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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7434992" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Medieval demographics are of limited use, due to effective healing magic.and no edition of D&D has good data. 2E has the best, but it doesn't match 5EWe do know that elves suffer very low infant mortality (2E Complete Elves) [human was almost 50% in many places], and low birth rates. (2 year pregnancy, as well, ibid.), for probably 3 births between age 110 and 150 (the adult years before middle age), with about 2.9 surviving. so, 2.9 per 110 years birth rate per couple, or 1.45 per person, peak. Non-violent death is around 45. If we assume the fecund period is only adult and middle age...we get about 50/450 of the population is fecund, and they average 2.9 per couple living to adulthood, and 1/450 dies annually... 90% of fecund age reproduce... I get 4538 years minimum doubling time for elves in 2E.Humans, with 15-40, and 6 kids, with 35% infant mortality rate, and the D&D 100 death, I get 151 years minimum doubling. (this is a 20% reduction in infant mortality, and 1 extra child, over historical, plus 2.1x median death age, but median death for medieval was lowered highly due to plagues)Dwarves, we are told, are  suffering a 4:1 ratio of M:F, so only 20% are reproductives, and even the reproductives don't get started until twice adulthood, and average similar numbers of children as humans per couple... but with low (1%) infant mortality... 1107 years doubling time minimumOrcs, per complete book of humanoids, and historical human numbers of children and infant mortality:Age, adult    10age, max middle    17Age, death    40Births per fecund period    5Infant mortality    0.45rate of reproductives    0.9Years    118 to doubling, minimum.If we up the children to 1 per year... for 7 children per couple, it drops to 38 years...Orcs positively explode compared to the others.Attached is the XLSX of my numbers spreadsheet I used to work it out. Note that warfare, plagues, and curses will drastically increase population doubling times. Dwarves, if you reduce births, or increase infant mortality to even 5%, go into a death spiral.</blockquote>

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