Elves And Levels
- Thread starter SHARK
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drnuncheon
Explorer
I think that elves all being very high levels would make for a great alternate viewpoint on D&D - somewhat more Tolkien-esque, really, or recalling the Celtic legends that the Professor drew from.
I had an idea for a world with a dominant culture like this - the elves did not have the "flighty" CG mentality, but instead a more organized, orderly (Lawful) mindset. Their superior skill at arms and magic allowed them to conquer large swathes of territory and set up an empire and a bureaucracy worthy of anicent China.
For a while, it seemed like their low birth rate would hold them in check, but then it was found that elves who bred with human women were more likely to have surviving children. These half-elves, although members of the aristocracy by virtue of their elven blood, would often not live long enough to inherit their elven parent's holdings, creating a large class of people eager to gain their own lands, by whatever means necessary.
The edges of the Empire are continually expanding as half-elven children seek to conquer more land as their only chance for power, and then send for elven-blooded wives. So the Empire continues in a cycle of expansion...
J
I had an idea for a world with a dominant culture like this - the elves did not have the "flighty" CG mentality, but instead a more organized, orderly (Lawful) mindset. Their superior skill at arms and magic allowed them to conquer large swathes of territory and set up an empire and a bureaucracy worthy of anicent China.
For a while, it seemed like their low birth rate would hold them in check, but then it was found that elves who bred with human women were more likely to have surviving children. These half-elves, although members of the aristocracy by virtue of their elven blood, would often not live long enough to inherit their elven parent's holdings, creating a large class of people eager to gain their own lands, by whatever means necessary.
The edges of the Empire are continually expanding as half-elven children seek to conquer more land as their only chance for power, and then send for elven-blooded wives. So the Empire continues in a cycle of expansion...
J
ruleslawyer
Registered User
Gez said:
Hate to say it, Gez, but now who's trying to cram a ridiculous portrayal of elves down people's campaigns?
D&D elves are somewhere between faerie elves and JRRT elves; there's really no getting around this. Being magical and excessively long-lived just tends to militate toward those conclusions. Moreover, a society which trains all of its members in the longsword and longbow hardly could be considered restricted to "prancing, singing, drinking, [and] frolicking."
That said, I happen to use actual otherwordly, JRRT-style elves IMC, just because it provides me with a nice way to stick them with an ECL and therefore discourage players from running hordes of absurdly long-lived PCs who aren't played to that long life or alien experience. IMC, elves are the most alien of core races due to their near-agelessness, the corresponding ancient heritage of their race, and their proclivity for magic. The ECL, incidentally, explains why they don't level particularly well; elves are fragile combatants against foes of equal CR (a 1st-level elf fighter is ECL 3, IMC) and even if they consistently win combats, they get less experience for them.
s/LaSH
First Post
Most good points are already made. Here's another one that even applies to Tolkein elves.
Magic items.
What do elves do with their time in Tolkein? Why, they make magic items. Swords that glow, thermoptic camouflage cloaks, super-nutrition bread... these are just the things they give to stinky non-elves. How much magic must they have stored around the tops of their trees?
The XP cost for all this stuff is going to be startling. Blam, control mechanism for elves - spellcasters at least, and most elves will be taking caster levels. Maybe not flashy casters most of the time, but look at the defenses of Rivendell or the properties of their average weapon. They're using a lot of permanent magic, and that has an XP cost.
Yeah... that's about it. One more log to add to the fire of human supremacy...
Magic items.
What do elves do with their time in Tolkein? Why, they make magic items. Swords that glow, thermoptic camouflage cloaks, super-nutrition bread... these are just the things they give to stinky non-elves. How much magic must they have stored around the tops of their trees?
The XP cost for all this stuff is going to be startling. Blam, control mechanism for elves - spellcasters at least, and most elves will be taking caster levels. Maybe not flashy casters most of the time, but look at the defenses of Rivendell or the properties of their average weapon. They're using a lot of permanent magic, and that has an XP cost.
Yeah... that's about it. One more log to add to the fire of human supremacy...
John Crichton
First Post
I had a similar idea to this but yours is a bit of a twist on it. Consider this yoinked for my next homebrew.drnuncheon said:
Skarp Hedin
First Post
Said Gez:
Gez, this proves that you're the coolest gnome in all France.
That aside, in my campaign the elves don't live quite as long as PH elves, but they're still the longest lived PC race. Why aren't they all high level? Well, their rulers are pretty high level, but the average elf isn't.. they're just not very vital. After having lost their empire, they've become insular and withdrawn, spending much time in bitterness over their reduced stature in the world.
Well, that's the normal elves, the elves everyone knows about.
The other elves, the ones that aren't lost in self-pity, they're a highly spiritual and mystical subrace -- they don't care about power and all that, your average Bright Lander elf is content to ply his fishing net or throw his clay in peace and serenity. Low population with them.
Therefore, with both groups, you get a small set of powerful types, and a bunch of not-powerful types. As for the PH elves, well.. I think Psion hit the nail on the head -- sure, they have a long time to do stuff, but how heroic are most people? I constantly see mentions of how elves make all this supremely high-quality equipment and what-not because they're willing, even eager, to spend ten years to make one bow. Or carving or necklace or whatever. That's going to give you a lot less time to be slaughtering orcs, skewering dragons, and negotiating cease-fires between warring nations, and hence, less experience. Spending ten years making something isn't very challenging when you're already a member of a race that's supposed to be that patient, so the elf craftsman would earn experience at about the same rate as a human craftsman.
Even the elven favored class, wizard, is a class that encourages a sedentary lifestyle, doing research and penning scrolls.
Gez, this proves that you're the coolest gnome in all France.
That aside, in my campaign the elves don't live quite as long as PH elves, but they're still the longest lived PC race. Why aren't they all high level? Well, their rulers are pretty high level, but the average elf isn't.. they're just not very vital. After having lost their empire, they've become insular and withdrawn, spending much time in bitterness over their reduced stature in the world.
Well, that's the normal elves, the elves everyone knows about.
The other elves, the ones that aren't lost in self-pity, they're a highly spiritual and mystical subrace -- they don't care about power and all that, your average Bright Lander elf is content to ply his fishing net or throw his clay in peace and serenity. Low population with them.
Therefore, with both groups, you get a small set of powerful types, and a bunch of not-powerful types. As for the PH elves, well.. I think Psion hit the nail on the head -- sure, they have a long time to do stuff, but how heroic are most people? I constantly see mentions of how elves make all this supremely high-quality equipment and what-not because they're willing, even eager, to spend ten years to make one bow. Or carving or necklace or whatever. That's going to give you a lot less time to be slaughtering orcs, skewering dragons, and negotiating cease-fires between warring nations, and hence, less experience. Spending ten years making something isn't very challenging when you're already a member of a race that's supposed to be that patient, so the elf craftsman would earn experience at about the same rate as a human craftsman.
Even the elven favored class, wizard, is a class that encourages a sedentary lifestyle, doing research and penning scrolls.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
My argument is pretty simple:
Time x=x Levels
If Time = Levels, then, yeah, the old elves would be the mighty of the PC races.
But if Time x=x levels, there's no reason for any given old elf to be any more powerful than any given old person.
There can be a lot of explanations for the Time x=x Levels equasion. My answer is by saying that an elf that lives 10 times as long as a human is going to take 10 times as long to become just as competent in anything a human can do. That is, IMC, part of the reason humans are seen as quick, impetuous, and rather distastefully grasping (even to your dwarf or gnome, who don't live nearly as long as an elf). They don't learn how to do things RIGHT, they just learn to do 'em well enough, and then go out and use their hack skills.
So a human takes 12 years to get mature. That same elf that lives 10 times as long would take 120 years to do the EXACT SAME THING. They'd just contemplate it for longer, spend it dabbling in the longsword/longbow, spend it slacking off in trees inventing poetry, attending all-night dances, whatever. A human that takes 5 years to master swordplay can do it well. An elf must take 50 years to do it as well, and add in their little elvish cultural quirks to boot.
That's IMC. There's a LOT of ways to slove it, almost as many as there are to view elves themselves.
Time x=x Levels
If Time = Levels, then, yeah, the old elves would be the mighty of the PC races.
But if Time x=x levels, there's no reason for any given old elf to be any more powerful than any given old person.
There can be a lot of explanations for the Time x=x Levels equasion. My answer is by saying that an elf that lives 10 times as long as a human is going to take 10 times as long to become just as competent in anything a human can do. That is, IMC, part of the reason humans are seen as quick, impetuous, and rather distastefully grasping (even to your dwarf or gnome, who don't live nearly as long as an elf). They don't learn how to do things RIGHT, they just learn to do 'em well enough, and then go out and use their hack skills.
So a human takes 12 years to get mature. That same elf that lives 10 times as long would take 120 years to do the EXACT SAME THING. They'd just contemplate it for longer, spend it dabbling in the longsword/longbow, spend it slacking off in trees inventing poetry, attending all-night dances, whatever. A human that takes 5 years to master swordplay can do it well. An elf must take 50 years to do it as well, and add in their little elvish cultural quirks to boot.
That's IMC. There's a LOT of ways to slove it, almost as many as there are to view elves themselves.
Dragonblade
Adventurer
The notion that a human spends 1 year learning the sword and an elf spends 100 is kind of absurd.
If elves were so incompetent and so slow, they would have been wiped out centuries ago by wild animals and nature, let alone orc hordes, dragon attacks, etc.
Rather, SHARK is exactly right, being long-lived does make one incredibly wise and incredibly skilled. An elven fighter who has lived through a hundred years of duels, battles, and wars is going to be exceptionally wise and have very a commanding presence. No human fighter would stand a chance.
The mind set of such a being would be very alien to us. But elves would definitely rule the world unless slowed down by birthrate and even then would probably still rule over vast stable empires of incredible magic and technology.
And the demographics put forth by the DMG where all the world is 1st level characters except for the PCs and a few NPCs is patently ridiculous. Monte Cook completely dropped the ball when he wrote that.
If elves were so incompetent and so slow, they would have been wiped out centuries ago by wild animals and nature, let alone orc hordes, dragon attacks, etc.
Rather, SHARK is exactly right, being long-lived does make one incredibly wise and incredibly skilled. An elven fighter who has lived through a hundred years of duels, battles, and wars is going to be exceptionally wise and have very a commanding presence. No human fighter would stand a chance.
The mind set of such a being would be very alien to us. But elves would definitely rule the world unless slowed down by birthrate and even then would probably still rule over vast stable empires of incredible magic and technology.
And the demographics put forth by the DMG where all the world is 1st level characters except for the PCs and a few NPCs is patently ridiculous. Monte Cook completely dropped the ball when he wrote that.
William Ronald
Explorer
Gez, I will have to remember tht one. I kind of ignored the 2nd Edition "flight of the lemmings" that they put elves through in the FR. (One of the problems with 2nd Edition is that it seemed that FR was having too much of an impact on the core rules.)
Joshua Dyal, I tend to see setting dictating the rules as well. The game
As for elves in general, I would say that adventurers are rare breed. Think about it. Most adventurers go against creatures that legitimately frighten most people. Some even hunt fiends on their native planes.
So, adventurers, and particularly high level adventurers, should be somewhat rare in any society. As for elves, there are also the economic and social roles that individuals must fill in society.
Someone has to farm, make goods for sale at market, sell the goods, and run the government. I suspect that your average elf would mostly be involved with the same activities as his human counterpart -- trying to make a living. (I think the various PC races should practice agriculture. Elves are described in some settings as hunter-gatherers. When would such societies develop the time to support such things as book binders and wizards? Such things indicate the presence of agriculture and civilization.)
With that in mind, I think we have room to make elves as culturally conservative or innovative as we desire. I like flexibility as a DM.
I also think it is somewhat amusing to see how elven lifespans have been adjusted in different editions. Having been part of a 24-year-old campaign, we just keep the aging tables from previous editions. I don't even want to get into the rational of how people would feel if their average lifespan went down from 1,200 years to 700 years. (The equivalent of going from a lifespan of 70 years to almost 41 years.) There are some high level elves in my world, but they do not dominate the world. The effect on level is irrelevant, and I do not have to change a basic fact about a race in my campaign. (I also ignored the old demi-human level limits as they seemed nonsensical.)
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