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Message: <blockquote data-quote="R_Chance" data-source="post: 7785219" data-attributes="member: 55149">It depends on whether you thought through the effects of being that long lived. Elves (etc.) as PCs seemed to gain experience at the same rate as humans. As an aside at one point I considered reducing their experience awards, but that would have killed them as PCs (iirc it was an option in 2E but I'd already nixed it for my campaign). Well, if they gain experience at the same rate as humans and they are limited in gaining levels (in original D&D 4th level Fighter / 8th level Magic User / unlimited as Thieves - and with good stats a little higher 6/8) what are they doing with their time? Do they adventure for a couple of years and retire at 4/4? Do Elves never leave home and stay at level 1/1 for 1,000 years? What makes sense? I came up with mythic / historic reasons for their level limits and life spans. Still, limits or no, there is no reason for Elves to be level 1/1 their entire long lives. I assumed that only the low level youth were out adventuring / gaining levels and the more mature Elves stayed home brooding sharpening their swords, researching spells, pursuing other vocations and cursing their ancestors who restricted their levels and life spans. It's called the Limiting in my game setting. Those levels went up in 1E and later of course. Now, why would Elvish kingdoms continue to exist (if you're setting has any) if they don't have some advantage? Are they hidden? That's one option, but how long could they do that for with inquisitive humans running all over? Are they geographically isolated or naturally defensible? Maybe. Are humans just nice to their neighbors... err, scratch that one. We're not even nice to our fellow humans. Some combination of factors have to account for their survival. I decided they were tougher militarily than your typical human state, the reasoning being their life spans / experience. This is fairly reasonable. Imho, of course. I made these setting decisions in the "age of homebrew" (1974-79) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I substituted small groups (or individual) Elves for those 20-200 Elf wilderness encounters in the original game and 1E. It worked for me, and I've had no reason to change my mind on it. I still use the 1E lifespans for Elves (and other races) and level limits (from 2E, typically level 12 / 15 and I give bonus levels for high stats). Given my game doesn't churn out level 20 characters it hasn't effected any PCs. Yet anyway. Give it time <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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