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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Norfleet" data-source="post: 1205609" data-attributes="member: 11581">Typical D&D elves have a large cultural dependency on metal products: Their melee weapons of choice are longswords and rapiers. Their other cultural weapon, the longbow, presumably requires metal for use in arrowheads, unless elves use stone arrowheads instead, but this would suffer from a similar problem. They're also noted for their chainmail, which is not only composed of metal, but composed of exotic metal: mithril.Yet, elves have no interest in mining, according to the PHB, and only a few of them actually trade for this metal. However, elves obviously consume metal at prodigious rates: In addition to whatever metal tools are surely used to maintain their living standard, all elves are proficient in their racial weapons: This means that, unlike humans, nearly every elf will *HAVE* such a weapon to practice with, as the entire race surely could not become proficient in them if the weapons weren't widespread.How, exactly, does a race that inhabits terrain generally unsuited for mining, and has no interest in mining at all, as elves clearly do not turn tracts of forest into festering strip mines to fuel their demand for metals, and has strong isolationist tendencies, manage to fuel their demand for all this metal that they don't extract? Why has a culture that engages in practically no mining come to favor weapons which require great amounts of metal to produce? Wouldn't it make more sense for elves to favor spears and staves, instead of swords? Spears also seem like the natural weapon choice of a race which finds the idea of being prematurely killed extremely distasteful.</blockquote>

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