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Yeah, the whole "mature at 100" was probably just an unfortunate 3.5ism that got brought forward. How would a species even survive if they're juveniles for a century? That's so high risk even with parents and communities helping.
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Indeed it was a legacy from D&D that I never felt was properly explored in any version of the game. Further, for an ancestry that's supposed to be close enough to human to be a "core" ancestry, someone who spends a century as a child is a bit too alien to my tastes.
We didn't feel brave enough to make changes like this with 1st edition, when we were worried about changing the game so much that our established customers from Dragon and Dungeon would not want to come along with us in the transition over to Pathfinder, but with 2nd edition we did this and a lot more.
The idea of an ancestry that takes a century to grow up to adulthood is very fascinating; don't get me wrong. But that isn't the focus for Pathfinder. And honestly, it doesn't work for ANY rpg that's a level-based game, I feel, since it makes ancestries who take a hundred years to grow up seem weirdly regressive and atrophied. Why would an elf take 120 years to finally gain enough maturity to become a 1st level fighter, when a human can do it in 18 or so? Especially for an ancestry that has traditionally been presented as extra-smart (with a bonus to Intelligence), it's kinda nonsensical and strange.
You can STILL have elves who have lived long among human society and are forlorn, of course, since once they reach "adulthood" they kinda stop aging and stay young looking for centuries. You just didn't spend those 100 years as a kid. Forlorn elves are still very much a thing.
RELATED: The D&D idea that elves never sleep is another example of something I think makes them too alien to be a reliable core ancestry. If a culture doesn't sleep... that has HUGE implications for exploration, ranging from "how do their houses look if they don't need bedrooms" to "what does a culture that never sleeps do in place of the need for dreaming." And it further complicated the whole idea that they had to wait a hundred-plus years to reach 1st level, since for an ancestry that doesn't sleep... that should give them EVEN MORE time to get ahead of humans.
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... "how do their houses look if they don't need bedrooms"...I know the game, and therefore the forum are generally PG13 and a bed is never required for anything at all, but a large, relatively soft space that can fit a couple of human-sized-ish humanoids easily is pretty handy for most homes in the long run, I would have thought.
Indeed, the game is PG13 and we kinda shy away from sexual content for the most part, but to be honest... exploring what a culture that doesn't use beds to sleep uses instead for that part of the "more important to life than pretty much anything else" part of existence is part of that. But even beyond that, bedrooms serve as shelters for people to escape to; private sanctuaries where they can feel safe. It's an interesting topic to explore, but not really one suited for a game in which all that work would be aimed at a fraction of it all. Maybe a game where elves were the only PC option for ancestry would be a better place to explore something like this, but given how folks kind of react to this content in RPGs on a mass-market scene, such a game would probably need to remain an indie game.
Or maybe be a line of novels and not a game at all.
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... "how do their houses look if they don't need bedrooms"...I know the game, and therefore the forum are generally PG13 and a bed is never required for anything at all, but a large, relatively soft space that can fit a couple of human-sized-ish humanoids easily is pretty handy for most homes in the long run, I would have thought.
Yeah, you definitely need a comfy bed to binge Netflix.
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I can just picture young elves doing what I once did with a remote in a hotel room. I noticed that it had on it a button I had never seen before: "Parental Control". Naturally, I pointed the remote at my parents, pushed the button, and then announced that it didn't seem to work. ;)