Elves And Levels

[Shard O'Glase]

Naw, more low-mid elvels percentage wise I cans ee, but at high levels just come upw ith ways to avoid dying of old age, reincarnaiton, undeath, transfer your brain whatever. Long life wont help the elves because at hihg levels you have ways to aovid age problems.

And besides elves are wussies too afraid to leave there momas skirts to go up and fight the real monsters needed to get to the high levels.

 

[Desdichado]

SHARK, we've missed you! Where've you been the last few months, buddy?

 

[Angcuru]

Naw, more low-mid elvels percentage wise I cans ee, but at high levels just come upw ith ways to avoid dying of old age, reincarnaiton, undeath, transfer your brain whatever. Long life wont help the elves because at hihg levels you have ways to aovid age problems.

And besides elves are wussies too afraid to leave there momas skirts to go up and fight the real monsters needed to get to the high levels.

you sir, are an idiot!


and on a more thread-related
And elves DO live forever, it's just the factor of them desiring to move on. There ARE those who ignore that desire, ever hear of Ascended elves?

 

[Shard O'Glase]

what no smilie?

 

[Desdichado]

SHARK, my opinion on this issue will echo the primary discrepancy from which the two of us approach homebrewing: in my opinion the setting comes first, and the mechanics should reflect the setting, and your style is more along the lines of let's build a setting that reflects the mechanics.

So, to me, elves shouldn't be high levels just because they're long-lived, because that's a case of mechanics driving setting, not the other way around. A good solution, of course, is that most folks don't advance in levels just by hanging around living their standard lives -- only truly unusual individuals like PCs and certain NPCs advance in character class levels. That seems to be the assumption of base D&D anyway, so I think it works well enough to explain why only the occasional elf will be really high level.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It really depends on your elves, since elves vary from campaign to campaign....

I'd personally say no. Because *everything* in the time span of the elves is multiplied.

Say an average human lives 70 years, and an average elf lives 7000 years. I would say, effectively, this boils down to the same things...

Humans reach maturity at 12. Elves, 1200. It takes humans maybe 5 years to learn how to use a sword. For an elf, it takes 500.

Adventuring elves are a slight anomoly, because they're pressing themselves harder than the rest of their society. They gain skill quicker, and probably die sooner because of the stress.

The extra time an elf usuall spends doing things gives them time to *perfect* it, and to look cool doing it, and to appreciate it in all it's nuances. An elf who gains power faster just doesn't have the time to appreciate all the nuances of their abilities. They gain power too quickly.

So, it's possible to explain that elves don't rule the world by explaining that everything a human can do quickly, and elf has to take an eternity (but abuot an equal percentage).

That's not going to hold true for all elves everywhere, but I prefer a world in which age doesn't nessecarily equate dominance.

 

[Angcuru]

But we're not talking about commoners, here. The only characters with real levels are adventurers and other significant individuals. But still, the elves may not have overwhelmingly higher amounts of high-level characters per capita, but they would generally have the higher-level characters, being as they live practially forever and have LOADS of time to train, etc.

 

[Gez]

And elves DO live forever, it's just the factor of them desiring to move on. There ARE those who ignore that desire, ever hear of Ascended elves?

Nah. You're confusing D&D elves with melnibonoldorelves. They are not the same. The whole "call to the west" and "fading to Arvandor" things is no more -- thankfully, as I don't want this kind of thing to be shoved down my campaign's metaphorical mouth. Or arse. Or whatever.

In other words, unless you house-rule it in your campaign, elves are mortal. And there is no mention at all of "ascended elves". Not in their PC write-up in the PH, not in their monster write-up in the MM, heck, not even in Races of Faerûn (which isn't core, by the way).


Now, as Psion said, levels are a factor of heroism, not age. You don't need to be old to have lots of XP in D&D. One of my PC gained 5 levels while aging only two weeks.

And elves are likely to be the less heroic race of all -- they are few, have low birth rate, long long life expectancy, little puny ridiculous Constitution, and they prefer prancing, singing, drinking, frolicking (and in the rare times they are in a sober and serious mood, studying magic) than traveling to noisy stinking cities with boring stinky dwarves and humans to equip for treks in icky stinking dungeon and fight ugly stinking monsters.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

they live for like 700 years not practically forever. They are described in their personalities as not being as focussed as other races. There might be the incredibly rare elf who adventures hard core for most of those 700 years, but most who are adventurers would likely adventure a bit and then write poetry or something maybe adventure some more then spend a 100 years trying to make the perfect quiche. They would likely have very little more adventure time than a more motivated short lived race like humans. And the few elves that did get more adventure time would easily be duplicated by the much more numerous humans who got reincarnated for another 50 years of life, and or went lich or some other life extending program.

 

[Angcuru]

Aw hell, I know I'm not getting my point across....time to do....something else.