Read what I write (or strat thinking instead of replying on a reflex). Elves can trade but they have not enough to trade with to get everything a D&D nation needs to be strong (in the case of elves).
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.[/qoute]
A large fur trade would mean a lot of death animals which does not work with the elven lifestyle. The yield of gems would be extremly low without minign (which the cliche elves do not practice) and elves are no master crafters by default. When one race are master crafters then dwarves who actually has a racial bonus for working with certain materials. And for all magical the market is rather small so you can't sustain a nation by selling magic, not to mention that those things require a huge investment. Not to mention a wizard needs to mantain a spellbook which is also quite expensive as he has to pay much for every spell he scribes into it. The spellbook of a fresh 1st level wizard alone is already worth hundereds of gold.
We are reading what you're writing. We disagree with your arguments, however. The elves have plenty to trade. As has been mentioned in other posts, the colonization of North America was largely because of the huge market in Europe for wood, fur, and food. Regardless of your feelings on the matter, these had huge value, such as that nations made expensive, dangerous voyages across the ocean, and felt it was worth it to invest in the new continent.
The elves could very well have the knowledge to be able to benefit from that trade...and make it a renewable resource. Their lives are so long, that they likely have the perspective to realize the importance of, and manage the process of replanting, and forest management, to a degree that humans don't. Imagine how much better we'd likely be at that kind of thing, if a forest grew to maturity in 6-7 years. A forestry expert would manage over their career the growth of maybe 5 forests? But because it takes much longer, humans haven't had the foresight to do it properly. But elves? An elf could definitely fit in the management of, say, the growth of maybe 4-5 forests, each taking 60 years (as an example) over their lifespan. They could directly see the benefits of doing so, so would be motivated to do it.
Meanwhile the humans continue to strip clear and overhunt, which only increases the value of the resources the elves manage even more.
Derren said:
Yeah, right. Can you care for 40 children at once? Every child is an additional drain on the communities ressources because they consume without producing anything. An elf having about 5 non adult children at the same time is acceptable but not 20. That means that an elf gets 5 children in 100 years. That is quite low.
Given that humans with a 20 year reproductive span *can* effectively rear 12+ children, the argument you're making seems kind of thing. Again, nowhere does it say that elves are children until 100. Only that adventurers start their careers around then. We don't know whether that's because they're physically and mentally the same as human children at age 95, or whether it's simply that their culture doesn't consider them adults yet. And that's far, far different.
Plus, in a pre-industrialized world, having more children was beneficial. In our current society, we're used to children being a drain on resources in the family until they're about 20. But in the pre-industrialized world, those 8 and 10 year olds were out there helping ma and pa to run the farm. They could do all kinds of tasks to assist. That's one reason many farm families were relatively large. It was kind of "free" labour.
Banshee
