The problem with elves take 2: A severe condemnation [merged]

[thedungeondelver]

My problem is that, to me, the rules condemn the elves. All the rulessets and optional rules and third party rules seem to condemn them.

Not really, no.

Please, consider a 2000 year old gray elf assassin/m-u in 1st edition.

*shudder*

That ain't condemned, that's scary.

 

[Derren]

*sigh* Sometimes I get the impression that some people simply want to counter what I say (probably because they love elves so much) and do not really think over what they propose.
Ok, coal was my mistake so take it out. That still doesn't change that the elven society would lack ressources like iron and forests are also not very good places to frow large amounts of food.

In short:

- Elves can harvest less food than other races
- Elves lack many ressources not found in forests
- Elves have nearly nothing to trade (I do'nt care if the native amarican economy was based on wood and fur. Technologically they were a lot less developed than D&D nations). Meat is cheap acording to D&D pricing guides as is wood.
- Selling enough hides to support a medival like economy + wizard training would require overhunting the area
- Wizard training is very expensive, as is item creation
- Elves have a low birth rate as they take so long to grow up. An elf child has to grow up for 100 years before it can have children itself. That are 3 human generation (maybe 4 orc generations). Also still having to care for a child after 50 years because it is still not self sustaining limits the number of children a elf can have at one time
- Saying "That would also apply to humans" is no argument
- Elves would have a high child mortality because of Con
- Elves are more likely to be affected by diseases than normal
- Elves have no superpowers which gives them a large advantage over other races
- Elves do not have more spellcasters than other races as the numbers of them are limited by exceptional individuals

All that leads to that elves would be overrun by faster breeding races and monsters (and that includes dragons!)

 

[fusangite]

I don't know why.

I think that until you are able to answer this question, we probably aren't going to be able to come to a common understanding.

Once I've read about the destruction of the elves in book after book related to the game (take the War of Souls trilogy, for example) and seen them reduced to insignificance in setting after setting (such as Greyhawk) and see how the rules work against them (at least, in 1st and 2nd edition) I begin to think of the elves as losers, in the D&D game.

People like the Celtic Twilight theme. There is no doubt that there is a big market for fiction that taps into the theme of the elves as being in decline. But that has to do with people's preferences in fiction. I don't think fantasy literature is going to change any time soon.

If you feel that your D&D game is being adversely affected by reading fiction in which the evles are in decline, you should stop reading that fiction and pick fiction in which that is not happening. What you should not do is assume that because people like writing about declining elves that this has something to do with the rules of D&D.

Now, last post, I threatened to tell you my theory about why you are saying what you are saying:

You want to be able to justify giving the elves in your game special mechanical advantages, like a souped-up 3rd edition conversion of the Lifeproof spell. But somehow, you seem to have decided that it wouldn't be fair to hand out this advantage because it would be unbalancing. So, in order to justify your desire to make elves more mechanically powerful than other humanoids you think that you need to prove that they are currently under-powered.

And my view is: don't sweat it man. Balance is not the only value that matters in a game. If you want to give out that spell to all the elves in your campaign world, go ahead. You don't need any justification beyond the fact that you find the idea cool. Things don't need to be mechanically broken in order to justify fixing them. Giving your elves more powers doesn't need to be necessary for you to do it. Do it because you will enjoy doing it.

 

[Banshee16]

You want to know why the elves are doomed? Why 3rd Edition elves are doomed, despite the fact they can take any class and reach any level? Ok, let's try this again.

The 3rd Edition Player's Handbook grants elves some abilities, but does not grant them other abilities. RAW.

- Elves do *not* have any special immunity to disease, magical or mundane. (Indeed, that -2 to Constitution would increase their susceptibility.)
- Elves do *not* have any special immunity to parasites.
- Elves do *not* have any special immunity to poison.
- Elves do *not* have any special immunity to cold, heat, or the effects of sunlight.
- Elves have low-light vision, but not darkvision.

Elven low-light vision is defined as the ability to see quite accurately in any conditions where they have at least as much light to see by as starlight or moonlight. Given the sky is full of stars at night on any night during which it is not overcast, elves will have the advantage over humans after dark.

If you want to start looking specifically at what they do and don't have.....

Humans don't have low-light vision.
Humans don't have any kind of resistance to disease, poison, parasites, cold, heat, or the effects of sunlight.
Humans have less acute senses, and consequently are likely not as good at the whole hunter/gatherer thing as elves are.
Nor are they as stealthy, given the lack of a +2 to DEX, and consequently, again, aren't as effective hunters, since they can't get as close to prey animals.

We can continue this way through the whole argument. Humans need to cook their food, select carefully what they'll eat etc. And they need *more* food than elves, given their greater body mass. So they're also more vulnerable to starvation than elves, halflings, and gnomes.

Elves freeze like anyone else in the winter. Yes, winter. Small thing, that. No winter coat? No gloves? No cap? No boots? Welcome to the wonderful world of frostbite, hypothermia, pnemonia, and death.
Elves are subject to heat weakness, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke like anyone else.
Elves are subject to sunburn like anyone else. Enough sunlight, and they contract cataracts, glaucoma, and blindness like anyone else.

You're correct....elves have no less vulnerability than humans do to any of these conditions. However, they're not any *more* vulnerable either.

Elves tire out, just like anyone else. In fact, they tire out more quickly, because of that -2 Constitution. If the average elven Constitution is 8, I'd say they tire out all too fast.

And heck, elves cannot see in the dark. They can see in low light, but not in total darkness.

Low light, enough for elves to see by, is defined as a starry or moon filled sky. That is quite dark enough for humans. But under those conditions, elves can see as effectively as humans do in daylight. For 60'.

As to CON, humans will have the edge in resistance to exhaustion etc. How much of an edge is debatable. In a game based on D20 roles, that is a 5% advantage.

But elves do live longer than humans. That, they do. Even though their lifespans are shorter in 3E, those lifespans are still much longer than humankind.
There is no rule saying elves cannot have as many children as they want in 3E. So, perhaps they can have one child per year, every year, for their whole reproductive life. No rule says otherwise.


I pity elven women, in this case. Childbirth is hard enough for human women. Take that -2 Constitution, and the ladies have a real problem. Especially if they wish to bear several hundred children in their reproductive lifetime.
Assuming that there is food aplenty, help available, no wars or other dangers, and everything is otherwise going perfectly, of course.
Why, under this scenario the elves might even keep pace with humans, in terms of population!

Childbirth sure is hard enough....definitely in more primitive times. But by no means was it a death sentence. If it was, most of us wouldn't be here. Through the centuries, there have been plenty of societies where women commonly produced large numbers of children. Historically, many French Canadian women had 12+ children over their reproductive lifespans. Some died, but many did not. I've had relatives who've had 15+ children in the past. Would elves be any different? Imagine if a woman's reproductive period was 200 years instead of 20+? Statistically, the odds might catch up to her...but when?



The elves can choose to live in the city. Or the country. Or the forest. Or even under the mountains. All this still happens.

And what a pleasant existence they are enjoying ...


Remember that there is nothing in the RAW that says elves must be communal. There is nothing in the RAW that says they need be good, altruistic, nice, or even reasonable.
Perhaps some of the children decide to turn on their parents. Parents come to loathe their brothers and sisters. Child turns on child. Jealously turns to anger and hatred. Feuds and battles break out. Communities shatter and their people disperse.
Normally, elves are conceived of as sticking together, but nothing in the 3E RAW says they must do so, and so ... they don't stick together! (Anymore than they must live in forests.)

-

The Race of Man, is not reasonable.
The Race of Man, has this bad tendency to lord it over, despise, and kill those of other races.
But don't take that from me. Take it from a majority of the realms, nations, cultures, and human peoples of the various settings. They'll inform you that, elves are not welcome in their lands (even the nice Knights of Solamnia will do this.) Maybe elves can visit, if they behave themselves. And maybe visiting elves go to the Arena (Hillsfar on the Moonsea.)

The elves could go to war to obtain lands held by humans. They could even win, crush the humans, drive them out, and take all for themselves.
Or elves can go to war against other races, and take their lands, so they have a home for themselves.
Or they could skulk in the few human lands where they are actually welcome. And in the lands of the few other races that will grant them a welcome. (This does not ensure they will be treated well ... it merely means they can actually live there without fighting a war to do so. The way humans carry on, elves can expect only the unexpected, and the unexpected could be very bad indeed. The other races are probably no better.)
If they will not do that, they can ... like the gully dwarves ... skulk and rot in the places of the world nobody else wants, places virtually uninhabitable for humanoid types (including elves.) In which case, disease, plague, and starvation will be more prevalent than ever before.

Of course, in many of the settings you reference, the elves are relatively entrenched. They were there, with stable civilizations when men were still living in caves. So the onus is less on elves to try to take the land from humans, than for humans to take the land from an entrenched foe who's on their home turf.

If one wants to ignore the setting-specific stuff, then one goes back to core, which really doesn't detail where exactly elves live in the first place...but then it doesn't really define where humans live either.

The races are different, they each have their own advantages and disadvantages. The scenario you paint can be an interesting take on the subject, but it's not the only take.

Banshee

 

[The Green Adam]

I'm not certain why a new thread needed to be made as we addressed much of this in the earlier thread. And as in that thread I would have ask

Elves are not winners, not successful, not able to adjust or cope, not able to survive. These realities are built into the race in 3rd edition (as it was in 2nd and 1st edition and OD&D)

They're not winners? That's built into the rules? A higher Dex when most of their attacks are Dex based, resistance to sleep and charm, seeing in the dark, long life, an affinity in using magic...yep, sounds pretty weak. :\

We as players ignore this reality

What reality? The one we each make up for our campaigns?

Elves have all the problems of humans. They have all the problems of humans because they 1: have no special immunities to the horrors of nature, and 2: have no special immunities to manmade (and other races and monster) horrors, and 3: have to eat like anyone else.

Let's see...Humans have trouble seeing in the dark, resisting sleep spells and can be paralyzed by a Ghoul. They age and die.

Well, elves don't suffer the first three problems and they are fairly resistant to the fourth. (The Elven immunity to Ghouls is listed in the original, 'first addition' Monster Manual.

So elves:

1: Do not procreate.
2: Live in forests under conditions that make any civilization beyond the Stone Age impossible.
3: Waste time in singing, dancing, and making merry.

1: Mine do. Fairly often.
2: A) Not all Elves live in forests. B) The forests they do live in must be able to support their cities. C) Magic
3: What?! I'm sorry, I mean...really? I don't recall them doing that in my campaign.

And:

4: Humans and other races are on the aggressive against elves
5: Monsters infest the lands and forests, making survival even more difficult
6: Many of the other races are supercompetitive, superpowerful, and hate the elves like bad spinnach

Result: extinction. (Or, as the Daleks would say: Exterminate!)

4: Unless they need to team to fight a more immediate, deadly menace.
5: Agreed. No time to waste picking on the potentially helpful magical allies.
6: Huh? Which race of the basic assortment lives longer and creates as many powerful magic items?

While some of your ideas are interesting, the catalyst for your overall opinion of Elves eludes me. If you are refering to Elves in a particular book series or campaign, your comments and comparisons might be correct. However, to say that Elves in D&D as written are somehow inferior...I just don't see it in any way, shape or form. Further more, none of my campaigns have ever reflected this mentality in the 30 years I've been playing. Trust me, in thirty years I've seen a lot of Elves.

 

[Banshee16]

Once I've read about the destruction of the elves in book after book related to the game (take the War of Souls trilogy, for example) and seen them reduced to insignificance in setting after setting (such as Greyhawk) and see how the rules work against them (at least, in 1st and 2nd edition) I begin to think of the elves as losers, in the D&D game. Nowhere else, but definitely in this particular game.
Now we have 3rd edition, and perhaps that image can be turned around?

Now these are some statements that make sense. I won't argue with you on the idea that they're often depicted as on the retreat. However. I would like to point out that the novels are very, very different than the game itself. Writer prerogative allows a writer to basically say what they want. And a lot of standard fantasy is very derivative of Tolkien...hence the elves in retreat. But it's not necessarily that way in the game, as the rules don't dictate that this is the way of things. Some settings do....but we're getting back to whether things are derivative of Tolkien.

Rajaat and his Champions hunted the elves....but they didn't succeed in exterminating them. They were one of the demihuman races to escape extinction, unlike the gnomes. DL's take on what's happened to the elves is just weird. I hope there's a plan for them. But who knows?

FR? The elves were in Retreat, but that's now over. And as of the novels Evermeet, and then the elven trilogy a year or two ago, they've established a new hidden colony, with a tree of life or whatever, that will assist them in establishing a strong realm armed with High Magic, and they used an army of thousands of elven heroes to reconquer Cormanthor, and reestablish Myth Drannor....coming back to the example of a long-lived race having hundreds of high-level or even medium-level regular citizens.

So now, the fiction isn't entirely making them a bunch of losers. Maybe they'll be a little less similar to the retreating elves of Tolkien.

Banshee

 

[fusangite]

- Elves can harvest less food than other races

That's just not true. You and Edena have both failed to demonstrate this. We, on the other hand, have offered a number of examples of cultures that lived in forests and harvested more food per capita per hour than any pre-industrial agrarian society.

- Elves lack many ressources not found in forests

Since you have failed to demonstrate that elves cannot trade, this point is untrue.

- Elves have nearly nothing to trade

And by "nearly nothing," you include furs, gems, spell casting services, master craft labour, books, scrolls and other magic items. This is not "nearly nothing."

(I do'nt care if the native amarican economy was based on wood and fur. Technologically they were a lot less developed than D&D nations).

You are missing what we are saying here. North America and Siberia did not have significant local fur trades at all until higher-tech European countries began purchasing their furs in large quantities. The 16th to 18th century European nations, the consumers of the furs were higher-tech than the human nations in D&D.

Meat is cheap acording to D&D pricing guides as is wood.

I agree. But gems, scrolls, spell casting services and furs are not. They are expensive.

- Selling enough hides to support a medival like economy + wizard training would require overhunting the area

How are you able to argue this without knowing:
(a) the climate of the forest
(b) the size of the market for furs
(c) the demand for furs on the part of consumers
(d) the amount of gold consumers are willing to spend
(e) the species of animals being hunted
(f) the quality of the furs being exported
Given that you have no idea of the supply of furs, the demand for furs or the ecosystem producing the furs, how can you have any idea of how many furs need to be hunted?

- Wizard training is very expensive,

Where do the rules say that?

as is item creation

Yes. But it has an absolutely gigantic profit margin.

- Elves have a low birth rate as they take so long to grow up. An elf child has to grow up for 100 years before it can have children itself. That are 3 human generation (maybe 4 orc generations). Also still having to care for a child after 50 years because it is still not self sustaining limits the number of children a elf can have at one time

Elves can give birth to one child at a time. It does not follow that they can only raise one child at a time. Elves' gestation periods are not stated in the rules but if we accept the only figure that has been quoted, it appears that an elf woman could have 20-40 more kids during the time it takes for her first child to grow up.

But more to the point, high birth rates do not equal high survival rates. As has already been mentioned on this thread, societies with low birth rates have much lower mortality rates, much higher levels of education, much higher life expectancies and much higher levels of worker productivity.

- Saying "That would also apply to humans" is no argument

Why not? You argue that something that is true about all humanoids is true about all elves but then claim that this flaw will only kill elves but not affect the other humanoids with whom they are competing. Just declaring an argument to be "no argument" doesn't make it so.

- Elves would have a high child mortality because of Con

The main things that affect infant mortality are not innate CON. Infant and child mortality is conditioned primarily by access to parental care, medical care and healthy food. Elf children have way better food, parental care and medical care than orc children.

- Elves are more likely to be affected by diseases than normal

5% more likely, approximately. They are also 5% less likely, approximately, to be hit by creatures trying to attack them.

But, again, the kind of culture they live in, not their CON score, is going to be the prime determinant of the amount of disease they will be exposed to.

- Elves have no superpowers which gives them a large advantage over other races

Are all races without superpowers doomed? Because, if so, all PC races are doomed. I guess we'd all better play Minotaurs from now on.

- Elves do not have more spellcasters than other races as the numbers of them are limited by exceptional individuals

Well, given that 3E is balanced so that class levels are of equal value regardless of what class they are in, I'm not especially troubled by this.

All that leads to that elves would be overrun by faster breeding races and monsters (and that includes dragons!)

There's no point in us repeating ourselves unduly. You seem to have decided that elves have low birth rates and all creatures with low birth rates are doomed, despite massive, pervasive and overwhelming evidence from the real world to the contrary.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hmm
They flourish because they are specialists in surviving in the regions they inhabit, like the steppe nomads, or the bedouin, or the Inuit or... (need I go on?)

Where do you get this from? Elves do not have any forest related abilities. They are not more suited for a live in a forest than humans or orcs are.

By the rules, Mongolian humans have no steppe-related abilities, Arab humans have no desert-related abilities, and Inuit humans have no arctic-related abilities, but obviously those groups all flourished in their respective lands by becoming specialists in surviving in those regions.

By the rules, elves may have no racial bonuses to living in the woods, but they -- at least wood elves -- have a society that obviously specializes in living in the woods. Presumably a typical elf is not a wheat farmer who raises a few chickens, and who fails to thrive, because he's trying to grow wheat and raise chickens in the woods.

Thanks MMadsen I’m beginning to see this now as a ‘we need a rule for everything’ argument. Which is obviously nonsense.

Derren, Edina, if you want to play a game where the rules are all that there is, then that’s up to you, but I’m curious. Why do you both appear to argue that if it ain’t in the rules, it can’t be done? The rules are simply a method of resolving conflict situations you should not, IMO expect them to be as all encompassing as the laws of physics. I’ve never read DnD 3.5, but does the system have a rule for the rate of growth of trees in a year? Or the quality of beer brewed by an innkeeper, or do you, as referees, simply make some stuff up.

My advice is, if you think a rule is wrong, and it’s spoiling your fun, ignore it. I’m reasonably sure that all earlier editions of DnD, aspecially the ones you quote, say something like, it’s your game, do what you want and ignore what you don’t like.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Ok, coal was my mistake so take it out. That still doesn't change that the elven society would lack ressources like iron and forests are also not very good places to grow large amounts of food.

For information on ‘Natural Iron’ check here.
http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm
Deer, swine and chickens were all originally forest animals. There is a lot of eating on a boar. Eggs are readily available (lots of birds live in trees).
Fruit and nuts grow on trees (so do edible fungi – though hopefully not the same trees). Apples, pears, oranges, quinces, etc., the list is very long. Okay, commercial fruit farms are not exactly forests, but our ancesters were pretty good at planting and maintaining trees.
Depending on the climate, olives (and therefore olive oils) could be produced, they are a valuable export crop (at least they were a millennium or two ago).
Grapes make wine which can also make a huge trading profit.
A quick google check should take you to some sites where you’ll be able to pull up details of forest tubers and grains. I’m no expert.
Bees make hives in forests and make honey. Sweeteners were difficult to find in medieval times, and were valuable.

 

[Hussar]

Meh, my elven armada of several hundred archmages will deal with any threat short of divine intervention.