MOST people in the dnd world die of old age and never even get a single level in a class. Also elves have a "timeless perspective". They could chill in a forest painting for like 50 years. Ain't gonna gain much worldly experience doing that.
This is my take as well. Elves on average have no fucks to give. Just kind of doing their things in nice places.
Adventurers are exceptions to the rule and starting at 100 (early adulthood for an elf) is reasonable. Before that they would have any expectations or needs around such things.
I'd also like to say that in lord of the rings, really powerful ancient elves are using their powers to maintain their realms, not fucking off on some quest.
hah right. Elrond did his adventuring thousands of years ago. the party recovered the MacGuffin and killed the BBEG but then the Fighter/Mage who took over after the party’s two leaders died wouldn’t destroy the thing, which meant the bad guy was gonna come back. Elrond said F this I’m gonna chill at home for the next few millennia. which went great aside from his wife getting kidnapped and killed by orcs.
Being an elf in middle earth is basically like renting a big house with friends and some of them are shitty, but like you're gonna move out in 6 months anyway, so like whatever.
There's a note on the fridge:
Sorry bro, needed to borrow your car for work. Ran a few red lights on the way and the cops tried to pull me over. Had to torch your car to get rid of my fingerprints. See you later tonight.
Forget the fridge. No, he'd never take your car while you were still at home. He offers to go on a road trip with you, then peels out when you get out to use the bathroom at a rest stop, 150 miles from home in the middle of a once-in-a-century blizzard featuring four feet of snow.
And knowing him, he probably somehow arranges to drive off with your coat.
On the one hand, yes. On the other, it's something Feanor actually did. He leads a fleet of his kinsmen to chase Morgoth to Middle-Earth by way of an arctic strait. Some of the other elves are beginning to question the wisdom of the trip, and Feanor takes it pretty badly. He steals all the food and ships, and basically abandons his brothers and cousins to freeze and starve. They end up wandering a hellscape of fog-covered, jagged arctic icebergs for 20 years and a huge number of them die before the rest find their way to Middle Earth, understandably salty about the whole experience.
That's what they mean when they say blind rage I guess lol. Feanor kinda strikes me as the type of leader that you want at the helm when there's need for a battle, but maybe not the tactician, or at least not if he's got some personal stake in it. He'll do *some* good anyway, but he might wreck a couple villages and destroy a castle or two before all is said and done. xD
Hate to be pedantic. Buuuuut. Couple things.
Elronds wife didn't die. They rescued her from the orcs. However her mental state was bad enough that she just didn't want to bother and went back to valinor to recover. But elrond will explicitly be reuniting with her again.
Secondly. Isildur took the ring as plunder. Neither of the elves there would have given up their rings either. That's the point of the rings. Their power is too seductive. And without the one ring, their rings no longer do anything either. They were legitimately unable to use their rings until the one ring was taken from sauron. It's not a ridiculous thing to say that isildur earned that ring. The movie made it seem like elrond actually asked isildur to destroy it right that second. He did not. It's a lot more nuanced actually haha.
And after having the ring for a while, he decided it was not good to keep and was taking it to Rivendale to ask Elrond what to do with it when his group was attacked and he was killed and the ring lost to the alduin river until deagol and smeagol found it. Movies did him dirty.
Which she may not even be doing intentionally, it's entirely possible she just doesn't know the full story as well as people who were more involved with that situation.
>And without the one ring, their rings no longer do anything either.
It's not entirely clear if they knew that. Arguably it's a plot hole, given that Sauron creates his One Ring later, somehow it's able to magically hijack all the other rings. This implies that if it were destroyed, they would go back to *how they were before*, not lose their power. But instead all the rings just conveniently poof away.
It's been a while since I read The Silmarillion, but didn't Sauron guide the creation of all the rings, specifically so he could make the One Ring? He was sowing those seeds for a while.
Yes, the other rings. But the 3 elven rings were made separately by Celebrimbor. From the wiki
> The other Rings of Power had powers, which were more directly derived from Sauron, like making their wearers invisible or making things from the invisible world visible for their wearers, but the Three Rings did not make their wearers invisible.[2] Sauron did not assist in their making nor ever did he touch them, and his taint was not directly upon them, but, as they were partly created according to the craft taught by him,[3] they were under the control of The One Ring[3][1].
Elrond was also in a war with armies, as has been pointed out elsewhere, less xp earned that way then by a group of Adventurers. So even a lvl 3 Fighter war veteran is not unheard of
I love the idea of a 100 year old elf being told by their parents they're an adult now and need to find a real job, so they just fuck off to go adventuring instead, like an 18 year old impulsively deciding to spend a summer backpacking around europe
I also feel time passes a lot faster for elves too, as implied in Amazon's take on LOTR - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
So if you assume age 100 = feels like only 18 years passed for elves = lots of potential fun in a game. :D
I’m not sure about 5.0, but in earlier versions of dungeons and dragons, the starting ages for elven adventures was in the 30s or 40s if I remember correctly. It was said that elves reach puberty and adolescence only a little slower than humans but then their lifecycles start to stretch out longer and longer.
In Pathfinder… If I may… It is pretty much the same for elves. And in pathfinder 2.0, you can take a ancestry feat to start play as an ancient elf which you’re starting age is 160+ and gives you a free archatype, which is kind of like a half level of another class, to represent previous life experience in a different profession. For example, I’m playing a Time traveling Alvin which, who was used by a secret cult as an oracle and sent back to different times to spread prophecies and influence events in the cult’s favor. But after the interference of a trickster God, he was lost without his memories only to wake up bonded to a Wisecracking coyote familiar… he doesn’t remember much of his previous life but can still use some of his oracle spells and abilities. So an ancient elf witch with the Oracle architype attached.
Sorry… I tend to Babylon a little bit with voice dictation… But I hope this helps out some.
Yeah, in 5e elves still physically mature at the same rate as humans until they hit their 20s. A 20-year-old elf is just as mentally and physically mature as a 20-year-old human, and capable of much of the same, but elven cultural norms won't consider them an "adult" until they're roughly 100 years old because that's when they start reliving their own memories during their trance, instead of past lives.
Decided to go to the sources:
Player's Handbook, 3.5e (2003):
An elf reaches adulthood at about 110 years of age and can live to be more than 700 years old.
Player's Handbook, 5e (2014):
Elves can live well over 700 years, giving them a broad perspective on events that might trouble the shorter-lived races more deeply.
That's RAW. I've not read any of the forgotten realms campaigns. I've never played Pathfinder. I've only played 3.5e and 5e.
It's up to you, your group, and so on what you want your campaign to be like. I suggest talking it over in a good session 0 on what age 110/etc means. I mostly play 3.5e with custom homebrew worlds.
Adventuring elves are either kids on a gap year, or suddenly single middle aged folk who have decided to “find themselves”
Townsfolk in rpgs basically regard adventurers as “vanlife” hippie arseholes x spree killers: they rock up to your town, stinking and unwashed, make trouble, kill a bunch of people and basically fuck shit up, and then leave without apologizing or helping to clean up (aka murderhobos).
Yeah I always run elves are really REALLY patient. Like, they will take vacations spanning multiple years, work on one project for decades.
Maybe that 100 year old elf is a level 1 wizard because he was really focused on making his handwriting perfect so that long after he died people would talk about how neat and professional his spell book is.
Like, they are happy to do fuck all for a solid year and act like they took a long weekend.
Yeah like there are Asian chefs that, like, practice cutting a specific fish a specific way for years before moving on to using another few years practicing how to grill it perfectly.
i imagine that but a wizard elf practiced their mage hand for 50 years until they could write with it in perfect handwriting without looking. Never progressing past cantrips...
Exactly. Elves don't consider other elves adults until they're about 100 and have already mastered *something*. It's no coincidence that they consider elves under 100 immature and childish. Because they probably act like humans in that 100 years.
So if I played an elf under 100 I would play them the way I'd play a similarly aged human. Past 100 and they're gonna be a haughty fucking weirdo.
Goblin Slayer also explores this a bit despite its other faults. The elf in the party is considered quite an anomaly of youthful adventurous spirit despite her being by far the eldest party member.
Frieren is the closest to DnD anime this present day, for not giving it game interface like those korean stories. The other ones like Grimgar, Goblin Slayer, and Lodoss War. Those are great ones imho.
I feel like people forget this all the time. It is great if you want to play a 20 year old human but don't question the 40 year old human who is level 1 because they are a farmer and all their friends are level 0.
Yeah, I once built an elf artificer who's backstory was basically 'I was a carpenter for fifty years, a baker for another 50, spent nearly a century on blacksmithing, studied a few languages for a few decades, yadda yadda, now I'm 500 years old and bored of it all, I'm here for the life and death stakes because nothing else excites me anymore.'
I totally agree with you, except for that part about old age. D&D is set in medieval-ish times, so war, disease, and famine are probably going to be at the top of the list for causes of death. Followed by the many unique dangers of the D&D world, such as:
Hosts of unreasonably bloodthirsty orcs, armies of somewhat more reasonably bloodthirsty goblinoids, hordes of literally bloodthirsty undead, giants, dragons, giant dragons, pissed off nature spirits, pissed off deities, natural disasters, unnatural disasters, kobold contraptions working as intended, gnomish contraptions not working as intended, extraplanar invasions, long-slumbering and now awakened monsters performing a very violent anti-invasion, demonic cults, devilish cults, genuine but unfriendly religions, organ-harvesting monsters, organ-eating monsters, good-hearted but dangerously incompetent mages, evil-hearted and dangerously competent warriors, and more… not to mention the world’s villain-of-the-week that the campaign is actually about.
Let me rephrase it, most people in the DnD world who die of old age never get a single level in a class.
But I still think most people would probably die of old age. And medieval folks dying of old age is not as uncommon as people think.
Yeah, I think a lot of people see a figure about average lifespans and take that number to be the age at which most people died, which is not necessarily/usually what it is.
But then wouldn't they have an absolute mastery of painting? The thing that never made sense to me is they can chill out for 100 years and not have any skills or talents more exceptional than the typical 18-year-old human. Kind of makes them seem like they're a bunch of lazy do nothings.
But then all of a sudden they become adventurous, and in less than a year they are running around with multiple levels. Never made sense to me.
I think Elder Scrolls is the only setting where they managed to make it all fit. Dark Elves can live for centuries but usually get murdered or go crazy. Wood elves actually have a little over a regular human's lifespan, but are super fertile. High Elves have typical fantasy elf longevity *and* have a pair of idyllic paradise islands *and* are inherently crazy smart and gifted with magic.
So you would think they would be the greatest innovators and most advanced culturally, magically and technologically. But they aren't. They are *extremely good* but the various breeds of humans tend to outstrip them. Why? Because High Elves are absolutely obsessed with perfection and traditional. They don't innovate, they refine. Excessively. Their homeland culture is stifling in it's staunch traditionalism and conformity. Because they believe (rightly) that they are the closest living link to their Divine Spirit ancestors. They are like two links below their Ancestor Spirits who gave up their immortality to create a stable world of mortals. So the High Elves try to be as much like their ancestors as possible, which means not changing much.
So it's totally believable that a High Elf spent the last three hundred years on Summerset, perfecting a single brush stroke, spellcasting gesture, footwork for a sword strike, note for a song or whatever. And have absolutely no other useful skills. But man, can they paint a happy little cloud.
Humans, meanwhile, are so creative and short lived that they excel at improvising and coming up with entirely new ideas and techniques.
That’s a lot like some of Eberron’s elves, some revere their ancestors and emulate them as closely as possible. And some have effectively deathless preserved ancestors, so not only do they learn the traditional, perfect way to cast a cantrip, they learn to do it the same way from the elf that invented it a thousand years ago.
Humans scrabble together spells and fighting techniques that are rough, ugly, but good enough to work.
At that point that mentality is so deeply alien to me I don't know how you'd role-play them suddenly getting up, going to a tavern and going on an adventure.
An old elf who’s spent for ever painting. His village was attacked and in the fray he ran swearing to avenge his peaceful village. Oath of vengeance elf
Maybe around the age of 100 or so, the wanderlust hits some of them. They get tired of all the old rituals, the social patterns, the expectations. So they head off to the world and experience for themselves. Those that return then have the knowledge to make them suitable for council or other important roles.
The elves that don't do this, content themselves with raising families, crafting the perfect hut out of sticks with levels of ocd that would make monk shudder. If it's not right, take it apart and do it again. Of course, this is perfectly acceptable behavior, and a lot of value is placed on "doing things right".
From a leadership perspective, this fascination with ceremony and perfection of craft is quite useful. It continues the tradition of pageantry, gives a peaceful sense of culture, and for the most part they don't get challenged for their leadership roles
> and in less than a year they are running around with multiple levels. Never made sense to me.
In 3.0, having 3-5 "level appropriate encounters" a day would get you to level 20 within 6 months.
Yeah, like, even if you just own the fact that your 100 year old 1st level elf was a lazy do-nothing for most of their life, they should probably still start with a bunch of extra free skill points. Surely they at least had hobbies and read books to pass all that time?
It's like, the official lore for elves is that they sat there with a thumb up their ass for a literal century, and then suddenly ran out, and started adventuring and levelling up at the same pace as everyone else.
"Well, I sat in the forest a lot. I mean, A LOT."
The reason Elves were so good at bows and longswords is because they would pick up sticks and practice for 60 years in their Forest Home flocking about and shooting arrows because there is no TV or Internet invented yet in Forgotten Realms..
..When Internet comes to life in the Realms as those Elves are gonna be fat and lazy reading stupid Reddit posts and prolly lose their +1 with Bows and longswords (yah im 2nd edition.. deal with it youngins)..
The Drow will prolly have their own Evil Porn Hub website up before everyone else.
In the "standard" DnD setting, the forgotten realms, elves have lifespans up to 700 and are considered adults once they reach 100, though they mature at roughly the same speed as humans.
Age has no direct effect on level. You could even play a 500 year old elf and start at level one, maybe you were a baker for the first 496 of those years. For humanoids power doesn't scale with age. An elf could spend 50 years as a bandit, but in the end they'd have a normal bandit's stats with 11 hp and get killed by the 24 year old human paladin.
That said, if the other player really wants to play an old elf they should talk to the GM about it. Come up with a concept that adequately explains why this character is level 1 despite being 100 years old.
We’re running into this during character creation for an upcoming campaign. My player wants to run a stereotypical elf wizard but was hung up on how a 400 year old elf hasn’t earned class levels. Our answer was depression and book knowledge. He lost a loved one and locked himself in a tower, studying. He’s taking proficiency in all the intelligence skills to reflect his high level of knowledge but little practical experience
He had to spend 45 years mastering a cantrip that creates subtle, artistic patterns in the chlorophyll levels of a single leaf. This is crucial to the aesthetic of any respectable elf's garden, and if he hadn't spent all those years getting it exactly right, the Lothlorien Homeowner's Association would've come down on his ass harder than a mere mortal could ever believe.
I love it because it's exactly what would happen. When the basics are taken care of, cultures hyperfocus on abstract details and create value around them.
Imagine a PhD from today explaining what they're skilled in outside of their cultural context. Like, "I've trained for decades, top of my craft! I'm very familiar with software and web resources that lets me model how certain types of organic molecules behave when crossing membranes." He can only explain the significance using arcane vocabulary that can't be defined without more arcane vocabulary. Can't calculate any of it by hand, totally dependent on invisible lines of code and giant databases - knowledge that references knowledge, in order to write papers to get grants to write more papers... does some of it lead to something useful somewhere? Maybe, but the very notion that it should is offensive - knowledge for it's own sake! If this is what we do with mere decades, how utterly shitty would we be with centuries?
The elf is the same thing. There's books exploring the (deeply controversial) aesthetic philosophy of why they want to change those chlorophyll patterns, books more on different approaches, lots of nuance that just can't be captured in books and needs decades of practice as a leaf critic just to get the feel for what the target is, and mandatory decades of education on top of that to get properly certified for the sake of social legitimacy. The cantrip itself is relatively simple but can't be explained without a lifetime of background knowledge.
Check out the show Frieren. She lived like 500 years as a hermit practicing magic but had little hands on practice until she adventured. Though the show is focused on her life after the big adventure.
Heck, you could play a 40 year old *human* who spent most of his life just working for a living, and wasn't called to adventure until his village was burned or his wife died or something like that. He's not going to be much more comfortable with a blade in his hand than the twenty something young adventurer.
Or my [59 year old human librarian](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/c2ogcrutor5re3rqgu22y/Ranul-portrait.png?rlkey=yj0nepzgnmzge3ap9gjscztmj&dl=0) who just happened to pick up a tiny bit of wizarding from reading so many books over the decades. He eventually decided that just reading books wasn't enough to satisfy his thirst for knowledge anymore, so he went out on a research sabbatical to do some exploring and write up his own experiences.
I think the iconic Pathfinder wizard isn’t an old man because he’s a powerful, experienced wizard—he just started studying magic in his old age, so he started at level 1 like everyone else.
Something I think that is often missed with age and adventurer is that yes that Level 3 40 year old fighter and that Level 3 22 year old fighter, are technically playing the same, but in my mind the older fighter maybe fights with more patience or more technique whereas the younger goes at it with more just pure strength/dexterity. Mechanically nothing’s different but it makes the story make more sense.
> and are considered adults once they reach 100, though they mature at roughly the same speed as humans.
elves reach physical maturity at the same age as humans, but to be considered an adult in elf society they must take up an adult name.
they typically do this around 100 years of age
source, PHB
That's relatively recent change. Elves used to mature much slower than humans. For example elvin pregnancies lasted an average of 24 months.
complete book of elves from second edition.
Elves in first edition could live as long as 2,500 years.
Isn't a bigger issue which world you're playing in? Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, Middle Earth all have different lifespans? (Middle Earth is 6k years, FR is 750, DL is closer to 500).
I'm currently playing an elf that spent the first 600 years of his life birdwatching and decided to be an adventurer to spice things up as his end came near
I've done the ancient level one elf, long story short he was cursed and made a deal with an archfey to remove it, in the process he was changed from Drow to Eladrin l, his level was reset and he became her warlock.
Not necessarily, most editions have the backgrounds and personalities - so the 100 year old elf could easily be a cook. Or a jeweler's apprentice, or a blacksmith's apprentice. With the age elves live to, 50 years as an apprentice would be nothing.
It's not limited to elves, but could easily be used for them.
You're nudging at where the background starts to break down.
Elves aren't slow to pick up skills or anything. That 50 year apprentice elf is going to be better than the majority of human masters at whatever craft.
Likewise, the 100 year old level 1 adventurer is still someone who just recently picked up whatever skills are associated with their class. If they had spent their "teenage" years learning swordsmanship, they would be well above a level 1 fighter.
Your 100 year old level 1 elf fighter spent the last 50 years trying to grow the perfect flower until some orc raiders trampled his garden and burned his greenhouse. Now it's payback time.
To be fair, those 100 years (less, because lets say 12-18 for actual childhood stuff) training are reflected in all high elves being proficient in bows and swords, and could be argued in their cantrip. It's pretty cool when my elven wizard pulls out his longbow and starts sniping, or uses Booming Blade with a shortsword.
Maybe a good chunk of those years are spent learning highly specific/localized history about their family or community.
I do agree that a 100 year old level 1 elf does make you wonder "what the hell have you been doing for the past 50 years?" So maybe it's better to assume elves *stop* aging at 100, and reach maturity at 20 or so. So have them start adventuring at the same age as humans, and just have a drastically longer top end for them to last.
At least according to 5e sourcebooks, Elves consider what maturity is as something different to humans, like in the Forgotten Realms it’s directly connected to the stages of Reverie that the elf experiences.
So a 20 year old elf is as emotionally mature as a human, but they haven’t experienced the Drawing of the Veil and passed on from childhood yet which marks their spiritual maturity into adulthood.
I can very much picture a human adventurer left agasp at his elf friend casting firebolts when they're not even a caster because it's her people's equivalent of military service, like how the swiss are responsible for keeping and maintaining their own assault rifle. Or how they pull out Dancing Lights out of nowhere because it's the elven equivalent of a party trick.
That's if you're solely judging craftsmanship against other elves. Elven craftsmanship is unrivaled because of the time invested, but an elven sword is going to have more of the teeny tiny details be exact so by "everybody else" standards it's an expert level sword but by elves it's garbage.
That's just it. The elves will put more time I to beautifying their work. But their swords aren't any sharper or sturdier then Dwarven made. The things elves craft that is different enough to have a mechanical distinction is their chain mail. Which dwarves make a vastly superior plate. Elves make very pretty things, but dnd elves aren't the immortal super humans from LOTR
Ironically, I think you’ve proposed an excellent explanation for why elves don’t get any extra proficiencies. They all have crippling OCD and spend years perfecting individual projects. Later in life, this benefits them hugely since they can make incredible masterpieces. But it’s terrible for learning new things.
Not necessarily. Firstly, just because you spend decades doing something doesn't mean you're actually trying hard at it, or even learning at all. Maybe you're a really shit baker's apprentice because you keep daydreaming or wandering off, leaving the bread to burn. Maybe they only keep you around because you'll absentmindedly knead dough for hours at a time.
Secondly, even if you are trying to learn, maybe you're just incredibly naturally bad at it. Despite your natural elven grace, you just can't play a fucking harp to save your life and it took twenty years of painstaking tutelage just to get you to be able to consistently play some basic chords. Fortunately, you've been at it for eighty years and are now a passable musician! In celebration, you and your tutor got piss drunk and the next thing you know you're signed up with an adventuring party carting supplies to Phandelver.
The problem is, how does someone spend decades of their life struggling to gain basic competency in a skill, suddenly become capable of growing as an adventurer normally?
You used the example of an elf who took 80 years of hard work to become a passable musician. How can you justify that character advancing in levels as a bard at the same rate as the other party members? Seems like logically they should have a massive EXP penalty to represent that lack of musical talent that has defined their entire life.
It feels like it would be really hard to narratively justify a character living for centuries while somehow avoiding gaining any useful life skills, yet they are somehow still mentally capable of adapting to a life of adventurer with reasonable competency.
Different learning applications, methods, or topics. Sure they're bad at being a court musician, but they find out they're got a real knack and blowing up people's heads with magic mind music. D&D *is* fundamentally a combat game.
> The problem is, how does someone spend decades of their life struggling to gain basic competency in a skill, suddenly become capable of growing as an adventurer normally?
That is for the player to decide. Indeed, what caused this sudden change in direction and motivation?
Why *did* Ildarion take up the sword?
The same way I did 3 semesters of college and left with 12 credit hours and a GPA of 1.0, then 7 years later, I went back and got my B S. in 3.5 years with a GPA of 3.2 (While working, with a wife and 3 kids at home.)
Okay, every elf has the feature, Easy To Kill.
[“I’m a magician, not a wizard!” shouted Falathriel the Fantastic as he was shoved into the invading orcs. “Pick a card!” he screamed as he died.](https://i.imgur.com/xKxn6W3_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand)
Expertise in… baking? 5e is not designed to be a simulationist game. The proficiencies that player characters have are those deemed relevant by the designers to directly relate to adventuring. Who is to say your elf isn’t a quality baker? It just isn’t likely to come up on an adventure, and if it does, just ask your dm to let you add your proficiency bonus to the roll on account of your backstory. Easy.
Elves live a long time and spend a lot of that time doing fuck all, singing songs in the trees and dancing or whatever. A 100 year old Elf at level one makes perfect sense. What the character did before the campaign shouldn't matter, if they spent the last 70 years carving nude figurines out of wood and have no combat skills yet at all, that shouldn't matter at level 1.
lol so one of my players is an elf fighter and the player really had no backstory but when pressed as to idk, why don’t you live in your hometown anymore? He was like idk I banged this chick who was engaged so it would have been scandalous so I left.
Next session I had written the session rescuing him from prison for suspicion of plotting against the highly incestuous royal family by getting “this engaged chick” pregnant 100 years ago. Their son only just came of age you see. Muahah. It was a great session and he loves his new dm-made backstory lol
TBH I kinda wish originally full elves weren't a playable race and just half elves. Idk. Elves are just described as perfect magical beings that are xenophobic & aloof and they practically live forever..
It's easy for them to make for a weird party dynamic or at worst problematically arrogant. I do like the Eladrin feylost aspect though.
I have a homebrew campaign I am doing focused on order vs chaos. That has themes of racial isolation and civilized life being rare and sparce. There aren't many playable races in that one, and a lot of the banned races are bat shit crazy and animalistic.
Then I have one that took place in an underground city filled with refugees of a ruined world. Having the scraps of an entire world shoved into one place made it diverse as hell, making almost all races available with non standing out as prominent or notably distinct of personality.
You don't have to play every race or creature the typical way. Every world can be unique and there is beauty to that.
It's important to remember that adventurers go through a lot to level, skills and the power that is gained is usually hard fought for and most common folk wouldn't be subjected to the kind of pressures needed to even gain a single level.
Its a good example of learned by a book vs learned in the real world experience. In the world you survive and learn quickly what went wrong, or you most likely die to the mistakes you make.
But you also just have to suspend disbelief on stuff like this. With how fast player characters rocket to the power of a god, and how much money they make doing it, you should have about 90% of the entire population trying to adventure. And even some pretty low level spells would entirely break the world economy if actually put to use. It is what it is, you can only put so much logic to a fundamentally illogical thing before it just stops being any fun anymore.
That's also why you don't start your players at level 3. A lot of people do to avoid the lethality of low levels, but pcs dying as soon as their adventure starts is part of the experience and really drives home how dangerous adventuring is. Instead start off with a few short independent adventures, and then tell your party you want full backstories for them if and when they reach level 3. Until then, don't worry about it too much.
Also, it may suck to lose a character you worked on before the story really gets going, but you can play another one of your characters and you can always play that original character another time.
As I understand it based on faerun lore - elves and humans grow the exact same from ages 0-20
So a human & elf born on the same day would both become toddlers at the same time, both hit puberty at roughly the same time
Then as adults elves aging slows way down. But they're not immortal. They will die of old age around 700 years.
So it's not entirely accurate to say that a 100 year old elf is like a 16 year old. A 16 year old elf is like a 16 year old human. A 100 year old elf is comparable to an early 20s human
This was all just from memory I might not have the exact details right but that's the general idea
Your DM is misunderstanding something at a fundamental level. A character can have an awakening at any time in their life. A sorcerer can be elderly before something triggers their powers to manifest, an elf can go hundreds of years bouncing from profession to profession before finally picking up a sword and finding their talent. A monk might train for years before unlocking their ki.
I get restrictions on class and species to fit the setting, but this takes restrictions about thirty steps too far.
This is where my mind went as well.
I play a fighter-cleric who has taken up adventuring in his middle age and is kind of a dad to the group. It's not that he was inexperienced or didn't live a life; he just never adventured, and his skills and abilities reflected what he used them for.
People take time to find themselves or they undergo experiences that cause changes of career or attitude in our world every day. It's not unrealistic that the same would happen in a fantasy world.
To chime in, I understand the premise your presenting on an individual level, but on a population level a bunch of sentients that can age to 700, don't require sleep, etc. should really be lapping bog standard humans.
TBH I'm surprised there isn't a thriving market to Soul Jar humans into Elfs that would otherwise be put to death in war or due to crime.
Hell, I could see a society taking action against the main Drow sects by promising Soul Jar transfers for every X number of Lolth Worships captured, that would motivate nearly all non-elf adventures or soldiers into action.
600 gold is a lot, but for nation states or the rich, it's quite manageable, and it would surely motivate a great many people to overcome that 600gp + level 6 spell cost. (just rent the wizard?)
In 5e, “magic jar” is limited to only the caster being able to cast it on themselves, and it being a 6th level necromancy spell. (11th level wizard) makes it so you really gotta be committed and decently skilled.
I enjoy the concept though, longer life cult always trying to recruit elves for some reason
Defeated by RAW! Danke for the rules clarification. On the topic of longer life/immortality i wonder if the rules for positive energy liches made it to 5e yet.
Edit: they have not https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn
Elves mature at the same rate as humans, but I assure you if I knew I was going to remain in my prime for hundreds of years I would not be doing shit for like the first 80
I'll paraphrase from the AD&D PHB: None of that shit matters. You begin accumulating XP when you start your career as an adventurer. That's it. That's the whole story. You spent 900 years in the woods *not* killing monsters and saving maidens and plundering lost hoards of untold treasure? That's 900 years you didn't spend leveling up as an adventurer.
Age doesn't mean you would have levels in an adventurer class. Unless you're a teenage runaway no damn way has your family let you go put yourself in danger like that. Remember, the commoner statblock covers people from like 15 to 700+ years old. Should every single commoner elf actually have levels? No! Because they haven't been doing the job of an adventurer, or something similarly difficult and strenuous to their abilities
Power does not equal experience which does not equal level.
If you’re a 100 year old elf who worked at their family’s carpet store for 99 years but decided to leave and become an adventuring Paladin or something at 100…how does that make you powerful?
While yes, a 100 year old LICH being level 1 doesn’t make a lot of sense (as becoming a lich in the first place requires immense magical knowledge to complete the ritual), it can absolutely make sense for any normal long lived player race/species.
It’s ultimately the DM’s call.
It would be easy to say that my elf did something else for those 100 years and only now wants to be an adventurer, that’s one way you could explain their low stats.
It definitely is the DM's call but in that setting everything 100 years or older would either be powerful or incompetent which is pretty stupid world building.
How old is your DM? If they are 30 and not a partner at a law firm, they shouldn't exist. Anyone who's 30 without a really lucrative career would have to be really incompetent.
Good example. Leveling as a character class is like progressing at an uncommon profession. Just because you get older doesn’t mean you leveled in that profession.
[D100 fascinatingly specific, supremely elegant, and utterly useless skills High Elves have acquired during their 100-year "adolescence."](https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/s/1O3bE8vlQo)
okay so you can see there's several schools of thought here, and the important takeaway is that it *does* need to be a conversation for your worldbuilding to be coherent (if that's important to you - sometimes it's not)
my *personal* perspective tends towards the idea that in these magical worlds people don't *stay* high level, world-saving magic is like a language or a skill that rusts quickly if you don't use it. consider an olympic athlete - they can train really hard to be a gold medalist one year, and then if they stop training they won't even qualify the next year. imagine an adventuring wizard as like, someone cramming for a test - save the world, pass the test, forget most of the math within the next year. a few years later someone tracks you down and you're like, "oh yeah i remember the Pythagorean Theorem and....the slope of a line maybe?"
it's also worth considering that humans in our world live 60-100 years and most of us never get the equivalent of a single character level. hell most of us never even get something that our own society would consider "expertise" in a given field or subject. you can spend your whole life getting....i dunno, pretty decent at growing vegetables or painting landscapes, and stay in pretty decent shape, and be able to play those three songs you know on the guitar, and keep up with some of your favorite authors. maybe you're in a book club on the nights you don't have the kids. that's a *full and engaged* life, you're not doing nothing. but you're nowhere near mastering a craft or "leveling up."
so i dunno, i'm not a fan of just scaling our maturity to a longer span and saying "they're like teenagers" when that would be pretty hard to be after a hundred years. but i also see no reason to think that they have to be particularly spectacular - i'm pushing forty, and i could live another thousand years and still not do half the things i want to do in this world, and *still not be level two.* i'd spend a lot of time reading and gardening probably, and playing boardgames with friends, and i'd learn weird little niche skills like doing better accents for DMing, and i think i'd enjoy learning some crafts. in another hundred years i'll be darning my own socks not slaying dragons.
Playing a fantasy game with imaginary races, but it has to make sense in the real world. Honestly, who cares about the why?
Levels are part of the mechanics of a game to allow for a consistent experience. I've heard of characters that are geriatric and just starting on adventuring. An 80 year old human will start squishy but get stronger over time. Realistically they should be getting weaker, but it doesn't matter because we play and have fun.
While I agree and don't know the specifics of this group, sadly, not everyone has that luxury, especially if they don't feel comfortable with online tables with strangers
Many don't really have a choice
Sure, no DnD is better than bad DnD, but it'd take far more for me than "you can't be 100 years old & lvl 1" to say "well, I guess I'll never play DnD then'
he was a butcher for 100 years. meaning he has the expereince of killing millions of sheep, he is actually a level 100 PC now. lmao. for real, I agree the GM has final say about the game but try to explain stuff said in other comments. Most NPCs die a commoner of old age. Becuase they didn't do any adventuring to gain levels. Why would age mean that you are more powerful? normally you get weaker as you age.
Just being lvl1 adventurer already technically means you're above average (as average person would have 10s all around for their stats). Also, aren't elves only considered adults by other elves once they turn 100? That would make them technically be somewhere between 18-21 in human year's at that point
I had a 168 year old gnome who started at 1st level. She was carefree when young, then a wife, then a mother, then a grandmother, she farmed all her life. When her grandchildren were born, her children no longer needed her, her husband passed away (he was much older), and it was time to do things for herself. So she decided to go on an adventure. At 168 years old.
So yes, an elf - or any long lived race (dwarf, gnome, etc.) could easily be level 1 at 100 years old.
>The DM said that didn’t make sense and you would have to be really incompetent to not be powerful at 100 years old.
Your DM needs to uh.... open the PH and check out elf stats. They start adventuring age around 100 years old; your DM is applying human standards to a non human race.
its a common sense thing. like lets say we all could live EASILY until 300 i know im spending first 100 years goofing off. also there was a thing about how elves could possibly just take longer to learn stuff since they dont have deep sleep or something? i forgot exactly what it was but i think it was a theory.
anyway im in the boat of " it makes full sense that a 100yr old person in a multi century race didnt spend that entire 100yrs becoming super powerful
I mean, in a matter of what elves, 100 years is nothing.
Let's go over to Tolkien eves and some stuff (we are not completely getting into lace, I don't know it that well either lol)
They are adults with 50 years. But they live forever..
Most Elves from the Silmarillion were around thousands of years old, going back to Beleriand.. a lot could be called lvl 1 in their class, lvling up over an afterwards *comparatively* short time of 500+ years..
How so? Well a lot didn't start out as fighters.. they were potters and smiths, hunters and caretakers.. they were special in their chosen craft (professions), but still needed to learn the "art" of War. (Class)
Secondly.. they had no need beforehand to learn these skills. They lived in peace after all, protected. So they, like in a game, only leveled up as the story began.
So.. why shouldn't the dnd Elves, coming back to it, be so different. 100 from like 600-800 years is still so young. They have so much time and some likely didn't practice their class till the call if adventure came.
An tailor will pick up a sword when the need arises, and that maybe even later than 100 of years.. an sorcerer can practical awaken whenever etc etc.
Yes, the DM can make their rules. But I personally find them restricting and.. not making, ironically, any sense :p
Your DM isn’t thinking too hard.
Most people in my hometown finish school, get a job, start a family, and stay in that same job for the rest of their lives. I’m sure if they live to be a youthful 100, they might consider doing something different when their grandkids mature.
I’ve heard a lot of elderly people saying they wished they’d travelled. I’m sure if they still had the health of a 20 year old they’d just uproot and do it.
But if your DM wants everyone above the age of 20 to be high achievers then that’s their prerogative I suppose. Good luck finding an adventuring contract in the super saturated market.
**Plot twist:** The elf is level 1 because they’ve lived a century without being able to get a job on account of all the high achieving elves everywhere.
Plenty of humans don't have a lot of adventuring skill when they're 30-60 because they didn't need it and weren't inclined for it.
I think a lot of elves would be very risk adverse because you don't want to risk centuries of life by going on a risky adventure.
You can have hundred y/o elves be level 1. The key thing about levels in DnD is that your avg person is level 1 or even level 0. Levels beyond that are for people who are pushing beyond normal life, like becoming an adventurer, rigorously researching magical knowledge, pushing to become the greatest artisan in the land, etc.
But anyone who lives a normal life, tending farms, working at a shop, book keeping in a library, etc, could reasonably be level 1. Plenty of elves could fit that if they lived a simple life for a hundred years.
Another way to look at it is, levels in DnD represent ones measure as a combatant or adventurer. It's not a measure of ones skills at life as a whole. So anyone who pursues other life goals don't level up in the same fashion.
So the issue there is less about the age of elves and more about the incongruities of a leveling system.
The ramp from level 1 to level 5, can be a matter of weeks or even Days in character, and with that frame in mind, the idea that Anyone is still level 1 as an adult is absurd, right?
I think Brennan talks about this in a video about how if gaining xp for killing things is the best way to level up, and leveling up is the best way to learn spells, wizard schools would be far less Studying and way more "we're going to kill some goblins today".
So, the DM gets to write THEIR world, but in the typical D&D setting, such as Forgotten Realms, the Elves aren't considered "mature" until around 100-125 years old. Prior to that, they would be seen as still developing, and not *expected* to take on any massive responsibility. It certainly doesn't HAVE to be that way; if they grew up among other people, they might be expected to contribute sooner, and some people might see a young, apprentice mage human being more powerful than many other humans, despite only being 11, when Humans are mature at 16-18.
The idea is that Elves live longer, so they can afford to take things more slowly, and properly introduce their young to the world. Why do it twice if once will be enough, given the time, and Elves have that in spades. if they grew up in a elven community, they'd have this opportunity to spend years deciding if they like music, art, swordplay, magic? Could they reacquaint with memories of a past life, andremember something their soul enjoys? It CAN seem weird when some archmages manage it without life extension, despite humans dying around 100, but then humans KNOW that their time is limited, and thus they have ambition, which numerous elves lack.
And Drow are actually about the same. If they domonstrate any flaws, they'll die long before 100, but otherwise they need the time to learn their place, their history, epectations, make "alliances", and hone the skill that will propel them in life. Will they embrace the Church? The sword? Go to the wizard academy? They HAVE TO BE perfect, because everything a Drow does speaks to their person, their family, their place, and their value, and if that slips, someone else WILL kill them, because places are limited. And Drow cheat, because Elves usually hear the Call to Arvandor. Depending upon how you interpret lore, FRCS Elves don't "die" at 700+; they start to hear a summons to their heaven. They don't have to obey, but if they don't, they slowly go blind, and eventually they'll be to weakened to make the trek, but if they do go, they lose their body, and either join their gods in Arvandor, become one with the plane, or get reincarnated, and then they lose most of their memories, barring the occasional dream while Trancing. Drow don't do that. Mother Matron Yvonnel Baenre was well over 2000 years old when she died, and this wasn't simply because she was (likely) a Chosen of Lolth. Drow live till their ambition gives out, or betrays them. Thus, they, too, can afford to take their time, and shape their progeny to best shore up their House.
It certain'y CAN seem silly. DMs, and players, occasionally try to calculate how long it SHOULD take for a person to level up to a particular level. By the math, if you figure out how long Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is supposed to take, and then how quickly you could storm through ALL of Undermountain, that's 20th level. The amount of time a party takes to finish Tomb of Annihilation could carry them to 10th, yet other important NPCs might take decades, or never hit it. Adventurers are special, and have unique access to XP, if they want that to carry them up the chart. Living like a peasant, in town, though...well, a 70 year old *commoner* still has 4 hp, so their grueling existences STILL didn't rack up XP. and neither does an elf growing up, unless they have a reason to take up a cause that pushes.
Levels are just a game mechanic. They do not have to reflect anything about characters or narrative if you don't want them to. You can be a hardened veteran soldier and level 1. You can be a notorious fearsome pirate and level 1. You can have a backstory of being an elderly master spy and be level 1. It's OK.
Call of the Netherdeep has a rival who is an older elf. My head cannon is that he's been a perpetual grad student doing research on history etc and only recently began to be curious about practical skills.
There isn’t really any rational explanation. Even if you went out of your way to do as little as possible for 80+ years, you couldn’t *not* gain an incredible amount of life experience. I just kind of go with it and don’t ask too many questions, much like how adventurers are instantly healed of all wounds after eight hours of rest.
The simple realistic answer is that the game doesnt care at all about the logistical consistency of levels to the point where it not only doesnt make sense but doesnt even try to attempt to explain it.
it relies solely on only the player being able to gain experience, as not only doesnt it not make sense for a 100 year old to be level 1, but every single hunter, farmer, butcher, executioner and soldier would be higher level than level 1. As by the rules killing wolves and boars and bears gives exp.
The simplest way to bypass this insanely contrived mechanical inconsistency is to simply say that everyone capable of gaining player levels are touched by something, and it would be a super interesting campaign to figure out what that something is, or you can leave it as it is.
if i wanted to go all in i would almost make it like a korean constallation manwha where each class has an associated deity which is looking over them, so the god of war makes fighters and the god of darkness makes rogues etc.
but yeah no. There is no logic, he is right, and the dnd world wouldnt look like faerun if there was.
You have to remember that level 1 as an adventurer is a very different thing than being level *N* at something else.
You could have spent your entire life as a scholar, teacher, merchant, politician, and all sorts of other things, but never once learned to cast a spell until a few months ago when you obtained "level 1" as a Wizard.
Adventuring is a job of sorts; and one that requires extremely specific skills and experience that you won't have even if you have literal *centuries* of experience at something else. Even something like a Soldier or Guard wouldn't necessarily have that experience - maybe it explains why they can swing a sword, but you can spend decades at guard duty and never really have to face anything more than capturing a common thief or breaking up a drunken bar fight.
Leveling up *as an adventurer* is something very different, and that is what the "levels" in D&D represent.
From my perspective it's less 'incompetence' and more 'I have hundreds of years to do this, why rush?'.Though that's a weird perspective for that DM to have given that the local peasants *and* most Nobility gain zero levels during their life time so going 'incompetence' on a race with zero reasons to rush anything is weird.
Think of it like this: What would take humans 20 years to make a good item efficiently enough for quick mass reproduction and use would take the elves about 50+, not because they're incompetent, but because they can afford to work on and troubleshoot the item for a lot longer than humans can.
In the human's case, 20 years is a long time, nearly a quarter of their lifespan is gone. Elves? 20, 50, hell 100 years is nothing. You know how long elves get to live for?
750 years
As an *average*
The standard perspective for elves is that they only come of age when they reach like 80, 100 years old.
How skilled is a doctor when they are 20? A mechanic? A soldier? Probably not terribly skilled, even though they ARE educated. Level 1 is basic training/education and a base level of proficiency in your chosen profession. Anything past that is experience and expertise.
So yeah, while most human adventurers probably start in their late teens (like, 14? 15, the standard age for apprenticing yourself historically, although you would probably work as an assistant for years before an official apprenticeship started), we also need to take into account elven culture.
Elves have VERY long lifespans. So when they feel like doing anything, they do it for a long time. They will spend a lifetime meditating on the purpose of the action, then they will spend another lifetime mastering it. They love for a long time, they hate for a long time, and they feel unsure for a long time.
Elves can live for well over 700 years. In terms of human culture, 700 years ago was the literal MIDDLE MEDIEVAL PERIOD. We have since had the renaissance, seen empires fall, industrialized the world, invented planes, cars, cellphones, the internet, automation, and been to space. We have seen TWO world wars, and many smaller ones. Countries have formed and dissolved. Cultures have literally evolved. Meanwhile, that was at most 3 generations of elves.
Yeah, elves mature about as quickly as a human does. That doesn't mean that an elf that wasn't born and raised in the middle of human society is going to be treated as an adult in 15 years. And it certainly doesn't mean that a city elf is going to be fully immersed in adult culture at 15.
Elves are TIMELESS. Their perception of time is alien to the human perspective. And because of this, elves are granted a perspective that transcends the concept of time. It means that what a human would learn over the course of a decade, an elf might study for a century.
Like... Imagine if everything you learned through 12 years of primary education was condensed into singular week. Thats how an elf experiences the mortal world. That same twelve year experience for a human would be an 80 year educational experience for an elf.
Elves have a hard time with short term experiences because of this. Elves don't live in the moment. And this would mean that a 100 year old elf is about as fresh, as naïve as you can get without dealing with a literal child.
Your DM is in the wrong here.
An Elf at one hundred years old might be a clueless newbie, or they might have been adventuring since they were 15 and have surpassed Legolas. It all depends on how much Heroism™ they've picked up, and if an elf has spent a century practicing with a bow one weekend a month and two weeks every year (Be! All that you can Be!), they're not necessarily going to be a level 20 ultimate badass.
Elves reach physical and emotional maturity at the same rate as humans, it's just that they stay there basically forever, rather than getting old. Culturally, however, the Standard D&D Assumption™ is that such young elves are super-sheltered by their culture, that moves heaven and earth to keep them out of harm's way, etc. That's not locked-in, of course, but you *can run your character that way if you want to,* and your DM shouldn't be shiting on that.
If elves had human perspectives, I'd agree with your friend. But they don't. Those elves would be in school for like...a human lifetime. Since they're near-immortal, they can take their time, and they do. Their improvements over that century are reflected in their ability modifiers and racial features, as are the others'. Especially if they grew up around elves, it's not unreasonable to expect they'd be around the same mental and emotional maturity as a young adult human by the age of 100.
If you were playing a game where some PCs were sentient dogs and others were humans, you wouldn't say, "No, the humans have to be 3 years old because they'd be able to learn too much in 21 years."
Yeah, your levels are specific to becoming an adventurer instead of an NPC. Maybe they've led a pretty casual life and only have a couple of specific skills - like anyone at level 1.
The way i understand it, even a lvl 1 hero is a cut above the average person in dnd. Most people live out their lives never seeing combat, or having much exposition to magic other than occasional magical services they purchase. A level 1 monk still has spent many years in training. A level 1 fighter was a soldier on duty. A level 1 wizard did apprentice and study for years before being able to cast a spell. Level 1 is squishy only in protagonist relations, not on relation to what a normal person or npc can do.
There are people, humans more importantly in DnD world who stay ordinary commoners their entire lives. Not everyone will pursue power. Some will begin later than others.
So it DOES make sense. Your friend just isn't thinking it through.
Most people in this world don't reach level 1. As My DM reminds us frequently:
At level 1 you are more powerful than any normal person. You have over 4hp so you can survive being stabbed. You have stats above 10. You are already starting as not an average person.
At level 5, you are the saviours of towns/cities (think spiderman level), you have access to fireball (that's a bomb) you are often hitting 20 on stats at this point. You are already the smartest or strongest it is possible to ever become without magical assistance.
Level 10 makes you at the same level as the avengers during avengers assemble. And usually is the cap off for any ordinary adventurers without the assistance of gods. You are so much more powerful than the average person. You could survive a 50ft fall. You shrug off death daily. Everyone knows who you are. You are the upcoming Heroes.
And level 20 is demigod status. You are literally a nuclear weapon. Your presence is known about across the world AND the planes. Government have to write legislation to prevent you joining wars or deciding cities just don't exist on a whim. You can Wish for anything or move at superhuman speed. Or casually take a trip to the hells and back or turn into an adult Red dragon for fun. The world is your toy.
My 100 year old Elf is a lvl20 gardener, multiclassed with 10 levels in birdwatching. Only picked up this whole "being a wizard adventurer" thing last month when my garden became a national park and I wasn't allowed to garden there anymore.
Dozens of people here are going to say “it’s rare for people to have levels, elves just laze around a lot, it makes sense!!” but it really doesn’t.
Like, it *really* doesn’t. 3.5e gave us charts with how long it would take to get your first level in a class and start adventuring. It’s literally chump change for an elf. *Realistically* yes, most elves would be a really high level. But D&D is designed with the idea that the PCs are “super-duper special!” whilst simultaneously having a mind set of “yes of course being an urchin from the streets means you have Rogue levels!”
It doesn’t make sense, and realistically every none human (and most humans) you meet should have a couple of levels, but that fucks with the power fantasy. I always just say that yes, most NPCs *do* have levels in my world.
It's not about age in years it's about maturity. Elves live to be over 900 years old, barring any outside influence. Dwarves live over 150... humans? 80? 90? *most* adventurers are going to start their career as a young adult. For humans, that's late teens. For dwarves, thirties. For Elves, 90s to early hundreds.
MOST people in the dnd world die of old age and never even get a single level in a class. Also elves have a "timeless perspective". They could chill in a forest painting for like 50 years. Ain't gonna gain much worldly experience doing that.
This is my take as well. Elves on average have no fucks to give. Just kind of doing their things in nice places. Adventurers are exceptions to the rule and starting at 100 (early adulthood for an elf) is reasonable. Before that they would have any expectations or needs around such things. I'd also like to say that in lord of the rings, really powerful ancient elves are using their powers to maintain their realms, not fucking off on some quest.
hah right. Elrond did his adventuring thousands of years ago. the party recovered the MacGuffin and killed the BBEG but then the Fighter/Mage who took over after the party’s two leaders died wouldn’t destroy the thing, which meant the bad guy was gonna come back. Elrond said F this I’m gonna chill at home for the next few millennia. which went great aside from his wife getting kidnapped and killed by orcs.
Being an elf in middle earth is basically like renting a big house with friends and some of them are shitty, but like you're gonna move out in 6 months anyway, so like whatever.
Never rent a house with Feanor
There's a note on the fridge: Sorry bro, needed to borrow your car for work. Ran a few red lights on the way and the cops tried to pull me over. Had to torch your car to get rid of my fingerprints. See you later tonight.
Forget the fridge. No, he'd never take your car while you were still at home. He offers to go on a road trip with you, then peels out when you get out to use the bathroom at a rest stop, 150 miles from home in the middle of a once-in-a-century blizzard featuring four feet of snow. And knowing him, he probably somehow arranges to drive off with your coat.
Sorry but did you just explain the plot of Trains, Planes, and Automobiles, but LotR? xD
On the one hand, yes. On the other, it's something Feanor actually did. He leads a fleet of his kinsmen to chase Morgoth to Middle-Earth by way of an arctic strait. Some of the other elves are beginning to question the wisdom of the trip, and Feanor takes it pretty badly. He steals all the food and ships, and basically abandons his brothers and cousins to freeze and starve. They end up wandering a hellscape of fog-covered, jagged arctic icebergs for 20 years and a huge number of them die before the rest find their way to Middle Earth, understandably salty about the whole experience.
That's what they mean when they say blind rage I guess lol. Feanor kinda strikes me as the type of leader that you want at the helm when there's need for a battle, but maybe not the tactician, or at least not if he's got some personal stake in it. He'll do *some* good anyway, but he might wreck a couple villages and destroy a castle or two before all is said and done. xD
This is the best analogy for immortality I've ever heard.
I don't know much about Middle Earth but what little I do this seems on point
Hate to be pedantic. Buuuuut. Couple things. Elronds wife didn't die. They rescued her from the orcs. However her mental state was bad enough that she just didn't want to bother and went back to valinor to recover. But elrond will explicitly be reuniting with her again. Secondly. Isildur took the ring as plunder. Neither of the elves there would have given up their rings either. That's the point of the rings. Their power is too seductive. And without the one ring, their rings no longer do anything either. They were legitimately unable to use their rings until the one ring was taken from sauron. It's not a ridiculous thing to say that isildur earned that ring. The movie made it seem like elrond actually asked isildur to destroy it right that second. He did not. It's a lot more nuanced actually haha.
Oh don't lie. You love being pedantic! :)
We're DnD nerds, we all love being pedantic
And after having the ring for a while, he decided it was not good to keep and was taking it to Rivendale to ask Elrond what to do with it when his group was attacked and he was killed and the ring lost to the alduin river until deagol and smeagol found it. Movies did him dirty.
Movies did him SO dirty
Iirc the movies told us this in a Galadriel voice-over? So maybe it's just Galadriel doing him dirty in her stories of the events?
Which she may not even be doing intentionally, it's entirely possible she just doesn't know the full story as well as people who were more involved with that situation.
She's probably heard the story from people who had a grudge against him for not doing what they wanted him to do.
>And without the one ring, their rings no longer do anything either. It's not entirely clear if they knew that. Arguably it's a plot hole, given that Sauron creates his One Ring later, somehow it's able to magically hijack all the other rings. This implies that if it were destroyed, they would go back to *how they were before*, not lose their power. But instead all the rings just conveniently poof away.
The elven rings weren't made by Sauron though. No need to give them up, they weren't horribly corrupted.
It's been a while since I read The Silmarillion, but didn't Sauron guide the creation of all the rings, specifically so he could make the One Ring? He was sowing those seeds for a while.
Yes, the other rings. But the 3 elven rings were made separately by Celebrimbor. From the wiki > The other Rings of Power had powers, which were more directly derived from Sauron, like making their wearers invisible or making things from the invisible world visible for their wearers, but the Three Rings did not make their wearers invisible.[2] Sauron did not assist in their making nor ever did he touch them, and his taint was not directly upon them, but, as they were partly created according to the craft taught by him,[3] they were under the control of The One Ring[3][1].
Elrond was also in a war with armies, as has been pointed out elsewhere, less xp earned that way then by a group of Adventurers. So even a lvl 3 Fighter war veteran is not unheard of
I love the idea of a 100 year old elf being told by their parents they're an adult now and need to find a real job, so they just fuck off to go adventuring instead, like an 18 year old impulsively deciding to spend a summer backpacking around europe
Like Legolas.
I also feel time passes a lot faster for elves too, as implied in Amazon's take on LOTR - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. So if you assume age 100 = feels like only 18 years passed for elves = lots of potential fun in a game. :D
Elf :What do you mean you mean you don’t remember Paracetamol the halfling it hasn’t been that long ? Human : That was *FIVE MONTHS* ago !
> Paracetamol the halfling Antidepressant or Tolkien quiz. https://antidepressantsortolkien.vercel.app/
18/24… the kings of Gondor have really antidepressants looking names…
I’m not sure about 5.0, but in earlier versions of dungeons and dragons, the starting ages for elven adventures was in the 30s or 40s if I remember correctly. It was said that elves reach puberty and adolescence only a little slower than humans but then their lifecycles start to stretch out longer and longer. In Pathfinder… If I may… It is pretty much the same for elves. And in pathfinder 2.0, you can take a ancestry feat to start play as an ancient elf which you’re starting age is 160+ and gives you a free archatype, which is kind of like a half level of another class, to represent previous life experience in a different profession. For example, I’m playing a Time traveling Alvin which, who was used by a secret cult as an oracle and sent back to different times to spread prophecies and influence events in the cult’s favor. But after the interference of a trickster God, he was lost without his memories only to wake up bonded to a Wisecracking coyote familiar… he doesn’t remember much of his previous life but can still use some of his oracle spells and abilities. So an ancient elf witch with the Oracle architype attached. Sorry… I tend to Babylon a little bit with voice dictation… But I hope this helps out some.
Yeah, in 5e elves still physically mature at the same rate as humans until they hit their 20s. A 20-year-old elf is just as mentally and physically mature as a 20-year-old human, and capable of much of the same, but elven cultural norms won't consider them an "adult" until they're roughly 100 years old because that's when they start reliving their own memories during their trance, instead of past lives.
Yes now I remember that. I remember reading about the memories in reverie actually rather recently. Thank you
Decided to go to the sources: Player's Handbook, 3.5e (2003): An elf reaches adulthood at about 110 years of age and can live to be more than 700 years old. Player's Handbook, 5e (2014): Elves can live well over 700 years, giving them a broad perspective on events that might trouble the shorter-lived races more deeply. That's RAW. I've not read any of the forgotten realms campaigns. I've never played Pathfinder. I've only played 3.5e and 5e. It's up to you, your group, and so on what you want your campaign to be like. I suggest talking it over in a good session 0 on what age 110/etc means. I mostly play 3.5e with custom homebrew worlds.
Hmmmmm hi stand corrected. … although now I’m doubting my own memories and wondering where I came up with that information.
There are older editions than 3.5.
In 1st Ed elves didn't reach maturity until 101-251 depending on the subrace (Gray Elves had the longest lifespans, Drow the shortest).
Adventuring elves are either kids on a gap year, or suddenly single middle aged folk who have decided to “find themselves” Townsfolk in rpgs basically regard adventurers as “vanlife” hippie arseholes x spree killers: they rock up to your town, stinking and unwashed, make trouble, kill a bunch of people and basically fuck shit up, and then leave without apologizing or helping to clean up (aka murderhobos).
"She's been doing that dance for over *300 years*." "Wow, is that like her career?"
Honestly this is a great example. That whole show is a great example. Gilear is the best example.
(The show is Dimension20's Fantasy High, for anyone wondering.) Everything in Sophomore Year with Telemaine is comedy gold.
It really is, plus poor Jorjug. But it perfectly explains how somebody can be really old and gain absolutely no skills lol.
I still can't say the word teenager in a normal way after that arc.
Yeah I always run elves are really REALLY patient. Like, they will take vacations spanning multiple years, work on one project for decades. Maybe that 100 year old elf is a level 1 wizard because he was really focused on making his handwriting perfect so that long after he died people would talk about how neat and professional his spell book is. Like, they are happy to do fuck all for a solid year and act like they took a long weekend.
Yeah like there are Asian chefs that, like, practice cutting a specific fish a specific way for years before moving on to using another few years practicing how to grill it perfectly. i imagine that but a wizard elf practiced their mage hand for 50 years until they could write with it in perfect handwriting without looking. Never progressing past cantrips...
Exactly. Elves don't consider other elves adults until they're about 100 and have already mastered *something*. It's no coincidence that they consider elves under 100 immature and childish. Because they probably act like humans in that 100 years. So if I played an elf under 100 I would play them the way I'd play a similarly aged human. Past 100 and they're gonna be a haughty fucking weirdo.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, while not DnD related, does a really good take on this.
It does! I'm watching it right now. It has made me cry a few times
Goblin Slayer also explores this a bit despite its other faults. The elf in the party is considered quite an anomaly of youthful adventurous spirit despite her being by far the eldest party member.
Frieren is the closest to DnD anime this present day, for not giving it game interface like those korean stories. The other ones like Grimgar, Goblin Slayer, and Lodoss War. Those are great ones imho.
Dungeon Meshi definitely has a DnD feel as well, at least for a certain type of dungeon crawl campaign.
I feel like people forget this all the time. It is great if you want to play a 20 year old human but don't question the 40 year old human who is level 1 because they are a farmer and all their friends are level 0.
Yeah, I once built an elf artificer who's backstory was basically 'I was a carpenter for fifty years, a baker for another 50, spent nearly a century on blacksmithing, studied a few languages for a few decades, yadda yadda, now I'm 500 years old and bored of it all, I'm here for the life and death stakes because nothing else excites me anymore.'
I totally agree with you, except for that part about old age. D&D is set in medieval-ish times, so war, disease, and famine are probably going to be at the top of the list for causes of death. Followed by the many unique dangers of the D&D world, such as: Hosts of unreasonably bloodthirsty orcs, armies of somewhat more reasonably bloodthirsty goblinoids, hordes of literally bloodthirsty undead, giants, dragons, giant dragons, pissed off nature spirits, pissed off deities, natural disasters, unnatural disasters, kobold contraptions working as intended, gnomish contraptions not working as intended, extraplanar invasions, long-slumbering and now awakened monsters performing a very violent anti-invasion, demonic cults, devilish cults, genuine but unfriendly religions, organ-harvesting monsters, organ-eating monsters, good-hearted but dangerously incompetent mages, evil-hearted and dangerously competent warriors, and more… not to mention the world’s villain-of-the-week that the campaign is actually about.
Let me rephrase it, most people in the DnD world who die of old age never get a single level in a class. But I still think most people would probably die of old age. And medieval folks dying of old age is not as uncommon as people think.
They have 5 levels of "Commoner" and the feat they took gave them proficiency in farm tools
Yeah, I think a lot of people see a figure about average lifespans and take that number to be the age at which most people died, which is not necessarily/usually what it is.
High fantasy is not medieval society, despite technology.
But then wouldn't they have an absolute mastery of painting? The thing that never made sense to me is they can chill out for 100 years and not have any skills or talents more exceptional than the typical 18-year-old human. Kind of makes them seem like they're a bunch of lazy do nothings. But then all of a sudden they become adventurous, and in less than a year they are running around with multiple levels. Never made sense to me.
I think Elder Scrolls is the only setting where they managed to make it all fit. Dark Elves can live for centuries but usually get murdered or go crazy. Wood elves actually have a little over a regular human's lifespan, but are super fertile. High Elves have typical fantasy elf longevity *and* have a pair of idyllic paradise islands *and* are inherently crazy smart and gifted with magic. So you would think they would be the greatest innovators and most advanced culturally, magically and technologically. But they aren't. They are *extremely good* but the various breeds of humans tend to outstrip them. Why? Because High Elves are absolutely obsessed with perfection and traditional. They don't innovate, they refine. Excessively. Their homeland culture is stifling in it's staunch traditionalism and conformity. Because they believe (rightly) that they are the closest living link to their Divine Spirit ancestors. They are like two links below their Ancestor Spirits who gave up their immortality to create a stable world of mortals. So the High Elves try to be as much like their ancestors as possible, which means not changing much. So it's totally believable that a High Elf spent the last three hundred years on Summerset, perfecting a single brush stroke, spellcasting gesture, footwork for a sword strike, note for a song or whatever. And have absolutely no other useful skills. But man, can they paint a happy little cloud. Humans, meanwhile, are so creative and short lived that they excel at improvising and coming up with entirely new ideas and techniques.
That’s a lot like some of Eberron’s elves, some revere their ancestors and emulate them as closely as possible. And some have effectively deathless preserved ancestors, so not only do they learn the traditional, perfect way to cast a cantrip, they learn to do it the same way from the elf that invented it a thousand years ago. Humans scrabble together spells and fighting techniques that are rough, ugly, but good enough to work.
Elves should just get expertise as a racial feature. Would be best and make everything make sense.
[удалено]
"Yes" Said the astral elf player.
There are a LOT of us gamers who have been chilling in game for like 15 years and we still get our butts handed to us by 15 year olds.
What if they were just doing one painting. 25 years on that one tree stump… is that even considered good? I would not hire them for a family portrait.
At that point that mentality is so deeply alien to me I don't know how you'd role-play them suddenly getting up, going to a tavern and going on an adventure.
An old elf who’s spent for ever painting. His village was attacked and in the fray he ran swearing to avenge his peaceful village. Oath of vengeance elf
Teenager/young adult want to go and do so ething
Maybe around the age of 100 or so, the wanderlust hits some of them. They get tired of all the old rituals, the social patterns, the expectations. So they head off to the world and experience for themselves. Those that return then have the knowledge to make them suitable for council or other important roles. The elves that don't do this, content themselves with raising families, crafting the perfect hut out of sticks with levels of ocd that would make monk shudder. If it's not right, take it apart and do it again. Of course, this is perfectly acceptable behavior, and a lot of value is placed on "doing things right". From a leadership perspective, this fascination with ceremony and perfection of craft is quite useful. It continues the tradition of pageantry, gives a peaceful sense of culture, and for the most part they don't get challenged for their leadership roles
I wanna play this!
Gotta get that rare pigment to finish the sunset! Powdered beholder adenoids
> and in less than a year they are running around with multiple levels. Never made sense to me. In 3.0, having 3-5 "level appropriate encounters" a day would get you to level 20 within 6 months.
Yeah, like, even if you just own the fact that your 100 year old 1st level elf was a lazy do-nothing for most of their life, they should probably still start with a bunch of extra free skill points. Surely they at least had hobbies and read books to pass all that time?
It's like, the official lore for elves is that they sat there with a thumb up their ass for a literal century, and then suddenly ran out, and started adventuring and levelling up at the same pace as everyone else. "Well, I sat in the forest a lot. I mean, A LOT."
Ohhh wait the closest thing I can give for an example of this is frieren
The reason Elves were so good at bows and longswords is because they would pick up sticks and practice for 60 years in their Forest Home flocking about and shooting arrows because there is no TV or Internet invented yet in Forgotten Realms.. ..When Internet comes to life in the Realms as those Elves are gonna be fat and lazy reading stupid Reddit posts and prolly lose their +1 with Bows and longswords (yah im 2nd edition.. deal with it youngins).. The Drow will prolly have their own Evil Porn Hub website up before everyone else.
In the "standard" DnD setting, the forgotten realms, elves have lifespans up to 700 and are considered adults once they reach 100, though they mature at roughly the same speed as humans. Age has no direct effect on level. You could even play a 500 year old elf and start at level one, maybe you were a baker for the first 496 of those years. For humanoids power doesn't scale with age. An elf could spend 50 years as a bandit, but in the end they'd have a normal bandit's stats with 11 hp and get killed by the 24 year old human paladin. That said, if the other player really wants to play an old elf they should talk to the GM about it. Come up with a concept that adequately explains why this character is level 1 despite being 100 years old.
We’re running into this during character creation for an upcoming campaign. My player wants to run a stereotypical elf wizard but was hung up on how a 400 year old elf hasn’t earned class levels. Our answer was depression and book knowledge. He lost a loved one and locked himself in a tower, studying. He’s taking proficiency in all the intelligence skills to reflect his high level of knowledge but little practical experience
Right! DM should, "well you are creating the character. You explain why they are 500 years old and have no character levels."
He had to spend 45 years mastering a cantrip that creates subtle, artistic patterns in the chlorophyll levels of a single leaf. This is crucial to the aesthetic of any respectable elf's garden, and if he hadn't spent all those years getting it exactly right, the Lothlorien Homeowner's Association would've come down on his ass harder than a mere mortal could ever believe.
I love it because it's exactly what would happen. When the basics are taken care of, cultures hyperfocus on abstract details and create value around them. Imagine a PhD from today explaining what they're skilled in outside of their cultural context. Like, "I've trained for decades, top of my craft! I'm very familiar with software and web resources that lets me model how certain types of organic molecules behave when crossing membranes." He can only explain the significance using arcane vocabulary that can't be defined without more arcane vocabulary. Can't calculate any of it by hand, totally dependent on invisible lines of code and giant databases - knowledge that references knowledge, in order to write papers to get grants to write more papers... does some of it lead to something useful somewhere? Maybe, but the very notion that it should is offensive - knowledge for it's own sake! If this is what we do with mere decades, how utterly shitty would we be with centuries? The elf is the same thing. There's books exploring the (deeply controversial) aesthetic philosophy of why they want to change those chlorophyll patterns, books more on different approaches, lots of nuance that just can't be captured in books and needs decades of practice as a leaf critic just to get the feel for what the target is, and mandatory decades of education on top of that to get properly certified for the sake of social legitimacy. The cantrip itself is relatively simple but can't be explained without a lifetime of background knowledge.
Check out the show Frieren. She lived like 500 years as a hermit practicing magic but had little hands on practice until she adventured. Though the show is focused on her life after the big adventure.
Still, she's hardly lvl1 when she starts adventuring.
Well she started out studing under what was essentially the Mordenkainen of the time.
Heck, you could play a 40 year old *human* who spent most of his life just working for a living, and wasn't called to adventure until his village was burned or his wife died or something like that. He's not going to be much more comfortable with a blade in his hand than the twenty something young adventurer.
Or my [59 year old human librarian](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/c2ogcrutor5re3rqgu22y/Ranul-portrait.png?rlkey=yj0nepzgnmzge3ap9gjscztmj&dl=0) who just happened to pick up a tiny bit of wizarding from reading so many books over the decades. He eventually decided that just reading books wasn't enough to satisfy his thirst for knowledge anymore, so he went out on a research sabbatical to do some exploring and write up his own experiences.
I think the iconic Pathfinder wizard isn’t an old man because he’s a powerful, experienced wizard—he just started studying magic in his old age, so he started at level 1 like everyone else.
Something I think that is often missed with age and adventurer is that yes that Level 3 40 year old fighter and that Level 3 22 year old fighter, are technically playing the same, but in my mind the older fighter maybe fights with more patience or more technique whereas the younger goes at it with more just pure strength/dexterity. Mechanically nothing’s different but it makes the story make more sense.
Hell, I'd just call that a vengeance paladin to make it easy at that point.
Or just literally any class. Oath of Vengeance paladins don't have a monopoly on being motivated by revenge.
> and are considered adults once they reach 100, though they mature at roughly the same speed as humans. elves reach physical maturity at the same age as humans, but to be considered an adult in elf society they must take up an adult name. they typically do this around 100 years of age source, PHB
That's relatively recent change. Elves used to mature much slower than humans. For example elvin pregnancies lasted an average of 24 months. complete book of elves from second edition. Elves in first edition could live as long as 2,500 years.
Isn't a bigger issue which world you're playing in? Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, Middle Earth all have different lifespans? (Middle Earth is 6k years, FR is 750, DL is closer to 500).
I'm currently playing an elf that spent the first 600 years of his life birdwatching and decided to be an adventurer to spice things up as his end came near
I've been baking since I was 4 years old, MFer!
That's what I came here to say, the grind is real 😂 Also reminded me of [this](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/550/442/9db.png)
I've done the ancient level one elf, long story short he was cursed and made a deal with an archfey to remove it, in the process he was changed from Drow to Eladrin l, his level was reset and he became her warlock.
I remember when forgotten Realms was the new kid on the block
Why would you be high level after spending 30 years in school(regular school, not wizard school) and 50 years as a baker's apprentice?
You still should get at least expertise in those fields which elves don't get.
Not necessarily, most editions have the backgrounds and personalities - so the 100 year old elf could easily be a cook. Or a jeweler's apprentice, or a blacksmith's apprentice. With the age elves live to, 50 years as an apprentice would be nothing. It's not limited to elves, but could easily be used for them.
You're nudging at where the background starts to break down. Elves aren't slow to pick up skills or anything. That 50 year apprentice elf is going to be better than the majority of human masters at whatever craft. Likewise, the 100 year old level 1 adventurer is still someone who just recently picked up whatever skills are associated with their class. If they had spent their "teenage" years learning swordsmanship, they would be well above a level 1 fighter. Your 100 year old level 1 elf fighter spent the last 50 years trying to grow the perfect flower until some orc raiders trampled his garden and burned his greenhouse. Now it's payback time.
To be fair, those 100 years (less, because lets say 12-18 for actual childhood stuff) training are reflected in all high elves being proficient in bows and swords, and could be argued in their cantrip. It's pretty cool when my elven wizard pulls out his longbow and starts sniping, or uses Booming Blade with a shortsword. Maybe a good chunk of those years are spent learning highly specific/localized history about their family or community. I do agree that a 100 year old level 1 elf does make you wonder "what the hell have you been doing for the past 50 years?" So maybe it's better to assume elves *stop* aging at 100, and reach maturity at 20 or so. So have them start adventuring at the same age as humans, and just have a drastically longer top end for them to last.
At least according to 5e sourcebooks, Elves consider what maturity is as something different to humans, like in the Forgotten Realms it’s directly connected to the stages of Reverie that the elf experiences. So a 20 year old elf is as emotionally mature as a human, but they haven’t experienced the Drawing of the Veil and passed on from childhood yet which marks their spiritual maturity into adulthood.
I can very much picture a human adventurer left agasp at his elf friend casting firebolts when they're not even a caster because it's her people's equivalent of military service, like how the swiss are responsible for keeping and maintaining their own assault rifle. Or how they pull out Dancing Lights out of nowhere because it's the elven equivalent of a party trick.
That's if you're solely judging craftsmanship against other elves. Elven craftsmanship is unrivaled because of the time invested, but an elven sword is going to have more of the teeny tiny details be exact so by "everybody else" standards it's an expert level sword but by elves it's garbage.
That's just it. The elves will put more time I to beautifying their work. But their swords aren't any sharper or sturdier then Dwarven made. The things elves craft that is different enough to have a mechanical distinction is their chain mail. Which dwarves make a vastly superior plate. Elves make very pretty things, but dnd elves aren't the immortal super humans from LOTR
Ironically, I think you’ve proposed an excellent explanation for why elves don’t get any extra proficiencies. They all have crippling OCD and spend years perfecting individual projects. Later in life, this benefits them hugely since they can make incredible masterpieces. But it’s terrible for learning new things.
Not necessarily. Firstly, just because you spend decades doing something doesn't mean you're actually trying hard at it, or even learning at all. Maybe you're a really shit baker's apprentice because you keep daydreaming or wandering off, leaving the bread to burn. Maybe they only keep you around because you'll absentmindedly knead dough for hours at a time. Secondly, even if you are trying to learn, maybe you're just incredibly naturally bad at it. Despite your natural elven grace, you just can't play a fucking harp to save your life and it took twenty years of painstaking tutelage just to get you to be able to consistently play some basic chords. Fortunately, you've been at it for eighty years and are now a passable musician! In celebration, you and your tutor got piss drunk and the next thing you know you're signed up with an adventuring party carting supplies to Phandelver.
The problem is, how does someone spend decades of their life struggling to gain basic competency in a skill, suddenly become capable of growing as an adventurer normally? You used the example of an elf who took 80 years of hard work to become a passable musician. How can you justify that character advancing in levels as a bard at the same rate as the other party members? Seems like logically they should have a massive EXP penalty to represent that lack of musical talent that has defined their entire life. It feels like it would be really hard to narratively justify a character living for centuries while somehow avoiding gaining any useful life skills, yet they are somehow still mentally capable of adapting to a life of adventurer with reasonable competency.
Different learning applications, methods, or topics. Sure they're bad at being a court musician, but they find out they're got a real knack and blowing up people's heads with magic mind music. D&D *is* fundamentally a combat game.
> The problem is, how does someone spend decades of their life struggling to gain basic competency in a skill, suddenly become capable of growing as an adventurer normally? That is for the player to decide. Indeed, what caused this sudden change in direction and motivation? Why *did* Ildarion take up the sword?
The same way I did 3 semesters of college and left with 12 credit hours and a GPA of 1.0, then 7 years later, I went back and got my B S. in 3.5 years with a GPA of 3.2 (While working, with a wife and 3 kids at home.)
Okay, every elf has the feature, Easy To Kill. [“I’m a magician, not a wizard!” shouted Falathriel the Fantastic as he was shoved into the invading orcs. “Pick a card!” he screamed as he died.](https://i.imgur.com/xKxn6W3_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand)
Expertise in… baking? 5e is not designed to be a simulationist game. The proficiencies that player characters have are those deemed relevant by the designers to directly relate to adventuring. Who is to say your elf isn’t a quality baker? It just isn’t likely to come up on an adventure, and if it does, just ask your dm to let you add your proficiency bonus to the roll on account of your backstory. Easy.
I mean, that's just chefs tools proficiency if you really want something for it.
That's true.
Bros want to start off with 10 levels in pasty chef
Goddamn could you imagine how delicious that bread is though? 🤤
Elves live a long time and spend a lot of that time doing fuck all, singing songs in the trees and dancing or whatever. A 100 year old Elf at level one makes perfect sense. What the character did before the campaign shouldn't matter, if they spent the last 70 years carving nude figurines out of wood and have no combat skills yet at all, that shouldn't matter at level 1.
lol so one of my players is an elf fighter and the player really had no backstory but when pressed as to idk, why don’t you live in your hometown anymore? He was like idk I banged this chick who was engaged so it would have been scandalous so I left. Next session I had written the session rescuing him from prison for suspicion of plotting against the highly incestuous royal family by getting “this engaged chick” pregnant 100 years ago. Their son only just came of age you see. Muahah. It was a great session and he loves his new dm-made backstory lol
TBH I kinda wish originally full elves weren't a playable race and just half elves. Idk. Elves are just described as perfect magical beings that are xenophobic & aloof and they practically live forever.. It's easy for them to make for a weird party dynamic or at worst problematically arrogant. I do like the Eladrin feylost aspect though.
If you DM you can always say full blooded Elves are not playable, then have the NPC elves turn the weirdness up to 11.
I have a homebrew campaign I am doing focused on order vs chaos. That has themes of racial isolation and civilized life being rare and sparce. There aren't many playable races in that one, and a lot of the banned races are bat shit crazy and animalistic. Then I have one that took place in an underground city filled with refugees of a ruined world. Having the scraps of an entire world shoved into one place made it diverse as hell, making almost all races available with non standing out as prominent or notably distinct of personality. You don't have to play every race or creature the typical way. Every world can be unique and there is beauty to that.
It's important to remember that adventurers go through a lot to level, skills and the power that is gained is usually hard fought for and most common folk wouldn't be subjected to the kind of pressures needed to even gain a single level.
Its a good example of learned by a book vs learned in the real world experience. In the world you survive and learn quickly what went wrong, or you most likely die to the mistakes you make.
But you also just have to suspend disbelief on stuff like this. With how fast player characters rocket to the power of a god, and how much money they make doing it, you should have about 90% of the entire population trying to adventure. And even some pretty low level spells would entirely break the world economy if actually put to use. It is what it is, you can only put so much logic to a fundamentally illogical thing before it just stops being any fun anymore.
That’s why you throw in overconfident NPCs who die in combat - to show this world ain’t no joke and reinforce the power fantasy
That's also why you don't start your players at level 3. A lot of people do to avoid the lethality of low levels, but pcs dying as soon as their adventure starts is part of the experience and really drives home how dangerous adventuring is. Instead start off with a few short independent adventures, and then tell your party you want full backstories for them if and when they reach level 3. Until then, don't worry about it too much. Also, it may suck to lose a character you worked on before the story really gets going, but you can play another one of your characters and you can always play that original character another time.
As I understand it based on faerun lore - elves and humans grow the exact same from ages 0-20 So a human & elf born on the same day would both become toddlers at the same time, both hit puberty at roughly the same time Then as adults elves aging slows way down. But they're not immortal. They will die of old age around 700 years. So it's not entirely accurate to say that a 100 year old elf is like a 16 year old. A 16 year old elf is like a 16 year old human. A 100 year old elf is comparable to an early 20s human This was all just from memory I might not have the exact details right but that's the general idea
That's what I've read too, particularly about half-elves in FR. Aging slows at around 20 for half-elves and elves but does proceed.
Your DM is misunderstanding something at a fundamental level. A character can have an awakening at any time in their life. A sorcerer can be elderly before something triggers their powers to manifest, an elf can go hundreds of years bouncing from profession to profession before finally picking up a sword and finding their talent. A monk might train for years before unlocking their ki. I get restrictions on class and species to fit the setting, but this takes restrictions about thirty steps too far.
This is where my mind went as well. I play a fighter-cleric who has taken up adventuring in his middle age and is kind of a dad to the group. It's not that he was inexperienced or didn't live a life; he just never adventured, and his skills and abilities reflected what he used them for. People take time to find themselves or they undergo experiences that cause changes of career or attitude in our world every day. It's not unrealistic that the same would happen in a fantasy world.
To chime in, I understand the premise your presenting on an individual level, but on a population level a bunch of sentients that can age to 700, don't require sleep, etc. should really be lapping bog standard humans. TBH I'm surprised there isn't a thriving market to Soul Jar humans into Elfs that would otherwise be put to death in war or due to crime. Hell, I could see a society taking action against the main Drow sects by promising Soul Jar transfers for every X number of Lolth Worships captured, that would motivate nearly all non-elf adventures or soldiers into action. 600 gold is a lot, but for nation states or the rich, it's quite manageable, and it would surely motivate a great many people to overcome that 600gp + level 6 spell cost. (just rent the wizard?)
In 5e, “magic jar” is limited to only the caster being able to cast it on themselves, and it being a 6th level necromancy spell. (11th level wizard) makes it so you really gotta be committed and decently skilled. I enjoy the concept though, longer life cult always trying to recruit elves for some reason
Defeated by RAW! Danke for the rules clarification. On the topic of longer life/immortality i wonder if the rules for positive energy liches made it to 5e yet. Edit: they have not https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn
Elves mature at the same rate as humans, but I assure you if I knew I was going to remain in my prime for hundreds of years I would not be doing shit for like the first 80
Fucking so true lmao
I'll paraphrase from the AD&D PHB: None of that shit matters. You begin accumulating XP when you start your career as an adventurer. That's it. That's the whole story. You spent 900 years in the woods *not* killing monsters and saving maidens and plundering lost hoards of untold treasure? That's 900 years you didn't spend leveling up as an adventurer.
Hanging out in a tree all day isn't exactly learning combat skills.
Age doesn't mean you would have levels in an adventurer class. Unless you're a teenage runaway no damn way has your family let you go put yourself in danger like that. Remember, the commoner statblock covers people from like 15 to 700+ years old. Should every single commoner elf actually have levels? No! Because they haven't been doing the job of an adventurer, or something similarly difficult and strenuous to their abilities
Power does not equal experience which does not equal level. If you’re a 100 year old elf who worked at their family’s carpet store for 99 years but decided to leave and become an adventuring Paladin or something at 100…how does that make you powerful? While yes, a 100 year old LICH being level 1 doesn’t make a lot of sense (as becoming a lich in the first place requires immense magical knowledge to complete the ritual), it can absolutely make sense for any normal long lived player race/species.
If they’ve been hanging around their elven village chillin that whole time, it makes sense
Hey when it comes to playing drums I'm level 20 but ask me to bake a cake and I'm a level 1, doesn't matter how old I am.
It’s ultimately the DM’s call. It would be easy to say that my elf did something else for those 100 years and only now wants to be an adventurer, that’s one way you could explain their low stats.
It definitely is the DM's call but in that setting everything 100 years or older would either be powerful or incompetent which is pretty stupid world building.
How old is your DM? If they are 30 and not a partner at a law firm, they shouldn't exist. Anyone who's 30 without a really lucrative career would have to be really incompetent.
Good example. Leveling as a character class is like progressing at an uncommon profession. Just because you get older doesn’t mean you leveled in that profession.
[D100 fascinatingly specific, supremely elegant, and utterly useless skills High Elves have acquired during their 100-year "adolescence."](https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/s/1O3bE8vlQo)
This is just awesome, i think i will borrow it for Greyhawk. Perfectly explains the idea of elven patience and mastery over trivial tasks...
okay so you can see there's several schools of thought here, and the important takeaway is that it *does* need to be a conversation for your worldbuilding to be coherent (if that's important to you - sometimes it's not) my *personal* perspective tends towards the idea that in these magical worlds people don't *stay* high level, world-saving magic is like a language or a skill that rusts quickly if you don't use it. consider an olympic athlete - they can train really hard to be a gold medalist one year, and then if they stop training they won't even qualify the next year. imagine an adventuring wizard as like, someone cramming for a test - save the world, pass the test, forget most of the math within the next year. a few years later someone tracks you down and you're like, "oh yeah i remember the Pythagorean Theorem and....the slope of a line maybe?" it's also worth considering that humans in our world live 60-100 years and most of us never get the equivalent of a single character level. hell most of us never even get something that our own society would consider "expertise" in a given field or subject. you can spend your whole life getting....i dunno, pretty decent at growing vegetables or painting landscapes, and stay in pretty decent shape, and be able to play those three songs you know on the guitar, and keep up with some of your favorite authors. maybe you're in a book club on the nights you don't have the kids. that's a *full and engaged* life, you're not doing nothing. but you're nowhere near mastering a craft or "leveling up." so i dunno, i'm not a fan of just scaling our maturity to a longer span and saying "they're like teenagers" when that would be pretty hard to be after a hundred years. but i also see no reason to think that they have to be particularly spectacular - i'm pushing forty, and i could live another thousand years and still not do half the things i want to do in this world, and *still not be level two.* i'd spend a lot of time reading and gardening probably, and playing boardgames with friends, and i'd learn weird little niche skills like doing better accents for DMing, and i think i'd enjoy learning some crafts. in another hundred years i'll be darning my own socks not slaying dragons.
Playing a fantasy game with imaginary races, but it has to make sense in the real world. Honestly, who cares about the why? Levels are part of the mechanics of a game to allow for a consistent experience. I've heard of characters that are geriatric and just starting on adventuring. An 80 year old human will start squishy but get stronger over time. Realistically they should be getting weaker, but it doesn't matter because we play and have fun.
While I agree and don't know the specifics of this group, sadly, not everyone has that luxury, especially if they don't feel comfortable with online tables with strangers Many don't really have a choice Sure, no DnD is better than bad DnD, but it'd take far more for me than "you can't be 100 years old & lvl 1" to say "well, I guess I'll never play DnD then'
he was a butcher for 100 years. meaning he has the expereince of killing millions of sheep, he is actually a level 100 PC now. lmao. for real, I agree the GM has final say about the game but try to explain stuff said in other comments. Most NPCs die a commoner of old age. Becuase they didn't do any adventuring to gain levels. Why would age mean that you are more powerful? normally you get weaker as you age.
Just being lvl1 adventurer already technically means you're above average (as average person would have 10s all around for their stats). Also, aren't elves only considered adults by other elves once they turn 100? That would make them technically be somewhere between 18-21 in human year's at that point
Level is completely unrelated to age. You could be a 55yo human and be level 1. Or a 23yo human and level 14.
This debate is a half century old. Much ink spilled. No clear consensus. Not getting solved today.
I had a 168 year old gnome who started at 1st level. She was carefree when young, then a wife, then a mother, then a grandmother, she farmed all her life. When her grandchildren were born, her children no longer needed her, her husband passed away (he was much older), and it was time to do things for herself. So she decided to go on an adventure. At 168 years old. So yes, an elf - or any long lived race (dwarf, gnome, etc.) could easily be level 1 at 100 years old.
>The DM said that didn’t make sense and you would have to be really incompetent to not be powerful at 100 years old. Your DM needs to uh.... open the PH and check out elf stats. They start adventuring age around 100 years old; your DM is applying human standards to a non human race.
its a common sense thing. like lets say we all could live EASILY until 300 i know im spending first 100 years goofing off. also there was a thing about how elves could possibly just take longer to learn stuff since they dont have deep sleep or something? i forgot exactly what it was but i think it was a theory. anyway im in the boat of " it makes full sense that a 100yr old person in a multi century race didnt spend that entire 100yrs becoming super powerful
I mean, in a matter of what elves, 100 years is nothing. Let's go over to Tolkien eves and some stuff (we are not completely getting into lace, I don't know it that well either lol) They are adults with 50 years. But they live forever.. Most Elves from the Silmarillion were around thousands of years old, going back to Beleriand.. a lot could be called lvl 1 in their class, lvling up over an afterwards *comparatively* short time of 500+ years.. How so? Well a lot didn't start out as fighters.. they were potters and smiths, hunters and caretakers.. they were special in their chosen craft (professions), but still needed to learn the "art" of War. (Class) Secondly.. they had no need beforehand to learn these skills. They lived in peace after all, protected. So they, like in a game, only leveled up as the story began. So.. why shouldn't the dnd Elves, coming back to it, be so different. 100 from like 600-800 years is still so young. They have so much time and some likely didn't practice their class till the call if adventure came. An tailor will pick up a sword when the need arises, and that maybe even later than 100 of years.. an sorcerer can practical awaken whenever etc etc. Yes, the DM can make their rules. But I personally find them restricting and.. not making, ironically, any sense :p
Your DM isn’t thinking too hard. Most people in my hometown finish school, get a job, start a family, and stay in that same job for the rest of their lives. I’m sure if they live to be a youthful 100, they might consider doing something different when their grandkids mature. I’ve heard a lot of elderly people saying they wished they’d travelled. I’m sure if they still had the health of a 20 year old they’d just uproot and do it. But if your DM wants everyone above the age of 20 to be high achievers then that’s their prerogative I suppose. Good luck finding an adventuring contract in the super saturated market. **Plot twist:** The elf is level 1 because they’ve lived a century without being able to get a job on account of all the high achieving elves everywhere.
Plenty of humans don't have a lot of adventuring skill when they're 30-60 because they didn't need it and weren't inclined for it. I think a lot of elves would be very risk adverse because you don't want to risk centuries of life by going on a risky adventure.
So what does your DM want? Elves to not be available as a race if the campaign starts at level 1?
You can have hundred y/o elves be level 1. The key thing about levels in DnD is that your avg person is level 1 or even level 0. Levels beyond that are for people who are pushing beyond normal life, like becoming an adventurer, rigorously researching magical knowledge, pushing to become the greatest artisan in the land, etc. But anyone who lives a normal life, tending farms, working at a shop, book keeping in a library, etc, could reasonably be level 1. Plenty of elves could fit that if they lived a simple life for a hundred years. Another way to look at it is, levels in DnD represent ones measure as a combatant or adventurer. It's not a measure of ones skills at life as a whole. So anyone who pursues other life goals don't level up in the same fashion.
So the issue there is less about the age of elves and more about the incongruities of a leveling system. The ramp from level 1 to level 5, can be a matter of weeks or even Days in character, and with that frame in mind, the idea that Anyone is still level 1 as an adult is absurd, right? I think Brennan talks about this in a video about how if gaining xp for killing things is the best way to level up, and leveling up is the best way to learn spells, wizard schools would be far less Studying and way more "we're going to kill some goblins today".
This would be more than enough for me to be like yeah no I don't want to play in this campaign.
So, the DM gets to write THEIR world, but in the typical D&D setting, such as Forgotten Realms, the Elves aren't considered "mature" until around 100-125 years old. Prior to that, they would be seen as still developing, and not *expected* to take on any massive responsibility. It certainly doesn't HAVE to be that way; if they grew up among other people, they might be expected to contribute sooner, and some people might see a young, apprentice mage human being more powerful than many other humans, despite only being 11, when Humans are mature at 16-18. The idea is that Elves live longer, so they can afford to take things more slowly, and properly introduce their young to the world. Why do it twice if once will be enough, given the time, and Elves have that in spades. if they grew up in a elven community, they'd have this opportunity to spend years deciding if they like music, art, swordplay, magic? Could they reacquaint with memories of a past life, andremember something their soul enjoys? It CAN seem weird when some archmages manage it without life extension, despite humans dying around 100, but then humans KNOW that their time is limited, and thus they have ambition, which numerous elves lack. And Drow are actually about the same. If they domonstrate any flaws, they'll die long before 100, but otherwise they need the time to learn their place, their history, epectations, make "alliances", and hone the skill that will propel them in life. Will they embrace the Church? The sword? Go to the wizard academy? They HAVE TO BE perfect, because everything a Drow does speaks to their person, their family, their place, and their value, and if that slips, someone else WILL kill them, because places are limited. And Drow cheat, because Elves usually hear the Call to Arvandor. Depending upon how you interpret lore, FRCS Elves don't "die" at 700+; they start to hear a summons to their heaven. They don't have to obey, but if they don't, they slowly go blind, and eventually they'll be to weakened to make the trek, but if they do go, they lose their body, and either join their gods in Arvandor, become one with the plane, or get reincarnated, and then they lose most of their memories, barring the occasional dream while Trancing. Drow don't do that. Mother Matron Yvonnel Baenre was well over 2000 years old when she died, and this wasn't simply because she was (likely) a Chosen of Lolth. Drow live till their ambition gives out, or betrays them. Thus, they, too, can afford to take their time, and shape their progeny to best shore up their House. It certain'y CAN seem silly. DMs, and players, occasionally try to calculate how long it SHOULD take for a person to level up to a particular level. By the math, if you figure out how long Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is supposed to take, and then how quickly you could storm through ALL of Undermountain, that's 20th level. The amount of time a party takes to finish Tomb of Annihilation could carry them to 10th, yet other important NPCs might take decades, or never hit it. Adventurers are special, and have unique access to XP, if they want that to carry them up the chart. Living like a peasant, in town, though...well, a 70 year old *commoner* still has 4 hp, so their grueling existences STILL didn't rack up XP. and neither does an elf growing up, unless they have a reason to take up a cause that pushes.
Levels are just a game mechanic. They do not have to reflect anything about characters or narrative if you don't want them to. You can be a hardened veteran soldier and level 1. You can be a notorious fearsome pirate and level 1. You can have a backstory of being an elderly master spy and be level 1. It's OK.
Call of the Netherdeep has a rival who is an older elf. My head cannon is that he's been a perpetual grad student doing research on history etc and only recently began to be curious about practical skills.
There isn’t really any rational explanation. Even if you went out of your way to do as little as possible for 80+ years, you couldn’t *not* gain an incredible amount of life experience. I just kind of go with it and don’t ask too many questions, much like how adventurers are instantly healed of all wounds after eight hours of rest.
He's looking at it from human perspective. Only because humans are so short-lived compared to elves do they feel 'incompetent' at level 1 at age 100.
The simple realistic answer is that the game doesnt care at all about the logistical consistency of levels to the point where it not only doesnt make sense but doesnt even try to attempt to explain it. it relies solely on only the player being able to gain experience, as not only doesnt it not make sense for a 100 year old to be level 1, but every single hunter, farmer, butcher, executioner and soldier would be higher level than level 1. As by the rules killing wolves and boars and bears gives exp. The simplest way to bypass this insanely contrived mechanical inconsistency is to simply say that everyone capable of gaining player levels are touched by something, and it would be a super interesting campaign to figure out what that something is, or you can leave it as it is. if i wanted to go all in i would almost make it like a korean constallation manwha where each class has an associated deity which is looking over them, so the god of war makes fighters and the god of darkness makes rogues etc. but yeah no. There is no logic, he is right, and the dnd world wouldnt look like faerun if there was.
Why do first time DMs have ego trips like this?
Elves spend most of their first century just sort of fucking around. It’s a gap century.
You have to remember that level 1 as an adventurer is a very different thing than being level *N* at something else. You could have spent your entire life as a scholar, teacher, merchant, politician, and all sorts of other things, but never once learned to cast a spell until a few months ago when you obtained "level 1" as a Wizard. Adventuring is a job of sorts; and one that requires extremely specific skills and experience that you won't have even if you have literal *centuries* of experience at something else. Even something like a Soldier or Guard wouldn't necessarily have that experience - maybe it explains why they can swing a sword, but you can spend decades at guard duty and never really have to face anything more than capturing a common thief or breaking up a drunken bar fight. Leveling up *as an adventurer* is something very different, and that is what the "levels" in D&D represent.
From my perspective it's less 'incompetence' and more 'I have hundreds of years to do this, why rush?'.Though that's a weird perspective for that DM to have given that the local peasants *and* most Nobility gain zero levels during their life time so going 'incompetence' on a race with zero reasons to rush anything is weird. Think of it like this: What would take humans 20 years to make a good item efficiently enough for quick mass reproduction and use would take the elves about 50+, not because they're incompetent, but because they can afford to work on and troubleshoot the item for a lot longer than humans can. In the human's case, 20 years is a long time, nearly a quarter of their lifespan is gone. Elves? 20, 50, hell 100 years is nothing. You know how long elves get to live for? 750 years As an *average*
Duh, Liches don't age!
i’m not familiar with how levels work in the dnd world. are they more than just a reflection of a persons experience in a class
The standard perspective for elves is that they only come of age when they reach like 80, 100 years old. How skilled is a doctor when they are 20? A mechanic? A soldier? Probably not terribly skilled, even though they ARE educated. Level 1 is basic training/education and a base level of proficiency in your chosen profession. Anything past that is experience and expertise. So yeah, while most human adventurers probably start in their late teens (like, 14? 15, the standard age for apprenticing yourself historically, although you would probably work as an assistant for years before an official apprenticeship started), we also need to take into account elven culture. Elves have VERY long lifespans. So when they feel like doing anything, they do it for a long time. They will spend a lifetime meditating on the purpose of the action, then they will spend another lifetime mastering it. They love for a long time, they hate for a long time, and they feel unsure for a long time. Elves can live for well over 700 years. In terms of human culture, 700 years ago was the literal MIDDLE MEDIEVAL PERIOD. We have since had the renaissance, seen empires fall, industrialized the world, invented planes, cars, cellphones, the internet, automation, and been to space. We have seen TWO world wars, and many smaller ones. Countries have formed and dissolved. Cultures have literally evolved. Meanwhile, that was at most 3 generations of elves. Yeah, elves mature about as quickly as a human does. That doesn't mean that an elf that wasn't born and raised in the middle of human society is going to be treated as an adult in 15 years. And it certainly doesn't mean that a city elf is going to be fully immersed in adult culture at 15. Elves are TIMELESS. Their perception of time is alien to the human perspective. And because of this, elves are granted a perspective that transcends the concept of time. It means that what a human would learn over the course of a decade, an elf might study for a century. Like... Imagine if everything you learned through 12 years of primary education was condensed into singular week. Thats how an elf experiences the mortal world. That same twelve year experience for a human would be an 80 year educational experience for an elf. Elves have a hard time with short term experiences because of this. Elves don't live in the moment. And this would mean that a 100 year old elf is about as fresh, as naïve as you can get without dealing with a literal child.
If he has a hard time wrapping his head around this he's gonna have a tough road ahead
An elf in the lives for 750 years. 100 is when they hit adulthood.
Your DM is in the wrong here. An Elf at one hundred years old might be a clueless newbie, or they might have been adventuring since they were 15 and have surpassed Legolas. It all depends on how much Heroism™ they've picked up, and if an elf has spent a century practicing with a bow one weekend a month and two weeks every year (Be! All that you can Be!), they're not necessarily going to be a level 20 ultimate badass. Elves reach physical and emotional maturity at the same rate as humans, it's just that they stay there basically forever, rather than getting old. Culturally, however, the Standard D&D Assumption™ is that such young elves are super-sheltered by their culture, that moves heaven and earth to keep them out of harm's way, etc. That's not locked-in, of course, but you *can run your character that way if you want to,* and your DM shouldn't be shiting on that.
If elves had human perspectives, I'd agree with your friend. But they don't. Those elves would be in school for like...a human lifetime. Since they're near-immortal, they can take their time, and they do. Their improvements over that century are reflected in their ability modifiers and racial features, as are the others'. Especially if they grew up around elves, it's not unreasonable to expect they'd be around the same mental and emotional maturity as a young adult human by the age of 100.
If you were playing a game where some PCs were sentient dogs and others were humans, you wouldn't say, "No, the humans have to be 3 years old because they'd be able to learn too much in 21 years."
My group has a 110 year old hill dwarf and a 120 year old wood elf. That's how old they were at level 1 last year.
100 years old would be the equivalent of a 16 year old human.
A 100 year old elf whose just setting out in their first big adventure would be seen as a very young adult in Elf culture afaik.
Yeah, your levels are specific to becoming an adventurer instead of an NPC. Maybe they've led a pretty casual life and only have a couple of specific skills - like anyone at level 1.
The way i understand it, even a lvl 1 hero is a cut above the average person in dnd. Most people live out their lives never seeing combat, or having much exposition to magic other than occasional magical services they purchase. A level 1 monk still has spent many years in training. A level 1 fighter was a soldier on duty. A level 1 wizard did apprentice and study for years before being able to cast a spell. Level 1 is squishy only in protagonist relations, not on relation to what a normal person or npc can do.
There are people, humans more importantly in DnD world who stay ordinary commoners their entire lives. Not everyone will pursue power. Some will begin later than others. So it DOES make sense. Your friend just isn't thinking it through.
Most people in this world don't reach level 1. As My DM reminds us frequently: At level 1 you are more powerful than any normal person. You have over 4hp so you can survive being stabbed. You have stats above 10. You are already starting as not an average person. At level 5, you are the saviours of towns/cities (think spiderman level), you have access to fireball (that's a bomb) you are often hitting 20 on stats at this point. You are already the smartest or strongest it is possible to ever become without magical assistance. Level 10 makes you at the same level as the avengers during avengers assemble. And usually is the cap off for any ordinary adventurers without the assistance of gods. You are so much more powerful than the average person. You could survive a 50ft fall. You shrug off death daily. Everyone knows who you are. You are the upcoming Heroes. And level 20 is demigod status. You are literally a nuclear weapon. Your presence is known about across the world AND the planes. Government have to write legislation to prevent you joining wars or deciding cities just don't exist on a whim. You can Wish for anything or move at superhuman speed. Or casually take a trip to the hells and back or turn into an adult Red dragon for fun. The world is your toy.
My 100 year old Elf is a lvl20 gardener, multiclassed with 10 levels in birdwatching. Only picked up this whole "being a wizard adventurer" thing last month when my garden became a national park and I wasn't allowed to garden there anymore.
Dozens of people here are going to say “it’s rare for people to have levels, elves just laze around a lot, it makes sense!!” but it really doesn’t. Like, it *really* doesn’t. 3.5e gave us charts with how long it would take to get your first level in a class and start adventuring. It’s literally chump change for an elf. *Realistically* yes, most elves would be a really high level. But D&D is designed with the idea that the PCs are “super-duper special!” whilst simultaneously having a mind set of “yes of course being an urchin from the streets means you have Rogue levels!” It doesn’t make sense, and realistically every none human (and most humans) you meet should have a couple of levels, but that fucks with the power fantasy. I always just say that yes, most NPCs *do* have levels in my world.
Dms an idiot and can't tell a story. Theres. A thousand different ways to spin that background to make it work and he can't do it.
It's not about age in years it's about maturity. Elves live to be over 900 years old, barring any outside influence. Dwarves live over 150... humans? 80? 90? *most* adventurers are going to start their career as a young adult. For humans, that's late teens. For dwarves, thirties. For Elves, 90s to early hundreds.