I think I disagree with a basic premise that most folks on this thread seem to accept without question.
I don't believe that someone who has been practicing his craft for 200 years is going to be all that much better than someone who has been practicing his craft for 15 years. The vast majority of people do not keep learning and growing and stretching their brains their entire lives. Most people learn enough to do their job well, practice until their skills become instinctive, and then that's it.
Put more simply, most people reach a skill plateau where they're as good as they're going to get. Improvement after that tends to be only in response to extraordinary events that force them to stretch themselves.
So your elf warrior has fought 300 battles. So what? He learned all he was going to learn in the first 12.
I don't believe that someone who has been practicing his craft for 200 years is going to be all that much better than someone who has been practicing his craft for 15 years. The vast majority of people do not keep learning and growing and stretching their brains their entire lives. Most people learn enough to do their job well, practice until their skills become instinctive, and then that's it.
Put more simply, most people reach a skill plateau where they're as good as they're going to get. Improvement after that tends to be only in response to extraordinary events that force them to stretch themselves.
So your elf warrior has fought 300 battles. So what? He learned all he was going to learn in the first 12.