Preface: this is a really minor and silly thing to be thinking about but i had a thought and wanted to put it out here
If it takes a human roughly 20ish years or so to hit lvl 1, then another 30ish for the average NPC to peak at somewhere from level 5-8
why does an elf take 100ish years to hit level 1 and much longer to cap at the average level of 5-8? are elves just lazy or something?
can anyone give me a good head cannon reason for this to work?
Lazy tree huggers.
In my golarion, and I think this is even canon, their Minds just work differently, they mature way more slowly, their whole society has no emphasis on teaching things quickly.
Kind of like a mouse is "grown up" way faster than a human.
Elven society encourages going out and gaining a multitude of new experiences, rather than just devoting all your time to training for a specific role. (I believe James Jacobs said something along those lines in a thread somewhere, perhaps someone else knows where it is)
So Elves don't spend the whole 100 years pursuing wizardry, or archery, or wizard archery. They might do a few minutes a day for 100 years while also visiting distant lands, having flings with shorter-lived races, watching trees grow, and all that Elven nonsense.
They might even try out a couple of things, before they settle on what they want to do with their life.
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their Minds just work differently, they mature way more slowly
My god, I can't stand teenagers for the 7 years they actually are. Does that mean elf parents have to put up with teenagers for decades?
I'd go insane. I really would. The only redeeming quality of teenagers is that it's a temporary condition with a guaranteed cure (if they survive their 7-year contamination period).
Like the others have said, it's a matter of Elvish mindset and culture. Elves have centuries to complete their personal goals, why not stop and smell every single rose on the way the way then?
The Advanced Race Guide shows that sometimes they seriously get hung up on single spells (The Spellbinder). The book "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" show that Elvish teenagers, Laurana, learn how to behave in social situations but outside of that are immature and somewhat narrow sighted, typical teens.
Yes, DM_Blake, that is one of the consequences of this. But luckily (most of) the elven parents tend have a lot more patience too. When you have the time to spend a year contemplating a poem, that puts things into perspective.
At the same time they are not uber-wise mary sues. They tend to get confused with the shortlived races and their quickness in everything and make really bad improvisers.
My elves have a bit of an LotR-Ent-vibe to them, pondering every decision for days and weeks.
Luckily I have never had a player who wanted to play a full elven character, because that would probably create problems with the other PCs.
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To a housecat, humans take an amazingly long time to learn how to eat, walk, and jump, all skills they learn in a few months.
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Elves are dumb, man.
That sounds strange, but really, that's the only justification I can think of. Elves and dwarves and all that are just incredibly dumb. The "Learning taking a long time because they don't focus on one thing" explanation falls apart when you have a character with a backstory specifically stating they spend all their time doing the one thing. For some unknown reason, long lived races are just incredibly dumber than short lived races, and it averages out over time. Much like how human babies are incredibly dumber than cats and it averages out over time (until the human becomes smarter and overcomes the cat, but that doesn't happen with humans and long lived races)
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Elves are dumb, man.
That sounds strange, but really, that's the only justification I can think of. Elves and dwarves and all that are just incredibly dumb. The "Learning taking a long time because they don't focus on one thing" explanation falls apart when you have a character with a backstory specifically stating they spend all their time doing the one thing. For some unknown reason, long lived races are just incredibly dumber than short lived races, and it averages out over time. Much like how human babies are incredibly dumber than cats and it averages out over time (until the human becomes smarter and overcomes the cat, but that doesn't happen with humans and long lived races)
Yeah, because anyone who has ever owned a cat knows, you never overcome the cat. The nature of their dominion may change, but the cat always wins, and always will.