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I am on and off working on a homebrew setting. For elves I have been having them have the Tolkienian approach that elves live until they decided to Walk, as I put it (or Go into the West to use the comparison).
I personally started out in 2nd Edition when elves lived 2000 to 2500 years and then died.
In pathfinder they live to a maximum (Barring certain effects mind you) of 750 years.
My roommate likes the third option. He thinks that the first option takes away from "Death is inevitable" and the second option is stupid as well and that both cheapen death.
what are your guys take on the whole thing? The differing lifespans and whether or not the longer lifespans cheapens anything.
O.k. I goofed. The 2000-2500 years was a Dragonlance thing, but in the 2 Edition players handbook it does state that elves would be compelled to migrate to some other land away from the world of men.
That detail has been cleared please continue continue with the two cents.
Well I know this is kinda heresy but...I never did care for Tolkienian myself. I did play loads of FR where elves often lived to about 750, but some lived much, much, much longer.
In golarion I am not sure if many elves die of old age or just "go back home" though the gates really.
I often have elves with lifespans of just 2 or 300 hundred years myself and my last homebrew they lived just under 200 years on average. I really do not like the thousand of year old or even half that age races as player races myself.
O.k. I goofed. The 2000-2500 years was a Dragonlance thing, but in the 2 Edition players handbook it does state that elves would be compelled to migrate to some other land away from the world of men.
If it makes you feel better, Elves lived in the 1500-2500 range in 1st edition.
I fully support you running elves the way you want in your home-brew. I think immortal elves puts *more* emphasis on the inevitability of death for everyone else, and makes elven death that much more tragic. 500-750 works well for 'a heck of a long time, long enough to see everything twice'. 2000 years works for a mid-point, where they might as well live forever, since an eon goes by before they start to get cranky and arthritic.
Well... maybe just for arthritic.
I'm fine with any of them, as long as Legolas dies before 2012. POWER TO THE PURISTS! :P
In seriousness...I think I like 750. But I never did much like elves.
In actual game terms, it doesn't really matters does it? So that leaves the impact on your setting.
Majuba makes a good point about immortal elves emphasizing the mortality of other lifeforms. Or you could say they are effectively immortal in the eyes of other races, but give them their own view of "elf-death" and have it be culturaly important to them and something never to be shared with non-elves.
Just don't give them green, blue or purple hair and dances moves eerily similar to Michael Jackson's and you'll be in good shape.
In actual game terms, it doesn't really matters does it? So that leaves the impact on your setting.
Majuba makes a good point about immortal elves emphasizing the mortality of other lifeforms. Or you could say they are effectively immortal in the eyes of other races, but give them their own view of "elf-death" and have it be culturaly important to them and something never to be shared with non-elves.
Just don't give them green, blue or purple hair and dances moves eerily similar to Michael Jackson's and you'll be in good shape.
Lovely. I like it. Good job both of you.
Neverminding you can buy me drinks.
As for the rest of you: If you think of something to contribute please feel free. I enjoying throwing a pebble and seeing what rolls down hill.
I'm in the camp of 'it doesn't REALLY matter' what the top end of elfdom is. Considering how rare it is for anyone to actually have to deal with age in an actual campaign... it shouldn't have too much of an impact one way or the other.
PERSONALLY, as a MASSIVE fan of Highlander and Vampires... i prefer the tolkien style. I like them essentially immortal. The fact that they outlive all their friends and lovers is VERY interesting. MUCH more fun than the 'death is inevitable' concept. Seriously... People think that not 'growing old and dying' cheapens death? Most of my characters don't think they'll live to retire ;)
Also as an added bonus... knowing that you have all the time in the world... gives your elf that something extra to seperate them from humans. More to their life philosphy then just another human but who can see in the dark and have pointed ears.
One of my biggest complaints in the Pathfinder core... (and they copied directly from DnD 2E... is the age increments. I find it horribly misproportioned if all elves start to feel the ravages of time after only 175 years... Considering that 750 is the goal for any edition... or FOREVER in others... 175 is a child. In fact the 'starting' age of elves is 110+...
Their first jump should be somewhere around the 250-300 year mark... minimum.
The only DOWNside of immortal elves.. .is the 'history' concept. Golarion has LOTS of ancient lost civilizations... and it MAY be possible for certain elders to know more about them then the DM wishes...
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In my opinion, when elves die is more or less irrelevant to actual play. Pick the flavor you like best.
The only problem I have is Elven starting ages. I use the human starting ages list for all races in my games. It means characters who grow up together in a cosmopolitan town won't face the problem of the "elf short bus". Instead I have longer lived races stall their aging at adulthood and then change categories to match the book.
In my opinion, when elves die is more or less irrelevant to actual play. Pick the flavor you like best.
The only problem I have is Elven starting ages. I use the human starting ages list for all races in my games. It means characters who grow up together in a cosmopolitan town won't face the problem of the "elf short bus". Instead I have longer lived races stall their aging at adulthood and then change categories to match the book.
Similar to what we did with half-elves in a 2E game... I started mine at 21... a friend started his at 50... As mine grew up with a human friend, we quickly adopted the idea that 1) Half-elves can grow at different speeds... and 2) once they hit 'young-adult' they stall till the middle-age break. So mine was 21 and his was 50 but they looked about the same age.
I prefer elves that live shorter, 300-500 years without augmentation, with maturity reached no later than at 50-100.
That said, I see elves as having much easier access to extended lifespan than the rest of common humanoid races (tapping the highborn gene, keeping to traditional elven lifestyle, herbs, certain forms of elven magic).
I am on and off working on a homebrew setting. For elves I have been having them have the Tolkienian approach that elves live until they decided to Walk, as I put it (or Go into the West to use the comparison). (snip)
Making Elves immortal removes them from other 'mortal' playable races, which can be a good thing or a bad thing.
As Majuba said, the most interesting result of having elves live eternally is the dichotomy between elven everlasting lifespan and human's relatively short life. Dwarves and Gnomes live long enough by RaW to accomplish much more than what a human can ever dream of, yet humankind as a race thrives.
The Tolkien's approach put as much emphasis on the frailty of humans than on the long life of Elves, which gives human an understanding that elves cannot conceive. Again in Tolkien literature, the Istari (like Gandalf and Saruman) where sent to Middle-Earth in mortal shells so that from their weakness they can also learn and appreciate their strengths (and those of other mortals).
All that to say that I think it can work even for a player's oriented RPG, especially if you put as much weight to races with comparatively short lifespans.
'findel
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I think it depends on the purpose that you are using elves in your campaign. A world where there are easily-accessed humanoids who are generally allied to your cause and who personally remember when the dragons were in diapers is a different world than one with a mysterious past.
How about this: elves, in their home woodlands, live virtually forever. They might eventually get thinner and vanish in their sleep.
But the elves that spend any amout of time around other civilized races at all undergo a drastic change, becoming half-elves (lifespan in the 200 - 500 yer range). They're still called "elves" instead of "half-elves", but they all understand that they've been changed to deal with the mortal world on its own terms, and that it's a one-way change. Most see it as a loss or sacrifice.
Eves know this happens. They're xenophobic in the extreme, as a measure of self-preservation. So, nobody encounters an actual elf, except as a plot element.
(Oh, and as for hybrids: under this concept, (half)elves and humans have (half)elf or human children. But every child is one or the other. There's no middling ground.)
"elf short bus"
Yeah, I don't ascribe to the 'short bus' theory of elves either. The way I like to explain it is an analogy to the age of majority and the legal drinking age in the USA. If someone can go off to war at 18 but can't handle a drink for another 3 years, it's a cultural issue, not a physiological one.
Similarly among elves, they mature at a rate comparable to other humanoid races, but their cultural mores place a strong emphasis on patience. As such, instead of having to wait 3 years to be considered adults, they have to wait about 80.
Anyway, as far as elven age goes, I know that DragonAge has an explanation similar to Chris'. After exposure to humans, the elves of that mythos lost their longevity. In my world, I've been considering that true immortality may be something that is largely possessed only by the highest of the 'high elves'. Other elven subraces still live a long time, but not forever.
Either way, my preference is for elves to be long-lived to the point where there is a certain melancholy in forming relationships with the short-lived races. Knowing that your friend or lover will die long before you and willingly accepting the pain of eventual loneliness because you love them so much is rather profound IMO. I also find the concept of living long enough to see the consequences of one's own actions over 1000s of years to be interesting.
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I like them being essentially immortal, but that's mostly because I want to be one. ;-)
Technically, Elves in Tolkien "fade" if they don't go West. This is discussed in an essay by Tolkien in the last book (Peoples of Middle-earth) of the History of Middle-earth series edited by Christopher Tolkien.
This takes a while to happen, at least 6000-10000 years, however. It is one way to approach death for Elves that doesn't discard their immortality altogether.
I think Tolkien was thinking of the Elves as ghosts theme in Scandinavian and Celtic myth, where they are sometimes seen as spirits of the dead. Faded Elves are not able to affect the physical world as much as material, "living" Elves, but are very effective at magic.
In my home brew where we play most commonly, elves are the first creation of the gods, who are really more like archangels, so elves are pretty close to being angels. They are native outsiders, don't age, and have been around since before or right at the beginning of time. They only die by violence, basically. They are second edition uber elves, because that is the era we created the world in. In third edition, they used a different magic system (elements of magic). They were often scary, sometimes opponents, and the oldest elves were magicians with 30 levels of casting on top of lots of templates.
Right now we are playing a space fantasy campaign with elves who are more passionate, short lived, and much closer to mortals.
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Dwarves and Gnomes live long enough by RaW to accomplish much more than what a human can ever dream of, yet humankind as a race thrives.
On the other hand, especially in lawful dwarven or gnomish cultures, the longer and longer lifespans of the elders would stunt any sort of cultural growth or innovation, as the hidebound traditionalists retain their grip on power for *centuries.* (The only nations that would develop slower would be those run by lawful immortals, such as undead or outsiders.)
In research / scientific circles it is sometimes (morbidly) joked that the only way science can move forward is for the old generation to die, so that their theories can finally be challenged successfully.
Dwarven and (pre-Pathfinder) Gnomish culture could be hugely set in their ways, and resist any sort of change or cultural / technological / magical advancement with all the adult-diaper-wetting fear of change they can muster, muttering through whatever teeth they have left that 'it was good enough for my generation!' Pathfinder Gnomes aren't the stuffy 'half-dwarves' of Greyhawk, and might not suffer that sort of thing, but are prone to disillusionment/bleaching as they age, and wandering when they are young, making their 'culture' (such as it is) also not terribly prone to advancing itself, as the innovative youngsters are less likely to settle down and make a societal change, and the dispirited/melancholy elders are not likely to care enough to affect any sort of cultural development or change.
Elves, having generally been more chaotic, are less likely to be hidebound traditionalists, and yet, especially in the Realms, they've been portrayed as extremely respectful of their elders, ultra-conservative (paradoxically) and, in some cases, less prone to societal or cultural advancement and more focused on personal accomplishments or naturalist lifestyles. Pathfinder elves don't seem quite as deferential to the oldest among them, but they are portrayed as whimsical and less interested in improving upon things, than on maintaining a status quo (or, having returned, by their standards, relatively recently, rebuilding their status quo, starting with kicking Treerazor out of their woods).
Halflings have gone from un-ambitious pastoralists to scatterbrained nomadic kender-lite, serving as excuses for why *they* haven't advanced anything, and all the spells are named after human wizards, and all the big cities or relevant nations are run by humans.
I would love to see a game-setting where the Dwarves were the driving force of technological innovation, the Gnomes controlled banking and commerce and the Elves were at the forefront of magical innovation, with the 'signature spells' of the setting named after Elven magisters, and not members of the Circle of Eight human dudes. That sort of thing could exist in a setting that was *still* primarily human-dominated, as none of those things by themselves would necessarily mean that Dwarves, Gnomes or Elves would have the big kingdoms or have explored the newer resource-rich lands.
Indeed, humanity, in such a setting, feeling a bit 'shut out' by 'demihuman' locks on certain areas, might be the explorer race, and serve as a parallel for America, the nation that went from yet-another-colony to a world super-power. It also would make sense for humanity to be the race that most effectively took advantage of shipbuilding and sea travel, creating new trade routes and forging opportunities that the older races didn't recongize the value of until the humans opened their eyes to that potential.
An older elf ruler, who distinctly remembers pooh-poohing the human fascination with building ships and exploring newly discovered continents might frown a little frown, two hundred years later, to find himself in the position of England, regarding the upstart 'America' that the humans have founded over the sea...
The Kyonin elves seem to be in that boat, more or less, coming back to find that humanity inexplicably didn't settle their forest home (or cut it down and turn it into ships and buildings), but have surrounded it on all sides. For the eldest among them, it must seem like they blinked, and humanity exploded in all directions and took over the entire world!
In my homebrew setting Elves are immortal, but they aren't available as a player race. The oldest living player race in my setting are the dwarves, but they only live a maximum of 125+3d20 years, same as Half-elves in the rule book
Technically, Elves in Tolkien "fade" if they don't go West. This is discussed in an essay by Tolkien in the last book (Peoples of Middle-earth) of the History of Middle-earth series edited by Christopher Tolkien.
This takes a while to happen, at least 6000-10000 years, however. It is one way to approach death for Elves that doesn't discard their immortality altogether.
I think Tolkien was thinking of the Elves as ghosts theme in Scandinavian and Celtic myth, where they are sometimes seen as spirits of the dead. Faded Elves are not able to affect the physical world as much as material, "living" Elves, but are very effective at magic.
When I was talking with my roommate I had described things as "They get to a point where they feel the compulsion to Walk. So old elves don't die they just fade away."
Humorous and interesting... and some thing to consider. You stand next to the other two and fetch me my battle trousers.
I would love to see a game-setting where the Dwarves were the driving force of technological innovation, the Gnomes controlled banking and commerce and the Elves were at the forefront of magical innovation, with the 'signature spells' of the setting named after Elven magisters, and not members of the Circle of Eight human dudes. That sort of thing could exist in a setting that was *still* primarily human-dominated, as none of those things by themselves would necessarily mean that Dwarves, Gnomes or Elves would have the big kingdoms or have explored the newer resource-rich lands.
Eberron - except the dwarves are bankers and gnomes are inventors. Khovaire Elves are mostly assimilated but they longevity still kicks in, and "traditional" elves are necromancers.
Another coming example from closer to my own turf: Wolsung. Another steampunk fantasy setting based upon Europe that is deliberately based upon cliches and stereotypes, except it isn't human dominated - various races are partial substitutes for nationalities and ethnic groups.
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...I would love to see a game-setting where the Dwarves were the driving force of technological innovation, the Gnomes controlled banking and commerce and the Elves were at the forefront of magical innovation, with the 'signature spells' of the setting named after Elven magisters, and not members of the Circle of Eight human dudes. That sort of thing could exist in a setting that was *still* primarily human-dominated, as none of those things by themselves would necessarily mean that Dwarves, Gnomes or Elves would have the big kingdoms or have explored the newer resource-rich lands.
Indeed, humanity, in such a setting, feeling a bit 'shut out' by 'demihuman' locks on certain areas, might be the explorer race, and serve as a parallel for America, the nation that went from yet-another-colony to a world super-power. It also would make sense for humanity to be the race that most effectively took advantage of shipbuilding and sea travel, creating new trade routes and forging opportunities that the older races didn't recongize the value of until the humans opened their eyes to that potential.
An older elf ruler, who distinctly remembers pooh-poohing the human fascination with building ships and exploring newly discovered continents might frown a little frown, two hundred years later, to find himself in the position of England, regarding the upstart 'America' that the humans have founded over the sea......
What would you do with Halflings and Orcs or other races in such a setting?
I like these ideas and may fold them into one or two others I have. One where the elves and Humans have merged cultures for the most part and as such there are many Noble Born half-elves.