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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 3573241" data-attributes="member: 7240">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.Since you have failed to demonstrate that elves cannot trade, this point is untrue.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."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.I agree. But gems, scrolls, spell casting services and furs are not. They are expensive.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 exportedGiven 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?Where do the rules say that?Yes. But it has an absolutely gigantic profit margin.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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