How would it change a fantasy setting if elves took an amount

>>54758908
That would be dumb.

>>54758908
How do you explain them not learning anything in 100 years? With that time they could have several PHDs worth of education and possible experience.

>>54758984
In real life, human children simply aren't able to learn certain things until their brains have matured to a certain degree. The same could apply to elven children, albeit for a much longer time.

>>54759002

That seems like a really dumb cop out considering their physiology is different than humans in such a considerable way. What about child prodogies? PCs arn't beholden to being normal and there are children who are more than capable of learning at college levels early on. That said, having life epxeriences and learning are two different things if you want to keep peddling that excuse.

>>54759030
That's fair. So maybe their immaturity doesn't limit their ability to learn as much, but still impacts things. Another possibility: human children are basically sociopaths for a long time, utterly self-concerned and lacking empathy. Perhaps it takes elves much, much longer to grow out of this. It would also go hand-in-hand with the traditional haughtiness and arrogance of elves if for most of their early lives they are utterly unable to empathize with other elves, let alone other races.

>>54758908
They would probably be extinct by now.
>it's another elf thread

>>54759030
>That seems like a really dumb cop out considering their physiology is different than humans in such a considerable way.
I don't really understand what your getting at here. Elves are almost certainly one of the most humanlike races, that's the only reason half-elves are possible so why wouldn't their bodies work similarly to humans, just over a longer period of time? Granted I might be misinterpreting your phrasing.

>PCs arn't beholden to being normal and there are children who are more than capable of learning at college levels early on.
I don't remember anyone mentioning PCs. Isn't this more for a setting rather than how it affects a character? Sure a PC can be exceptional but that by definition would make them an exception to the rule.

>>54759070

And the parents and/or guardians wouldn't be able to train or beat it out of them. You've set up the premise that their aging and maturity is vastly different than humans so they arn't exactly tied down to our norms. If anything these elves would probably be more like Vulkans and iinstill certain levels of discipline especially considering their life spans.

Just dial the premise back to say they physically mature at the same or similar rates of humans or other humanoids and you don't have to deal with stupid shit like this. The idea of 1000 year old elves being lvl 1 adventurers is already a stretch.

>>54759168

The idea that they remain child like even though it takes a century to fully mature into physical adult hood is stupid and nonsensical. You can't tell me you still act and think like a child with a hundred years under your belt unless you come up with something stupid like them being incurably mentally retarded until physical adulthood.

Not only that, it doesn't have to be limited to PCs, there are people who are just really good at grasping knowledge. It doesn't mean they are wise beyond their years (but there are some who are very mature for their age given certain life expereinces.

Beyond that it seems like it would take active effort on the part of the adults to ensure their kids remain kids until 100

>>54759251
I don't think the idea is that far fetched. Humans take much longer to mature to adulthood than most animals. This has a large effect on how humans live compared to animals. Now we just have increase the scope and figure out how that would effect elven society.

>>54759168
>that's the only reason half-elves are possible
The only reason half-elves are possible is because Tolkien had them, even though they were fundamentally different than any DnD half-elves, and people followed suit. I rarely see any inherently logical reasons why these two different races should be able to interbreed while others can't.

>>54759070
I don't remember the name of the setting, but it had something vaguely like this, crossed with hedonism.
Elf children are physically mature at 20, but only mentally mature at 100 or so, and they spend pretty much the entire intervening eighty years fucking and prancing around in forest glades and eating exotic mushrooms. Every elf outsiders end up meeting is a dour as fuck SRSbizness type, because they're too busy playing nursemaid/prison guard for a bunch of spoiled hedonists. At the same time, they have to keep it that way, because the lowass elf birthrate means the crucible of constant fucking actually works to produce children.

Yes, looking back, it was probably fetish bait, but to each their own.

I like to think of that 19-100 and whatever age gap, as a stage where Elves are just optimal. I like to think of them like batteries. Where the less they exert themselves, the slower the battery dries, but still wearing out overtime. And a hard, battle-worn, long traveled, well studied Elf might show physical aging much sooner in it's lifetime.

>>54758908
The 5E PHB claims that Elves reach biological adulthood at 21 as opposed to Humans at 16.

100 is considered 18 in Elven society.
It's just a tidbit for the standard setting.

So you see Elves remain as horny teenagers for 82 years.

>>54758941
This. Turtles and parrots don't take ten times as long to mature just because they live considerably longer than most other vertebrates.

>>54759002
Not really. A child could perform surgery, they're just not likely to be physiologically able or psychologically desensitized to blood like a 30+ year old with 8 years of medical practice.

It's not their intellect that's lacking. 60yo elven toddlers would be academic geniuses even if they're not quite capable of putting their genius to practice.

>>54758908
They would be incapable of prolonged warfare with any other race. All their soldiers would die and they could not replace them nearly fast enough

>>54760515
Then again, they could just field child soldiers. But then you'd run into the issue of killing off your people before they're even capable of reproducing. They could get around this by being polygamist oligarchy, like the maasai. Women would be even more valued/urged to have as many kids as possible.

>>54760594
An army of sociopathic elf children sounds legitimately terrifying, provided they also have reasonable combat ability. It sounds like hypothetical long-maturation elves would avoid war as much as possible and most people would only see the old dour elves like >>54759317 describes, but when they do have to field an army there would be a lot of crazy child elves.

>>54760652
Well, they'd be overpowered by pretty much any other races' soodiers so they'd avoid melee, but that fits well enough with the elven preference for archery. Guerilla warfare would help even the odds further.

Mentally I don't think they'd be handicapped that much; kids learn knowledge and skills very quickly, it's just abstract thought and coordination lag behind.

>>54762295
So then, since bows actually take a lot of strength to draw, maybe elven child soldiers are equipped primarily with crossbows. In fact, the graduation from a crossbow to a longbow might be a sort of rite of passage, a sign of maturation into adulthood.

>Bonus points: What would change if it only took that long to mature in one category or the other? I.e., physically an adult at 20 but not mentally an adult until 100, or vice versa.


Really sounds like some disgusting magical realm shit.

>>54758908
Is this not how it typically is?

>>54762328
>physically an adult at 20 but not mentally an adult until 100
Forgot quote, am retarded

>>54762328
At least in various editions of D&D, the lore is that elves mature in all ways about as fast as humans, but are not considered adults culturally until they have become quite old by human standards.

>>54758908
Look at it this way.

You can make them age this way. If you do, you'll have to adjust their society, other societies, explain why they didn't get roflstomped yet, rewrite pretty much the whole biology of your setting to make this not retarded...

Just to force one single dumb idea that was dumb at the moment of its inception.

OR

You can do the sensible thing and make elves mature at the same rate but not count as "real" elves till they hit at least century, which is far more plausible idea and doesn't require extensive jumping through the hoops like the first one.

>>54758984
They learn, they just don't jump into doing things like hue-mans.

>>54762325
desu this.

Maturing mentally at the same rate while maturing physicall slower is the superior realm anyway.

>>54762340
It hardly necessitates rewriting "the whole biology of your setting", just the elves. Furthermore, analyzing the impact this altered maturation process is the entire point of the thread. Interestingly, it seems like it would make less of a difference than one would expect. Elves are already traditionally isolationist, and this idea gives a solid explanation for it. As discussed above, it also gives more reason for them to prefer ranged combat.

>>54762313
I'd think they could at least manage shortbows while young

>>54762340
But the former is the more fun thought experiment

>>54762338
What exactly are they assessing to judge one as an adult anyway? It's never specified what quality they're looking for that takes 100 goddamn years to develop.

>>54762518
I assume it's arbitrary, like age 18 for humans. A human is able to reproduce well before 18, but doesn't stop growing until sometime after 18, making it an arbitrary marker adulthood. I assume that in the usual lore elves simply don't think you've experienced enough to be an adult until you're 100.

>>54762313
Nah anon, only Drow get racial proficiency with the Hand Crossbow. High and Wood Elf children straight up are trained in the use of Shortbow, Longbow, Shortsword, and Longsword.

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>>54762313
Kids can be strong. Never as strong as an adult with as much training, but at least strong enough to wield a bow. The issue in melee isn't so much strength as it is just size. The sheer weight of an adult puts them at a dusadvantage, and the better reach makes it worse.

At their best, what you could end up with is a bunch of absurdly ripped elven child soldiers sniping foes and jumping through trees like it's nothing, while the enemy on the ground struggles to tell what's even going on.

>>54762549
It's not entirely arbitary with humans. By 18 we're about as big as we're ever gonna get, we're sexually mature, and probably most importantly we're more psychologically stable than we were in our teens. The exact age it all comes together varies, but 18 is a decent enough average to settle on.

So if elves hit all these key points as fast as humans, what the fuck are they waiting for?

>>54762690
18 year olds are fucking stupid and easy to trick because most of them still believe in magical thinking to some degree.

>>54762690
I don't think the default lore says much more than that, which in my mind makes it sillier than the long-maturation hypothesis. At least if the elves have long-maturation, adulthood being reached at age 100 makes some amount of sense.

I would say we've just about covered what military changes long maturation would impose on elves, but what about cultural changes? Earlier >>54759171 suggested that they would instill a high level of Vulkan-like discipline. It makes sense to me that long-maturation elven society would be far stricter to keep the many sub 100 year old elven children in check. Would long-maturation elf society be essentially totalitarian?

>>54762760
Yeah well, like I said i varies. We use 21 for some things but best to have those soldiers as early as you can. Besides, there's 30 year olds with magical thinking. Hard to pin down a cut off age for that if one even exists

>>54758908
In Pathfinder, this is exactly what happens, and it's an important part of the iconic thief Miresiel's backstory.

In my setting...

It takes 25 years for an elf to become the equivalent of a 15-year-old human, or in other words they age only about 60% as fast to that point.

From 25 to 110 is the elf equivalent of a human aging from 15 to 30, or about 17.65% the speed of humans. So a 75-year-old elf is the equivalent of a human around 24 years old.

From 110 to 400 is then the equivalent of a human aging from 30 to 70, or 13.79% of the speed. So a 387-year-old elf is the equivalent of a human who's a little over 68 years old.

From age 400 on, each year is only about 10% that of a human. So a 410-year-old elf is like a 71-year-old human; a 500 year old elf is like a 75-year-old human. This continues until the elf dies of old age, usually some time around 450 or so.

>>54763614
>In Pathfinder, this is exactly what happens, and it's an important part of the iconic thief Miresiel's backstory.

Lo and behold, ANOTHER reason why Pathfinder is shit.

>>54758908
>inb4 decade-long gestation period

>>54758908
Elves would be extinct.

>>54760031
As somebody who works with children

Children are idiots

Adorable, emotionally warm, fast learning idiots.

but idiots none the less.

>>54758908
You'd get kender. You don't want kender.

>>54764502
As far as I was aware, kender were reviled for being kleptomaniacs with no concept of personal property, not for their childishness. More importantly, long-maturation elves would still eventually mature, and if they live to their full lifespan would spend the vast majority of their lives as adults even with a 100 year maturation period.

>>54763746
Anon brings up a valid point. Would a long maturation period actually imply a longer gestation period?

>>54758908
The elven population is dying not because of fertility problems, but because nobody wants to endure their children's 200 year long puberty.

>>54762637
You clearly don't know how much strength it takes to draw a longbow

>Reminder that even animals that can live for hundreds of years still mature within a reasonable amount of time.

>>54766073
You'll notice I never said longbow

>>54758908
They would most likely go extinct but if they did survive the stone age/god age most of the governments would have slavery to deal with the population problem.

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>20-30 years changing diapers

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>>54768547
>That's the best part

>>54759002
Why don't you teach a five year old kid basic algebra? And don't give me any "They wont understand it" cuntery.

>>54758908
>the 5e PHB says elves claim adulthood at the age of 100. What if it actually took them 100 years to mature biologically?

Ok, for the ease of quick math, lets assume 100 is the elven equivalent of 20.

That means that assuming they have similar biological ages as humans, they'll be infants for 10 years, children for another 40, preteens for 15 years, teenagers for 25 years, and finally become a young adult maybe 10 years after that.

I know I wouldn't want to be an elven parent in that situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWaH6I

>>54768793
>And don't give me any "They wont understand it" cuntery.
You over estimate children.

>>54758984
>>54760652
Eleven brains matrue slowly, but unlike humans their minds are exceedingly malleable. they can retain information by rote, so the 80 uyears their bodies and minds are slowly maturing they exist in a dreamlike state where they explore their physical senses. during this time they are receptive to rote teaching, and this is where they are trained in basic magical techniques and combat.

For several hours a day, those elves who chose the roles of caretakers in the elven creches teach those who are currently aware enough to accept teachign how to fight, how to use magic, and speak the litanies of the evles. The minds of the elven children slowly add this information into what serves as a sort of secondary 'learned instinct', and they retain this information when their brains come into full functiion at 100+ years of age.

rthat's why elves don't know huge amounts of information at the age of 100 compared to humansd, but they can all utilize arms and weapons weell and they are capable of using magic so well. the immunity to sleep effects and resistance to charm also stems from this period of time where their brains are literally non-sapient and prone to drifting in and out of the dreamlands and other planar awareness.

>>54764770
Shorter, actually.

>>54764770
Traditionally, D&D has said elves take 2 years to gestate (or in other words, about as long as elephants). Female elephants live about 70-80 years on average, which is roughly the same length as the average human female. Of course, they're also much larger than humans.

On the other hand, black alpine salamanders have pregnancies that last from 2-3 years, and they're tiny, so mass isn't the only factor. Some sharks, like basking sharks, also have long gestation times.

Right, I'll just post my own thoughts that were a result of playing an elf character raised by humans. For the record, I'm this anon, >>54763614.

1/3

Elves aren't actually capable of impregnating or becoming pregnant until around age 40, even though by that point they look like a 17 year old human. Elves don't just age slower, they age *differently*. In addition to that, they're pretty infertile. Most attempts at conception fail - a human of that age has about a 90% chance of becoming pregnant (assuming they're trying to), while an elf has maybe a 10% chance.

Most elves in elven societies don't leave home until they're already 110, but this doesn't necessarily mean that they're just sitting at home playing ElfBoX or something. No, at around age 40-60 is when elves get married and have a child (twins are exceedingly rare, only about 1% of elf births, compared to human's 15%), whom they then raise until its time for that child to get married themselves. During this time their job in elf society is "raise your child", with no other expectations like work.

Age 110 is "adulthood" in elf society, but "adulthood" in this case means "I've gone through basic schooling, I've raised a kid, and now it's time for me to get a job and earn my keep." It's at this point that some elves, confronted with the possibility of having to actually work for a living as a baker or blacksmith or whatever, turn to a life of adventuring instead.

Elves remain fertile until around age 250-300 and so could theoretically have more children, but if they do they're expected to raise them on their own out of their own pockets, rather than their family's support. And there's a bit of a cultural weirdness attached to it. Not taboo or anything, it's just...weird.

>>54773754
2/3

>It's at this point that some elves, confronted with the possibility of having to actually work for a living as a baker or blacksmith or whatever, turn to a life of adventuring instead.

Incidentally, these elves are considered complete assholes by the rest of elf society, since it expressly means that they're abandoning their kid just as their kid as gotten married and is expecting a child. It was their job as a parent to get a job and support their kid while their kid was raising their grandchild, but instead they've just skipped out on their duties.

Among humans "adventurer" has a lot of different connotations, but most of them are positive or at least neutral. Among elves, "adventurer" is basically synonymous with "parent who skipped town rather than raise their kid, forcing their kid to grow up and get a job and face the real world way too early."

No elf would call themselves an adventurer as a result. Non-elf adventurers are basically sorted into one of three categories:
1) Left your husband/wife and kids at home? You're a family-abandoning bastard. They don't want anything to do with you. Expect to be turned out of inns, or else charged exorbitant fees. You won't be meeting with any high-class elves.
2) Forced from your home for some reason? (Dragon burned it down, dad forced you out of the house to "grow up", etc.)? You were basically orphaned and deserve help. Expect to get things like discounts at inns, or random passers-by giving you bread.
3) Neither of the above? You're kinda' weird and they don't really know what to make of you. Expect to be treated as an oddity - not poorly, but not well, either. Like someone who espouses a really weird worldview but otherwise seems harmless (like a Mormon, for a real-world example).

Of course, this applies to people who actually call themselves "adventurers" or some basic equivalent ("sellsword", "mercenary", etc.).

>>54773859
3/3

Finally, this is also why surface elves hate drow so much. Ellaine Cunningham's "Starless Night" established that drow females in noble Houses to go Arach-Tinilith at either age 25 or when they first menstruate, whichever comes first. They then spend 40 years learning the Litany of Lolth and becoming clerics, establishing a general maximum age of 65 at graduation. Drizzt Do'Urden in "Homeland" likewise grows to age 10 before being presented to Matron Malice for either preliminary Fighter or Wizard training, and when Fighter training is determined spends 10 years (age 20, so a little less than physically mature) under Zaknafein's tutelage before being sent to Melee-Magthere for 10 years, and so graduating at age 30.

From a surface elf perspective, these people are roughly what we'd consider to be child soldiers. They're living their lives ass-backwards: becoming priests or warriors or mages or whatever first, then raising a family. And of course that family has nothing to do with love (for the children), which is also anathema to elves, but really the big thing is that drow elves aren't really "adults". But they're still trying to kill you. That is the ultimate tragedy of the drow, and the ultimate sin of Lolth.

>>54768751
We're talking about babies in diapers here, not cute elf teens

>>54768793
I still counted with my fingers when I was five.

You're better arguing why we don't teach 8-10 year olds basic algebra.