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(Taken from a posting of mine to rec.games.frp.dnd.)
desmith@primenet.com (Doug Smith) writes:
>avatar@arkane.demon.co.uk (Alistair Young) wrote:
>>Look at it realistically. If you live 800 years to a millennium, you
>>learn a *lot* of things; and if the thing you happen to study is magic,
>>then you learn a quite horrendous number of spells. There really isn't a
>>way round it, other than decreeing that elves (etc.) learn at a
>>ridiculously slow rate (in which case you have to wonder why any of them
>>make it to adulthood), or throw out realism and admit that it's [level
>>limits] an arbitrary restriction to make the world work the way you
>>want it to. Or shorten elven lifespans.
>
>Actually there are plenty of ways to explain stuff like this than
>saying elves learn slowly. You can argue that elves DO learn a lot of
>stuff, and forget it over time like most humans do. I once knew how
>to diagram the architecture for a computer chip but here it is only
>six years later and I only remember the broader concepts. My two
>years of Spanish instruction in High School? Don't remember squat.
OK, but how long would it take you to pick it up again? I recently
bought an old 8-bit micro (a copy of the one I originally started on)
for nostalgia's sake. Now, I hadn't touched one in years, but it only
took a couple of days to get back up to speed on it. To use a
dreadful cliché, it's like riding a bicycle.
For that matter, it's been a long time since I did any Windows
programming, but I doubt I'd have to learn it all from scratch again if
I decided to pick it up.
>Think how much you will lose a hundred years later after having
>studied it.
The other flaw, if I can call it that, in this idea is that it assumes
that the individual in question doesn't use his skills except when he's
out adventuring. Say an elven mage, let's call him Avran, has learned
the arts of magic in his relative youth (in some adventures), and then
goes back home to the forest for a couple of centuries to relax.
Why should he forget his magic? He's using it every day - keeping the
house warm, for illumination, transporting himself about the place,
maybe making his living producing magic-powered refrigerators or
whatever, putting on illusion-shows for his friends, etc. ad naus.
(Sorry, but I'm one of those people who refuse to believe that
thousands of years of magical research has been entirely, or even
mostly, into combat applications.)
> Also elves need not be driven like humans. They got all
>the time in the world, so instead of spending eight hours plus a day
>studying something they spend an hour, then go to a party.
Well, that depends on how you see the elven mindset. Certainly, they
know that they have a long, long time ahead of them to do and learn
things, but I don't see them as being quite so, well, lazy as that.
To use my example character, Avran, as a typical elf; certainly, he
enjoys the finer things in life. He doesn't see any need to rush through
life, indeed, he wonders at the humans who seem to be always frantically
rushing about - how do they ever really experience anything? He enjoys
long meals, taking time to savour every bite; he enjoys travelling
leisurely, so that he can stop to enjoy any beautiful vistas or splendid
sunsets he happens across; he enjoys revelling in the lively social
scene.
But that doesn't mean he's only going to take ages over it whenever he
needs to research a new spell. Sure, he may enjoy a long lunch break,
and go out to a cocktail party in the evening, or possibly take the day
off entirely with his family if it's a nice day, but that certainly
doesn't mean he's *lazy*. Besides, he doesn't really want to be at a
party seven hours a day - where would the pleasure be in that? There's
a lot of enjoyment in creation, you know, whether it is a work of art
or a new spell. And if the work's needed urgently - say it's needed to
stop an orcish invasion, or some such, then he'll get stuck in and
finish it as fast as any human. People are dying, damn it! For that
matter, even if he just needs to finish his new illusion to show off at
Almathe's ball at the end of the week, he'll work hard on finishing it.
What *would* people think of him, if it wasn't ready? How embarrassing!
I mean, if elves were as uninclined to actually getting on with things
and easily distractible as many people seem to portray them, surely the
whole race would have died out before anyone figured out how to hit
animals over the head with rocks in order to eat.
> And of
>course lets not forget that most of the elf's youth was spent learning
>the history of his race. "Ok, class today we begin the study of the
>life and times of Trealimus who lived 54,359 years ago. He only lived
>854 years so it will only take a month to cover his life."
But why would everyone in the entire race study history in depth? Some
would, but I'd imagine most would just learn the edited highlights (like
we do), and then go on to study their own favoured subjects in depth.
Admittedly, that long lifespan gives you time to study a lot of subjects
in depth, but, IMHO, every elf should study their own unique set of
interests in it. Maybe Avran hasn't bothered learning much history,
Maybe he's preferred to spend his three centuries of life so far
studying (in addition to his magic) several dozen languages, sculpture,
and has spent the last eighty years or so trying to grow the perfect
grape to produce the perfect wine.
> Or the 10
>years spent learning to properly appreciate poetry and the beauty of a
>flower :) Oftentimes it isn't how long you've studied something, but
>how fanatically you study it that counts.
Now this I can accept, provided that elves get a *lot* of proficiencies
to reflect all this studying they've been doing, even in what might seem
to be total irrelevancies. You never know when those five slots in
History, Ancient History, Really Ancient History, Even More Ancient
History, and Positively Fossilised History will come in useful. Or even
the two slots in Poetry, or the one in Flower Arranging.
>>Or accept the consequences, and have a world where older elves (etc.)
>>are *very* powerful indeed, certainly enough to defeat any individual
>>human without much difficulty, and where the human "advantage" that
>>keeps them at parity is their breeding rate.
>
>If one goes down this route then elves should be a NPC race, or only
>allowed in parties where the average level is in the teens or better.
Or do what I've done, and have a non-humanocentric campaign. But it does
rather change the balance of the world, yes. But, realistically again,
you have to ask yourself why an elf would be in the same party as a
human anyway. I mean, (IMC) he has a lifespan of 850 +/- 40 years as
compared to the human's 80 +/- 10. That paragraph in "Council of Wyrms"
concerning how dragons see the other races could just as well apply to
how elves see humans:
"Humans - who enter the world, live, and die in the span it takes elves
(my subst.) to reach young adulthood - exist in a frenzy that flares
brightly and burns out in the wink of an eye."
And as we seemed to agree above, their entire way-of-thought is
different, the humans driven to achieve now by their short lifespans,
and only planning for the short term because they won't be around in the
future, and the elves taking time to do things relaxedly and perfectly
because they have near-unlimited time to do them, and planning out
carefully the possible future consequences because they'll still be
there to endure them.
And then there's the almost inevitable feeling of superiority (on the
elf's part) and jealousy (on the human's) as the human grows ever older,
seeming almost to rot while he's still alive, while the elf remains
untouched by the ravages of time. Eternal. Unchanging.
Between these, and the other differences which this post is too small
to contain, it's hard to imagine how there could ever be a real meeting
of minds, never mind a genuine friendship.
On the subject of elves, I'd also recommend the article "Elves: A Case Study of Transhumanism in Fantasy Worlds", by Jürgen Hubert (Pyramid subscription required).
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