this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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If they need to reach adulthood at the same rate biologically so that they can defend themselves in the wild, why would a 100 yo elf ever be level 1?
It sounds much weirder to consider that elves and dwarves keep acting like teenagers 30 to 80 years past their human-like rate of physical maturity. Or don't they? What does adulthood even mean for them? Sometimes it sounds like they have a higher standard for maturity than humans, wouldn't also be some form of neurological development? But I never seen that manifesting in any practical way.
D&D worldbuilding is made a little awkward by how fantasy races age and develop drastically differently, but they also must become strong at the same pace, such that a 100yo elf can be completely inexperienced and grow at the same pace as a human during a week of adventuring. They try to have it both ways, but the more it's explained, the more confusing it gets.
Leveling in general gets more confusing the more you try to explain it.
Why has my old character never leveled up before i started playing them?
Why has my Elf/Dwarf/etc never leveled up in hundreds of years?
If i can level up from 1 to 20 in a matter of days, why isn't every adventurer level 20 by now?
Also, even outside of level:
How isn't there a massive overpopulation issue when these races have hundreds of years to procreate? Instead they always seem to be rarer than humans.
Why would any job ever hire humans when elves/dwarves exist? They could acummulate way more experience and be better at basically anything.
In fact, why aren't Dwarves/Elves just better at everything? Do they learn things at a slower rate? But if that's the case, how come they can level up so fast once we start playing them?
I mean, really, at some point we gotta draw a line in the sand and decide that some things just need to be handwaved for the sake of fantasy.
This is one reason why I'd think actually making characters mature at the age of adulthood would make more sense. Of course there won't be that many elves if raising each one is a century-long effort
Yeah, at the end of the day the main purpose of D&D is being a game so it's understandable why they even it all out. That said I keep wondering if there could be a game that actually expressed these things, what would it be like? Maybe adventuring across ages with different heirs of humans who go from weak to strong extremely fast while elves start strong and grow slowly?
Like @Eeyore_Syndrome was mentioning, the anime Frieren is really good at showing what that would really look like, how a character who can live so long can become much stronger while also losing track of time, and yet a human can match them in talent, even if not in training and experience.
My head-canon is that they have a shorter window of fertility. I mean humans have menopause as well.
Though it would make more sense if that happens later in their lives, otherwise you're saying every adventurer has given up the possibility of raising kids. Also, i suppose if that's the case they haven't really matured in the sexual sense, so much as they've just grown enough to be independent.
I seem to remember some bit of lore saying dwarves only settle down to have kids near the end of their lives, but i can't find that anywhere ( Might've just imagined it, lol).
That sounds cool but you'd need all your quests to span generations and leveling in general would be very slow. Probably harder to make it balanced as well.