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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Banshee16" data-source="post: 3869107" data-attributes="member: 7883">Because in humans, our prolonged childhood is because we're born incomplete.  The brain isn't fully developed/matured yet....but we've evolved that way, because physiologically, the head size of human babies would be too large, if it contained a fully developed brain, and consequently couldn't pass through the birth canal of the mother, without killing her.  We've simply adapted biologically to the best way possibly, at this point in the evolution of our species, to create children who can survive upon birth, without killing the mother.Elves in the game don't really have larger brains.  If they did, they'd likely have several edges that humans don't, and would have an ECL as a result.I'm in favour of simply reducing the minimum starting age for elves.  That would deal with the whole problem.I suspect that at this point, the designers have simply carried over conventions created during an earlier edition (2nd Ed.), and somehow it became a "sacred cow".  Just like their short stature, and their reduced lifespans.....Elves did, afterall, live upwards of 1200-2000 years in 1st Ed., and I don't think they were as short as they're described now.  And in the novels, among printed NPCs etc. how many elves are actually as short as described in the PHB?  Very few.  Drizzt is described as 5'3", and in the Dark Elf Trilogy, he isn't described as being a giant among his people, yet FWIR, the height charts in 2nd Ed. showed male drow as maxing out at 5' tall.  There was another drow in that series who *was* described as exceptionally large, and he was like 6'.  In Dragonlance, Laurana is depicted as 5'6", and her brother Gilthanas is even taller.  Yet according to the height charts, neither is capable of achieving such a height.Or, if you look at the history of Dragonlance, Kith-Kanan, Sithas, and Sithel all lived over 1000 years each....which is beyond the absolute maximum age described in the PHB's for 2nd and 3rd Ed.Banshee</blockquote>

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