thoughts are well-aligned, and he has relevant information at his mental fingertips from his decades or even centuries of life. His experiences from the prior day are catalogued and put in context, and may be fresh due to their relevance, but they aren't interfering with clarity of thought regarding other, older memories. Relevant ones are as available as they ever are due to the recent realignment of thought.

As the day goes on, however, and they get further from their last meditation, their day's experiences build up. They don't feel tired, but they find the newer experiences dominating their attention over the older ones, and the connections, while not absent, are not strong between those and older ones. This makes them seem increasingly distractable and flighty. Nothing too noticeable if they're assiduous in their regular meditation - about the time a human is probably about two hours past his bed time, the elf is probably "just loosening up" - but since they never feel tired, they may not recognize that they're slipping, instead getting distracted and a little silly or overly intense on minor things. Go too long without it, and an elf becomes the chaotic, whimsical stereotype, able to remember ancient things if they focus, but not really considering them as interesting or important as the more immediate ones. And losing increasingly recent trains of thought more easily. Not like an Alzheimer's patient, but like, well, a child who gets bored easily. Their built-up experiences and knowledge since the last meditation have no root, so slip in and out as new stimuli appear.

Meditation lets them root those thoughts, make connections to older knowledge, categorize and deepen understanding of new ideas and concepts, and increase the ability to accept new stimulus as something that pulls on deeper, older, better-organized memories and knowledge.

[paddyfool]

I've posted this before, but I once had a rather... alternative take on elves:

The "Elven Lands" are a demiplane, out of phase with the rest of the world in time. For every day that passes there, 5 pass in the outside world. Growing up there means that you'll stay young for five times as long... which is the secret to the elves' longevity in the outside world. And to elven power; there are a few very, very old and very powerful elves around. God wizards and the like.

But the kicker is, you have to grow up in the elven lands to be properly instilled with longevity by them. So elves are rarely seen in the outside world until they're 20... or 100, depending on how you're counting.

Where the rest of the world and the elven lands meet stands an elven city, in phase with the rest of the world. Very, very few non-elves have ever passed beyond it into the elven lands proper. Those from the rest of the world who are viewed as friendly may enter the trading quarter of the city. But it's rare indeed that they'll ever see an elven child.

The elven demiplane is actually a fragment of what was once their world. The Drow live on another fragment; unlike the elves, they take back slaves. However, these slaves age and die rapidly, by how time runs in Drow lands, unless brought over as children; as do all who enter the elven lands. Drow thus are far more likely to take children as slaves than adults. Taken at the right age, these children will age "fast" as time is measured in the Drow lands, yet slow down in aging as adults even while not fully psychologically developed. A very few have escaped, to find a world where centuries have passed while they were away for decades.

The rest of the former world of the elves was destroyed in a long-ago mage war. The main elven population and the Drow are the remnants of the two main factions.

Wood/wild elves are the refugees of this conflict, and their aging is only slightly slower than human.

If they have to have dealings with those from the outside world, the very old elves with centuries of experience and arcane knowledge which form the basis for their power will sometimes disguise themselves as "elven gods". Over the centuries, this has led to a conjecture, which in turn has led to a mythology among some of the other races that the elves themselves have the potential to attain divinity.

The main body of elves trade, in the city which straddles the worlds, with fine fabrics and other consumables, many of them luxury items, which seem to stay fresh and new far longer than those made in the prime material plane. Elven weapons and metalwork are also held in some esteem, since they seem to keep their edge and form longer, with less maintenance. In return, the elves are only interested in items made from the more permanent things from the prime material plane, such as gold, stone, ceramics etc. Almost anything else will decay far too fast after being taken between worlds.

The light is dimmer in the elven lands, and their eyesight has adjusted to this.

The drow lands, meanwhile, have broken off from the main elven world. Their surface is an inhospitable place, without breathable atmosphere, and they therefore live in the interior, with the only gravity being that they create by their sorceries. (Effectively making these Drow moon-Nazis).

Relations between the main elves and the wood elves are friendly enough... but the latter cannot cross back, unless as babies, for fear of aging; they're now time-synched with the prime material plane.

A diet consisting largely of foodstuffs from elven lands has the side effect of very slightly delaying the aging process for those who consume it. Only by a factor of, say, 1.5 or so; but even this is regarded as a precious boon by the wealthy and privileged.

What this means for adventurers/plots
- A first level elf would have only recently attained the right to travel to the city or beyond, and could have left the city for practically any reason; the world outside would likely be rather strange to him or her, being as it's a different plane and all.
- A mid-level or high-level elf might have done their other adventuring a long time before, then gone home to raise a family, and return to a world which had changed by, say, 150 years while they lived for 30.
- Or they might have lived in the outside world for centuries, and seen nations rise and fall.
- Diplomatic negotiations with the elves can take a long time to resolve, if it's something for which those who live within the elven lands, rather than the city, would need to be consulted
- Adventurers wishing to visit the elven or the drow lands would be well advised to keep their visits brief, and not to visit while pregnant. If they stay for years, they'll grow old uncomfortably fast.

[Segev]

So, would an adopted human child in the high elf lands live as long as a high elf? or age like a drow slave?

Do escaped drow slaves, grown from children to adulthood in drow lands, possess a strange sort of elf-like immortality?

[Going Hereward]

My take on Elfish kids...

Elves keep their kids hidden to mitigate damages.

They lack the compassion and empathy to deal with the outside world; the notion of elvish superiority is ingrained from a very young age. They are fatally precocious and curious, so I would imagine an strange human stumbling into a group of elf kids would end up something like a dissected frog crossed with a training dummy. An elf kid adventurer would be insufferable to his friends and enemies. Like the worst sidekick times ten. There'd be a certain uncanniness to them, sorta like when you run into a vampire with a child's body.

There's also the problem of one leaving and developing a power that needs to be kept in elfish control. Once an elfish kid finds out he's a sorcerer and the majority of humans aren't, the only logical conclusion is to conquer the weaker races. So most elves find it their duty to keep the youth from going out into the world until they mature. Sorta like the Belkar curve.

Drow keep their kids hidden because every child is a potential tide-turner in a battle, thus should be held in reserve, and too much exposure to the outside world might create another Drizzt or something. I feel like Drizzt would be the example drow females give when talking about how not to raise a drow.

[Scalenex]

I really like the idea of a lack of sleep slowing down their learning.


I imagine that all Elf subcultures (even Drow) would be very protective of their children. Moreso than humans. I imagine they would generally try to minimize contact with non-Elves so visitors would rarely see them.

I imagine most elves (even Drow) would take the perspective that it takes a village to raise a child. Mortality would be low and health would be good but their sheltered prospective would make them almost feel invincible. So much so that if an elf minor did managed to meet a group of non-elf adventurers the elf would be friendly and curious and not at all cautious unless the adventurers in question were overtly hostile. In the face of real obvious danger, elf children and adolescents would probably panic and flee, hide, or freeze up and cry.

I imagine elven tutelage would be rough and exacting so Elf children and adolescents would be perfectionists.

This would partially counter the sheltered nature of their upbringing. If an Elf can fall back on his 10,000 repetitions of an archery drill, in combat he'll act by rote rather than in panic.

I also imagine college age Elves would have a gradually immersion into adult duties. Hunting and tracking for wood elves, torturing prisoners for Drow, whatever, but they could take on more difficult and dangerous tasks gradually.

I also like the idea of some elf cultures (not sure which ones yet) having a fictionalized version of the Rumspringa. The young adult elf travels the human/non-elf world for 10, 20, or 50 years (or some other number) to see the world and get new experience. While not all elves would be adventurers (some might take up a job at a winery or do something relatively mundane) a lot of elves would use their Rumspringa to adventure.

[The Insanity]

In my campaign setting normally elves reach adolescence as fast as humans, but their aging slows down rather drastically after that, taking them 9-10 decades to grow into adults. There are rare cases where an elf is born with fey blood manifesting more strongly than in an average elf, granting it an even longer lifespan, but also slowing their maturing rate by a lot. Such an elf stays a child for many decades, but they tend to be superior mentally to their peers and have fey powers.

[8BitNinja]

Obviously, elves are the most evil of races. Only they are the prettiest too, so they get away with it remarkably well.

It takes time and effort so cultivate an attitude and a mentality of 'we're better than everyone else', 'everything we do is right - and anything anyone else does is wrong' and 'when in doubt, see the first two'.

Elf children are very thoroughly shielded from the real world. They are carefully protected from doubt. They are taught at great length and in greath depth the merits of their own race, and their own way of life. At a later time, they are cursorily instructed of the many failings of other races, and how their wrong choices work against them.

Elves young and old live in a rigorously maintained regime of indoctrination.

Obviously, you disagree with all of this. But think about it for a moment.

The greenskins are kept in poverty and misery, and have no viable path for bettering their life than going to war. They have no fields to till, all the land belongs to other races.

The elves on the other hand are very much an overprivileged elite living in a gated community refusing to share anything with anyone, on pain of death.

If you look beyond alignment and fluff text, you'll realise the orcs are courageous freedom fighters, and elves are hateful bigots and tyrants.

=)

(Don't mind me - I play a goblin who very much subscribes to the above point of view)

I usually hate bringing up Netflix movies, as it is one of the most controversial subjects to exist, but isn't that the plot of the movie Bright?

[Going Hereward]

I also like the idea of some elf cultures (not sure which ones yet) having a fictionalized version of the Rumspringa. The young adult elf travels the human/non-elf world for 10, 20, or 50 years (or some other number) to see the world and get new experience. While not all elves would be adventurers (some might take up a job at a winery or do something relatively mundane) a lot of elves would use their Rumspringa to adventure.

This has always been my in-universe explanation for situations when there's too many good-aligned drow hanging around; their rebellious teen phase/Rumspringa is trying awkwardly to be good before (ideally) getting bored with it and going back home to be the stereotypical drow.

[2D8HP]

Many are familiar with Tolkien's Elves.

Some with the non Tolkienish Elves (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?502936-Rules-for-Non-Tolkienish-Elves) of other fantasy fiction and a lot of folklore (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFairFolk), and there's some (okay actually hella) disconnect, but the title of this thread gave me an idea:

"What are elf kids really like?"

You know how kids can learn to talk before they develop empathy (http://www.pbs.org/parents/child-development/age-7-social-skills/empathy)?

You know how teenagers can be adult size and strength but their minds are still developing (http://m.raisingchildren.net.au/articles/brain_development_teenagers.html)?

You know how "...elves reach the physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the Elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood and and adult name around the age of 100..."
-D&D, PHB

You know how, even though your three year old child is already talking, most may only remember things from that age of their lives that are particularly dramatic (and usually traumatic).

You know how elves are usually portrayed as insular and with a low birthrate?

You know the legends of "changlings"?

You know the term "Juvenile Delinquent"?

You know where I'm going with this?

I'm tempted to declare that Elf kids are goblins, and are treated like vermin, even by the Elves themselves, but let's say that Elf kids look like Elves.

Psychopathic, insane Elves.

The child stealing, cattle blighting, stroke causing (maybe even vulnerable to iron) Elves of folklore.

Maybe even with the sunlight sensitivity of the Drow, so they only came out of shadowed woods at twilight.

Maybe their kept penned in "Elf mounds".

Maybe Elf kids are monsters.

Three stages

1) Crazy, dangerous.

2) Suicidally reckless (the adventurer stage)

3) Mature
That way both flavors of fantasy fiction and folklore Elves fit.

[Mendicant]

Elves are silly, and if they have to exist, they're adults by 25 at the latest and could be adventuring by 15 if things turn out that way.

[Fiery Diamond]

Elves are silly, and if they have to exist, they're adults by 25 at the latest and could be adventuring by 15 if things turn out that way.

I kind of agree with this. Not so much that elves are silly, but that the super-duper long lifespans and delayed maturity are silly. I'm currently writing a story in which there are three basic races: humans, elves, and beastfolk. Here's an excerpt from the bit on their lifespans:


Second was that all of the races (beastfolk, humans, and elves), contrary to fantasy stories I’d read and watched, had similar lifespans. Humans and beastfolk had pretty much the same life expectancy – into their seventies, though it wasn’t uncommon for them to live longer, even up to two decades longer. Elves, on the other hand, suffered less from sickness, disease, and aging effects, and thus generally lived well into their nineties on a regular basis, sometimes living into the hundred-teens.

Maturity rate is the same, and elves just live a couple decades longer rather than centuries longer. It strains my disbelief less, and it makes interracial relationships easier.

[Scalenex]

I don't think it really matters whether Elves spend 50 years in diapers or whether they mature at the same rate as humans. Whatever the DM wants goes.

I think the more interesting roleplaying question is how are elves similar or different to human children and how elf parenting techniques are similar or different to humans. That's the part that will make an interesting game session, not number crunching.

[Blackjackg]

It's kind of amazing the mental acrobatics that we have to go through in order to justify the fundamentally flawed logic of D&D's racial premises.

1) Elves live eight times as long as humans
2) Elves and humans gain experience and power at the same rate
3) Elves are roughly equivalent in power and experience to humans

Doesn't make a lick of sense.

[Tanarii]

It's kind of amazing the mental acrobatics that we have to go through in order to justify the fundamentally flawed logic of D&D's racial premises.

1) Elves live eight times as long as humans
2) Elves and humans gain experience and power at the same rate
3) Elves are roughly equivalent in power and experience to humans

Doesn't make a lick of sense.
It doesn't make any sense, ever since they removed demi-human level limits, which were there so that things made sense, because so many DMs & players objected that "they don't make any sense".

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It's kind of amazing the mental acrobatics that we have to go through in order to justify the fundamentally flawed logic of D&D's racial premises.

1) Elves live eight times as long as humans
2) Elves and humans gain experience and power at the same rate
3) Elves are roughly equivalent in power and experience to humans

Doesn't make a lick of sense.

There's an important point 4 missing from that summary:

4) Elves and humans don't necessarily seek experience and power at the same rate, because they don't value experience and power the same way given their different lifespans.

Let's compare the worldviews and priorities a Medieval human and a modern human, as I did in a previous post upthread, this time in terms of pursuing a career. Let's assume that both the modern human (the "elf" in this example) and the Medieval human (the "human") both want to become carpenters.

A carpenter's son in the Medieval era would have been put to work as soon as he could contribute to the family home (and it would indeed be a son, because of course a daughter wouldn't be allowed to practice a trade). He would have received basic training in his father's trade as a child and then apprenticed (generally to another carpenter, but possibly to his father) around 10 or 11, and if he had the talent and dedication to become a master carpenter he would likely reach that point around the age of 17. He would then be a legal adult and fully-fledged independent tradesman, ready to start his career.

By contrast, a modern American boy would go through a much more drawn-out process. He wouldn't train for a particular career in elementary and middle school, though his teachers would encourage him to keep an eye out for interests and try to help him figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. If he knew he wanted to be a carpenter from a young age he could attend a relevant vocational high school, or attend a normal high school and then a post-secondary trade school, but it's much more likely that he'd be unsure of his future and attend high school and college like everyone else. He might take some history classes to satisfy general education requirements that would spark an interest in Medieval history, and from there to Medieval woodworking, and after graduating with a Bachelor's degree in History he might fall in love with the idea of becoming an old-school woodworker in the Medieval style.

He might go back to school for training in woodworking or practice it as a hobby while waiting tables or the like, but either way it would take several years before he could even think of doing it as his day job; perhaps it would only have been a year or three if he went for modern carpentry, but manual woodworking minus all the power tools and mass production of the carpentry business is both a more hands-on and a less common profession, so it would likely take nearly a decade of schooling, research, and on-the-job training to master the art. Eventually he'd come out the other side an accomplished woodworker and could open up his own shop selling "100% authentic handcrafted artisanal furniture!" or the like.

The Medieval carpenter and the modern woodworker would have the same skills, the same practices, and the same tools, and would produce the same products in the same way. But the Medieval one would have made a straight shot for a carpentry mastery and reached that point at age 17, while the modern one would have taking a more meandering path and probably reached that point around age 30 at the earliest. So the modern human would take almost twice as long to get to that point as his Medieval counterpart, and in a strict measure of woodworking competence none of the modern human's extra training would be relevant--not his broader education in math or writing or geography, not his awards for playing tennis or violin in high school, not his minor in Economics, not his detailed knowledge of the broader context and history around how woodworking techniques were developed.

If we were statting up the two of them with d20 Modern, both might have exactly the same stats, with the modern woodworker not even having a single extra rank in Knowledge or Perform to show for all that extra schooling. Yet while it might be considered frivolous time-wasting from the Medieval perspective, the modern era values education, hobbies, well-roundedness, freedom of career choice, the ability to dabble, and so forth, and so modern humans are raised that way. And that's the result of only a few decades' difference in lifespan, from an expected 50-60 years in Medieval times to 80-90 or more with modern medicine and nutrition. Elves, knowing they had many more decades to look forward to, would logically want to spend even more time in preparation; better to spend a decade or two in college deciding on a degree than being stuck with a career you hate for an entire century, right?

Of course, both elves and modern humans could easily accomplish what the Medieval human did in the same amount of time, but why bother? Don't rush anything; don't be too eager to grow up, kiddo; he'll cherish these memories when he's older, you know; man, don't you miss your carefree days as a child, when all you had to worry about was math homework?; and all of that let-children-be-children attitude that modern humans (and presumable elves) have.

So not only do I find it perfectly reasonable that D&D posits a much higher starting age for an elf than a human when both start off the same mechanically, I'd find a setup where elves dived headlong into adulthood in their 20s, worked and/or adventured for decades, and then spent centuries at 20th level with a bunch of other 20th-level elderly elves to be pretty illogical. Much more reasonable for elves to take their time reaching adulthood, go adventuring in short stints every couple decades and pursue their hobbies in the meantime, and not bother to go at the same pace as those poor hairless apes with less than a century of life to look forward to--it's not a race, you know, might as well enjoy the scenery on the way.

[Calthropstu]

Or elves have stuff like ... open families? I don't think Lawful equates to settling down early, not that Chaotic should mean the opposite.

Sure, in a society or culture that trends that way, lawful would be following that norm. But what if an actually Chaotic culture just sort of treated family and children and relationships as 'stuff that comes and goes'?

Anyways. Just playing devils advocate, I guess =)

Does sound like something elves would do, tho. Promiscuous bastards.
Actually humans are the promiscuous ones.
Half-elves
Half-orcs
Half-ogres
Half-giants
Half-dragons
Half-lings
Half-celestials
Half-demons
Tieflings
Aasimar
The part human elemental races
And centaurs... seriously wtf.
All these and more exist. Humans have been crossbred with just about everything.

[2D8HP]

It's kind of amazing the mental acrobatics that we have to go through in order to justify the fundamentally flawed logic of D&D's racial premises.

1) Elves live eight times as long as humans
2) Elves and humans gain experience and power at the same rate
3) Elves are roughly equivalent in power and experience to humans

Doesn't make a lick of sense.


Why?

I find that as I age, new things become harder to remember, and there's lots of research that suggests that We Best Remember Events That Happened Between 15 and 25 (http://www.newsweek.com/memories-strongest-age-15-25-522726), and it wasn't a sudden effect, but it now takes me far longer to learn new work skills,.

On the plus side, in my experience, bad things that happen usually have less of an emotional impact than they did when I was younger.

A 15 year-old is usually less in control of their emotions, but learns things faster than a 30 year-old.

I just imagine a 100+ year-old Elf would be much the same, many memories from 50+ years ago would be stronger than those of last month.

Stuff learned in an Elf's youth (Archery, SwordsElfship, a Cantrip) would be remembered, and things learned in dramatic/traumatic conditions (Adventuring) would be learned at the rate of a younger than elderly human, but mostly Elves would get by with the skills learned decades ago (like me at my job, my role is I'm the one who still knows how to maintain the old stuff, new installation methods are the province of the young plumbers).


There's an important point 4 missing from that summary:

4) Elves and humans don't necessarily seek experience and power at the same rate, because they don't value experience and power the same way given their different lifespans.

Let's compare the worldviews and priorities a Medieval human and a modern human, as I did in a previous post upthread, this time in terms of pursuing a career. Let's assume that both the modern human (the "elf" in this example) and the Medieval human (the "human") both want to become carpenters.

A carpenter's son in the Medieval era would have been put to work as soon as he could contribute to the family home (and it would indeed be a son, because of course a daughter wouldn't be allowed to practice a trade).....


Your post was AWESOME PairO'Dice Lost, but a quibble, then as now, women did enter mostly male trades and guilds.

Typically women guildmembers were widows who carried on their husbands trades (that a women armorer was a widow of an armorer in the 2001 film A Knight's Tale was one of a few realistic elements), but they were some others:

At least one woman, Agnes Hecche of York, was trained by her father as an armorer (http://www.antithetical.org/restlesswind/plinth/wimguild2.html),

and

The apprenticeship agreement, made between two families, was a legal document called an indenture. The following is an extract of an indenture in which John Nougle of London apprentices his sister, Katherine, in 1392.

"This indenture witnesses that John Nougle of London, haberdasher, has put Katherine Nougle, his sister, apprentice to Avice Wodeford, silkthrower, of London to learn her rat and to serve her after the manner of an apprentice from Pentecost in the 15th year of the reign of King Richard II until the end of the next seven years..." (http://sandradodd.com/sca/womenandwork)


Some trades (Bakers, Weavers) had more women per men, and some less (Masons).

To me (who was an Indentured Apprentice in the very late 20th century and the eary 21st century with a Building Trades Craft Union, UA Local 393- Plumbers, Steamfitters, and HVACR Service Technicians) the commonalities with modern times are striking. Some trades today have more women per men (Electricians and Laborers), some less (Iron Workers, Plumbers), but they are there (I've seen 'em, and the one women Iron Worker I saw, I would not challenge to a fist fight, and I imagine I wouldn't a Medieval women blacksmith either!).

The women plumber who I've worked with the most was a daughter of a plumber, and I already cited that there was at least one Medieval women armorer who's father was one, what you don't see much today are widows taking their husbands trade, which was more common back then, probably because more work was done together in the home.

Unlike today where professionals marry each other, back then the lower classes were more likely to work together.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Your post was AWESOME PairO'Dice Lost

Thanks. :smallbiggrin:


but a quibble, then as now, women did enter mostly male trades and guilds.
[...]
The apprenticeship agreement, made between two families, was a legal document called an indenture. The following is an extract of an indenture in which John Nougle of London apprentices his sister, Katherine, in 1392.

"This indenture witnesses that John Nougle of London, haberdasher, has put Katherine Nougle, his sister, apprentice to Avice Wodeford, silkthrower, of London to learn her rat and to serve her after the manner of an apprentice from Pentecost in the 15th year of the reign of King Richard II until the end of the next seven years..." (http://sandradodd.com/sca/womenandwork)

Huh, very interesting. I've ready plenty about widowers taking over their husbands' businesses and gender ratios of adults in guilds and suchlike, but I hadn't seen any sources talking about girls going through apprenticeships, hence putting that parenthetical note in the part about children starting to learn trades from their parents. That's an excellent source you linked, and I'll be adding that to my historical-stuff-for-D&D files for future reference.

[Blackjackg]

[a lot of really interesting, thoughtful stuff]

That's a great response and although I think I could argue with a few points, the bigger picture issue is that this is another example of us stretching to find an explanation for a logical flaw in the system. Your argument is as good as any I've seen, but suffers from the same flaw as most: that it's not borne out in the system. It takes an elf the same number of encounters to gain a level as it does a human and there's no indication that elf encounters are more spread out than human ones are (plus, if they were, you would see an even bigger disparity because that means elves have more time to recover between encounters and are thus more likely to survive their adventuring careers).

It's a good analogy and a good explanation, but my complaint wasn't that we as players aren't able to come up with explanations. It's that the onus is on us to come up with the explanation.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

That's a great response and although I think I could argue with a few points, the bigger picture issue is that this is another example of us stretching to find an explanation for a logical flaw in the system. Your argument is as good as any I've seen, but suffers from the same flaw as most: that it's not borne out in the system. It takes an elf the same number of encounters to gain a level as it does a human and there's no indication that elf encounters are more spread out than human ones are (plus, if they were, you would see an even bigger disparity because that means elves have more time to recover between encounters and are thus more likely to survive their adventuring careers).

Like I said, it's not that elves can't do things at human speed, it's that they don't necessarily want or need to...but if an elf is actively out adventuring with humans, they're obviously going to be doing things at the same pace as the humans. And it's not an encounter-level pace issue, it's more long-term; until the Evil Empire's army is vanquished or the God of Evil is banished back to the void, the elves and humans would be doing the same things at the same time, but afterwards the humans would probably either jump right into another adventure or retire, while an elf might take a decade or two off (again, assuming the elf has no other pressing reason to stick around with the humans) before returning to adventuring.


It's a good analogy and a good explanation, but my complaint wasn't that we as players aren't able to come up with explanations. It's that the onus is on us to come up with the explanation.

The basic idea, that elves take their sweet time to do things and operate on longer timescales outside of adventuring, is actually covered in some depth in the AD&D and 3e flavor-focused material.

Some relevant excerpts from the 2e Complete Book of Elves:


The key to understanding the elven mind is comprehending the years an elf must fill. Most races do not (and cannot) understand the perspective hundreds of years of life lend an elf. This incredible lifespan often gives the elf a terrible, driving ambition. Paradoxically, it can also give elves a lackadaisical attitude.

Above all, elves are patient. They have years to complete any task, and they don't mind the wait. After all, they have created many ways to wile away time. They find impatience to be an especially amusing vice possessed by the other races. If the need for haste is urgent, however, elves can move faster and more decisively than most of the other races.

Elves tend to be very clever and devious, having had years to practice their skills and hone their minds. Their conversation and their games possess many degrees of subtlety, most of which goes unheeded by non-elves.


An angry elf is a terrible foe. An elf bent on vengeance is even worse. As mentioned, elves have an inexhaustible store of patience. They can wait for years before exacting revenge-after their prey has been lulled into a false sense of security. Or they can hunt their enemies over the years, never faltering or slowing in the pursuit of their quarry. Occasionally, elves will make a pretense of the hunt and let the person "escape." After the person has taken to flight, the elf is likely to appear at random intervals-a tactic designed to keep fear instilled in the heart of the person. This can make for a life of anxiety for anyone who has earned the wrath of elves, for that person never knows when the elf may strike to claim vengeance. This is one reason that the elves are so feared as foes, for no one wishes to live a paranoid life fearing elven wrath.


Their lifespan gives elves a unique perspective on life than most other races can't share. Elves don't worry about not experiencing enough in their lives; rather, they look for the next new thing to excite their curiosity and enthusiasm. This lifespan also means that elves develop an attitude and a character that is uniquely their own. No one can tell exactly how their years will affect each individual elf. Typically, elves begin their lives as carefree, fun-loving spirits. As they grow older, most of them become slightly more cautious, yet still retain the warmth and vitality necessary for elves to fully enjoy their lives.

Still, some of them start life with a more serious attitude, believing (despite the advice of their elders) that their time is too short to be spent frittering it away on such foolishness as dancing and singing. As these elves grow older, they often become obsessed with finding a meaning to everything, seeking the fundamental truths of existence. Some few realize that their years are enough for both truth and fun. Most, however, continue on in a somewhat joyless existence, spending their years associating exclusively with sages and elder beings. Eventually, they lock themselves away from true life. In seeking the "truth," they lose the meaning and purpose of that which they value most: their lives.

Most elves, as has been noted, are more interested in living life fully. They can begin several projects within the span of a year, such as writing songs, creating works of art, learning swordplay, and so forth. They think nothing of setting aside each project when something more interesting comes along. After all, with centuries at one's disposal, taking a decade or two on a task is nothing to worry about. If they lose interest in the product in the intervening time, they can always ignite interest by reliving it through the reverie.

Obviously, elves see no need to hurry themselves through anything. If their short-lived friends legitimately need something quickly, elves will rush to fill that need. If left to their own devices, however, elves will take a much longer time than might otherwise be appreciated by a human. Elf lives simply aren't short enough to worry about haste. But elves are far from lazy. They are almost constantly active during daytime, engaged in some project or another. If they want to spend a day lying on a grassy hillside watching birds or just relaxing, who complains?


There are no serious troubles between members of separate generations, as is often the case with humans, but the variations in views held between elf generations are huge. Indeed, because of the unique nonaging physiology of elves, one of the few ways to tell between young and old elves is the difference in personality. Of course, this is still not a clearly defining test, for elves have as varied personalities as humans.

The personality of younger elves is characterized by curiosity, a strong streak of individualism, and a willingness to learn. They are just getting used to their long lives. Young elves are often found wandering into places where few would expect an elf to be. These are the elves who make friends with humans and the short-lived races, for they have not yet realized the speed of years for humans.

Older elves, on the other hand, lean toward isolation and quiet enjoyment of the world. Few, if any, elves of more advanced age leave the elf lands, for they have seen enough of the world to last their lifetime. While they don't become entirely inactive, their activities are of a contemplative nature, rather than the more boisterous activities of young elves.


Seemingly unlike many other races in the worlds, elves try to avoid violence. Their actions are typically more cautious, despite the fact that they seem impetuous. This is more true of older elves than younger ones. When embarking on a course of action, elves remind themselves that it could be their last. This has sobering effect on even hotheaded elves.

Elves live long enough that they don't want to risk their lives on an insignificant issue. Only truly earth-shattering events and dire emergencies will stir older elves from their retreats in the forests or mountains. Nothing less will entice them to risk their lives; although they are not cowards, they have no desire to lose a life for something petty. This is one of the reasons why elves have become legendary for their skill with the bow; it keeps their foes at a safe distance, affording the elves little danger. At closer distances, elven training with the sword is proficient enough that few need worry. Still, elves have no foolish notions about killing an opponent "honorably." The method of least resistance is more likely to preserve precious lives.

And relevant quotes from 3e Races of the Wild:


Elves’ unhurried nature combined with their predilection for self-sufficiency results in the curious lack of specialization that pervades most elf communities. Each elf prefers to perform all tasks related to basic living himself—no matter how long it takes. Thus, an elf wishing to build a house first consults with other elves who have done so. From them, he learns the basics of woodcraft, architectural design, and carpentry as well as the aspects of the trees and land nearby that might affect his plans. He designs the structure, taking pains to ensure that he has allowed for all appropriate contingencies and included all the design features that he craves. He then gathers the materials from the forest, prepares them, and begins to build. Until his house is finished, he sleeps in the open, in a room within his family home, or in some crude structure that he has fashioned as a temporary shelter. The elf cares not whether his project takes five months or fifty years; the only important goal is building a structure to his own personal specifications.
[...]
Though elves often seem carefree and self-indulgent, they can be focused and relentless while involved in particular projects. An elf building a house may forget everything else, losing contact with family and friends, stopping to gather food only when hunger threatens his focus and his well-being. Elves rarely worry about family members who “disappear” into their work for long periods, knowing that they will return with tales to tell and new works to show when they have completed their projects. Elves do unobtrusively check on members of the community who have been absent to ensure that no accident has befallen them. Disturbing the focus of an elf absorbed in his work, however, is simply not done.


Many long-lived races become bored with their lengthy lives, but elves rarely do. Their love of the natural world allows them to take pleasure in each new sunrise, hearing the songs of the birds and feeling the morning dew on their feet as if for the very first time. Long separations from boon companions who have gone adventuring or worked on lengthy projects make for days and nights of renewed companionship afterward. In addition, there is always something new to learn, some new
avenue to explore, or some new companion with whom to spend a few years. Boredom is nearly unknown to elves—they consider themselves responsible for their own enjoyment as much as for their own meals.


Many elves take up adventuring for a portion of their lives as young adults, both to see the world and to gain new experiences. Elves who adventure for a while are almost always welcomed back into their communities when they decide to take a break or even retire from the adventuring life. Though elves tend to be self-absorbed and may occasionally appear haughty, they are generally pleasant traveling companions. Many, however, are unused to working with others in groups at first and must come to realize that although others have their areas of specialty, they can support one another in ways that jacks-of-all-trades cannot.


[M]arriage between elves, however, is a centuries-long commitment that is never undertaken lightly. Light flirtations and even long-term dalliances between elves are more common than actual marriages. Children produced from such informal arrangements bear no stigma because new life is welcome in almost any elf community, whatever the relationship that produced it.

Though elves reach physical maturity at 25, marriages almost never occur at such a young age. In practice, elves less than 100 years old are considered too young for marriage and are strongly discouraged from considering such a permanent arrangement until they’ve had a few more decades of experience to understand themselves.

It's unfortunate (though unsurprising) that these background assumptions aren't really covered in the various PHBs, but they're there if you look (and if the edition lives long enough to give us those flavor-first books :smallwink:).

[FabulousFizban]

slow, takes a while to get an elf up to speed. A human achieves in 20 years what an elf does in 200.

[Keltest]

slow, takes a while to get an elf up to speed. A human achieves in 20 years what an elf does in 200.
Kinda, but not really. Elves don't just do things slower, they do it better too. An elf spending 200 years to learn, say, a smith's trade is going to blow a human smith out of the water.

[Nifft]

Kinda, but not really. Elves don't just do things slower, they do it better too. An elf spending 200 years to learn, say, a smith's trade is going to blow a human smith out of the water.

Campaign idea: "mithral" weapons & armor are great, but there's no such thing as mithral -- elven weapons & armor are just so well made, that everyone thinks they must be made of something better than steel.

[Vykryl]

My wife got me into a vampire series that provides some insight to this issue. Series is by Lindsay Sands I believe, her vampires are a result of nano technologies. Any of their group in the range of 20 to 100 are still treated like teens. Many live life as loose as 40k dark elder or slaanish followers. Somewhere in the range of 100 to 150 they lose there interest in decadent living an settle down to more productive pursuits. Many change trades every so many decades to help keep life fresh. Been a few years since I read any of these but one of their central topics does a good job of describing what the long lives of elves would be like and how various individuals cope with a life expectancy of centuries or more. They also have a rule about only 1 child every hundred to help keep their population from outgrowing available resources.

A warning to anyone interested in checking the series out. They are romance novels and they do get graphic.