One of my fellow players has uh... complaints about this all the time. He's sworn off the long-lived races for good, and smote them from his homebrew setting to spoil the fun for the rest of us.
I prefer a faster maturation (biologically), but I think Ambrus has more than the right idea in his post. Kudos! I've always liked the idea of adventuring as some "elven rite of passage" (read: before adulthood). I remember somebody likened them to Mass Effects Asari? (I think, I havent played the series myself) in that they break from their families and go on a hedonistic binge throughout the galaxy before returning home, all the wiser for it. Otherwise, you just have to think of how much better the elves of Kyonin are living... All the time in the world, no worries, elven wine and songs and festivals. I can't imagine anyone would tire of it fast, or stay in human lands overly long.
After all, what do they have to compete?
As a side note, are we looking at the other long-lived races in this thread? I'm fairly certain Gnomes don't age so much as go through the Bleaching, so they're unique there. Dwarves, though... I can't for the life of me picture Dwarven children. Could somebody paint a mental picture for me?
Somehow I picture dwarves being given little fully functional hammers on their first birthdays and spending much of their young life learning the ins and outs of metalworking and surviving in tunnels.And being raised on booze instead of milk.
Or are those just the dwarves who worship Armok? :P
And before ya know it they'll be all grown up throwing Fluffy Wamblers at Bronze Colossi and one-shotting them :)
Anyways, love this thread. Dotting.
In the mean time. I feel more comfortable role playing longer lived races. I may be the odd man out but I have long thought on scales that would boggle the modern human mind.... Which would explain my general hatred for most of humanity right now.
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Personally I think trying to figure out the psychology and sociology of fantasy races is half the fun of world-building. :)
As far as elves go, I think solid and intriguing cases can and have been made for both the slow and human-like maturation rates. Personally, I think that the more human-like rate better supports the fantasy tropes I'm most familiar with, so in my homebrew I have their rate of maturation as being slightly slower than that of half-elves and humans.
Some of the ways in which this shakes out in-practice are...
Because child-rearing constitutes a smaller percentage of an elf's adult life, both elven parents are generally able to devote prolonged attention to raising a child rather than one spouse needing to devote themselves entirely to child-rearing. Coupled with my conclusion that female elves have an estrous rather than a menstrual cycle, this means that elven children are generally more planned for, and that elven women are not subject to most of the gender-specific setbacks of their human counterparts. This seems to mesh well with how male and female elves have largely been portrayed as equals in most of the literature I've read.
With elven childhood being such a brief period, I could see elven families being very close-knit for the first 10-20 years, with society placing an almost sacred value on that formative period. Instead of having multiple children in the space of a few years, entire decades might pass in between children. This would lead to many elves having childhood experiences similar to those of an only child.
This is also part of the reason why elves are considered minors until they have passed their centennial birthday. While 'taking off' for 10 or 20 years to raise a child might be seen as acceptable and even encouraged (especially for a first child), it is seen as equally important for younger elves to learn the sense of stewardship even as their parents return to their own trade. If there is one thing that elves know well, it is that experience is the best teacher, and one way of ensuring that one learns is through having to teach someone else. As such, older 'children' (who are themselves fully grown, but still treated as minors in elven society), find themselves mentoring siblings who might be an entire generation behind where human sensibilities would be concerned.
Of course, not every elven minor is content to fill such a role. Middle children or those who do not have sufficient obligations to keep the preoccupied are particularly prone to seek out new experiences elsewhere. While elven law forbids the marriage of minors, that does not mean that elves who have reached their full growth are without libido. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, particularly in a culture that places such high value on artistry and experiencing creation.
This is a prime cause for the proliferation of half-elves. Whereas it would be taboo for two young elves to mate while still minors in the eyes of their culture, those who venture outside those circles find that different rules apply. In human society, an elf's youthful visage and advanced experience garner a great deal of attention. Unlike with female elves, however, human women do not have the same biological control over their own fertility. It is not uncommon then for elves and humans to enter into a sort of fantasy relationship with years slipping by easily for the young elf even as time all too quickly catches up to their human lover, bringing with it the stark reality that the elf's escapist fantasy (and potential family) cannot endure.
For good-hearted elves, this tragedy is as much of a learning experience as any they could have found in their homeland and a sobering one at that. For those who are more hedonistic, and shallow, however, humans are little more than playthings to be used and discarded while their youth endures. Thus, what elvendom may lack in terms of negative gender biases, may (in some elvish cultures), be made up for by contempt for humans and half-elves.
At any rate, by the time an elf has finally reached the age of adulthood, they have most likely already gained the experiences of one or two human lifetimes. For good or for ill, more than any racial features, it is this advanced experience that set elves apart from the shorter-lived races. While a human of 20 years might be just as capable (likely moreso) than an elf of 25 or 30 years, most humans will simply never reach the same level of experience that your average elf does until their bodies are too advanced in age for it to matter. This then is the true reason why elves seem superhuman in literature — not because the basic makeup of their race is superior beyond their longevity, but that their longevity allows them to live long enough to attain higher levels of experience even amongst those who do not adventure with any great regularity.
Of course, this also has the side benefit of allowing adventurers to truly be iconoclasts, since their rapid advancement can allow a human or halfling to quickly surpass their brethren and reach superhuman levels of prowess themselves.
For me the age management in PF and 3E/3.5E is a joke, and a bad one; it is stupid and ridiculous. races' ages are engineered so they can do math and adapt them to dice rolls, but they are impractical.
How could it be that an elf needs about 350 years to become as wise as a 70 years old human? Are they stupid, slow in their minds, retarded, mentally ill or what? Life is then not interesting for elves, they all live in such state of stupor that they look almost comatose to the rest, to learn is a challenge. I cannot imagine that. Then it is false that they reach maturity later because they're understanding the meaning of their long lives when they really grasp no wisdom from it!
Belfgur, the Bald, is a man in his 50's who lost all his family and is contemplating life in despair. Someone suggested him to go and talk with a well versed elf in the mountains, a man who is about 130 years old, who can give him some wise advice about surviving your loved ones. Belfgur went on his journey... Half a year later he came back and punched in the face the idiot who told him to go on that journey just to talk with an stupid elf who still thinks and acts like a teen. That elf knew nothing about life and had no advice to give to him! In fact, Belfgur had more to give to that moronic elf!
No way...
When i'm GMing, all races mature at similar rates, orcs a couple years before humans and elves maybe just 5 years later.
But their minds mature at same rates.
I don't allow characters above a century old.
An elf 100 years old is as wise as a man 90 years old; an elf 200 years old is twice as wise, and so on, and an elf a millennium old is such an incredible wise guy so it is no wonder he is unwilling to waste his precious time talking with the short-life humans who find even their simplest words as the most complex and cryptic prayers. Such characters would have an incredible insight of the world, they are part of the history, older than towns and some natural places. They have more skills and saving throws and HD because they were doing something in all that time, even by giving them NPC class levels. "Yes, my mother is not as skilled in magic as i am, but, Gods! Kings send caravans even from the other side of the world to purchase her embroideries, dude".
Elvish women doesn't have a menstrual cycle, and times between them are so long for their wombs have to reach such a state of perfection to allow an elvish baby to grow inside. Twins? Do elves know about twins? "Yes they do, go ask Ilidrond, the merchant, the cousin of a friend of one of his friends had twins 7 centuries ago. Man! I swear! It's true!"
Elvish, fey, drow societies manage citizenship levels/grades. You are an adult at the age of 20, but cannot do this or that until you reach 100, cannot participate in the government until 300... and so on. From 3 to 5 citizenship levels or so.
And that works! When my players talk to their ancestors of those long-life races they feel their ancestors are really ancient ones, venerable, respectable, wise and full of knowledge. "I have a bonus on that roll, i'm wise like my grandmother"; "Really? No, you could be as wise as her, but not yet"; "Ok... What do i need to be like her?"; "Ah, not much really, just 8 centuries more"; "Well, ok, i won't roll the dice"; "Huh?"; "Yes, i can just go tomorrow back home, pay a visit to my grandma and ask her"; "Ok, go ahead".
That create more interesting old elves and also explains why they keep their civilizations far away from the other races. Do they die of old age or maybe they transcend to another state of body and mind? I cannot answer that cause i'm a young human and that knowledge is veiled from me.
Elrison, the Last Wanderer, 1120 years old elf, is wondering if talking or not with that 'immature' Belfgur. "Poor humans," he thinks " for they have to die before attaining real insight about life. What words do i have for Belfgur? He is just whining about the lose of his family, i saw complete nations grow and die! Complete cultures went to oblivion. I still regret that dam project, 300 hundred years and we've never seen a stripped deer again; i'm completely sure now that we caused their extinction. Yes... maybe i have some advice for him. As life keeps walking in front of us, even for we, the long-lived ones".