SV: SV: elves on a pedestal? (w

[Trankel Al Ker]

At 12:16 PM 14/05/98 +0200, Fredrik Lundberg wrote:
>> In published materials, which contain particularly noteworthy
>>people. I would say that this argument has a serious sample selection
>>problem, and probably contains a far higher percentage of high-level human
>>wizards than of high-level elven ones -- powerful human mages strike me as
>>much less likely to avoid notoriety than powerful elven ones.
>>Particularly as powerful elven wizards can easily just sit in their towers
>>doing research for millennia, and the first any humans know about it is
>>when they get disintegrated for tresspassing, and never live long enough
>>to discover that the landlord is a 35th level wizard who's been around
>>since before humans first used fire.
>
>
>On the other hand there are at least one elf that I know of that it says
fought at Deismaar and who lived before that and he is still only 14th
level so time isn't everything.
>
If you're referring to Rouvhe, he's Warrior/Thief... So, he's like 15/14,
or something like that...

>> Like I said before, immortality does all sorts of screwy things to
>>demographics. For example, even though the elves are now in the small
>>minority, if there is no major human-elven war, *the elves will eventually
>>outpopulate the humans* because they grow faster than geometrically:
>>humans are like constant to the x, and elves are a Fibonacci sequence
>>(which grows for large x as x to the x) -- indeed, I first heard the
>>concept of a Fibonacci sequence phrased as "population growth of immortal
>>rabbits".
>
>
>Well the immortal rabbit might use a Fibonacci sequence to calculate it's
population growth but for some reason I don't think that elves are as
prolific as rabbits. The elf that I mentioned above that fought at the
battle of Deismaar he still doesn't have even one offspring and that is in
over 1500 years during that time Roeles descendants are quite a few.
>

Just a thought... In Cerilia, All dragons are like old,wyrm and things like
that. So, they don't follow the normal distribution of levels. I think that
that's how elven society is. I mean, there hasn't to exist twenty level 0
so there could be a level 1.


>Another small thing that is against the elves when it comes to spell
casting is that they don't like to use spells even if they are wizards and
they also shun Invocation/Evocation and Necromacy spells while humans are
not afraid to use any spells (at least the wizards, peasants are scared out
of there wits but that don't stop wizards from casting their spells).
>
>I also like elves but lets face it they are a race on the decline while
the humans are on the rise.
>
As dragons are on the decline (and the one lefts in Cerilia are VERY
powerful).

I don't have time to correct the structure and spelling of the things I've
just written, but I don't have time to correct them... Sorry if that
trouble someone... =P
Trankel Al Ker
Lord of the Brotherhood of the Black Tulipan

[Ryan B. Caveney]

On Thu, 14 May 1998, Trankel Al Ker wrote:

> If you're referring to Rouvhe, he's Warrior/Thief... So, he's like 15/14,
> or something like that...

Rhoubhe Manslayer is listed on a card in the boxed set as Fighter
16 / Mage 15. On the other hand, since he was a General before Deismaar
(PSofTuarhievel p.5)and is the one elf in all of Cerilia who actually
approaches anything with singleminded devotion, I'd have to say this
underestimates his power by a significant margin. I for one have always
taken levels in books as rough guidelines that may be completely wrong:
they are, in some sense, what the players think different people's
relative strengths are, since it's hard to keep them from reading things
- -- thus DMs should relevel NPCs to suit their own campaigns, especially
regarding how badly they want the players to be misinformed.

> Just a thought... In Cerilia, All dragons are like old,wyrm and things like
> that. So, they don't follow the normal distribution of levels. I think that
> that's how elven society is. I mean, there hasn't to exist twenty level 0
> so there could be a level 1.

Yup. That's what I mean, stated much more simply. =)

> >I also like elves but lets face it they are a race on the decline while
> the humans are on the rise.
> >
> As dragons are on the decline (and the one lefts in Cerilia are VERY
> powerful).

"In decline" does not by any means imply powerless, nor that
rising again is impossible or even unlikely.

- --Ryan

[Pieter A de Jong]

At 12:16 PM 5/14/98 +0200, Frederick Lundbergh wrote:
> Warning: this is very long, and is given over largely to logical,
>occasionally technical arguments for or against certain rules. If this is
>not what you want to read, by all means skip ahead now.
> Oh yes -- below, "mage" means "wizard", not "non-specialist
>wizard". I still call them "magic-users" quite a lot. =)
>
>>> Yes I know that Hammer Storm is the battle spell version of Spiritual
>>> hammer but for your information Fireball is already a battle spell just
>>
>> No no. The cards of which you speak list conventional spells that
>>are useful in a war card battle; they appeared in the original boxed set.
>>"Battle spells" as a concept were not introduced until the Book of
>>Magecraft, and are not listed on any such card. As magic missile implies
>>rain of magic missiles, fireball implies rain of fireballs -- which has
>>been avoided, I feel, for the very reason that Pieter gives: it would be
>>immensely powerful. A battlefield version of Mass Destruction, as it
>>were. And thus, perhaps, not too powerful when compared to the spells
>>that can be cast at the realm level (the next step up in power) -- it
>>simply would render conventional warfare obsolete, so it was left out
>>because Birthright is supposed to have aspects of a wargame.
>
>
>You are right in that they are not called battle spells on the card but as
you might note if you have the BoM or BoP is that the spells are said to
already be approved for use as battle spells. The concept of Battle spells
are simply that they are spells usable in a warcard battle and since
fireballs, flamesstriksn bless and all those other spells already are
useable they are therefor also battle spells otherwise what is there to stop
a person (except of cause the DM) from making a "Rain of Hammer storm" spell
that further increases the effectivness of that spell.
>
This would then imply because you can cast fireball in normal combat, you
can then cast Hammer Storm or other battle spells in normal combat. I
suspect that this was not what the designers intended.

>>> Well I used TSRs own demographic figures to calculated my numbers and
>>

>

>I also like elves but lets face it they are a race on the decline while the
humans are on the rise.
>
Now this, is a comment I am very interested in. As I have stated earlier, I
believe it took direct divine intervention/manifestation to beat the elves
pre-diesmaar. In post deismaar times, the only people that I can remember
to succesfully take land from the elves have been the Gorgon (province of
Sideath), the Raven destroyed two provinces of the Vos elven kingdom, the
Vos caused serious trouble in Tuar Awnn, but that was just after Deismaar,
with very few elves making it back that far north (most survivors settled
down earlier). Now I may have missed some points, but it strikes me that
post-Deismaar the elves have only lost land to the most powerful of the
awnsheglien, and even that was a waste of time for both sides because the
provinces were ruined. I suggest, we might be looking at an elven
renaisance, especially if the elven kingdoms start cooperating. (also, the
rules have now been changed that elven units for elven rulers cost the same
as human units)

Pieter A de Jong
Graduate Mechanical Engineering Student
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada