Race life expectancy issues

I think I disagree with a basic premise that most folks on this thread seem to accept without question.

I don't believe that someone who has been practicing his craft for 200 years is going to be all that much better than someone who has been practicing his craft for 15 years. The vast majority of people do not keep learning and growing and stretching their brains their entire lives. Most people learn enough to do their job well, practice until their skills become instinctive, and then that's it.

Put more simply, most people reach a skill plateau where they're as good as they're going to get. Improvement after that tends to be only in response to extraordinary events that force them to stretch themselves.

So your elf warrior has fought 300 battles. So what? He learned all he was going to learn in the first 12.

Wolfwood2 said:

Put more simply, most people reach a skill plateau where they're as good as they're going to get. Improvement after that tends to be only in response to extraordinary events that force them to stretch themselves.

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Wolfwood2 said:

So your elf warrior has fought 300 battles. So what? He learned all he was going to learn in the first 12.

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Using XP rules, it depends on what he's fighting. If he's repelling invasions from the Abyss, he stands to gain a lot of XP. But then he's not likely to survive 12 battles (he'd be like an adventurer, in this case). If he's just fighting Orcs Orcs Orcs, he'll learn nothing new; he'll just fight like a robot repeating the same finely-tuned maneuvers over and over, and since the EL's would be so far below his own level he'd gain next to no XP ... and he'd -still- be at at least some risk of getting cut down by a few lucky arrows. That's where you get the risk vs. practice balancing act.

In the other example, that of a wizard who moves into the city and keeps honing his craft. Let's not forget that amassing the sort of power a 20th level wizard possesses is not a lesson in ease -or- safety regardless of the amount of time he has. If he's going to pull that off without adventuring, there'd have to at least be some degree of fiendish summoning or dangerous experimentation. Plus, if a wizard is sitting in a tower in the middle of a city gaining power, there's going to come a point where the people living around him stop ignoring his presence. Other power groups within the city/region will start becoming threatened by the wizard. He might be pressured to keep his power in check, or he might be forced to perform extensive amounts of favors which prevent him from devoting too much time to his personal advancement. If he doesn't cooperate, powerful adventuring groups get secretely funded to do you-know-what. So maybe that 500 year old elf in the tower is only a 12th level wizard because he knows the local Merchant Guild is always keeping an eye on him.

KoshPWNZYou said:

Using XP rules,

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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

XP is metagame for advancement of player characters. I thought we were discussing realism issues of why elves don't become uber-skilled over their long lives. A prodigy might pick up character levels from only intense training, and someone without the spark of potential might never level up no matter how much xp they shoudl theoretically have earned.

Any realism argument that starts with xp rules, I disregard.

In the other example, that of a wizard who moves into the city and keeps honing his craft. Let's not forget that amassing the sort of power a 20th level wizard possesses is not a lesson in ease -or- safety regardless of the amount of time he has. If he's going to pull that off without adventuring, there'd have to at least be some degree of fiendish summoning or dangerous experimentation. Plus, if a wizard is sitting in a tower in the middle of a city gaining power, there's going to come a point where the people living around him stop ignoring his presence. Other power groups within the city/region will start becoming threatened by the wizard. He might be pressured to keep his power in check, or he might be forced to perform extensive amounts of favors which prevent him from devoting too much time to his personal advancement. If he doesn't cooperate, powerful adventuring groups get secretely funded to do you-know-what. So maybe that 500 year old elf in the tower is only a 12th level wizard because he knows the local Merchant Guild is always keeping an eye on him.

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Magic is one of those things that is extremely abstracted in D&D. Your explanantion makes as much sense as anything else.

Wolfwood2 said:

XP is metagame for advancement of player characters. I thought we were discussing realism issues of why elves don't become uber-skilled over their long lives.

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But there are realism-based interpretations. The warrior fighting a Demon that's much stronger and has a wide array of special abilities has to adapt to the new challenge and develop new strategies. The warrior fighting the same old Orc is just doing the same old thing. The XP gap has a valid explanation.

Magic is one of those things that is extremely abstracted in D&D. Your explanantion makes as much sense as anything else.

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Probably because it's just the one came up with at that moment. As a DM trying to provide explanations for why this works or why that works, all you can do is abstract. If a player were to ask me one of the questions that has been asked here, all I could do is generate an answer that at least makes some sense and somewhat limits the need for SOD. But there's still going to be some SOD -- you can't have it otherwise in a fantasy setting.

Wolfwood2 said:

I think I disagree with a basic premise that most folks on this thread seem to accept without question.

I don't believe that someone who has been practicing his craft for 200 years is going to be all that much better than someone who has been practicing his craft for 15 years. The vast majority of people do not keep learning and growing and stretching their brains their entire lives. Most people learn enough to do their job well, practice until their skills become instinctive, and then that's it.

Put more simply, most people reach a skill plateau where they're as good as they're going to get. Improvement after that tends to be only in response to extraordinary events that force them to stretch themselves.

So your elf warrior has fought 300 battles. So what? He learned all he was going to learn in the first 12.

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Even if we are going for pure realism, I'm not sure if I can agree. All performance in physical abilities in real life steadily increases with age (experience), until it declines with age again. If you wouldn't benefit from doing something the two thousandst time, I'm sure athletes wouldn't bother training so much.

Of course if you do some physical activity for hundreds of years, it's imagineable you would hit a point where you are completely perfect, depending on how complicated the activity is. A runner probably cannot increase his performance forever, but a fencer could easily learn every fencing style out there until he is a master in all of them, and then mix and match to improve it. And pick up martial arts, human anatomy and whatever he fancies. The fencer who has fought for hundreds of years would probably be incredibly good at predicting his enemy's moves.

And adding to that, if you want to have internal consistency in a fantasy setting, then you have to operate in a world in which people can do things they usually shouldn't be able to do (the heroes and the villians at least). That doesn't mean NPCs have to gain "XP" per se, but the limits of human (and elven) abilities are evidently a lot higher.


And that were just the physical abilities. For the mental abilities, certainly science and by extension magic (which is usually portrayed similar, at least with book-learning wizards), ability does continously increase. There is still some decline with age, that's why young scientists can compete with the old, but thankfully our elves won't have to deal with it.
The centuries' old elves should be able to aquire unimaginable amounts of knowledge, certainly much more than their human colleagues.

Interesting thread. A lot of people seem determined to come up with ways of explaining why elves aren't uber skilled compared to humans. But I find those rationalizations unsatisfying. I think they WOULD be uber skilled.

Its simply inevitable. I also think elves should be special, not just humans with pointy ears. My friend SHARK gives all elves the half-celestial template to reflect their innate power as immortal beings of legend. To me that is a far more satisfying approach then to just say that elves mature slowly or are lazy.

I much prefer the Tolkien-esque Noldur elves who knew how to kick ass and take names to the D&D version of elves as a hedonistic and lazy art lovers.

But I also like the image of elves as a wild and alien fey creatures sort of like in Warlords of the Accordlands.

One of the things I like about 4e is the Eladrin-Elf dichotomy. For my homebrew, I think I'll alter the rules to make Eladrin into the immortal badass beings of legend ala Tolkien. Essentially ancient refugees from the Celestial realms in mortal form, and Elves into exotic and alien refugees from the Feywild who can be bound or burned by the touch of cold iron, easily entranced by music, and affected by other classic fey vulnerabilities.

I like to make races interesting and unique. Not just have humans with pointy ears syndrome. As far as balance for the Eladrin, I'll think of something. Being burned by the touch of cold iron, and entranced by music seem pretty viable penalties to start with for Elves.

Banshee16 said:

Is there like a Pathfinder PHB or something? Where their variants etc. are described? As I understand it, the Pathfinder series is a book full of adventures each month, in a shared setting they have created. But is there like a "core book"?

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Not yet. Pathfinder is about half adventure, half world guide in each issue. So this last one in addition to the adventure had a section on how keeps are managed in Varasia, a gazeteer of Varasia, and the races section. And there's always a MM addition as well.

Anthtriel said:

Even if we are going for pure realism, I'm not sure if I can agree. All performance in physical abilities in real life steadily increases with age (experience), until it declines with age again. If you wouldn't benefit from doing something the two thousandst time, I'm sure athletes wouldn't bother training so much.

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I think the reason for continual training isn't to keep improving, it's to prevent the inevitable decline that would occur if they were to stop training.

Anthtriel said:

Of course if you do some physical activity for hundreds of years, it's imagineable you would hit a point where you are completely perfect, depending on how complicated the activity is. A runner probably cannot increase his performance forever, but a fencer could easily learn every fencing style out there until he is a master in all of them, and then mix and match to improve it. And pick up martial arts, human anatomy and whatever he fancies. The fencer who has fought for hundreds of years would probably be incredibly good at predicting his enemy's moves.

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No, I don't think you would become completely perfect. The benefit from constant practice goes from improvement in the beginning to upkeep and maintenance as your skill improves. There's a limit to how skilled you can become, that can't be overcome no matter how much you train. People don't level up. The amount of dedication they put towards a field allows them to become better, but not overcome the limitations imposed on them by biology.

Anthtriel said:

And adding to that, if you want to have internal consistency in a fantasy setting, then you have to operate in a world in which people can do things they usually shouldn't be able to do (the heroes and the villians at least). That doesn't mean NPCs have to gain "XP" per se, but the limits of human (and elven) abilities are evidently a lot higher.

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The limits of individual elves and humans are higher in fantasy, but that doesn't have to apply to the race as a whole. D&D is a heroic fantasy, and heroes are singular people, almost by definition.

Anthtriel said:

And that were just the physical abilities. For the mental abilities, certainly science and by extension magic (which is usually portrayed similar, at least with book-learning wizards), ability does continously increase. There is still some decline with age, that's why young scientists can compete with the old, but thankfully our elves won't have to deal with it.
The centuries' old elves should be able to aquire unimaginable amounts of knowledge, certainly much more than their human colleagues.

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Simply not true. In the more cerebral fields like physics and mathematics, most of the true breakthroughs are done by the young.

TwoSix said:

Simply not true. In the more cerebral fields like physics and mathematics, most of the true breakthroughs are done by the young.

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Mental capacities decrease with age. Unfortunately, everything gets worse with age

The D&D model of gaining INT/WIS/CHA with age are not quite accurate. Of course, neither are fireballs

Banshee