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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3549656" data-attributes="member: 2020">Let me comment on each point in turn.    - Of course elves can fight back.  But it seems like they don't fight back very well.  Consider the destruction of Qualinesti and Silvanesti (Dragonlance.)  Consider Athas (Dark Sun, elves reduced to a remnant of savage tribes.)  Consider Oerth (Greyhawk, elves reduced to Celene, Ulek, and the Lendores, and isolated elsewhere.)  Consider Toril itself (FR, elves reduced to Evermeet and Evereska.)  Consider Aebrinis (Birthright, elves driven from most of the continent.)  The Question really is:  how can we make it so elves can fight back effectively, while still remaining elves?  - Player Character elves are sorta an exception.  I'm mostly discussing the background material, which directly or indirectly affects PCs.  - Yes, elves are hot blooded young adults for a thousand years.  But the flip side of this, is that elves reproduce extremely slowly.  If a human couple in the medieval world has four children (who survive to adulthood) in 40 years, and they reproduce likewise, at the end of a thousand years you have countless thousands of humans.  In that same time, an elven couple would have one or two children (three, at the absolute most.)  Their one or two children, might or might not have yet had children themselves.  You'd think that being a hot blooded adult, eager for adventure, would lead over a thousand year period to astonishing levels of power.  And it should, I think.  But for some reason, elves just don't seem to go that route (there are exceptions, of course ... but these exceptions haven't changed the main reality.  The Srinshee was powerful, but she disappeared and left Myth Drannor to fall.)  There seems to be a cultural defect with elves in that they sit back and do ... nothing.    - PC elves are all for change.  But the societies they come from are not.  I defy any PC to talk the elves of Evermeet into going back to Faerun.  <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=":)" />  - It would be a refreshing change, a world dominated by elves, if the elves did not act like humans in order to survive.  Their survival mechanism should be uniquely elven.  How do we accomplish that?  (because this business of 'out-humaning' the humans when it comes to being ruthless and warlike and violent, is old hat.  And it doesn't seem logical, considering elven realities.)  The elves of Toril had their First Flowering.  What brought them down was a tendency to try to 'out-human the humans' as it were.  I'm not referring to the savage Illthyrri (sp?) here, but to the Dark Disaster of Miritar (sp?) caused by the elves of Arvandaar, plus all the other nonsense pulled by the non-Illthyrri elves.  One has to wonder how the First Flowering came to be in the first place, with the elves so warlike and ruthless and downright evil.  I guess it was High Magic, a temporary edge on magic the elves had that nobody else did.  - Of course Tolkien is to blame.  <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=":)" />  The Noldor had a lot more powers than those pathetic powers I would give to elf PCs.  The Noldor had, roughly, +4 to +12 to their stats, supernatural physical adaptability (running in your sleep is quite a feat), supernatural magical aptitude, something pretty close to True Sight at all times, and in combat they were as nasty as it gets (even Morgoth took several hundred years to build an army big enough to defeat them.)  Yet the Noldor went down, in the end.  All those skills were not enough.  And after Morgoth thrashed them, Sauron thrashed them again.  They exhausted all their remaining power beating Sauron in the Last Alliance, and they still didn't really win.    I could give Torillian elves all the powers of the Noldor.  You know what the result would be?  They'd try to take on the phaerimm.  And that would be that.  There's always a bigger fish out there.  The elves, if they want to win, need a third way besides hiding or fighting.  I've played beautiful elven maids.  The problem with doing this is a spell called Fireball and a failed saving throw.</blockquote>

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