Moon elf maturation rate

[Dalebert]

I have a moon elf urchin who will be starting his adventuring in his "teens" (by human standards)--maybe 15 to 16ish. About how old would that make him? I've heard different things. I've heard elves aren't adults until about 100 but I've also heard they mature to adulthood relatively quickly and then age slowly.

[Millstone85]

This is explained in the PHB.
Age. Although elves reach 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 an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 750 years old.

[Unoriginal]

I have a moon elf urchin who will be starting his adventuring in his "teens" (by human standards)--maybe 15 to 16ish. About how old would that make him? I've heard different things. I've heard elves aren't adults until about 100 but I've also heard they mature to adulthood relatively quickly and then age slowly.


This is explained in the PHB.

So the elf would be 16 if you want them to be physically a teen, and 75-ish if you want them to be mentally/culturally a teen.

[Millstone85]

So the elf would be 16 if you want them to be physically a teen, and 75-ish if you want them to be mentally/culturally a teen.Then there is the question of whether:
A) Both elves and humans would see a 75-year-old elf as acting like a teenager.
B) Elves think that humans sadly often die before they could know true adulthood.

[RedMage125]

I think it's important to note that the "100 years old" thing really only applies to elves who are raised among elves. That is when elves culturally consider a young elf to be "adult". Since they mature at about the same rate, and if your character grew up as an orphan in the streets of a human city, he/she could very well only BE 16-17 years old. Elves basically stop aging from age 20 until about 200 or so.

Older editions were a little more specific in these regards. They said that even another elf cannot tell a 60 year old elf from a 150 year old elf. Only clues about their maturity and behavior will indicate their age.

[Tanarii]

Per the 5e PHB, elves/dwarves/gnomes grow up just as fast as humans, but aren't socially accepted as "adults" until they are in their late twenties to early thirties in human-equivalent physical and mental age. (The ages given map fairly closely to 30 for all three races.)


So the elf would be 16 if you want them to be physically a teen, and 75-ish if you want them to be mentally/culturally a teen.
Disagree. "Mentally" is physically. Unless you mean personality changes due to life experience.

So 16 if you want them to be physically & mentally a teen, but 75-ish if you want them to be culturally a teen.