Author Topic: Elven Maturity (Read 36 times)

darkstorme · « **on:** March 21, 2007, 05:09:18 pm »

A long series of thoughts brought me to this: how do elves mature?

Is it the same as human aging, but proportionally lengthened? That is to say, do elves have to change diapers for 5-6 years? Suffer through eight years of having their voice break? Are the Terrible Twos the Terrible Teens?

Or...

Do they zip through to human age five or six, and then slow to a crawl for the next hundred or so years?

The advantage of the former would be that it would really go a ways to explain why elves and humans both start at level one, despite the disparate ages. If elves are infants/toddlers for their first few decades, effective teaching would be very difficult.

The latter would make more sense though; to borrow from the GiantITP boards, picture a tiny, pudgy dark elf standing in front of you. "Hi, I'm Dwizzt, and I'm... *counts on pudgy fingers*.. thiwty-thix!".

Thoughts? Opinions? Canon declarations from loremasters?

hawklen · « **Reply #1 on:** March 23, 2007, 09:57:07 am »

Elf (Dungeons & Dragons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Not sure, think they age for the first 25 years like a human does. Heres a wiki I founs, maybe it will help

Gulnyr · « **Reply #2 on:** March 23, 2007, 11:29:47 am »

Quote from: hawklen

Not sure, think they age for the first 25 years like a human does.

I'm definitely not an expert and that statement may be true, but it seems wrong with regard to Layonara. If an Elf ages just like a Human for the first 25 years of his life, why does he have to be over 100 to start playing? Or do you just mean physically and not mentally (which seems really weird)?

If maturity is only a cultural thing, and Humans and Elves develop similarly early on, then a 25 year old Elf would be a baby in Elven society, but would be 'mature' in Human society. The young Elf would have a body and mind more or less like a Human, and it would be pointless not to take advantage of the potential for early learning, so a fast-early-growth Elf should be able to get by among Humans as an adult.

Since that isn't allowed on Layonara, even with a bio of an Elf orphan raised by Humans in Human society, I think it is better to assume that Elves don't have an early growth spurt. It might seem to make no sense that an Elf child would be 36 years old and still childish, but that is looking at it from a Human perspective. Imagine if we, in the real world, counted our ages by months instead of years. I'd be about 380 or so, which sounds like an outrageous age only because we don't count age that way. Elves, with their long lives, probably see time differently. What is a long time to a Human isn't necessarily so long to an Elf. Elves might see years sort of like Humans see months.

I'm going to throw a little math in here. According to the 3.0 PHB, a Human has a maximum age between 72 and 110 years, for an average of 91 years. Human adulthood on Layonara begins at 18 years. An Elf has a maximum age between 354 and 750 years, for an average of 552 years. Elf adulthood on Layonara begins at 110 years.

Just for the sake of example, let's say that the average child of each race is cared for and supported by her parents until she is an adult. An average Human child will be supported for almost 20% of her life (18/91 = .197 = 19.7%). An average Elf child will also be supported for almost 20% of her life (110/552 = .199 = 19.9%). So overall, an Elven parent is doing the same amount of work as the Human parent within that parent's concept of time. Elven childhood seems outrageously long to a Human just like Humans seem to come and go like leaves in the wind to an Elf.

Falonthas · « **Reply #3 on:** March 23, 2007, 01:00:25 pm »

. Becoming physically mature by the age of 25 and emotionally mature at around 125 (Races of the Wild; Williams, Skip), they are also famously long-lived, capable of living more than half a millennium and remaining physically youthful.

Gulnyr · « **Reply #4 on:** March 23, 2007, 01:46:11 pm »

Weird.

The scientist in me wants to know things like whether going through puberty as a toddler (mentally) is less strenuous than going through it as a teen, or what survival value there is in being essentially mentally retarded for a century, or how to tell a child from an adult from a distance or in a portrait when they grow up so fast but remain physically youthful for five hundred years.

The rest of me is imagining fully grown Elves sitting around playing patty cake, and grabbing things while declaring, "Mine!"

lonnarin · « **Reply #5 on:** March 23, 2007, 02:01:03 pm »

*laughs* I could just imagine a full-grown elf bawling and pooping his diapers at 25. Honestly I think they just age slower overall... even if it means being a toddler for almost a decade and a teenager for maybe two or three. Keep in mind that other wikis and campaigns are not the same as Layo's Lore, so for that you should ask Ed or Leanthar.