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Friendly reminder that although you can homebrew it to be like this if you want, in the official D&D 5e lore, Elves and Dwarves mature at the same rate as humans, so they're all adults at 21.
Culturally is a little different, much like some older humans still view people in their 20s as "kids", elves and dwarves will only consider themselves to be truly adults after at least 100 years or so, but that's just a social stigma, not how they are biologically.
And if you want to play by RAW, they're born with all their stats, knowing whatever language they know, and and the same size class as adults.
What is important here is the mental maturity, not physical I believe, at least for adventuring. It would make sense that, mentally, a race that can live hundreds of years would take longer to mature
Why? Why is your body slowly falling apart necessary to mature mentally?
No? When you live for hundreds of years you can wait a couple of decades before going to school, maybe 50-100 to think about leaving your town, no need to rush anything. It makes sense that races that live longer would experience life at a slower pace therefore mature later in life.
Education and maturity are not the same thing. Also, if you live for hundreds of years the rational thing to do is work hard at the beginning so you can live on the interest for the rest of it.
that's stupid. if what you are saying was true they would die before or shortly after becoming an adult
They grow into adulthood at the same rate as humans, but after that point they age at a slower rate.
As per the PHB, page 23:
"AIthough elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood and an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 750 years old"
And page 20:
"Dwarves mature at the same rate as humans, but they're considered young until they reach the age of 50, On average, they live about 350 years."
So i did get some things mixed up, for Dwarves it's 50, not 100. Same idea though.
I know it sounds weird at first, but It actually makes a ton of sense. I mean, even outside of fantasy, the amount of time an animal takes to reach maturity isn't really proportional to how long it lives, it has more to do with its intelligence, which is about the same for all D&D races. For a lot of animals, reaching full maturity only takes a couple of months tops. Turtles can live way longer than humans yet they mature in about 5 to 8 years depending on the species.
Humans are already pushing it with about 2 decades worth of growing, having to spend a literal century as a kid, especially in a world as dangerous as the forgotten realms would be insane.
If they need to reach adulthood at the same rate biologically so that they can defend themselves in the wild, why would a 100 yo elf ever be level 1?
It sounds much weirder to consider that elves and dwarves keep acting like teenagers 30 to 80 years past their human-like rate of physical maturity. Or don't they? What does adulthood even mean for them? Sometimes it sounds like they have a higher standard for maturity than humans, wouldn't also be some form of neurological development? But I never seen that manifesting in any practical way.
D&D worldbuilding is made a little awkward by how fantasy races age and develop drastically differently, but they also must become strong at the same pace, such that a 100yo elf can be completely inexperienced and grow at the same pace as a human during a week of adventuring. They try to have it both ways, but the more it's explained, the more confusing it gets.
Leveling in general gets more confusing the more you try to explain it.
Why has my old character never leveled up before i started playing them?
Why has my Elf/Dwarf/etc never leveled up in hundreds of years?
If i can level up from 1 to 20 in a matter of days, why isn't every adventurer level 20 by now?
Also, even outside of level:
How isn't there a massive overpopulation issue when these races have hundreds of years to procreate? Instead they always seem to be rarer than humans.
Why would any job ever hire humans when elves/dwarves exist? They could acummulate way more experience and be better at basically anything.
In fact, why aren't Dwarves/Elves just better at everything? Do they learn things at a slower rate? But if that's the case, how come they can level up so fast once we start playing them?
I mean, really, at some point we gotta draw a line in the sand and decide that some things just need to be handwaved for the sake of fantasy.
How isn’t there a massive overpopulation issue when these races have hundreds of years to procreate? Instead they always seem to be rarer than humans.
This is one reason why I'd think actually making characters mature at the age of adulthood would make more sense. Of course there won't be that many elves if raising each one is a century-long effort
I mean, really, at some point we gotta draw a line in the sand and decide that some things just need to be handwaved for the sake of fantasy.
Yeah, at the end of the day the main purpose of D&D is being a game so it's understandable why they even it all out. That said I keep wondering if there could be a game that actually expressed these things, what would it be like? Maybe adventuring across ages with different heirs of humans who go from weak to strong extremely fast while elves start strong and grow slowly?
Like @Eeyore_Syndrome was mentioning, the anime Frieren is really good at showing what that would really look like, how a character who can live so long can become much stronger while also losing track of time, and yet a human can match them in talent, even if not in training and experience.
My head-canon is that they have a shorter window of fertility. I mean humans have menopause as well.
Though it would make more sense if that happens later in their lives, otherwise you're saying every adventurer has given up the possibility of raising kids. Also, i suppose if that's the case they haven't really matured in the sexual sense, so much as they've just grown enough to be independent.
I seem to remember some bit of lore saying dwarves only settle down to have kids near the end of their lives, but i can't find that anywhere ( Might've just imagined it, lol).
Maybe adventuring across ages with different heirs of humans who go from weak to strong extremely fast while elves start strong and grow slowly?
That sounds cool but you'd need all your quests to span generations and leveling in general would be very slow. Probably harder to make it balanced as well.
@Jorgelino @WeLoveCastingSpellz That puts dragon wyrmlings into perspective.
Rules don't apply to you when you're a motherfucking dragon, lol. They're so broken they don't need to hurry up growing, cause they're already at the top of the food chain at basically any stage in their lives.