Would an elf raised by humans be 100+ years when he starts adventuring?


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Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
3.5 Loyalist wrote:


Yep. Which is why the pre-110+starting char years for elves troubles me a bit. They are not 15 at 30 or 50, they are close to 15 at 110 with all that this entails.

I'd say the real problem is the insistence on evaluating elves in Human terms. Elves are not Humans with funny ears and willowy builds they are alien or as Spock would have to remind Kirk, "Nor am I a man"

What's the big hangup on the number anyway? It's not that it's going to shorten your adventuring career given the long lifespan that elves enjoy anyway.

Liberty's Edge

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You could just use a ratio to find the equivalent human age. If human start at 20 and the elves start at 120, then a elf at age 50 would be calculated as such:

20/120=x/50
x= 8.33

So at 50, it would be sized and look like an 8 year old human.


Shar Tahl wrote:

You could just use a ratio to find the equivalent human age. If human start at 20 and the elves start at 120, then a elf at age 50 would be calculated as such:

20/120=x/50
x= 8.33

So at 50, it would be sized and look like an 8 year old human.

But Humans start at minimum 16-17 (15 + class age which YdX).

Elves start at minimum 104-110 (100 + class age (YdX))


Starbuck_II wrote:
Shar Tahl wrote:

You could just use a ratio to find the equivalent human age. If human start at 20 and the elves start at 120, then a elf at age 50 would be calculated as such:

20/120=x/50
x= 8.33

So at 50, it would be sized and look like an 8 year old human.

But Humans start at minimum 16-17 (15 + class age which YdX).

Elves start at minimum 104-110 (100 + class age (YdX))

110 + class age, actually, which is 114 minimum.

Not that it really matters. The basic point is sound, even if the numbers aren't quite right.

Liberty's Edge

Yeah. I was just throwing out some arbitrary numbers. The math is there to plug in the real numbers. So then we can use the normal starting of 114 elf and 17 human and the specific elf was starting at 50. To simplify, we just do (A*B/C= relative age, where A=current elf age, B=normal human starting age, C=normal elf starting age. This would give you 7.4 years in human years.

It is just a rough way to give perspective. We don't have anything in real life to compare to. One thing you could look at is an animal in the wild that has a long lifespan, like a tortoise that lives for about 250 years. It is always going to be weird, since the cultures have such wide differences in lifespans. Humans cannot really support children of those races well, or it would take more than one generation to raise them to adulthood.


You guys do realize that the Human max age has been steady for the 2000+ years. The Average Age of Death is different. People died in War, Accidents, etc and that brought down the Average Age of Death.


Azaelas Fayth wrote:
You guys do realize that the Human max age has been steady for the 2000+ years. The Average Age of Death is different. People died in War, Accidents, etc and that brought down the Average Age of Death.

Overwhelmingly, what brought down the expected lifespan was childhood mortality. Usually childhood illnesses, complicated by general poor health, malnutrition and lack of sanitation.


Azaelas Fayth wrote:
You guys do realize that the Human max age has been steady for the 2000+ years. The Average Age of Death is different. People died in War, Accidents, etc and that brought down the Average Age of Death.

Except human lifespans have continued to increase over the years. 10 years ago, the average life expectancy was about 5 years lower than it is now.

And apparently, 1 in 3 children born this next year are expected to live to be 100 (which is a lot more than is expected for this generation).


Rynjin wrote:
Azaelas Fayth wrote:
You guys do realize that the Human max age has been steady for the 2000+ years. The Average Age of Death is different. People died in War, Accidents, etc and that brought down the Average Age of Death.

Except human lifespans have continued to increase over the years. 10 years ago, the average life expectancy was about 5 years lower than it is now.

And apparently, 1 in 3 children born this next year are expected to live to be 100 (which is a lot more than is expected for this generation).

Again, you're mistaking Max Age for average life expectancy.

Average life expectancy has been rising, more or less, depending on where in the world you live. Max age has been rising too, but much, much more slowly. The problem, going back more than a little ways is more one of verifying records than of finding really old people.


Interesting, I love the idea of elven be children until their ~90ish year, when puberty and adolescence strikes in.

Imagine a young adult human couple who decides to adopt that elf child. Times goes on and when the parents are 60yo their child would have change just a little.

IT'S LIKE HAVING AN ALWAYS-SMALL-CHILD SON! D= (sorry for caps) and that would be amazing for me!... except if I live a long life until my 80s and that spoiled adolescent brat tells me to buy him an enchanted elven sword, or a magical i-pad or somethin'

Sovereign Court

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I really can't say whether elves "obviously" reach any physical stage of development after any "logical" time - they're a fantasy race that tends to come into existence as the result of significant divine intervention/creation, and they have a lot of magic available to make their environment safer.

In the real world, animals that live very long do tend to take a long time to mature. Humans do seem to be unusually slow to mature though. Maybe that's also a result of relative luxury; our superior intellect and technology makes it possible for humans to mature slower than many animals, and maybe maturing slowly has advantages too? Time to do a better job of it? (I don't know.)

The weird part about elves really isn't the physical maturation, it's the mental part. It takes them a century to reach the same level as a human, and then they go adventure and go just as fast. How come?

Well, the elves that level up just as fast as humans tend to be PC adventurers, or at least adventurers. An elf that's left to its own devices in the woods won't level up that fast; he's got all the time in the world.

So it seems that elves can develop mentally just as fast as humans do (at least from a certain age), but normal elves don't. This is probably best explained due to their expected lifespan; if you live as hectically as a human but do that for centuries, you'll probably go mad. To remain sane, elves need time to reflect, dream, and basically just faff about like a trust fund student who's in no rush to graduate.

Which brings us to elves raised among humans. Boy, are they messed up. For one thing, even in the "accelerated development" environment of human society, they'll still be the retard, compared to humans. And people they know keep getting old and dying. Very traumatic. But also, the elf himself is being forced to grow up way too fast, to learn at a rate that he's capable of, but that just isn't good for him. It's something in between those sad child geniuses with over-ambitious parents that force them to do violin concertos, and child soldiers.

So you could maybe play an elf who's adventure-ready as a wizard at 40 or so, but he'll be teetering at the edge of a psychotic breakdown because he's had a totally screwed up youth.

This can only end in tears. So I think it makes sense that normal elves do go to great lengths to try to prevent this from happening. It doesn't work all the time, and the failures are definitely adventurer material, but they would be rare.


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The long-lived races, as written, have a lot of logic issues.

My recommendation is to treat them as aging approximately as humans do until they pass adolescence, then their 'immortality factor' kicks in and slows their aging.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Quatar wrote:

Let's say an elven couple lives in a human settlement and has a son, but when the boy is still little they both die due to a tragic accident.

Since no one knew any elven relatives of the parents, nor where they came from, or any other elves, the son is now raised by one of the humans in town.

It just seems odd to me that that elf would actually be the standard elf age when he starts a career in one of the PC classes, instead of starting it when he's in his 20s or 30s.

I get that "real elves" would probably laugh at him and view him as a child still, but when he waits till he's 120 years old, that would mean he probably saw the children of his 'siblings' die already and even their grandchildren have grandchildren by now.

Or do elves actually mature that much slower, either physically or mentally, that a 60 year old elf isn't any bigger, stronger or smarter than a 8 year old human?

What would happen is that the elf would outlive his/her adoptive parents before becoming mentally mature. The best that happens at that point is you wind up with a Merisel a Forlorn elf who's a bit screwed up by elven standards, but still functional. The worse... well let's not go there.


LazarX wrote:
Quatar wrote:

Let's say an elven couple lives in a human settlement and has a son, but when the boy is still little they both die due to a tragic accident.

Since no one knew any elven relatives of the parents, nor where they came from, or any other elves, the son is now raised by one of the humans in town.

It just seems odd to me that that elf would actually be the standard elf age when he starts a career in one of the PC classes, instead of starting it when he's in his 20s or 30s.

I get that "real elves" would probably laugh at him and view him as a child still, but when he waits till he's 120 years old, that would mean he probably saw the children of his 'siblings' die already and even their grandchildren have grandchildren by now.

Or do elves actually mature that much slower, either physically or mentally, that a 60 year old elf isn't any bigger, stronger or smarter than a 8 year old human?

What would happen is that the elf would outlive his/her adoptive parents before becoming mentally mature. The best that happens at that point is you wind up with a Merisel a Forlorn elf who's a bit screwed up by elven standards, but still functional. The worse... well let's not go there.

As I probably already said earlier in the pre-resurrected timeline of this thread, I've long had an elven character of this type in mind: Raised by retired human adventuring companions of his dead parents and several generations of their parents, as well as most of their village. People went from kids he helped take care of to (briefly) peers to adults who looked after him. It's what he knows. It's the way the world works. By the time he's near adulthood he's known everyone in the area even the elders since birth. Changed most of their diapers or babysat for them.

The Exchange

I am about to be starting a campaign set in the 3e setting Warlords of the Accordlands, where elves are cursed to live just about 30 years and a variant elf that lives just 10


Zhayne wrote:

The long-lived races, as written, have a lot of logic issues.

My recommendation is to treat them as aging approximately as humans do until they pass adolescence, then their 'immortality factor' kicks in and slows their aging.

I agree 100%. The thought that decades of experience haven't taught the elf anything is too much for me to fit into my mortal, human brain. Maturity or lack of it doesn't speak to experience, nor the argument that the experience hasn't led to any learning. Human neoteny doesn't work well for the longer lived races...

I'm playing in a PbP based on kid characters - we all have the young template - humans, sylph, 1/2 orc, catfolk - all except the elf (drow) are fine - but the elf is decades older than us and basically is RP'ed as way ahead of the rest of us 9-14 y.o characters. It doesn't work verisimilitudinally.


You could you know, just make him around 20 to 40 years old at the start. I haven't met a gm yet who says "you must have your characters start with the random age/height/weight or you can't play at this table." On the contrary, they all encourage you to make your character the way you want with those things.

The starting age for elves obviously takes into account the stereotype that all elves live with elves and are very old. But it's just that, a stereotype. Lols, politics in pathfinder!


Merisiel (Rogue)
Orphaned at a young age and raised by humans in the slums, the elf Merisiel has seen many friends grow old and die in the decades it took her to become an adult. She believes in experiencing life to the fullest, for you never know when you'll meet an unexpected end.


No, there's not actually logic issues with long-lived races. The books don't spell out the details (allowing the details to vary between campaign settings)...and obviously childhoods between the individual player races would be expected to be different. But that does not necessarily lead to logic problems.

Maturity and intelligence are both multifaceted characteristics. Neither can be simply boiled down to a single numerical quantity. (Even PFS and D&D before it had different mental characteristics - wisdom, intelligence, charisma). In games I run, I tend to treat elven children as sharing many characteristics with the autistic. They're not -stupid- per se. Or at least, they can fully understand complex concepts and have excellent memories. But they tend to fixate on things, can't filter out extraneous information, do not have the same sort of impulse control that might be expected of adults of other species, and just generally do not assign the same sorts of priorities to things that other people might.

An elven child of 30 hasn't learned any less than a human of the same age. They've just been busy learning -different- things. And probably not including basic self-sufficiency skills.


Domestichauscat wrote:

You could you know, just make him around 20 to 40 years old at the start. I haven't met a gm yet who says "you must have your characters start with the random age/height/weight or you can't play at this table." On the contrary, they all encourage you to make your character the way you want with those things.

The starting age for elves obviously takes into account the stereotype that all elves live with elves and are very old. But it's just that, a stereotype. Lols, politics in pathfinder!

Unless you take the ages in the rules literally and consider a 20-40 year old elf to be physically and emotionally equivalent to a 5 year old human. Or at the very least, much younger than the 15 year old human that a 110 year old elf would be the equivalent of.


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Shadowdweller wrote:

No, there's not actually logic issues with long-lived races. The books don't spell out the details (allowing the details to vary between campaign settings)...and obviously childhoods between the individual player races would be expected to be different. But that does not necessarily lead to logic problems.

Maturity and intelligence are both multifaceted characteristics. Neither can be simply boiled down to a single numerical quantity. (Even PFS and D&D before it had different mental characteristics - wisdom, intelligence, charisma). In games I run, I tend to treat elven children as sharing many characteristics with the autistic. They're not -stupid- per se. Or at least, they can fully understand complex concepts and have excellent memories. But they tend to fixate on things, can't filter out extraneous information, do not have the same sort of impulse control that might be expected of adults of other species, and just generally do not assign the same sorts of priorities to things that other people might.

An elven child of 30 hasn't learned any less than a human of the same age. They've just been busy learning -different- things. And probably not including basic self-sufficiency skills.

Because they're kids. They're experienced five year olds.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
thejeff wrote:
As I probably already said earlier in the pre-resurrected timeline of this thread, I've long had an elven character of this type in mind: Raised by retired human adventuring companions of his dead parents and several generations of their parents, as well as most of their village. People went from kids he helped take care of to (briefly) peers to adults who looked after him. It's what he knows. It's the way the world works. By the time he's near adulthood he's known everyone in the area even the elders since birth. Changed most of their diapers or babysat for them.

And unless you did that without developing any emotional attachments, you basically went through the same process as Merisel.... watching generations of your friends grow old and die while you remained relatively unchanged. You'd have to be fairly sociopathic to not have that traumatize you the way it did her.


Shadowdweller wrote:

In games I run, I tend to treat elven children as sharing many characteristics with the autistic. They're not -stupid- per se. Or at least, they can fully understand complex concepts and have excellent memories. But they tend to fixate on things, can't filter out extraneous information, do not have the same sort of impulse control that might be expected of adults of other species, and just generally do not assign the same sorts of priorities to things that other people might.

An elven child of 30 hasn't learned any less than a human of the same age. They've just been busy learning -different- things. And probably not including basic self-sufficiency skills.

And this just doesn't work for me. I'm happy it works for you, but I can't see an elf unable to look after themself at thirty years. I know we have plenty of folk in the real world who that can be said about, but an elf? Too busy learning secret elf-lore, astrology, lineage songs etc but failing to learn anything useful/life skills? And the elf-culture coddles them and keeps them safe for decades? Fair enough. But it doesn't work for me.


ummmn no, an elf who grows up that way becomes forlorn.

that also said, an Elf can adventure at anytime he/she/it can pick up a weapon......


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Oceanshieldwolf wrote:
And this just doesn't work for me. I'm happy it works for you, but I can't see an elf unable to look after themself at thirty years. I know we have plenty of folk in the real world who that can be said about, but an elf? Too busy learning secret elf-lore, astrology, lineage songs etc but failing to learn anything useful/life skills? And the elf-culture coddles them and keeps them safe for decades? Fair enough. But it doesn't work for me.

"I just can't see a human being unable to even walk after an entire year, let alone hunt or make a nest." The real world is full of organisms that develop neurologically at drastically different rates, my friend.


Shadowdweller wrote:
Oceanshieldwolf wrote:
And this just doesn't work for me. I'm happy it works for you, but I can't see an elf unable to look after themself at thirty years. I know we have plenty of folk in the real world who that can be said about, but an elf? Too busy learning secret elf-lore, astrology, lineage songs etc but failing to learn anything useful/life skills? And the elf-culture coddles them and keeps them safe for decades? Fair enough. But it doesn't work for me.
"I just can't see a human being unable to even walk after an entire year, let alone hunt or make a nest."

Well, no, that makes perfect sense - my point about neoteny in humans in the real world (in my post upthread) is that stretching that for thirty years is just a bridge too far for me...

But if it works for you, then fine.


The best quote from a rule book I could find was Elves of Golarion, page 12.

Forlorn wrote:
The Forlorn are elves raised outside elf society, brought up among the short-lived folk—humans and other races who die before an elf even reaches full maturity. This exposure to “constant” death makes these elves more somber and melancholy compared to those who have limited interactions with non-elves. In elf society, the Forlorn are pitied and mistrusted for their emotional “scarring.” Adventuring elves are overwhelmingly Forlorn, as the tendency of everyone they care about to rapidly grow old and die is a powerful incentive for the Forlorn to keep moving, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots. Forlorn can be of any elven subrace.

And while elves are interesting in this regard, I find the human-descended long-lived races even more interesting.

Probably 1 out of 1000, or fewer, elves are adopted and raised by humans. Every dhampir, tiefling, aasimar, ifrit, undine, sylph, and oread is born to human parents. Yet these races use the same Age table as the elf.

That Keleshite Ifrit....don't include parents in his backstory, they died 70 years ago and he was so young he probably doesn't remember them.

And the comments Radovan makes about how Count Varian has lived so long take on a new humor when you consider that Radovan will live twice as long if he doesn't meet a violent end.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Samasboy1 wrote:
TProbably 1 out of 1000, or fewer, elves are adopted and raised by humans. Every dhampir, tiefling, aasimar, ifrit, undine, sylph, and oread is born to human parents. Yet these races use the same Age table as the elf.

And at least quite a few of us consider this a grave mistake as far as the asismar and tiefling are concerned. (I do believe the elemental plane touched are of a more human scale). And the Creative Director seems to share that opinion to the point where it may be fixed in ARG errata.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

In AD&D, originally, elves physically matured nearly as rapidly as humans, but weren't considered "adults" and were not permitted to adventure. So, if you used the charts for generating your elf's age and such you would start a 100+, but elves were only strictly bound by the same as all other adventurers, which was that you had to be at least 16 or 18 or whatever. Later editions and supplements either supported or contradicted this concept with very little consistency.

I know that in my mind, a humanoid that takes 100 years to achieve the maturity of an 18 year old human must have an Intelligence and Wisdom of 3. Assuming a high degree of neoteny, they might take two or three decades to reach their full physical size, and they might take a century, or even three centuries, to look as physically mature as a human. However, I can't imagine for a second that a twenty year old elf can't sew, swing a sword, or hunt.


I thought I remembered this thread from years ago. Then I looked at the dates and, lo, it was so.

I think the longevity and slow development of Elves is what makes them interesting and "alien" if you will. Not just Humans with pointy ears. The Elves should have a very different take on life. Evil person that I am, in my game Elfin pregnancies last about a decade (Half Elves about 3 years - with a Human or Elfin mother), they do mature that slowly and live even longer than in 3.x. I still use the 1E age tables. I didn't see any need to switch with the ensuing editions. Talking to an Elf about anything time related should raise issues. "It will be done soon", I'll be back soon", or "just a bit" could mean weeks or months. "I've got a couple of things to take care of back home, should be done pretty quickly" could mean years. And yes, watching your non Elfin friends die so d@mn quickly could be depressing for Elves. Elves should have to think carefully about time related issues with Humans. Humans should have sayings about Elves sense of time, like "done in an Elf's time" or "soon by Elf reckoning". From the Elfin standpoint Humans should be always in a hurry, really fixated on minor amounts of time, and aging too fast while Humans should see Elves as unreliable, vague about time and apt to wonder off for years.

As for the OP, in this time machine of a necroed thread, an Elfin child would be the project of multiple generations of Human foster parents. As they say, it takes a village :)

Dark Archive

When in doubt consult the old TSR "Book of Elves" supplement. Those brownish colored ones, it's been years (like, 20 or so hah), but it had some really good background and cultural stuff for elves, I'd just rock that personally.

Liberty's Edge

Well it would depend on when the child was "adopted" if they were around 40's and then the family raised him for another 20 years putting him around 60 and you figure that 120 is equal to 20 human years then he would be 10ish physically and perhaps mentally.

So then your next question is does he favor the human mentallity or the elven one cause if he favored the humans then he could start traveling at 60 years old. Im of the opinion it depends on the overall backstory and idea.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
RJGrady wrote:

In AD&D, originally, elves physically matured nearly as rapidly as humans, but weren't considered "adults" and were not permitted to adventure. So, if you used the charts for generating your elf's age and such you would start a 100+, but elves were only strictly bound by the same as all other adventurers, which was that you had to be at least 16 or 18 or whatever. Later editions and supplements either supported or contradicted this concept with very little consistency.

I know that in my mind, a humanoid that takes 100 years to achieve the maturity of an 18 year old human must have an Intelligence and Wisdom of 3. Assuming a high degree of neoteny, they might take two or three decades to reach their full physical size, and they might take a century, or even three centuries, to look as physically mature as a human. However, I can't imagine for a second that a twenty year old elf can't sew, swing a sword, or hunt.

That's because ultimately... you can't stop thinking of elves as other than pointy eared Humans, perhaps with a touch of Spock. So you impose Human developmental standards upon them.


Steelfiredragon wrote:

ummmn no, an elf who grows up that way becomes forlorn.

that also said, an Elf can adventure at anytime he/she/it can pick up a weapon......

So can a human. So around 3 or 4, right? At least for light weapons.


It is confusing, though. How does it work?
Let's say you have a thirty-year-old elf boy (who is, physically, a small child) and you send him to human school. If he learns at the same rate as a human, he'll have graduated long before he achieves physical maturity. But based on the starting ages, they appear to learn at around a fifth the rate of a human (when not adventuring). So that suggests they'd have to spend five years taking the same classes over and over before they're ready to advance to the next year, and it would take fifty years to gain a basic education. How would such a child appear to a human observer? Exceptionally dim, or with some kind of severe Attention Deficit Disorder?


RJGrady wrote:
In AD&D, originally, elves physically matured nearly as rapidly as humans, but weren't considered "adults" and were not permitted to adventure. So, if you used the charts for generating your elf's age and such you would start a 100+, but elves were only strictly bound by the same as all other adventurers, which was that you had to be at least 16 or 18 or whatever. Later editions and supplements either supported or contradicted this concept with very little consistency.

I'm almost certain that wasn't "originally", though it may have appeared in a supplement. As near as I can tell character age isn't mentioned in the 1E PH. In the Monster Manual, elves are said to live for centuries.

2E PHB has the precursor to the current character age table. Elves start at 100.
Either I missed something or you're remembering a house rule. Maybe a supplement, but 1E didn't have a lot.


I have a radical notion. And it only works for first level characters. If you change classes it won´t work but thats wonky for years.
Now I compare two methods of self defence.
Let´s say wing chun to Tai chi. You learn how to punch people really fast in Wing chun. You learn how to fight effectivly very very slow in Tai chi.
Lets say human get the crash course, so to speak. The basics. They are very intuitive and crude. Elves go another way. Like repeating one movement for years to have it absolutly right.
Maybe even better. Let´s say the human nerve programming just works faster. Heck compared to a horse our nerve programming is quite lousy.
But once it is fully programmed, the canals are open and everything is much easier.
Actually another good example. I had french in school. And I was beyong lousy. At university I studied chinese. I learned for over one year just a language. Today I am fluent french speaker who regulary watches french movies. Without any more training. All was there, but I could not use it.


Matthew Downie wrote:

It is confusing, though. How does it work?

Let's say you have a thirty-year-old elf boy (who is, physically, a small child) and you send him to human school. If he learns at the same rate as a human, he'll have graduated long before he achieves physical maturity. But based on the starting ages, they appear to learn at around a fifth the rate of a human (when not adventuring). So that suggests they'd have to spend five years taking the same classes over and over before they're ready to advance to the next year, and it would take fifty years to gain a basic education. How would such a child appear to a human observer? Exceptionally dim, or with some kind of severe Attention Deficit Disorder?

Like an eternal child. Not stupid or ADD, but 5 years old.

A young child doesn't become an adult or become capable of learning more just by taking more classes. There's physical brain development going on.


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I see it this way: Elven children are rare. They are typically communally raised, over extensive time periods, to become elves. Connection with nature, appreciation of magic, learning five thousand years of elven history, stuff that do not really matter, but give a shared identity. Forlorn elves do not have that, and function mostly like long-lived humans. Elves mature physically and mentally as fast as humans... Which is the problem. It takes a good long while to learn how to live forever. At twenty, they are just as brash as humans. At sixty, they have had their first long romances, fought and won and lost enough to learn how to keep emotionally detached and aim long term. When they have understood these things, finally, the community lets them go.


FWIW, I have my adulthood age for dwarves and elves at 25; a little slower to mature (physically and mentally) than humans but not much ... but once mature, it takes them a long time to age.


@thejeff: Sure, but what is happening with all that eternal childhood experience? They must be learning something in all that time, regardless of their inability to apply it as their elders might. Is it a lack of curiosity, lack of creativity, lack of stimulus (elf mushroom cupboard approach to child rearing?)

The "island time" analogy works for the elders, but not so much for distorting the fact that for decades this child is not growing mentally. I don't like the autism/spectrum/ADD angle either - nor fey/touched in the brain, or differently interested. They are elves, not just incredibly long lived (pointy eared) humans with fantastically increased neoteny. Even doubling, tripling, quadrupling etc etc human neoteny is difficult for me to empahise with.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the basic concept as an idea, but nothing anyone has proposed feels at all right to me. I won't say "realistic" or "right" or "logical" as this is fantasy. Decades long neoteny for elves feels absurd and breaks verisimilitude. For me.

@ thejeff - Age tables were in ADnD DMG, near the front. Elves lived about 2k years if I remember rightly, which is the wrong end of the table for this discussion, but again, all I remember right now...


Oceanshieldwolf wrote:
thejeff - Age tables were in ADnD DMG, near the front. Elves lived about 2k years if I remember rightly, which is the wrong end of the table for this discussion, but again, all I remember right now...

We have in AD&D DMG:

High Elf:
Young Adult: 100-175 years
Mature: 176-550
Middle-aged: 551-875
Old: 876-1200
Venerable: 1201-1601

(Wood elves and drow a little less, grey elves and aquatic elves a little more)


sgriobhadair wrote:
Oceanshieldwolf wrote:
thejeff - Age tables were in ADnD DMG, near the front. Elves lived about 2k years if I remember rightly, which is the wrong end of the table for this discussion, but again, all I remember right now...

We have in AD&D DMG:

High Elf:
Young Adult: 100-175 years
Mature: 176-550
Middle-aged: 551-875
Old: 876-1200
Venerable: 1201-1601

(Wood elves and drow a little less, grey elves and aquatic elves a little more)

To compare, it listed Young Adult ages for a human as 14 to 20.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Ascalaphus wrote:
In the real world, animals that live very long do tend to take a long time to mature. Humans do seem to be unusually slow to mature though. Maybe that's also a result of relative luxury; our superior intellect and technology makes it possible for humans to mature slower than many animals, and maybe maturing slowly has advantages too? Time to do a better job of it? (I don't know.)

Keep in mind that software wise, human brains are the most complicated on the planet.

Silver Crusade

Samasboy1 wrote:

The best quote from a rule book I could find was Elves of Golarion, page 12.

Forlorn wrote:
The Forlorn are elves raised outside elf society, brought up among the short-lived folk—humans and other races who die before an elf even reaches full maturity. This exposure to “constant” death makes these elves more somber and melancholy compared to those who have limited interactions with non-elves. In elf society, the Forlorn are pitied and mistrusted for their emotional “scarring.” Adventuring elves are overwhelmingly Forlorn, as the tendency of everyone they care about to rapidly grow old and die is a powerful incentive for the Forlorn to keep moving, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots. Forlorn can be of any elven subrace.

And while elves are interesting in this regard, I find the human-descended long-lived races even more interesting.

Probably 1 out of 1000, or fewer, elves are adopted and raised by humans. Every dhampir, tiefling, aasimar, ifrit, undine, sylph, and oread is born to human parents. Yet these races use the same Age table as the elf.

That Keleshite Ifrit....don't include parents in his backstory, they died 70 years ago and he was so young he probably doesn't remember them.

And the comments Radovan makes about how Count Varian has lived so long take on a new humor when you consider that Radovan will live twice as long if he doesn't meet a violent end.

The ARG numbers are way off, and it's unfortunately spread a lot of confusion. Tieflings/aasimar/planetouched actually age like their parent race.

So that Keleshite Ifrit should be able to have their parents in their backstory. :)


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Just a random thought: pull a human couple (probably nobles in a racist society) adopt an Elven child and keep it as a kind of pet? If the adorable age of 4-6 or whatever you prefer lasts for centuries, you don't need to worry about the difficult teen years - you'll be long gone by then.
Just like some people treat pets like children.

That could be one twisted backstory.


Imagine a teenager who was born around WWI, and lived through the entire 20th century. He saw the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, The Summer of '69, He saw Star Wars in the theater, The Reagan Administration, watched Friends, Seinfeld and Star Trek TNG on TV, saw the Trade Center terrorist attacks, the economic collapse of 2008. During this time he was an angsty and angry teenager being raised by successive generations of humans...

...and now he's grown up and ready to adventure.


Owly wrote:

Imagine a teenager who was born around WWI, and lived through the entire 20th century. He saw the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, The Summer of '69, He saw Star Wars in the theater, The Reagan Administration, watched Friends, Seinfeld and Star Trek TNG on TV, saw the Trade Center terrorist attacks, the economic collapse of 2008. During this time he was an angsty and angry teenager being raised by successive generations of humans...

...and now he's grown up and ready to adventure.

Except he wasn't an angry angsty teenager for most of it. He was a cute little baby and toddler for the first part and only a teen for the last few decades.

Shadow Lodge

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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Erik Ingersen wrote:

Just a random thought: pull a human couple (probably nobles in a racist society) adopt an Elven child and keep it as a kind of pet? If the adorable age of 4-6 or whatever you prefer lasts for centuries, you don't need to worry about the difficult teen years - you'll be long gone by then.

Just like some people treat pets like children.

That could be one twisted backstory.

This is exactly what I thought of first. A few decades as an adorable pet. A few decades as an attractive houseboy/lady's maid. And when they get surly or ungrateful, out on the street they go.

Or they stay and become loyal to the family and the estate, rather than individuals, who are after all, transitory.

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