SHARK
First Post
Greetings!
Well, I was reading Edena of Neith's thread about elves having "problems" surviving in a campaign world. Specifically, how do elves be "elves" and still survive and prosper? A sub-set of questions relates to how to make elves interesting to play as characters by players in the game. Admittedly, numerous authors from Tolkien to Moorcock and others, as well as the designers of numerous game worlds for D&D have all presented elves as a dying race, once glorious, now desperately grasping to faded memories of a majestic past as their only legacy in the here and now.
However, if one does not *insist* on saddling the elves in any given campaign world with a suicidal pacifistic ideology--then by changing one's attitudes and assumptions, ideologically and socially, the elves can be a surprisingly formidable race, with not only outstanding prowess when necessary, but also exhibiting a powerful dynamic to survive and prosper, throughout the ages.
In my own campaign world of Thandor, elves are significantly different *stat-wise* from what the PHB slates the elves for. However, on close examination and careful reflection, the elves' abilities to not only endure, but prosper do not rely essentially upon character stats, regardless of what flavour you may select, or judge appropriate to your particular campaign world.
It has been noted that elves are traditionally long-lived, if not immortal; elves are breathtakingly beautiful or handsome; elves are especially in tune with the native world, and natural creatures; elves are powerful spell-casters and masters of magic and craftsmanship, both magical and mundane.
Now, having that as a general foundation, some solutions become clear.
First, I will dispense with the argument that elves are somehow militarily deficient in some way as compared to humans, or any other enemy. Magically speaking, elves would have the edge in levels and general mastery. Even if humans have *more*--their human wizards are not higher level than elves, and certainly cannot outmatch the elves' mastery of magic, especially weather-related, and other aspects dealing with animals and the natural world. It could also be argued that elves would enjoy some pretty impressive *supernatural* assistance, both in the form of divine aid from the gods, but also from other quarters of spiritual alliances and power, from angelic creatures, to animal lords, to elementals, as well as hosts of faery creatures, treants, unicorns, and friendly giants as well. Crack open your four or five Monster Manuals, and compile a list of all of the various creatures, friends, servants, and allies--natural and supernatural--that a typical decent-sized elven kingdom could reasonably be expected to call upon in any war.
Elves--by being long-lived, and highly skilled--have the *time* to not only perfect skills and training--but also to develop plans and resources in vast, powerful, and precise ways. Elven knights, cavalry, and archers alone will be far superior to the average human army. Then, add in the elves' magical prowess--on one hand, the elves will have several if not many wizards that are vastly more powerful than their opponents--and on the other hand, numerous low-level wizards or fighter/wizards--as well as numerous rangers, and druids!--which provide the elven army with several outstanding, and salient advantages that serve as a severe caution to any but the most numerous, wealthy, determined, and fanatical human army;
(1) Detection/Surprise: The elves, either by gear, skills, or magic--are always invisible, and undetectable to the majority of any large human army, at all times, regardless of season or weather, day or night. This means that the elves can harvest an enormous casualty rate against any invading human army, on a constant, daily basis.
N.B. The humans do not have this provision, and certainly not enough to go around to enable their whole army to successfully operate, even if they do have special units. Human armies also do not have the abilities that elves possess to operate *WITHIN* the confines of the natural world, like elves do. For example; rain, fog, darkness, cold, heat, humidity, etc, etc--not to mention the plethora of diseases that the humans may naturally find themselves struggling with, not even counting the elves *intentional* efforts to strike human encampments with diseases, plagues, insects, and on and on.
(2) Strategic and Tactical Initiative: This is a powerful advantage, and works itself out in numerous ways, from the strategic, down through the small unit tactical level; Strategically speaking, the elves are the masters of their native lands, and the elements and environment. Not only magic, but skill, and *knowledge*--developed and mastered over *time*--provide the elves with the ability to know every advantage and disadvantage of every inch of the land that the elven armies must defend--and the human armies must march through. Combined with (1) above, this means that the elves can gather their forces and focus them at a chosen point in the theater of operations--wherein they can even achieve a local superiority in numbers and overall power. By any stretch of the imagination, this superior mobility and operational leverage is absolutely devastating to any invading army. Tactically-speaking, add in the elves ability to not need sleep, or very little--and well, the human casualty rates just keep going up and up. All those body-bags going back home, every day, day after day, with comparatively few elven casualties to show for it, and the very land--while humans desperately seek to *conquer* it--seems to resist their grasp at every turn, and defy them in large ways and small. Add in the enormous casualties of dead and sick and incapacitated human soldiers from all of the animals, insects, and diseases--and the severe strain on the human morale that at every turn, every day, the weather is always miserable. This then also gets into psychological warfare, and the destruction of an army's morale. The invading human armies can seldom come to grips with the elves, and the weather and the disease and the insects and the dead comrades continues to eat away at the human armies...
After some time of this living hell, humans are notorious for second-guessing. You can imagine it. Back home, the mothers and wives all questioning, "why is my husband dead? Why is my son dead? Why is my brother crippled?" Or lower-ranking commanders questioning the effectiveness of the war, wondering what they are all gaining from the enedless fighting, and the endless suffering and misery...
(3) Economic Power: The elves, over such a long lifespan, can be reasonably expected to be fabulously wealthy, and have far more wealth and resources than the human army invading them, or the human kingdom contemplating about invading them. It's simple. Through economic manipulation, crop development, and absolute profits, not to mention the skillful political manipulation that elves could engineer, all prior to any kind of war breaking out, through marriages and other economic and political alliances, it can be seen how the elves could easily make it so enjoyable, pleasurable, and profitable--for the local human kingdom to be their friends, rather than their enemies--that any humans consumed by racism or greed would be discovered, and imprisoned or executed before much progress could be made. Why? Look at it this way, from a combined perspective. What can elves do to make humans happy? What can elves do to make humans wealthy? What can elves do to make humans' lives just better, all the way around, in so many ways? From the human perspective, the list is virtually endless, from games, to toys, to food, wine, to sex, to music, stories, not to mention magic, good weather, nicer animals, healthier crops, increase in trade and wealth, and on and on.
From the elven perspective, it isn't terribly difficult, but also shrewd, to manipulate and provide these things in such a way as the elves have control over the resources, knowledge, or ability, or maintaining such, and doing so in ways that are either unknown to the humans, protected by treaty, or simply inherent within the elves knowledge or ability. The elves could easily and shrewdly negotiate for some fair payment in wealth or resources by the humans for this vast and broad range of help--and provide it in such a way that the vast majority of humans would be glad to pay, or agree to whatever fair trade or arrangement the elves might desire--and feel like they are getting the best end of the deal, to boot!
Key point being that the elves can find many ways and the humans can be quite conscious of this--of how much better humans live with the local elves as friends, rather than enemies. The corollary to this is that the elves can always make it obvious to any thinking humans that by turning against the elves, first, the humans *lose* all of these benefits, including wealth, not to mention health and happiness; and secondly, the enormous price in blood, lives, and *gold* that the humans would have to expend so that they could gain....what? At the end of the day, the elves can make it so that the humans simply lose far more than the pittance they may gain by seeking to conquer, kill, or enslave the elves.
Part of the greatest strength in the elves' advantage is *intrinsic* to the elves...*being elves* The elves provide what they do, and accomplish what they do--because of who and what they are, and what they know, and how they do what they do. It has everything to do with the elves' relationships with nature, with the supernatural, with magic--and how they use their knowledge and skills, and relationships--and far less to do with how much gold they possess--though that would be immense--or how much steel they possess, or stone, or what kind of mountains they have on their borders, or even how many regiments of soldiers they command. What the elves provide any human friends is through *themselves* It is not through some resource or object or land or number of herds of animals or some geographical feature that can be somehow *possessed* or siezed, by humans or any other enemy. The obvious consequence of killing the elves--is like "killing the goose that lays the golden egg." If the humans conquer and kill the elves--then the humans gain some forest; they gain some natural resources; and maybe some *loot*--but they lose *everything* They lose far more wealth than what they gain; they lose all that elves provide them through their love and friendship, and through their knowledge, power, and unique abilities, skills and relationships, interwoven through everything involved, and done so on behalf of and to benefit their human friends and lovers--as long as the humans remain their friends and lovers--and only so long as the elves are alive and free to do what they do--to be *elves*. When the humans invade and conquer and kill the elves, the humans essentially gain nothing, but lose everything.
While it is true, in many cases throughout history, that overwhelming numbers win--it is also true that in many cases, forces that were significantly--even overwhelmingly outnumbered--managed to win, and sometimes, to win *big*--and make it look *easy* in doing it.
For example:
The Spartans at Thermopolae: The Spartans annihilated some 20,000 Persians, and lost 300 Spartans and a few other Greeks. Though at the time it was a victory for the Persians, it served to unite the Greek city states against Persia, and allowed them to gain the victory over the Persians; and two, it also sent political shock-waves throughout the Persian government and military, that eroded Persian morale constantly.
Alexander the Great: Alexander proceeded to march through and conquer the entire Persian Empire years later, always using a smaller Macedonian army of about 40,000 troops, and routinely thrashed Persian armies of 100,000 or more, again and again and again.
King Pyhrus: This Greek king operating in Sicily and southern Italy when Rome was growing as a young nation, outnumbered the Romans, and defeated them--*tactically* His armies suffered so many casualties fighting against the Romans who were gaining their reputation for courage and unflinching fortitude and perserverence--eventually won. Pyhrus lost so many troops that he could not afford another "Pyhrric Victory"--which is where we get the saying from to this day.
Hannibal at Cannae: Here, the Carthaginian general annihilated a Roman army of 80,000 troops in *one day*--with his smaller, lighter armed and armoured army of perhaps 25-35,000 troops.
The Romans against Boudicca: In Britain, Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe rebelled against the Roman empire, and ran amok, killing and burning, and gaining several impressive victories. She finally cornered the last Roman army in Britain--the Roman general carefully selected his last stand, using superior terrain, and tactics--and proceeded to annihilate Boudicca's army of 80,000 warriors--perhaps more--with his Roman force of 15,000 troops or so. The real kicker is that the Romans killed over 60,000 Celts in *one day*--and lost barely a few thousand Romans, if that. The battle broke the power of the Celtic tribes in Britain, and changed history forever. History was changed by *one* battle, in *one* day.
History provides many examples of how relatively smaller, outnumbered forces can achieve victory against overwhelming odds. However, it should also be noted here that not only were real, absolute military victories achieved in these examples, but also--the consequences of them, politically, economically, socially--were also apparent and realised, and often exploited to dramatic affect. Imagine some similar circumstances where elves and humans are involved, toss in magic and such, and it isn't much of a stretch to see how the political and economic effects and consequences--as well as the military losses involved with any human war against the elves--would be enormous, and potentially disastrous. Coups may be unleashed. Rebellions started. Conspiracies hatched. Political and social anarchy on a mass scale, as well as huge and deep economic consequences.
I hope this argument, such as it is, has made an effective point.
Elves are not doomed.
Elves can be a viable, propserous, and formidable race in any campaign.
And elves can make interesting, fun characters for players to enjoy, and do so without any fits of depression that the elves are ultimately doomed to extinction, or some broken, feeble existence on the fringes of the campaign world.
What do you think, my friends?
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Well, I was reading Edena of Neith's thread about elves having "problems" surviving in a campaign world. Specifically, how do elves be "elves" and still survive and prosper? A sub-set of questions relates to how to make elves interesting to play as characters by players in the game. Admittedly, numerous authors from Tolkien to Moorcock and others, as well as the designers of numerous game worlds for D&D have all presented elves as a dying race, once glorious, now desperately grasping to faded memories of a majestic past as their only legacy in the here and now.
However, if one does not *insist* on saddling the elves in any given campaign world with a suicidal pacifistic ideology--then by changing one's attitudes and assumptions, ideologically and socially, the elves can be a surprisingly formidable race, with not only outstanding prowess when necessary, but also exhibiting a powerful dynamic to survive and prosper, throughout the ages.
In my own campaign world of Thandor, elves are significantly different *stat-wise* from what the PHB slates the elves for. However, on close examination and careful reflection, the elves' abilities to not only endure, but prosper do not rely essentially upon character stats, regardless of what flavour you may select, or judge appropriate to your particular campaign world.
It has been noted that elves are traditionally long-lived, if not immortal; elves are breathtakingly beautiful or handsome; elves are especially in tune with the native world, and natural creatures; elves are powerful spell-casters and masters of magic and craftsmanship, both magical and mundane.
Now, having that as a general foundation, some solutions become clear.
First, I will dispense with the argument that elves are somehow militarily deficient in some way as compared to humans, or any other enemy. Magically speaking, elves would have the edge in levels and general mastery. Even if humans have *more*--their human wizards are not higher level than elves, and certainly cannot outmatch the elves' mastery of magic, especially weather-related, and other aspects dealing with animals and the natural world. It could also be argued that elves would enjoy some pretty impressive *supernatural* assistance, both in the form of divine aid from the gods, but also from other quarters of spiritual alliances and power, from angelic creatures, to animal lords, to elementals, as well as hosts of faery creatures, treants, unicorns, and friendly giants as well. Crack open your four or five Monster Manuals, and compile a list of all of the various creatures, friends, servants, and allies--natural and supernatural--that a typical decent-sized elven kingdom could reasonably be expected to call upon in any war.
Elves--by being long-lived, and highly skilled--have the *time* to not only perfect skills and training--but also to develop plans and resources in vast, powerful, and precise ways. Elven knights, cavalry, and archers alone will be far superior to the average human army. Then, add in the elves' magical prowess--on one hand, the elves will have several if not many wizards that are vastly more powerful than their opponents--and on the other hand, numerous low-level wizards or fighter/wizards--as well as numerous rangers, and druids!--which provide the elven army with several outstanding, and salient advantages that serve as a severe caution to any but the most numerous, wealthy, determined, and fanatical human army;
(1) Detection/Surprise: The elves, either by gear, skills, or magic--are always invisible, and undetectable to the majority of any large human army, at all times, regardless of season or weather, day or night. This means that the elves can harvest an enormous casualty rate against any invading human army, on a constant, daily basis.
N.B. The humans do not have this provision, and certainly not enough to go around to enable their whole army to successfully operate, even if they do have special units. Human armies also do not have the abilities that elves possess to operate *WITHIN* the confines of the natural world, like elves do. For example; rain, fog, darkness, cold, heat, humidity, etc, etc--not to mention the plethora of diseases that the humans may naturally find themselves struggling with, not even counting the elves *intentional* efforts to strike human encampments with diseases, plagues, insects, and on and on.
(2) Strategic and Tactical Initiative: This is a powerful advantage, and works itself out in numerous ways, from the strategic, down through the small unit tactical level; Strategically speaking, the elves are the masters of their native lands, and the elements and environment. Not only magic, but skill, and *knowledge*--developed and mastered over *time*--provide the elves with the ability to know every advantage and disadvantage of every inch of the land that the elven armies must defend--and the human armies must march through. Combined with (1) above, this means that the elves can gather their forces and focus them at a chosen point in the theater of operations--wherein they can even achieve a local superiority in numbers and overall power. By any stretch of the imagination, this superior mobility and operational leverage is absolutely devastating to any invading army. Tactically-speaking, add in the elves ability to not need sleep, or very little--and well, the human casualty rates just keep going up and up. All those body-bags going back home, every day, day after day, with comparatively few elven casualties to show for it, and the very land--while humans desperately seek to *conquer* it--seems to resist their grasp at every turn, and defy them in large ways and small. Add in the enormous casualties of dead and sick and incapacitated human soldiers from all of the animals, insects, and diseases--and the severe strain on the human morale that at every turn, every day, the weather is always miserable. This then also gets into psychological warfare, and the destruction of an army's morale. The invading human armies can seldom come to grips with the elves, and the weather and the disease and the insects and the dead comrades continues to eat away at the human armies...
After some time of this living hell, humans are notorious for second-guessing. You can imagine it. Back home, the mothers and wives all questioning, "why is my husband dead? Why is my son dead? Why is my brother crippled?" Or lower-ranking commanders questioning the effectiveness of the war, wondering what they are all gaining from the enedless fighting, and the endless suffering and misery...
(3) Economic Power: The elves, over such a long lifespan, can be reasonably expected to be fabulously wealthy, and have far more wealth and resources than the human army invading them, or the human kingdom contemplating about invading them. It's simple. Through economic manipulation, crop development, and absolute profits, not to mention the skillful political manipulation that elves could engineer, all prior to any kind of war breaking out, through marriages and other economic and political alliances, it can be seen how the elves could easily make it so enjoyable, pleasurable, and profitable--for the local human kingdom to be their friends, rather than their enemies--that any humans consumed by racism or greed would be discovered, and imprisoned or executed before much progress could be made. Why? Look at it this way, from a combined perspective. What can elves do to make humans happy? What can elves do to make humans wealthy? What can elves do to make humans' lives just better, all the way around, in so many ways? From the human perspective, the list is virtually endless, from games, to toys, to food, wine, to sex, to music, stories, not to mention magic, good weather, nicer animals, healthier crops, increase in trade and wealth, and on and on.
From the elven perspective, it isn't terribly difficult, but also shrewd, to manipulate and provide these things in such a way as the elves have control over the resources, knowledge, or ability, or maintaining such, and doing so in ways that are either unknown to the humans, protected by treaty, or simply inherent within the elves knowledge or ability. The elves could easily and shrewdly negotiate for some fair payment in wealth or resources by the humans for this vast and broad range of help--and provide it in such a way that the vast majority of humans would be glad to pay, or agree to whatever fair trade or arrangement the elves might desire--and feel like they are getting the best end of the deal, to boot!
Key point being that the elves can find many ways and the humans can be quite conscious of this--of how much better humans live with the local elves as friends, rather than enemies. The corollary to this is that the elves can always make it obvious to any thinking humans that by turning against the elves, first, the humans *lose* all of these benefits, including wealth, not to mention health and happiness; and secondly, the enormous price in blood, lives, and *gold* that the humans would have to expend so that they could gain....what? At the end of the day, the elves can make it so that the humans simply lose far more than the pittance they may gain by seeking to conquer, kill, or enslave the elves.
Part of the greatest strength in the elves' advantage is *intrinsic* to the elves...*being elves* The elves provide what they do, and accomplish what they do--because of who and what they are, and what they know, and how they do what they do. It has everything to do with the elves' relationships with nature, with the supernatural, with magic--and how they use their knowledge and skills, and relationships--and far less to do with how much gold they possess--though that would be immense--or how much steel they possess, or stone, or what kind of mountains they have on their borders, or even how many regiments of soldiers they command. What the elves provide any human friends is through *themselves* It is not through some resource or object or land or number of herds of animals or some geographical feature that can be somehow *possessed* or siezed, by humans or any other enemy. The obvious consequence of killing the elves--is like "killing the goose that lays the golden egg." If the humans conquer and kill the elves--then the humans gain some forest; they gain some natural resources; and maybe some *loot*--but they lose *everything* They lose far more wealth than what they gain; they lose all that elves provide them through their love and friendship, and through their knowledge, power, and unique abilities, skills and relationships, interwoven through everything involved, and done so on behalf of and to benefit their human friends and lovers--as long as the humans remain their friends and lovers--and only so long as the elves are alive and free to do what they do--to be *elves*. When the humans invade and conquer and kill the elves, the humans essentially gain nothing, but lose everything.
While it is true, in many cases throughout history, that overwhelming numbers win--it is also true that in many cases, forces that were significantly--even overwhelmingly outnumbered--managed to win, and sometimes, to win *big*--and make it look *easy* in doing it.
For example:
The Spartans at Thermopolae: The Spartans annihilated some 20,000 Persians, and lost 300 Spartans and a few other Greeks. Though at the time it was a victory for the Persians, it served to unite the Greek city states against Persia, and allowed them to gain the victory over the Persians; and two, it also sent political shock-waves throughout the Persian government and military, that eroded Persian morale constantly.
Alexander the Great: Alexander proceeded to march through and conquer the entire Persian Empire years later, always using a smaller Macedonian army of about 40,000 troops, and routinely thrashed Persian armies of 100,000 or more, again and again and again.
King Pyhrus: This Greek king operating in Sicily and southern Italy when Rome was growing as a young nation, outnumbered the Romans, and defeated them--*tactically* His armies suffered so many casualties fighting against the Romans who were gaining their reputation for courage and unflinching fortitude and perserverence--eventually won. Pyhrus lost so many troops that he could not afford another "Pyhrric Victory"--which is where we get the saying from to this day.
Hannibal at Cannae: Here, the Carthaginian general annihilated a Roman army of 80,000 troops in *one day*--with his smaller, lighter armed and armoured army of perhaps 25-35,000 troops.
The Romans against Boudicca: In Britain, Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe rebelled against the Roman empire, and ran amok, killing and burning, and gaining several impressive victories. She finally cornered the last Roman army in Britain--the Roman general carefully selected his last stand, using superior terrain, and tactics--and proceeded to annihilate Boudicca's army of 80,000 warriors--perhaps more--with his Roman force of 15,000 troops or so. The real kicker is that the Romans killed over 60,000 Celts in *one day*--and lost barely a few thousand Romans, if that. The battle broke the power of the Celtic tribes in Britain, and changed history forever. History was changed by *one* battle, in *one* day.
History provides many examples of how relatively smaller, outnumbered forces can achieve victory against overwhelming odds. However, it should also be noted here that not only were real, absolute military victories achieved in these examples, but also--the consequences of them, politically, economically, socially--were also apparent and realised, and often exploited to dramatic affect. Imagine some similar circumstances where elves and humans are involved, toss in magic and such, and it isn't much of a stretch to see how the political and economic effects and consequences--as well as the military losses involved with any human war against the elves--would be enormous, and potentially disastrous. Coups may be unleashed. Rebellions started. Conspiracies hatched. Political and social anarchy on a mass scale, as well as huge and deep economic consequences.
I hope this argument, such as it is, has made an effective point.
Elves are not doomed.
Elves can be a viable, propserous, and formidable race in any campaign.
And elves can make interesting, fun characters for players to enjoy, and do so without any fits of depression that the elves are ultimately doomed to extinction, or some broken, feeble existence on the fringes of the campaign world.
What do you think, my friends?
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
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