Elves

So, you want to know about elves? I'm here to teach you a bit about them. In the following posts I will explain to you about their culture, personality, appearances, beliefs, and other amounts of various information.

Elves in General

Elves are often amused, rather than being excited, and are much more likely to be curious rather than greedy. They have a very long life span, so they tend to keep a more broad perspective on events. When pursuing a new goal, whether completing an adventurous mission or learning a new skill, they can be extremely focused and extremely relentless. They often reply to petty insults with disdain, and serious insults with vengeance.


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As for their physical appearance, Elves are fairly short and slim. Often standing about 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 feet tall, typically weighing around 95 to 135 pounds. Elven men are the same height and only marginally heavier than than elf women. They are graceful, but frail. Elves have no amount of facial or body hair, and are easily recognized by their famously pointed ears. They prefer simple and comfortable clothes. Many humans and other races find them beautiful. Generally, an elf reaches adulthood around 110 years of age, and can live longer than 700 years.

Elves do not sleep. Instead, an elf meditates for several hours a day. An elf resting in this fashion gains the same benefit that a human does for nearly double the amount of time. While meditating, Elves dream, though these dreams are actually mental exercises. These periods of meditations are often called a "Trance."

Elves tend to live in woodland clans, numbering less than a few hundred. Their villages blend into the trees, and the Elves ensure not to harm the forest. They hunt, gather food, and grow food. Often Elves take up adventuring out of wanderlust. Elves among humans usually find careers that allow them to wander freely and set their own pace. Elves also enjoy demonstrating their prowess with the sword and bow, or gaining greater magical powers, and adventuring allows them to do so.

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I've collected all relevant information (to arg-reg) that I can on the available elven subraces in this page, if you want to take a peek. (Or even add to it!) 

Hm... no facial hair...? I think you should meet Elivith   

Elves do not sleep. Instead, an elf meditates for several hours a day. An elf resting in this fashion gains the same benefit that a human does for nearly double the amount of time. While meditating, Elves dream, though these dreams are actually mental exercises. These periods of meditations are often called a "Trance."

I would like to point out that in early D&D books where reverie was explained better it is explained that elves CAN sleep but simply prefer not to. Reverie is explained also to not be a racial trait at all but rather a learned one, that in theory, any one could learn. However the practice is regarded by elves as a jealously guarded secret much the same as there homeland. Its not really "unreachable" just guarded as a cultural secret.

While i am unsure how much of this information is considered "cannon" on this server it is an interesting bit of D&D Lore.

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I've collected all relevant information (to arg-reg) that I can on the available elven subraces in this page, if you want to take a peek. (Or even add to it!) 

You forgot Drow.   

Drow are getting there own page because of all the super long info that comes with them. I haven't got round to doing them yet, because I'm waiting for some ore solid Arg-reg lore to write about, so I'm not just copy and pasting chunks from everywhere (plus drow lore is crazy and confusing and contradicting).

But those are all the 'Elven' (And I don't distinguish between elves and eladrin, mainly because that point is useless info for arg-reg) subraces available.

This came up again in RP, so I thought I might as well make a post so we can discuss it and make sure we all agree with each other.

Things that we seem unsure about:
1. When are elves considered 'adults' both culturally and in physical-mental maturation.
2. What are the differences between the different subraces (including drow) when it comes to longevity and maturation.
3. HOW DO ELVES AGE?!



Here's the Player's handbook (3.5) tables on ages and age effects:

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This means that while '110' is the age of adulthood for elves, it's comparable to age '15' for humans, which is about a ratio of 7:1 years in rate of maturation. Then, somehow, middle age for an elf is 175 while for humans it's 35, making the ratio 5:1, or if going by the rate of ageing changing it's 3.25:1 ((175-110=65), (35-15 =20), 65/20 =3.25), and then 5:1 or 7:1 for old age, and then roughly 5:1 for venerable. 

Making it look like Elves mature really slowly into adulthood, nose dive into middle age, and then slowing back down into old age+. Which seems a bit weird. 

(Also, I always imagined elves being hale and hearty well into their 500's, so It seems strange to me that elves get old and frail at half their potential lifespan (350 out of the possible 750)).

But does this mean that an elven child matures really slowly? That a 70 year old elf looks like a 10 year old child to a human? Or do they age more on a bell curve, where they age similarly to humans at first, till they hit puberty, have a terrifyingly long puberty, then come out as elven adults, all mature and haughty?

In the Forgotten Realm Classic, Icewind Dale novels, starring our most loved/hated drow Drizzt Do' Urden, Drizzt was considered an adult at about 70, if I recall correctly. Now, this may be a discrepancy, or it's a racial difference between drow and moon elves, or maybe elves actually reach adulthood at 70 but are only considered 'legal' adults at 110? (Or reversely drow, being the harsh race they are, decide your a legal adult at a pretty young age). 

Also, the different subraces seem to age differently. We have '110' as the standard age of adulthood for elves, and 700 as the average lifespan, meaning that unless lore says  otherwise, it's a safe bet to say that's the same for another subrace:

Moon/Wood/Wild/Drow Elf:
Age of Adulthood = 110
Longevity = Average 550? (Utter maximum would be 750)

(According to Races of Faerun, Drow have the same longevity as other elves- it's just that their 'average lifespan' tends to be shorter due to their harsh lives.)

Sun Elf:
(Races of Faerun says that 'Sun elves are long lived, even by elven standards" and has these modifiers for age effects instead:
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Which means that Presumably:
Age of adulthood: 110, but likely older, however races of Faerun doesn't give an alternative.
Longevity=  Average 720? . Because of course sun elves have to out do all the other elves. (Max age: 1020.)

Avariels:
(Races of Faerun says Avariels have shockingly short lifespans for elves and to use the gnome ages from the above table:)
Age of Adulthood= 40
Longevity=  350 average? ( 500 max.Yikes.)



These ages seem weird to me. They take ages to mature (15% of their lives in child hood), have a brief moment of living in their prime (35% of their potential lifespan), then spend most of their lives shouting at humans to get off their lawns (around 50%). ( Guess this is comparable to the human ages given there as Childhood: 13%, 'Prime': 50%, Seniority: 36%, if they reach the max lifespan of 110 >.>)  

Elves.... 

Right, tracked down some info from ODA:

ODA: Topic: Wild magic and Aging wrote:If you play an Elf your PC would have a start age (base) of 70, the PC would be 'old' at age 263 and could live as old as 350, giving a PLAYER 193 'playable' years. In RL years, this is 23.63 years of viable play before your elf starts to droop in the tights too much and needs to go on a boat outing or something.

Judging by this, we're mostly sticking to the standard D&D age table, except we have '70' as the 'starting' age, not '110'. ODA also gives the human 'start' age of 14.

Because the Handbook is suggesting 110 = 15. ODA is suggesting 70 = 14. And NwN is suggesting 120 = 18 (Which is what I'd always gone off and is roughly the same as the handbook >.>)

So, it comes back to 'when is an elf an adult' and 'how fast do they mature'?

Is it possible to get some age comparisons, as in human 'translations?

Human = Elf
Handbook, Arg-reg(?),
1 =7 / 5 /
2 =14.6 / 10
3 =22 / 15
4 = 29 / 20
5 = 36.5 / 25
6 = 44 / 30
7 = 51 / 35
8 = 58.4 / 40
9 = 66 / 45
10= 73 / 50
11= 80 / 55
12= 87.6 / 60
13= 95 / 65
14= 102 /70
15= 110 / 75
16= 113.25 / 80
17= 116.5 / 85
18= 119.75 / 90 
19= 123/ 95
20=126.25 /100
21= 129.5 / 105
22= 132.75 / 110
23= 136 / 115
24= 139.25/ 120
25= 142.5 / 125
26= 145.75 / 130
27= 149 / 135
28= 152.25 / 140
29= 155.5 / 145
30= 158.75 / 150
31= 162 / 155
32= 165.25 / 160
33= 168.5 / 165
34= 171.75 / 170
35= (175?)

Friends,
Excellent notion, though a little low priority for me atm. I'd like to suggest maybe a simple spreadsheet to review the standard races per 2nd, 3rd and 3.5 editions. If anyone wants to create such a thing please do otherwise I'll whip one up in the odd moments at some point in the not too distant future.

KUDOS all.

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Here's a spreadsheet with all races and most versions- I'm finding it hard to track down the 3rd edition, because it was quickly replaced by the 3.5 edition. If anybody can tell me if the age table in the 3e player handbook is different to 3.5 player handbook, I'll add that in- if not, I'll just delete those columns.

That should be a link to a spread sheet that anyone can Comment  on. I haven't opened it up to public edits, to avoid possible spammers. If you want to edit, send me a pm with an email, I'll send you permission so you can edit (Or I'll change the whole thing to edit, if we think we can trust people not to be jerks). I've got the current version saved anyway.