Elves are Broken :p

Wicht

Hero
Actually they are not, its the 1st level villager assumption thats broken.

I am trying to plan out an elvish village with some detail concerning some of the elvish NPCs. Specifically, I was trying to figure out what the average level of the typical average elvish hunter should be. Being Charitable, I decided to make the average be about 100 years experience of hunting. Then I looked up the statistics for a deer as my base. This is only fair as deer is what is normally hunted in forest climes in order to provide meat. The deer in Dangerous Denizens has a CR of 1 or 300 experience for a 1st – 6th level character.

This means if a 1rst level hunter had no luck and only managed to get 2 deer a year he would still be level 2 within 2 years with 1200 experience. Keeping the number of deer at 2 a year for a moment, in 3 more years he would be level 3 with 3000 experience. So we have the typical hunter being 3rd level within 5 years. Assuming his improved skill can net him at least 5 deer a year now he would be level 4 within only 2 more years (6000 exp total).

7 years hunting equals level 4 hunter pretty easy.

We will assume that he can continue to kill 5 deer a year easily. This means that he is level 5 in three more years (10500 exp) and level 6 three years after that (15,000 exp).

An elf who has been hunting deer for only 13 years should be ashamed of himself if he is not 6th level.

17 years of experience should see him into his 7th level (at 5 deer a year) with 21,000 experience.

Deer are now worth 263 experience points each and our elf needs 7000 experience in order to level up. This should take him 6 years (28890 experience total). This makes deer worth only 200 experience each which means that it will take him another 8 years or so to get to 9th level (36,890 experience total) at which point deer are worth no more experience.

The upshot of this though is that after 31 years of hunting deer (a piddly amount of time for your average elf), the elf should by at least a 9th level hunter of some sort.

So my problem is, should I use DM fiat to make most of the elves 5th level experts, which is what I was originally going to go with, or be more fair and make them mostly 9th level. Considering I was planning on having 50 or so experienced elven hunters in this village, this means that the village would easily have 50 9th level Expert archers.
 

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well, first of all, i need to roll some hp, cause i evidently levelled :)

but, assume the elves hunt together, and split the xp, then throw the numbers out the window and go with your gut :)

and 300 xp for a deer is RIDICULOUS, they don't even carry weapons....
 
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Wicht said:
Actually they are not, its the 1st level villager assumption thats broken.

Gearhead DM alert!

I am trying to plan out an elvish village with some detail concerning some of the elvish NPCs. Specifically, I was trying to figure out what the average level of the typical average elvish hunter should be.

I think I can say with near-absolute certainty that nobody in your group, besides yourself, is going to care what the average level of the typical elvish hunter is. When it comes down to providing a suitable gaming experience for people around the table, this is a matter of profound indifference for the rest of the world, to steal Guderian's quote.

Make up a number, and go with it. Trying to reconcile elven lifespans with default D&D rates of advancement is something that should have gone out of fashion with 2E, and leads simply to the situation where the PCs become irrelevant because every NPC they meet is higher level than they are.

If you really want to go hog-wild and indulge your gearhead world creation tendencies, either GURPS or HERO would be your best bet (and pick up Fantasy HERO for the absolute best discussion of world building around). Despite the creeping HEROization of D&D continuing apace, it's still got a long way to go in terms of catering for the gearheads.
 
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If I split it then it takes them twice as long, that is 62 years, still a young elf.

Actually it does not seem that wrong to me that in a village of elves, you would have some high level hunters. Farmers would of course not level as fast, but hunters would have to it would seem by the book.

My main worry is what is the effect on game play if the village the PCs are protecting has 50 9th level hunters in it? How different would this be to game play from having 50 5th level hunters?
 

Wicht said:
My main worry is what is the effect on game play if the village the PCs are protecting has 50 9th level hunters in it? How different would this be to game play from having 50 5th level hunters?

What level are the PCs?
 

hong said:
Trying to reconcile elven lifespans with default D&D rates of advancement is something that should have gone out of fashion with 2E, and leads simply to the situation where the PCs become irrelevant because every NPC they meet is higher level than they are.

So you are saying that elves really are broken? :p


And leaving it alone isn't as fun as puzzling it out.
 
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Wicht said:
So you are saying that elves really are borken? :p

I wouldn't know, I banned elves from my game. :cool:

And leaving it alone isn't as fun as puzzling it out.

I think it was fun the first 2,634 times. The next 1,925 times, it was just routine. The next 3,006 times, it got a bit tedious.
 

Wicht said:
3rd, but they have only been adventuring for a few months and are young elves yet.

Then make the average hunter be a 1st level ranger, and throw in a few 2nd level leaders. Maybe add a 3rd or 4th level chief for flavour. You don't want to risk being in the position where the players say "ah screw it, they're doing a tip-top job of defending themselves, we'll just watch".
 

Okay, look at it this way...

Why is hunting a deer a challenge?

I don't see why doing the same thing over and over should garner any experience.
 

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