Elves And Levels

[FireLance]

Another explanation that could work to explain the lack of large numbers of high-level people in the world (especially those from the longer-lived races) is the possibility that the PCs are special.

One of the standard conventions in fiction is that the protagonist is "naturally talented" and able to pick up in a relatively short time skills that would take others years to master. In game terms, it means that the PCs gain XP at a much faster rate than "ordinary" people, and reach higher levels in a shorter time.

The same argument could be applied to longer and shorter lived races. Shorter lived races gain XP at a faster rate than longer lived races. PCs from the longer lived races are the special ones that gain XP as quickly as their (equally exceptional) counterparts from the shorter lived races.

However, even with this argument, the greatest heroes would still be from the longer-lived races. As they have both the talent (rate of XP accumulation), drive (always seeking greater and greater challenges) and length of life to reach tremendously high levels.

 

[William Ronald]

A good point, Fire Lance.

However, humans can also use longevity magics to stay alive indefinitely. (There are alternatives to becoming a lich.)

 

[Graf]

First off, levels are more about heroism than experience in 3e. According to the demographic rules in the DMG, a MASSIVE majority of the populace is 1st level.

That being the case, I don't see big chunks of the elven population making it to 20th level.

Except that the way the xp rules work this just isn't true. Elven characters are treated just like everyone else.

I see that a lot of people like D&D the traditional way, but the rulesset doesn't back up any of the story-driven ideas people have presented.

Shark is right. Even a slow elf is going to be 6 or 7th level within 70 to a hundred years.
(SKR did a little opinion piece about human commoners that supports this .)

Think about it like this, if an elf gets just 10 xp a week, starting at maturity, by the time they're 300 (200*52*10) they have 104,000. This is someone who is doing just about as little as possible.

There are a few ways to stop this but not many that appeal (to me anyway):
*Assume that only PCs get to advance using the rules in the books. Everybody else advances some other slower way.
*Make elves compulsive and inefficent multi-classers. (aristocrat 1/expert 1/bard 1/warrior 1) is advancing at 60% slower...)
*"Social" reasons... most elves aren't interested in power. So they may have lots of xperience points but they don't "advance in level".
*Catacysim killed off all elves. The ones that remain are really young.
*no-standard level advancement requirements. You have to take a test or get a magic item to advance in level.
*Strange elven dementia issues (I actually used this in on FR game) basically elves have periods of decades or centuries when they go kind of mental and are pretty much depressed and useless. When they recover they've forgotten their previous classes and abilities completely.

The best rules based stop is the idea that there is a CR-cap. Once you get to 7th level the weakest of all possible encounters (CR1) don't give you xp any more so you never get any more xp unless you fight.

The big problem with this is that it only work if you ONLY give xp out for COMBAT. If you do give xp out for other tense situations then...
Elves will be be interacting with other elves, other elves who advance at the SAME rate at yourself and have been given similar opportunities. In other words the people around you aren't 1st level.
Then to continue your progression you only need to do something significant once every few years. Stuff like petition the elven council for better irrigation for your farm, oversee your daughter's wedding, arrange a deal to sell some of your pottery to another elven merchant, get involved in a fight with your grandmom (who's probably dipping into the epic level handbook by this point) or anything else that might challenge you as a person.

Except for the fact that we humans are humanocentric there's no reason for low level communities of elves dotting the landscape in most worlds.

Sorry.

[edits = clarity, duplication]

 

[John Crichton]

The only way you would give out any type of XP on a weekly, daily or monthly basis would be for the NPC classes. PC's don't get more experienced by sitting around, they get it by putting themselves in danger and living through it to fight another day.

I've always seen the core 11 classes as the typical "hero" or important figure types. Maybe 1 out of 1000 (just a number) beings is this type of person, probably even less than that. Consider this: An elven couple gives birth to 6 healthy children over their lives. This is spread out over the course of hundreds of years. A human couple can do the same in the span of 30 years. If you started each populous at the same number, the humans would overtake elves in a very short amount of time by sheer mass.

Putting all that together makes it easy for me to rationalize that only a certain amount of elves will become "heroes or important people" in my world per generation. As for their advancement being scaled compared to the other races, it makes sense. Elves have many years to grow and develop, plus each individual is considered valuble to the whole because births are relatively rare. I guess the point is, why rush? If I knew that my natural lifespan would be 500 years I would certainly take my time to do things (and get them right, as someone else mentioned) especially if that is what the rest of my culture was doing.

But that's just core-type elves. There are many other cool takes that I have seen. It all comes down to just looking at the PC classes and seeing what one has to go thru to gain the skills listed in the class description...

 

[Fenes 2]

IMC, elves just lack the drive of humans. They are an old race, rooted in traditions that date back 1000s of years, and arch-conservative to boot. Not something that leads to quick adaption of new things and ideas. There are exceptions, but most elves just can't keep up with humans when it comes to learning something in the shortest amount of time.
Elven culture is stagnant, just producing more ornate versions, more refined versions of what they already have. Sure, their products are among the most beautiful there are, but they lack variety. Longswords, long bows, elven chain all alround - few if any suits of plate mail or greatswords. And in the end, a masterwork longsword made by elves will kill you all the same as a masterwork longsword made by humans, it will just look fancier.
Same goes for magic - I don't have elven high mages dominating the spellcasters, since they are just too conservative, and less prone to experiment, or to try new approaches.

Yup, no uber-elves IMC.

 

[seasong]

Well, I got ignored . Too dry, perhaps. Here's my point with no math:

Elves who advance quickly, die quickly.

Elves who advance slowly, don't get that huge a leg up from their 700 year lifespan, especially compared to highly populous humans who DO risk themselves.

You don't need any special rules to limit elves. Darwin will limit them for you.

 

[Psion]

Except that the way the xp rules work this just isn't true. Elven characters are treated just like everyone else.

But it is. Look in your DMG. Like 99% of the population is 1st level.

The XP system is geared towards adventurers. There is no reason to assume that a commoner is going to be racking up XP.

Shark is right. Even a slow elf is going to be 6 or 7th level within 70 to a hundred years.
(SKR did a little opinion piece about human commoners that supports this .)

That relied an a variant interperetation of the XP rules.

Think about it like this, if an elf gets just 10 xp a week, starting at maturity, by the time they're 300 (200*52*10) they have 104,000. This is someone who is doing just about as little as possible.

Time based aquisition of XP is not part of the rules, so don't sit here telling me what the rules support when you are injecting variants yourself.

The big problem with this is that it only work if you ONLY give xp out for COMBAT.

Like I said, the XP system is geared towards adventurers. It's not meant for NPCs. You aren't required to track XP for npc (even the rules for NPC advanturer types resort to converting XP costs of items to GP instead of tracking them.)

In short, XP are for PCs, and any argument based on what an NPC will look like based on XP is on shaky ground.

 

[Psion]

Well, I got ignored . Too dry, perhaps. Here's my point with no math:

Elves who advance quickly, die quickly.

Actually, I caught it... it's just that I mentioned this as a factor in my first post. You do adventury-type things that the core XP system covers, then you have adventury-type mortality rates.

 

[Graf]

Well, I got ignored . Too dry, perhaps. Here's my point with no math:

Everybody has their own way of looking at it.
Honestly your idea didn't make any sense to me so I skipped it. Its kind of hard to talk about your example without getting sucked into some really weird situations.

With 100,000 adventurers, a total of 6,465 people will die before the population reaches level 2. Another 6,047 people will die before the population reaches level 3. And so on. Assuming adventurers advance at a rate of 1 level per year (which is slow, according to most of the discussions I've been in here on ENWorld), just over 2,000 people will be left alive by the time the human adventurers start having to worry about dying of old age (age 73). Whether they are elves or not.

In the spirit of not ignoring you lets break it down:
Start out with 100,000 people.
Advance them by a level a year (which you feel is slow).
By the time that they are 73 (or 153 in the case of elves I suppose) you will only have 2000 people left.
However they're pretty happy because they are all 53rd level. (73-starting age 20=53)

I, uh, hope you see why I didn't really try to work with your example.

 

[Graf]

The XP system is geared towards adventurers. There is no reason to assume that a commoner is going to be racking up XP.

So then the commoner advancement tables are a varient rule?
Wonder why they included them if commoners don't get xp. Typo probably....

(That was one of the sillier parts of 2e and I'm personally glad they scrapped it).

Like I said, the XP system is geared towards adventurers. It's not meant for NPCs.

So in your games NPC wizards are all 1st level and never gain xp because they aren't controlled by a PC?

It sounds like you've selected:

But it is. Look in your DMG. Like 99% of the population is 1st level.

Assuming for a minute that this one-line-in-the-DMG is supposed to be the ultimate rule that trumps the pages and pages of rules about NPC level advancement there's no correlation between this statement and anything about elves... It's not mathmatically useful and there are any number of different ways that this could be true and the average level of the elven population could be quite high.
I mean, what population are you talking about?

Elves are usually listed at being 1-2% of the population of civilized lands (in SL anyway, I don't know FR or GH). And there are often places where there are no elves and places which are teeming with plenty of other sentient creatures with short lifespans and high birthrates (i.e. the place marked 'Thar be orks' on the map). So the idea that the entire elven population is under 1% of the world population is quite probable.

And for the record I'm of the opinion that the one-line-in-the-DMG is to help a novice DMG get a feel for standard D&D worlds, not a commandment from the almighty Monte Cook himself. You obviously, feel differently, which is fine. But it's not like you've got some sort of rock solid bedrock of rules supporting your assertion.