If you really want Tolkien elves, make them Outsiders -- they'd be immortal, but couldn't be resurrected if killed, either! They'd also be immune to "person"-affecting spells, so you could get rid of the "elven immunities."
Then just do a straight swap: they become immortal, but also can't be resurrected.
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Personally, I'd deal with it like this:
Gain: immortality.
Cost: you don't get stat adjustments for age, ever, at all. You want higher wisdom on an ancient elf? Well, that's what she put her statadds from levels into.
I think it has no mechanical difference, but does add flavor. I say go for it. Of course saying I'm 1000 years old is fine for a PC, but the age benefits should not be used by PC's.
The home campaign I've been running set in the same world for the last 20 years has always had immortal elves. As far as any particular campaign has gone, it has had no effect on PCs whatsoever - no campaign has run through enough campaign time.
My current campaign is actually exploiting it - I've grabbed the rules from Dragon for running really long lived/immortal PCs and am running a campaign that runs through about 3000 years of campaign time (with occassional jumps of a few hundred years (like the montage/fade outs in 'Highlander'). Some of the PCs are magically extended humans, the others are elves.
The only modififier I've added for elves as they age is that they gain -1 con on every thousandth birthday - forcing them to retire to an ageless realm (essentially the lands of faerie) when they decide they're frail enough to keep out of the nasty mortal realm.
I've based this on the old 1st Ed hints that elves are more closely tied to the fey than anything else.
Reggie.
You have to think about implications for the world, too. If Elves are immortal, why don't they have 500 elves for every human or dwarf in the world? I don't know why it wasn't that way in Tolkien (I guess they didn't like reproducing), but it brings up a valid question a PC could ask when he thinks about it.
A GM I ran with long ago had versions of a number of spells at differing levels, including 'aging spells' based off the old 'haste ages you by a year' theme of past versions. Every race got differing saves and effects from such spells, Elves all but ignoring and then suffering a year at most.
You could always give them Timeless Body as Monk or Druid. It would give them some mechanical benefit (immunity to aging effects at least). I'd personally swap it for Elven Magic as the ability is only a benefit for certain classes. If they gain Timeless Body again then they can become immune to dying of old age.
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You have to think about implications for the world, too. If Elves are immortal, why don't they have 500 elves for every human or dwarf in the world? I don't know why it wasn't that way in Tolkien (I guess they didn't like reproducing), but it brings up a valid question a PC could ask when he thinks about it.
Flies have lives measured in Hours, Humans have lives of decades. We are essentially immortal by comparison. Yet the number of flies is far greater still than the number of Humans.
Low reproduction rate, and a decades long childhood will keep most organisms in check.
The home campaign I've been running set in the same world for the last 20 years has always had immortal elves. As far as any particular campaign has gone, it has had no effect on PCs whatsoever - no campaign has run through enough campaign time.
My current campaign is actually exploiting it - I've grabbed the rules from Dragon for running really long lived/immortal PCs and am running a campaign that runs through about 3000 years of campaign time (with occassional jumps of a few hundred years (like the montage/fade outs in 'Highlander'). Some of the PCs are magically extended humans, the others are elves.
The only modififier I've added for elves as they age is that they gain -1 con on every thousandth birthday - forcing them to retire to an ageless realm (essentially the lands of faerie) when they decide they're frail enough to keep out of the nasty mortal realm.
I've based this on the old 1st Ed hints that elves are more closely tied to the fey than anything else.Reggie.
I've have much the same situation in my campaign. I've always run it that elves never die of old age. They merely reach a point where the urge to leave the mortal world and go on to the First World (faerie). It's never caused any issues with game mechanics, and gives that more mystical feel to elves. I've played through section of history over hundreds of year through the game world and it's never been a problem.
I think TOZ's point is that you could just say elves are immortal. No need to make a racial ability out of it.
Age is not feature. Core races have their age categories included in the rules but newer races don't. Their aging is subject to GM fiat. At least until Advanced Races Guide comes out. Uh, that won't be that long immortality.
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I already use immortal elves in our game. Hasn't caused any issues and I've been doing it for about 5 years now. Of course they have reproduction rates of about 3% human rates, so they don't exactly overwhelm the world with their numbers, coupled with the fact that I allow them the ability to Return when they feel that they have no more purpose or just become tired of the mortal world. (Return is a ritual journey in which the elf leaves and transcends the mortal world and moves on to the next world.)
Hasn't effected anything in terms of balance.
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You could always give them Timeless Body as Monk or Druid. It would give them some mechanical benefit (immunity to aging effects at least). I'd personally swap it for Elven Magic as the ability is only a benefit for certain classes. If they gain Timeless Body again then they can become immune to dying of old age.It could also be argued that the weapon familiarity only benefits certain classes.
Regardless, I'm not looking at giving up an ability here. The ability I'm giving doesn't appear to mechanically offer a benefit, so I don't really want to take one away.
This would be true if there was no such thing as exotic weapons... or you're a halfling. Elve get some of the best weapons as Simple Weapons and the Elven Curved Blade is nothing to sneeze at as a Martial Weapon.
It's your game, you can do what you want.
I just get annoyed when Elves get extras for free that aren't "mechanical". Elves only need 4 hours of meditation instead of sleep. It's not mechanical because they still need 8 hours to recover abilities. Then why do they need it? Why not make it a racial feature? Elves need only four hours of sleep, can go without it for twices as long without ill effect, and only suffer half the penalties to Perception checks when asleep. /Rant.
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Am I the only one not 'getting' why this is significant?
If you want your elves to be Immortal (and I assume you mean solely in longevity, not inability to die/be killed) than just say "Elves are immortal" and be done with it.
I don't see any significant mechanical benefit to it, most PCs will never live long enough for it to matter, and most campaigns won't stretch across 500 game years so that only Elves survive and everyone else is on their 50th character.
If you want "immortal" elves, just do it, there's no need for a mechanic. Adjust the fluff/flavor of the world and be done with it.
At my table elves receive the following trait:
Ageless: Elves are immune to magical aging, and receive a +2 racial bonus on saving throws against disease.
Works well enough mechanically when you add, "Oh, and elves stop physically aging once they reach adulthood."
There are some things to watch out for. Don't let anyone play an elf older than is sensible for your campaign. You don't want an ancient horror rising from the depths from an age before recorded history, only for the party's elf to say, "Oh, I knew that ancient horror when it was just a wee thing."
Ageless elves that are easily accessible to the players can very easily destroy any mystery of the past.
Am I the only one not 'getting' why this is significant?
Well, if Happy wants to put an emphasis on aging, then chances are that the passage of time and aging effects will matter at his/her table. In the grand scheme of the game and player-base, it probably matters very little, but I don't think anyone is petitioning to have this material covered in the core rules (yet).
Wouldn't hurt to have this stuff made official, anyway...
There are some things to watch out for. Don't let anyone play an elf older than is sensible for your campaign. You don't want an ancient horror rising from the depths from an age before recorded history, only for the party's elf to say, "Oh, I knew that ancient horror when it was just a wee thing."
Ageless elves that are easily accessible to the players can very easily destroy any mystery of the past.
Well, wouldn't the elf then have at LEAST 15 levels of whatever class/es if they're that old? While it might be fun to have a Gandalf in the party (super-powerful compared to the others, but dies early on and revives to help them when the gap isn't so big)...I dunno, seems like there'd be SOME common sense involved.
Then again, common sense is showing to not be so common :P
I disagree that age = levels. This is such a common sentiment and I find it rather disconcerting.
A 50 year old wino with no skills and no job is going to be a level 1 commoner in my game. You can't grow outside of conflict, even if that conflict is as simple and mundane as maintaining a general store to feed your family for the winter.
A 200 year old elf who spent the last 150 years of his adulthood playing cards with his buddies, reading books, learning etiquette and doing whatever it is elves do, doesn't mean he's grown beyond level 1 if he hasn't gone off in search of conflict. I will grant you that it is harder to avoid conflict for 150 years than for a mere 50 years, but it's not impossible to waste a dozen lifetimes on nothing.
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I just get annoyed when Elves get extras for free that aren't "mechanical". Elves only need 4 hours of meditation instead of sleep. It's not mechanical because they still need 8 hours to recover abilities. Then why do they need it? Why not make it a racial feature? Elves need only four hours of sleep, can go without it for twices as long without ill effect, and only suffer half the penalties to Perception checks when asleep. /Rant.
The bit about elves meditating/not sleeping has almost entirely been removed from Pathfinder. The only mention of it that I know of was in Elves of Golarion, which was written under the 3.5 rule set.
The notion that elves don't sleep at all seems to be more of a Forgotten Realms thing, inspired by the fact that elves are immune to magical sleep. We've toned that bit of flavor down quite a bit in Pathfinder. There are still a few mentions of elves not sleeping in the rules, but they're more like evolutionary writing fragments; whether or not elves actually sleep or if they meditate or whatever is something we leave up to each individual GM.
I pulled the above quote from this thread.