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HelldoG
Learned Scribe
101 Posts |
 Posted - 06 Mar 2010 : 15:40:53
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Hi all!
I'm curious about how elves (And drows in particular.) develop physically during their adolescence and further.
For example: at what age is an elven child comparable to a 10 year old human child?
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Hoondatha
Great Reader
USA
2449 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2010 : 16:42:19
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Check Ed's replies here at the keep from a few years ago. I know he talked about it at length. IIRC, elves mature physically about as quickly as humans (so reaching full height in 15-20 years) but their mental and sexual maturation lags decades behind. Note he also said that you could essentially force elves to mentally grow up really quickly (ie: about the same time as their bodies), but that there were some bad side effects.
Drow use much the same rules, except that they're all forced to grow up quickly, so by about age 20-25 they're full-fledged adults in all senses of the word. |
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Edited by - Hoondatha on 06 Mar 2010 16:42:56 |
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Dalor Darden
Great Reader
USA
4211 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2010 : 16:53:05
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So in essence, Drow are bad because of poor parenting eh?  |
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sfdragon
Great Reader
2285 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2010 : 20:13:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Dalor Darden
So in essence, Drow are bad because of poor parenting eh?
hahaha good one |
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Alystra Illianniis
Great Reader
USA
3750 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2010 : 20:54:17
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Full size that early? You'd think that they would take longer. That just doesn't make much sense for the body to reach full size that long before full maturity. I'd say (going just on the novels that have mentioned it, like Daughter of the Drow) that an elf would be equivalent to a human ten-year-old at the age of about 25-30. Since most elves don't reach full maturity until 90-100, cutting the rate of aging by 1/4 would make sense. That would explain why an elf could still be considered a young adolescent at 40 or even 50.
This isn't canon by any means, but here's my take on it- make of it what you will:
Age Human equivalent
10 5
25 11
40 14
75 18
90 20
This would more or less fit with the canon from various novels about elven adolescence. From that point on, one could probably expect the aging to slow down even more.
As to why drow grow up faster, I'd say it's a combination of poor parenting and competition among siblings. You learn fast when your own brothers or sisters are out to kill you! |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4685 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2010 : 22:23:54
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The elven body grows as quick as a humans, in the normal case at looking at a much greater life span they stay mentally adolescence until 50 to 100 year range.
Consider it like a wealthy family can send their children to college for 4 to 8 years (sometimes even longer) and poor families can not support their children long enough to complete high school.
The high (surface) elves have time for their children to play and learn for many, many years. The Lolthian Drow more or less tell their 10 years olds "you need to prove you are of value enough to live to age 11".
The culture one grows up in effects why Drow are combat ready and self-reliant by at least age 20 - should they live that long. The other sub-races are not expected or required to be useful until much later.
Oh as far as age go, IIRC, different ages do apply to the different Editions. |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2010 : 00:44:42
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Ed has actually discussed this at Candlekeep.
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" |
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Hoondatha
Great Reader
USA
2449 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2010 : 02:01:55
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| That's the response I was thinking of, Sage. Thanks for tracking it down. |
Doggedly converting 3e back to what D&D should be...
Sigh... And now 4e as well. |
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Ashe Ravenheart
Great Reader
USA
3240 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2010 : 03:55:15
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| So, in effect, their bodies grow at about the same rate as humans, but they're teenagers for decades longer... *shudder* |
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Lady Fellshot
Senior Scribe
USA
379 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2010 : 06:22:17
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This would explain much about the... er... rate of development for certain characters.   
Small wonder why the age of responsibility among surface elves is around the first century mark.
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Alystra Illianniis
Great Reader
USA
3750 Posts |
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HelldoG
Learned Scribe
101 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2010 : 13:05:05
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| So if a drow child will be born in Westgate from one drow parent and one half-elf parent then at what earliest age could she "take" some levels in Rogue and how quick could she progress? She's quite intelligent (20 Int) and charismatic (20 Cha). |
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Hoondatha
Great Reader
USA
2449 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2010 : 16:40:04
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Earliest? Well, as Ed says, if needed, elves can grow up really fast, so she could take levels as early as a human. Meaning, like ten, if she's thrown out on the streets with no other way to survive.
For something somewhat less drastic, she could start learning in her early-to-mid teens, again, much like humans. Many elves would dabble in various character classes around this time, trying to figure out what they want to do in life (and starting the practice that eventually gives full-blood elves the advantage with bows/long swords), but again, elven parents would want to give their kids decades to experiment and grow up before settling down.
In your case, though, the kid's probably going to hew much closer to a human timescale. The drow parent doesn't know any different, and the half-elf might not either, depending on how they were brought up. It's possible the half-elf might not know anything at all about elven child rearing, and so they would take on the custom of whatever people they're around.
End result: an elf can learn as quickly as a human, but there are often severe psychological ramifications of doing so. Pick whatever's right for the situation, and just be aware that there may be scars. |
Doggedly converting 3e back to what D&D should be...
Sigh... And now 4e as well. |
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Elf age & growing
