Author Topic: Immortal Elves  (Read 24357 times)

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Offline Marc R

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #20 on: December 09, 2007, 10:17:33 AM »
Tangential, but worth considering, this one was a plan expressed by an Elf PC in a game I was in, that thankfully wasn't adopted.

Mean old elves want to get rid of humans.

Disease list.

Now, if those 50,000 elves among the 5 billion humans were casting 1,000 lethal super contagious diseases into existance each day. . .and relying on their +100 RR vs Disease immunity to get through it. . .

That's one rather obvious, once you think about it, method for elves to get rid of all the other mortal races. (Other than the other fey races, who also have a +100 RR vs Disease.)
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Offline DonMoody

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #21 on: December 09, 2007, 10:24:06 AM »
Elves are good at tactics in small groups, but not as an army. (That is actually more or less like Tolkien as far as I remember. None of the armies in middle earth were ever commanded by elves.)

This is *very* different from Tolkien elves.
Yes, in Tolkien's Third Age, there were few 'active martial forces' led by elves.
But in Tolkien's Second Age, there were many such forces (e.g. The Last Alliance of Men and Elves).
And in Tolkien's First Age, for *many, many* years, all of the 'good' forces were exclusively [made up of and led by] elves.

IIRC, ShadowWorld elves are quite like Tolkien elves.

And it maybe elves as in Tolkien's works that are the 'problem'.


Slightly different than above ...
If you have a very low reproduction rate society of immortals, what type of social pressures would there be to keep all offspring 'at home' and 'free from harm' (i.e. within the protection of the community)?
"Yes Johnny, I know you're a hundred and eighty but you're still not going over to that human town."
"But Grandpa did it!"
"True, but Grandpa was almost a thousand years old before he left the elven conclave. Keep studying and practicing and we'll consider a short trip in a few centuries or so."

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Offline Balhirath

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #22 on: December 09, 2007, 12:17:24 PM »
Hmm I guess that it's been a very long time indeed since I read those books.. and I'm not planning to do it in the near furture. :)
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Offline RandalThor

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #23 on: December 09, 2007, 03:57:12 PM »
Ofcause the other way around is also possible. Some of you might have read The Wheel of Time where the long-lived Ogier comes into the world of humans with charts that are hopelessly outdated.
Elf: "I dont understand this. My uncle said that there was a bridge here!"
Human: "Yeah. See the ruins! That was a at least 200 years ago!"

:)

Read them numerious times - love them. Going with that example, the reason the Ogier did not know about all the changes to the world was due to the fact that they very rarely ventured out into the human lands from their stedding. Even then, only those certain crafts"men" who were there to repair some structure or another that they, themselves, helped build centuries ago. The fact is they had great memories for those things they saw, heard, smelled, etc.. so the only reason they have for not knowing certain things is that they weren't there to learn them.

Also, remember the one ogier that is a main character in the series is a young ogier (Loial / 90 years old), was not even concidered an adult by the other ogier, and yet he is constantly amazed at the pace of life set by humans. They do things with such haste to him. I think that a Meeting of the Stump (an ogier 'village' council) could last years. They would be thought hasty if they only debated for months! Of course, that is not solid months/years, they slept, ate, etc.

In most typical fantasy worlds, the elves have much more interaction than the ogier did in The Wheel of Time setting. Even those that are supposed to be "isolationist" have much more recent interaction with the mortals.

Having the point of view above that Balhirath quoted would just help make them enough different to be pretty-much unplayable as PCs. As well as, hard to run as a GM.

In all "actuality," the only reason that elves and other similar beings don't look upon humans and other similar beings as pets, is because we share similar features (more so than apes/humans) and have the ability to truly communicate complex ideas. Otherwise we would be relegated to the roles of pets or insects - do you swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting the cockroach in the road? So I wouldn't imagine that an elf would bother helping out humans with thier dangerous problems - unless it was a problem for the elves as well. [This is, of course, other than the real reason: playability. We need to make them as human as possible, while still retaining somewhat of a difference, so that they can be played by a human.]

Now a being that uses life-extending magics/powers to live for these incredible lengths of time we are discussing is another matter entirely. With their original mind-set (that of a mortal) they wouldn't have such a different outlook on things - at least, not at first. Eventually, though, they would begin to think differently about things to the point as to not make sense to normal mortals. The ancient wizard that has lived in the tower in the next valley for as long as anyone can remember would seem truly alien to the common villager. He might as well not be human anymore. It is at that point that they become an NPC. Actually, they probably would have become one loooonngg before.
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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #24 on: December 09, 2007, 04:01:40 PM »
Generally, realisticly, an immortal would choose low risk choices. . .why fight a guy who'll be dead in a few subjective hours and risk getting hurt. . .a solo game with a smart PC playing an elf would consist of a lot of "And I wait". . .and likely they'd rule the world before you got done. . .

Most games wouldn't allow for that.

500 years is effectively immortal anyway. . .In doing the RLO calculations for CT we called immortal 1000 years in terms of calculations of value.
I once calculated a set of life tables for elfs, and I found that even if you took the lowest death rate in a modern population (that of 16-20 year olds), and lowered it a bit for older elfs (to reflect increasing skill and caution) the average life expectancy of a 20-year old (I also assumed maturity at ~20, like a human - I've never liked the idea that elfs manage to be 'children' for decades, though there's something to be said for adventuring elfs being 'teenagers') was only 300-400 years. It takes a very, very low death rate to get life expectancy up to 1000 years.

Because of this, I've never been too concerned about 'immortal' elfs - finding one that witnessed events from more than 600-700 years becomes an adventure, and and what they have to say a convenient plot hook.

Quote
Consider the current world. . .do you think a person born at any single point in the world in 1507 would either have had an easy time surviving to 2007, or would feel in any way comfortable in this modern world?

How about someone born in 1007 living today?

They both represent almost absurd potential time frames. The only thing that lets me GM with races like that in frame is the fact that living from 0 AD to 1000 AD is almost as freaky as the examples above, but living from 7,000 BC to 6,000 BC isn't actually all that bad.
This assumes that an immortal becomes as set in their ways as many middle aged and older humans do. I expect that if they did they'd advance so much more slowly than other species that they'd be 'left behind' and end up pushed into marginal lands or just wiped out, as has happened to all the stone-age cultures the Europeans (and others) ran into in the last couple of centuries.

It seems more reasonable to me that they'd retain the mental flexibility to learn and adapt, even if they cease to innovate after the first century or so of life and that, combined with actually living through that thousand years of change, would allow an immortal born in AD 1007 to be comfortable in AD 2007.

Offline Marc R

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #25 on: December 09, 2007, 04:49:07 PM »
not necissarily. . .

if you assume elves take say to 30 to reach maturity, live to 1,000 and die.

Vs an average population of "Threescore and ten" humans.

Human lifespan of 70 years, presume that they consume more than they produce from age 0-15 and from age 60-70. (The latter is VERY generous for pre-moderns.)

That's 25 non productive years out of 70, or 25/70= 36% of the population. . .so only 64% are productive.

Vs the elves 30 non productive out of 1,000...30/1000 = 3%. . .so 97% are productive.

So, two villiages of 1,000 inhabitants.

640 Humans are working.

970 elves are working.

The elvish villiage has 152% productivity on pure man/hours.

If you consider experience, most benefit is early then little late. . .So say masters are 20% more efficiant than journeymen, who are likely around 500% more efficiant than apprentices.

The human villiage's 640 workers are like 60 aprentices, 520 journeymen and 60 masters. (3,030 work units)

The elvish villiage's 970 workers are like 5 apprentices, 9 journeymen and 956 masters. (5,788 work units)

That pushes them from 152% productivity to 191%.

That's nearly a 2 to 1 advantage (And the experience factors are probably way conservative.). . .the reality is that there's also a "Maintainence per person" level of work, subtracting that out gives the net profit. . . almost all the elvish improvement is in the profit margin, so while they might be 2x as productive, they'd be more like 10x as profitable.

As to advances. . .how much faster do you think a sandal maker from 1,650 AD was compared to one from 5,000 BC? Perhaps 5-10% more efficiant due to slightly better tools? If that? Same of farming and all other crafting skills. Advancement compounding advancement at the scales we're used to seeing don't crop up until 1800, well into the "Modern" period.

A villiage of 1,000 elvish farmers would far surpass the best efforts of their human neighbors, even if the elves were using bronze age technology and methods while the humans were using late reinnesance methods and technology.

There really isn't all that much push to fit in, adjust or update until the mid to late modern era and industrial advances accelerate the improvement rate of technical production faster than the rate at which experience improves productivity. The humans would never understand how that backward villiage of elves with bronze tools could always produce so much more food per acre. . .must be magic!

This is assuming the elves didn't figure out in that 1,000 years that there's more money in being the landlord than in being a farmer and use their surpluss production to buy the human's lands (The very definition of "Out competing"). . .The early agricultural revolution saw a trend in which tech adopting farmers saw increases of efficiancy around 50% and they ended up buying out all of their neigbors who stuck to the non-competative "old ways".

Cost benefit analysis along those lines would indicate that it's essentialy impossible for humans to beat elves in any economic endevor the elves choose to compete in. In a confrontational competition, the humans could devote more workers to reach the same production levels, but they could never match the elves on efficiancy or cost per unit.

Of course, there's one exception, due to population sizes and birth rates, humans can far more efficiantly replace casualties due to war. If the only way you can compete with your neigbors is to kill them. . .what kind of interaction does that lead to?

Situations like that usually resolve in violence, at least, historicly neigbors with that great a level of productivity variation tended to conquer each other using military or economic methods.

And those elvish villiages would be islands of conservatism way beyond the parochialism of human villiages. . .the Ogier example above covers that aspect well.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2007, 05:06:05 PM by LordMiller »
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Offline DonMoody

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #26 on: December 09, 2007, 06:50:19 PM »
I once calculated a set of life tables for elfs, and I found that even if you took the lowest death rate in a modern population (that of 16-20 year olds), and lowered it a bit for older elfs (to reflect increasing skill and caution) the average life expectancy of a 20-year old (I also assumed maturity at ~20, like a human - I've never liked the idea that elfs manage to be 'children' for decades, though there's something to be said for adventuring elfs being 'teenagers') was only 300-400 years. It takes a very, very low death rate to get life expectancy up to 1000 years.

Because of this, I've never been too concerned about 'immortal' elfs - finding one that witnessed events from more than 600-700 years becomes an adventure, and and what they have to say a convenient plot hook.

I think there are some flaws in your methodology.
Not sure what they would be (the vagueness of the method used didn't giver me much to go on but my first guess would be you used a 'generic' death rate instead of actually determining causes of death and basing a death rate upon that) but the fantasy literature with 'live until slain' immortals I am familiar with has numerous individuals of an age that is 'many, many centuries' or 'many millennia'.

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Offline Wōdwulf Seaxaning

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #27 on: December 09, 2007, 09:48:29 PM »
In the world I'm creating there are two kinds of Elves:
1) High Elves servants of the Goddess Gaia.They are immortal,but it has to do with living in the land of Fey.If they leave Fey for long periods of time they begin to age.

2) Low Elves (Sidhe).Who are exiled & live in the "real" world.They live longer than humans & are more resistant to both magic & disease.They are made up of Clans/individuals who who were exiled from the land of Fey for some reason.I'm considering having them being a half-Elf race.I'm still thinking this out.

My favorite Elves are from Poison Elves , Elflord & Elfquest comix. I'm not a big fan of Tolkien Elves.
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Offline dutch206

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #28 on: December 10, 2007, 09:37:54 AM »
I just found this conversation, so excuse me for back-tracking a bit.  I seem to remember reading somewhere that immortal elves adventure because they tend to view life as a game to be played.  Imgine how dull life would be if nothing ever changed----excitement from any source would be preferable to another century of the same old thing.

In Celtic mythology, the Sidhe (elves) were immortal.  They often kidnapped (ie 'borrowed') humans for use in their games and plots, took mortal lovers, etc.... and generally invaded our privacy whenever they liked.  However, the penalties for humans invading the privacy of the 'Good Neighbours' was usually quite severe.  This is a double standard if I ever heard of one, but there you go.

Also, English legends are full of people who I would describe as being half-elven.  The most notable of them are Thomas of Ercldoune (Thomas Rhymour) and Robin Goodfellow.  There are also legends of an elf named the 'love-talker' who delighted in seducing human virgins.

I tend to use Elves as NPC's and plot devices rather than heroes in my games.

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Offline DonMoody

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #29 on: December 10, 2007, 11:03:06 AM »
I tend to use Elves as NPC's and plot devices rather than heroes in my games.

Which is what I thought was a main point of the OP:
Immortal Elves are NPCs, not PCs.

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #30 on: December 10, 2007, 01:06:34 PM »
Generally, realisticly, an immortal would choose low risk choices. . .why fight a guy who'll be dead in a few subjective hours and risk getting hurt. . .a solo game with a smart PC playing an elf would consist of a lot of "And I wait". . .and likely they'd rule the world before you got done. . .

Most games wouldn't allow for that.

500 years is effectively immortal anyway. . .In doing the RLO calculations for CT we called immortal 1000 years in terms of calculations of value.

Consider the current world. . .do you think a person born at any single point in the world in 1507 would either have had an easy time surviving to 2007, or would feel in any way comfortable in this modern world?

How about someone born in 1007 living today?

They both represent almost absurd potential time frames. The only thing that lets me GM with races like that in frame is the fact that living from 0 AD to 1000 AD is almost as freaky as the examples above, but living from 7,000 BC to 6,000 BC isn't actually all that bad.

Keep in mind that you're not talking about somebody who was born then and all of a sudden randomly ended up in our time.  If someone actually had life experiences spanning all that time, I believe they'd have no problem coping with things in whatever time frame they inhabit currently.  Anybody living that long would have to be extremely receptive to changes around them.  Humans, with our short lifespans, can be stubborn and hate change all we want, but somebody witnessing such drastic changes in technology, culture, language, and the like would have to be adaptable.  Such a being would presumably be possessed of vast years of youth; thus the mind stays sharp and receptive to new information.  So yeah, if a humanoid, sentient being were to live that long, I think they'd be used to their surroundings because they would have essentially "grown up" in them, so to speak.

Offline Marc R

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #31 on: December 10, 2007, 01:46:06 PM »
I'm not denying the possability. . .merely saying that an elvish society would have a lot of internal inertia, based on the logic in my later post. . .and would change very slowly. . people don't change for no reason.. . the external factor of how elves and humans rub against each other sounds like a recipie for war to me. . .that being a seperate problem. (And one that's a problem with Dwarves too.). . millenial lifespans encourage risk aversion. . .which inhibits innovation and change.

Even evolutionary logic would be conservative. . .

Germs change within our lifespans, since they cycle generations so fast.

a human generation is on average 20 years. . .do elves live to see their great/great/great/great/great/great grandchildren? Or is their rate around the 20% mark also, say 200 years?

Huamn beings have actually changed in the last few thousand years. . .taller, slightly longer and thinner fingers. . . .if elves lived 10,000 years you'd get "Hmm, your people used to be a lot shorter, and you had more hair."

The vast variation is that in 200 years you go from one human to their 10th decendant. . .and a lot of change in human society is picked up by the young generationally. . so 10 re-boots and chances to pick up new things without preconceptions. . . .vs a continuous learning process layering on preconceptions.

They're fantasy, so there's no right answer, but modeled on humans, they'd be the stickiest sticks in the mud ever.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2007, 01:52:56 PM by LordMiller »
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Offline vroomfogle

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #32 on: December 10, 2007, 01:58:00 PM »
In Terry Amthor's Shadowstone Chronicles (Shadow World) he described the elven memory in an interesting way.   Elves may be immortal but they do not have an ever-increasing memory capacity.     Elves would have a difficult time remembering things from a long time ago, to the point where they would completely forgot about some things entirely.     

If this is the case then it could effectively control levels for immortals.  If I ever got to a point where I'd have to treat this in-game I would remove the character's lowest level of development every 100 years or so.     So, a 5000 year old elf might have gained 100 levels in his life, but he only has the experience/memory of the last 50 of them (and thus is effectively 50th level).

Offline Marc R

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #33 on: December 10, 2007, 02:22:37 PM »
Heh. . .makes me think of HERO, and re-tasking your variable power pool. . .

Like. . .You have a DP limit. . .say 1,000 DP total. . .when you hit it, when you go up a level and have 40 DP to spend, you have to jettison 40 DP of skills to make room.

Hmm, no wonder they're so nasty. . .you could re-spec your character over time.
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Offline Temujin

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #34 on: December 10, 2007, 03:52:28 PM »
The problem I have with immortal PCs, is 'Why are they doing what they do?'.
Why are they risking their immortal lives?
And even if they want to take such risks, why didn't they spend the last century or so training and accumulating wealth which is turned into items that increase their survival *before* they went out and risked their lives?

You assume that everyone analyses everything, figures out cost-benefit, and then takes the best action for him.  The truth is, that doesn't work.  Of course some elf (the more rational, long-term sighted ones) will take such a path, that of accumulating wealth, or accumulating knowledge and skill, before taking on risk.  But there's always those who love risk, those who can't see beyond meeting their day-to-day needs, those who like to "waste their time" on social endeavours or cultivating their private garden of flowers, etc.  Just look at the world arround you.  There are those who drive through school to get good grades, get into their program and pass with speed and excellence, then enter the market and make a million before they are 30.  Surely that sounds optimal, but how many take that route?  Why do some people with great potential end up in drugs, low-level crime and prostitution?  While a few, with barely their clothes on their back, decide to go out and travel the world without a single worry, when 90% of the society is busy about meeting their bills for the end of the month...

You ask "why do they do what they do?" and look at optimal alternatives, that any logically-minded sane individual would follow.  Trying to figure out who they are as individuals (because surely, someone who lives for several centuries has developped a personality, at least one would hope so) might be a better way to figure out why there are elven adventurers, and why the elven race as a whole hasn't outcompetted the human race as a whole yet.  Immortality doesn't make for perfection, but I agree that the perfectionist, driven and ambitious immortals are going to be scary...

Offline Marc R

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #35 on: December 10, 2007, 04:27:25 PM »
The problem is that even at sub optimal career choices, elves would be masters.

As to risk aversion, as above, elves would evolve slower than humans, but they would still evolve.

And Cost Benefit Analysis merely lets you make informed choices, assuming you have good data.

The real world actually enforces them. . .they are merely a study tool to try and figure out the world.

Individual elf life value is worth 10x what a human's is, on span. . .it might be worth far more on "replacement value" due to a low reproduction rate.

Essentially, over time, the non risk taking elves would end up being the only ones having kids, so that would become the dominant trait.

In biology, long lifespan, low fertility species tend to have either evolved themselves out of danger, or exibit behaviors of risk aversion, while short lifespan, high fertility creatures exhibit loads of risk taking behavior.

It's not really an opinion issue, it just seems to be the way nature works. Of course, we only have humans as a template for sentient behavior, and this is fantasy, so who knows.
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Offline markc

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #36 on: December 10, 2007, 05:14:20 PM »
 Dutch206,
 Are you shure the elf was not a dragon in disguise?

 BTW, I have to disclose that I am taking money from the pro-elf lobby and it may bias my oponion on this subject. If I was a true politico I would change the font sze to 1 point and the font to someting you could not read.

 All in all I love elves in almost any form,mostly. I also generally prefer to play an elf, 1/2 elf, spirit etc.

MDC

 Modify,
 Another one who just poped into my mind from ye old Deities snd Demi-Gods, Hiemdal gardian of the Bright Frost bridge.  People and gods out thier, please for give me if I buthchered the spelling of his name.

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Offline yammahoper

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #37 on: December 10, 2007, 06:45:32 PM »
A topic about stinking elves >:(

Oh the agony. 

I hates elves, alls of em.

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Offline Dax

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #38 on: December 10, 2007, 07:55:41 PM »
I believe the hate against Elven origins in that big, unnamable RPG-system.
I never played it, but I believe there it is simply the munchkin race.
So any good roleplayer with such experience would have a "gut feeling" against them.

Good points are stated and I will reconsider them for use.

I'm also one of the Elf-lovers (and could easily play S*m G*mgee  ;))

I was the first in our group who played an elf, in a not so good RPG system (not D*D).
Later while GMing I let an Elf stated (take over the PC): "Oh a dragon guards the pass ? We wait until it died of old age and then go ..." Today, 20 years later it is still quoted.

"Nobody knows how an immortal being thinks"
I heard this quote often, it must be stated in a famous RPG-network.
Here I heard it again and I have to reject.

But let me first ramble a bit (not much).
We now play some mages with a kind of implanted second mind (like in some Perry Rhodan books, sorry don't know more). It gives us some special abilities (mainly for centration on spell while casting others and a chance to hold concentration even if attacked) and it makes us emotionless, total logical - a sociopath (hope it is the right translation).
As I'm an very emotional, I tried to avoid it (OK, this is lame of me)
And I told them:
"You think playing an Elf is difficult ? It is more difficult to play a sociopath !
Any human believes s/he is immortal, but I can't imagine to kill a child w/o hesitation."

That is it, human as a being believes in its own immortality.

LordMiller summarizes "the curious vs the cautious Elf" problem,
but it might be questionable if the cautiousity is a genetic factor.
As I was told it occures even with rats: some are curious some a cowards,
but it doesn't seem to follow Mendel's rules. (cautious parents, curious off-spring)

The other points are the starting level and here I want to state another quote:
"Old swords are desirable, because only good swords get old ..."
So there is the issue with the 1000 year old Elf who has many skill ranks in every skill.
Of course the PC are one of the curious kind and of young age.

But would this mean that Elrond would has to be a master in every skill ?
RM has dimishing returns and we could go the way for rank reduction for unused skills (a possible resolution: NPC and PC need DP to hold the number of skill ranks
maybe first DP-cost for each dekades of skill ranks).

Why didn't Elves outnumber the other races ?
Surely there are some races hunting them and because they just reproduced at low level.
The half-elves are proof that they can reproduce with other races successfully.

The T*lkien kind of Elves are 'good' they help the humans and don't want to kill their younger brethen with diseases.
IIRC: Glorfindel lead an elven army to defend Gondor. (Maybe dutch206 can confirm this).

I don't have any problems with Elves and won't reject if a player wants to create one (depending on the background). And even if the starting age is about 1000 years she would have the same starting level.

One of the last campaign should start with humans, but one girl  ;) wanted to play an elf and I let her roll on the M**p race table and got an half elf. The other also want to roll and got silvan elves. This way it got a better plot and I even can't remember the planed story line with the humans.
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Offline dutch206

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Re: Immortal Elves
« Reply #39 on: December 10, 2007, 09:13:18 PM »
I know Glorfindel was the one who made sure The Fellowship made it to Imladris with the Ring, but I can't remember who helped defend Gondor.  (Sorry, but I haven't read JRRT since college)

Gil-Galad, the elf king who formed the Last Alliance against Sauron, got involved in human affairs and died as a result of it.  IMHO, this is why elves in middle earth are reluctant to involve themselves in human affairs any more.
"Cthulhu is the bacon of gaming." -John Kovalic, author of "Dork Tower"