Concerning Elves

[Bohandas]

The main thing is, the fiction tells us that a 125 year old elf, in 107 extra years of doing stuff, learns absolutely nothing: they know just as much as the 18 year old Human. That extra century of experience is worth absolutely nothing.

That doesn’t make sense, though I understand it for balance (though I imagine something like the new Trance feature could cover some ground).

The way I would handle this is to have there be NO Commoners. Not everyone is a PC class, but everyone is at least an Expert or Warrior, or possibly even an Adept or Magewright. A high number of Adepts and Magewrights also contributes to their society being magical and exotic.

[Unoriginal]

At the very least, The Shepherd's Crown describes the elf queen with wings that:

• Do not disappear when her glamor is destroyed by a rival.
• Leave her with bleeding shoulders after being ripped off.

Which, combined with all the comparisons to social insects, makes me think that the elf queen's true form was some sort of alien fairy.

"Alien fairy" is a good description for Discworld's Elves.

[NecessaryWeevil]

At the very least, The Shepherd's Crown describes the elf queen with wings that:

• Do not disappear when her glamor is destroyed by a rival.
• Leave her with bleeding shoulders after being ripped off.

Which, combined with all the comparisons to social insects, makes me think that the elf queen's true form was some sort of alien fairy.

I "could swear" there were more clues but I would have to reread it all. Or read it for the first time, in the case of TSoD II.

I think there's a scene in which Tiffany goes into a painting / dream / memory, and two of the inhabitants / Queen's minions are sort of like large bee-women. Could that be what you're recalling?

[Slipjig]

Yeah, I find it odd that 5e PC elves have been alive for like a hundred twenty years already (“adulthood” for an elf), but have absolutely nothing to show for those extra years. And that just a young adult elf. If you play a middle aged elf (400 years old-ish), you better have a good story why you’re no more learned or experienced than a 18-year old human.

Yeah, the canonical Elven life timeline in D&D makes zero sense. "They age as fast as humans until they hit 18, then spend a full century living with their parents as 18-year-olds before they are considered 'adults' and leave home." What are they doing during that century? Nobody seems quite sure.

It would make a whole lot more sense if they just aged at 1/5 the rate of humans the whole time.

If you've been a farmer for 300 years, you should be REALLY GOOD at farming. But that's not what D&D covers.

That's not really true though. With very few exceptions, the learning curve on most professions levels off after a few years. The person who has been a seamstress for 30 years probably isn't significantly better than the person who has been doing it for five. If you've spent 50 years as the village blacksmith, but you are still making the same horseshoes and nails you learned to make as an apprentice, you are probably still a Level 1 Expert. Situations where you aren't challenged and don't learn anything shouldn't grant XP.

That applies to fighting disciplines, too. If you learn all the techniques of your school and earn a Black Belt (Level 1 Monk), and then never do anything but practice those same techniques in your dojo without learning anything new, you'll still be a Level 1 Monk 100 years later, no matter how many times you run through those kata.

[Rukelnikov]

That applies to fighting disciplines, too. If you learn all the techniques of your school and earn a Black Belt (Level 1 Monk), and then never do anything but practice those same techniques in your dojo without learning anything new, you'll still be a Level 1 Monk 100 years later, no matter how many times you run through those kata.

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

[RSP]

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

Yeah, if I’ve learned anything from Daniel LaRusso, it’s that practicing the basics, repeatedly, will get you better and better, with each movie.

[Sorinth]

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

That's very true but is there a big difference between the person who practised that one kick 10,000 times and one practised it 100,000 times. In the original example the ratio is 1:10000 in the other it's a factor of 1:10. And it's not like gains will be linear, the first thousand repetitions will provide more growth then the next thousand which provide more growth then the thousand after that, etc... The first ten thousand take you from beginner to expert, but to go from expert to whatever tier is above that is probably a lot more then just repetitions.

[KorvinStarmast]

What are they doing during that century?

Playing too many video games in the basement. (But man, they always get the high score on those games when we go to a tavern. How do they do it?)

[Rukelnikov]

That's very true but is there a big difference between the person who practised that one kick 10,000 times and one practised it 100,000 times. In the original example the ratio is 1:10000 in the other it's a factor of 1:10. And it's not like gains will be linear, the first thousand repetitions will provide more growth then the next thousand which provide more growth then the thousand after that, etc... The first ten thousand take you from beginner to expert, but to go from expert to whatever tier is above that is probably a lot more then just repetitions.

The difference between 10k and 100k will be smaller than 0 to 10k, but there will be a difference nonetheless. It'd probably require a certain understanding of the discipline to grasp the difference in mastery though.

[stoutstien]

I don't tend to have elves as a playable race in my settings but when I do I tend to lean on the ingrained chaos/freedom angle.
Young elves lack the discipline and focus to really learn much of anything past basic tasks. some communities go as far as exiling the young for their youth until their instincts hits some form of equilibrium. Others set mind numbing tasks that can take centuries to perform before the are allowed to pick up any form of real learning.

One player has an elf that spent nearly 80 years counting the thorns in a grove before they shown the necessary patience to begin their path as a cleric.

[Segev]

I do think that the current canon for D&D elves — where they age like humans until their prime, then stay in their prime for hundreds of years, but are considered 'children' the way we consider 17-year-olds to be children until they're 120 or so — should have adventuring elves be 'children' by elven standards. Runaway brats who are going out in the world without proper supervision at age 26, or the like.

My personal preference, though, is for elves to age much more slowly throw out their long lives, so that a 50-year-old elf is still equivalent to a 7 to 10 year old human in growth. With thus comes a biological immaturity to their emotional and mental development. Maybe exceptional circumstances could make them grow up faster, mentally, the way some human kids are forced to by tragic circumstances, but normal, healthy upbringing sees them learning facts and figures, sure, but not the maturity to apply themselves properly to develop skills until they are 115 or so. They learn that much more slowly because they're lay are kiddos, and while kids learn things fast, they also forget them and don't focus and refine them if they're not fun and interesting. And maybe elves shelter them, too, deliberately not teaching them adventuring skills that they would endanger themselves practicing, until they are physically able to handle it more safely.

[Rukelnikov]

Consider that by current canon, a 25 yo Elf might be more mature than a 50 yo one, cause the 25 yo can still remember their past lives and time in arborea, a 50 yo or so is going thru the trauma of losing/having lost that remembrance, which I think act as the equivalent of human adolescence.

[Sorinth]

One angle to consider is that they will need/want a much different work/life balance because you can't follow the human model of become an adult work over half your life and then retire when that work half your life is 400+ years rather then 40. Even if you are changing what work you are doing it's still not all that viable because of the risk of burnout. And burnout from working too hard could very easily be seen as something that culturally elves would be very sensitive too and keen to avoid. So not only would gap years (Or even decades) become common but a typical work week would also probably way less actual work. So for example an elven blacksmith might only spend 2hrs a day at the forge compared to the 8 hour day a human would and as a result take over 4 or even more times (Loss of efficiency) as long to complete the same task. This also kind of leans into the elves are flighty/carefree vibe that they already kind of have as fae and gives that it will get done when it's done, no need to rush it vibe where everyone treats it as there's plenty of time to relax and enjoy oneself.

So an elf noble commissions a famous elf painter to do a family portrait. Rather the one sitting and maybe a few weeks for the artist to do the final touchups, it's a several sittings spread over a whole year where the artist basically moves in with the noble family as a guest and there's constant food and parties and poetry, and other social complexities involved. So the elven painter whose been painting for 400 years might still have less total works done then a human painter over 10 years.

[Slipjig]

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

...is what the sensei who has run out of new things to teach you will say. Sure, you need to practice to MAINTAIN your skills, but you aren't getting any better.

But even if we accept it as true, you hit that 10,000 rep number in a single year doing just 27 reps a day, which should take about 5 minutes daily.

[Rukelnikov]

...is what the sensei who has run out of new things to teach you will say. Sure, you need to practice to MAINTAIN your skills, but you aren't getting any better.

But even if we accept it as true, you hit that 10,000 rep number in a single year doing just 27 reps a day, which should take about 5 minutes daily.

That quote is attributed to Bruce Lee, maybe he ran out of things to teach, but still probably a cut above your regular black belt.

[RSP]

That quote is attributed to Bruce Lee, maybe he ran out of things to teach, but still probably a cut above your regular black belt.

Imagine if he had 100 years to train…

[Anonymouswizard]

One of 4e's better ideas was cutting back elven lifespan.

An idea I had for a setting was making elves be serial hermaphrodites, although I never fully settled on how it worked. But basically they'd have a childhood and grow into adulthood by about age 40, at which point they'd be sex A and overtaken by wanderlust, and these were the elves most people encountered. Eventually, probably sometime in their hundreds, they'd start transitioning and find a community to settle down in and raise children. I think they actually went female->male with relatively short pregnancies, I wanted the wanders to be female to play off the 'effeminate elf' idea.

I never quite worked out if half-elves fit into this somehow or if they just didn't exist.

[Bohandas]

What are they doing during that century?

I still think that the best way to answer that question without having to change the game too much would be "becoming a class other than commoner".

[Doug Lampert]

I still think that the best way to answer that question without having to change the game too much would be "becoming a class other than commoner".

Agreed.

If you want to you can just assume that a human level 1 PC is an exceptionally capable human, while an Elf level 1 PC flunked out of adventurer school six times and all his childhood school buddies are now archmages or something.

PCs being balanced does not mean that the races are balanced, because starting PCs are not random selections from their races, they are specifically selected to be people who've just reached level 1 in a PC class.

Maybe for a kobold that's one in a million, maybe for a human it's one in a thousand, maybe for an elf it's one in 5 and the only reason it's that low is that the other 4 had no interest at all in learning to fight or risking their lives in adventures.

[Bohandas]

I wasn't talking specifically for player characters or player character classes. I meant like the entire elfin village is experts and adepts or better

[JackPhoenix]

Why haven’t they been fighting for 400 years if they’re 500 years old?

Fighting in wars tend to have rather detrimental effect on one's lifespan. If they've been fighting constantly, it's rather unlikely they'll live to be 500 years old. Sure, elves who lived and fought for that long would be terrifying enemies, like every old man in a profession when men die young. They'll also be extremely rare, because while they are not subject to old age like humans are, they are not immune to attrition, and there's much less of them to begin with compared to humans.

I wasn't talking specifically for player characters or player character classes. I meant like the entire elfin village is experts and adepts or better

Are you sure you're on the right section of the forums? No such thing in 5e.

[Hurrashane]

I do think that the current canon for D&D elves — where they age like humans until their prime, then stay in their prime for hundreds of years, but are considered 'children' the way we consider 17-year-olds to be children until they're 120 or so — should have adventuring elves be 'children' by elven standards. Runaway brats who are going out in the world without proper supervision at age 26, or the like.

I've always liked the idea of playing a young elf like that. Have them act like they're so much better, so much more experianced than like, the humans in the party. Only for when they get to elven lands they find out they're essently a petulant child.

[Bohandas]

Are you sure you're on the right section of the forums? No such thing in 5e.

Oops. Well whatever the 5e equivalents are then

[JackPhoenix]

Oops. Well whatever the 5e equivalents are then

Commoners. That's your generic non-combatant statblock.

[Bundin]

That's very true but is there a big difference between the person who practised that one kick 10,000 times and one practised it 100,000 times. In the original example the ratio is 1:10000 in the other it's a factor of 1:10. And it's not like gains will be linear, the first thousand repetitions will provide more growth then the next thousand which provide more growth then the thousand after that, etc... The first ten thousand take you from beginner to expert, but to go from expert to whatever tier is above that is probably a lot more then just repetitions.

That doesn't mesh well with PB going up relatively quickly, once the party of humans and elfs/elves start adventuring.

It could be explained (but still not perfectly) by the way society looks at them. Maybe society doesn't really expect anything from them for the first decades. After all, they're not considered to be adults. So they do what some/many kids and adolescents do when given the chance: fk about and have fun. And then grow into a 'background' when it's age appropriate. Which could be early, if it's Urchin :)

[Grim Portent]

A way to portray it along the dilettante profession changing line of thought would be that elves don't think of themselves as one person, but rather several people over the course of their life, and actively lose their prior skills as they age and change vocation.

When Archmage Finriel Leafhair retires and becomes a baker for the next century, the Archmage is dead, all his skills psychologically blocked off from Pastry Chef Finriel Leafhair. He still has a lot of the knowledge, but is unable and uninterested in applying it to anything, because as far as he's concerned he's not the Archmage, he's just living in the same the body the mage used to. He still knows where his magical artifacts were left, who took over for his wizard tower and so on, but they aren't things he knows about himself, they're things he knows about a person he never met. A sort of partial-reincarnation as it were.

One in a thousand or so elves just don't do this, and instead stay in one role for their whole life, growing to great levels of skill, but the rest just kind of meander through one life after another.


For this idea a starting elf PC is freshly born-again for the first time at about 100 years. They spent some 20 years growing to adulthood, then most of a century in some profession or other, then forgot most of it to take up the sword or spell in the past couple of years. A 500 year old elf is basically the same, they've just 'died' a few more times before.

[Bohandas]

Commoners. That's your generic non-combatant statblock.

Is there an equivalent of the old adept or magewright classes?

[Rukelnikov]

Is there an equivalent of the old adept or magewright classes?

I'd argue the Sidekick classes are basically that, take a commoner, and give them levels in Expert, Spellcaster or Warrior, and you have what you are looking for.

[RSP]

I'd argue the Sidekick classes are basically that, take a commoner, and give them levels in Expert, Spellcaster or Warrior, and you have what you are looking for.

Which leaves us with 1st level PCs being below average unless they 20-year old kids that ran away from home or some such. It’s unfortunately the only backstory that actually makes sense.

[Anymage]

Elves being slackers who take forever to learn their craft (whether this applies to all elves or just PC ones) runs into the immediate problem that many players are disinterested in playing slackers. Plus, it stretches credulity a bit to say that the human, the slacker elf, and the incredibly fast learning aarakocra all happen to wind up having the exact same leveling speed once they begin adventuring with each other.

If I had to try and justify it, I'd go with saying that elves around age 20 were encouraged to go out and adventure. Many will die, but the ones who do return will come back with knowledge, broadened perspectives, and most importantly a good chunk of levels. It helps make them slightly alien, and also helps make elves look badass when every adult elf happens to be a seasoned ex-adventurer.