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shadow_archmagi
2008-04-23, 05:32 AM
It occurs to me that races with say, +4 int -4 wis +4 dex -4str would have a lot more difficulties.

Although a 5 is rare, its a death sentence if it lands in a -4 stat. A 1 in any stat means you'd be unable to move/think. Is the difference in probability (mere -2 races would have very low odds of this, and it could never happen to humans.) enough to be noticed amongst the general populations?

Fruan
2008-04-23, 05:40 AM
I just don't think the world works that way - Most NPCs are stated up via the non-elite array, which won't provide any problems of that type even with the race you suggest.


Now, why seemingly heroic individuals can have stats lower than the general population is another question entirely.

Dhavaer
2008-04-23, 05:53 AM
A 1 in any stat means you'd be unable to move/think.

You need a 0 in a stat to be immobile/catatonic (or dead, for Con).

Tempest Fennac
2008-04-23, 06:15 AM
I thought that stats had to be at at least 3 with it being impossibly to have them being any lower then that without stat damage/drain. Shouldn't the general population's stats also be random as well? I assumed the standard and elie arrays were only created to make things easier for DMs who didn;t just want to give an NPC 10 in each stat.

Dhavaer
2008-04-23, 06:22 AM
I thought that stats had to be at at least 3 with it being impossibly to have them being any lower then that without stat damage/drain.

I'm fairly sure that only Intelligence is capped at 3, other abilities can go down to 1.

Tempest Fennac
2008-04-23, 06:28 AM
Sorry if I made a mistake (I'm quite new to the game, so I assumed that applied to all stats). In that case, anyone who did get a 1 for a stat would probably not survive for that long (Cha is an exception, but the others would cause severe problems).

AKA_Bait
2008-04-23, 07:47 AM
Sorry if I made a mistake (I'm quite new to the game, so I assumed that applied to all stats). In that case, anyone who did get a 1 for a stat would probably not survive for that long (Cha is an exception, but the others would cause severe problems).

Yes, but depending upon the race that may, or may not result in a higher infant mortality rate. Races that are primarily good aligned may have systems in place (formal or cultural) to care for such individuals.

Edit: Another thing to note is size. A small or smaller race may just be less dependant upon a stregnth score (which is tailored to reflect needs of medium size races).

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-23, 07:58 AM
Which races, specifically, are being referred to here? Kobolds are the only Small or Medium humanoids I can think of off-hand who get a -4 in anything, and I've always assumed they probably birth clutches of eggs, being that they're generally at the bottom tier of the humanoid badass ladder. (Although reading Races of the Dragon, I was persuaded that being Lawful Evil, they do a great job of making up for their size by utilizing their numbers and their formidable intellect. They're exactly as smart as humans, and a lot cleverer than many bigger humanoids - like orcs and ogres.)


And the limit on Intelligence only applies to "sentient humanoids", since Int 1 or 2 are animal intellect. Heck, it may only apply to PCs. (And even so, only something like 1.39% of orcs would randomly get an Int of 2 or 1, after racial adjustments.)


This hypothetical race with Str -4, Dex +4, Int +4, and Wis -4 would probably make up for its deficiencies pretty handily - depending, of course, on its other abilities. In fact, if their strengths didn't make up for their weaknesses, they probably wouldn't continue to exist, excepting the protection of some sort of epic or divine guardian.

Fishy
2008-04-23, 08:22 AM
Hrm. Does that mean that a proportion of a hypothetical -4 int race is born non-sentient?

I'm sure there's stuff you can do with that concept...

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-23, 08:45 AM
Hrm. Does that mean that a proportion of a hypothetical -4 int race is born non-sentient?

I'm sure there's stuff you can do with that concept...

I'd say the answer is "of course not."

But it depends on whether the chargen rule of "no Int below 3" applies to them.

shadow_archmagi
2008-04-23, 02:21 PM
Hrm. Does that mean that a proportion of a hypothetical -4 int race is born non-sentient?

I'm sure there's stuff you can do with that concept...

Thumbing through my character generator for -4 int races...

Gargoyle: +4 str +4 dex +8 con -4 int -4 chr
Troll: +12 str +12 con +4 dex -4 int -2 wis -4 chr
Alaghi: +8 str +2 dex +2 con -4 int
Gully Dwarf: +2 dex +2 con -4 int -4 wis; (from Kyrnn, apparently)
Ogres*: +10 str +4 con -2 dex -4 int -4 chr; (Dragonlance style)

Riffington
2008-04-23, 05:42 PM
Sorry if I made a mistake (I'm quite new to the game, so I assumed that applied to all stats). In that case, anyone who did get a 1 for a stat would probably not survive for that long (Cha is an exception, but the others would cause severe problems).

Charisma is the most important stat for an infant's survival...

Riffington
2008-04-23, 05:43 PM
Hrm. Does that mean that a proportion of a hypothetical -4 int race is born non-sentient?

I'm sure there's stuff you can do with that concept...

A proportion of humans are born non-sentient. It's really pretty sad.

de-trick
2008-04-23, 07:34 PM
most of the time a race tries to hide there weakness and try to make up for them with there strengths.

eg
a elf would not be a marathon runner, but excel a fencing
a orc would not go on jeopardy but go in a weight lifting completion
and so on.
The races tend to stay away from their weakness

graymachine
2008-04-23, 07:47 PM
Good points by people. I would say, though, that infants born in a species with a crippling stat would be treated like such infants were treated in human history at the same technological, and ethical, development. Deformed children are left in woods to the elements. Idiot children grow up to muck out stalls, engage in dangerous labor, etc. D&D likes to put a very PC (pun) spin on campaign worlds, but I find that a gritty campaign world gives more flavor to a game.

Awetugiw
2008-04-24, 08:45 AM
It's not the -str races that need to worry about their infant mortality. It's the -con races. Why don't the elves take over the world with their very long lifespan? Because they die because of diseases, starvation, accidents, et cetera way more often than the other races.

Adventurers sometimes make it seem different, but the main causes of death are not being stabbed or roasted by a fireball, but more mundane things.

The races you should watch out for are the gnomes and dwarves. With their survival talents they might have a very good chance of actually conquering the world in a couple of generations.l

AKA_Bait
2008-04-24, 09:29 AM
A proportion of humans are born non-sentient. It's really pretty sad.

Sorry to nitpick about this but this particular misuse of language always bugs me (I blame StarTrek).

Sentient just means that it reacts to stimuli, has sensations and feelings.
Sapient means it can reason.

My dog is Sentient, but she is not Sapient.

Citizen Joe
2008-04-24, 09:55 AM
It's not the -str races that need to worry about their infant mortality. It's the -con races. Why don't the elves take over the world with their very long lifespan? Because they die because of diseases, starvation, accidents, et cetera way more often than the other races.


Actually, shear accidental deaths will keep elves down. Going by the starting ages, middle aged, etc. charts, and applying some reasonable actuarial tables regarding unstoppable accidental deaths (like lightning strikes and cart/horse wrecks, falling out of trees, etc.) Elven women would need to produce upwards of 10-40 children just to break even. Even then, by the time an elf has lived to the point he can start adventuring, 90% of the people he's ever known have died.

Dervag
2008-04-24, 10:40 AM
Charisma is the most important stat for an infant's survival...Mechanically, infants of intelligent probably get a free charisma bonus with respect to adults of their own species. Any pseudomammal species that survives has a strong inborn instinct to protect and raise its own children.

And by 'pseudomammal', I mean 'gives birth to young, or to eggs that hatch into young, which require parental attention'. If a baby Lizardfolk possesses all the basic skills required to be a functional Lizardfolk, and just happens to be smaller and weaker, then Lizardfolk may not have much of a parental instinct because they won't need as much of one.


Good points by people. I would say, though, that infants born in a species with a crippling stat would be treated like such infants were treated in human history at the same technological, and ethical, development. Deformed children are left in woods to the elements. Idiot children grow up to muck out stalls, engage in dangerous labor, etc. D&D likes to put a very PC (pun) spin on campaign worlds, but I find that a gritty campaign world gives more flavor to a game.The thing to remember is that D&D worlds aren't at a medieval technological level in the general sense of the word 'technology,' because magic in D&D acts like a kind of technology. It has useful, reproducible effects that can be readily understood and used as its owners see fit, which are the key features of a technology.

In a D&D world, leaving deformed children in the woods to die of exposure makes less sense because:
-There are sources of power which, being nonphysical, are just as accessible to someone with a physical disability.
-There are resources that could potentially "cure" a number of disabilities that, while expensive, can be produced and reproduced without much difficulty.

So the position of the disabled in a D&D society wouldn't be the same as it is in a real life medieval society, because the D&D society has a different menu of options for dealing with them than a real medieval society would.


Actually, shear accidental deaths will keep elves down. Going by the starting ages, middle aged, etc. charts, and applying some reasonable actuarial tables regarding unstoppable accidental deaths (like lightning strikes and cart/horse wrecks, falling out of trees, etc.) Elven women would need to produce upwards of 10-40 children just to break even. Even then, by the time an elf has lived to the point he can start adventuring, 90% of the people he's ever known have died.I've run into this claim (about the 90%) before; I'm not sure of it. I mean, that winds up drawing "reasoanble actuarial tables" in which roughly 20% of people die in unavoidable accidents every decade of life. That doesn't square with my experiences, and if it squares with yours I am sincerely sorry for you (and your accident-prone acquaintances).

Could someone link me to an authoritative source that states that the death rate to unavoidable accidents is something like that bad?

Citizen Joe
2008-04-24, 11:26 AM
CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html) table lists annual deaths per 1000 people. Worst estimate is around 30/1000 or about 3% death annual death rate.

The chance of Living in any given year would be 97%. So the chance that you survive 100 years would be 0.97^100 = 0.0475, which is about 4.8%. That means that 95.2% of the population has died by that time.

The USA, with many advances that make accidental deaths less likely still has a 8.27/1000 death rate, or 0.327% annual death rate. So 99.673% survival rate. 0.99673^100 = 0.7206 or 72.06% of the population surviving to 100. Now, keep in mind that, in order to achieve that rate, we have instantaneous worldwide communication (cell phones), Ultra fast response teams (standard movement of 250 to 500), Advanced medicine with active immunization programs, Sterilized and regulated foods, etc.

To postulate that elves have that level of care based on magic would require ridiculous assumptions of how prevalent magic is amongst the elves... like all of them can cast 4th level healing spells... at no cost.

Personally, given the nature of disease, war, raids etc. in a typical Fantasy Setting, I'd mark up the typical annual death rate of humans around 3%. If I were to be VERY generous, I'd put elves at 2%. Orcs probably at the 4-5% rate. etc.

So at 2% death rate until age 120 (min starting age for DND Elf) we have:
0.98^120 = 0.0885 Survival to age 120, which is 91.15% dead.

By contrast, the fast growing orcs start at like 15... so even with 5% mortality we have:
0.95^15 = 0.4633, or 46.33% survival to adulthood. Which is a little over half of orc children die before reaching adulthood.

The elf woman (50% of the population) would need to have 2 surviving children in order to maintain a stable population. Since my estimate has less than one in ten elves surviving to adulthood, that means every elven female needs to give birth to over 20 children JUST to maintain static population.

The orc female, by contrast, only needs 4.

Jayabalard
2008-04-24, 11:29 AM
Could someone link me to an authoritative source that states that the death rate to unavoidable accidents is something like that bad?something like this (http://xkcd.com/369/)?

Citizen Joe
2008-04-24, 11:55 AM
This 12 Mb census report (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsushistorical/mortstatsh_1936.pdf) also shows turn of the century (1900) mortality rates at about 1.6% in the US and hovering around 2.2% in Europe.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-24, 11:59 AM
CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html) table lists annual deaths per 1000 people. Worst estimate is around 30/1000 or about 3% death annual death rate.

I don't see anything that indicates that doesn't include violence and natural causes.

Also, do factor in cure and restoration spells.

Yeah, that's what I thought.


Also, I'm not quite willing to accept that 22% (.99 ^ 25 = .777...) of people born in Finland when I was (1983) have failed to survive up until now. 22% mortality by age 25? I don't buy it. It's obvious those statistics, if broken up, would be heavily weighed in certain areas (like the first few years in developing countries, and 60+ in pretty much all countries).

So there's obviously some pretty serious problem with the math you're doing here, even if you don't account for the fact that we're talking about elves in a fantasy world. (Never mind that, for instance, with orcs, you'd have massive mortality in the early years - just like in the real world - but a lot less after that.)

Citizen Joe
2008-04-24, 12:26 PM
Well, ok, just do this then... knock off the first five years as infant mortality. Figure out what percentage of people you know that have died in the 20 years after that (years 6-25). That gives you your 2 decades mortality rate. From that get your survival rate. Take that value and raise it to the 1/20th power to get your annual survival rate. Subtract that from 1 to get your annual mortality rate for humans.

Now justify your low constitution elves having some means of protecting themselves from the same things that affect humans, yet for some reason humans don't adopt the same policy... because... they are suicidal?

Anyway, eventually you will come up with a death rate that makes sense for fantasy humans. Assuming that death rate is not 0, then the fact that elves live 5 times as long and take that long to become adults causes major repercussions on the necessary birth rate that don't jive with the low birth rate theory. You can tweak the numbers all you like, but when elves take five times as long to mature, they will need five times as many children as humans in order to offset the death rates.

So, you can ignore the problem and simply say "It's magic!", you can accept the problem and the ramifications, or you can change the parameters.

RukiTanuki
2008-04-24, 12:53 PM
If your claim centers around accidental deaths, it may be better to utilize a statistic that tracks accidental deaths.

A simple deaths per 1000 statistic would only be marginally useful if the relative ages of the deceased were provided. For the purposes of this discussion, it seems likely that we'll want to discard infant mortality and deaths by end-of-lifespan complications.

Barring that, is there a deaths per 1000 statistic for, say, people aged 20 to 30? And are there numbers available for different parts of the world vs. worldwide? More detail is frequently useful. :)

Telonius
2008-04-24, 01:08 PM
Sorry to nitpick about this but this particular misuse of language always bugs me (I blame StarTrek).

Sentient just means that it reacts to stimuli, has sensations and feelings.
Sapient means it can reason.

My dog is Sentient, but she is not Sapient.

Pssht, silly dictionaries. If enough people say it, it's correct. :smallbiggrin:

Things like infant mortality stats are really tricky to get a handle on. They really screw up the life expectancy figures for most of human history. About a year ago, I tried to untangle the statistics for human life expectancy around 2,000 years ago. I'm not a statistician, so it was pretty hard going. What I eventually came up with, was that if you survived to 10 years old, you could reasonably expect to live to be 60 or so. But there was just so much infant mortality, that all the stats I could find gave medians and averages down around the 30s or thereabouts. Those figures give the impression that people were dropping dead at 35, which just wasn't the case.

Benejeseret
2008-04-24, 01:54 PM
For most races birth rate seems to be a bigger issue by fluff. But again, since fertility should be tied to CON more than any other stat (don't say CHA because ugly people bump uglies too, just uglier uglies) we should still be knee deep in dwarfs and gnome after all these years.

However, none of the stats actually document fertility at all well as every species could have completely different cycles. Who knows.

I would even argue that infant mortality can be linked to INT/WIS and CHA....because if you have a society with lots of social interaction and group support as well as the INT/WIS to establish good medical practices and properly acknowledge resources available vs child rates you will end up with a more stable and healthier population overall.

Telonius
2008-04-24, 02:58 PM
Perhaps dwarves can only reproduce while sober?

Starbuck_II
2008-04-24, 03:52 PM
For most races birth rate seems to be a bigger issue by fluff. But again, since fertility should be tied to CON more than any other stat (don't say CHA because ugly people bump uglies too, just uglier uglies) we should still be knee deep in dwarfs and gnome after all these years.

Why do you think we aren't knee deep in Dwarves and gnomes? Remember, though, gnomes have Strength penalty so they can die in attack easier (less damage to hurt foe back).

Riffington
2008-04-24, 05:24 PM
Sorry to nitpick about this but this particular misuse of language always bugs me (I blame StarTrek).

Sentient just means that it reacts to stimuli, has sensations and feelings.
Sapient means it can reason.

My dog is Sentient, but she is not Sapient.

Two things:
First, I wasn't misusing language by anyone's definition. Some proportion of humans are born anencephalic.

Second, Sentient has multiple definitions. If by sentient you mean "satva" (having senses), then a dog/cat is both sentient and sapient; reasoning is a higher bar than feeling sensations, but dogs and cats can do both.

If by sentience you mean the "ability to feel or perceive subjectively" (the most common American definition), then you must be self-aware to be sentient. Dogs are likely sentient; cats are debatable. Under this (more common) definition, sentience is a higher bar than sapience.

The Extinguisher
2008-04-24, 05:49 PM
Perhaps dwarves can only reproduce while sober?

Then they would go extinct.

Collin152
2008-04-24, 06:00 PM
Perhaps dwarves can only reproduce while sober?

So Dwarves are the opposites of half-orcs.
But seriously, if the women looked like that, you'd be god and tanked before going near them too.
Not that I would notice the women.
Also not that I drink, or have any plans to evre do so.
Also not that I'm a Dwarf, short though I be.

shadow_archmagi
2008-04-24, 07:01 PM
First off, i don't think an elf's world is anywhere NEAR as dangerous as our own.

Its entirely understandable and common for someone to get in a car crash, but I really can't see a very high percentage of wagon turnovers as being lethal.

Ride, as a skill, doesn't even matter outside of combat. Absolutely everyone can always ride a horse no problem unless an orc leaps out.

Second, a single Rod of Cure Light Wounds means that anyone who doesn't die immediately WILL survive. D&D has no stats for mortal wounds or long-term disability. Oh, you got horribly mangled by the ax? Roll well and hope you get stable, healer will be here in an hour.

Citizen Joe
2008-04-24, 07:44 PM
First off, i don't think an elf's world is anywhere NEAR as dangerous as our own.

Second, a single Rod of Cure Light Wounds means that anyone who doesn't die immediately WILL survive. D&D has no stats for mortal wounds or long-term disability. Oh, you got horribly mangled by the ax? Roll well and hope you get stable, healer will be here in an hour.

1. You have clearly chosen some arbitrary reason that the statistics don't apply to elves. I could state that elves are trees until 100, thus the death rates don't apply. I could state that elves are fae and they spend their childhood in Faewyld, thus the death rates don't apply. I could state that elvish children have impenetrable force fields, thus the death rates do not apply. My point is that I need to apply some reason for the death rates NOT applying to elves when they do apply to everyone else.

2. A single Rod of Cure Light Wounds is the equivalent of a hospital emergency ward in modern times. Where is that rod? How do I get to it when this overturned cart is crushing me? How does that help when I got caught in a flash flood and I'm drowning... or fell into a well... or fell out of a tree... I know your first instinct is to point to magic, but magic IS expensive and it isn't nearly as available to the general populace as it is to PC's.

PC's don't have those mortality rates. They cause their own deaths. PC's don't suffer from mortal wounds, but NPC's can. There's a whole lot of death out there that just doesn't affect the PC's because they are heroes and it just wouldn't be heroic for them to get pneumonia, or get run over by a horse, or slip on a toy and fall down the stairs... but all of that happens to people.

dukeh016
2008-04-24, 08:14 PM
Citizen Joe, I believe the large amount of critics (and I happily jump on the bandwagon) have issue with the average death rate, a very basic statistic that is easily manipulated and really doesn't say anything helpful, being applied to the situation. The CIA Fact Book, while nifty, doesn't break things down by "accidental" death, which probably accounts for a small amount of the actual deaths. In America, for example, the largest cause of death is heart disease. That is not, I would suppose, a problem in a magical world that has a low-level spell titled "cure disease."

Beside this flaw with the data, most accidents probably occur at points in life in which the individual is not capable of taking care of his or her self. This would be children and the elderly, naturally. Hence applying the mortality rate equally through all stages of life is simply bad statistics.

Finally, considering that some methods of death are primarily accountable to human physiology (like our inability to withstand extreme temperatures, our cells' love for cancerous mutation, and impacting wisdom teeth), it is quite unfair to apply our disabilities to other races who might not have them.

In sum, applying such a broad statistic without looking at causation or the spread of the data abuses the statistic and leads to bad results.

Regards,
Duke

Halna LeGavilk
2008-04-24, 08:21 PM
The main reason why is probably that 'normal' elves, 1st level commoners, have no reason not to put a 12 in CON, leading to a 10, which is average, no less than a human.

And a lot of accidents become deaths because of our relatively limited medical technology. Yes, magic may not be common place, but if all you have one Rod of Cure Light Wounds, and only one person who can use it, then with the elve's very communal life-style (which would probably lead to accidents being reported earlier, screams can be heard faster with curtains blocking it than windows), then as soon as you get to the priest, BANG, you're cured, no surgery, and magic can cure internal bleeding and organ damage which is very hard for us to repair right now.

And I think that a lot of modern city death problems, fire and flooding and storms and what not, in a large elven city, at least a few wizards and clerics, if not a lot, would be present to sort it out.

Not every other person has to be a level 20 Wizard for magic to cure a lot of deaths. Some of them have to be level 20 Clerics. :smallbiggrin:

Riffington
2008-04-24, 09:15 PM
Some of you play in worlds very different from mine.

In my world, people die in horseback riding accidents (you just don't need rules for it, because who wants to roll to see if you die in a pointless accident), the average "priest" is a level 3 expert or aristocrat, and "cure disease" is no match for normal aging processes like atherosclerosis. NPCs don't get to pick their attributes: some elves have constitutions of 6, and a rare few have constitutions of 16. And not all people avoid their "racial weaknesses": some elves are track stars at their schools, and some dwarves excel at their schools' debate teams (even if they would lose every time to a gnomish team). And a rod of cure light wounds costs more than the average village.

Citizen Joe
2008-04-24, 09:29 PM
For all you detractors, pick a mortality rate, any mortality rate. Apply it across the board to see what happens. If you want elves to have only a couple children in their lifetime, that means an overall low mortality rate. But if you apply that rate to humans, you'll find that they should have a phenomenal population growth rate. So all your cure diseases and rods of curing end up causing famine and overpopulation on the other end.

For me, personally, I like what Earthdawn did with them. They become adult around 25 and then have a relatively long life after that. There is still a bit of an issue, but they have a very long breeding period in order to reproduce the needed numbers. I mean what is the point of being 120 and just getting your first class level? Who really needs a century of back story? What DM wants to READ a century of backstory?

TheDright
2008-04-24, 09:53 PM
The reason that elves survive their long childhoods must be because of their clean, well-kept woodland homes. Compare LOTR elves versus LOTR humans, except probably not as severe. They only come of age at 120+random modifier is because they have retardedly long maturation periods. A 20 year old elf is much less mature than a 20 year old human. There is no rush for them, their bodies won't naturally where out for at least a couple centuries.

Yahzi
2008-04-24, 11:06 PM
Second, a single Rod of Cure Light Wounds means that anyone who doesn't die immediately WILL survive.
As will Remove Disease, and oh yah, Raise Dead.

The D&D world is vastly less dangerous than our world. Aside from the monsters, that is. :smallbiggrin:

Collin152
2008-04-24, 11:08 PM
As will Remove Disease, and oh yah, Raise Dead.

The D&D world is vastly less dangerous than our world. Aside from the monsters, that is. :smallbiggrin:

Yes, aside from the raiding orcs, goblins, ogres, and the occasional giants and dragons and demons, it's much safer than our world.

Wulfram
2008-04-25, 07:12 AM
This (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html) is a life table for the USA in 2003, giving the chance of dieing at a given age.

Happily for Elves and young people, though rather unhappily for the old, it gives a very different picture to the one which Citizen Joe gives. Deaths are heavily concentrated among the old, making the death rate figures pretty useless for a people with such a different life span.

If we assume that the chance of an elf reaching 18 is the same as a modern american, and that from then on it stays steady at the rate for an 18 year old, then 91% of male elves would be reaching 100, as would 95% of females.

edit: You could certainly argue that these figures are too generous, but there's also reason for regarding them as too harsh. These Elves are supposed to be children in their early years, and Childhood mortality rates, after the first year, are much lower than those of at 18, the start of adulthood.

I do, however, agree that the long elven childhood is silly. It works OK for a legal age of majority among high elf types, who might be able to afford to keep their kids wrapped up in cotton wool for a century, but otherwise it causes a lot of problems for little return.

Fighteer
2008-04-25, 09:36 AM
The reason that elves survive their long childhoods must be because of their clean, well-kept woodland homes. Compare LOTR elves versus LOTR humans, except probably not as severe. They only come of age at 120+random modifier is because they have retardedly long maturation periods. A 20 year old elf is much less mature than a 20 year old human. There is no rush for them, their bodies won't naturally where out for at least a couple centuries.
Tolkien's elves are also immune to disease and aging. They don't die due to natural causes. If D&D elves had this trait, they would be horribly imbalanced. Thus, we have an anomaly: a low-Con race with an enormously longer natural life span than a normal-Con race. Other than "a wizard did it", the only logical explanation is that elves suffer a lower natural mortality rate than humans despite having a lower Con score.

To explain the lower mortality rate, we can examine the probable sociology of a much longer-lived race and conclude that they take much greater care of their well-being. Certainly an increased Dex score helps, as they can avoid many injuries and deaths that result from simple clumsiness. Presumably, the naturalistic environment that elves prefer to surround themselves with reduces their exposure to environmental contaminants, and their lower population density reduces their exposure to communicable diseases. Also, they simply have more time, which allows them to take a slower approach to life and avoid many of the stresses that humans deal with. They can take greater care of the few children they have, greatly increasing the chances of survival to adulthood. Also, in lore, elves have a higher rate of magic use than humans, meaning that the average elf has much better access to magical healing in the event of disease or injury.

One other note about diseases of aging: healing and restorative magic is specifically stated as being unable to extend a creature's lifespan, aside from certain effects that specifically extend it.

Storm Bringer
2008-04-25, 11:10 AM
just a couple of points:

1) someone living in a medival setting is exposed to a very different set of conditions to someone alive in a modern setting. not many of us need to worry about falling off a horse, but quite a few historical people have been seriously injured/killed by failed ride checks . things like contaminated water (everyone drank beer back then, even the kids. the water could kill ya), poor sanitation, limited medical knowledge (so a non leathal cut could get gangrene and be leathal), high population density (meaning plagues can rip though a city in no time), and Malnutrition would increase death rates, while things like no cars (so no being run over),lower exposure to chemical pollutants, and so on would lower death rates. In short applying modern death rates to a medievil socity would not be accurate.

2) while a Rod of CLW is cheap for a adventurer, an adventurer is richer than Bill Gates wildest dreams compared to most people in a medival set up. Profession says that a guy can earn half his dice roll in GP a week. Assuming the guy takes ten, has four ranks in profession, and has a 2+ stat bonus, that's...8 GP a week. With a flat 10 wisdom, it's a gold piece a day. Now, I'm not going to bother with working out how much he needs to spend a week on food/etc for him and his family, but you can get an idea how long it would take for people to get thier hands on even the most basic magic items, even if clubbing together. Clerics can cast healing spells, yes, but that requires you to both know a cleric willing to heal you (rather than, say, send you to meet the Lord in person, or charge you an Extortionate amount for the spell), AND that cleric being located and brought to you within the needed time period.

3) elves take far too long to come of age. I mean, a 110-year old elf is as mature, mentally and physically, as a 15 year old human. Just think about that for a second. Thier also very slow to learn, i must note, as a elven wizard takes, on average, 35 years to learn what a human wizard does on average in 7, and can take up to 60 years to get it right.

No wonder thier are deing out and legging it.

hamishspence
2008-04-25, 11:22 AM
the elven aging thing is fixed in Races of the wild: 1-15 ages at human rate, 15-20 for a human = 15-25 for an elf, so 25 year old elf is as mature as a 20 year old human, then static for centuries. and while they may get frailer, they never get wrinkly.

Reason they rarely start adventuring till 110: while physically and mentaly mature, they need time to mature emotionally.

Citizen Joe
2008-04-25, 11:38 AM
Reason they rarely start adventuring till 110: while physically and mentaly mature, they need time to mature emotionally.
Umm... think about that for a moment... think back about every elf you've played with in a game... just how mature do you need to be to kill things and take its stuff?

From a game play perspective, why is it even important that they start at 120+?

Here's a cheap way to deal with it... just knock 100 years off the age of an elf and say that it was a clerical error. Elves count their age by the current century and year rather than the number of years that have passed. So when they list their age as 1st century, 20th year, people think they are 120 years old, when in fact they have only had 19 birthdays.

hamishspence
2008-04-25, 11:41 AM
I wonder how many 20 year olds these days would cope well with life and death struggles with scary monsters. Many elves are a little psychologicall fragile at first.

The other option is one to consider, Or just ignore the guidelines: Drizzt started adventuring much younger (30 odd) (escaping from Menzoberranzan) Liriel Baenre as in a similar age bracket. If drow can do it, elves can do it.

Storm Bringer
2008-04-25, 11:56 AM
From a game play perspective, why is it even important that they start at 120+?

It isn't. It's important to the RP types who like to play tolkien age elves who knew you fathers fathers fathers father, and won't let you foget it.



I wonder how many 20 year olds these days would cope well with life and death struggles with scary monsters. Many elves are a little psychologicall fragile at first..

Dunno. ask an army dude, they'll know.

Fighteer
2008-04-25, 12:49 PM
3) elves take far too long to come of age. I mean, a 110-year old elf is as mature, mentally and physically, as a 15 year old human. Just think about that for a second. Thier also very slow to learn, i must note, as a elven wizard takes, on average, 35 years to learn what a human wizard does on average in 7, and can take up to 60 years to get it right.
My theory is that they spend an awful lot of their spare time doing things that most humans would find pointless: contemplating the stars, learning decorative flower sculpting, composing poetry, etc. Heck, just learning the history and pageantry of a typical elvish nation could take a good decade or two. One could also imagine that they are perfectionists: an elven wizard doesn't just learn to cast magic missile; she spends months or years perfecting the positions of her fingers, getting the incantations in the right meter and accent, and contemplating the most aesthetically pleasing shape for the energy. Of course, the mechanical effects are exactly the same, but hey, they have to fill all that spare time with something. :smalltongue:

Then again, even the Giant pointed out the absurdity of the difference in racial time scaling at a few points in OotS.

Citizen Joe
2008-04-25, 01:13 PM
OK, I went back with that actuarial data by age and charted out the mortality rates for humans and then elves (on the basis of 5 human years = 1 elf year). Again, this is based on 2008 US standards which is about a 0.833% mortality rate. By comparison, 1900 US mortality rate was about twice that and Europe was 3 times that.

My results are that, by the end of the breeding age (middle aged), elves have had 8 times as many deaths as humans and only about 93% as many surviving fertile females. That means that, in the elven female's lifetime, she needs to produce 8.6 times as many children as a comparable human female. Now, that breeding age is five times as long, but that still means that annually, elves need to produce 72% more children than humans. Not exactly what you would call poor fertility rates.


Some interesting effects I noticed. The elf male starts to have a significant mortality rate just as they reach adventuring age while the human male has this drop upon reaching middle age. Also, the big drop for humans is right around "venerable" where as elves start dropping like flies at "old".

Storm Bringer
2008-04-25, 01:44 PM
indeed, but, the figures are not directly comparible.

We don't know how thier bodies ages (as the Giant points out (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0218.html), the DND rules don't reflect reality in this matter).

We don't know what diseases affect elves, and if they suffer form fatal diseases (at the very least, they are not going to be affected by human diseases)

we don't know how long they are fertile, how long thier pregancy takes (humans have a unsually long pregnacy period compared to other animals, but one that is honestly not quite long enough.), and how long the child is dependant of the mother/family.

In short, we don't have enough data on elven biology and living condictions to make any judgements on at what rate they will die, and at what points.

FlyMolo
2008-04-25, 02:26 PM
I could state that elvish children have impenetrable force fields, thus the death rates do not apply.


Au contraire, an impenetrable force field would lead to a 100% death rate. Feeding yourself would be a little tricky, no?

Storm Bringer
2008-04-25, 03:41 PM
Au contraire, an impenetrable force field would lead to a 100% death rate. Feeding yourself would be a little tricky, no?

Au contraire, a simple lack of oxygen would kill them long before hunger or thirst did. failing that, they'd boil in thier own body heat.

Collin152
2008-04-25, 05:22 PM
Au contraire, a simple lack of oxygen would kill them long before hunger or thirst did. failing that, they'd boil in thier own body heat.

Not to mention the inability to move.
Even if they lived they'd die.

Citizen Joe
2008-04-25, 07:27 PM
In short, we don't have enough data on elven biology and living condictions to make any judgements on at what rate they will die, and at what points.
And that is exactly the point. Elves are not humans, but the game pretty much treats them as pointy eared chicks. There has to be something so vastly different in their biology that we can't even comprehend. All my calculations show that if they followed human mortality rates at all, they would not be in the numbers that they currently have. So what is it about elves that let them avoid death? I'm not actually here to answer that, but I am saying that GMs should take that into consideration when they apply the fluff to the elven race and when they roleplay that race.

GoC
2008-04-25, 07:31 PM
My results are that, by the end of the breeding age (middle aged), elves have had 8 times as many deaths as humans and only about 93% as many surviving fertile females. That means that, in the elven female's lifetime, she needs to produce 8.6 times as many children as a comparable human female. Now, that breeding age is five times as long, but that still means that annually, elves need to produce 72% more children than humans. Not exactly what you would call poor fertility rates.
What?:smallconfused:
I'm getting 97% surviving to breading age. That means elves need to produce 5% more children than humans.

Dervag
2008-04-25, 07:52 PM
And that is exactly the point. Elves are not humans, but the game pretty much treats them as pointy eared chicks. There has to be something so vastly different in their biology that we can't even comprehend. All my calculations show that if they followed human mortality rates at all, they would not be in the numbers that they currently have. So what is it about elves that let them avoid death? I'm not actually here to answer that, but I am saying that GMs should take that into consideration when they apply the fluff to the elven race and when they roleplay that race.Now THAT is a cogent argument. I like.

My basic idea is that elves have more low-level casters than most D&D races. This has some advantages:
1)It explains (partly) why they are able to hold their own against enemies even though they are stereotypically a low-population species that take a much longer timescale to replace losses than their enemies,
2)It ties in neatly with both the Tolkein elf tradition and the older Northern European tradition it's drawn from in which the elves have inherent magic.
3)The presence of (relatively) large numbers of low level casters in their communities explains why they don't die of diseases very often. Disease takes time to carry you off- if every elven community is within a short ride of the nearest 5th level cleric, there will be very few deaths from disease. Since disease is one of the main sources of mortality, that also brings their mortality rate down.
_____________________

Or you could go for a more elaborate and ambitious explanation. Perhaps elves who die 'prematurely' on their own soil will come back to life of their own accord after a month or two- if the elves perform the proper (not very difficult) nature magic rituals.




just a couple of points:

1) someone living in a medival setting is exposed to a very different set of conditions to someone alive in a modern setting. not many of us need to worry about falling off a horse, but quite a few historical people have been seriously injured/killed by failed ride checks . things like contaminated water (everyone drank beer back then, even the kids. the water could kill ya), poor sanitation, limited medical knowledge (so a non leathal cut could get gangrene and be leathal), high population density (meaning plagues can rip though a city in no time), and Malnutrition would increase death rates...Yeah. But "high population density" doesn't apply to elves so much. Elves are bred for forests- even if they do live in cities, I'd expect their cities to be have lots of parks and exquisitely planned landscaping. So elves wouldn't end up having mass pandemics that spread through densely packed cities faster than even a squad of archpriests could bring them under control. Humans might.

And most of those other factors aren't as threatening in a D&D world. There's no obvious reason for casters not to use spells like Cure Disease or Cure Minor Wounds to save someone's life by removing their dysentery or disinfecting a wound. The spell slots don't actually cost anything but time to use, and the time cost is quite low. Clerics of low level who live among a community have no reason not to use spells to preserve the lives of their parishioners- whether or not they can afford a 500 gp fee or whatever.

It's a common fictional trope that elves have plenty of magic and considerable knowledge of the healing arts. Why should we be surprised that they have enough low level clerics that you can find someone to heal your sick child for a modest or negligible price by your standards on several days' notice?


3) elves take far too long to come of age. I mean, a 110-year old elf is as mature, mentally and physically, as a 15 year old human. Just think about that for a second. Thier also very slow to learn, i must note, as a elven wizard takes, on average, 35 years to learn what a human wizard does on average in 7, and can take up to 60 years to get it right.I think the most sensible thing to do is hypothesize that elves should reach basic physical maturity (old enough to look out for themselves and to resist diseases as an adult would) fairly quickly.

Then they have an extremely prolonged late adolescence. The elven culture doesn't expect them to be productive (because they're not going to drop dead of old age in a few more decades), so they aren't.

Then it takes something like 70 or 80 years for them to get the impulse to party out of their system.

It sounds silly by the standards of human sociology and psychology, but so does living in a cave and eating... er... mushrooms. And yet nobody thinks dwarves are improbable.


We don't know what diseases affect elves, and if they suffer form fatal diseases (at the very least, they are not going to be affected by human diseases)Well, they might. Their biochemistry is very different, but it might be subject to infection by similar kinds of germs.

If you can catch diseases from a bird (and you totally can), you can probably catch diseases from an elf and vice versa. I mean, in that case at least you're both mammalian. And (by all appearances) primates.


Au contraire, a simple lack of oxygen would kill them long before hunger or thirst did. failing that, they'd boil in thier own body heat.Yes, but it would be tricky feeding yourself.

Not sure about the body heat thing... gotta think about that. It depends on how energy dissipated by the shield behaves.

dukeh016
2008-04-25, 08:13 PM
OK, I went back with that actuarial data by age and charted out the mortality rates for humans and then elves (on the basis of 5 human years = 1 elf year). Again, this is based on 2008 US standards which is about a 0.833% mortality rate. By comparison, 1900 US mortality rate was about twice that and Europe was 3 times that.


The difference between U.S. death rates and the rates of a fantasy race hold such great difference I can't understand why we keep applying them. Considering "remove disease," which would hypothetically kill any invasive pathogen, the line of cure and vigor spells, which hypothetically heal any wound short of amputation (regeneration handles that!), and the completely different societal structures (which would heavily influence things like war, accidental deaths, starvation, etc.) it occurs to me that mayhaps we should look at it from a different view.

I personally like to believe that the population of an area is highly dependent on the current resources. Because of the lack of certain modern things, like factories and fertilizer, populations are kept rather rural and controlled by the variables of their geography. Forest, taking the typical wood elf as an example, has a large amount of wild life but isn't very conducive to the agrarian way. Hence elves live in small communities. If there are too many elves, they are forced to migrate or lose population.

Of course the simplest answer is the same answer to why dwarves exist: magic! Those little devils just happen to exist because somewhere along the line someone said "man, wouldn't it be awesome if my character had a beard, loved to drink, and talked in an awesome accent?" (Can't really blame em there, eh?) Point being, I don't think there needs to be an explanation thats based on modern time (unless you are playing d20 modern, of course). And if you really want one, then use Darwinism.

PC: How come the elves live here?
DM: Because of a combination of historical, biological, and geographical necessities that resulted in the current society. Now shut up and roll initiative for being lippy.

If that explanation isn't enough, then make something up! Magic always works.

Regards,
Duke

shadow_archmagi
2008-04-25, 08:28 PM
Dwarves eat Plump Helmets. Duuh.

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Main_Page

Dervag
2008-04-26, 01:55 AM
I like to analyze these things in terms of the principles of evolution and sociology, rather than just saying "magic."

The problem is that unless I start concocting specific bits of 'technobabble' to explain how the magic works, saying "it's magic" doesn't give me any ideas I can use to flesh out the details of the things the magic is powering. I can do the technobabble, but it's more fun to use what I think of as a more rigorous approach that gives me more common-sensical consequences.

Dannoth
2008-04-26, 10:56 AM
That's why you play the "heros". If the GM will not let you reroll (at least once) a 5 stat ... maybe you need to dump a higher score into that stat.