Why does it take an elf over 100 years to reach 'Adulthood'? For that matter, why does it take a tiefling 60 years? If they're mostly human, wouldn't that be incredibly awkward watching all the humans grow faster than you? Isn't it kind of unfair for the parents/orphanage/etc who have to feed them?
Yeah, that awkwardness, unfairness, and difference is exactly the major subtext of Elves and other long lived races re: relations with 'humans'.
Not everything is 'fair', even in the fantasy world of Golarion.
Tieflings and Aasimar fluff consistently portrays them as alienated from Humans to some extent.
Not that they wouldn't be without that long life, being wierd animal/monstrous/metallic-featured beings, or gaunt white-less eyed aliens in case of Elves.
As to the why of aging patterns, why do humans mature more slowly than dogs or mice? Same thing.
I would guess it depends how you define adulthood? If it is the physical maturity (that means that a creature can procreate), or a social construct (for when they are ready to leave home/start a career).
But it's an inherent part of the species, which can provide a feeling of alieness and provoke thoughts upon the subsequent culture of the creatures.
Personally not a fan of that, but it makese plenty enough sense for what it is. You take their life span and stretch it out, the young part gets longer just as the mature parts do.
Expletive wrote: Why does it take an elf over 100 years to reach 'Adulthood'? For that matter, why does it take a tiefling 60 years? If they're mostly human, wouldn't that be incredibly awkward watching all the humans grow faster than you? Isn't it kind of unfair for the parents/orphanage/etc who have to feed them? Exactly, why do flies take so quick to mature compared to humans. We should mature in a matter of days. (sarcasm).
It is how it works in reality.
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There are three distinct types of "maturity"; biological, mental, and social. Biological maturity is based on your ability to reproduce. Most Humans reach biological maturity in their early to middle teenage years, at the early stages of puberty. Mental maturity is based on when the brain "finishes" wiring itself completely and usually happens somewhere in the 22-24 year range for Humans. At that point, our brain is "fully operational" as it were in regards to higher functions. Lastly, is Social maturity; when your society accepts you as having reached the age of majority. This is more based on the laws of your society; in the US, for example, it's 18 years old. Before that, you're considered a minor.
So which of these kinds of maturity are we dealing with when we talk about "adults" for the Pathfinder races? Furthermore, are we talking about the same kind of maturity in all cases? Humans list Adulthood as beginning at 15 years. That's definitely not mental maturity and lines up better with physical maturity for most practical purposes. Throughout human history, Social maturity was typically lined up with a point just after Physical maturity and it's much more recent that Social maturity took up the "split difference" between Physical and Mental maturity. If we presume that Pathfinder models this, we can say that Adulthood, for Humans, is a case where Social maturity is lined up approximately with Physical maturity plus a couple of years. But what about Elves who live for over 100 years before being considered Adults, out of a max of about 354-750 years? What about Half-Orcs who only live to 80 years compared to a Human's 110, but reach adulthood at 14 years compared to a Human's 15? Here's a comparison among core races of the percentage of time a race would be expected to spend in "childhood", based on the lower-bound of their max life expectancy:
Human: 21%
Dwarf: 16%
Elf: 31%
Gnome: 20%
Half-Elf: 16%
Half-Orc: 23%
Halfling: 19%
According to this data, Elves can spend up to nearly a third of their lives considered "not yet adult". By contrast, Dwarves seem to reach adulthood relatively quickly, tied with Half-Elves but Half-Elves are sort of an outlier since they are hybrids. An interesting thing to note that, among these races, the fastest-maturing one is the only one with a racial Wisdom bonus while the slowest-maturing one is the only one with an Intelligence bonus. Another thing to note is that, while Elves take the longest relative portion of their lives to be considered socially mature, Half-Elves take a significantly smaller portion of their lives, even compared to Humans. Meanwhile, Half-Orcs take longer, ratio-wise, compared to Humans. Additionally, based on the ARG, age of adult-hood compared to max age is consistent among races; goblins, ratfolk, grippli, and stryx all reach adulthood at 12 years and max life is 40+1d20. This, btw, indicates that these four races spend 29% of their life as pre-adults, at least socially speaking.
I'd postulate the following based on this: there are two major elements at play here; 1) how quickly a race reaches physical maturity and 2) how quickly they reach the "compromise point" between physical and mental maturity that is accepted as the Social maturity level. I'd think this is largely based on a combination of how complex their minds are and what mental racial bonuses they get. A Wisdom bonus seems to push your Social maturity closer to your Physical maturity while an Intelligence bonus seems to push it towards Mental maturity. Racial type may also play a role as the mind of a Native Outsider may be more complex than that of a Humanoid. So it would be expected there is a certain "baseline" that any race needs to reach, plus a variable factor based on how complex their maturing process is. This explains the Half-Elf and Half-Orc outliers in that Elves probably physically mature long before they mentally mature. So you're taking some value, x at which any race needs to at least age to, plus some variable value for their physical maturity, z to determine the bare earliest age they could be considered socially mature. In the case of Humans, z is very small compared to x while for Elves, z is very large.
So, if we presume that Human physical maturity happens at about 13 years (18% of your pathfinder min lifespan) and that Half-Elf maturity can't happen any later than 16%, it means that Elf physical maturity probably happens, ratio-wise, can't happen any later than 14% and possibly earlier. This means that a long-lived race like Elves spends less of their total life in childhood than a Human does, balanced out only by it being a ratio and a fifth of a mile is still significantly longer than half an inch. If we gauge it like that, presuming a physical maturity at about 14%, an is physically mature and ready, biologically, to have kids at about 50 years, but has to go 60 more years beyond that before being recognized, socially, as being close enough to their full mental development to be considered an adult.
Based on this, a 50 year old Elf, developmentally speaking, probably looks a lot like a 13 year old Human (not taking into consideration longer exposure to elements that may make the elf look more "weathered"). But while the Human only has another 2.8% of his life to go before reaching social acceptance and then another 11% after that to mental maturity, an elf has to go almost 17% of their life after sexual maturity before they get social acceptance, though only roughly 1.4% of their life after that before they do that last little bit of mental structuring.
I change this, myself. Long-lived races enter adolescence/puberty fairly shortly behind humans (f'rex, an elf is a physically mature adult at around 18), then their immortality factor kicks in and their aging slows.
It saves elves from every human thinking they're mentally challenged, since the 150 year old elf is no more skilled at anything than a 20 year old human.
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It should not, just ignore it. It is dumb and does not make any sense.
Even Paizo don't follow that rule, look at Nualia in Rise of the Runelords, she is perfectly mature at 20 years old, but if you follow the rules, Aasimar should mature at like 70+ years old.
As far as I am concerned, every humanoids and sentients races mature roughly at the same speed.
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Starbuck_II wrote: Exactly, why do flies take so quick to mature compared to humans. We should mature in a matter of days. (sarcasm).
It is how it works in reality.
Terrible comparison, flies are not a sentient and intelligent lifeform.
Why would an elf take a 100 years to acquire as much knowledge and skills as a human in 18 years.
It does not make any sense and it is just completely impossible to deal with in any decent narrative structure. Like I said, Paizo themselves ignore it,
Lauraliane wrote: It should not, just ignore it. It is dumb and does not make any sense.
Even Paizo don't follow that rule, look at Nualia in Rise of the Runelords, she is perfectly mature at 20 years old, but if you follow the rules, Aasimar should mature at like 70+ years old.
As far as I am concerned, every humanoids and sentients races mature roughly at the same speed.
JJ has said that the starting age charts in the ARG for planetouched races are wrong and will someday be errataed to be the same as humans.
Quandary wrote: Yeah, that awkwardness, unfairness, and difference is exactly the major subtext of Elves and other long lived races re: relations with 'humans'.
Not everything is 'fair', even in the fantasy world of Golarion.
Tieflings and Aasimar fluff consistently portrays them as alienated from Humans to some extent.
Not that they wouldn't be without that long life, being wierd animal/monstrous/metallic-featured beings, or gaunt white-less eyed aliens in case of Elves.
As to the why of aging patterns, why do humans mature more slowly than dogs or mice? Same thing.
What complicates the issue with the planetouched is that originally asimar and tieflings were going to have standard human life expectancies. That fell through the cracks so we have the mess we've got now.
Depending on race I've just run it as being a social thing. Like Elves are mature at the same age as Humans, but in Elf culture you spend almost a century partying as hard as possible non stop. This explains why Elves don't care much for drinking and think the habits of the other races to be beneath them, they view any sort of partying as childish.
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Considering how the Forlorn are run, I like to think of it more as Elven society "taking the slow approach" to raising their children.
Physically speaking, the elf might mature by a fairly low age, however living in elven society they have a lot longer to spend learning about things (Int bonus, spellcasting, weapons, etc).
The Forlorn are elves that are forced to live in human society, and "grow up quick" as they look and are treated like adults far before elven society would deem appropriate.
It'd kind of like us looking at child warriors in the congo (or wherever), who are ordered to kill or rape at such a young age. We look at that aghast, and think "they lost their chance at being a child".
That's how elves look at the forlorn.
Kaisoku wrote: Considering how the Forlorn are run, I like to think of it more as Elven society "taking the slow approach" to raising their children.
Physically speaking, the elf might mature by a fairly low age, however living in elven society they have a lot longer to spend learning about things (Int bonus, spellcasting, weapons, etc).
The Forlorn are elves that are forced to live in human society, and "grow up quick" as they look and are treated like adults far before elven society would deem appropriate.
It'd kind of like us looking at child warriors in the congo (or wherever), who are ordered to kill or rape at such a young age. We look at that aghast, and think "they lost their chance at being a child".
That's how elves look at the forlorn.
That's the same approach I take sure a 150 year old elf is no more skilled than a 20 year old human but everyone of those elves was allowed to develop at their own pace. They didn't get a ton of homework every day instead they learn about life sciences till their done then about hunting and so on with lots of time to relax and be kids in between. An elf (or other long lived race look at the human education system and its one size fits all, cram in all this stuff most of which wont help them in the real world with horror). If a kid is having trouble with some concepts they can take the time to fully understand it there's no rush for htem to grow up afterall.
I also go with longer lives for a lot of the longer lived races in my games an half-elf has a life expectancy of up to 700 years and a full elf can see as much as 3,000 depending on their race.
In my home brew World they grow to physical maturity in a speed that is not unlike human but the are not considered adult before reaching a certain point of life. 33 for halflings, 66 for dwarfs and 99 for elfs. This is because there socerity is ruled by oldish folks and that the drive to do stuff "now"is a Human thing. So dwarfs are perfectly happy with studying 40 years to become a artisan. This also explains why dwarfs are better Smiths:) So in a dwarf socerity you are a child until you are an old man ond so forth.
For a less serious look at it, perhaps this is how longer lived species keep their numbers in check. If raising a child takes over a century and during that time they are prone to all the heart stoppingly bad choices children can make... it's the only thing keeping elves from over running the world. Also, only elves with a higher than normal intelligence (say, about a +2) are smart enough to make it to adulthood.
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Lauraliane wrote: Even Paizo don't follow that rule, look at Nualia in Rise of the Runelords, she is perfectly mature at 20 years old, but if you follow the rules, Aasimar should mature at like 70+ years old.
Hmmm.
<Grin>
@Anguish, please use the tags for spoilers like that ;)
Back in the middle ages people lived much shorter lives and had to end childhood earlier. Main reason was that most families could not afford to let them be children for longer. But it would have been silly to have people be children for half their lives.
Now, that most of us live in prosperity (at least relatively) we can afford taking 18 years to become adults. In relation to our live span this might even be about equal to how it was back than.
In other words: If you live very long you can afford to be a child for a longer time. I guess an elf child raised by human peasants would be forced to mature quicker. If this would be healthy, physical as well as mental is another question.
Expletive wrote: Why does it take an elf over 100 years to reach 'Adulthood'? For that matter, why does it take a tiefling 60 years? If they're mostly human, wouldn't that be incredibly awkward watching all the humans grow faster than you? Isn't it kind of unfair for the parents/orphanage/etc who have to feed them? Sexual maturity to life span differs across species. the creators of DnD got it, thats followed through to this day.
Why... thats nature.
For that matter elves have small testicles, dwarves have big ones.. seriously: the gonadosomatic index (GSI) is one of the measures of maturation age.
On the up side it seems the more advanced (intelligent/civilized) a creature is the longer it takes to mature. Fits elves as well.
There is a good paper on it here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aalas/jaalas/2002/00000041/00000005/a rt00005?crawler=true
"The ratio of age at sexual maturity to average lifespan was largest for humans and nonhuman primates (13 to 14), indicating the increased time to reach puberty versus that in other species (cats/dogs etc)"
So more advanced than humans with itty bitty testicles it is!!
I would have liked to be a xenobiologist/do xenobiological modelling - if only it was a field you could actually be paid for instead of just getting a complementary foil hat for.
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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Since humans are not considered to be mentally mature until they reach their 20s and they have starting age rolls of d4, d6, and 2d6 added to 15, it appears that the qualifications for being an adventurer are to be physically and socially mature but mentally immature.
I guess that explains the dumb, impulsive things we keep hearing about player characters doing, right?
insaneogeddon wrote:
For that matter elves have small testicles, dwarves have big ones.. seriously: the gonadosomatic index (GSI) is one of the measures of maturation age.
Hmmm... Page ref.?
(sorry, I'll leave now)
David knott 242 wrote: Since humans are not considered to be mentally mature until they reach their 20s and they have starting age rolls of d4, d6, and 2d6 added to 15, it appears that the qualifications for being an adventurer are to be physically and socially mature but mentally immature.
I guess that explains the dumb, impulsive things we keep hearing about player characters doing, right?
What we would equate with high-school and college undergrad years. Talk about the School of Hard Knocks.
Thymus Vulgaris wrote: @Anguish, please use the tags for spoilers like that ;) My apologies; I didn't think six years later such a thing was a spoiler but I can see the point.
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