Elves And Levels

In terms of ADVENTURERS, the elves could have MUCH higher level examples, being so much longer lived than the other races. If an elf continuously improved himself and didn't get killed, he would be WAAAAAAAY more powerful than what a human could hope to become, by natural means. Simply put, more time to improve=more improvement.
More time does not yield more improvement for adventurers though. Only challenging, near-death experiences yield improvement. The limiting factor isn't time but survival.

This has been pointed out a few times in this thread, most recently by bmcdaniel:
Long-lived elf adventurers are not generally higher-level than human adventures because VERY VERY FEW adventurers die of old age. For both elves and humans there is an almost perfect correlation between their death rate and their rate of xp advancement, because xp are earned for taking possibly fatal risks.
Now, for non-adventurers, folks who take non-violent risks and face non-violent challenges, then, yes, longevity should pay off handsomely.
 

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When I look at elves and levels I just take it the easy way. Elves do live longer, so the potential for high levels is an easy one. However, there are MANY fewer elves than humans. Therefore, you don't see them very often. On top of this, elves are always trying to protect their race, so the highest level elves are centred in large elven populations and looking out for the best interest of the elves. They just give up adventuring (in general, of course). This allows a high level, and keeps the race balance. The same thing goes for dwarves, as they are even more "people-centred" than elves. Also, I think Kamikaze Midget is onto something with his age-relation stuff.
 

Angcuru said:
B - Elves have a conception rate of about 13%. Humans have a conception rate of 77%. Elves have pregnancy periods of 2 years, humans 9 months. So comparatively, while elves may have shorter pregnancies in terms of lifespan, humans make the babies WAY more often. If you were to assume that there were two Married couples, 1 human and 1 elven, and both went at it constantly to get as many kids as possible,(going by statistics here) the humans could pop out 51 kids, while elves will on average have 3 kids in that time period. They just outnumber the elves, man!
Sounds reasonable. Where is this data from?
And a general comment: In terms of ADVENTURERS, the elves could have MUCH higher level examples, being so much longer lived than the other races. If an elf continuously improved himself and didn't get killed, he would be WAAAAAAAY more powerful than what a human could hope to become, by natural means. Simply put, more time to improve=more improvement.
Not really; the assumptions that the elf continuously improves himself and never gets killed don't work, they are too strong. Once a being reaches, say, 25th level, his level gain is limited by the amount of epic challenges available. This limit is usually much more stringent than the age limit.

Even with the weird assumption that if you want XP when you're 30th level you just have to go and get them, humans have a huge population advantage. This means that even if an elf was three times more likely than a human to get to 35th level because he can take his time doing it, there would still be just as many humans at that level simply because humans vastly outnumber the elves.

As for the elves conquering the world, I find it *very* unlikely. In a war, their age advantage is 100% irrelevant, while the low population and reproductive rate is a killer.
 

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