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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8683363" data-attributes="member: 6790260">There's an interesting reverse of this same concept, applied to dragonborn.That is, dragonborn generally have lifespans equivalent to humans (or at least they did in 4e, and I don't really care if that's changed.) But...dragonborn also mature more quickly than humans. Much more quickly. Shockingly quickly, in fact.Dragonborn gestate in their eggs for something reasonably similar to human pregnancy times, but this allows dragonborn women to, y'know, do things instead of being stuck pregnant. This also helps alleviate many of the rather serious issues with giving birth since dragonborn lay their eggs at least a few months before the child is ready to hatch. IIRC, dragonborn children are even semi-aware of their environment in the weeks leading up to hatching.As soon as they hatch, though, the developmental differences set in. Dragonborn children can stand and walk within hours of hatching. Not just crawl, walk. Can you imagine how different it would be for human development if infants were standing and walking within their first few hours? Children would be both much more dangerous (being, y'know, way more mobile) but also much better able to protect themselves and far less dependent on their parents for survival. Though unlikely, it is actually plausible that an abandoned dragonborn "infant" (if that's even the appropriate term) could legitimately be raised by bears or whatever and actually have a decent chance of survival.But it doesn't stop there. The mother nurses her child for the first few months of life as their teeth grow in, and then gradually transitions the child to soft food, then ordinary food. By the end of the child's first year, it has the development of a three-year-old human, meaning many dragonborn are fully capable of speech at least by six months of age, possibly younger. Again, imagine a six-month-old human that can walk unaided and talk. That's crazy!We're also told that dragonborn "mature quickly throughout [their] youthful development" (which presumably means puberty). By 12 years old, most dragonborn have reached adult height and simply need to "fill out" their imposing form over the next three years or so. Meaning, dragonborn have the development of a 3-year-old after one year, and the development of roughly a 16-year-old at 12, being fully physical and mental adults at 15, where humans take three to six additional years to get that done.Now, to put that in some context: Incredible prodigies among human beings generally hit their stride in their mid-teens, aka the time the average dragonborn becomes physically and cognitively mature. Truly unbelievable masters, like Mozart, begin their impressive feats before they even hit double digits.This means a "Dragonborn Alexander the Great," who was commanding armies and winning battles etc. at a mere 16 years of age, would probably be closer to 12-13. Dragonborn literally are anime protagonists. They legitimately could have full careers and impressive accomplishments under their belts before officially becoming teenagers. And this developmental head start will stick with them their whole lives, and (for women) be compounded by not having to waste so much time unable to do things because of pregnancy, on top of having far lower infant and maternal mortality due to far lower risk of puerperal fever and other postpartum infections. Dragonborn settlements will hit self-sustaining populations about 30% faster than human equivalents. Dragonborn societies will have (effectively) double manpower because their women are fully fit to participate in as much combat as their men in most cases. And, other than their higher dependency on protein-rich diets (and thus, most likely, their need to depend on pastoralism and/or aquaculture much more than irrigation-based agriculture), they generally have the same psychological and physiological needs as humans. Oh, and they heal better and faster than humans do, so even if they suffer injuries or illnesses, they're more likely to survive and bounce back.Dragonborn, in practice, should be an incredibly scary group to see roll into an area. They would be primarily limited by dietary concerns and socioeconomic conditions, not by developmental ones, because in an environment where dragonborn and human(oid)s have their needs equivalently met, dragonborn should absolutely outcompete humans. It wouldn't even take that long, from a historical perspective: if dragonborn generations are about 15 years while human generations are about 20 years, then even if the human population started out 100 times larger than the dragonborn one, in 400 years the dragonborn population will fully catch up. And that's ONLY counting the generational-turnover factor; the lower death rates (particularly among "pregnant" dragonborn and infants) and higher resilience against injury should prop those numbers up even more. (Of course, this assumes purely exponential growth, which is a fallacious assumption, but we're talking about small foothold societies where logistic concerns shouldn't affect things TOO much.)I find all of this incredibly fascinating, from both a pure physiological standpoint and from a cultural-impact standpoint. Childhood is a brief and fleeting thing for humans; for dragonborn, it's practically "blink and you'll miss it." And yet they have essentially just as much lifespan ahead of them as humans do. They get started early and the dragonborn train does not stop.</blockquote>

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