AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

I'm trying to flesh out some character background and in my research I've found some contradictory accounts of how Elves mature, its largely assumed that a PC elf is around 120 when they start adventuring so I'm trying to figure out what happens n all those years prior, some accounts state the elves physically mature slowly they physically remain in adolescence till around 50 and don't reach adult proportions till 85 or 100, others say that elves physically mature much like humans but have an adolescent mindset till around age 85. What are the conventions regarding early Elven life on the server?

For my purposes I'd like it to be the slower maturation, but if that's not the consensus I don't want to make it a point and have it be an issue, I'll work around whatever is standard.

References
Slow Maturation
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Elven_Life_cycle (Tolkien elves are different from DnD elves for sure but they were based on them)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Elves_(Zyanya_Supplement)#Elven_Lifespan

And the 2nd ed complete book of elves suggest the slower maturation
http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/gaming ... 0Elves.pdf

Childhood
"Elves remain children for approximately 65 to 75 years. They grow slowly throughout these
years, achieving a height of 4 feet at most. It is during this stage of life that they learn what it
means to be an elf. They learn the basics of archery and swordplay. However, they are still
essentially children and continue with their childish ways until they reach adolescence."

And another source
http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry ... naging.pdf

The one refrence to a human like maturation was here
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Elf (this is FR so its likely be be the best guide but the reference is for 4th ed so I'm not sure if that diverted from 3-3.5, because it talks about eladrin and such)

There are enough sources that contradict each other on that question that I think the only possible answer is "wait for a DM to tell you which ones are correct for Amia." My personal take on it would be that the sources that say an elf isn't an adult until 100 or 110 years old are referring to cultural adulthood, rather than physical maturation, because the idea of a fifty-year-old toddler is, quite frankly, amazingly stupid.

Peeves wrote:

Random starting age in years
--------Adulthood-- Middleage--OldAge--VenerableAge--Max age
Human-----15---------35---------53----------70---------+2d20 years
Dwarf------40---------125--------188---------250-------+2d100 years
Elf----------110--------175--------263---------350-------+4d100 years
Gnome-----40---------100--------150---------200-------+3d100 years
Half-elf-----20----------62---------93----------125-------+3d20 years
Half-orc----14----------30---------45-----------60--------+2d10
Halfling-----20----------50---------75----------100-------+5d20 years

I'd say that's what we use since this is in the R&L forum.

The chart gives an age of adulthood without defining "adulthood." Is 110 years the age at which an elf is first physically and mentally capable of functioning as an adult? Or is it the age at which elven society judges that an elf is no longer a child and is entitled to be treated as an adult? In the real world, for example, humans are pretty much as developed as they're going to get, physically and mentally, by 15 or 16. But a 15-year-old is still a "child," until the completely arbitrary age of 18, when we as a society have decided "adulthood" begins.

It's a very interesting question indeed. Lizzie's already caught the point I was going to make. I've always thought that elves did indeed physically mature at a rate similar to humans (~17-20 years for physical adulthood), but they didn't meet the societal standard for adulthood until after a century or so.

I'm led to believe that that's what the chart means. Plenty of societies, especially if we take Medieval times as a crude stand-in for FR, considered 13 years to be adult. Hell, you had to get out and start having kids as soon as possible, before you die at the ripe old age of 30 from the plague! Or raiders! Or arbitrary decree of whomever was wearing the crown in your part of the word.

But to get back on point, my thought had always been that elves grow at a similar rate to humans. It would be extremely weird to see an elven "child" waddle up to someone and say "today's me 60th birthday!". However, an apparently adult elf of going around playing pranks on people and macking on ladies because he's 30 and that's the mental equivalent a human teenager makes more sense. To me, at least.

Beyond that, I've always taken the age chart as general, in telling you what age to make the PC if you wanted him to be young, elderly, whatever. As long as you don't have like a toddler or inbetweener, of any race, running around wielding god-like powers, age shouldn't really be a big deal.

I see your point that 60 year old toddlers can be silly or disconcerting, but elves are not humans, they do live many ages longer than humans its not out of the question for them to mature at a slower pace, there's a bunch of references that they do, some that they don't, I'm trying to fill in what happens in those years before 120, so knowing how an elf ages in those early years can be important, if they were raised among humans, a childhood friend could have grown up, had kids and died and the elf "teenager" is babysitting their grand children before they are ready to go off and make there way in the world.

I'll have to point out that none of the sources referenced here are Forgotten Realms canon. I wouldn't take R&L tables as final, either: I think they were intended as the best guidelines we have, but I'm sure they are open to adjustment if someone happens to find hard data on Toril's elves.

The books you might have luck with are Elves of Evermeet, Cormanthyr - Empire of Elves, Races of Faerûn, the two Forgotten Realms Campaign Settings and possibly Player's Guide to Faerûn (though it's pretty shitty with the lore). I can't promise you'll find anything, but it's worth a shot. I'm at work and they're at home, and I probably have better things to do when I get there.

Other than that, searching Candlekeep is always wise. You'll often find references to the books and sometimes previously unpublished clarifications from the setting authors. That, I can do for you right now.

There's a lot of useful discussion in this topic, but this is the best bit:

The Sage wrote:

Here's Ed's actual reply... from 30th May 2005 -

"May 30, 2005: Hello, all. ISP problems kept Ed offline for a day (during which I see some good questions have arrived), but he’s “back on” now, and herewith answers the last Phoebus questions: “I think most people have a good idea regarding what a human of reasonable ambition and means can achieve in her first, say, 35 years of life (putting her in her peak, if you will). How does an Elf compare? Does a Mountain Dwarf or a Moon Elf really need to hit 250-300 years before his drive brings him to the same skill level as the aforementioned lady, or is it more a case of plateauing early and just relaxing through the rest of life? I understand the concept of different races = different mentalities/philosophies, but I've always felt that carrying this over to the "game" portion of the Realms (to maintain "game balance", for example) is a bit contrived.”

Ed replies:

Phoebus, I quite agree that this racial differentiation seems contrived, though I don’t disagree with trying to make the races different (and the colour that brings to the game, which can of course be readily ignored by players and DMs not wanting to include it).

However, the ‘big shift’ of the Realms to bring it to the ‘broad tapestry of reality’ that the world first started to see it in published form as having, involved my adapting it to the (1st Edition, unfolding) D&D rules, and this slow maturing of the demi-human races was present in those rules, so it’s there in the Realms.

I think of it like this: given proper amounts of nourishment (as opposed to, say, starved slavery) elves and dwarves physically mature about ten years later than their human counterparts, so that they stop looking like obvious children at about age 20 or 21 rather than 10 or 11. I don’t mean that they stop growing or even looking older - - I mean demihuman individuals stop seeming obviously immature to other races observing them at about that age (members of their own race can judge their approximate age far more accurately, given a ‘good look’ at an individual).

I don’t think demihumans are sexually mature when they stop looking like children; I believe achieving puberty takes at least another 80 years, and possibly as much as 120.

The time ‘in between’ being truly human and being sexually mature is the time in which demihumans start to grow up socially. So an elf or dwarf between, say, 20 and 100 can’t become pregnant or impregnate anyone, and so can sexually ‘play’ free of some social responsibilities. At the same time, they are dominated by surging hormones (and hence, mood swings), and are especially susceptible to all sorts of diseases (which they inevitably catch, and conquer). Also, during this long onset of puberty, their bones are still hardening, and in soft state lack some strength that saves them from breakages in some calamities, but also robs them of some accuracy that they’ll master later.

For elves and halflings, this prolonged adolescence is dominated, for most but not all individuals (so a PC adventurer could well be one of the exceptions, if desired) by judged-by-most-humans-as-wildly-frivolous-or-silly play, leading to an inability to stick with any one task or even pressing need for long (no attention span, a seeming complete inability to take consequences or impending disaster seriously).

For dwarves and gnomes, adolescence is dominated by a fierce, exploring independence that leads the younglings to be stubborn, proud, difficult, bad ‘team-players,’ and prone to racing off on quests or solo explorations.

Perhaps “ungovernable” is a good term to describe both the elves and dwarves. Isolated or in conditions of war or flight, they will, yes, be forced to ‘grow up’ or perish, but in terms of being trainable to specific skills (represented in the game by class abilities, skills, and feats) - - no, that comes later, at different rates for each individual. This is probably best simulated by having a favourite hobby or pastime (such as acrobatics, or archery, or a skill at identifying metals or the rocks that hold metallic ores) being mastered in this adolescence, leading to proper skills later.

This DOESN’T mean that every adolescent demihuman is a hopeless, helpless, dithering [and pouting or flipping out whenever spoken to or guided] crazy - - it just means that they’re unreliable, and can’t muster the drive to master any one thing. Unlike humans, they’re so rapt (lost) in experiencing the world and absorbing their cultures (song, dance, playing musical instruments, the lore of aeons, forge-craft, knowing stone by smell - taste - texture, divining directions underground and where water is, lineages and feuds and tribal tales, etc.) that they master everything a tiny bit at a time, not one skill and then another.

By the time 250 to 300 years of age is reached, demihumans are masters of their own bodies, world-view and awareness, and so can begin to acquire task skills (classes) and at the same time have a natural restlessness stirring that goads them into having the sort of personal drive, patience, and foresight that humans have (and that their own elders just go on developing more and more of, until death). This in turn makes them want to accomplish things, have adventures (as opposed to playing games) and so on.

In short, if an elf lass escapes from slavery at age eight to wander alone - - yes, she has no one to play with, and a need to master feeding herself and keeping herself safe, so she would ‘grow up’ pretty quickly (WITHOUT all the ‘lore of the People’ that an elf growing up far more slowly, with other elves, would possess). If the same escaped elf lass was found very swiftly by elves who took her in and raised her in an elf society, she’d mature more slowly with all of the usual play and blithe merriment.

This is my view, of course, not enshrined in the game. It’s what *I* think of the races as being, in the Realms, but feel free to disagree. I’ll be very interested in your opinion.

So saith Ed.

Nice solid trio of posts, to good questions. Thanks, Phoebus!

love to all,
THO"

And here's another topic on the subject.

You need to keep in mind that elven lifespan varies between editions. Which one we choose seems largely up to taste, though the one that best coincides with established lore references and NPC ages is the obvious choice. A 1000-year lifespan is certainly not out-of-place in the setting, even if the table quoted above gives lower numbers.

Elves grow like trees.

Ah. Ed strikes again. I very much like his take on it. And it's kind of a balance between both outlooks; yes, they physically mature a few years later than humans, but the majority of it is social, and pressing circumstances can overrule having to spend an entire century as a promiscuous, snarky teen. Not that all elves stop being promiscuous or snarky once they hit adulthood, mind you. >_>

great find from Ed the man himself, this is the info i was wanting, thanks!

That is one of the things that have always bothered me in most RPGs; creatures like elves and dwarves that we often think of as immortal (much thanks to Tolkien I suppose) now have defined age categories to fit the rest of the game system that is designed for human PC's. Tolkiens solution was to make the elves immortal; they are born and grow as 'normal', but they simply stop ageing at adulthood. The dwarves were just said to live for centuries, with no further explanation give.

Me, I think the age categories are silly. I'd much rather have elves, dwarves, whatever mature at the same pace as humans. Difference would be that they live much longer. Forcing races of a much longer lifespan into the same ageing process as humans only creates such problems, and I can not understand why it was done in the first place.

It's been established and confirmed by DMs in past that Amia lore is that elves/drow age like humans until they hit 21 - 25 ish years, then slow down.

Elven Life Cycle Question

Who is online