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Not really, but you don't seem to understand physical development and the roll it plays in memory, maturity and processing.
A ten-year-old human child can learn pretty much anything that they devote time to - foreign languages, musical instruments, fractions, world history, the names of dinosaurs... I don't see there's any particular need for further physical development before they can learn calculus / spellcraft. It's just that it normally takes a few years to get round to those things. I think. If you have evidence I'm wrong, please cite your sources.
A ten-year-old human child can learn pretty much anything that they devote time to - foreign languages, musical instruments, fractions, world history, the names of dinosaurs... I don't see there's any particular need for further physical development before they can learn calculus / spellcraft. It's just that it normally takes a few years to get round to those things. I think. If you have evidence I'm wrong, please cite your sources.
Look at the proportional change between infancy and ten and ten and 20. There's a huge change in volume and an even greater one in structure and function along the way. A lot of the changes in the brain are done by early adolescence. Most of the real heavy lifting in brain development is done by 5 iirc. You don't see the need for further development and what it allows because it happens in a short time span for us. By the time we start to learn something that takes time, we have developed further and the brain is developing the whole time facilitating what we learn. It's complex and I apologize if I over simplified it.
I tried to keep it simple without complicating it too much, and I over simplified it, but here's a good roadmap of the brains development and the learning it facilitates at different developmental stages. It's aimed at teachers:
http://www.apa.org/education/k12/brain-function.aspx#
*edit* In short, they don't stay 10 while learning; they age and develop. And learn. Page 3 is the meat of brain development and learning btw. Anyway, it's an American Psychological Association website.
I again offer another approach. Whoever played a Vampire in Vampire the masquerade knows that a newborn, aka transformed vampire, in most clans is trained for years sometimes decades to work in the society.
Etiquette, control of the beast and how to feed. Some clans don´t but they have a survival of the fittest attitude and some princes have a sheriff whos main duty is to kill those, because they threaten the masquerade. Now transform that to elven society. Their society is OLD.
Their leaders are hundreds of years old. I would imagine that every child is trained to perfection. Wich also makes sense as there are so very few elven children.
Again taking cues from martial arts. To become a swordfighter it takes more than the pointy end into flesh. Swordfighting is quite difficult and archery too. So I guess of the 100 years of youth 20 goes into learning each of those weapons. Then maybe hugging a tree for another 5 years to learn about growth, heck even planting a tree to learn how things grow.
Also elves are apart from orcs, and I think latter most often do it the ugly way, the only race who fools with humans. So I guess they have a very well frolic metabolism ;-). So another 20 years to learn not to hump anything moving.
Every child is trained to perfection kind of assumes those children would know something beyond a lvl 1 human........
Swordfighting is quite difficult and archery too. So I guess of the 100 years of youth 20 goes into learning each of those weapons.
Then you'd expect an elf with 40 years of weapon practice to be a lot better at fighting than a 17-year old human, which by RAW they aren't.
Also, lots of races find humans attractive. See Oreads, etc.
Personally, I find the hundred-year-childhood silly, certainly in terms of mental development. My brain won't accept helpless 60-year-olds.
'My' elves mature at 25; only a little slower than humans.
Otherwise I'd feel that they needed to be more skilled in some way than humans to reflect their long development. Even if something token (ranks in knowledge(nature) or whatever), it would give them an unfair advantage and potentially harm game balance.
One would think that way. But now train somebody in a purely theoretical fashion and train someone the bloody way. 2 orc children might be given a club or even axes and the winner is the one who survives. But for an elf everything is diffrent. You do not want scars. So you spend a year just how to hold a sword in a controlled manner. And maybe they DO know more about swordfighting. Just a lot of it is completly and utterly useless in real combat.
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Not really, but you don't seem to understand physical development and the roll it plays in memory, maturity and processing.
Okay, I confess. I only got a B in the Behavioral Neuroscience course I took while working on my BA in Psychology. I only took one unit on lifespan development in graduate school. So it's true, I'm not an expert on this subject.
Also, I've never trained a ten year old in swordsmanship. I practice strictly with foam-padded boffer weapons, and the youngest player I've tutored was 12. I have to admit, development plays a role. Even after weeks of training, he was only slightly more capable than most adults.
And certainly, you can't expect someone to become really skilled without some kind of structured learning. For instance, my son, when he was about seven, constructed a handmade bow out of some sticks he found, some safety tape, and a few bread ties. It was not much of a bow; I don't think it had more than thirty feet of range or so.
So you're totally right, kids do learn differently than adults.
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I see a lot of excuses here. People want the starting age to make sense. It doesn't, not in any sort of way. If elves were so slow to learn things, they are certifiably morons. If elves learn something in their excess ninety years or so, they should start with extra competence, and not just a little, either. If the elves spend their time learning useless stuff, then there should be elves who chose instead to learn useful things, and end up with mastery in all sorts of abilities. None of this works. Nor does the excuse that elves are so afraid to get hurt or die. Read any number of books about them. A major theme of elves is sacrifice.
The sum total is that the starting age is a stupid piece of gaming history. In Drakar och demoner, a swedish RPG from the eighties, it was written that elves could not die from age, and thus could live to thirty thousand years of age. Every player I played with drew the immediate conclusion that the starting age of an elf should be ten thousand years old, still with just the same statistics as everyone else.
It doesn't work like that. If you want someone to survive in a fantasy world, they need to mature quickly and learn useful things. This means you could have a slightly longer childhood, but not more than a few years or so. What you could have, however, is a situation where a young elf behaves mostly like a human, until they have experienced the passage of time, which changes their outlook drastically. I would be thrilled to play that change in a character, and there is so much that could be done with it.
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It doesn't work like that. If you want someone to survive in a fantasy world, they need to mature quickly and learn useful things. This means you could have a slightly longer childhood, but not more than a few years or so. What you could have, however, is a situation where a young elf behaves mostly like a human, until they have experienced the passage of time, which changes their outlook drastically. I would be thrilled to play that change in a character, and there is so much that could be done with it.
I disagree with this. On earth there is a huge range in how long species take to mature. Humans take ridiculously long to mature compared to most species, but we're not about to go extinct.
Why couldn't it be the same with elves? Because they take so long to mature, they place a heavy emphasis on protecting those elven homelands where the children are growing up. That's why elves tend to be so "xenophobic", and why it's a cliche that the protagonists are one of the first non-elves in centuries to be allowed in there.
Haven't you wondered why elves haven't conquered the world through sheer force of compound interest? In human society, old people have had a lot of time to accumulate power. White men over 50 still have disproportionate power. Now imagine white elves with 500 years of time to gain influence in human society. Why haven't they built the Elven World Order yet?
They have, it's just not all that visible. And they don't use it to overtly run human society. But elven ambassadors influence all other nations, elven sages manipulate adventurers into just the right quests, and elven wizards have a huge supply of ancient artifacts, as well as the kind of spellbook you can only fill if you have centuries of time to accumulate spell knowledge.
They use all that power to shelter their society. Because it needs a lot more sheltering than fast-breeding races.
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Deadmanwalking, RJGrady, help me out: is there a source that explicitly states that it takes 100+ years for an elf to mature mentally and psychologically?
Well, the fact that they don't have any more skills than a starting 17 year old human at over 100 means something...though what exactly is unclear.
But that's pretty much it.
So, you're saying elves do the equivalent of dropping their kids in front of the boob tube.
I don't buy it.
Not exactly. I'm saying they know they've got plenty of time and let the kids do whatever they want to a much greater degree than humans do. That doesn't mean they aren't paying attention or supporting them, it means they're not putting as much of a priority on the children achieving things right now.
You could certainly play it that it's a cultural thing that 'normal' elves are perfectly ready to go adventuring when they're in their forties, but it's incredibly rare. Consider: about 50% of adventurers are dead within a year. You're in your physical prime, and will be for another hundred years. Why would you rush into danger? Why not first spend seventy years living a fun life in the elf lands, perhaps raising a couple of children of your own?
Elves raising children before 100 are considered pedophiles or teenage pregnancies (shameful).
Remember before 100 Elven society thinks them helpless children despite how capable they are.
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No, you didn't. Bad editing of the reply post. Sorry.I never said this.So, Elves maturing (and learning) slowly makes sense to me in terms of the time it takes them to grow up. Once they hit maturity they learn (level up) as fast as humans.
No worries. I'm not offended or anything, I just wanted to make it clear that I never said that, for the record.
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Elves mature physically almost as quickly as humans and pretty much do so mentally as well, but at maturity they have a very strong drive for reproduction and spend the rest of the "childhood" period having and raising children, generally one at a time. Elven culture supports them and encourages this. They're allowed to devote their full efforts to their children and don't have to do other work during this period. Towards the end, the drive fades and fertility drops drastically. That's when they begin to prepare for whatever they'll do in their adult life.
Children outside of this period are possible, but rare. Elves still enjoy sex for recreation, but the drive isn't anywhere near as strong.
One of the best workarounds yet; doesn't require changing the rulebook. So they mature around, say, 35 - but then spend the next 70 years raising two children, one at a time. Only then do they start their 'proper' career. So 110 years 'adulthood' would actually be their 'career start' age rather than (say) sexual maturity. And they are family-focused (which isn't measurable in pathfinder) in the first hundred years, explaining the lack of character-sheet-measurable skills, feats or levels.
They then take longer to train (10d6 years for trained classes, instead of 2d6 for humans) because they are doing their training alongside time with their families. In other races, a trainee wizard would most likely be training full-time, but elves wouldn't be.
I like it.
Well, the fact that they don't have any more skills than a starting 17 year old human at over 100 means something...though what exactly is unclear.
But that's pretty much it.
Actually elves get more skill points than most other races. If we base ourselves on average ability scores... It's right there, in the Ability Score Racial Trait: +2 Int.
They have no more starting skill than a 17 years old human because humans, compared to other races, are really crazy learner: they have an entire racial trait that makes them learn more than their average intelligence should let them...
The problem is the entire system not letting a character learn anything if they don't level up, so either you let elves start at higher level, or you can't mechanically represent it according to rules as they are now...
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Actually, as I recommended earlier Breadth of Experience solves this problem without requiring higher level characters...and reflects a rather undirected but broad education quite well.
Replacing either Elven Magic or Weapon Familiarity at the individual Elf's option with that Feat seems a reasonable House Rule to solve the problem entirely, IMO, and works by the ARG's Race Builder, too (not that the Race Builder is a good measure of anything).
Or just have most Elves take it at 1st level.
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At 1st level, an elf commoner could have three or four Int-based skills at +5, allowing them to "take 10" and make difficult checks, and is proficient with both the longsword and longbow. That still leaves them with a feat to play with. That's not bad for a commoner.
If you assume elves produce less commoners than other races, more warriors and more experts, and more high-level fighters and wizards, I don't see starting at 1st level as a "problem," any more than it's a problem an eighteen year old human can't start at 2nd level (there surely are such people).
I'm easy to please. I don't care about the mechanics; I simply care about the "why". Someone from Pathfinder could say: "Deity X created all the elves, and desired for them to have the gift of an extra long life of joy, etc. So elves get an extra long childhood, extra long old age to enjoy their children, grandchildren, etc." I would be completely cool with that, especially if they made the ridiculously short "prime" period of their life longer.
Or hell, I would still be OK with the shortened "prime" period, so long as the same description said something like, "But the elves were haughty, and abused their power, and so Deity X decreed they would only enjoy 50 years or so of awesomeness out of their average lifespan of 575 years."
As of right now, though, there's nothing. There's just this copy and paste of arbitrary numbers that don't really serve the game or the setting in any meaningful way. Unless you assume that the 2nd Edition AD&D Complete Book of Elves informs the genetic and social makeup of Pathfinder elves, there's no indication what elves do before they hit 110+ years and start adventuring. Someone could argue that it's just an unbroken genetic imperative that they frolic for 109 years (or whatever) before they decide to take up a trade and/or adventure.
It doesn't work like that. If you want someone to survive in a fantasy world, they need to mature quickly and learn useful things. This means you could have a slightly longer childhood, but not more than a few years or so. What you could have, however, is a situation where a young elf behaves mostly like a human, until they have experienced the passage of time, which changes their outlook drastically. I would be thrilled to play that change in a character, and there is so much that could be done with it.I disagree with this. On earth there is a huge range in how long species take to mature. Humans take ridiculously long to mature compared to most species, but we're not about to go extinct.
Why couldn't it be the same with elves? Because they take so long to mature, they place a heavy emphasis on protecting those elven homelands where the children are growing up. That's why elves tend to be so "xenophobic", and why it's a cliche that the protagonists are one of the first non-elves in centuries to be allowed in there.
Haven't you wondered why elves haven't conquered the world through sheer force of compound interest? In human society, old people have had a lot of time to accumulate power. White men over 50 still have disproportionate power. Now imagine white elves with 500 years of time to gain influence in human society. Why haven't they built the Elven World Order yet?
They have, it's just not all that visible. And they don't use it to overtly run human society. But elven ambassadors influence all other nations, elven sages manipulate adventurers into just the right quests, and elven wizards have a huge supply of ancient artifacts, as well as the kind of spellbook you can only fill if you have centuries of time to accumulate spell knowledge.
They use all that power to shelter their society. Because it needs a lot more sheltering than fast-breeding races.
Interesting take. It also provides a possible answer to the Golarion elf response to Earthfall. Trying to prevent it was just too risky, save the children, the families, the bloodlines; we can return when it's cleared up. Combine this with the Jeff's idea and it works even better. Elves are all about protecting the status quo, the family, civilization...they'd rather dig a bomb shelter than risk failing to stop the disaster.
I disagree with this. On earth there is a huge range in how long species take to mature. Humans take ridiculously long to mature compared to most species, but we're not about to go extinct.
I like your proposal, so don't think I'm disagreeing with it... but I don't think this reasoning really helps it out. We made it because we're the only sentient species capable of our level of complex thought and corresponding products. Once we figured out fire, simple tools, and the means by which to set up simply agrarian infrastructure (and corresponding means of defense, such as fences, etc.), our ability to survive against any other species on earth was virtually guaranteed.
By contrast, humans in Golarion do have to contend with elves and dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. Those races in turn have to contend with orcs, goblins, and all manner of hostile races. All of them in turn have to contend with giants, dragons, and still other ridiculous species that seek to dominate and/or destroy other sentient life. The only real world species struggle that could compare to Pathfinder's own is what might have been if Homo Sapiens Sapiens was the only survivor of a conflict that violently extinguished all other branches of humanity.
In that sense, while I think your proposal on elven maturation is just as feasible as any other that seeks to work with the existing rules, I don't think its viability is supported by our own species' survival in the real world. It's viable just on the grounds that you proposed: that the first generation of elves-as-we-know-them figured out advanced magic, technology, etc., and survived the long maturation period and was able to establish their infrastructure and society. After that, they weren't so much interested in overt power and domination and instead focused their resources on keeping safe/separate from the rest of the world.
Interesting sidenote: in the Palladium RPG of old, elves used their longevity to achieve exactly the sort of dominance you allude to. Of course they later succumbed to evil and used dangerous magic that exploded their empire. The end.
There are tons of "what ifs" that we could propose. All of the ones I've read in this thread are valid. I just wish a good answer had come with the core rulebook. One might argue that the game designers don't want to paint you in a corner with such an answer... but they had already achieved that by including the age tables. :)
Not really, but you don't seem to understand physical development and the roll it plays in memory, maturity and processing.
Okay, I confess. I only got a B in the Behavioral Neuroscience course I took while working on my BA in Psychology. I only took one unit on lifespan development in graduate school. So it's true, I'm not an expert on this subject.
Good. Neither am I. I just know what my professors told me in my psych, behavioral science and education classes.I assume they told me the truth. Not the greatest basis for "truth" I know.
Also, I've never trained a ten year old in swordsmanship. I practice strictly with foam-padded boffer weapons, and the youngest player I've tutored was 12. I have to admit, development plays a role. Even after weeks of training, he was only slightly more capable than most adults.
Neither have I. My point isn't that a 12 year old can't learn. It's the difference between a newborn, a 5 year old, a 10 year old, a 15 year old and an adult. Yes, development plays a role. How many adults have you trained? Do all 12 year olds learn faster? Is this one simply an advanced learner? Who knows.
And certainly, you can't expect someone to become really skilled without some kind of structured learning. For instance, my son, when he was about seven, constructed a handmade bow out of some sticks he found, some safety tape, and a few bread ties. It was not much of a bow; I don't think it had more than thirty feet of range or so.So you're totally right, kids do learn differently than adults.
Yes, structure helps. It certainly makes learning more efficient and predictable. Your son displayed the imaginative solution I'd expect from a kid. Kids are described as agile and imaginative learners. They think outside the box. Adults are somewhat different (and individuals display "significant variation" - a quote from a prof that stuck for 30 years now).
I have 3 munchkins of my own, all 18+ and in college now. I've passed thousands of students through my classroom in the last 25+ years from 14 on up to older adults. There are observable differences, imo of course.
Maybe I haven't expressed myself well. With your background I'd think I was preaching to the choir. I think slower physical development would lead to longer required times for learning due to differences in processing, memory storage and maturity. How much slower is difficult to say, but it makes a good rationale for Elfin starting ages and why they learn as fast as other adults once they start. We'll probably never be sure, but the reasoning seems sound. Especially as background for a game rule.
My apologies if I came off sounding like a jerk (Did I?). If so, I didn't intend to. Just tired and playing hooky while grading. It's finals here.
I think that elves grow up at the same rate as humans. But they stop aging around 30. In a race that is so well lived though, the maturity and wisdom gained over long years would definitely surpass a human elder's. Thus, even though a 60 year old elf is just as versed and lived as a 60 year old human, he's still considered a young-un in elf years.
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I think slower physical development would lead to longer required times for learning due to differences in processing, memory storage and maturity.
And yet, the main survival advantage of human neoteny is a vast increase in intelligence, and a lengthening of the "gainful play" period of life. Ten year olds don't act like ten year olds because they're mentally weak, but because they are learning at an amazing rate. Domestic and human-allied animals such as dogs, cats, and horses similarly display neotenous traits and an enhanced disposition and facility for learning. You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but you have a better chance of that than teaching an old wolf new tricks.
Consider also that all the vast improvements in cognitive ability over our nearest relatives comes at the expense of lengthening childhood by 50%, maybe 75%. If elves have a childhood five times as long, I would expect them to be vastly more intelligent than humans... they would be a degree more intelligent than humans, beyond what humans are to chimpanzees, assuming a vaguely proportionate relationship.
In contrast, if an extended elven childhood is associated with directionless activity and few gained skills, it's really impossible to argue anything other than that elves have vastly reversed the advantages humans have over apes, being less inquisitive, less able to retain information, and, with the creative formlessness of youth, less able to acquire new aptitudes, beliefs, attitudes, and insights.
I prefer to imagine that the racial traits of elves reflect a hundred years of quality learning, and their society boasts a percentage of 1st level wizards among the young adult population in the high single digits.
And yet, the main survival advantage of human neoteny is a vast increase in intelligence, and a lengthening of the "gainful play" period of life. Ten year olds don't act like ten year olds because they're mentally weak, but because they are learning at an amazing rate. Domestic and human-allied animals such as dogs, cats, and horses similarly display neotenous traits and an enhanced disposition and facility for learning. You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but you have a better chance of that than teaching an old wolf new tricks.
I'm not sure the intelligence of humanity is due just to a longer childhood. I think the longer childhood is necessary to develop the brain that gives rise to that intelligence. Children are learning a fantastic amount, but most of it is the basis for later, more complex, learning. Reasoning and memory formation improve as the child develops. Neural connections increase steadily during elementary school allowing the child to make connections with prior learning and comprehend more difficult concepts. Learning and it's more formal cousin, education, are built on a foundation of earlier more basic ideas building to more complex ones. You crawl before you walk, and walk before you run. Or you bump into a lot of things :) Domestic animals have adapted to us and, through survival, developed traits we value. Dogs are dogs, not wolves, because we valued some traits that wolves display and chose their ancestors accordingly.
Bad things happen to us as we get older though, human, dog or wolf, no doubt about that :(
Consider also that all the vast improvements in cognitive ability over our nearest relatives comes at the expense of lengthening childhood by 50%, maybe 75%. If elves have a childhood five times as long, I would expect them to be vastly more intelligent than humans... they would be a degree more intelligent than humans, beyond what humans are to chimpanzees, assuming a vaguely proportionate relationship.
Chimps hit adulthood at around 12 (by both adult dentition and brain development), but their lifespan is about 40-50 years. That sounds proportionally similar to humans (assuming full maturity at about 20 and an 80 year typical lifespan). I would argue that Elves have a childhood (and developmental phase) that is longer because they have a longer lifespan. Keeping the body functional for centuries rather than decades may simply make for a more complex and protracted development until adulthood. Chimps do have a 98% DNA match to humans. There is the IQ disparity though, but hey 2% might be important :)
In contrast, if an extended Elven childhood is associated with directionless activity and few gained skills, it's really impossible to argue anything other than that elves have vastly reversed the advantages humans have over apes, being less inquisitive, less able to retain information, and, with the creative formlessness of youth, less able to acquire new aptitudes, beliefs, attitudes, and insights.I prefer to imagine that the racial traits of elves reflect a hundred years of quality learning, and their society boasts a percentage of 1st level wizards among the young adult population in the high single digits.
I'd say it's associated with more complex development leading to a longer lifespan. The learning and retention of information is a matter of developmental processes / stages, not calendar age. At least until you hit adulthood / maturity and you have what you have. This accounts for things such as delayed development with children not learning "age appropriate" information and skills because they are not at the right developmental stage calendar age not withstanding. If you aren't ready for it, time alone will not help you learn it. An argument could be made that you need both development and time and I'm sure that's true. I just think without appropriate development the time is wasted.
I'm not sure which of us is right (if either or maybe both), but thanks for making me go down this track. It's fun putting my neural connections through their paces occasionally. And it has me looking over my Elvish cultures and society again. Win, win! :)
I have chimpanzees as living about 50 years in captivity, and the world average expectancy for humans at 67. Even saying chimps are mature at 12 (which is high, most of my sources say > 9), that still leaves humans with comparatively long childhoods. But then again, very long-lived humans live much longer than very long-lived chimps. From this I conclude that humans have fairly long lifespans, and that our maturation rate is similar to that of a chimpanzee, close enough that the difference can be attributed to rather immediate pressures of survival. There ought to be some association, but clearly if a very old human can live twice as old as a very old chimp, while maturing within a few years of the same span, there is not a linear association.
Some humans, of course, exhibit precocious development, and it is hard to pin a reliable association between that and mental maturity or skill acquisition.
For elves to be resistant to new learning for a hundred years, I don't think they would be like eternal children. I think they would have to be precocious adults... physically a fraction of a human's age, but mentally, a hidebound, indolent curmudgeon by age 6. Developmentally speaking, play is equivalent in meaning to learning. If elves did nothing but play for 100 years, they would have very considerable skills. With no need for the drudgery of the mill or the plow, they could be tree-climbers, hide-and-seekers, archers, flower arrangers, and wizards... and not just some of those things, but all of those things.
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I disagree with this. On earth there is a huge range in how long species take to mature. Humans take ridiculously long to mature compared to most species, but we're not about to go extinct.I like your proposal, so don't think I'm disagreeing with it... but I don't think this reasoning really helps it out. We made it because we're the only sentient species capable of our level of complex thought and corresponding products. Once we figured out fire, simple tools, and the means by which to set up simply agrarian infrastructure (and corresponding means of defense, such as fences, etc.), our ability to survive against any other species on earth was virtually guaranteed.
By contrast, humans in Golarion do have to contend with elves and dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. Those races in turn have to contend with orcs, goblins, and all manner of hostile races. All of them in turn have to contend with giants, dragons, and still other ridiculous species that seek to dominate and/or destroy other sentient life. The only real world species struggle that could compare to Pathfinder's own is what might have been if Homo Sapiens Sapiens was the only survivor of a conflict that violently extinguished all other branches of humanity.
In that sense, while I think your proposal on elven maturation is just as feasible as any other that seeks to work with the existing rules, I don't think its viability is supported by our own species' survival in the real world. It's viable just on the grounds that you proposed: that the first generation of elves-as-we-know-them figured out advanced magic, technology, etc., and survived the long maturation period and was able to establish their infrastructure and society. After that, they weren't so much interested in overt power and domination and instead focused their resources on keeping safe/separate from the rest of the world.
For that problem I'm going to pull a new answer out of the top hat. In fantasy worlds, races tend to be created rather than evolved. So perhaps the elven creator (deity) spent a few centuries protecting them until they got everything started up.
Typical elven histories generally have such a Golden Age in their ancient past, where the elves walk among the gods before some sort of fall from grace. After which the elven elders need to take the place of the gods in shepherding the race.
In Golarion, the answer instead seems to be that elves came from Venus another planet, meaning they had time to build their civilization before competing with all of Golarion's other intelligent races.
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There are tons of "what ifs" that we could propose. All of the ones I've read in this thread are valid. I just wish a good answer had come with the core rulebook. One might argue that the game designers don't want to paint you in a corner with such an answer... but they had already achieved that by including the age tables. :)
I kinda prefer it this way. Look at this thread; half a dozen really nice different ideas came up. If we had had an answer out of the book, that might have dampened down our search for neat explanations.
The age numbers are kinda weird, I don't want to apologize for that. But I do sometimes enjoy the method of "first generate some weird facts [numbers], then find a way to explain them". Taking the weird numbers as a given, how could that be? This approach can push us to be creative.
I always have liked to think that since elves live much longer than other races that they are in no rush to leave the care-free days of youth behind.
A human in this society would have to give up childish pursuits in the face of a reality ie monsters, magic, untold evil etc
Since their lives are short they quickly have to adjust into the life of an adult if they want to accomplish anything with their lives
Elves have the time of spend days thinking about poetry or spending months learning a new spell because he doesn't feel rushed and wants to party with friends while still learning. They can still be has carefree and put off entering into the adult world, because they will have 500+ years of it!
But I think an elf growing up in a strictly human environment would be forced into adulthood much quicker. If he was physically mature at 25 or so, then his adoptive parents might put more adult demands on him. They wouldn't let him be care-free, as say elven parents would. He would have to help run the human family business, or make his way in the world because his parents can't afford to look after him. (depending on the circumstances)
I guess I'm just trying to say, elves living longer lives doesn't mean they aren't mentally mature at around the same age as humans, but that elves are just more lazy because they have the years to do so.
I just finished Crown of Renewal by Elizabeth Moon, her Elves mature quickly for the first 18-24 months, then for the next 8-10 years like a human, then spend decades maturing to adulthood.
I kinda prefer it this way. Look at this thread; half a dozen really nice different ideas came up. If we had had an answer out of the book, that might have dampened down our search for neat explanations.
The age numbers are kinda weird, I don't want to apologize for that. But I do sometimes enjoy the method of "first generate some weird facts [numbers], then find a way to explain them". Taking the weird numbers as a given, how could that be? This approach can push us to be creative.
I hear you. At the end of the day, however, a choice has nonetheless been made for you. Personally, I think that table could have been altogether ommitted. A single sentence grearding longevity could have been added in each race's section. For example: "Elves possess centuries-long lifespans. A life shorter than four centuries is considered tragically short, while some elders have been known to live for more than seven hundred years."
And then we can still figure it out, come up with our own ideas, etc., but we don't have to come up with ideas that conform to some inexplicable, unqualified range of numbers. :)
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@Phoebus: but the numbers aren't inexplicable. Lots of competing explanations have been offered :P
It's a particular way of GMing I picked up from one of those old skool GMs. Generate some random numbers, accept them as fact, then try to explain them.
You can apply that to just about anything, and it can really push you out of a mental rut.
Touche regarding inexplicable. That's what I get for throwing in unnecessary adjectives! :D
Those races in turn have to contend with orcs, goblins, and all manner of hostile races. All of them in turn have to contend with giants, dragons, and still other ridiculous species that seek to dominate and/or destroy other sentient life. The only real world species struggle that could compare to Pathfinder's own is what might have been if Homo Sapiens Sapiens was the only survivor of a conflict that violently extinguished all other branches of humanity.
Except most of those races weren't around during the development of the elven species in Pathfinder.
Remember, Orcs and Dwarves only came to the surface during the Quest for the Sky after Earthfall.. Gnomes are also fairly recent immigrants from the First World, after Earthfall. Humans had advanced societies pre-Earthfall, but they were engineered and elven society pre-dates even them.
So yeah, their maturity rate doesn't make much sense compared to humans, orcs, or even dwarves. But the elf race and society came to be before those races were threats. Elves grow very rapidly compared to dragons. :)
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I have chimpanzees as living about 50 years in captivity, and the world average expectancy for humans at 67. Even saying chimps are mature at 12 (which is high, most of my sources say > 9), that still leaves humans with comparatively long childhoods. But then again, very long-lived humans live much longer than very long-lived chimps. From this I conclude that humans have fairly long lifespans, and that our maturation rate is similar to that of a chimpanzee, close enough that the difference can be attributed to rather immediate pressures of survival. There ought to be some association, but clearly if a very old human can live twice as old as a very old chimp, while maturing within a few years of the same span, there is not a linear association.
I've seen the same range of ages for maturity in Chimps. I went with 12 because their dentition is permanent and their brain development is about 95% at that point. Some date species maturity by sexual maturity which, having taught teenagers, is definitely wrong :D
Some of our lifespan is a matter of nature but at the extreme upper end our medical technology enters into it. We don't expend the same level of resources on animals in captivity. Then again I would tie our long childhood to two factors; biological longevity and the time needed to develop that intelligence.
Some humans, of course, exhibit precocious development, and it is hard to pin a reliable association between that and mental maturity or skill acquisition.
Individuals can vary quite a bit. Developmental stages are always ballpark figures which are typical for a species.
For elves to be resistant to new learning for a hundred years, I don't think they would be like eternal children. I think they would have to be precocious adults... physically a fraction of a human's age, but mentally, a hidebound, indolent curmudgeon by age 6. Developmentally speaking, play is equivalent in meaning to learning. If elves did nothing but play for 100 years, they would have very considerable skills. With no need for the drudgery of the mill or the plow, they could be tree-climbers, hide-and-seekers, archers, flower arrangers, and wizards... and not just some of those things, but all of those things.
I agree, they would have considerable skills, but they apparently don't. They do have a bit of an advantage but nothing like the time span of their childhood would suggest. If they were human and developed at the same speed we do. That's why I tie their long maturation to an extended period of development. They don't race ahead because they can't; you can't learn what you're not developmentally ready for.
In looking at the races (and the game in general, I've always taken certain things as "facts" (Elven lifespans and age ranges for example) in the game world and then worked on explaining them. Oddly enough a background in history, anthropology and education really helps. And a ton of time spent reading fantasy and science fiction of course :) If I decided their base assumptions were wrong I'd develop a different assumption / fact for a background. As I'm sure many have and will.
It's a particular way of GMing I picked up from one of those old skool GMs. Generate some random numbers, accept them as fact, then try to explain them.You can apply that to just about anything, and it can really push you out of a mental rut.
That's how I do it and, I think, a lot of old timers like me. You take a "fact" / "event" generated by the game and come up with a reasonable explanation that fits. *sigh* Now I feel older... but then I am :)