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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steverooo" data-source="post: 1523513" data-attributes="member: 9410">I approached the problem a bit differently, for a Racial Background Skills article I wrote...  An Elven PC of the same class as a Human one (with the same INT) has exactly the same number of skill points, even though (s)he has lived roughly five times as long...  What did they do for all of those years?To answer the question (for all the races), I turned first to the racial descriptions in the PHB, then the Monster Manual, and then to older editions.  Boiled down, some'at, what I found for Elves was this:They live in trees, and in communion with Nature.  They are masters of magic, and all manner of lore.  They speak many languages, their music and poetry are famed, and (despite it not being a favored class) they produce many Bards.Now look at the skills set that this implies, for most, if not all Elves:  Balance (to avoid falling out of the trees), Climb (to get into and out of them), Rope Use (to make and bind lashings, for those tree cities in communion with nature), Knowledge (Arcana), Spellcraft, and Concentration (as "Magical Arts"), ALL of the 10-or-so Knowledge skills, Speak Languages/Decipher Script, Perform, and various arts and crafts (with the notable exception of Profession: Miner, which the PHB says that they don't do).Now the PROBLEM is that beginning Elves (generally) have NONE of these skills!  The same is true of Halflits, Dwarves, Orcs, etc.!...So, what I did was to create a list of "Racial Skills", and allow PCs to chose various skills from their race's list, with a maximum of three skill points in any one skill (as they were pre-apprentice, at this point), IN ADDITION TO their normal number of class skill points (times four, at first level).The difference is, class skill points can be spent on other skills, cross-class.  With the exceptions of Crafts, Languages, and Professions, Racial Background Skills could not.So, Half-Orcs could easily pick up skills listed in their racial description (chanting, drinking (brewing), drumming, singing), or beating on things (Craft: Armorsmithing, Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Cobbling, Weaponsmithing, etc).  They would find it harder to learn Craft (Glassblowing).  Halflits could more easily learn Survival and Escape Artistry, but have a harder time being cobblers.All in all, I think it worked well...  Elves have the largest skills set, and also the greatest starting age...  Obviously, no Elf is going to be turned loose until (s)he has enough Balance and Climb to get around, and "school" for a race of magical Loremasters, who also devote much time and energy to various arts, crafts and professions, will take a very long time!In short, it is society's expectations of Elves, and not slow maturation or slow cognition, which determines their age of "maturity".  Beginning PC Elves of average INT should be Loremasters, compared to most other races.  It has simply taken them a century (or so) to soak up all this knowledge!That's MY answer, an' I'm stickin' to it! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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