Battle Elves

[geeman]

OK, folks, in keeping with this recent them of all things elven, I`m
curious how folks out in the Birthright community think the elves
conduct war. A few specific comments and questions.

1. Do elves really fight wars? Of course, they`d fight if they were
invaded, but would they really engage in large scale, army against
army battle? Yes, they have in Cerilia`s past at Deismaar, but was
that battle the exception rather than the rule? Given elven
immortality and apparently slow birthrate would elves "spend" their
lives in something like pitched battle rather than favoring skirmish
and guerilla warfare where their skills could be brought to bear?

2. Are elven archers accurately portrayed? Elven mounted
units? What should be different? (Loaded questions, I know, but I`m
curious how people think about these units.) Should there be other
types of elven units?

3. Elves use magic, it`s their nature. What kinds of magics do you
think they employ in war?

4. Elves use nature, it`s their magic. What kinds of natural
creatures, substances, terrain features, etc. might they employ in war?

6. If elves were to besiege a castle would they do it differently
from humanity? It`s hard to imagine them digging tunnels and counter
tunnels.... What kinds of siege weapons would elves use?

7. What kind of fortifications would elves prefer? Quite a while
back, I pointed out that a few elven regents could easily keep their
entire domains Warded (the realm spell) and still have plenty of
extra time to spend gathering RP and developing their holdings. With
a few dozen wizards at their disposal their could create vast,
permanent thickets (the Plant Growth spell) to wall off their
lands. What other kinds of things would the elves do for the defense
of their realms? How might these things be done tactically to
maximize their effects? Are there mundane techniques that are apt
for Cerilia`s elves?

Anything I missed?

Gary

[DanMcSorley]

1. Do elves really fight wars? Of course, they`d fight if they were
invaded, but would they really engage in large scale, army against
army battle? Yes, they have in Cerilia`s past at Deismaar, but was
that battle the exception rather than the rule? Given elven
immortality and apparently slow birthrate would elves "spend" their
lives in something like pitched battle rather than favoring skirmish
and guerilla warfare where their skills could be brought to bear?

I think this depends a lot on how you conceive of elves. By default, yes, elves fight wars, have armies, etc. They are depicted as having conflict with other races throughout history, and would not have been a major force at Deismaar if they were totally unused to and unsuited for pitched battle.

One can certainly conceive of elves who are highly magical, fey, and unconcerned with worldly affairs, avoiding war by mystery and magic. Invading armies bumble around in the woods till they get lost and terrified, and then flee. The elven "military" is merely a contingent of their most skilled hunters pressed into service when necessary. Elves employ the animals, plants, and spirits of the forest to preserve their homelands, or summon elementals to do their fighting for them.

But I don't think that's how they appear in the setting, usually. Elves are certainly skirmishers by preference, taking advantage of their superior mobility in the wilderness, but after drawing the enemy into their favored terrain, they seem to commit with cavalry and archers to battle. All elves may use minor magic, but most of them are not warcasters, and fight with bow and spear.


2. Are elven archers accurately portrayed? Elven mounted
units? What should be different? (Loaded questions, I know, but I`m
curious how people think about these units.) Should there be other
types of elven units?

Accurately portayed where? I guess I don't understand the question.


3. Elves use magic, it`s their nature. What kinds of magics do you
think they employ in war?
4. Elves use nature, it`s their magic. What kinds of natural
creatures, substances, terrain features, etc. might they employ in war?

Druidic magic and wizardry seem to me that they should be related for elves. Illusions, summoned spirits, elementals, and so on would be useful in a battle. They don't seem to approve of necromancy or BOOM spells.

Elves prefer to fight in broken terrain that makes close ranks impossible. Forests in particular, hills, cliffs, and so on. Elves fight in all 3 dimensions, perching wizards and archers high in the trees. Useful forest creatures would be committed to the battle as skirmishers and shock troops.


6. If elves were to besiege a castle would they do it differently
from humanity? It`s hard to imagine them digging tunnels and counter
tunnels.... What kinds of siege weapons would elves use?

There are several possible answers, here.

-Why would an elf besiege a castle? An enemy in a castle cannot possibly be attacking you, so ignore him. If he's really your enemy, he'll come out soon enough and you can kill him at your leisure.

-The subjects of an elven siege would not know they were under siege until they started to die. Elves don't besiege using massed forces, they besiege using a single assassin.

-All of humanity is under siege by the elves right now- the elves are merely waiting for their castles to crumble into rubble. A castle built of stone! How absurd. It will last a thousand years at best.

-An elvish siege begins when your basement floods, continues while the trees grow their roots through your walls, peaks when the birds fly away with your roof, and ends when you move away.

-Elves do not commit to sieges because they do not recognize castles as strategically significant. They move freely throughout the countryside, unable to comprehend that the humans think they are winning simply because they control 1% of 1% of the countryside inside their stone walls.


7. What kind of fortifications would elves prefer? Quite a while
back, I pointed out that a few elven regents could easily keep their
entire domains Warded (the realm spell) and still have plenty of
extra time to spend gathering RP and developing their holdings. With
a few dozen wizards at their disposal their could create vast,
permanent thickets (the Plant Growth spell) to wall off their
lands. What other kinds of things would the elves do for the defense
of their realms? How might these things be done tactically to
maximize their effects? Are there mundane techniques that are apt
for Cerilia`s elves?

Elves probably don't build fortifications. A fortification speaks to a belief that one piece of territory, properly controlled, dominates the country around it, and that doesn't seem like an elvish belief.

The entire forest is the elven "fortification". The trees and brambles break up your forces and provide cover and mobility for elven troops. If you keep your forces tight for defense, you get picked off by snipers. If you spread your forces to control more of the countryside, your lightly-arrayed troops get ridden down by the hunt. When you try to retreat, you find a line of elves blocking you, the hunt coming in behind, and an earth elemental appears 50 feet inside your lines.

You can go totally the opposite way from this, obviously. The elves could build impossible crystal, wood, ice, and stone castles on mountaintops, the bottoms of lakes, out of giant trees, and so forth, but I don't think that fits the setting.

[Autarkis]

Elves do use fortifications, as per Player's Secrets of Tuarhievel. For instance:


The most important settlement in Bhindraith is the stronghold of House Tuarlachiem, a massive structure of stone and living trees that somehow have been fused. Certain legends hold that when this stronghold fails, there will no longer be any hope for elves on Cerilia. Considering this structure is located right on the border of Markazor, Cariele, and Tuarhievel and has withstood three millennia of assualts, this statement may be more than just hyperbole. Around 2,500 elves dwell in and around the fortress.

So elves would have some type of hybrid fortification, that attempts to tie in the natural landscape (in the above case, trees.)

I would assume, if they decided to go on the offense (and again reference PSofTh for a brief history of their warlike tendencies), it would be something akin to 'grown' or 'hybrid' siege weaponry.

[Autarkis]

OK, folks, in keeping with this recent them of all things elven, I`m
curious how folks out in the Birthright community think the elves
conduct war. A few specific comments and questions.

1. Do elves really fight wars?

Elves have gone to war before the War of Shadows. Their subjigation of the goblinoids and kobolds and their war with the dwarves being examples.


2. Are elven archers accurately portrayed? Elven mounted
units? What should be different? (Loaded questions, I know, but I`m
curious how people think about these units.) Should there be other
types of elven units?

I am not going to go into whether they are portrayed accurately, but I would assume other units should be available. Perhaps spearman or perhaps skirmishes of some sort. I think they would value agility and a loose formation.


3. Elves use magic, it`s their nature. What kinds of magics do you
think they employ in war?

I would assume they would stay away from Evocation spells, but would probably gear towards elemental and nature. For instance, a spell that grows vines from the grown with thorns that tear into the enemy.


4. Elves use nature, it`s their magic. What kinds of natural
creatures, substances, terrain features, etc. might they employ in war?

I would take what a typical army in the BR setting uses, and put a twist on it. Instead of catapults, maybe they use walking trees that hurl boulders or spores, for instance.


6. If elves were to besiege a castle would they do it differently
from humanity? It`s hard to imagine them digging tunnels and counter
tunnels.... What kinds of siege weapons would elves use?

I could imagine them instead using magic or magical effects to cause the walls to collapse instead of actually digging under it themselves. Or, even having giant moles dig in their stead.


7. What kind of fortifications would elves prefer? Quite a while
back, I pointed out that a few elven regents could easily keep their
entire domains Warded (the realm spell) and still have plenty of
extra time to spend gathering RP and developing their holdings. With
a few dozen wizards at their disposal their could create vast,
permanent thickets (the Plant Growth spell) to wall off their
lands. What other kinds of things would the elves do for the defense
of their realms? How might these things be done tactically to
maximize their effects? Are there mundane techniques that are apt
for Cerilia`s elves?

See my previous post.

[kgauck]

One can certainly conceive of elves who are highly magical, fey, and unconcerned with worldly affairs, avoiding war by mystery and magic. Invading armies bumble around in the woods till they get lost and terrified, and then flee. The elven "military" is merely a contingent of their most skilled hunters pressed into service when necessary. Elves employ the animals, plants, and spirits of the forest to preserve their homelands, or summon elementals to do their fighting for them.
That's basically how I envision the elves fighting a war. The elves have military units, not just a handful of skilled hunters, but they only fight once they have already won the battle. Battle under the best circumstances is a iffy business, and I don't see elves taking chances. Battles also kill a lot of your own people. In the Western Way of War, Victor Davis Hanson contrasts the Greek (and afterward western) way of war with the Persian and most other styles of war. The west, and in the game I think the humans and dwarves in generally, but especially Anuireans and Dwarves use a direct contest, close in, with heavy infantry, in which both sides fight and die, and one side is decisively and catastrophically defeated. On the other hand, there is a Souix explanation of war: if you were hunting a bear, and the bear went into a cave, and you knew that if you followed him, a third of your hunting party would die, but the bear would be killed, would you do that and go in the cave, or would you wait or attempt to lure the bear out? The elves are like the Souix. They see warfare like hunting. You don't fight because you can fight, people get killed doing that. You fight because you will almost certainly win the day with as few losses as possible.

The problem is that the Western way of war is stronger. So how do the elves avoid final defeat? Mostly by using illusions, charms, and summonings to "bumble around in the woods till they get lost and terrified." The difference is that it is at that moment when I see the elven cavalry and archers showing up with assorted minor magics to finish off the already defeated invader. And by finish off, I mean annihilate.

Ryan has mentioned some of his models of elves, and my model is drawn from both the Celtic, Norse, and Arthurian view of them as well as the Romulans from Star Trek. I think the Vulcans and the Romulans are the elves in Star Trek where technology is wizardry. The Romulans use a cloaking device to conceal their ships, but at the cost of huge energy consumption (slower ships, weaker shields, some tactical vulnerability, &c) so they have to win with a decisive first strike. I think the Romulans do have concerns about how many Romulans there are and not running out by bleeding themselves dry. I apply this template to the elves. They fight like Romulans. They use trickery, lay traps, hide, and then only "de-cloak" to unleash a terrible strike that utterly destroys their opponents.

There is some concern about making elves normal so that they work the same way that humans do for purposes of making sense of the realm system. This might be especially pressing if you run mixed parties of human and elf regents. I don't think the elves play nice with the humans so I wouldn't run a mixed game. I also note that I had more problems with the dwarves being portrayed as too "other", because I do think mixed human and dwarf games are possible. So I prefer near human dwarves. Elves, I prefer to be magical, exotic, and defiantly not near-human. That extends to how they should wage war. Not as humans do, but to paraphrase the way Dan put it, waging "war by mystery and magic."


All elves may use minor magic, but most of them are not warcasters, and fight with bow and spear.
I agree with this, but it doesn't take a whole lot of decent level spellcasters to put a whole lot of magic on the battlefield.


1. Do elves really fight wars?

Everyone wages war. And often. Perhaps the elves a little less often then men, but everyone is fighting, almost continually.


2. Are elven archers accurately portrayed? Elven mounted units? What should be different? Should there be other types of elven units?

Archers and cavalry seem fine, because as I mentioned above there shouldn't be heavy infantry and because of elven movement in forests, they are already effectively scouts. The cavalry is for running down the enemy like light cavalry, not delivering shock like heavy cavalry. Elves only have combat units that engage and disengage on a whim.


3. Elves use magic, it`s their nature. What kinds of magics do you think they employ in war?
Charms, illusion, and summonings. Charms to trick humans into turning left when they wanted to go right. Charms that convince you to stop the march and look for water when you have enough to continue. Charms that enflame your hostility to Captain Rogers, who slighted you on some previous occasion. Let him charge alone, we'll let him take the arrows and follow up after to claim the victory. Illusions to distract, detour, and confuse the invader. Summonings least of all, but to bring in friends and allies, or call forth the very elements to fight the invader. Elves won't spend their natural allies, so they don't use animals or plant allies as fodder for human swords. They use them they way they use their own forces, to finish off an enemy without taking any more casualties than absolutely necessary.


4. Elves use nature, it`s their magic. What kinds of natural creatures, substances, terrain features, etc. might they employ in war?
Animals and plants can be the eyes and ears of the elves as the invaders blunder about in the forest. In general, the side with better intelligence always wins the battle to follow. The humans can make use of divinations to try and even the playing field, but the elves have good magical protections against being scryed or detected. The elves always know where you are, your order of battle, and the condition of your army. They act with near perfect intelligence.

Finally there is terrain. They know it well (perhaps alter it now and then -I hear hillocks are in fashion this year) and combined with knowing where the enemy is and in what numbers, having already confused and frightened them, they use forests and rivers to keep the enemy from moving as they would like. So they frequently skirmish on one side of a river when the enemy is half across, use the forest as cover, and once the enemy is committed, move to another location, either to fight on a flank or wait another day.


6. If elves were to besiege a castle would they do it differently from humanity? It`s hard to imagine them digging tunnels and counter tunnels.... What kinds of siege weapons would elves use?
I don't see the elves sieging. Its the heaviest of heavy styles, and the elves are light. Sieges are eventually won because someone will lead a large body of mean through a breech into certain death. As much as any other cause, I think the humans won what they have from the elves because they build fortifications.


7. What kind of fortifications would elves prefer?
None. Fortifications are places you can't escape from where the invader can turn things to their advantage. I do think they will litter a place with traps and obstacles to channel attacks into kill zones, but they won't make keeps or defend constructed places.

[Hrandal]

Obviously, Rhoubhe isn't your typical elf, but he has a castle - Tower Ruannoch (from Sword & Crown). Its built from marble on top of a giant tree-stump. The construction is described as pretty standard (apart from the magical effects that surround it), but the aesthetics are noticeably different. It does seem to indicate that the castle is indicative of elven architecture in general (very tall pointed tower as the centrepiece.)

Again, though, Roubhe isn't your typical elf, and it may be that his more lawful nature makes such a thing appealing to him where other elves would only wonder why he was bothering.

[kgauck]

I don't think towers of this kind are militarily defensible. Good against adventurers, assassins, and bandits, but not against large armies. I think, for one thing, there would be far fewer towers still around to discover if they were used for defense. They have another purpose which I think is magnificence, or magical, or aesthetic, but not military.

[irdeggman]

4. Elves use nature, it`s their magic. What kinds of natural
creatures, substances, terrain features, etc. might they employ in war?


I hate the use of the word "use" here.

I understand what you are getting at but "use" makes it sound more forceful and an enforcement of will than I believe the elves do with regards to nature.

I think they use nature as in the using natural terrains to their advantage.

I think that when they invoke the power of nature it is more akin to "asking" and "convincing" nature to work in a certain way.

Their structures are built within nature not from natural things. What I mean is it is a lot like the Japanese minature trees, a little snip here a little snip there and it is "encouraged" to grow in a certain way.

Sort of like the boy character (I'm drawing a blank on the name) from Heroes when he talks about "asking" the technology to do something. He doesn't "order" it to do something he "asks" and it responds.

[ryancaveney]

Accurately portayed where? I guess I don't understand the question.

I interpret it as asking, "can one take the warcards seriously?" That is, can you really spend 4 GB to muster a unit of 200 1st-level warrior elves who fight in ranks like humans, dwarves and orogs do? Phrased that way, I think the answer is no. I think the only time the elves have standing-army warcards is when they get them magically via charming or summoning, so they're not really composed of elves. The only warcards made entirely of elves I can envision are the "Adventurers" cards from Blood Enemies, which just add bonuses to the stats of regular war cards, or something on the power scale of the Magian's Riders. That is, when an elven noble brings her military entourage to battle, it consists not of a thousand low-level grunts but instead a dozen high-level rangers, wizards and rogues. The only units in the army composed of elves are the elite special forces who are even more ridiculously skilled and hard to kill than Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando or Bruce Willis in Fifth Element; the battalions of regular infantry are charmed humans and summoned goblins.


They don't seem to approve of necromancy or BOOM spells.

I think this varies somewhat with terrain. That is, they don't approve of fireballs in their home forests, but see no problem with them if fighting in the plains of an already clear-cut human province.


-The subjects of an elven siege would not know they were under siege until they started to die. Elves don't besiege using massed forces, they besiege using a single assassin.

-All of humanity is under siege by the elves right now- the elves are merely waiting for their castles to crumble into rubble. A castle built of stone! How absurd. It will last a thousand years at best.

-An elvish siege begins when your basement floods, continues while the trees grow their roots through your walls, peaks when the birds fly away with your roof, and ends when you move away.

These are all excellent ideas, with which I agree. Single wizards also make great siege weapons, both as silent invisible assassins and as very flashy show-offs in a way which is often considered non-elven, but makes an excellent diplomatic impression on possible future opponents. A few castings of Earthquake, Soften Earth and Stone and Disintegrate render walls nonexistent. For a creepier approach, just slaughter everyone inside with Cloudkill, and then feed their remains to your summoned ogres who can then occupy the place and redecorate it in their own grisly style.


They move freely throughout the countryside, unable to comprehend that the humans think they are winning simply because they control 1% of 1% of the countryside inside their stone walls.

Ah, but castles aren't about winning -- they're about avoiding losing. A small force in a castle represents a constant threat of raids against supply lines, so a normal army must beseige it even if they don't want to capture it, just to keep its garrison from getting up to mischief after the main army passes by to its primary target. For this reason, I suspect elves who want to go past a castle just kill everyone inside on their way, as conventional defensive tactics have no hope of withstanding even a single mid-level wizard.


Elves probably don't build fortifications. A fortification speaks to a belief that one piece of territory, properly controlled, dominates the country around it, and that doesn't seem like an elvish belief.

I agree as far as internal castles go, but I think they do have their equivalent of the Great Wall of China for perimeter defense. For example, the entire border of the Sielwode, all the way around, is probably a tangled bramble hedge a hundred feet high and three hundred thick, which is defended by razor-sharp thorns, poisonous animals who crawl through it and carnivorous plants grown into it, and kept well-watered by river, swamp and rain to deter fire.


The entire forest is the elven "fortification". The trees and brambles break up your forces and provide cover and mobility for elven troops. If you keep your forces tight for defense, you get picked off by snipers. If you spread your forces to control more of the countryside, your lightly-arrayed troops get ridden down by the hunt. When you try to retreat, you find a line of elves blocking you, the hunt coming in behind, and an earth elemental appears 50 feet inside your lines.

Yes, exactly! Mobile defense in depth. That said, given their easy access to magic, the defense shouldn't need to be very deep at all before the invaders flee in terror.

[ryancaveney]

it doesn't take a whole lot of decent level spellcasters to put a whole lot of magic on the battlefield.

It doesn't even take many low-level ones. I refer you back to an archived post so old it's not even on this web site. In http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0004B&L=BIRTHRIGHT-L&P=R8753&I=-3 I wrote,



You want a truly nasty warcard? Look at what happens when you make an infantry unit as 200 number appearing from the "Human, soldiers", "Dwarf", or "Elf" entries in the Monstrous Manual. Here's what you get, on average:

humans: 200 0-level men-at-arms, d6 hp
F6, F3.5, 13 F1.5
20% chance of one cleric, level 5-7
it's not clear to me exactly which leaders get to roll on the adventurers table to determine magic items. If the cleric appears, he will have 3.6 magic items. The two leaders may have 5 between them, or maybe not. (***)

dwarves: 200 1st-level fighters(*), d8+1 hp, thaco 19
F6, F4, 5 F3.67, F4.5/C5.5
23.283 fighter magic items, .55 cleric (***)

per two warcards, add:
F8, F7, F6/C7, 2 F4/C4
2.9 fighter magic items, 1.5 cleric (***)

in camp/home territory/per 3 war cards(****), add:
7 F3.5, 5 F3/C3
3.95 fighter magic items, 1.5 cleric (***)

elves: 200 1st-level fighters(*), d8+1 hp, thac0 19 (Sidhelien don't get bow/sword bonus)
M8, 2 F6/M6/T6, 2 F4/M5, F4/M4/T4, 2 F3/M3/T3, 2 F4, 5 M1.5, 10 F2.5
26.3 fighter magic items, 12.25 wizard, 2.2 thief (***)

in camp/home territory/per two war cards(****), add:
F4/M7, M7(**), F6, F5, 5 F4, 5 M4, 5 F2/M2/T2
9 fighter magic items, 7.9 wizard, 1 thief (***)

(*): in case you disagree, note that humans add some number of F1 or higher, while the other two species add F2 or higher. (Also note 1+1 HD has the same average hp as d10, and a better THAC0 than an F1).

(**): these are listed as clerics, but Sidhelien don't have those.

(***): BR is supposed to be a low magic setting (I am one of those who strongly disagrees, however, largely because of the immortal elven wizard issue), so disregard this if you wish.

(****): per N war cards is calculated from "number of females... who fight as males" -- 50% for dwarves, 100% for elves, so that 600 dwarves / 400 elves may be considered as 400 / 200 + in-lair adults.

So 5 elven units against 5 human units, given this setup, is a slaughter. Against 30 wizards of level 5+, the humans bring one measly cleric. Nary an arrow need be fired, given that the first-round fusillade of Lightning Bolts and Ice Storms alone will destroy all the human units twice over -- not to mention their 81 wizard-specific magic items (imagine, for a moment, a Wand of Cloudkill) or 65 assistant wizards of lower levels.


Note that this is using no speculation on my part about universal elven magic use -- it is taken directly from the 2e monster manual. Even in D&D worlds other than Cerilia, the MM always said that any other race trying to fight the elves in a conventional battle will be annihilated on round one.

[ryancaveney]

Given elven immortality and apparently slow birthrate would elves "spend" their lives in something like pitched battle rather than favoring skirmish and guerilla warfare where their skills could be brought to bear?

I think they spend other people's lives quite freely. Use charm magic to take over half the opposing army and have it fight the other half. No matter which side wins, every death on both sides is good for the elves.


2. Are elven archers accurately portrayed? Elven mounted units? What should be different?

There should be far fewer soldiers of far higher individual power. This makes them very difficult to represent in warcards. I suppose you could say that an elven archer war card is just four or five 20th-level rangers and rogues, and destruction of the unit just means they turned invisible and went home until tomorrow.


3. Elves use magic, it`s their nature. What kinds of magics do you think they employ in war?

Charm and summoning on an immense scale -- the Subversion realm spell, but also five hundred non-regent elves casting Magic Jar at once. Also lots of constructs -- sure, you can only make a few golems per year, but you've got centuries, they don't rot, and just one can do grotesque amounts of damage to an army whose soldiers aren't mostly armed with good magic weapons.


4. Elves use nature, it`s their magic. What kinds of natural creatures, substances, terrain features, etc. might they employ in war?

Elementals, of course. Like golems, good damage reduction and brutal against swarms of individually weak opponents. Air elementals in tornado form are self-aware, self-mobile area-attack spells. I agree with Duane that "use" should be read not as "command", but rather "ask friends and relatives for help," but that still means there should be plenty of elementals happy to show up. This is especially true since "killing" an elemental doesn't damage the animating spirit -- it just sends it back to the elemental planes. I also think many of the magical monsters (owlbears, ankhegs, umber hulks, rust monsters, etc.) are really engineered biological weapons, some of them made by the elves. In particular, consider the bulette. Immense threat to humans both in armies and in villages, nigh-unstoppable, and eats everything except elves.


6. If elves were to besiege a castle would they do it differently from humanity? It`s hard to imagine them digging tunnels and counter tunnels.... What kinds of siege weapons would elves use?

Wizards. A single 9th-level wizard is better than a hundred catapults. Fly, Improved Invisibility and Cloudkill allow near-instantaneous, completely unresistable destruction of any affordable number of normal military units by just one elf.


Anything I missed?

Given my answers to all of the above, how can it be possible that the elven realms are still in retreat, or ever were?

[ryancaveney]

I don't see the elves sieging. Its the heaviest of heavy styles, and the elves are light. Sieges are eventually won because someone will lead a large body of mean through a breech into certain death.

In terms of medieval equipment, then assuredly yes. One of the many troubles with the D&D magic system is that it means elves have access to 21st-century weapon technology. Elven scouting parties are more like attack helicopters than classical light cavalry. It's just one of the many illustrations of a running theme: if you want a world with a medieval feel, you have to completely overhaul the PHB magic system. If you leave it untouched, elves have cell phones, fax machines, satellite reconnaissance, aerial bombardment and tactical nuclear weapons -- no medieval way of war can possibly survive that.

[kgauck]

That's why I effectively ditch the PHB in terms of magic. For a medievalesque feel, 1st and 2nd level spells are really quite powerful. I think when they went for the magician, this is the direction they were going in. But as long as PC's are exempt from these changes (by being blooded or Sidhelien) you basically end up in the same place as far as game play, even though the world itself is a shade more medieval than the core fantasy setting assumes.

When I said, "it doesn't take a whole lot of decent level spellcasters to put a whole lot of magic on the battlefield," I really meant not a whole lot of spellcasting. It can be profound. I think my build for Harald Khorien (Scholar 4/Wizard 4/Natural Magician 2) is one of the important 2nd rank mages of the game. Building a character with more than 5 or 6 levels of major spellcaster is just something I am very reluctant to do except for unique characters.

I certainly think nearly every elf has 1st and 2nd level wizard or bard spells in the same way that I think every human noble has at least a single level of noble. But if I were going to build a great Sidhe battle mage, I'd probabaly make him a Taelinri 8 (wizard class design, druid spell list) Ranger 8 (spell points stack) Fighter 4. Epic characters would just get more levels of classes that give you skills (bard, rogue, noble, &c). And they aren't a dime a dozen.

If someone is playing standard class levels 1-20 and up, with single class mages and priests, right out of the PHB, then no one builds castles or raises armies and landed nobles are surrounded not by a lot of soldiers, but a Round Table of super-elite knights who can face these spellcasters with some reasonable chance of success.

But if that's the case, AFAIC, the ninja gnomes have laser guns and the dreaded jet pack +4.

[kgauck]

You want a truly nasty warcard? Look at what happens when you make an infantry unit as 200 number appearing from the "Human, soldiers", "Dwarf", or "Elf" entries in the Monstrous Manual. Here's what you get, on average:

Here is the compliment for much the same from Heroes of Battle:
Human: 160 F1, 16 C2, 8 F3, 8 C4, 4 P5, 2 F7, 1 F9

Dwarves: 160 F1, 16 B3, 8 C4, 4 F5, 2 C7, 1 F9

Elf: 160 R1, 24 R3, 12 W4, 4 W5, 2 R7, 1 W9

[Beruin]

Dwarves: 16 B3,


This number left me puzzled at first. Then I found the image of dwarves rhythmically marching to battle to the sound of their war drummers very compelling.
Then I bothered to look it up, just to notice that 'B' doesn't mean bard, but barbarian. Ah, gimme my war drummers back.

[Lee]

About fortifying land, I`d think the elves would do something about using
terrain to create ambush opportunities, so they would riddle forests and hills
with caves and trenches to hide scouts, sniper positions, and supply caches.
Not to mention magical equivalents of minefields and booby-traps.

Lee.

[kgauck]

This number left me puzzled at first. Then I found the image of dwarves rhythmically marching to battle to the sound of their war drummers very compelling.
Then I bothered to look it up, just to notice that 'B' doesn't mean bard, but barbarian. Ah, gimme my war drummers back.

I like war drummers too. In my first BR campaign, the PC Overthane of Baruk-Azhik was assisted by his old tutor, a Dwarven Chanter (and drummer) who was quite an influence on the young king.

[irdeggman]

I like war drummers too. In my first BR campaign, the PC Overthane of Baruk-Azhik was assisted by his old tutor, a Dwarven Chanter (and drummer) who was quite an influence on the young king.


Which is why I like dwarf bards.

[kgauck]

Given my answers to all of the above, how can it be possible that the elven realms are still in retreat, or ever were?

I do think the elves have been in retreat, at least until mid-empire, and here I offer my reasons for why, despite more powerful characters, the elves could not restrain the humans.

The short answer is that just as elves have an affinity to nature and magic, the humans have an affinity to war and combat. Most societies are based on farmers and "those who fight" constitute a small number. But with Anduiras as chief god (and now Haelyn and Cuiraecen out there) humans have a broader participation in war than most cultures. One consequence of this is that humans are involved in their wars and regard them as their war, not simply the war of the chief. This means humans can embrace a heavy, close style of warfare that is the most decisive and is not overcome by other styles.

Elves with their reliance either on summoned goblins, or nature allies, or their own archers are all inferior to the heavy infantry and cavalry that humans employ. This is counteracted to a degree by their magical affinity, superior magic, and nature advantages, but the edge still lies with the men-at-arms with the heaviest armor and a bastard sword, or the heavy knight.

Second, humans build castles. The castle either is what it was, or its not worth the huge cost and simply doesn't exist. So, does BR have castles? I say yes, so castles must be valuable defensive places that justify their huge cost. Castles are only worth their considerable cost if they can't be bypassed by flying or magic, or teleportation, and so on. Now firstly, AFAIC, teleportation is a gate through the SW. Part of this is my own thing about making magic much more connected to the SW, but there are a few references to this kind of thing as well. Building a castle with materials, or symbols, or design features that strengthen the evanescence so that you can't just pop into caer dominibus would seem to be a normal part of engineering. Second, transportation seems to have a sympathetic quality to it, go from flame to flame, tree to tree, and so on. So going from nature grove to large unnatural complex in finished stone is harder than appearing just outside the manor. Plus, its only sensible that you can put up wards with the right materials and/or symbols, &c. When we look at magic attacking castles, again I think castles have defenses (like having energy resistance spells counter energy spells). Generally defense is the stronger form of war, so it should be easier to magically enhance your castles against fire, acid, electricity, cold than it is to do such damage to the castle. Part of this is the nature of stone. Part of this can be expensive additions to castles which work like a lightning rod to "ground" or disburse energy attacks. Part can be spells that have to be used up by allies to improve the castle's ability to absorb damage. At the end of the day, a 12th level wizard should be no more potent against a castle than a 12th level fighter.

Indeed, 3e imagines that given a problem two characters of the same level have roughly the same potency against it. I rather differ. I prefer to think in terms of spheres of game activity, like combat, magic, and interaction, and suppose that everyone is not roughly the same at combat, and that magic doesn't do combat by other means. I believe the spellcasters, both arcane and divine should be as vulnerable in combat as the fighter is in a purely magical scenario. Spellcasters can still be quite potent, but only as force multipliers to actual fighters, not instead of actual fighters. The Sidhe wizard might be able to make his summoned goblin assault force look like the waving grass of the field, but he isn't floating overhead protected by a globe of invulnerability, hurling down fireballs with a wand.

Finally there is divine vs arcane magic. Divine magic tends to be more defensive, and that makes sense. Reinforcing the heavy infantry and knights with healing, protections, and giving them information from divinations is about right. Elves, being immortal, should have higher level characters, but in spellcasting, the margin of difference isn't enough that a divinely buffed human fighter doesn't win 6 out of 10 fights with the arcane assisted elf fighter. Elves should be higher level, but I am not thrilled by the notion of 2^(CR/2). I'm happier if a 20th level character is more like 3 times as capable and 10 times as durable, and perhaps 5 times as versatile. By using wound points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm#woundPoints), for instance, that 20th level character isn't able to withstand more than one or two critical hits. So, even though higher level elf fighter/wizards might still have plenty of fight left in them after their summoned, charmed, and allied forces are defeated, they generally elect to withdraw and fight again with more summoned, charmed, and allied forces, rather than commit their immortal persons to the deadly hazards of battle with a large number of midlevel human fighters most them armed with critical threat weapons on a 19 or 20. Throw in some Improved Critical feats and the attrition just gets too high.

Currently (and since mid-Empire) I think that elves are now in their most highly defensible places, so human expansion is no longer into Sidhe areas, and we read about attempts to hold provinces in the Five Peaks or to settle the Giantdowns, and so on. I think the the elves have been developing the Hanner-Sidhe (half-elves) as a plan to co-opt the humans and regain the initiative. Will it work? Who knows, it would not be something I'd be inclined to unleash on my players, since such a thing would end politics and change the game into a epic struggle. The plan is something players can discover and fret about, however.

What does the future hold for the elves? No more withdrawl, for sure, but over-all victory does seem like a long shot unless the plan is carried off as prefectly as imagined.

[Rowan]

Good discussion.

In game terms, I think elven forests can easily be represented as providing fortification to the elves naturally. In fact, a good way to represent elven near-omniscience, mobility, skill, and less fatigue on the battlefield could be to give them a Fortification bonus equal to the source potential of whatever province they're fighting in (getting a massive bonus to Warcraft checks and bonuses to Defense and morale).

At the least, the elven forests should be considered fortified, I think, equal to their source potential. For me, that would put them at 9 or 10, since IMO elven forests have source potentials that high (as an aside, I think dwarves are also automatically fortified, double fortification levels against surface attacks--it's virtually imposible to clear dwarves out of their holes). I'd even make any non-elven units in elven lands make a morale check every war move or take subdual damage as if they had not been paid.

Something else to consider is that, since most agree that elven units are quite different from human ones, their mustering could use some rules adaptation. For instance, mustering could be as expensive as listed to simply equip and arrange a rapid communication system for a given number of elves (all of whom would be Veteran warriors with extra training in all warcard attributes). Maintenance ought to be nil, IMO. Elven units simply come together as needed from whatever they are doing, via magical communication, rapid courier, signal arrows and whistles, animal and plant messengers. Further, elven militia should be spontaneously-mustering units at least as strong as irregulars (I'd say Veteran irregulars).

I figure there are probably hero units attached to any elven "unit." Plus, the regent isn't the only one casting realm spells. I've incorporated various forms of wizard vassalage ideas for the elves; any given source is likely to be used during any given month for a realm spell.

Elven "units" are amorphous; they're likely to be almost everywhere on the battlefield, especially in a forest. I'd have a hard time representing it on a battle grid, but concentrations of elven warriors could be noted and engaged as units. However, elves failing morale or taking hits could easily break up and join another damaged unit, melting swiftly away into the forest or the other elven group. This skirmish order would be maddening to fight, and would make massed human archer attacks (already very limited if in forests) almost useless--the elves would be too few and far between and too quick to scatter out from under the cloud of arrows to be affected. To represent that, one could give them a missile defense bonus akin to Shield trained infantry. (BTW, I'd also give elves artillery range at a missile penalty).

As for sieges, elves could besiege a fortress by surrounding it with conjured brambles so high and thick no supplies will reach it. Vines would grow up and attack the walls, beginning to pull them down. Animated trees and elementals could crush the walls, and elves could ignore them--via elven rope, scaling the vines growing on walls, attacking under cover of darkness and obscuring mists, sharpshooting human soldiers off the battlements from impossible distances, warping the wood of all enemy archers' arrows and artillery (and the drawbridge, for that matter). This is how elves would reduce fortification levels while "occupying" land. That said, I doubt they try to rapidly assault a major fortification unless they can Raze it; they're patient enough to wait it out if necessary.


In story terms, it's terrifying to fight the elves for all of those reasons you've cited. Armies that enter elven forests simply disintegrate, units becoming divided by trails that change themselves, hedges that move, trees that attack, and the ever-present threat of at-will harassment by elven arrows, rapid-strike swordsmen and cavalry out of nowhere, sprites, centaurs, satyrs, giant owls and eagles (and the elves riding them), magic, poison, etc. Maintaining supply lines is impossible unless you can clear-cut or burn the forest in your wake. Forage is incredibly dangerous; any small group of forages is an easy kill.

In light of all these, how do you defeat the elves, and how have elves lost land and wars?
Well, they weren't ready for fortifications, as Kgauck I believe noted. Further, massive armies with tight cohesion, heavy armor, and protective divine magic have the best chance of braving elven forests and driving for any permanent elven settlements or seats of power while accepting the losses from harrassment. More importantly, massed soldiers can prevent elves from annihilating bands of settlers gradually cutting down the forests at forest edge and plowing the land. It's this gradually claiming of land that has done most of the work.

How can goblinoids oppose the elves? Actually, their lack of discipline would help them. Ferocious warriors who fight with rage and the desperation of cornered rats can whittle the elves down. Large numbers of humanoids flooding the battlefield in skirmish order (amorphous units like the elves) and swarming any elf they see can bring down those individual elves very, very quickly (whatever D&D rules may say, a pile-on of 8 desperate goblins is going to kill almost any elf in short order, with little chance for the elves to save their kin). A lack of dense groupings would also limit the effectiveness of magic employed against them, yet humanoids could form mass camps and ranks just like humans to persist in advancing through the forests while just accepting the losses of harrassment.

[Rowan]

Kgauck, I like much of what you said, but disagree that wizards shouldn't be any more effective against a fortress than fighters. Just like you pointed out later about different roles, wizards are artillery. Just like artillery, they are weak when attacked directly, but if left to attack, just like artillery they specialize in pounding strong military formations--whether massed troops or stone walls.

The rarity of wizards and powerful magic keeps strongholds low-tech; they don't need to counter much magic. Most energy spells will, indeed, be poor in the short term. Specialty spells, like Transmutations, Disentigrate, and so forth will be more effective. However, a wizard even in Long Range to cast a spell exposes himself within 400-800 feet--well within bowshot for archers who fire clouds of arrows into the sky. Protection from Missiles or Stoneskin are only going to protect against a couple of volleys, because each volley is likely to cause hits against that wizard.

Still, high level wizards are very rare and very feared precisely because they can defeat the greatest collective strength of man: fortresses and armies. Aelies can almost single-handedly turn back armies.

I very much agree that elves are in their most defensible places now. When the text says that Queen Isaelie doesn't think elves can hold out for long against humans, I think she's seeing that Anuire will either reunite as an empire or fall under the Gorgon, and the ensuing strength can, over a thousand years or more, whittle down the forest little by little through determined settlement. I think she worries about it because she's not yet sure how to gain the edge long term on humans, and isn't willing to bet elven futures yet on whatever strategies have been devised (such as expanding half-elven populations to cope, keeping the humans disorganized and disunited, even rebuilding elven strength).

The simple and lasting problem is that elves cannot hold plains against humans--and humans are adept at turning forests into plains; as long as humans control so much of the land and renew their strength so quickly, elves cannot recover enough land and numbers to expand much again. However, it may well be possible for them to retake and hold all forests all over Cerilia; I expect many elves have long range plans to do just that.

[geeman]

Let me ask a follow up question to the issue regarding how elves
might use magic in war: What standard, 1st-9th level spells do you
think could be used against units of soldiers at the company
(warcard) level? What effects might they have? I`m looking for
things other than the obvious, destructive spells like Fireball or
Meteor Swarm (which the Sidhe avoid anyway.)

For instance, the Magic Jar spell could be used by an elf wizard to
take over the body of an average human soldier as the unit is
encamped, perform as many murders as possible before he is eventually
struck down, inhabit another body, etc. until the company is
destroyed, the spell is magically countered, or until either the jar
or the wizard`s body is found. (Any wizard worth the name would be
able to hide the jar and his body, but those are the conditions to
end the spell.)

Spells like Ghost Sound, Message, Unseen Servant and Ventriloquism
could be cast to harass soldiers. It`d only take a few Ghost Sound
spells, for instance, to replicate the screams of a few humans dying
in agony to ruin any chance of rest the company might get.

What other uses of standard spells do you guys see? How might their
effects be accounted at the company (warcard) level?

Gary

[Autarkis]

So not to sound antagonistic, but I assume this site disregards source material printed for the BR setting in place of a new version based on the direction of the BRCS and the source authors of said document?

PSoTh gives plenty of examples of how they would deal with war and explanations of use of fortresses/strongholds as well as an example of historical warlike tendencies (against the goblins, kobolds, dwarves and themselves during their civil war.) Also, in Player Secrets of Tournen the general of the army is a sidhe who has been in that position for at least 100+ years. Brecht campaign setting also has some interesting information as well as the Khinasi campaign setting.

I keep seeing statements similar to 'humans build castles' or 'time is how elves wage war' when there is canonical evidence that yes they do build castles and yes they are at war (Ghaellie Sidhe).

[DanMcSorley]

On 2/2/08, Autarkis <brnetboard@birthright.net> wrote:
> So not to sound antagonistic, but I assume this site disregards source material
> printed for the BR setting in place of a new version based on the direction of the
> BRCS and the source authors of said document?

You do sound antagonistic, so try harder.

> PSoTh gives plenty of examples of how they would deal with war and
> explanations of use of fortresses/strongholds as well as an example of
> historical warlike tendencies (against the goblins, kobolds, dwarves and
> themselves during their civil war.) Also, in Player Secrets of Tournen the general
> of the army is a sidhe who has been in that position for at least 100+ years.
> Brecht campaign setting also has some interesting information as well as the
> Khinasi campaign setting.

You can safely assume that the people discussing this here know the
content of the various books. We`ve been discussing them for
something like 10 years now.

You seem bent out of shape because we`re ignoring "canon". This is
silly. We`re not ignorant of "canon", but we discuss more than that.
Something having been written by the original employees of TSR does
not make it more useful in a game I`m running than a new idea. And
new ideas are fun to discuss- if we only discussed "canon", we would
have run out of things to say years ago.

"Hey guys, what do you think about..."
"Page 32, RoE"

Boy, that would be an interesting discussion.

--
Daniel McSorley

[ryancaveney]

I assume this site disregards source material printed for the BR setting in place of a new version based on the direction of the BRCS and the source authors of said document?

Hell no!


when there is canonical evidence that

Ah, well. That's a very different issue. Since "canon" can be confusing and often self-contradictory, we spend a lot of time talking about how certain parts of it should be improved or replaced.

[AndrewTall]

So not to sound antagonistic, but I assume this site disregards source material printed for the BR setting in place of a new version based on the direction of the BRCS and the source authors of said document?

Not as far as I can see - but some sources - like PSoT certainly have more detractors than others.

As has been noted elsewhere canon frequently is inconsistent - particularly in PS's - the PSoT casually puts a human girl as queen and states that the king meekly marched off to put his head on the Gorgon's block when the awnsheghlien demanded - both incomprehensible in light of canon elsewhere, and that is amongst several other glaring oddities in the book. That means that interpreting canon - and arguing over differing interpretations will always be rife. As long as the debate is held in good nature and people explain why they think this or that I think that the interpretations are always beneficial even when they don't fit my campaign - I'll use them somewhere even just in defining my own take on thnings.


PSoTh gives plenty of examples of how they would deal with war...

As for war the PSoT suggestions are fine - but far from the be all and end all of the matter. As has been noted standard D&D rules basically make armies useless - a high level character of any class wins against any number of L0 foes every time. As a result in building a campaign setting for me also involves reining in magic heavily - and for that matter any other high level abilities. But then BR does always seem to polarise between epic-glory high level action and 'gritty' story-telling styles of play!


I keep seeing statements similar to 'humans build castles' or 'time is how elves wage war' when there is canonical evidence that yes they do build castles and yes they are at war (Ghaellie Sidhe).

The Gheallie Sidhe as written looks much more like bandit raids by malcontents than outright war - and even then is mostly a political force within the elven realms themselves - even Rhuobhe doesn't seem to be conquering lands around him, just harvesting scions and having a gay old time aslaughtering as the whim takes him. This is a long war from war in which one nation decides to devour/dominate another -unless what we are really debating is the meaning of the term war.

[geeman]

At 12:00 PM 2/3/2008, AndrewTall wrote:

>The Gheallie Sidhe as written looks much more like bandit raids by
>malcontents than outright war - and even then is mostly a political
>force within the elven realms themselves - even Rhuobhe doesn`t seem
>to be conquering lands around him, just harvesting scions and having
>a gay old time aslaughtering as the whim takes him. This is a long
>war from war in which one nation decides to devour/dominate another
>-unless what we are really debating is the meaning of the term war.

The GS appear to exist in subtle and not-so-subtle variations in the
various elven lands throughout Cerilia, and sometimes within elven
lands. In one or two places they seem like the de facto military,
for most they appear to be a kind of unregulated, irregular militia
and in others they are little more than raiders. In one or two cases
the GS seem to be a sort of elven knighthood. Most are more
perverse. In all cases they seem to have a slightly different
mystical component too. Some are a sort of Wild Hunt, others are
more sober. For the most part, I think this is a good reflection of
elven individualism.

I was thinking of handling this chapter in my supplement by having a
1-3 paragraph description of the GS in each of the elven
lands. Maybe a few character write ups for those who have none.

Gary

[kgauck]

The Gheallie Sidhe as written looks much more like bandit raids by malcontents than outright war.
The light style of war often is more raiding than anything else. Light forces (light cavalry, archers) don't want to engage main forces. They want to disrupt the population to lower incomes or induce them to leave, and if they encounter other forces, no more than skirmish if they think they have the advantage. Why risk the deaths of elves on these kinds of missions?


This is a long way from war in which one nation decides to devour/dominate another -unless what we are really debating is the meaning of the term war.
War as conquest is really pretty unusual in the span of human experience. Even in Anuire I think its very unusual for war to achieve the aims of devouring or dominating an opponent, even if the forces are designed to be able to do that.

Here is a bit of historiography from the Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World.

One of the many contributions of Hans Delbruck to the history of warfare was to propose that there were two basic forms of warfare, the strategies of annihilation and of exhaustion. Victory Hanson in The Western Way of War argues that the first of these is particularly Western and can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. The idea is now reaching a wide audience through John Keegan's A History of Warfare whose master thesis is to contrast between non-western limited forms of warfare and a Western tradition, derived ultimately from the Greeks, of a face to face battle to the death.
Of course the Cerilian explanation for why humans fight this way should be different. Cerilian humans don't have a Greco-Roman history, and they do have Anduiras and Haelyn. But the notion of a limited form of warfare based on exhaustion for the elves (and the goblins too, BTW) based on raids and strikes, makes sense, and contrasts nicely to a decisive form of warfare based on annihilation through battle for the humans.

The human gods of war, Anduiras, Haelyn, and Cuiraecen provide an explanation for why humans are capable of fighting this way, with its strong reliance on personal courage and honor, with divine support, assistance, and encouragement. The fact that humans are intensive resource consumers (this is my farm, this acre here, that acre over there is not nearly as good for me, it belongs to Bob) provides another explanation. The elves are described as raiders, fighting a guerrilla war against occupation, and lack the ideological template for this kind of war (hey you, sacrifice yourself for the group by charging there). Further this acre and the acre next to it are both as good for elves, so if the one comes easily and the other one comes dearly, take the easy one and we'll get around to the tough one later. So the elves leave the castle alone and attack outlying villages. The humans lay siege to the castle.

I recall this news story from 2004 (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article88661.ece)

OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.

After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.
This is a classical example of a Western force demonstrating its willingness to fight to the death and in so doing, routing a much larger non-Western force. Western history, from Rome to Iraq is full of these kinds of examples. If we look specifically at times and places where there is not also a huge technological disparity (forget the 19th century, technology will be a confounding factor) we can see why the humans ultimately triumph, but also why it takes as long and isn't as decisive as some examples we might otherwise imagine.

Further when we add arcane magic and immortality to the elves, we further reduce the advantage of humans. But I think the point about how both sights fight is clear.

[Rowan]

Your explanations, Kgauck, continue to show how humans can have driven elves back despite elven supremacy in most military engagements.

Geeman, I disagree that elves would use Magic Jar. It's one of the most perverse necromancy spells; unless you are very much changing the concept of elves, they would consider it a heinous crime and foul act to even know the spell, much less use it. Further, it is a very risky spell to use. The 9th level wizard required to cast the spell needs to keep the possessed body within 90 feet of the gem, and the gem needs to remain within 190 feet of the original body. Burying oneself might work, but could also cause additional problems. For instance, would things that would keep you safe like Otiluke's Resilient Sphere or Rope Trick not prevent the soul from returning? At the least, enemy clerics and spellcasters who recognized the spell (through spellcraft) could cast Locate Animals and Plants or some other detection spell, find the elven body, and destroy it. Very risky, and perverse.

Other spells that elves would be likely to employ (with a group of casters) are large strike groups under Expeditious Retreat; large sections of Greased battlefield; causing distractions with Dancing Lights; using Flare and Color Spray right before contact with an enemy, breaking charges or letting the first ranks be cut down quickly; hiding archers at the edges of Obscuring Mist, retreating into them and escaping if charged; Charming commanders; putting sections of the enemy to Sleep (best on mounted units, dropping horses and riders to be trampled and create holes in the important cavalry wedges); Disguising casters as human soldiers; Enlarging allies and Reducing enemies (talk about a morale impairment when you see your buddy made little).

And that's just the 1st level wizard list. I give my elves access to the Druid list, which brings in other elfy spells like Entangle, Faerie Fire, and Produce Flame at 1st level (a few Entangles can leave an entire unit at the mercy of elven archers, like shooting fish in a barrel).

If you figure that at least 20% of elves in combat can use 1st level spells, just those above are pretty devastating. A single volley of Sleep and Color Spray alone from 20 elves could virtually rout a unit.

With their mobility, fighting in skirmish order, and access to spells, it's a very rare event to pull off a successful charge against elves. Scouts are also likely to be pretty ineffective against them, especially in forests, since they would have a hard time surviving, much less identifying the scattered bands and individuals of elves hiding in the forest and ascertaining "unit" numbers.

Of course, higher level spells are more effective, and have some obvious applications. Here are some good picks:
Protection from Arrows, Fog Cloud, Glitterdust, any Summoning spell, Summon Swarm, Web, Detect Thoughts, Daze Monster, Hideous Laughter, Hypnotic Pattern, Invisibility and Greater and Sphere, Mirror Image, any standard Image illusion spells, Pyrotechnics, Whispering Wind, Magic Circle, Sleet Storm, Stinking Coud, Suggestion, Wind Wall, Flame Arrow, Fly, Haste, Slow, Evard's Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, Arcane Eye, Scrying, Locate Creature, Confusion, Crushing Despair, GEases, Hallucinatory Terrain, Illusory Wall, Rainbow Pattern, Mass Reduce Person (or Enlarge), Cloudkill, Wall of Stone (Walls in general), Prying Eyes, Telepathic Bond, Symbol of Sleep (any Symbol spell), Sending, Dream, Nightmare, Mirage Arcana, Seeming, Transmute Mud to Rock and vice versa, Repulsion, Acid Fog, Mass Suggestion, Veil, Control Water, Move Earth. I'll stop here at 6th level.

Druid spells are almost better: any Nature's Ally, Flaming Sphere, Gust of Wind, Soften Earth and Stone, Tree Shape, Warp Wood, Call Lightning and Lightning Storm, Contagion, Meld into Stone, Plant Growth, Quench, Snare, Spike Growth, Speak with Plants (and animals), Air Walk, Flame Strike, Giant Vermin, Ice Storm, Spike Stones, Animal Growth, Awaken, Control Winds, Insect Plague, Tree Stride, Wall of Thorns, Fire Seeds, Repel Wood, Stone Tell, Transport Via Plants. Again stopping at 6th level.

[geeman]

At 10:22 PM 2/3/2008, Rowan wrote:

>Geeman, I disagree that elves would use Magic Jar. It`s one of the
>most perverse necromancy spells; unless you are very much changing
>the concept of elves, they would consider it a heinous crime and
>foul act to even know the spell, much less use it. Further, it is a
>very risky spell to use. The 9th level wizard required to cast the
>spell needs to keep the possessed body within 90 feet of the gem,
>and the gem needs to remain within 190 feet of the original
>body. Burying oneself might work, but could also cause additional
>problems. For instance, would things that would keep you safe like
>Otiluke`s Resilient Sphere or Rope Trick not prevent the soul from
>returning? At the least, enemy clerics and spellcasters who
>recognized the spell (through spellcraft) could cast Locate Animals
>and Plants or some other detection spell, find the elven body, and
>destroy it. Very risky, and perverse.

I agree that most elves would find such a tactic both risky and
perverse, but doesn`t this show us rather at what extremity elves
would be at to employ that spell rather than that they wouldn`t use
it at all? Elves do shun necromancy, and those who use it "risk
censure of his peers and ostracism from the community" but that`s not
the same as a crime. Only the Khinasi actually make necromancy a
crime, punishable by death. It is also a risk, but I think that`s
again shows us that they`d use the spell only in extreme
circumstances rather than not at all. That said, any 9th level
wizard who can`t hide his comatose body for a period of time and
escape from a unit of soldiers--assuming he has no aid from other
elves--is a pretty sad magic user.... (The spell mentions
specifically how it can be barred, and I don`t think Otiluike`s
Resilient Sphere or Rope Trick do it. At least, it doesn`t read that
way from the MJ spell description, so in the absence of another
reference I`d say no.)

Of course, there are also the occasional elf who exemplify this
extremity and the elven willingness to go that route. Sideath leaps
to mind.... The elven repudiation of necromancy is one of those
important, but flavourful aspects of the original materials, meaning
that it should be taken seriously, but it`s not an absolute.

Thanks for the lists of spells that`d have adventure level
effects. That`ll save me quite a bit of time hunting around.

Gary

[kgauck]

There is going to be some difference based on what various campaigns look like. I think the way one might proceed is to imagine various typical units or groups and then ask, "what can they do?"

If you have a group of 23 elves like a squad described in Heroes of Battle, you have 20 Ranger 1, 2 Ranger 3, and a Wizard 4.

But given that Cerilian elves are immortal, not just long lived, I wonder where you would find all these 1st level elves.

So another group might be the elite guards, which (in the same numbers) would be 10 Ranger 2, 10 Wizard 4, and a Wizard 5.

This would include 10 Ranger 2's who look like:
hp 14; Init +3; Spd 30 ft; AC 16; touch 13; flat-footed 13; Base Attack +2; Grp +2; Atk +7 ranged (1d8/x3, masterwork longbow); Full Atk +5/+5 ranged (1d8/x3, masterwork longbow); SA favored enemy humans +2; SQ elf traits, low light vision, wild empathy, +1 (-3 magical beasts); SV Fort +4, Ref +6, Will +1; Weapon Focus Longbow, Rapid Shot.

That's a pretty good archer for a CR 2 guy, but I have some problems with him. Are there really armies full of elves with an 8 Cha and a 13 Con? This guy supposedly has Str 10, Dex 16, Con 13, Int 13, Wis 12, Cha 8.

PHB elves have a +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution, so these elves had an at start 15 Con and an 8 Cha. I'll let Ryan calculate how "typical" this is, but putting aside an additional +2 Cha -2 Str, I'd almost want to see these reversed.

Or, I might start with the base elf in the Monster Manual and then adjust with the racial adjustments. This gives me:
Str 8, Dex 13, Con 8, Int 11, Wis 11, Cha 13
this strikes me as a better guide to standard soldiers, and save the standard array for officers.

My new 10 Ranger 2's would look like:
hp 10; Init +1; Spd 30 ft; AC 14; touch 11; flat-footed 13; Base Attack +2; Grp +1; Atk +5 ranged (1d8/x3, masterwork longbow); Full Atk +3/+3 ranged (1d8/x3, masterwork longbow); SA favored enemy humans +2; SQ elf traits, low light vision, wild empathy, +1 (-3 magical beasts); SV Fort +2, Ref +4, Will +0; Weapon Focus Longbow, Rapid Shot.

That's a little less stunning, but I think a lot more believable.

The other 10 guys are Wizard 4's. These guys have something like 10 hp's. Its generally argued that there is a significant jump in magic when you can start casting 3rd level spells, and these guys don't. Looking at Rowan's suggestions, we could cast sleep three times per wizard, or 30 times. Lets say they want to hold back 6 Grease spells, and 4 obscuring mist, and we'll save 2nd level spells from consideration. As long as they don't want any expeditious retreats for themselves (I recommend potions for this anyway) that leaves them 20 sleep spells. Sleep requires being just outside of the standard range of archers (unless they're Rjurik) since most archers use shortbows. This is even less of a problem if you are trying to sleep infantry so let's assume 2 range increments for the wizards.

So lets assume 10 human archers, warrior 1's, are going to shoot at our 10 elf wizards with shortbows at 2 range increments, while the wizards target up to 20 human infantry, also a warrior 1. Sleep invokes a Will save, Just as I did for elves, all human ability scores are 10 or 11, so no bonuses. Anuireans get a +1 to Will saves. But let's just keep that in mind, and not assume Anuireans. Human warrior 1's have a will save of +0, so one through thirteen pass out, and 14 through 20 say, "oh my!" They sleep for 4 minutes, which is only useful if there is an attack going forward to that position. Assume some goblins. The elf wizards are spent, except for their 6 grease and 4 obscuring mists, designed to protect the archers, and their 2nd level spells. The 10 human archers have a +2 ranged attack (+1 BAB, weapon focus shortbow) against the elf who have an AC of 13 and 16 hp (using DMG and a 13 Con). That gives the archers a 35% chance to hit, compared to the 65% chance of spell effect. The human archers get multiple shots (as many as they have arrows) but are also dealing with the elf archers. Unless the goblin attack gets through the human defenders to the sleeping infantry, while they sleep, the wizards are really just there to cast some grease and obscuring mist to protect the elf archers, plus whatever 2nd level spells they have prepared. 10 4th level wizards take out 13 1st level warriors for 4 minutes. It could certainly be tactically decisive. It could also have no effect on the battle at all. It all depends on getting to those sleeping infantry and inflicting a coup de grace.

As for charming leaders (verb, not adjective), that seems dubious to me. Unless you mean very low ranking leaders, I expect they are nobles, and nobles get the better Will save. Also, if used during battle, there is a +5 save bonus. A 4th level noble gets a +4 will save bonus, and we're already up to +9. A charm from a 4th level wizard casting a 1st level spell with a 15 Int, is a 13 DC. If we assume a 10 Wis for the noble, that 80% to save. Of course the 20% gets you a guy on the other side who regards you as an ally, though you cannot communicate, for four hours. That's an entire battle. Of course you have the problem that your charmed guy has to be subtle, or other leaders will step in. Without communication, who knows what he'll do. Tell his soldiers to switch sides? Run to his friends the elves? That won't work. If he just holds back, that's probably the most effective thing he can do. However, you might just be creating a reserve for a higher leader to come by and send into battle.

Sneak approaches which charm leaders might be more effective, since you bypass the +5 for threats, but even so, leaders are never alone so communication is still out unless you change self into a courier to give bogus instructions to the commander. However, keep in mind that "any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the charmed person breaks the spell." Would a volley of arrows constitute a threat? I would imagine so. So you almost need to charm a leader before battle and convince him (and his squire, secretary, and herald) that his commander wants him to clear the south woods of any secreted elf scouts, when the battle is in the north and there are no elves where you are sending this guy, again removing what, 10 warrior 1's, 2 fighter 2's and our noble 4 from the battle? And charm person only makes you friendly, it doesn't make his other friends unfriendly, so what happens when he gets stopped wandering to the south woods by another friend who claims they have already checked these woods? Is he back in play?

Then of course we have the question of limited spell casting. Since I require that half of all character levels can't be spellcasting, suddenly these wizard 4's are noble 2/wizard 2 or fighter 2/wizard 2, or something along those lines. That drops us to a third of the spells castable by our Wizard 4's and no 2nd level spells to consider.

[Rowan]

This all depends on how far you want to take D&D player rules into combat and demographics.

For instance, if you want to really stick with the rules, then 4 minutes is plenty long, especially if you're talking about a skirmish battle between two sides each with 20 people, or even 100. Keeping it scaled at 20, remember that Sleep will drop up to 4 1st level human warriors, and it will preferentially drop the warriors before dropping the higher level commanders. That means that your 10 wizards with 20 sleep spells employed against a unit of 20 humans is likely going to drop every single one of them, or at least only leave 4-6 leaders, who will be pincushioned in short order.

Further, if elves are fighting a traditional pitched battle, this may not work, but in their skirmish style, especially if you stick with D&D round-by-round rules, that battle's going to be over in less than 4 minutes. Elves are most likely going to get a surprise round first strike, hit hard and fade fast. In round by round rules, it's going to be over in less than 1 minute. So there's a big question in just how closely we want to follow D&D combat rules here for warfare, even skirmish warfare.

I agree with your assessment of the 1st level Charm spell--it must be used outside of combat. It's more for information gathering purposes, as I see it, unless it is Heightened and/or Extended. Keep in mind also that the elves can produce plenty of scrolls, some potions, and a few wands.

As for levels, I referred in an earlier post to what I thought was a reasonable level difference for elves: give them PC class levels while humans have NPC class levels, and assume they are all typically 3 levels higher than humans (until you start getting into children and perhaps levies). By that assessment, common elven combos to offset the 1st level human warriors are Bard/Ranger, Bard/Wizard, Bard/Fighter, Ranger/Wizard, Noble/Wizard, Noble/Bard, Noble/Ranger, with 1-3 levels in each. That would make almost every elf capable of casting a couple of 1st level spells, or at least 0-level. Leaders would be higher level.

Another note: I think I've seen material referencing the feared "Anuirean Longbowmen." Are you sure they use shortbows? I thought Anuireans were like later middle ages Welsh and English employing longbows. Also, your 4th level wizards are proficient longbowmen as well, significantly better than your standard human archers, with BAB +2 and higher dex.

[irdeggman]

But given that Cerilian elves are immortal, not just long lived, I wonder where you would find all these 1st level elves.


Well "age" does not corespond to "levels" in D&D, despite what "logic" dictates. :)

It is just another one of those "abstractions" that makes up D&D.

[ryancaveney]

I disagree that elves would use Magic Jar. It's one of the most perverse necromancy spells; unless you are very much changing the concept of elves, they would consider it a heinous crime and foul act to even know the spell, much less use it.

I don't see it that way. The problem is one of terminology. On one hand, there is necromancy the school, which in 2e includes all magic for healing and resurrecting, as well as a number of things for defending against the undead. On the other hand, there is necromancy the act of magically making nice with the undead. I think both elves and Khinasi can safely abhor the latter without cutting themselves off from the former. Magic Jar is one of those things which got put in the necromancy school without having anything at all to do with the undead, so I think it's not prohibited either by elven custom or the Five Oaths of the Temple of Rilni, any more than Geas is.

[Rowan]

How is tearing someone's soul free from their body and trapping it in a gem while you traipse around in possession of their skin not necromantic?

You're separating the life force from a body, essentially leaving it just an organic shell that you use to work your will. It's far more invasive even than Domination, and I see it as akin to that whole argument in the undead thread that elves are incredibly offended by the undead because a spirit is kept animating a body. For the elf to become the spirit animating someone else's body while they leave their own unnaturally untethered to a soul seems to personally participate in the same sort of heinous violence against the natural order that is inherent to undeath.

I think not only every human religion under a good god would warrant such an act as punishable by death, and I think every Sidhelien realm that maintains any connection to traditional culture would likewise find it one of the few crimes worthy of execution of another elf.

[kgauck]

Well "age" does not corespond to "levels" in D&D, despite what "logic" dictates.

Sorry, if it doesn't make sense, I might as well play minesweeper.

[kgauck]

Another note: I think I've seen material referencing the feared "Anuirean Longbowmen." Are you sure they use shortbows? I thought Anuireans were like later middle ages Welsh and English employing longbows.

Not if you go by the warcards. Anuireans have some of the worst ranged attacks of any nation. The Rjurik and elves have the best ranged attacks. Plus the Anuirean warcards show shortbows. I think the Anuireans at war are much more like the French, good knights/ poor archers, than they are like the English. The Rjurik seem to be the feared longbowmen, and have the warcards to put that into practice. Its because of this, that one change I made to the standard martial weapons was to make compound bows exotic weapons. The Rjurik and elves get compound longbows as martial, and the Khinasi and elves get compound shortbows as martial. The Anuireans get the bastard sword as martial. This helps match up characters to the warcards.


For instance, if you want to really stick with the rules, then 4 minutes is plenty long, especially if you're talking about a skirmish
Combat is normally long periods of anticipation punctuated by short bursts of intense combat. The question is, and it will vary, do the elf force attackers break through to the sleepers in their push. The humans are not facing elves for the first time, so it seems they have useful counter-measures. The best and easiest counter for this attack is to have a mobile reserve ready to ride in to fill the missing soldiers.

So assume that the goblins advance to within 75 feet where the goblin archers let loose. The elves can stay back at 90-100 or so feet to stay within the sweet spot. The wizards cast sleep and the elves fire their arrows. Once the humans pass out, their comrades can slap them as a standard action (and frankly what else does infantry have to do when the enemy is 75 feet away) to wake them. Some horse would rise in to assist the infantry, and I don’t see much effect in a main battle where other infantry could just close the gap, or cavalry could ride to aid.

Where such an attack could be decisive is in scouting parties, foraging parties, or other small unit actions. However, such duties might be given to more powerful veterans, where these risks are lessened. Its also likely that like any heavy force fighting a lighter force, they just spend more time in a solid group, avoiding sending out detachments.

Of course this means they don’t know where the enemy is. The Austrians had both Hungarian Hussars and their own Grenzer infantry, both light troops, and Frederich the Great could not scout or forage, and during his invasion of Bohemia wrote to his brother that he didn’t know if the Austrians were over the next hill or in Beijing, because he couldn’t scout for fear of encountering the superior light troops of the Austrians.


Especially if you stick with D&D round-by-round rules, that battle's going to be over in less than 4 minutes. […] So there's a big question in just how closely we want to follow D&D combat rules here for warfare, even skirmish warfare.

Four minutes is very long for a single engagement, but engagements don’t often happen one right after the other. If the elves get through those left awake and coup de grace the sleepers, it’s a great victory, but if they fail, then they won’t get a bunch more chances. Maybe a second chance, maybe not. This is a classic first strike strategy, but if it doesn’t win, they need to go home and try again tomorrow. Well suited to hit and run raids, poorly suited to a main battle.

One good strategy no matter who you are, is to get the other guy to “shoot his wad” early. This phrase comes from the days of muskets, when powder and ball were wadded up together and in a bag and shoved down the barrel of the musket. Who ever shot first put themselves at a disadvantage because they other guys could close, and then fire, while you reloaded. So humans would probably try and get the elves to cast their spells then fall back and wait for the duration to expire. Since spells are usable a very limited number of times per day, and you can swing a sword all day long, it makes sense to get the elves to expend spells in sub-optimal circumstances. Then fall back and wait out the duration.

When you can’t do that, the best plan B is to have a fast moving reserve to fill the gaps. Outwait the spell duration, and then reset the battle line.


Keep in mind also that the elves can produce plenty of scrolls, some potions, and a few wands.
I’ve not run elf battles, but I’ve run plenty of Rjurik battles. I calculated a “recharge rate” of cure light wounds “potions” (I actually used runes instead of potions for Rjurik and glyphs instead of scrolls) for a holding, based on Magical Medieval Society. The core rules assume 1-3% of the population is spellcasters (including Adepts) for most groups. Magical Medieval Society assumes that 5% of the taxable income of a realm might be magic instead. Given that the Oaken Grove is the source of magic, you could increase that to 10%. So I’d take 10% of the Grove’s income and figure out what magic that would be. If you took 5% of the landed domain’s income and made it magical, and 5% of the guild income, and 10% of the priestly domain and made it magical, that’s a lot of divine magic to put at the disposal of a state where all the holdings work together. For Baruk-Azhik, that makes plenty of sense. For Stjordvik, I only really consider land and temple.

So suppose a province like Arvaald is considered. It’s a level 2 province with a level 2 temple holding. Assuming a population of 40,000 (ten times higher than the rulebook) that’s a manorial income of 858,666 gp, of which 5% is 42,933 and a cure light wounds potion costs 200 gp, so 215 cure light wounds potions are available to Arvaald over the course of a year. That’s about the same as a single unit of men with a cure light wounds a piece. If the eorl wants a Stone of Alarm, that five fewer potions. Based on the core rules, a wand of cure light wounds would cost 750 gp, but any sensible lord with a magic budget of nearly 43K gp would invest heavily in wands of cure light instead. So I increase multi-use magic items by a factor of ten. This makes a wand of cure light wounds costs 7,500 gp or 37.5 times as much as a single use potion. That’s still cheaper than 50 potions of cure light wounds (10,000 gp), but much less ubiquitous. Since the eorl doesn’t employ spellcasters, he takes nearly all of his magical tribute in cure light wounds potions (runes), plus some occasional magical items for personal defense of the eorl (who doesn’t want a rune of neutralize poison?)

The elves would presumably be the same, 5% for land domains, and 10% for source domains, but I would probably want to calculate source domains as if they were temple domains to determine the magic the elves have available at the realm level.

Hmm, level 6 province with a 9 source level, that’s 386,400 gp for a magic budget for land, and 1,738,800 for sources. That’s a lot of scrolls of sleep (at 100 gp a scroll).

[kgauck]

I think Magic Jar is a form of possession. Bad mana there.

[irdeggman]

Sorry, if it doesn't make sense, I might as well play minesweeper.


True enough - but don't use D&D mechanics as reference then. :)

[ryancaveney]

How is tearing someone's soul free from their body and trapping it in a gem while you traipse around in possession of their skin not necromantic?

Because no one's (un)dead. Yeah, the spell is surely a really nasty thing to do to someone, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with "raising or communicating with the dead," which is the only part of the broader school of necromancy which the Khinasi Five Oaths actually prohibit. I think the elven restriction is similar.


For the elf to become the spirit animating someone else's body while they leave their own unnaturally untethered to a soul seems to personally participate in the same sort of heinous violence against the natural order that is inherent to undeath.

On the contrary, I think elves are only slightly-embodied spirits to begin with, so it is perfectly natural for them to transfer their consciousness to another body for a while, especially if that body's previous inhabitant was about to use it to do something to harm the elves or the forests under their protection.


I think not only every human religion under a good god would warrant such an act as punishable by death, and I think every Sidhelien realm that maintains any connection to traditional culture would likewise find it one of the few crimes worthy of execution of another elf.

I think temples of Haelyn and Avani would practice it officially as a form of punishment for sufficiently famous evildoers. Take over the body, and make the meat puppet publicly recant its sins and atone for them in some suitably grisly way in order to make a better impression on the commons than mere execution would. I think they are Lawful, not nice. Elves would be extremely upset about anyone who did it to another elf, but I think they wouldn't care at all if it were done to a lesser creature, like a human or goblin.

[ryancaveney]

True enough - but don't use D&D mechanics as reference then. :)

The point is that it would be nice to use a suitable variant of the D&D mechanics to help represent a world which does make sense. In such a world, level would be strongly correlated with age, since experience is strongly correlated with age and level is a direct function of experience. Therefore, in any game world where I'm using any part of D&D or any other system which uses the concept of character levels (RoleMaster, for instance), I use a table which translates age to average character level for creating NPCs.

[kgauck]

True enough - but don't use D&D mechanics as reference then. :)

How exactly do we get an old man who never got better at anything? Not his craft, he should have gotten better as expert or commoner. He learned nothing about local history, his profession, or couldn't bargain any better in the market than he could when he was a teenager.

Its one thing to impose a brutal Con penalty as non-elite characters grow old until a fall off a chair is fatal, but to deny that characters gain skills makes no sense in a game where experience begets abilities makes no sense.


Therefore, in any game world where I'm using any part of D&D or any other system which uses the concept of character levels (RoleMaster, for instance), I use a table which translates age to average character level for creating NPCs.

I figure that at a minimum, a human gains a level every five years from 15 years old to 35 and that at 4th level, you've mastered basic skills to the point where doing the same things stop accruing experience. Characters who do more challenging things can expect to exceed this rate and this ceiling. There is no way that the old father of a peasant family is as unskilled as his teenage grandson. The boy may be quicker and more durable, but that's just a matter of imposing Dex and Con penalties for age, and I'd also provide Int and Wis bonuses for age. Con and Wis more than Dex and Int.

[Rowan]

Kgauck, thanks for the update on Anuirean shortbows.

If the elves are using Sleep, I don't there are are likely to be anyone left in a unit that gets attacked to wake them up. Using your example, 1 standard unit of elven archers (200 elves, but 100 spellcasters capable of casting Sleep if we extrapolate from your smaller band) vs. 1 unit of human infantry and 1 unit of cavalry (400 humans) can put darn near everyone to sleep (if each caster can cast sleep twice, even without scrolls, we've got 200 sleep spells capable of putting to sleep 800 standard human warriors)/

Then they snipe off the commanders and lucky ones who don't fall asleep with merely 1 or 2 targeted volleys of arrows. Expeditious Retreat can lead a quick charge in to coup de grace if necessary. Thus it would take more than 2 human units for each elven one just to resist this strategy. With scrolls, or making nearly all elves have Bard or Wizard levels, or breaking the stupid D&D vancian magic system, the ratio gets even harder to beat.

Other very effective 1st level spell techniques are breaking charges or blasting through front ranks just before engaging in melee with Color Sprays--wouldn't take very many. Also, a few Entangles pin units down, leaving them at elven mercy.

Ryan, your Cerilia seems like a very dark place, where you've revised it to basically eliminate every beacon or major leaning toward Good alignments. Not my cup of tea (it would seem to me futile to play in a world with no sense of Good), but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

I do use an easy table for determining age/levels. For humans, every decade of age gives 1 level, starting at 15. For dwarves, every 30 years. For elves, every 100, but slowing down after 800 years. I also have an Elite modifier. For these people, a small proportion of the population (10-20% depending on my mood), levels can be double normal for age. And then, of course, you have the special characters and very driven folks who break those rules--those are PC's and special NPC's as required by the story.

[kgauck]

1 standard unit of elven archers vs. 1 unit of human infantry and 1 unit of cavalry (400 humans) can put darn near everyone to sleep

I agree, at which point the setting suddenly doesn't make any sense. If this is the right way to structure the problem, Cerilia is all Sidhe with a few dwarves in some mountains and humans are slaves to the beastmen of Aduria. But that's not the end state, so the typical battle must not be 200 elf fighter 2/wizard 2 (or varients) against 400 warrior 1's (plus leaders). Since I'm not keen on an army of elf warrior 1's, I'm going instead with 40 or 50 elves, summoned or allied forces numbering perhaps 150 animals, plants, or whatever. The humans have brought along 20 mid to high level divine casters, and have 30-40 mid to high level leaders (nobles and noble/fighters).

However, the elves don't want to fight this way, so they look for a chance for 20 of their elves and 20 allies to sneak up on 50 humans foraging, scouting, or otherwise alone. If the humans know what they're doing, the minimize these opportunities.

[Rowan]

Well, humans still have the advantage as you've outlined in various ways with large, dense formations outnumbering the elves, because the elves just can't fight a pitched battle against humans, particularly in the open. So I can see how elves still lose the plains to humans, and how over long periods of time with human settlement and persistence that even humans such as in Boeruine can take forests from elves. Still, elves are almost unbeatable in the forests, as it should be.

[kgauck]

I looked up the CR calculations and 50 4th level characters is still pretty close to 400 1st level characters. Whether you try and CR such large numbers, 400 1st level warriors is around a CR 16+, and 50 4th level characters is about CR 15. Given an 8:1 ration, 1 4th level character is a CR 4, 8 warrior 1's CR 5. I'd need to game it out several times because I suspect the human leaders might be the margin the gets the expected results.

[irdeggman]

How exactly do we get an old man who never got better at anything? Not his craft, he should have gotten better as expert or commoner. He learned nothing about local history, his profession, or couldn't bargain any better in the market than he could when he was a teenager.


Simple - in D&D (note I said D&D) you can't.

Character levels are based on experience.

Experience is based on overcoming challenges (DMG pg 36 & , PHB pg 58) not simply on getting older.




experience points (XP): A numerical measure of a character’s personal achievement and advancement. Characters earn experience points by defeating opponents and by overcoming challenges. At the end of each adventure, the DM assigns experience to the characters based on what they have accomplished. Characters continue to accumulate experience points throughout their adventuring careers, gaining new levels in their character classes at certain experience totals.





Whether you like it or not has no bearing on the game mechanics being used.


Sorry, but it is simply a fact. "Logic" has relatively little to do with D&D, especially D&D combat - which is by design extremly vague.


Now if you want to use something different - then switch to a completely different game mechanic, but make sure that you say you are using a different mechanic during site-based discussion, since the assumption is that the default mechanic is D&D (the most current version).


There are many other game systems that do not use a level-based mechanic. Those sound like the ones you want to really use, but using "levels" is one of the white elephants of D&D that is going to remain in place even in 4th ed.


Now if you want to say that the character in question has overcome X number of challenges, that is proper - but overcoming challenges is not age dependent. If it was, than adventurers should in general be much "older".


I have great trouble with people saying that because elves are ageless they should be higher level. If the logic was more along the lines of they have had a life of strife and encounters with X creatures was common they should be Y level - is fine. But the character in question could have been nothing but a "log" and actually done nothing of note nor left the "farm" at all. Note that the DM does have the ability to define "challenges" so that system can be used, they are just not mutally dependent.

[Rowan]

Irdeggman, I don't understand why you have a problem applying the D&D concept of levels to the wider circle of a demographic, realm-level game situation.

D&D classes and the explanation of experience were designed for PC-level play. BR takes D&D a step further and thus requires adjustment. Note that there have been MANY D&D supplements through the years, Dragon articles, and even the 4th edition DMG that arbitrarily apply significant class level mechanics demographically. For instance, there at least used to be a general rule that a 20th level character is 1 in a million, and that for every character of a given level, there were twice that many in the level below him. The DMG has a different formula for finding levels of people in towns and so forth. So there are already abstractions about levels in D&D that don't rely on the very limited Experience description you quoted that is only intended to focus on PCs.

There should be no problem whatsoever or conflict with the rules, then, when coming up with any other abstraction to account for character levels among NPCs. D&D DOES try to approach things logically, only sacrificing logic where it is deemed necessary to improve game play. Since the class system includes such things as skill at arms and skill points, it is obvious that training and time spent at something (age) play a role. Apprentices at a trade did not often assume journeyman status until they were into adulthood, and master status until much later. Similarly among the clergy and knighthood.

[ConjurerDragon]

ryancaveney schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ...
> Because no one`s (un)dead.
A soul without a body and a body without a soul animated by another
one?s soul/spirit?
Stealing souls and imprisoning them into a magic jar is in my opinion
clearly something associated with evil Necromancers - or at least
demons/devils.

> ...
> I think temples of Haelyn and Avani would practice it officially as a form of punishment for sufficiently famous evildoers.
That?s what "Mark of Justice" or "... of Evil" are for. And branding and
banishment are already mentioned in the published material as used
punishments in the khir-aften-el-Arrasi.

> Take over the body, and make the meat puppet publicly recant its sins and atone for them in some suitably grisly way in order to make a better impression on the commons than mere execution would. I think they are Lawful, not nice. Elves would be extremely upset about anyone who did it to another elf, but I think they wouldn`t care at all if it were done to a lesser creature, like a human or goblin.
>
Atonement can only be valid if the person that commited the crime
actually repents - using the body of a magic jar victim as some sort of
puppet master to make it *appear* as if it is repenting is
contraproductive as neither the criminal actually atones, nor the gods
can forgive the deed he did because he never actually atones himself.
That sounds like a wizard trying to fool his own god in seeing a
criminal atone while the wizard?s soul himself controls the criminals body.

[irdeggman]

Irdeggman, I don't understand why you have a problem applying the D&D concept of levels to the wider circle of a demographic, realm-level game situation.

D&D classes and the explanation of experience were designed for PC-level play. BR takes D&D a step further and thus requires adjustment. Note that there have been MANY D&D supplements through the years, Dragon articles, and even the 4th edition DMG that arbitrarily apply significant class level mechanics demographically. For instance, there at least used to be a general rule that a 20th level character is 1 in a million, and that for every character of a given level, there were twice that many in the level below him. The DMG has a different formula for finding levels of people in towns and so forth. So there are already abstractions about levels in D&D that don't rely on the very limited Experience description you quoted that is only intended to focus on PCs.

There should be no problem whatsoever or conflict with the rules, then, when coming up with any other abstraction to account for character levels among NPCs. D&D DOES try to approach things logically, only sacrificing logic where it is deemed necessary to improve game play. Since the class system includes such things as skill at arms and skill points, it is obvious that training and time spent at something (age) play a role. Apprentices at a trade did not often assume journeyman status until they were into adulthood, and master status until much later. Similarly among the clergy and knighthood.

Because "age" has nothing to do with it. That is all I am saying.

If "age" is directly tied to character level - then shouldn't Michael Roele be of much lower level than other "regents" becasue he died at 35? And yet his was an expansionistic regency, frought with great battles and such.

How about Arthur? Or Robin Hood? Or any of the legendary heroes of literature. Their "equivalent level" in D&D terms is measured by what they did not by their age.

As I said if the logic being applied is that they have had an adventurous life and thus have had to overcome challenges that effectively gained them levels I do not have a problem. But merely stating becasue you are older corresponds to character levels in D&D is flat out wrong and there is no equivalent D&D mechanic, nor was there, that equates the two.

In the 2nd ed Book of Elves it suggested granting elves a non weapon proficiency in some sort of art-related proficiency (like dancing or singing) to reflect their "upbringing" - but it never, never suggested that merely becasue they were "older" that they gained more levels.

[irdeggman]

Irdeggman, I don't understand why you have a problem applying the D&D concept of levels to the wider circle of a demographic, realm-level game situation.

D&D classes and the explanation of experience were designed for PC-level play. BR takes D&D a step further and thus requires adjustment. Note that there have been MANY D&D supplements through the years, Dragon articles, and even the 4th edition DMG that arbitrarily apply significant class level mechanics demographically. For instance, there at least used to be a general rule that a 20th level character is 1 in a million, and that for every character of a given level, there were twice that many in the level below him. The DMG has a different formula for finding levels of people in towns and so forth. So there are already abstractions about levels in D&D that don't rely on the very limited Experience description you quoted that is only intended to focus on PCs.

Those demographics have nothing to do with age but with relative "experience". They are comleted removed from age makes you better concepts.

3.5 D&D experience is measured by overcoming "challenges". The DM is free to assign what is and what isn't (or was and wasn't) a challenge - but again they have nothing to do with age.


There should be no problem whatsoever or conflict with the rules, then, when coming up with any other abstraction to account for character levels among NPCs. D&D DOES try to approach things logically, only sacrificing logic where it is deemed necessary to improve game play. Since the class system includes such things as skill at arms and skill points, it is obvious that training and time spent at something (age) play a role. Apprentices at a trade did not often assume journeyman status until they were into adulthood, and master status until much later. Similarly among the clergy and knighthood.

Because it will have a direct corespondance to PC levels.

If a PC regent has a troup with 2-3rd level warriors then why is he only a 1st level character? {That is the arguement you lead to with line of usage}

There are present rules for apprenticeships already and again they have nothing to do with age.

The closest thing you can find is the starting ages for classes. But note that this is for initial level and not even for multiclassing or subsequent levels.

[geeman]

Age is related to experience. The assumption that people will live
their lives without even accidentally engaging in the kinds of
challenges for which they will earn experience is very difficult to
believe. A system that attributes experience to age is simply taking
an "average" of such incidental and accidental
challenges. Experience gained from adventuring, of course, will pile
up much more quickly, but to look at the experience award system and
see challenges as only the results of standard adventuring is a very
narrow interpretation.

It *is* remotely possible for characters to live long periods of time
without many such encounters, but not having them at all? Highly
doubtful. I would avoid a system that automatically gave levels to
characters based on their age. Rather, it makes more sense to me to
do something like consider the activity of the character in question
and then. Someone who has spent twelve years in the army is more
likely to have done things that gained him experience than someone
who spent twelve years on a farm or factory. It makes more sense to
me to assess years of activity rather than just years and then use
that as a modifier to determine the _possibility_ of gaining
levels. Let`s say every year spent in some sort of active profession
gives a character +1. Every other year spent doing something
relatively active gives him the same modifier, and every four years
spent "inactive" gives him +1. Roll a d20 and if the results are
greater than 10 the character is 2nd level, greater than 15 for 3rd,
20 for 4th, etc. Those numbers might be tweaked a bit here and there
to determine how far the character might go.

The problem is that experience awards start to taper off at 4th
level, and immortal elves make for some very long years. The maximum
modifier for years might be +20 or something since eventually
characters will stop having encounters in "daily life" that are the
sort for which they`ll earn experience given their character level.

Gary

[Rowan]

Irdeggman, I don't think anyone is suggesting that age be the strict determinant of level, so there's obviously no problem with younger folk having higher levels based on what they've done in their lives. Rather, the point the rest of us are making is that age can be used as a guide for relatively how much experience people have accumulated on average. The reason elves are often favored for these higher levels is simply because they by nature are living much more adventurous lives than humans, if only for the simple implication that very few elves are living on farms their entire lives like the vast majority of humans. No, elves are much more likely to wander, try new skills, take part in skirmishes and conflict over the centuries of their lives. The elven pattern of life for almost all of them seems to match that of human nobles, knights, warriors, wizards, and general adventurers. That creates a strong argument that, with relatively much more time for these pursuits, elves tend to be much higher level.

Age is merely a measure of time over which the experiences that you acknowledge lead to level advancement can occur. So it makes sense to extrapolate this demographically.

[irdeggman]

Age is related to experience. The assumption that people will live
their lives without even accidentally engaging in the kinds of
challenges for which they will earn experience is very difficult to
believe. A system that attributes experience to age is simply taking
an "average" of such incidental and accidental
challenges. Experience gained from adventuring, of course, will pile
up much more quickly, but to look at the experience award system and
see challenges as only the results of standard adventuring is a very
narrow interpretation.

It *is* remotely possible for characters to live long periods of time
without many such encounters, but not having them at all? Highly
doubtful. I would avoid a system that automatically gave levels to
characters based on their age. Rather, it makes more sense to me to
do something like consider the activity of the character in question
and then. Someone who has spent twelve years in the army is more
likely to have done things that gained him experience than someone
who spent twelve years on a farm or factory. It makes more sense to
me to assess years of activity rather than just years and then use
that as a modifier to determine the _possibility_ of gaining
levels. Let`s say every year spent in some sort of active profession
gives a character +1. Every other year spent doing something
relatively active gives him the same modifier, and every four years
spent "inactive" gives him +1. Roll a d20 and if the results are
greater than 10 the character is 2nd level, greater than 15 for 3rd,
20 for 4th, etc. Those numbers might be tweaked a bit here and there
to determine how far the character might go.

The problem is that experience awards start to taper off at 4th
level, and immortal elves make for some very long years. The maximum
modifier for years might be +20 or something since eventually
characters will stop having encounters in "daily life" that are the
sort for which they`ll earn experience given their character level.

Gary

Other than being completly wrong in D&D ruleset. . .

You (and the others) are using real world comparisons to an abstract game (D&D).

So, if I'm playing an elf PC and another player is playing an Anuriean PC - shouldn't my PC, using this reasoning, be several levels "higher"?

Or a dwarf when compared to a human?

Or an elf compared to a dwarf?


No the "logic" being applied has no basis in the D&D game set (only in real life) and there is "false" when talking about D&D rules and mechanics.

As I pointed out previously - Experience (in D&D) is based on overcoming challenges (DMG pg 36 & PHB pg 58) not simply on getting older.


Specifically (DMG pg 36):

"Expereince points are a measure of accomplishments. They represent training and learning by doing, and they illustrate the fact that, in fantasy, the more expereinced a character is, the the more power he or she posseses. Expereince points allow a character to gain levels. Gaining levels heightens the fun and excitement."

"When a party defeats monsters, you award the characters expereince points.. . . . .

You must decide when a challenge has been overcome."

DMG pg 38

"Challenge Ratings for Traps"

DMG pg 40

"CRs for Noncombat Encounters

You could award experience points for solving a puzzle, learning a secret, convincing an NPC to bring help, or escaping from a powerful foe."

DMG pg 40

"Mission Goals"

"Roleplaying Awards"

DMG pg 41
"Story Awards and Standard Awards"

Nope, nothing listing for "getting older".

DMG pg 107

"NPCs gain experience points the same way that PCs do. Not being adventurers, however, their opportunities are more limited. Therefore, a commoner is likely to progress in levels very slowly."


So please show me where in any WotC 3.5 product they equate "age" to "experience" in relationship to levels.

[ConjurerDragon]

irdeggman schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> irdeggman wrote:
> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> How exactly do we get an old man who never got better at anything? Not his craft, he should have gotten better as expert or commoner. He learned nothing about local history, his profession, or couldn`t bargain any better in the market than he could when he was a teenager.
>
> -----------------------------
>
>
>
> Simple - in D&D (note I said D&D) you can`t.
>
> Character levels are based on experience.
>
> Experience is based on overcoming challenges (DMG pg 36 & , PHB pg 58) not simply on getting older.
>
However in Birthright we can - if we use the rules that already 2E
Birthright had, that everyone can train using a character action and
gain +1 Hitpoint or improve a non-weapon-proficiency.
If you play with gaining only average hit- and skillpoints in 3E then
the common human might not find the time to maximize his hitpoints and
his skillpoints - but a thousandyears old sidhelien might.

[Rowan]

Irdeggman, D&D wasn't designed for realm level play where we're trying to get a grasp on demographics. All BR rules are an expansion on D&D because it couldn't handle the type of game BR represents. Therefore, we recognize an expansion to the rules as a guideline--not even a hard and fast rule!--to help us play at the realm level better, and one that's realistic, by your own admission.

Just as not every 40 year old human is 4th level and just as not every 500 year old elf is 5th level, player character level would remain consistent across the party as befits fun and fair game play. None of us are proposing age as an absolute rule, only as a general guideline to aid the GM in game play and in picturing and understanding the game world.

To refer to one of your earlier examples, of course a regent can be accompanied by or surrounded by soldiers of higher level than he. Level has no bearing on whether you can be a regent, and regents routinely employ champions better at what they do than he. A GM running a game with PCs probably won't want minions doing stuff for the PC, but it's certainly not unrealistic to have higher level minions. In fact, it would be unrealistic NOT to have some.

[geeman]

At 10:49 AM 2/6/2008, irdeggman wrote:

>Other than being completly wrong in D&D ruleset. . .

Of course it never explicitly says that age equates to experience
(and I think you`ll note that neither did I) but the D&D ruleset
doesn`t side with you either, and can be read to indicate the opposite.

>As I pointed out previously - Experience (in D&D) is based on
>overcoming challenges (DMG pg 36 & PHB pg 58) not simply on getting older.

Yes, but in doing so you assume that no one is going to encounter
challenges as part of getting older, which runs against the
experience of most people. See the disconnect there? To you people
age without ever breaking the hermetic seal. They NEVER engage in
activities that earn them experience in the absence of an
adventure. That flies in the face of most people`s
experience. While you may not have grown more experienced, wiser,
educated or more skilled in the years since you turned 15 or so, it`s
clear that other folks around here have had that experience, yet very
few of us have slain dragons, rescued princesses or otherwise
adventured. It`s merely common sensical.

>No the "logic" being applied has no basis in the D&D game set (only
>in real life) and there is "false" when talking about D&D rules and mechanics.

First off, I`m not convinced that these ideas are false in the face
of D&D rules and mechanics (see below) but even if what you`re saying
is true... is that really even a criticism? How does your suggestion
that these ideas are based on real life not game mechanics an
argument against them?

>So please show me where in any WotC 3.5 product they equate "age" to
>"experience" in relationship to levels.

How about that last quote. What do you think it meant by "a commoner
is likely to progress in levels very slowly"? Commoners are not
adventurers. They don`t engage in the challenges that adventurers
do. Yet it specifically says they advance in levels and that this
process is slow.... How does that happen if not by NPCs gaining
experience as they age? This process is left up to the DM to
adjudicate, and that`s all we`re talking about doing. If there was
some sort of system for doing this in the core rules we needn`t
bother coming up with one, but if there were a system of domain rules
in the core rules we needn`t have to bother with one that is made for
BR either. At the pace at which BR campaigns can sometimes progress
it is important for us to have some sort of way of thinking about the
slow progress of commoners, and that`s all we`re talking about here.

Gary

[ryancaveney]

How about Arthur? Or Robin Hood? Or any of the legendary heroes of literature. Their "equivalent level" in D&D terms is measured by what they did not by their age.

But Arthur at age 10ish, when he pulled the sword from the stone, was much lower level than at age 20ish when he formed the round table, and continued to gain levels though adventuring until his fall on the battlefield at age 50ish. Since level-draining monsters are rare, and in 3e level draining is generally temporary anyway, within any one person's life there simply must be some relationship between age and level. You just write down the year in one column and the experience level in the other, and notice that both sets of numbers increase over time. This correlation is not perfect, but it is significant. Therefore, once you are dealing with groups of thousands or millions of people, it is actually quite easy to compile their life histories into a table of average level at any given age. It does not predict any one person perfectly, but on average it is pretty close to most people, so it provides a good reference point when making lots of NPCs from scratch. It makes no argument about whether age causes experience -- it merely observes that both age and experience tend to increase over time (since neither can decrease), in ways which are not identical but are similar enough to have real demographic effects.


If "age" is directly tied to character level - then shouldn't Michael Roele be of much lower level than other "regents" becasue he died at 35? And yet his was an expansionistic regency, frought with great battles and such.

That has nothing to do with character level. He could have been a first-level aristocrat his entire life but still done all that because Emperor of Anuire is the title he inherited simply by being born. By your own argument, he need not have gained a single xp from his battles because he need not have fought in them himself -- that's what having an army is for.

[ryancaveney]

Ryan, your Cerilia seems like a very dark place, where you've revised it to basically eliminate every beacon or major leaning toward Good alignments. Not my cup of tea (it would seem to me futile to play in a world with no sense of Good), but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

It doesn't seem all that dark overall to me, but what seems to generate the most discussion here are the darker parts. I certainly don't eliminate every beacon of good -- I've still got Cuiraecen and Nesirie and Laerme and Erik -- I just don't happen to think that either Haelyn or Avani is more good than lawful, and I think many of their priests tend toward the evil side of lawful neutral; Haelyn, in particular, is perfectly happy with explicitly Lawful Evil clergy. In any case, I don't use the alignment system at all IMC, and never really think about it except for purposes of discussions here. I think that from the point of view of the orogs he's killing, a human paladin is Chaotic Evil; and from the point of view of many elves, Rhoubhe's actions are positively Good.

[kgauck]

Experience is based on overcoming challenges (DMG pg 36 & , PHB pg 58) not simply on getting older.
No one said “simply on getting older.” Gary offered the argument well I think.

Age is related to experience. The assumption that people will live their lives without even accidentally engaging in the kinds of challenges for which they will earn experience is very difficult to believe. A system that attributes experience to age is simply taking an "average" of such incidental and accidental challenges.
A five year period is a long time not to accumulate 1000, 2000, or even 4000 experience points if small awards are given for challenging tasks that involve some risk, for normal people.

Take a smith. As an apprentice his master does the hard work, but he gets some opportunities to do some challenging work, even if its rated at CR ¼ or CR ½. Such experience, though lower than the standard table is more suitable for people like farmers and smiths. A Commoner 1 needs 14 CR ¼ challenges to get to Commoner 2. Is this possible in 60 months? I think so. It means once a season he has to make a test that has risk and difficulty. So after 5 years I think that everyone who is not getting experience assigned for typical actions (fighting, solving mysteries, resolving disputes, &c) can at least claim to have been faming, smithing, knitting, or doing something during this time period to merit a Commoner level. Not an adventurer level, an NPC level, and most probably a Commoner level, which is the saddest of the bunch. Its also noteworthy that if our smith or farmer seems especially proficient, I need not assume extra levels, I can just put Expert levels in place of Commoner levels. A 30 year old smith who is a Commoner 2/Expert 1, is hardly some kind of game breaking abuse of the experience point system. Its actually a much more sensible than assuming some middle aged smith is still a Commoner 1. Surely the most typical way to acquire Commoner levels (and Expert levels for that matter) is by doing mundane things, not adventuring things. Accumulating the slow grind of ½ and ¼ CR’s until after long last, your skill at Craft (Blacksmithing) and Profession (Blacksmithing) increase by one rank.


Sorry, but it is simply a fact. "Logic" has relatively little to do with D&D, especially D&D combat - which is by design extremly vague.
Vague mechanics just mean I can apply a different logic to explain what is going on than some other guy. It doesn’t mean no one can be logical. Further if this were actually your belief, you would not argue as you do below, with logic. So your own use of this skill belies that you don’t really believe this.


Now if you want to say that the character in question has overcome X number of challenges, that is proper - but overcoming challenges is not age dependent. If it was, than adventurers should in general be much "older".
Why do you always rigidly apply a principle as if it’s the only principle in the world that could ever apply? Did anyone ever say that age and only age determines level? What absurdity! Several of us have said that there is a minimum that should apply so that the guy who doesn’t get busy adventuring isn’t just watching grass grow. If 14 CR ¼ challenges in 60 months is too fast for the guy who never actually enters a crypt or battle, then make that argument. But to argue that this minimum rate must also be the maximum rate is just being silly. Obviously people can acquire, by the standard rules, several levels in a single adventure. The experience point award for challenges assumes 14 (actually 13.33) challenges resolved at an EL equal to the player character level to allow them to gain a level. So I assume that even if you try and stay home, you’re getting a single challenge once a season. If you go out an adventure, you could realize this number in a couple of days. I also assume that while CR 1 encounters continue to provide experience through your 8th level, CR ½ stops providing experience past 3rd level. A 9th level character needs CR 2 challenges to continue to acquire experience and it will be painfully slow. A 4th level character needs CR 1 challenges.


I have great trouble with people saying that because elves are ageless they should be higher level. If the logic was more along the lines of they have had a life of strife and encounters with X creatures was common they should be Y level - is fine. But the character in question could have been nothing but a "log" and actually done nothing of note nor left the "farm" at all. Note that the DM does have the ability to define "challenges" so that system can be used, they are just not mutally dependent.
A character who is a log should get a level in log. If I’m not mistaken a 2nd level log gets the special ability Resist Termites. A character who stays on the farm should gain a commoner level after five years.


Because "age" has nothing to do with it. That is all I am saying. If "age" is directly tied to character level - then shouldn't Michael Roele be of much lower level than other "regents" becasue he died at 35? And yet his was an expansionistic regency, frought with great battles and such.
If I were to construct an argument like irdeggman, I would say that if age has nothing to do with level, than there are the same number of 20 level five year olds as there are 20 level 30 year olds. But of course such a thing is absurd. Its not that age is the sole determinant of level, it’s the idea that even a quiet life has some small challenges. Michael Roele, like any adventurer, can aquire his 13.33 encounters in a day or two. Some connected set of encounters, like a war, can see a character gain a lot of levels in a very short period of time. But observing that this is so, is not the same as saying that everyone must progress at the same rate of speed. Advancement should be determined by the challenge and frequency of encounters. All I am saying is that this challenge never gets as low as zero, and the frequency is never as low as zero. I argue that ¼ is probably the minimum challenge for a season of time.


-In the 2nd ed Book of Elves it suggested granting elves a non weapon proficiency in some sort of art-related proficiency (like dancing or singing) to reflect their "upbringing" - but it never, never suggested that merely becasue they were "older" that they gained more levels.
2nd edition lacked the ability to give weak classes like warrior or commoner to NPC characters to reflect the accumulation of mundane experience, or to employ a high skill class at 1st level to give a character oodles of skill points to reflect a rich live before adventuring. 2nd edition was just so much weaker in this area. After all they had the 0-level character.
time.

[kgauck]

Those demographics have nothing to do with age but with relative "experience". They are comleted removed from age makes you better concepts.
The mention of demographics is valid. Given a population of a certain size, and given assumptions about what characters do and what challenges we can presume they have faced, what is a normal distribution of levels? Since immortal, ageless elves have had centuries if not millennia to acquire experience, even if only a bit here and there, its really had to believe they have zero experience.


There should be no problem whatsoever or conflict with the rules, then, when coming up with any other abstraction to account for character levels among NPCs.


Because it will have a direct corespondance to PC levels.

Not at all, at last no direct correspondence. Just yesterday I was checking out the latest Design and Development column in Dragon, and came across this:

We’ve talked elsewhere about some of the bogus parallelism that can lead to bad game design—such as all monsters having to follow character creation rules, even though they’re supposed to be foes to kill, not player characters—this is just another example of the game escaping that trap. Sure, a DM can decide for dramatic reasons that a notable NPC or monster might…
What we establish as true for the general population doesn’t have to be true for PC’s. They can be exceptional. In a normal campaign where you have 1st level elves, they can be the exceptional young elf. Much more exceptional than the teenage human (who is probably vastly more normal in a medieval world than a modern world). Few young 1st level elves doesn’t presume [b]no[/no] young 1st level elves. Such young elves should be markedly less common, but not totally absent. That’s giving extrapolation a bad name!


If a PC regent has a troup with 2-3rd level warriors then why is he only a 1st level character? {That is the arguement you lead to with line of usage}
Sounds to me like you’ve described the classic 2nd lieutenant problem. The young lieutenant who is inexperienced but leading a group of veterans is normal enough not only in the military, but in many companies that hire fresh college grads. Plus, what young scion isn’t sent off with some experienced help by daddy. If it didn’t work this way, I’d wonder why not.


There are present rules for apprenticeships already and again they have nothing to do with age.
Or they just assume that DM’s are sensible people. Are there rules that describe that water is wet? That bathing removes dirt? That characters marry? Rules exist so that people don’t have to think. Rules also presume that the game designer knows more about the world than the DM. How apprenticeships work in a given world is going to vary, so they provide the minimum mechanics necessary. Whether most apprentices are declared journeymen in their mid-teends, late tends, early twenties, or whether one can use these rules for any kind of training of new skills even for older people, don’t need to be included in the rules no matter how much some people need the guidance.


You (and the others) are using real world comparisons to an abstract game (D&D).
This is called modeling. The game is a model for a reality. Imperfect, but if well done, satisfying none the less.


So please show me where in any WotC 3.5 product they equate "age" to "experience" in relationship to levels.
Convieniently, you did it for us.

DMG pg 107

"NPCs gain experience points the same way that PCs do. Not being adventurers, however, their opportunities are more limited. Therefore, a commoner is likely to progress in levels very slowly."
Does one level per five years, or a single CR ¼ challenge per season for a CR 1 commoner qualify as “slowly”?


(DMG pg 36 & PHB pg 58)
Specifically (DMG pg 36):
DMG pg 38 "Challenge Ratings for Traps"
DMG pg 40 "CRs for Noncombat Encounters
DMG pg 40 "Mission Goals" "Roleplaying Awards"
DMG pg 41 "Story Awards and Standard Awards"

Nope, nothing listing for "getting older".
I think both Gary and Ryan have answered this last part quite well. I do find it really hard to imagine that no one encounters even tiny little CR's of this nature over an extended period of

[Lord Rahvin]

Kenneth, Gary, Ryan, while I agree with you and take mirthful delight in your strange alliance, I have to ask why you are arguing so passionately for re-opening Pandora`s jack-in-the-box.

-Lord Rahvin

[Rowan]

Because most people here like to argue :)

And also because one of the beauties of this site is that we establish decent consenses and some rules alternatives for the benefit of anyone who wants to use them. Justifying any of them just adds to the usefulness of the rules developed and their story application.

Personally, having a large number of NPC's with levels is important for my suspension of disbelief, because I just can't tolerate a world where 1st or 2nd level PC's are superheroes, especially when that world is populated by multitudes of monsters and such that can kill the PC superheroes, but haven't been able to overrun the general populace of 1st level commoners.

I like having a guide to give me a believable indication of about what level I should put a given NPC at should it become relevant--which it may well do with typical PC's who will either try to employ NPCs to their advantage, or get violent with them. Why not have the bar brawl retain its challenge because it's filled with a bunch of 1st-3rd level warriors/2nd level commoners who don't drop instantly when a PC looks at them. Why not know that in a given level 4 province, you can find a 12th level expert weaponsmith capable of forging exceptional weapons for your PCs? What's the harm in knowing there's a posse of frontiersmen and 6th-8th level commoners residing in any given village in Torien's Watch in Mhoried who aren't going to be bullied?

[geeman]

At 05:06 PM 2/6/2008, you wrote:

>Kenneth, Gary, Ryan, while I agree with you and take mirthful
>delight in your strange alliance, I have to ask why you are arguing
>so passionately for re-opening Pandora`s jack-in-the-box.

Because Pandora was a wuss?

I have no legitimate excuse. I`m always fascinated by demographic
issues in gaming. I can`t explain it. It`s nearly a fetish. I
think it may have something to do with a subconscious megalomaniacal
desire to rule the world as a benevolent master of life and death,
but that`d just be speculation on my part... for now.

Gary

[irdeggman]

No one said “simply on getting older.” Gary offered the argument well I think.


Gary is pretty much the only person who hasn't attempted to tie age into experience in this discussion.

And I think you are mistaken. It might not have been what you, Rowan and Ryan meant but what you had actually posted leads one directly down the path of age = experience.


From Rowan:

http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43575&postcount=32 (http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43575&postcount=32)


As for levels, I referred in an earlier post to what I thought was a reasonable level difference for elves: give them PC class levels while humans have NPC class levels, and assume they are all typically 3 levels higher than humans (until you start getting into children and perhaps levies). By that assessment, common elven combos to offset the 1st level human warriors are Bard/Ranger, Bard/Wizard, Bard/Fighter, Ranger/Wizard, Noble/Wizard, Noble/Bard, Noble/Ranger, with 1-3 levels in each. That would make almost every elf capable of casting a couple of 1st level spells, or at least 0-level. Leaders would be higher level.



From Ryan
http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43591&postcount=41 (http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43591&postcount=41)


The point is that it would be nice to use a suitable variant of the D&D mechanics to help represent a world which does make sense. In such a world, level would be strongly correlated with age, since experience is strongly correlated with age and level is a direct function of experience. Therefore, in any game world where I'm using any part of D&D or any other system which uses the concept of character levels (RoleMaster, for instance), I use a table which translates age to average character level for creating NPCs


And Kenneth:
http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43593&postcount=42 (http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43593&postcount=42)

I figure that at a minimum, a human gains a level every five years from 15 years old to 35 and that at 4th level, you've mastered basic skills to the point where doing the same things stop accruing experience. Characters who do more challenging things can expect to exceed this rate and this ceiling. There is no way that the old father of a peasant family is as unskilled as his teenage grandson. The boy may be quicker and more durable, but that's just a matter of imposing Dex and Con penalties for age, and I'd also provide Int and Wis bonuses for age. Con and Wis more than Dex and Int.


And:
http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43584&postcount=36 (http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43584&postcount=36)


Quote:
Originally Posted by irdeggman (http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?p=43578#post43578)
Well "age" does not corespond to "levels" in D&D, despite what "logic" dictates.

Sorry, if it doesn't make sense, I might as well play minesweeper.

[Rowan]

I didn't even mention age in that quote, just an arbitrary assessment of a way to measure the difference between elves and humans. Yes, that has something to do with elven longevity and thus the experiences they go through, but it also has to do with their much more adventurous lifestyle, where nearly every elf has the luxury throughout their long lives of a noble or adventurer rather than a human peasant struggling to subsist every day on his farm with little time for anything else.

I think what you are fearing is an absolute rule that for every X number of years, you gain a level, or gain X number of experience points. I don't think anyone has been suggesting that. We just recognize that the two are correlated enough that we should be able to look at a 30 year old soldier and see that, barring infirmity, he's going to whoop most 15 year old boys picking up swords with fire in their eyes (same for blacksmiths and artisans in their trades).

[ConjurerDragon]

Gary schrieb:
> At 10:49 AM 2/6/2008, irdeggman wrote:
>
> ...
> Yes, but in doing so you assume that no one is going to encounter
> challenges as part of getting older, which runs against the experience
> of most people. See the disconnect there? To you people age without
> ever breaking the hermetic seal. They NEVER engage in activities that
> earn them experience in the absence of an adventure. That flies in
> the face of most people`s experience. While you may not have grown
> more experienced, wiser, educated or more skilled in the years since
> you turned 15 or so, it`s clear that other folks around here have had
> that experience, yet very few of us have slain dragons, rescued
> princesses or otherwise adventured. It`s merely common sensical.
Common sense of the real world does not apply to experience and levels
in D&D. Even a 1st level wizard weaving real magic is beyond everything
our real world ever saw (if we stick to known facts and exclude mythos
or religious beliefs).

Simply becoming older and older is as I agree with irdeggman no reason
at all to grow more experienced or to even gain levels.
Only overcoming challenges is.
Challenges are not only adventures, but adventures are the most common
way to gain experience in D&D.
A farmer who plows the same field in the same way after taking over the
farm from his father and does so for the next 30 years will eventually
not gain any level at all after a few levels of commoner.

And a sidhelien living in the deep forest away from any fight, content
to forage for berrys and hunt for meat does not overcome challenges that
would justify a new level if he does it for 100 or 1000 years.

> How about that last quote. What do you think it meant by "a commoner
> is likely to progress in levels very slowly"? Commoners are not
> adventurers. They don`t engage in the challenges that adventurers do.
Sure they do. Once in a while they leave their farm, travel to the next
town to enjoy citylife, sell surplus and buy needed stuff. That´s what
Endier did in the beginnings of "The Spider´s test". Travelling beyond
the village using unsecure roads, negotiating (successfully) with
merchants from the town are challenges to low-level commoners.

An adventure is not the same as killing monsters but can be anything
from successfully negotiating a peace treaty with your kings enemys to
slaying a dragon.
> Yet it specifically says they advance in levels and that this
> process is slow.... How does that happen if not by NPCs gaining
> experience as they age? This process is left up to the DM to
> adjudicate, and that`s all we`re talking about doing.
In the end everything is up to the DM - but if we stick to the
guidelines then no, aging does not gain you XP or levels.
NPC´s gain XP slowly because they face "challenges" much more seldom
than PC´s and the challenges NPC´s meet are either not very challenging
gaining them only very little XP - or the NPC is dead.

> If there was some sort of system for doing this in the core rules we
> needn`t bother coming up with one, but if there were a system of
> domain rules in the core rules we needn`t have to bother with one that
> is made for BR either. At the pace at which BR campaigns can
> sometimes progress it is important for us to have some sort of way of
> thinking about the slow progress of commoners, and that`s all we`re
> talking about here.
No, you were talking about a reason to have more levels for NPC´s (and
especially for non-human or immortal NPC´s )because they´re older.
If we are discussing why Commoners level slowerlier than PC´s I have
missed the point the whole discussion.

[irdeggman]

I didn't even mention age in that quote, just an arbitrary assessment of a way to measure the difference between elves and humans. Yes, that has something to do with elven longevity and thus the experiences they go through, but it also has to do with their much more adventurous lifestyle, where nearly every elf has the luxury throughout their long lives of a noble or adventurer rather than a human peasant struggling to subsist every day on his farm with little time for anything else.

I think what you are fearing is an absolute rule that for every X number of years, you gain a level, or gain X number of experience points. I don't think anyone has been suggesting that. We just recognize that the two are correlated enough that we should be able to look at a 30 year old soldier and see that, barring infirmity, he's going to whoop most 15 year old boys picking up swords with fire in their eyes (same for blacksmiths and artisans in their trades).


You are correct you did not directly tie age to level (it was inferred).

But Ryan and Kenneth did specifically state so. (see the quotes above)

One has a specific table that correlates age to level and the other states that humans gain a level roughly every 5 years.

So I think that there is a clear voicing of the opinion that age directly correlates to level, which is what I am opposed to.

I do not, and said so several times, have a problem with a judgment that due to ahazardous (or adventurous) life a character gains levels.

I do have an issue with a statement that all elves are 3-4 levels higher without some sort of correlary as to why (other than age). Then it becomes problematic when dealing with PCs since PCs are by definition "eleite" and "exceptional". So saying that all NPC are higher levels and not stating that PCs also get this benefit is flatly missing in logic. And if applying hte lgic then this makes things poorly balanced between PCs with one being given more levels than another.

[ConjurerDragon]

ryancaveney schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ryancaveney wrote:
> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> How about Arthur? Or Robin Hood? Or any of the legendary heroes of literature. Their "equivalent level" in D&D terms is measured by what they did not by their age.
> -----------------------------
>
>
>
> But Arthur at age 10ish, when he pulled the sword from the stone, was much lower level than at age 20ish when he formed the round table, and continued to gain levels though adventuring until his fall on the battlefield at age 50ish.
Yes. And thousands of other people were also 10 and (if they were lucky
to survive in medieval times) 20.
They never did what he did so they never became what he did become -
with the exception of age. They did become as old as he did.

> Since level-draining monsters are rare, and in 3e level draining is generally temporary anyway, within any one person`s life there simply must be some relationship between age and level. You just write down the year in one column and the experience level in the other, and notice that both sets of numbers increase over time.
Wishful thinking that?s all. "Alter schützt vor Torheit nicht" - could
be roughly translated to "Age does not protect from foolishness". You
can spend your years aging overcoming challenges (not only adventures)
and you can spend your years staring at your wall at home and not
gaining enough XP for even a single level of commoner.

> This correlation is not perfect, but it is significant.
It also is nonsense ;-)
Consider a sidhlien fighter - he slowly gains XP the first hundred years
overcoming local lower threats gaining some levels, then 200 years
living in peace in the deep forest gaining no XP at all and then 1000
years later he slays a dragon and gains lots of XP.
There is no relation between passively aging and XP - only between
actively overcoming challenges and XP.

> Therefore, once you are dealing with groups of thousands or millions of people,
Are we talking about the sidhelien population of Cerialia here still?
Thousands of millions?

> it is actually quite easy to compile their life histories into a table of average level at any given age.
We can make statistics for everything. Sure you can make a table and say
"on average a person gains an average of 10 XP per year aged". But one
person gains all the XP and another none. Consider Churchills words "I
only belive the statistics I forged myself".

Or consider three women sitting in the doctors waiting room. One is
pregnant, two are not.

According to the average all 3 women are 1/3 pregnant.

> It does not predict any one person perfectly, but on average it is pretty close to most people, so it provides a good reference point when making lots of NPCs from scratch. It makes n
> o argument about whether age causes experience -- it merely observes that both age and experience tend to increase over time (since neither can decrease),
Why not? Fantasy world and such. Negative levels? 2E wights :-)
> That has nothing to do with character level. He could have been a first-level aristocrat his entire life but still done all that because Emperor of Anuire is the title he inherited simply by being born. By your own argument, he need not have gained a single xp from his battles because he need not have fought in them himself -- that`s what having an army is for.
>
He could have gained XP for fighting personally (Michael definitely is
not the type of person sitting on his horse playing Frederick the Great
overlooking the battlefield - especially with his bloodability of Divine
Wrath), he could have gained XP for successfully doing a job as supreme
Commander of the Army or General as tactician, he could have lead a
company of the royal guard into battle or he could have supported the
army by negotiating supply from his allies and vassals - all are
challenges that could earn XP. Aging while the wars were waged is no
challenge. It?s automatic.

[Rowan]

Conjurer and Irdeg, do either of you ever have anyone other than the PC's have class levels? Do either of you recognize higher level NPC's among the general populace?

I bet you do, and if so, how do you determine who is of what level?

We who look to age as a guideline merely seek something other than an arbitrary choice. For story encounters with singular characters, arbitrariness as the story dictates is fine. To attempt to determine things on realm level play when you're averaging out statistics demographically to add to the depth of realism in the game (just because we want and/or need that realism for our enjoyment), setting up guidelines is very important.


We can make statistics for everything. Sure you can make a table and say
"on average a person gains an average of 10 XP per year aged". But one
person gains all the XP and another none. Consider Churchills words "I
only belive the statistics I forged myself".

Of course the gaining of XP is going to be sporadic and not consistent across everyone. Statistics work because we're looking at averages across huge samples (thousands OR millions), where mathematics PROVES that you can extrapolate an average as the large sample size approaches Normal (distribution set). So we're going to have 60 year old 1st level commoners and 15 year old 5th level fighter/rogues. But these are the outliers.

No age rule yet proposed issues XP strictly for time, merely as an extrapolation to avoid having to determine what challenges each of our million Anuireans has faced in their lives. PCs DO determine the challenges that they face, so we don't apply this extrapolated system to them at all, unless the GM and players agree that they want to play characters, for instance, for the first year of their adult life, then skip ahead to when they're 60 and about to pass the throne, but not before one last adventure (perhaps the group then decides to give each character a couple more levels).

PC's gain experience so much faster than everyone else that they already wildly break the pattern. If your PC's haven't gained a level in 5 years, something's wrong, and players should have ditched their GM long ago. But the whole point of playing is to play through the adventures of a few people; the whole rest of the world doesn't get this attention, despite the implicit assumption that they are going through challenges of their own.

One last thing. Challenges as the sole source of levels makes sense for PCs (again, D&D is a PC-focused game). For PCs, that's all that's needed. Looking at the general population of NPCs that you're not going to focus on, we have to consider that levels include skill at arms (for soldiers) and skill points. Of course extra training or combat experience or brawling in an inn are going to increase your BAB. Of course extra training or 30 years on the job are going to give you extra Skill Points. That's how most NPC's advance.

As for elves, I've made most of my argument that they live a much more luxurious and adventurous lifestyle than humans which would warrant much higher levels even within a human's lifetime because of those lifestyles. Over their extra centuries, it surely accounts for something, unless you want most elves to dilly-dally like mindless little sprites happy to dance their lives away in the woods for 3,000 years (in which case they should still have 15 levels of Expert in Perform (Dance), or at least like 30 ranks in it). Do you disagree with my assessment of elves?

[geeman]

At 07:54 AM 2/7/2008, you wrote:

>Common sense of the real world does not apply to
>experience and levels in D&D. Even a 1st level
>wizard weaving real magic is beyond everything
>our real world ever saw (if we stick to known
>facts and exclude mythos or religious beliefs).

How does that relate to the issue at hand? NPCs
don`t gain levels because of magic?

>A farmer who plows the same field in the same
>way after taking over the farm from his father
>and does so for the next 30 years will
>eventually not gain any level at all after a few levels of commoner.

OK, let me put it this way. I agree with all the
examples and reasoning you guys have used so
far. A farmer who plows his field the same way
as described above would gain no experience from
that activity. No one will ever gain experience
outside of having encounters and overcoming challenges.

Where we disagree is that you and Irdeggman seem
to be operating under the assumption that during
that 30 year period that farmer is never going to
every do anything other than plow his
field. He`s never going to deliver goods to
market, sell them and then encounter a thief who
tries to pick his pocket. He`s never going to
walk into the local tavern, have a drink and get
into a brawl. He`s never going to meet a soldier
who has deserted from the local militia who seeks
to kill him. A wolf never makes off with any of
his stock and he goes after beast. He`s never
drafted into a unit of levies and has to defend his lands against an invasion.

You guys have to assume that nothing ever happens
outside the course of adventures outlined by a
DM. The other side of this argument assumes that
as DMs we must account for the events of normal
human interaction in order to come up with a
legitimate system of portraying NPCs.

>An adventure is not the same as killing monsters
>but can be anything from successfully
>negotiating a peace treaty with your kings enemys to slaying a dragon.

Exactly.

>No, you were talking about a reason to have more
>levels for NPC´s (and especially for non-human
>or immortal NPC´s )because they´re older.
>If we are discussing why Commoners level
>slowerlier than PC´s I have missed the point the whole discussion.

What`s the difference between NPCs and commoners
in this sense? The issues of level having to do
with the immortality of elves is just the most
stark and obvious example of the issues being described here.

I woke up this morning and it hit me that maybe
the way to do this is to add up all the years of
an NPCs life and then use that to get a die from
which to determine his "random" level. That is,
at 15-17 everyone starts out at 1st level. Every
year adds +1. Every year spent in an active
profession (like soldier) adds another
+1. Whatever modifiers or issue one thought are
prudent. Then it might be a simple table:

Result Die
1-5 d2
6-10 d3
11-15 d4
16-20 d6

Etc.

That way even the older NPCs might still wind up
being 1st level, but they`d be more likely to
average out according to the die. It doesn`t
take into consideration the vagaries of the CR
tables, which level of every four levels or so,
but I`m wondering how much this kind of
demographic should really be bound to that sort of thing....

Gary

Gary

[irdeggman]

Conjurer and Irdeg, do either of you ever have anyone other than the PC's have class levels? Do either of you recognize higher level NPC's among the general populace?

I bet you do, and if so, how do you determine who is of what level?


We who look to age as a guideline merely seek something other than an arbitrary choice. For story encounters with singular characters, arbitrariness as the story dictates is fine. To attempt to determine things on realm level play when you're averaging out statistics demographically to add to the depth of realism in the game (just because we want and/or need that realism for our enjoyment), setting up guidelines is very important.

Yes I do and I try to come with a "history" for each of them, the amount of detail varies on the significance of the NPC.

But each one has "earned" those levels for doing something. If they are very active then they gained those levels quicker (and thus are of younger age) then those who didn't. Note that age does not equal experience, but every character has an age and what they have done with their time determines what they have accomplished.

I find it exceeding difficult to grasp that those who are argueing over such a large amount of detail concerning elven life style and philsophy do not perceive things on this level and instead wish to simply "gloss over it" by saying it is a function of "age".



No age rule yet proposed issues XP strictly for time,
I again point you to the quotes that indicate otherwise.



As for elves, I've made most of my argument that they live a much more luxurious and adventurous lifestyle than humans which would warrant much higher levels even within a human's lifetime because of those lifestyles. Over their extra centuries, it surely accounts for something, unless you want most elves to dilly-dally like mindless little sprites happy to dance their lives away in the woods for 3,000 years (in which case they should still have 15 levels of Expert in Perform (Dance), or at least like 30 ranks in it). Do you disagree with my assessment of elves?

And that arguement is at least based on something other than age. Age only allowing them to do more with the life style you have assumed.

Now something else that could be used to justify them not having higher levels is their chaotic and mercurial behavior. Because they are so quick to change they take a lot longer to accomlish anything. (Sort of like a fey with ADD).

[kgauck]

But each one has "earned" those levels for doing something. If they are very active then they gained those levels quicker (and thus are of younger age) then those who didn't.
This is all we've been saying, so you've revealed that you really agree with us.


Note that age does not equal experience, but every character has an age and what they have done with their time determines what they have accomplished.
Ditto


I find it exceeding difficult to grasp that those who are argueing over such a large amount of detail concerning elven life style and philsophy do not perceive things on this level and instead wish to simply "gloss over it" by saying it is a function of "age".
Its this funny thing called intersubjectivity.


I again point you to the quotes that indicate otherwise.
Only if you ignore all those other words around the quotes. Admit it, you're on our side. Said so yourself.

Time to move along.

[Lord Rahvin]

irdegman is facing, not only overwhelming resistance, in this argument but bizzare flanking tactics. He responds to argument A, and then gets attacked with argument B. Argument B gets countered (or at least answered) and he gets criticised for the argument not applying equally to A and C as well.

I think some of the main points of the vast legions of proponents in the Elven Superior team need to be clarrified.

1. Should there be a table or die roll to determine npc level quickly based on age and race? yes/no

2. Is this an argument for adding levels to existing known npcs? yes/no

3. Are you advocating for additional levels in npc-classes or common adventuring classes?

4. Does this logic/paradigm extend to npcs and/or pcs during adventures, or just background world-detail stuff? Are we likely to see higher level fighters in the nobleman`s bodyguard, for example.

5. How should this ultimately extend to elves, the gorgon, etc. how many levels does 500 years of military life get you?

Anything i missed?

-Lord Rahvin

[geeman]

At 01:49 PM 2/7/2008, you wrote:

>1. Should there be a table or die roll to determine npc level
>quickly based on age and race? yes/no

It could come in handy.

>2. Is this an argument for adding levels to existing known npcs? yes/no

No.... at least not systemically.

>3. Are you advocating for additional levels in npc-classes or
>common adventuring classes?

No.

>4. Does this logic/paradigm extend to npcs and/or pcs during
>adventures, or just background world-detail stuff? Are we likely to
>see higher level fighters in the nobleman`s bodyguard, for example.

Yes, yes and yes, but probably not. A noble`s bodyguard would
represent a small cross-section and should, therefore, be
representative of a range of levels and experience.

>5. How should this ultimately extend to elves, the gorgon,
>etc. how many levels does 500 years of military life get you?

The benefits for time and aging would eventually slow down as one
finds it more and more difficult to find appropriate challenges
through "random events."

Gary

[kgauck]

1. Should there be a table or die roll to determine npc level quickly based on age and race? yes/no
Age is one of the weaker traits for level. The NPC's location would be much more likely to tell me something about his level than his age would.


2. Is this an argument for adding levels to existing known npcs? yes/no
No


3. Are you advocating for additional levels in npc-classes or common adventuring classes?
For non-elves, the issue is mostly about NPC classes for villagers. For elves adventuring classes are not unreasonable for very long spans of time.


4. Does this logic/paradigm extend to npcs and/or pcs during adventures, or just background world-detail stuff? Are we likely to see higher level fighters in the nobleman`s bodyguard, for example.
I'm not sure I understand the question.
Are you asking:
1) Do characters gain experience for aging while adventuring: No
2) Do characters left behind gain experience while other adventure: Perhaps if the adventure takes years and years. Odysseus may have left Penelope a 2nd level Noble and returned to find her a 4th level noble. Life continues even without inspection.
3) Is this fluff (background world-detail stuff) or crunchy (stat'd out villagers, courtiers, and soldiers) its crunchy and fluffy, like peanut butter. As for a nobleman's body guard, they should be determined by the rank, prestige, and wealth of the noble. The more of that stuff he's got, the high level everyone around him will be, except maybe his friends. Nobles cherry pick the best soldiers, officials, and perhaps even friends, from their subordinates.


5. How should this ultimately extend to elves, the gorgon, etc. how many levels does 500 years of military life get you?
Its not "military life" that gets you anything, its a what kind of CR's at a given frequency of time.

[rugor]

1. Do elves really fight wars? Of course, they`d fight if they were
invaded, but would they really engage in large scale, army against
army battle? Yes, they have in Cerilia`s past at Deismaar, but was
that battle the exception rather than the rule? Given elven
immortality and apparently slow birthrate would elves "spend" their
lives in something like pitched battle rather than favoring skirmish
and guerilla warfare where their skills could be brought to bear?

Gary

I think Elven wars, especially now that their numbers have dwindled from past conflicts which they engaged in on grand scale, would certianly be very different from the way we view war.

The war Rhuobe Manslayer wages on humans is a prime example of how different they think... the very fact that they are immortal gives them a long term view of things that humans just could not fathom.

If you look thru the PS of Tuornen with an eye for what COULD be, there is enough evidence to support the theory that the Manslayer was behind the downfall of Alamie, the most powerful realm in Anuire at the time it broke into warring factions.

Elves were involved throughout Tuornen's history and creation, to the current day, Fhylie the Sword, Laila Flaertes, both half elves, are the most prominent people in Tuornen, and Brandonel has been involved since the very beggining.

Brandonel slays a noble here, a noble there, the Manslayer kills/bloodthefts a Tuornen regent here, and a generation or two later does so again... nothing like the manslayer having his own inside man (Brandonel) to keep Alamie from re-uniting. There is no better cover for such an inside-man, than for him to be known as Rhuobe's greatest enemy.

When you don't have the numbers to destroy or overwhelm your enemy, the next best thing to do is to get them to destroy one another.

[rugor]

As for elves, I've made most of my argument that they live a much more luxurious and adventurous lifestyle than humans which would warrant much higher levels even within a human's lifetime because of those lifestyles. Over their extra centuries, it surely accounts for something, unless you want most elves to dilly-dally like mindless little sprites happy to dance their lives away in the woods for 3,000 years (in which case they should still have 15 levels of Expert in Perform (Dance), or at least like 30 ranks in it). Do you disagree with my assessment of elves?

I think we tend to humanize Elves too much... who is to say how long it takes for them to reach maturity, as far as the ability to rationalize and adapt?

It might take them 100 years to fully mature into what we would consider a 16 year old... 250 years to be able to rationalize and respond to things in a fully adult way... a 500 year old Elf being the equivalent of a 25 year old human.

But I also agree with other who say we demote their abilities too much. That 500 year old Elf should be considered an expert archer, and have off the chart abilities to conceal themselves in forested areas, track, identify creatures, and other things that would fit their nature.

That elf likely fletched each of his own arrows, and has done so ten thousand times before, making him an expert at it, he is probably so familiar with his bow that he would automatically be able to make precise shots even while on the run... even the greatest human archer should pale in comparison to the most common Elven one.

As for what happened to the elves and why they got pushed back. They allowed the Humans to settle at first, there was no war initially. When the humans got numerous and were considered a threat, the elves found themselves up against a tidal wave that beset them; much in the way the Europeans came to colonize America, they just kept coming and coming, and their weapons, their methods of building permanent structures, their way of fighting wars... all very foriegn to the natives whom they pushed further back, or exterminated tribe by tribe.

[AndrewTall]

Duration as a child
I tend to assume that most races have a fairly similar progression from childhood to adulthood simply as a prolonged adolescence serves little if any purpose - most races mature in the minimal time required to become functionally proficient in their bodies as these interact with their environment. If a race for whatever reason was mentally childish for a prolonged period this would impact on survival rates and breeding success, the latter is in accordance with elven behavious indicated in canon and various sources, but the first is not - elves are otherworldly and fey but not generally described as immature or incapable. I'd note in any event that learning is generally faster during childhood - something that would compound the racial power curve not retard it.

Skills
In most games advancement (by level, skill, whatever) relates to overcoming challenges. Challenges occur with a strong dependence on time and level of chaos in a society thus when looking at a population as a whole the level of advancement possessed will form a normal curve with a strong dependence on a) age of population b) frequency of challenges in the culture (i.e. the number of challenges faced by the members of the society) and c) ability to learn and remember and d) relevance of skills/etc learned by the elf in relation to the games power mechanics (i.e. ability of the members to learn from those challenges).

Accordingly unless elves become skilled in matters completely outside the power mechanic (i.e. I'm a 20th level 'forest shaper', I get no combat bonuses, saves, feats, etc but I can grow a mean mulberry bush in just 6 months or less), or elves are prone to bizarre memory lapses (yesterday I was a 20th level archmage, today I forgot all that magic stuff and started afresh as a barbarian, huzzah!) then one would expect that the elven normal curve would centre over a far higher power mean than most other races - a natural consequence of living many times as long. Dwarves may be an exception as they have long lives, but constantly wage war against orogs, are industrious aiming to produce items only of the finest quality (i.e. have frequent challenges) etc, etc.

I can see goblins for example having a far more aggressive and challenging society leading to a rapid increase in skills over a short time (i.e. the average 30 year old goblin would be expected to be a higher level in D&D terms than the average 30 year old elf). Similarly humans would initially advance more swiftly on average before with the average elf 'catching up' and then surpassing the average human in time (quite possible long after the average human died of old age).

Unless elves have major learning / forgetfulness issues (which would impact PC advancement severely) I can't see a strong argument against common elves routinely having 4-7 levels of so in D&D terms (after that challenge ratings to give xp are few and far between and the system automatically slows advancement). This would have little if any impact on the game - characters as noted by Kenneth are exceptional and face far more challenges than less rambunctious compatriots therefore advancing far more quickly than the norm, although an elven campaign would be likely to have far more people 'not to mess with' than a human campaign where human challenges rapidly reduce in scope (at least in gross physical terms). The level disparity would also force elven PC's to think 'outside the box' in human terms if they wanted to make an impression on their peers - which could be used to spur a mixed race party which would otherwise be quite difficult in BR.

Rulership failings in the human wars
I wonder if one reason that earlier elven realms endured under a single ruler for thousands of years is simply because that ruler, in practice, did very little. Scattered tribes of goblins can be fought by scattered groups of elves without any real need for central organisation - the elf - king is then simply the ultimate arbitrar when disputes cannot be settled 'in-house'. This sort of very loose government has many strengths in terms of freedoms granted, but is very poor at forming mass central armies and the like that would have been needed to oppose the humans - or the wave of goblin, orog, etc migration caused by the human settlement.

The profound changes in government needed would likely have taken the elves a very long time to come to terms with - quite possibly centuries particularly given the strength of the individualism in the culture and rejection of command by a central authority typically seen as key to the elven psyche in BR.

[rugor]

To quickly add to the last part of your post Andrew, would be the value they placed on their own lives.

They may mot have been willing to sacrifice 10 elves to kill 200 humans, or they may have grown weary of taking such losses, and seeing the humans repopulate so quickly after almost being wiped out.

That would lead to them finding alternate means of fighting them, while they hid away in their most Ancient forests... like stirring Humanoids against them, or getting them to fight one another (Manslayer) and forgetting about the elves (for the most part).

[ryancaveney]

Kenneth, Gary, Ryan, while I agree with you and take mirthful delight in your strange alliance, I have to ask why you are arguing so passionately for re-opening Pandora`s jack-in-the-box.

I see it the other way around -- I have always assumed there was a natural correlation between experience and age, because that's what life has always been like. Why does a tribe look to its elders for advice? Because they have more experience. Why do they have more experience? Because they're older, and experience is nothing but the accumulation of things that have happened to you. Senate literally just means "bunch of old men". Being told there shouldn't be any relationship at all is what I find strange and disruptive, so I argue for what I think is the maintenance of the quite reasonable existing relationship.

[ryancaveney]

It might not have been what you, Rowan and Ryan meant but what you had actually posted leads one directly down the path of age = experience.

Strongly correlated is not the same thing as equals. You get experience from overcoming challenges. It takes time to do this, and there is intervening time in which there are no significant challenges. Therefore, it takes time to accrue XP. While you are doing that, you also get older. As a result, there comes to be some degree of relationship between average age and average level. This relationship will be clearer if you keep adventurers and non-adventurers in two separate groups, but it will still be true overall because almost no one is an adventurer.

[irdeggman]

I see it the other way around -- I have always assumed there was a natural correlation between experience and age, because that's what life has always been like. Why does a tribe look to its elders for advice? Because they have more experience. Why do they have more experience? Because they're older, and experience is nothing but the accumulation of things that have happened to you. Senate literally just means "bunch of old men". Being told there shouldn't be any relationship at all is what I find strange and disruptive, so I argue for what I think is the maintenance of the quite reasonable existing relationship.

Now that aspect of "experience" the the one that does not translate well at all for D&D (as I have repeatedly pointed out).

The seeking of advice from elders translates into the ability score increase for aging in D&D.

But there should be a corrallary with how "adventurous" a life one has led and how many "opportunities" one has to adventure. The longer lived races have more opportunites over time, but if they do not have an "adventurous" lifestyle then they actually gain nothing by being a couch potato.

[ryancaveney]

Yes. And thousands of other people were also 10 and (if they were lucky to survive in medieval times) 20. They never did what he did so they never became what he did become - with the exception of age. They did become as old as he did.

They never took levels in Paladin or High King or whatever funky prestige class he did, and didn't amass as large a total amount of XP as he did, but they definitely did advance from Commoner 1 at age 10 to perhaps Commoner 2 / Expert 3 at age 50. Everyone, from the High King to the lowliest peasant, takes time to gain experience. That's what they do at their jobs all day. Practice makes you better at what you do. Skill increases over time. All of these things are true both for heroes who fight dragons to gain levels very quickly, and for common craftsmen who make slightly more complicated horseshoes every year to gain levels at a glacial pace. While they are gaining levels, they are also getting older, so there is no way to avoid the relationship.


You can spend your years aging overcoming challenges (not only adventures) and you can spend your years staring at your wall at home and not gaining enough XP for even a single level of commoner.

Yes, which does nothing to invalidate my point. There is a *distribution* of levels at every age, and the average increases with age. There will always be people who never get past level zero and there will always be people who hit level 20 at age 25, but there are so very few of them out of the millions of people on the continent that they are statistically irrelevant. The average person gains maybe five (or three or eight, depending on how you view the skill system), levels over the course of their lives, since there has to be a measurable difference between the developed skills of a 20-year expert craftsman and a beginning apprentice, just as there is between a veteran soldier of 20 years spent on campaign and a raw recruit.


Consider a sidhlien fighter - he slowly gains XP the first hundred years overcoming local lower threats gaining some levels, then 200 years living in peace in the deep forest gaining no XP at all and then 1000 years later he slays a dragon and gains lots of XP.

This also shows that you really agree with me. This doesn't show that my idea is nonsense -- it is a perfect example of my idea. What you have described is precisely what a correlation that is strong but not perfect means. His level does not increase at a constant rate with his age, but it does increase with his age!


There is no relation between passively aging and XP - only between actively overcoming challenges and XP.

I never said anything to disagree with this, either. I never said age caused experience. In fact, what I have been consistently saying is that it takes time to gain experience, so they have the same cause (or, if you prefer, experience causes age!). In 1e and 2e, you can calculate the number of kobolds you need to kill to become a 20th-level fighter. It's in the millions, so _it takes a long time_, so you _will be older_ by the time you are done.


Are we talking about the sidhelien population of Cerialia here still? Thousands of millions?

I said "thousands OR millions", not "thousands OF millions" (oder, nicht von). There are definitely at least half a million elves in Cerilia, and I think five to ten million is a much more reasonable number. See post 43179 for a report of the basic calculation.


Or consider three women sitting in the doctors waiting room. One is pregnant, two are not. According to the average all 3 women are 1/3 pregnant.

This strikes me as willful misunderstanding of the nature of demographics. What I'm talking about has always been on the order of "there are 12 million adult female humans in Anuire; at any given time, 3 to 5 million of them are pregnant; therefore, any random individual woman encountered has an approximately 1/3 chance of being pregnant." I'm talking about millions and millions of people, the details of whose lives constitute a probability distribution which can be used as a guideline for quickly and randomly determining the characteristics of any one of them taken singly.


Aging while the wars were waged is no challenge. It's automatic.

Yes, and it's irrelevant to my argument. The point is that gaining experience takes time, so no matter the rate at which you gain it, you also necessarily gain age as you gain experience. When dividing total levels by total age to compute the average rate of level advancement per year, different people get wildly different numbers, but there is a maximum and a minimum and all of them are positive and constitute a distribution with some natural width about a mean. It is precisely the same thing as rolling 3d6 to determine ability scores. Sera doesn't actually roll 3d6 six times each time a child is conceived, but on the average, if you look at a large group of people and don't know who their relatives are, the population distribution is your best guide to guessing any individual's characteristics. The chance of being exactly correct is always exactly zero, but the chance of being correct to within some margin of measurement error is directly computable and grows with the size of the interval relative to the natural width of the distribution.

[Airgedok]

I don't think some people understand the consequences of the Elven advantages in warfare. Lets take a look at the human advantages

Numbers. - Humans can and do have bigger armies. Yet they lack a decent command structure that can effectively gather intelligence and communicate with troops on the field of battle or on the march.

Heavier troops - Human troops appear to be slower heavily armoured troops, that would have the advantage in a stand up and thump each other a sword distance away.

Fortifications - Humans appear on the whole have more and stronger fortifications than their elven counter parts.

These three advantages appear to give humans a significant military advantage over elves and appear, to many people, provide the explanation as to why they are winning. Yet if we look at the elven advantages we will see how the Human advantages are actually a disadvantage.

1) Immortality - This is a HUGE advantage that is not fully understood by many. The knowledge gained over multiple life times will never be fully understood by people who have only one life time to amass knowledge. Elves would seem incredibly wise and smart by human standards as they will accumulate far more experience than we ever could. It also means they can wage warfare in a different way. When humans wage war they think short term what can we gain if we attack here and now? Elves can say what if we destroy the farms in the area and starve out the humans? Sure it means that the land goes back the fallow and would take years to make things productive again but for the Elf he has years, the human doesn't.

2) Manoeuvrability - Elves move through terrain in a manner that allows them to mover their armies far fast and far farther than any human army could even dream of. This means they operational distances are far greater than human armies. This is an advantage that is often over looked and ignored.

3) Intelligence - With the ability to use animals to spy gives Elves far better intelligence over humans. Elves can pretty much pin point human troop movements while humans operate near blind to elven troop movements. When you know were the enemy is you determine when and how you engage the enemy.

4) Magic - This give elves a huge fire power advantage over the slower human forces. Yet the more subtle and often ignored use of magic give elves even a greater advantage. COMMUNICATION!! Elves have greater access to spells that are low level that allow for communication over distances. This means an Elven commander can communicate more easily and more often with his unit commanders both on the march and on the battle field.


Now lets imagine an elven force on the attack. They invade a human province, unlike a human force that is either there to raid or occupy the Elves are there to RAZE. First off they Use their superior intelligence and communication to pinpoint the human forces. They then strike where the humans are weak. The humans encountering a superior numbered elven force fall back to their defensive positions and also send out requests for help. Humans behind their walls of stone watch as a superior numbered elven force lays siege to them. Yet the elves are not there to siege in a traditional way. They are there to hold up the human in their stone walls while they get their allies to destroy the farmland and crops. How hard is it for Elves to make the weeds grow fast to choke the human crops? How hard is it to get animals and insects to eat the crops? How hard is it to burn the farm buildings? See the Elves don't need to conquer the land or steal the valuables. They need only to destroy the ability of the humans to feed themselves. All during this time their superior intelligence allows them to know when the large human relief army is and when it gets close they use their superior mobility to escape leaving the humans to "save" their siege brothers. Yet now the castle and its town can't feed themselves this coming winter. The Elves now move further into the human territory doing the same thing.

When the Elves have a numerical advantage they strike and destroy the human military and leave before the enemy can use its advantage of numbers. The combined advantages in mobility, intelligence and communication gives the elves such a huge tactical, operational and strategic advantage that Humans would not be able to win. Elves now only have to strike at the land and not the human's military to defeat the human military machine. By destroying a regions ability to feed a population you win the war. It wouldn't take long before humans would not settle any where near an Elven population centre as its a sure way to lose everything and starve.

I put forth that Elves would use siege warfare and would let humans starve over multiple winters by striking at human's support structure not their armies except when they had overwhelming odds or overwhelming terrain advantage as in a forested conflict where weight of arms and numbers lose their advantage.


Yet all this is not something that translates well into a BR game. Supply, intelligence and communications are harder to represent than troops. It also doesn't fit in another context of a game and that is balance. If you gave elves all their actuall advantages they would be unstopable. They would raze all the provinces around their forests making it impossible for humans to farm teh land then wait for the forests to reclaim the farmland and then in 200 to 500 years after the forests have expanded they hit the next set of provinces around the now larger forests. How do you play a game where Elves wait centries for the forest to reclaim farmland to expand their powerbase? Yet humans use months to conquer other lands? The time scales are too different to play and the tactics of the elves when they do attack are too difficult to translate into rules.

[ConjurerDragon]

ryancaveney schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> Consider a sidhlien fighter - he slowly gains XP the first hundred years overcoming local lower threats gaining some levels, then 200 years living in peace in the deep forest gaining no XP at all and then 1000 years later he slays a dragon and gains lots of XP.
> -----------------------------
> This also shows that you really agree with me. This doesn`t show that my idea is nonsense -- it is a perfect example of my idea. What you have described is precisely what a correlation that is strong but not perfect means. His level does not increase at a constant rate with his age, but it does increase with his age!
>
A lot of things happen while someone or something ages. When someone
chops down a tree that takes time in which the man and the tree age. But
it would be nonsense to say that it is a function of the trees age to be
cut to firewood.. The tree becomes firewood because something actively
happens.

The sidhelien fighter in my example did not gain levels from aging, but
he got XP from overcoming challenges. Aging was automatic the whole time
and completely unrelated to him gaining XP - he might have gained much
more or much less XP in the same time aging.

However if you really want to make XP a function of age then you can
make everything a function of age because everything that happens takes
time.
Do you really want tables that list that a 20 years old commoner has -
on average - gained 1/2 level of commoner or had a 25% chance to die of
smallpox?

> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> There is no relation between passively aging and XP - only between actively overcoming challenges and XP.
> -----------------------------
> I never said anything to disagree with this, either. I never said age caused experience. In fact, what I have been consistently saying is that it takes time to gain experience, so they have the same cause (or, if you prefer, experience causes age!).
How many levels do the trees in the ancient elven forests have then if
age would cause experience? The "Sword of Roele" must have gained
several levels simply from hanging a lot of time on the walls of the
Gorgon aging ;-)
However "experience causes age" is also not true. The passage of time
causes aging. Gaining experience does not. Else someone never gaining
experience would never grow old.

> In 1e and 2e, you can calculate the number of kobolds you need to kill to become a 20th-level fighter. It`s in the millions, so _it takes a long time_, so you _will be older_ by the time you are done.
>
Or you will recognize that you should stop killing lowlevel enemys as
their CR is too low to gain you enough XP. And no I don?t agree that age
brings that wisdom because else all old would be wise and that isn?t
true ;-)

> Yes, and it`s irrelevant to my argument. The point is that gaining experience takes time, so no matter the rate at which you gain it, you also necessarily gain age as you gain experience.
Which turned around equals to the immortal fool who - because he never
gains XP - never ages.

[ryancaveney]

The sidhelien fighter in my example did not gain levels from aging, but he got XP from overcoming challenges. Aging was automatic the whole time and completely unrelated to him gaining XP - he might have gained much more or much less XP in the same time aging.

I agree completely, and never said I didn't. I have never said that age alone *caused* XP. I have said that since the actual process of gaining XP generally takes years, if you know nothing about someone other than their age, you can predict their level better than if you know nothing about them at all.


Do you really want tables that list that a 20 years old commoner has - on average - gained 1/2 level of commoner or had a 25% chance to die of smallpox?

Yes, that is *precisely* what I want! Pages and pages of such tables, as an essential part of random NPC generation tables like the ones from the back of the 1e DMG. I have made a few, but I want more, and I want to discuss them with others who want them without being told by those who don't that we're using the game system wrong. In fact, I have tables that describe the differences between ability scores of people at different ages and levels, because the ones who die from smallpox are not in the distribution for later years: the distribution of Constitution scores for age 30 should reflect that everyone described by it has already survived 30 years of exposure to various diseases, so their average Con is slightly higher than it was when the cohort was born -- because the people born with 6 Con die off at a much faster rate than those with 16 Con. One easy way to do this is say something like people are born with 3d6 for stats, but by the time they reach full adulthood they've been whittled down to that part of the original group whose ability distribution happened to always have been shaped like best 3 of 4d6 (at least for Con, and maybe Str or Int as well depending on environment).


How many levels do the trees in the ancient elven forests have then if age would cause experience? The "Sword of Roele" must have gained several levels simply from hanging a lot of time on the walls of the Gorgon aging ;-)

You continue to refuse to hear what I am saying. I have repeatedly stated that I agree completely that age doesn't by itself directly cause experience. Stating again what I already said to be true in no way opposes my argument. The lack of direct causation in no way prevents age from being a useful thing to know in helping to predict a person's experience. Elves and humans, and adventurers and non-adventurers of each species, tend to gain experience at different rates, so you use different actuarial tables for each group, but within each group the correlation between age and experience is clear and positive (those who have lots of one tend to have more than the average of the other, and those who have little of one tend to have less than the average of the other), and even across all the groups it is noticeable. Trees don't gain experience, but treants sometimes act as if they did -- how else is one to interpret the "creature advancement" line in the Monster Manual except by the concept that some monsters get bigger and more powerful over time? That's what advancement means. The concept of advancement (motion in general) relies on time going by.


However "experience causes age" is also not true. The passage of time causes aging. Gaining experience does not. Else someone never gaining experience would never grow old.

That's right, and I always said so, so it again says nothing against my main line of reasoning. I just said it was "more" true (i.e., closer to the truth), but neither is actually true. The truth is that you can gain age without gaining experience, but you can't gain experience without simultaneously gaining (some variable amount of) age. Neither one causes the other, but they have a very strong and completely logical and necessary relationship regardless. Gaining experience requires the expenditure of time; time causes age; therefore gaining experience is a process which always includes gaining some amount of age. The exact age gained varies greatly depending upon how often you encounter challenges of what degree, but everyone who gains any experience at all is older -- whether by a day or a century -- between the middle of one level and the middle of the next. Thus, since gaining experience takes time, no matter the rate at which you gain it, you also necessarily gain age as you gain experience.


Which turned around equals to the immortal fool who - because he never gains XP - never ages.

No it doesn't, because you can't turn it around because it isn't symmetrical. As you gain experience, you necessarily also gain age; but as you gain age, you do not necessarily also gain experience. You can avoid gaining experience, but you cannot avoid gaining age. That is why, while you gain experience, you must also be gaining age. People who never gain any experience also seem like so rare an exception that I can exclude them entirely from my statistical tables. Anyone who says the life of a medieval peasant wasn't often challenging to survive just isn't paying attention. Not as challenging as fighting dragons, surely, which is why they advance on average over time at a different average rate than adventurers -- but they *do* advance in level over time, however slowly, which means that the level of an old peasant, chosen randomly, tends on average to be somewhat higher than the level of a young peasant chosen randomly, in exactly the same way (though not necessarily the same amount) that the level of an old adventurer chosen randomly tends on average to be somewhat higher than the level of a young adventurer chosen randomly. Therefore, when randomly generating NPCs, those with higher level than average tend generally to be somewhat older than average, and those older than average tend to be slightly higher in level than average. I don't see how there can be any logical objection at all to this statement, even assuming the D&D rules are completely correct and true as written.

[WindMage]

I don't think some people understand the consequences of the Elven advantages in warfare. Lets take a look at the human advantages

Numbers. - Humans can and do have bigger armies. Yet they lack a decent command structure that can effectively gather intelligence and communicate with troops on the field of battle or on the march.

Heavier troops - Human troops appear to be slower heavily armoured troops, that would have the advantage in a stand up and thump each other a sword distance away.

Fortifications - Humans appear on the whole have more and stronger fortifications than their elven counter parts.

These three advantages appear to give humans a significant military advantage over elves and appear, to many people, provide the explanation as to why they are winning. Yet if we look at the elven advantages we will see how the Human advantages are actually a disadvantage.

1) Immortality - This is a HUGE advantage that is not fully understood by many. The knowledge gained over multiple life times will never be fully understood by people who have only one life time to amass knowledge. Elves would seem incredibly wise and smart by human standards as they will accumulate far more experience than we ever could. It also means they can wage warfare in a different way. When humans wage war they think short term what can we gain if we attack here and now? Elves can say what if we destroy the farms in the area and starve out the humans? Sure it means that the land goes back the fallow and would take years to make things productive again but for the Elf he has years, the human doesn't.

2) Manoeuvrability - Elves move through terrain in a manner that allows them to mover their armies far fast and far farther than any human army could even dream of. This means they operational distances are far greater than human armies. This is an advantage that is often over looked and ignored.

3) Intelligence - With the ability to use animals to spy gives Elves far better intelligence over humans. Elves can pretty much pin point human troop movements while humans operate near blind to elven troop movements. When you know were the enemy is you determine when and how you engage the enemy.

4) Magic - This give elves a huge fire power advantage over the slower human forces. Yet the more subtle and often ignored use of magic give elves even a greater advantage. COMMUNICATION!! Elves have greater access to spells that are low level that allow for communication over distances. This means an Elven commander can communicate more easily and more often with his unit commanders both on the march and on the battle field.


Now lets imagine an elven force on the attack. They invade a human province, unlike a human force that is either there to raid or occupy the Elves are there to RAZE. First off they Use their superior intelligence and communication to pinpoint the human forces. They then strike where the humans are weak. The humans encountering a superior numbered elven force fall back to their defensive positions and also send out requests for help. Humans behind their walls of stone watch as a superior numbered elven force lays siege to them. Yet the elves are not there to siege in a traditional way. They are there to hold up the human in their stone walls while they get their allies to destroy the farmland and crops. How hard is it for Elves to make the weeds grow fast to choke the human crops? How hard is it to get animals and insects to eat the crops? How hard is it to burn the farm buildings? See the Elves don't need to conquer the land or steal the valuables. They need only to destroy the ability of the humans to feed themselves. All during this time their superior intelligence allows them to know when the large human relief army is and when it gets close they use their superior mobility to escape leaving the humans to "save" their siege brothers. Yet now the castle and its town can't feed themselves this coming winter. The Elves now move further into the human territory doing the same thing.

When the Elves have a numerical advantage they strike and destroy the human military and leave before the enemy can use its advantage of numbers. The combined advantages in mobility, intelligence and communication gives the elves such a huge tactical, operational and strategic advantage that Humans would not be able to win. Elves now only have to strike at the land and not the human's military to defeat the human military machine. By destroying a regions ability to feed a population you win the war. It wouldn't take long before humans would not settle any where near an Elven population centre as its a sure way to lose everything and starve.

I put forth that Elves would use siege warfare and would let humans starve over multiple winters by striking at human's support structure not their armies except when they had overwhelming odds or overwhelming terrain advantage as in a forested conflict where weight of arms and numbers lose their advantage.


Yet all this is not something that translates well into a BR game. Supply, intelligence and communications are harder to represent than troops. It also doesn't fit in another context of a game and that is balance. If you gave elves all their actuall advantages they would be unstopable. They would raze all the provinces around their forests making it impossible for humans to farm teh land then wait for the forests to reclaim the farmland and then in 200 to 500 years after the forests have expanded they hit the next set of provinces around the now larger forests. How do you play a game where Elves wait centries for the forest to reclaim farmland to expand their powerbase? Yet humans use months to conquer other lands? The time scales are too different to play and the tactics of the elves when they do attack are too difficult to translate into rules.

I think you've made an accurate assesment of human and elven strengths and weaknesses. It would be relatively easy for elven raiders to evade most human defenders and raze a few provinces. However, after the initial raid, things will begin to go poorly for the elves. The ugly, but simple truth is that the humans can afford to wage a war of attrition and elves cannot. Human populations will recover much more quickly than elven ones. And what happens after the elves raid the human and raze a couple of provinces? No kingdom worth the name is simply going to sit back and take that lying down. The war mongering rulers of Anuire would quickly march on whatever elven realm they feel is responsible. The elves may be able to avoid the slower moving human armies, but if they do they will find themselves facing the same fate they just inflicted upon those human provinces. The human armies will simply began burning the forests to the ground should the elves choose not to engage them. Thus the human can force the elves to either fight or watch their beloved forests burn. This lets humans choose the ground on which they fight, a fight which will most likely be a straight up slugfest that naturally favors the more numerours and heavily armed human forces. This is why the elves, despite their individual superiority simply can't wipe out the humans and wait for the forests to reclaim the land.

[rugor]

And what happens after the elves raid the human and raze a couple of provinces? No kingdom worth the name is simply going to sit back and take that lying down. The war mongering rulers of Anuire would quickly march on whatever elven realm they feel is responsible.

Rhuobe Manslayer has been doing that for generations of humans, he is as "in your face" as an Elf domain can get. And he has been razing and slaughtering provinces quite effectively during that time.

Depending on how you want to interpret the history found in PS of Tuornen, and in pieces sprinkled throughout Birthright, one could find the Manslayer responsible thru plot and intrigue for a great many Noble deaths in Anuire, and a great many tragedies in the past couple hundred years of Anuire history. Manslayer has certianly done more, than simply raid nearby human provinces from time to time.

But as yet "The war mongering rulers of Anuire" have yet been able to root him out, or do anything to give him pause.

[ConjurerDragon]

Airgedok schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> Airgedok wrote:
> I don`t think some people understand the consequences of the Elven advantages in warfare. Lets take a look at the human advantages
>
> Numbers. - Humans can and do have bigger armies. Yet they lack a decent command structure that can effectively gather intelligence and communicate with troops on the field of battle or on the march.
>
Why do human armies lack a decent command structure? I see especially
Anuirean armies as having a command structure equalling that of the
roman empire. And although the roman armies had much infantery they also
had some cavalry or auxiliares around to scout the area. Unless their
supreme commander was Varus obviously but that was an exception ;-)

However if all you wanted to say is that the sidhelien ability to scout
the enemy and to deliver messages and commands in forests is far better
and faster than that of any human army then I agree.
> Heavier troops - Human troops appear to be slower heavily armoured troops, that would have the advantage in a stand up and thump each other a sword distance away.
>
Do you equal "human" with "anuirean" here? Because I don?t see Khinasi
heavy armoured infantery or Rjurik platearmoured cavalry as something usual.
> Fortifications - Humans appear on the whole have more and stronger fortifications than their elven counter parts.
>
Why do they? Rhuobhe is clearly described as being fortified and both
Tuarhievels natural defences (in it?s players secrets) and Sielwodes (in
the novel "Greatheart") are described While that is not reflected in
fortress levels for example in the computer game it could easily be
simulated by a house rule that sidhelien forests are fortified to the
level of their source holding or by placing a permanent wizards tower
(which in the computer game equals a fortress) in the province. That
would be needed unless the whole province isn?t warded and a fortress
would only be a waste of time.
> These three advantages appear to give humans a significant military advantage over elves and appear, to many people, provide the explanation as to why they are winning.
And the support of divine magic and the gods? And that a huge number of
sidhelien was wiped out at Deismaar that could not yet be replaced by
their lower birthrates?

> Yet if we look at the elven advantages we will see how the Human advantages are actually a disadvantage.
>
> 1) Immortality - This is a HUGE advantage that is not fully understood by many. The knowledge gained over multiple life times will never be fully understood by people who have only one life time to amass knowledge. Elves would seem incredibly wise and smart by human standards as they will accumulate far more experience than we ever could.
Or they could become increasingly stubborn and convinced in their ways
of having learned something to the point that they ignore something
newer and better because the "elven way" is different. That is not my
opinion but simply a possibility.
> It also means they can wage warfare in a different way. When humans wage war they think short term what can we gain if we attack here and now? Elves can say what if we destroy the farms in the area and starve out the humans? Sure it means that the land goes back the fallow and would take years to make things productive again but for the Elf he has years, the human doesn`t.
>
Here I agree :-)
> 2) Manoeuvrability - Elves move through terrain in a manner that allows them to mover their armies far fast and far farther than any human army could even dream of. This means they operational distances are far greater than human armies. This is an advantage that is often over looked and ignored.
>
Yes. Humans can compete with sidhelien in speed only on road in plains
while sidhelien can move fast even in dense forests. But so can dwarves
on mountains.

> 3) Intelligence - With the ability to use animals to spy gives Elves far better intelligence over humans. Elves can pretty much pin point human troop movements while humans operate near blind to elven troop movements. When you know were the enemy is you determine when and how you engage the enemy.
>
Aren?t that many assumptions? Can any elf use animals to spy? Don?t
human armies have the support of either clerics, druids or magicians or
oracles that are able to divine at least similar amounts of information?
That is if there is no wizard that used the SCRY spell on the province
before. And even humans have scouts even if those are not as good as
sidhelien scouts.
> 4) Magic - This give elves a huge fire power advantage over the slower human forces. Yet the more subtle and often ignored use of magic give elves even a greater advantage. COMMUNICATION!! Elves have greater access to spells that are low level that allow for communication over distances. This means an Elven commander can communicate more easily and more often with his unit commanders both on the march and on the battle field.
>
Why? Are there more sidhelien spellcasters than human magicians and clerics?
> Now lets imagine an elven force on the attack. They invade a human province, unlike a human force that is either there to raid or occupy the Elves are there to RAZE. First off they Use their superior intelligence and communication to pinpoint the human forces. They then strike where the humans are weak. The humans encountering a superior numbered elven force fall back to their defensive positions and also send out requests for help. Humans behind their walls of stone watch as a superior numbered elven force lays siege to them. Yet the elves are not there to siege in a traditional way. They are there to hold up the human in their stone walls while they get their allies to destroy the farmland and crops. How hard is it for Elves to make the weeds grow fast to choke the human crops? How hard is it to get animals and insects to eat the crops? How hard is it to burn the farm buildings? See the Elves don`t need to conquer the land or steal the valuables. They need only to destroy t
> he ability of the humans to feed themselves. All during this time their superior intelligence allows them to know when the large human relief army is and when it gets close they use their superior mobility to escape leaving the humans to "save" their siege brothers. Yet now the castle and its town can`t feed themselves this coming winter. The Elves now move further into the human territory doing the same thing.
>
Towns are normally not built directly on the border. Using the normal
rules for the domain level even a sidhelien can?t simply bypass human
fortresses but needs to neutralize them first. And superior numbers to
achieve is seldom even if the siedhelien commander is able to
outmaneuver the human troops.

[ConjurerDragon]

ryancaveney schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ryancaveney wrote:
> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> The sidhelien fighter in my example did not gain levels from aging, but he got XP from overcoming challenges. Aging was automatic the whole time and completely unrelated to him gaining XP - he might have gained much more or much less XP in the same time aging.
> -----------------------------
> I agree completely, and never said I didn`t. I have never said that age alone *caused* XP. I have said that since the actual process of gaining XP generally takes years, if you know nothing about someone other than their age, you can predict their level better than if you know nothing about them at all.
>
And you can say the same about water or relative size or the consumption
of oranges or whatever.
Most beings drink water/are born rather small. They drink more
water/grow as time passes. They gain experience as time passes (or not
but they do on average).
But do we measure the XP of NPC?s by the amount of water they drank in
their life?
When there is a river nearby must the people living there have more
levels in commoner as they could have easier access to more water? ;-)
Or by their size? The NPC is 1.70 metres large. He must be a 2nd level
commoner/3rd level expert...

If there is a general rule, for example the old rule of thumb that there
is double the number of classed individuals (level -1) for each levelled
individual then we have a breakdown of characters that is sufficient to
draw general conclusions from.

Using "more age = more XP" is not only problematic because it?s not
directly connected but only arbitrarily by "more age = probably more
challenges met over time = more XP" it?s also a problem with any
individual (awhnsheglien, all people with the Long Life bloodability) or
race (dwarves, sidhelien) that live far, far longer than any average human.

[WindMage]

Rhuobe Manslayer has been doing that for generations of humans, he is as "in your face" as an Elf domain can get. And he has been razing and slaughtering provinces quite effectively during that time.

Depending on how you want to interpret the history found in PS of Tuornen, and in pieces sprinkled throughout Birthright, one could find the Manslayer responsible thru plot and intrigue for a great many Noble deaths in Anuire, and a great many tragedies in the past couple hundred years of Anuire history. Manslayer has certianly done more, than simply raid nearby human provinces from time to time.

But as yet "The war mongering rulers of Anuire" have yet been able to root him out, or do anything to give him pause.

Rhoube himself has yet to be destroyed, due only to his immense personal power. However, despite all his power he has yet to be able to expand his domain beyond that one single province. Even in the basic BR boxed set it mentions that Rhoube has been effectively contained by the powers of Avanil and Boruine and the Archduke has "nearly brought down the awnshegh himself". While I would heartily agree that Rhoube has certainly caused a great deal of destruction, suffering, and tragedy, he doesn't seem much closer to his goals of driving all humans from Cerilia than he was a thousand years ago. In any event I would say that Rhoube does not represent the typical elven realms, seeing as how most of them are not led by thousand plus year old Awnsheighlen bearing a True bloodline of Azrai that were present at the destruction of Mount Deismaar.

[geeman]

At 02:06 AM 2/19/2008, Airgedok wrote:

I`m 98% with you, but I have a couple of comments:

>How hard is it to burn the farm buildings?

Elves avoid using destructive magics, particularly fire, and I
suspect their objection isn`t so much to the particular schools of
magic as it is an ingrained attitude towards the real and imagined
affects of fire on the natural world. They`d avoid burning buildings
even with mundane fire for similar reasons.

>See the Elves don`t need to conquer the land or steal the valuables.
>They need only to destroy the ability of the humans to feed
>themselves. All during this time their superior intelligence allows
>them to know when the large human relief army is and when it gets
>close they use their superior mobility to escape leaving the humans
>to "save" their siege brothers. Yet now the castle and its town
>can`t feed themselves this coming winter. The Elves now move further
>into the human territory doing the same thing.

This is an interesting point. Elves would not have the same attitude
towards siege warfare as humans in that they would take the "long
view" towards such things. What is a year or two of siege to them?

However, it does seem counter to the elven character to engage in
siege warfare because of the "instant gratification" (a human term,
but one that more or less works) of the elven personality. I do see
the elves engaging in a kind of siege warfare, but in a way that is
"natural" to them. They`d view a siege as a sort of reforestation
process, with nature making its almost glacially (from the human POV)
slide back into blighted areas. Humans represent a sort of wildfire
in this analogy, and elven siege is their process of nurturing the
forests back to "health".

>By destroying a regions ability to feed a population you win the war.

That`s true, but I don`t think elves really look at it that way. To
them crops represent a perversion of the natural order, but they are
essentially a positive thing and they`d be reluctant to destroy
them. Rather, they`d prefer to let them run wild so that they
eventually were overtaken by more natural processes or simply
replaced themselves in a natural way--out of the orderly rows that
humans put them in.

Imagine, for example, a human orchard. Elves who kill all the humans
who planted that orchard would not then cut down the trees, but leave
them in hopes of their reforesting the same area in a more natural
way. Similarly, I have trouble buying that elves would destroy ANY
human agriculture directly. I like the idea that they would see
"weeds" and similar plant-life as a way of retaking those fields, but
anything more direct than a sort of "counter growing" process would
probably be just as offensive to elves as the actual crops.

Gary

[kgauck]

I frankly don't understand the confusion of the relationship between age and experience. It seems straightforward, obvious, and simple to me. I can understand people who don't want to bother with this level of detail. The standard NPC stat block doesn't include age. But a character has an age. He has lived for some specific amount of time. He has consumed a certain quantity of water. He has consumed some number of oranges. Water is a good measure of age (assuming we don't mean found water, but water in foods and drinks, no one drinks found water unless they're hoping to catch dysentery and other water-borne diseases), since you consume water every time you eat and drink. Of course it adds an extra variable into the link between water consumption and experience, but its subject to the same statistical models that work with age. Just not as directly. Oranges have nothing to do with experience since oranges were unknown to Europeans until the middle ages. If I know the average orange consumption for a population, then I can draw a line or plot a cloud of data points for orange consumption and experience. Again orange consumption adds a layer of indirect correlation, but that just adds noise to the relationship, it doesn't invalidate it. If orange consumption varies widely, its a lot of noise, but even if orange consumption is random, since the law of large numbers can be applied, a large number of older people have still consumed more oranges than a large number of younger people, and a large number of older people have more experience than a large number of younger people.

But why would I want to do that? Age is a normal, useful, description of a character. Age relates to whether a character remembers the previous ruler, or a previous war, whether they have gray hair, have old injuries that effect their posture, walk, &c. If a character gets enough description, some indication of their age is described. But I don't know of any character that normally gets their orange consumption described.

Suppose you are warned that there is a Mage of the Stonecrowns, and you encounter "an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which a white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots." Is he powerful? Who knows? But its safer to assume that he might be powerful, because he could be, than to assume he's been staring at trees and is 1st level.

On the other hand, if you encounter Arthur when he pulls the sword from the stone, when he first establishes the round table, when he fights Mordred, doesn't he both age and increase in power? Only Merlin is an exception to the principle.

So, other than adding a layer of complexity, what is the problem with the idea that age and experience have some rough correlation?

[DanMcSorley]

On 2/19/08, kgauck <brnetboard@birthright.net> wrote:
> So, other than adding a layer of complexity, what is the problem with the
> idea that age and experience have some rough correlation?

Metagame-wise, only PCs and PC-equivalent NPCs (the warlock, king
arthur, etc that you mention- movers and shakers) gain experience.
Most people do not adventure. Adventuring gains you experience. Most
people, even elves, just live their perfectly normal lives.

Narrative-wise, assuming that age->experience and therefore all old
things like elves are high level breaks the setting. If you assume
every elf is an 8th-level wizard, then the world ceases to exist in a
puff of contradictions- humans would never have settled the continent,
Deismaar couldn`t have happened the way it did, we don`t get all these
nifty kingdoms and castles and armies to play with. We could play the
internal politics of the world-spanning elven hegemony, which sounds
like an interesting game, but it`s not Birthright.

Or you can try to get both (the Birthright setting and high-level
elves), but then you end up with bizzare convolutions as you try to
explain the setting; and the setting was clearly written assuming that
not all elves were high level.

--
Daniel McSorley

[rugor]

Originally Posted by rugor
Rhuobe Manslayer has been doing that for generations of humans, he is as "in your face" as an Elf domain can get. And he has been razing and slaughtering provinces quite effectively during that time.

Depending on how you want to interpret the history found in PS of Tuornen, and in pieces sprinkled throughout Birthright, one could find the Manslayer responsible thru plot and intrigue for a great many Noble deaths in Anuire, and a great many tragedies in the past couple hundred years of Anuire history. Manslayer has certianly done more, than simply raid nearby human provinces from time to time.

But as yet "The war mongering rulers of Anuire" have yet been able to root him out, or do anything to give him pause.

Rhoube himself has yet to be destroyed, due only to his immense personal power. However, despite all his power he has yet to be able to expand his domain beyond that one single province. Even in the basic BR boxed set it mentions that Rhoube has been effectively contained by the powers of Avanil and Boruine and the Archduke has "nearly brought down the awnshegh himself". While I would heartily agree that Rhoube has certainly caused a great deal of destruction, suffering, and tragedy, he doesn't seem much closer to his goals of driving all humans from Cerilia than he was a thousand years ago. In any event I would say that Rhoube does not represent the typical elven realms, seeing as how most of them are not led by thousand plus year old Awnsheighlen bearing a True bloodline of Azrai that were present at the destruction of Mount Deismaar.

Ah well, there we go HUMANizing elves again.

In the time that Rhuobe has been at war against humans, has the Empire become stronger or weaker?

Have the ruling Human bloodlines grown in power or deteriorated?

Has Alamie and other powerful Duchies grown weaker?

Are there now Half Elves in control or realms like Dhoesone and Tuornen?

Do you KNOW what an immortal Elf's strategy would be to bring ruin to Humanity if that was his plan... how many hundreds of years would he be willing to take to make his plans come about?

There are many who feel the Gorgon has plans within plans, that he manipulates the regents of Anuire to do his bidding, even tho many don't realize it... honestly, I don't think the Gorgon would have anything over Rhuobe Manslayer.

The Manslayer sat himself right down in the heart of the Anuire Empire and hasn't been budged. Any talk of Boeruine or anyone else taking him out is purely wishful thinking... someone may think they came close, but more likely they barely escaped with their own lives, and never was the Manslayer really at risk.

As for some of the other Kings and Queens of the various Elven realms, I don't think they are slouches, and I don't think there is currently any Anuire realm or realms that would have much luck taking them down... heck the Gorgon couldn't get it done, I seriously doubt anyone in Anuire is more of a threat.

[geeman]

At 12:10 PM 2/19/2008, Daniel McSorley wrote:

>Metagame-wise, only PCs and PC-equivalent NPCs (the warlock, king
>arthur, etc that you mention- movers and shakers) gain experience.

Back in 2e when there were 0-level characters I could see this
interpretation, but that`s been gone for some time now....

Gary

[geeman]

At 12:37 PM 2/19/2008, rugor wrote:

>Ah well, there we go HUMANizing elves again.
>
>In the time that Rhuobe has been at war against humans, has the
>Empire become stronger or weaker?
>
>Have the ruling Human bloodlines grown in power or deteriorated?
>
>Has Alamie and other powerful Duchies grown weaker?
>
>Are there now Half Elves in control or realms like Dhoesone and Tuornen?

Actually, I think these questions are really questions that only a
human would ask.... In the past 500 years certain human efforts have
backslid, but if you are _truly_ looking at things from the elven
perspective then you have to go back further than the fall of the
Anuirean empire, and that means the elves are losing. If their
strategy is to take the long view then one has to look at it from the
declaration of open hostilities between humans and elves. Even under
the fractured empire, with the decline of several individual human
realms and the inclusion of a few half-elven rulers, the Sidhe as a
group have continued to decline throughout that period.

In fact, if one looks at the info we have on the ancient history of
the setting (mostly from the PSo Tuarhievel text) the decline of the
elves started before humanity arrived on Cerilia.... It was much
more gradual, but the Golden Age of the Sidhelien was ten thousand
years in the past, and their decline began at least 2,000 years
before human migration. Something else is going on with elven decline.

>Do you KNOW what an immortal Elf`s strategy would be to bring ruin
>to Humanity if that was his plan... perhaps his plan is just to
>regain some or all of the lost elven kingdom?

Why would that be his strategy?

Gary

[AndrewTall]

At 12:10 PM 2/19/2008, Daniel McSorley wrote:

>Metagame-wise, only PCs and PC-equivalent NPCs (the warlock, king
>arthur, etc that you mention- movers and shakers) gain experience.

Back in 2e when there were 0-level characters I could see this
interpretation, but that`s been gone for some time now....

Gary

Indeed, I've been convinced of late against my long held 1e and 2e beliefs that L2-3 expert/commoner NPC's would not be unusual whereas the L0 commoner would; although I'm wondering about starting PC's at L2-3 to compensate - i.e. they have already proved they stand out from the crowd and can survive the initial rough and tumble. (The Athas approach I guess)

I'm confused by the arguments that age and experience would be uncorrelated across the population - unless one takes the view that events only occur 'while the DM is watching' then the sort of events that give rise to experience will inevitably occur as a function of time across the population as a whole, leading the population power curve to follow a standard normal distribution with a strong age correlation - although as noted this gives no specific information on any individual.

I do wonder about the impact of removing this 'people are likely to gain skill and wisdom over time' expectation from the game - such a change in the social dynamics would have a major impact on the perception of the elderly for starters, similarly the standard hierarchy's we know from culture around us would need to be drastically revised - if a grizzled veteran is no more likely to be skilled at warfare than a neophyte fresh from the training barracks (the obvious corollary of age and wisdom being independent) then a lot of standard expectations go out of the window, together with most assumptions of advancement through an organisation. Indeed since clearly the population as a whole cannot be learning from their experiences, one wonders about how they perceive and act to those who - like the PC's - do learn and grow.

I note that I fully agree with Ryan's comments on survival of the fittest. When calculating the average L3 fighter for example you should exclude any poor saps who might have rolled '1' on the L1 and L2 hp rolls - they would not generally have survived to L3, higher level characters should have on average better stats generally since those would make it more likely that they would survive to the higher level. So the average hp of a L2 fighter would not be 5.5 + 5.5 but, say, 7 + 5.5... Likely with a con bonus too.

This assumption is however countered by the fact that to a degree higher level, etc mechanics may be intended to boost the average rather than actually increase the maximum, although they would seem a poor mechanic for doing so.

[rugor]

In fact, if one looks at the info we have on the ancient history of
the setting (mostly from the PSo Tuarhievel text) the decline of the
elves started before humanity arrived on Cerilia.... It was much
more gradual, but the Golden Age of the Sidhelien was ten thousand
years in the past, and their decline began at least 2,000 years
before human migration. Something else is going on with elven decline.

Gary


True enough, but I still support the position that if they went about razing some provinces and retreating back into the woods, there isn't a whole lot that could be done about it by most of the human realms.

Throw up a Ward Realm spell, or some other equally powerful and effective magic to destroy invaders or protect the elven realm, if the human realm does indeed come looking for payback.

[kgauck]

Warding is reasonable for very small realms, like Endier or Ilien, but impractical otherwise. The cost is huge (5 RP and 2GB) the number of provinces covered is small, and the ward can be penetrated by the worst sorts of enemies, parties of adventurers who might enter the province and start contesting your sources. Getting into a bidding war after you've thrown down a lot of RP and GB on a warding is a very questionable strategy.

In the case of Tuarhievel, if Fhileraene is a Fighter 7/Wizard 7, he can cast the spell on 2 provinces in the Rulebook and 1 province in the BRCS. That's useful if he's dealing only with Cariele (in which case the real power in Cariele already has holdings in your provinces and doesn't need to visit you to contest your sources- though she may need a wizard, depending) or the Giantdowns.

If I were Mheallie Bireon, and the elves warded Bindraith and Avallaigh, I'd spend to contest both of those sources and move an army through (and raise troops in) Dhoesone to strike in Braethindyr or Dhoneaghmiere.

Mheallie is worth 37 RP, Larra is worth 22 RP, Entier is worth 18 RP, for a total of 77 RP, compared to Fhileraene's 55. Fhileraene's income is around 28GB and Mheallie's alone is 31GB. Mheallie can outspend Fhileraene, bypass the wards, and is in an overall stronger position.

The elves certainly have advantages, but wards don't seem to be one of them. They strike me as mostly liability. They make sense for the Manslayer, but that's about it. Isaelie could use them to block human realms while dealing with the Gorgon, but that doesn't do much good for Sielwode, except that it allows her to pick her enemy. I think the Gorgon would like nothing better than to dominate the elves.

Warding whole realms requires Isaelie and Fhileraene to set up a bunch of source-vassals and will cost a lot of RP.

[geeman]

At 11:39 PM 2/19/2008, kgauck wrote:

>The elves certainly have advantages, but wards don`t seem to be one
>of them. They strike me as mostly liability. They make sense for the
>Manslayer, but that`s about it. Isaelie could use them to block
>human realms while dealing with the Gorgon, but that doesn`t do much
>good for Sielwode, except that it allows her to pick her enemy.

Don`t forget the "perfected" version of the spell that Niobhe of
Innishiere. She is described as warding the entire realm with it in
exactly the way you`re describing.

Gary

[WindMage]

True enough, but I still support the position that if they went about razing some provinces and retreating back into the woods, there isn't a whole lot that could be done about it by most of the human realms.

Throw up a Ward Realm spell, or some other equally powerful and effective magic to destroy invaders or protect the elven realm, if the human realm does indeed come looking for payback.


I'll have to agree with the comments of a few others here, warding isn't a very cost effective way of protecting any realm larger than a province or two.

I think it is more fact than fiction that the elves are in decline. If there was truly so little the humans could do to harm the elves how did the human tribes come to dominate most of Cerilia while the elves have only a few small realms remaining? Even looking at an Elven time table of thousands of years, there can be little doubt that elven civilization is losing ground. Most of the remaining elven realms aren't bounding back, but are still slowly declining, either by outside threats(such as the Raven, the Gorgon, Ghuralli, etc) or internal matters. While the elves are without a doubt still a powerful force, I don't see them as being back on the rise.

I'd say that individually elven warriors are probably superior to individual human warriors. The elves most likely have at least a slight edge in wizardry. Given the elves the speed and skills in wilderness terrain they also be better the most human realms(excepty maybe khinasi realms) at raids, running battles, and hit and run style tactics. Humans however have a huge advantage in numbers, both in terms of population and size of military forces. Humans also have the advatage of divine magic which is just as powerful as arcane magic. Humans are better at open warfare and head on clashes of large armies. I'd say also that humans are more capable of waging potracted, long term military campaigns than the elves are. The human race is also capable of fighting a war of attrition, something the elves just can't afford.

In my opinion, elven raiders and the Hunt of the Elves are defintiely a thing to be feared, but it seems to me that most of the elven rulers(with the probable exception of Rhoube) seem to be aware that they can't wage open war with the humans and hope to come out on top. In most every description of an elven realm in BR material there is some mention of the sense of depression, doom, and loss fealt by the elves. Most of the elven realms seem to seek only to defend their current borders and prevent any further loss and deforestation.

[rugor]

I agree with all of that.

Elves I don't think are dwindling in numbers so much as the other races are just breeding like rabbits. Elves stay in balance with nature, Goblins, Humans and all the others don't, they voraciously consume all of nature's resources with no concern at all to the consequences.

The exception to this are the Rjurik, and even they are slowly becoming developers of permanent dwellings, towns and cities which drain the resources around them.

Look at our own world scenario, 75 years ago there were 2 billion people on the earth, today there are over 6 billion on the earth... 75 years is like a week worth of time in an Elf's life, so how do they compete with that?

But, that said, if an elf realm brought its full power against a human realm, I think they would cream the human realm. The human realm would recover in a generation or two however, the elves would never really recover any losses they sustained, not in a thousand years.

And thats why they don't wage human-type wars on human realms, they would never win that way, and I'm sure they've realized this, since they have involved themselves in human wars in the past, and paid the price.

The only way they have a chance of longterm survival, is incorporating a lot of half-elves into their ranks... and that only delays the issue, so long as humans and humanoids continue to breed like bacteria in a specimen jar, elves will always be threatened.

So the final solution for elves would be to do what the elves of Middle Earth (Tolkien) did, and split the scene somehow... in most game settings this has been done by them retreating to an island and sealing it off from humans with magic.

[rugor]

Warding is reasonable for very small realms, like Endier or Ilien, but impractical otherwise. The cost is huge (5 RP and 2GB) the number of provinces covered is small, and the ward can be penetrated by the worst sorts of enemies, parties of adventurers who might enter the province and start contesting your sources. Getting into a bidding war after you've thrown down a lot of RP and GB on a warding is a very questionable strategy.

In the case of Tuarhievel, if Fhileraene is a Fighter 7/Wizard 7, he can cast the spell on 2 provinces in the Rulebook and 1 province in the BRCS. That's useful if he's dealing only with Cariele (in which case the real power in Cariele already has holdings in your provinces and doesn't need to visit you to contest your sources- though she may need a wizard, depending) or the Giantdowns.

If I were Mheallie Bireon, and the elves warded Bindraith and Avallaigh, I'd spend to contest both of those sources and move an army through (and raise troops in) Dhoesone to strike in Braethindyr or Dhoneaghmiere.

Mheallie is worth 37 RP, Larra is worth 22 RP, Entier is worth 18 RP, for a total of 77 RP, compared to Fhileraene's 55. Fhileraene's income is around 28GB and Mheallie's alone is 31GB. Mheallie can outspend Fhileraene, bypass the wards, and is in an overall stronger position.

The elves certainly have advantages, but wards don't seem to be one of them. They strike me as mostly liability. They make sense for the Manslayer, but that's about it. Isaelie could use them to block human realms while dealing with the Gorgon, but that doesn't do much good for Sielwode, except that it allows her to pick her enemy. I think the Gorgon would like nothing better than to dominate the elves.

Warding whole realms requires Isaelie and Fhileraene to set up a bunch of source-vassals and will cost a lot of RP.

Well, a simple game mechanics adjustment for elves is required then, we'll say an Elf realm can cast ward, at half the GB and RP costs, and anyone trying to counter it would have a negative penalty involved due to elves having a stronger bond to their world and to magic.

Just because game mechanics say something works a certian way, does NOT make them right, or fitting, for a given situation.

Infact this raises a good point. The standard rules for contesting, combat, and domain running in general, which is geared for Human realms and the lesser wanna-be humanoid realms is fine. But there should be concessions and adjustments made for Elf and Dwarf realms that would suit their differing nature.

[Airgedok]

Airgedok schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> Airgedok wrote:
> I don`t think some people understand the consequences of the Elven advantages in warfare. Lets take a look at the human advantages
>
> Numbers. - Humans can and do have bigger armies. Yet they lack a decent command structure that can effectively gather intelligence and communicate with troops on the field of battle or on the march.
>
Why do human armies lack a decent command structure? I see especially
Anuirean armies as having a command structure equalling that of the
roman empire. And although the roman armies had much infantery they also
had some cavalry or auxiliares around to scout the area. Unless their
supreme commander was Varus obviously but that was an exception ;-)


Humans have a poor command structure because all armies at this technology level have poor command structures. They have a very hard time reacting to changes on the battle field and they use 'runners' to communicate. If a field commander needs to tell a unit commander to attack a position he sends a runner. Yet if the unit commander misunderstands or needs clarification to a poorly worded or writen command he can't ask for a clarification. Perhaps the most famous example of orders being misunderstood is the charge of the light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava, 1854. But this NOT by far and exception to the rule this type of thing happens all the time in warfare to varing degrees.
This difficulty has plague armies up until the last 100 years of recorded warfare. Yet with the advent of modern communications armies can react and resposond far more quickly and accurately. The Elves however had an equivalent to modern communication through magic. This allows them a huge strategic and tactical advantage that is near impossible to simulate in the BR game.



However if all you wanted to say is that the sidhelien ability to scout
the enemy and to deliver messages and commands in forests is far better
and faster than that of any human army then I agree.

Elves can use their communications in any enviorment it is not limited to forests. Anyone that has lived on a farm or the praries knows that wildlife abounds there as well. The ability of elves to communicate means that their command structures would reflect and evolve to take advantage of said advantages. This greater flexability would allow elves to get a "force multiplier." Their armies would fight as though they had many times the number of humans.


Part I.(was too long for one post)

[Airgedok]

> Heavier troops - Human troops appear to be slower heavily armoured troops, that would have the advantage in a stand up and thump each other a sword distance away.
>
Do you equal "human" with "anuirean" here? Because I don?t see Khinasi
heavy armoured infantery or Rjurik platearmoured cavalry as something usual.


No I am not making that assurtion what I am saying is that it appears that humans use calvalry and infantry more than elves who appear to use more archery units and light clavary that uses missle weapons much like the steppe nomads of central asia. This is not to say that every human army has nothing but heavy infantry and horse. It is only to suggest that their forces are on the whole heavier than their elven counter parts. Nor is it to say that there are no heavy elven units. I only put forth the premiss that on the whole most humans armies will be heavier than elven armies and an army moves at the speed of its slowest units so human armies on the whole will be slower than elven ones.



> Fortifications - Humans appear on the whole have more and stronger fortifications than their elven counter parts.
>
Why do they? Rhuobhe is clearly described as being fortified and both
Tuarhievels natural defences (in it?s players secrets) and Sielwodes (in
the novel "Greatheart") are described While that is not reflected in
fortress levels for example in the computer game it could easily be
simulated by a house rule that sidhelien forests are fortified to the
level of their source holding or by placing a permanent wizards tower
(which in the computer game equals a fortress) in the province. That
would be needed unless the whole province isn?t warded and a fortress
would only be a waste of time.

From what information I have been able to gather humans use the classic medieval stragegim(sp?) of stronghold warfare. A stronghold allows a weaker protective force to fall back behind strong defensive positions to await releif from the outside. The attacker can not just ignore the smaller force as that would leave an intact enemy at his rear and allow said force to harass it from the rear. Thus the attacker is forced to seige the fortification. This tactic works great in a medieval situation and to some degree even in modern warfare but it surrenders the strategic initative to the enemy. It also proposes that the enemies goal is conquest or a raid. If the goal of the enemy is neither then the strong hold loses it advantage.

I put forth that while Elves have Strongholds they do not place their defencive strategies on the same model as humans. They have stronghold that can be used rather well against human forces but it is not their primary defensive strategy. Elves have the advantage of having a command and communication structure that allows them to fight in terrrain that hinders other forces. i would suggest that Elven force structures would be smaller faster and with better communication and intelligence to allow them to strike at human forces using the forested terrain to their utmost advantage terrain that doesn't allow human numbers and heavier forces to be an advantage. The elves use attack as their primary means of defense. Because they can move through terrain unhindered they and concentrate their forces on the enemy far easier and quckly when humans are most vulnerable. Forested areas are terrbile to melee infantry that uses the man beside you as mutal protection. Humans would be forced to travel along paths or roads in such places yet the elves could fire from the cover of the woods and strike at teh human forces in higher concetrations than humans could because humans are hindered by the terrian. This negates the humans advantage of heavier units and more numbers. This means that humans can not use the same tactics against he elves because once they enter the forest they lose all their strengths and are struck with the full weight of the elven advantages. Forest fighting for formation units is deadly. They can't fully deploy they can't move to react well and they will be struck by missle weapon armed enemies that fall back into the woods when the melee units charge. The melee units will then have to either break up further thus losing the advantage of mutual protection even more or stop once they reach the wooded area on either side of the path/road that their army MUST follow. The Elves just fall back wait to see if the men charge into the woods if they do they can pick them off one by one as the trees and terrian sperate the men from the protection of the formation. If the human troops stop they simply fire at the exposed men stanging in the clearing of the path/ road. Human missle armed troops will be more exposed to the enemy fire and can't see far into to trees. As anyone knows who has been in the woods its hard to see far into the trees from the path you are walking on but step into the wooded area and its pretty easy to see the path from much farther in wooded area. So Elven bowmen can fire with near impunity against human bowmen. If teh bowmen advance then they lose the advantage of volly fire and the elves can strike them as they break up their number in teh forest. The simple fact that elves are not hindered by terrian makes them unstopable in a wooded enviorment. Therefore elves would use stronghold is a much differnent way. A way the is not simulated well in the rules because again the rules are not equiped to deal with two completely different styles of warfare. One is medieval the other is far more modern in resemblance.



> These three advantages appear to give humans a significant military advantage over elves and appear, to many people, provide the explanation as to why they are winning.
And the support of divine magic and the gods?
And that a huge number of
sidhelien was wiped out at Deismaar that could not yet be replaced by
their lower birthrates?
I would suggest that elven populations and lower birth rates and conversly humans greater populations and birthrates are not significant strategic advantages or hunderances to either force when one takes into consideration how Elves would fight wars. In fact Humans larger populations make them more vulnerable to Elven tactics and the Elven lower populations make them less vulnerable to the same tactics. But such differences also have their own inherant advantages and disadvantages that would be weighted such that neither situation is a significant advantage or disadvantage. If Elves fought wars like Humans they would be doomed but they do not thus populations considerations are not as critical as many people might think. Elves do not need as many troops on the field. With Elven command and communication and far better intelligence they can do far more with far less.


Part II.(was too long for one post)

[Airgedok]

> Yet if we look at the elven advantages we will see how the Human advantages are actually a disadvantage.
>
> 1) Immortality - This is a HUGE advantage that is not fully understood by many. The knowledge gained over multiple life times will never be fully understood by people who have only one life time to amass knowledge. Elves would seem incredibly wise and smart by human standards as they will accumulate far more experience than we ever could.

Or they could become increasingly stubborn and convinced in their ways
of having learned something to the point that they ignore something
newer and better because the "elven way" is different. That is not my
opinion but simply a possibility.
Why do you equate long life and accumulation of knowledge with stubborness? It a very unlikely outcome of such a long life and such a breath of "human" experience. Elves would be far more LESS likely to be stubborn and unchanging they will have seen change and the advantage of change on a first hand basis. They would see the advantages of better tools can have in situations and would know this first hand. This knowledge would stimulate progesss not hinder it. In fact they would never have the attitude "our ways are the same ways as our father's fathers and thus are good enough for us." Simply because the ways of their father's Fathers changed. Having old elves around that remember the way things were before they had "X" and how much better things are now that they have "X" would be a powerforce against stagnation. Far too many elves would have seen the advantage of change and seen the disadvantage of not changing. Immortality is far too often viewed as stagnation because it appears that immortals do not change in the sense that they do not grow into middle age and into old age. Yet the immortal would be more attuned to change because they would experience change far more often than mortals. Change would be a constant. It is a common misconception about immortality. The truth is immortality is perhaps the most frightning advantage the elves have.



> It also means they can wage warfare in a different way. When humans wage war they think short term what can we gain if we attack here and now? Elves can say what if we destroy the farms in the area and starve out the humans? Sure it means that the land goes back the fallow and would take years to make things productive again but for the Elf he has years, the human doesn`t.
>
Here I agree :-)

And even here I glossed over things. Having all the time in the world to let plans mature and ripen means that you can manipulate your enemies far easier. You remember things that they forget as generations die.



> 2) Manoeuvrability - Elves move through terrain in a manner that allows them to mover their armies far fast and far farther than any human army could even dream of. This means they operational distances are far greater than human armies. This is an advantage that is often over looked and ignored.
>
Yes. Humans can compete with sidhelien in speed only on road in plains
while sidhelien can move fast even in dense forests. But so can dwarves
on mountains.

I put forth that even on the plains and roads Humans and dwarves are slower than elves. First armies have to send forth scouts a head of themselves less they either miss each other there are case all through human history of armiers marching past each other because they simply did not see each other. An army without scouts is blind and ripe to slaughter. Scouts slow down an army. Yet Elves can use birds and other animals to scout thus increasing their own speed as they do not need to send out as many elven scouts and yet they have a greater perimeter around their army. Thus another advantage Elves have that is near impossible to simulate in BR. Elves also do not sleep and thus can travel longer and therefore farther than other armies. All armies rest on the march but not being required to sleep means they can be far more mobile than any other army on the field.

Elven armies on the whole are lighter than human armies they can therefore choose a larger force of just light fast units to strike deep into the hostile territory with less of a loss in fighting strength. This again gives Elves greater Flexability and mobility even on raods and the plains. The fact that terrain does little to hinder Elves also means that areas that a human army could not pass an elven army could and this gives them again far greater strategic flexability.

Part III.

[Airgedok]

> 3) Intelligence - With the ability to use animals to spy gives Elves far better intelligence over humans. Elves can pretty much pin point human troop movements while humans operate near blind to elven troop movements. When you know were the enemy is you determine when and how you engage the enemy.
>
Aren?t that many assumptions? Can any elf use animals to spy? Don?t
human armies have the support of either clerics, druids or magicians or
oracles that are able to divine at least similar amounts of information?
That is if there is no wizard that used the SCRY spell on the province
before. And even humans have scouts even if those are not as good as
sidhelien scouts.

It does appear the elves can use animals to spy, at lest that is what I have read, perhaps its an assumption but its does seem to be supported by multiple people and multiple traditions. It is very much a celtic sidhe ability that the Sidhelien are based on.

Magic is an elven ability they will have not only a higher percentage but the literature suggests the elven are magical by nature as well. How this translates into rules and game balance is hard to say. My whole arguement is based on teh fact that Elves are out of balance and thus much of their advantages are simply ignored to further the game. Given their magical nature I would suggest that Elves have by far more numerous magic users, than any human force. They would out number that enemy is sheer number of magic users and their skill, given their immortality, also be likely to be greater. The lore suggests that magic is more common than in human cultures even taking into consideration clerical magic. It appears that Elves encounter magic much more commonly than their human counter parts. Thus it is not hard to conclude that elves would base their entire force structure on magic. They would take it for granted that a military unit even a small one would need magic to properly function.


> 4) Magic - This give elves a huge fire power advantage over the slower human forces. Yet the more subtle and often ignored use of magic give elves even a greater advantage. COMMUNICATION!! Elves have greater access to spells that are low level that allow for communication over distances. This means an Elven commander can communicate more easily and more often with his unit commanders both on the march and on the battle field.
>
Why? Are there more sidhelien spellcasters than human magicians and clerics?


Yes the lore does seem to suggest the average elf encounters magic much more often than the average human. This suggests that their must be far more practisioners of magic in elven lands than in human lands even counting clerical magic users. The lore suggests that elves are magic by nature as well given rise to a logical concusion that elves would produce more magic users.



> Now lets imagine an elven force on the attack. They invade a human province, unlike a human force that is either there to raid or occupy the Elves are there to RAZE. First off they Use their superior intelligence and communication to pinpoint the human forces. They then strike where the humans are weak. The humans encountering a superior numbered elven force fall back to their defensive positions and also send out requests for help. Humans behind their walls of stone watch as a superior numbered elven force lays siege to them. Yet the elves are not there to siege in a traditional way. They are there to hold up the human in their stone walls while they get their allies to destroy the farmland and crops. How hard is it for Elves to make the weeds grow fast to choke the human crops? How hard is it to get animals and insects to eat the crops? How hard is it to burn the farm buildings? See the Elves don`t need to conquer the land or steal the valuables. They need only to destroy t
> he ability of the humans to feed themselves. All during this time their superior intelligence allows them to know when the large human relief army is and when it gets close they use their superior mobility to escape leaving the humans to "save" their siege brothers. Yet now the castle and its town can`t feed themselves this coming winter. The Elves now move further into the human territory doing the same thing.
>

Towns are normally not built directly on the border. Using the normal
rules for the domain level even a sidhelien can?t simply bypass human
fortresses but needs to neutralize them first. And superior numbers to
achieve is seldom even if the siedhelien commander is able to
outmaneuver the human troops.

I put forth the case that the rules do not reflect the realities of the situation. I also put forth that the rules should NOT change either as this would give the elves far too much of an advantage to make game play enjoyable. The game does not factor in the ability of the land to support communities except in the most abstract way via province size. I suggest that elves would fight so different from humans that the current rules do in no way reflect how elves fight nor their advantages.

Most games do not undertand logistics, communication and intelligence, thus most players also do not understand them. They minimise their importance and quite frankly they are the lesss fun parts of a military simulation yet they are by far the most important. Elves "win" in all these areas. The fact the Elves are not hindered by terrian mean their loggistics trains need not be confined to exposed routes thus their logistic trains will be better protected and move faster than any human army.

Human armies on the defense can NOT be clumped in a large force on the border. They must be dispersed over the whole of the kingdom. Large concentrations of forces require huge supplies of food and armies in these "time" periods/technology levels feed of the land. An Army can't feed off the land for long. Again this is something that is poorly simulated by medieval games. The full strength of a kingdom at this technology level is not able to be a standing army. Most soldiers are needed in the fields and an elite "noble" force is stationed at castles that dot the land. These forces are smaller and dispersed by nessesity and are mobilised when a nation is attacked or plans to go to war. When they are not at war they are scattered across the landscape. It is therefore very easy for any elven Force to concetrate attack and gain superiority at the start of the conflict. Thus forcing the Humans to fall back into their strongholds. The Elves need only to force the defenders into the fortress to "win." If the humans stand and fight they die because their forces will be weaker because they lack all the advantages the Elves have. And they will be out numbered. The elves would simply burn down the farms and detroy the crops. The fact that towns are not on the boarder is of no concequense elves can stike fast and far into a human province before the enemy even knows they are there and it is during the time the humans mobilse and gather for the counter attack that the elves do their damage.

To people who say fire is adverse to elves nature loving ways I put forth that that is false. Elves live in a forest setting they know that fire is vital to the health of the forest. Without fire you get dried dead brush that chokes a forest and when a fire does happen its more deadly. Also maky trees need fire to germinate. So Fire would be a constant part of a healthy elven forest. In north America fire suppression in forests worked so well that it has now showen to cause more problems then it solved. Today forest management includes controlled fires as it is not accepted to be vital for a healthy forest management program. I put forth that the idea of elves do not like fire & type of magic and its destructive ways as a false hold out from when people beleive fire was damaging to forests not a vital part of the natural order. Any Elve truely in touched with the health of a forest would see fire as vital to the health and welfare of the natural world.


I simply think that the BR rules are ill equipped to simulate the realities of elven warfare and ill equipped to simulate the advantages elves have. The time scales are all wrong and most simulations a better at simulation warfare between two equal sides. Not equal in terms of force numbers but equal in command structure and communication potential.
Please note I am not advocating make uber elves in the rules I think any chage towards that would ruin the game. I simply present the "realities" of elven warfare to show why elves can't be made "accuratly." Its more information to show why the elves survive even though the rules in teh game would suggest they perish.

I would also submit that the Elves are not "losing" now even though humans have spread like a plague across the land. Elves simply have observed the enemy and learned their strengths and weaknesses. They likely wanted to see how and if humans and elves could live in peace and its be what 1500 years since the great battle where the gods died? That may appear to be a long time by our own peceptions but I submit that to the elves this is just the first stage of the war. They have assesed the situation and can now strike. But the game would would never do this because whats the fun in a setting such as that. Its far more enjoyable to have the fractured humans fighting each other with "islands" of elven woods holding them at bay in their wooded fortesses. The advantages given to the elves sound minor and sound insignificant but any force with those advantages would be unstopable if they were willing to destroy the lands ability to grow food and willing to wait for the forests to reclaim the cultivated farmlands.

Part IV.

[Airgedok]

At 02:06 AM 2/19/2008, Airgedok wrote:

I`m 98% with you, but I have a couple of comments:

>How hard is it to burn the farm buildings?

Elves avoid using destructive magics, particularly fire, and I
suspect their objection isn`t so much to the particular schools of
magic as it is an ingrained attitude towards the real and imagined
affects of fire on the natural world. They`d avoid burning buildings
even with mundane fire for similar reasons.

>See the Elves don`t need to conquer the land or steal the valuables.
>They need only to destroy the ability of the humans to feed
>themselves. All during this time their superior intelligence allows
>them to know when the large human relief army is and when it gets
>close they use their superior mobility to escape leaving the humans
>to "save" their siege brothers. Yet now the castle and its town
>can`t feed themselves this coming winter. The Elves now move further
>into the human territory doing the same thing.

This is an interesting point. Elves would not have the same attitude
towards siege warfare as humans in that they would take the "long
view" towards such things. What is a year or two of siege to them?

However, it does seem counter to the elven character to engage in
siege warfare because of the "instant gratification" (a human term,
but one that more or less works) of the elven personality. I do see
the elves engaging in a kind of siege warfare, but in a way that is
"natural" to them. They`d view a siege as a sort of reforestation
process, with nature making its almost glacially (from the human POV)
slide back into blighted areas. Humans represent a sort of wildfire
in this analogy, and elven siege is their process of nurturing the
forests back to "health".

>By destroying a regions ability to feed a population you win the war.

That`s true, but I don`t think elves really look at it that way. To
them crops represent a perversion of the natural order, but they are
essentially a positive thing and they`d be reluctant to destroy
them. Rather, they`d prefer to let them run wild so that they
eventually were overtaken by more natural processes or simply
replaced themselves in a natural way--out of the orderly rows that
humans put them in.

Imagine, for example, a human orchard. Elves who kill all the humans
who planted that orchard would not then cut down the trees, but leave
them in hopes of their reforesting the same area in a more natural
way. Similarly, I have trouble buying that elves would destroy ANY
human agriculture directly. I like the idea that they would see
"weeds" and similar plant-life as a way of retaking those fields, but
anything more direct than a sort of "counter growing" process would
probably be just as offensive to elves as the actual crops.

Gary

I do not agree with this assessment of Elves. First it concludes as a basis of elven nature that decay and fire are not vital to the health and welfare of the land. Science is begining to understand just how vital fire is. Fire is not a destructive influence but a regenerative influence. It is why most forest services now engage in controlled burns. Elves would know this and view fire and decay as vital. The reason elves are writen the way they are is that they were written by humans with a flaud understanding of nature.

I put forth that an elf would see the benifits of detroying the crops of human farmers and thus starving the humans forcing them to leave. Human populations require reshaping the land to support its populations but destroying the food production of humans over say a decade every year you attack and destory production you force the humans to leave. After the second year the people will start to leave where they can live in a more stable situation. Elves would see the land start to be reclaimed. THe reasons for the destroction of the orchard and the fields is not because elves are impacient but because It allows them to remove the humans which destroy the land . With the humans gone the elves would then just let the land alone. As soon as a farmer appears again they destroy this crops until he leaves. This is perfectly consistant with a society seeking balance with nature. It is a very long term approach to warfare and it applies all the strength of the elven warmachine against the weakness of the human strategic situation. Which in turn makes for a very boring simulation. it hard to simulate a sustained conflict between elven and human kingdoms as the elven strategy covers generations. It gets rather boring waiting for the land to be reclaimed and boring for the human player to hear elves swarmed across the boarder again they foreced your border garrisons into their strongholds and by the time you relief force arrived the land was in ruins and the elves gone.

"Ok this time I place my forces right on the boarder in quick striking distance. What happens?" The elves circled around you moved faster than you attacked your undefended rear areas and burned a scored the land across an even greater area.
"Crap how did they get by me?" They move faster than you and their intelligence told them where your scouting parties were so they simply moved their force between your encampments and because they don't need to sleep of use roads to move quickly they were able to attack your rear and by the time you moved your forces to stop them they moved on.

This is a classic result when you fight a force with greater mobility, superior communication and intelligence. Given the elves do not want to loot and thus get slowed down which happens to raiders and they are not there to occupy the land humans have little defence against this type of attack. I wont go into why a strike into an elven wood is doomed to fail as I have in above posts already.

This is why I think the BR rules do not simulate the realities of elven warfare and why they should not be changes to simulate them. GMs should simply assume the Elves are not going to fall back anymore while they observe humans and gather intelligence. GMs should also assume that for the campaign Elves are still in watch and learn mode not open warfare mode because when they do switch modes humans are in for a rude awakening.

[AndrewTall]

Well, a simple game mechanics adjustment for elves is required then, we'll say an Elf realm can cast ward, at half the GB and RP costs, and anyone trying to counter it would have a negative penalty involved due to elves having a stronger bond to their world and to magic.


Unnecessary. Elves tend to have at least one mage high enough level to make a warding cover a large number of provinces and last for seasons. Warding makes the realm immune to armies, stops virtually all regents, and as a result removes any real need to defend ones holdings. More than most other spells warding gets truly gruesome for a high level caster.

The book of magecraft also happily talks about potions of doubling (and redoubling) working on realm spells - if Llaeddra of Lluabraight casts a warding spell after drinking two (fairly cheap) potions then 4 provinces vanish for 7 years - well worth an action. For 2 actions, 4 Gb and 40 RP (less than a season's income from source holdings alone) Llaeddra's realm is immune to pretty much anything that might head her way in terms of armies or domain actions both.

Add a metamagic feat (if you let them to act on domain spells) or a stronger magical artifact and the position is even worse. Since 2 GB and 20 RP equals the income of roughly 3 elven provinces for a single season the spell is cheap even if the duration is not extended. And as noted this is one spell in particular that elves are likely to research improvements on - most spell casters in BR would see little use for a L6 spell that needs a L5 source, the elves could easily make a L8 version that needs a L9 source and either costs less or last longer.

In war warded provinces are ridiculous - warded provinces cannot be scouted or invaded, allowing the elves to leave their realm undefended and send their massed forces to strike at whim retreating to safety anytime they find serious opposition.

Yes adventuring parties may be able to get in but what then? The elves have very few logistical centres to attack, are very good at detecting spies - or adapting plans if discovered, and anyone who wants to attack the elven commanders in a classic PC-party decapitation strategy is going to need to be more than just 'pretty good' to have a chance of surviving. The typical human/goblin tactic of 'overwhelm by numbers' really doesn't work well when the elves outnumber the attackers 100 to 1...

Tuarheviel is more vulnerable than most elven realms simply because Fhileraene is such a low level (by elven standards) as a mage but other elven realms with their L14-18 court mage would do exactly as Cwmb Bhein and Innishiere (amongst others) are said to have done in the sourcebooks - lay down a ward and simply vanish from the map as far as everyone else is concerned.

As a GM the spell makes elven realms a complete pain, you want them to interact but they turtle better than anyone else...

[rugor]

Excellent clarification.

I still say give them some extra benifits tho, after all, they are the race that mastered magic, first, and have it flowing thru their being/realms. ;)

[geeman]

At 02:55 PM 2/20/2008, Airgedok wrote:

>I do not agree with this assessment of Elves. First it concludes as
>a basis of elven nature that decay and fire are not vital to the
>health and welfare of the land. Science is begining to understand
>just how vital fire is. Fire is not a destructive influence but a
>regenerative influence. It is why most forest services now engage in
>controlled burns. Elves would know this and view fire and decay as vital.

I think it`s safe to say that the elven concept of nature isn`t that
of modern forestry services. Elves want a seemingly (in fact, a
factually) magical realm that is often described as "sylvan" or
"idyllic." Fire is not rejuvenation in such a mythical
construct. The elven ideal of a forest is the kind of thing that
teams with life and most forestry services fear will result in a
blackened wasteland when the inevitable fire sweeps through the area
because the "overgrowth" will burn so hot as to destroy
everything. However, in truly sylvan lands the inevitability of the
fire sweeping through the land isn`t actually inevitable, and what
modern humans would view as "overgrowth" is to elves the very
point. It`s what makes the lands magical. And as part of their
magical nature, under elven influence and control, they burn down no
more often than dryads wear blue jeans....

>The reason elves are writen the way they are is that they were
>written by humans with a flaud understanding of nature.

Fire does have a role in the modern HUMAN understanding of nature,
but I`d counter that this understanding of nature is essentially
mundane and, therefore, does not apply to how elves think.

>I put forth that an elf would see the benifits of detroying the
>crops of human farmers and thus starving the humans forcing them to leave.

Starving humans is a human tactic. Elves want them driven away and
their lands returned.

Elves favor modification and alteration to destruction. To elves the
processes of nature is magical. In that context, the destruction of
human farms and crops by fire would act as a kind of counter process
to simply leaving them as they are and "treating" the region with
their own magical influences.

From the elven POV, which would be easier to turn into a faerie
wonderland? Would one take living things as they are and "husband"
them into forms more suited to elven magical esthetics, or burn large
sections of real estate to ash? Elves _like_ to modify living
things, and it would make more sense to an elf to take a flower grown
in a greenhouse into a more natural setting (by taking down the
structure) to let it grow wild. They`d prefer that to burning the
flower and then starting over with something new entirely.

From the human POV land that has been burned is highly
productive. However, from the elven POV such lands are dead. They
might still be brought back to life, but there are aesthetic,
practical as well as "magically real" reasons for elves to avoid a
scorched earth policy.

Gary

[rugor]

Most games do not undertand logistics, communication and intelligence, thus most players also do not understand them. They minimise their importance and quite frankly they are the lesss fun parts of a military simulation yet they are by far the most important. Elves "win" in all these areas. The fact the Elves are not hindered by terrian mean their loggistics trains need not be confined to exposed routes thus their logistic trains will be better protected and move faster than any human army.


This is true, "the battle is won before it is ever fought" is a very true statement.

The army with the better intelligence, better weapons, and faster communications will win EVERY battle unless it is a suicide mission along the lines of the 300 Spartans.

The more elite the unit in todays army, or in Roman times, has the better equipment, the best trained/fit/intelligent men, and usually the best intelligence.

In todays world, give me a small squad of men, a radio, choice of terrain (that I position myself in before the enemy enters the area), and the ability to call in fire (Artillery, Air strikes, etc.) and I will decimate a fighting force of thousands and make them combat ineffective.

When you watch/read stories like the Lord of the Rings, the elves KNOW exactly when the Company of the Ring Bearer enters into their forest, they KNOW that Orcs are tracking them, even tho those Orcs are outside of the Elven domain... no way you are sneaking into or near the borders of an Elven realm with any type of fighting unit.

Imagine an army unit entering into the elven woods, and having arrows rain down on them from the tree tops. Don't even need magic, the typical elf can probably fire off three arrows per round, without any serious negatives, their best archers are probably deadly from a click away.

The human unit would be cut down as easily as if they were standing in front of a line of machine guns on full auto.

[kgauck]

We have a game to explain how these things work. In a movie explanations of how things work are ignored unless they advance the plot. I would imagine that scrying is the best way to watch out for and track intruders. But scrying can be anticipated, countered, tricked, and ultimatly defeated. The game provides mechanics for telling us how.


The fact the Elves are not hindered by terrian mean their loggistics trains need not be confined to exposed routes.
For example, elves have a racial ability that allows them to move thorugh challenging terrain, Nature Stride, but this doesn't extend to their objects, such as wagons or carts, or to their animals. Animals, and vehicles as well, can be enhanced by spells, but this isn't a free ride. Elves can also, one imagines, use other kinds of magic, from bags of holding and extra-dimentional spaces, but I think there are serious questions about how much permenant magic exists in the setting.

Rather than adding a very large amount of magic to make fantastic logistics possible, I would prefer that elves try and do without any logistic baggage. I don't think elves really eat, pace Ryan, so for short missions, some gear could be reduced. If missions are short raids, the logistical needs of the raiders are small, some amount of gear (perhaps extra arrows) can be reduced, and all seems well.

Humans eat 2 lbs per day, so a 250 man company would eat a ton of food every four days. Moving a ton of food requires animals, and those animals need a quarter of the humans they accompany. Humans will, under the best conditions, be like the Romans, slow, well provisioned, and decisive in battle.

Elves, I think, lack supply trains altogether.


Imagine an army unit entering into the elven woods, and having arrows rain down on them from the tree tops. Don't even need magic, the typical elf can probably fire off three arrows per round, without any serious negatives, their best archers are probably deadly from a click away.
Many elven soldiers are presumed to be rangers, and at 2nd level they can select archery as a combat style and get the Rapid Shot feat. At 6th level such archers could get their 3rd shot per round. 6th level characters are really a bit high, I think for regular archers. Common enough as leaders, though. Elf ranger 3's, 4's, and 5's can certainly be pretty formidable, especially if they take humans as their Favored Enemy, but they're hardly invincable. As a rough guide, two human CR 1's are a match for a single CR 3, 4 CR 1's can be a technical match for CR 5, but if the CR 5's get surprise and cover, their probabaly need to be 8 CR 1's.

I think that human armies are about 40% full of warrior 1's and 2's, and 40% full of fighter 1's and 2's. Each represents about a fifth of the total numbers. The remaining fifth is elite troops and leaders. The bulk of the army are CR 1's. and the warrior 1's and fighter 2's kind of average out to be CR 1's.

If elves are levels 3, 4, and 5 in roughly equal portions, the'll average out to be CR 4's, since the elves themselves need not be NPC classes. I'll grant them that advantage. Not counting the elite forces and leaders, the bulk of a human army needs to be 4 times as large.

So two companies of elves would require five companies of humans for an even match. One human company (20%) would comprise the human elite, the other four companies (80%) would comprise the rank and file CR 1's.

However, the human elite company costs significantly more to raise and maintain than the other companies. I think that elf units are by and large all elite, so they too are expensive.
One way to monitor these costs is to change how many people are in a company. But that's not my point here. Rather to observe that the human costs may be only 50% more than the elf (4 GB for the 4 rank and file, 2 GB for the elite, compared to 4GB for 2 elites).

This is, I think why elf units had higher muster costs in the rulebook. I think that if elves had guild and temple incomes, (and BRCS rightly gives guilds twice the income of temples, so they're twice as important for this point) elf units would have double maintenance. The reduced maintenance is an adjustment to the loss of those holdings.

So humans need about 50% more money to go to war with the elves. That seems about right.

In terms of skirmishing, a single elite human unit can match a single elf unit (which is by its nature elite) but humans can't find enough elite soldiers to wage war with only elite units. No Rjurik realm has the all-housecarl army. Anuireans don't raise all-knight armies.

[rugor]

kgauck,

I give you that if humans fully mobilized, bringing with them catapults, a powerful wizard or two, Priests... the whole works... then they could assault the edges of a Elf domain, slowly cutting into it, and put up the good fight.

But lacking that type of massive assault and use of magics, if a couple of units were sent into an Elven domain looking for trouble, game mechanics aside, they'd get their arses handed to them without so much as putting a dent of damage into the elfs IMO.

[kgauck]

But lacking that type of massive assault and use of magics, if a couple of units were sent into an Elven domain looking for trouble, game mechanics aside, they'd get their arses handed to them without so much as putting a dent of damage into the elfs IMO.

Re: lacking a an assault in mass and use of magic:
I think anyone who attacks with only a part of their power is asking to be defeated. Check out Machiavelli's chapter on defending mountain passes. Sending out a part of your capacity to face what is likely to be the whole of the enemy is rather silly.

Re: a couple of units looking for trouble:
This kind of mission should be restricted to elite units. If Dhoesone were to raise a unit of Anuirean knights and Rjurik huskarls, these are some pretty powerful units, elite as well. Supported by paladins and priests of Haelyn among the knights and rangers and druids among the huskarls. They would be pretty formidable on a trouble seeking mission. However, both are close combat charge units. But if the mission was to seize a place, they could do fine.

re: game mechanics aside:
I started with what I thought was a reasonable description of elf and human forces, then I attempted to describe them mechanically. I do not start with rules and mechanics and then make the game world match those. If you think the elves are on balance more powerful, that's fine, but at some point if you're gonna play out an encounter, you need to start using mechanics of some kind. If you wanted elves to be levels 6-8, instead of 3-5, as I suggested, its still possible to go to the drawing board and assess how many and what kind of human forces you need to face them. Since I think that 4th-5th levels are where normal people top off (routine challenges in the life of a normal person) and BR has a lot of 4th and 5th level folks in the published materials, I am hesitant to go higher. YMMV. BR has fewer and fewer characters who get into the 6-9th levels, and very few who are 10-12th. Elves are an exception to this, but more, as Rowan suggested, by shifting the curve +3, rather than re-drawing the whole curve. As such, assuming that armies could be formed with units of 6-8th level characters is just too high for me. But the DM should do what seems right to them.

[rugor]

Re: lacking a an assault in mass and use of magic:
I think anyone who attacks with only a part of their power is asking to be defeated. Check out Machiavelli's chapter on defending mountain passes. Sending out a part of your capacity to face what is likely to be the whole of the enemy is rather silly.

Re: a couple of units looking for trouble:
a unit of Anuirean knights and Rjurik huskarls, these are some pretty powerful units, elite as well. Supported by paladins and priests of Haelyn among the knights and rangers and druids among the huskarls. They would be pretty formidable on a trouble seeking mission. However, both are close combat charge units. But if the mission was to seize a place, they could do fine.



Its not so much about levels, my mistake for not making that clearer earlier.

IMO it doesn't matter if the elves are 2nd, 3rd, 4th levels...

What point I'm attempting to make, has more to do with terrain and tactics.

The elves are never going to meet the Knights and Huskarls in mass formation. They would stay spread out, attacking them from the front and sides, above and below... small groups with arrows and spells. Staying up in the tree tops, using cover and concealment, using small unit tactics.

Its a matter of how they fight, Gorilla style, shoot and retreat, attack and draw them into a trap, killing off one man here, two there, etc.

Manueverability in a heavily forested region would be slow and ponderous for such heavy units as Knights. A Horse charge would be impossible, strict lines would be impossible.

Thats why I agreed with you, that if a very large and powerful force set up on the edges of the forest, set up camp for a longterm seige, and started cutting and firing up the forest and working their way slowly in, this would have effect IMO... but it would be a slow ponderous campaign, like trying to assail a fortress with Walls a mile thick, taking forever to get to the heart of the Keep.

Many of the advantages that give humans the upper hand in battle against the elves out in the open plains, or on the coastlines, would be a dis-advantage or unavailable to them in the middle of a forest.

[kgauck]

What point I'm attempting to make, has more to do with terrain and tactics. The elves are never going to meet the Knights and Huskarls in mass formation. [...]
Its a matter of how they fight, Gorilla style, shoot and retreat, attack and draw them into a trap, killing off one man here, two there, etc.

Actually, this is a recipe for total elf defeat. Guerrilla war is a weak form of war that pits large number of inferior forces against small numbers of superior forces. If the elves are spread out, they'll get defeated piecemeal. A dozen elves here and a dozen elves there is suddenly two dozen dead elves. Guerrilla war works only when they bring large numbers of (inferior) forces against a small number of (superior) forces. If humans are on a search and destroy mission, they are in a group, and you're putting large numbers of humans into contact with small numbers of elves.

The elves should be using a raid style of warfare. Here, they pick an obstacle they can easily cross, but which will block humans. A revene with overgrowth works nicely. The elves en mass, fire from that position and fall back when the humans charge. If the elves break up into small groups, they will never kill any humans, just annoy them. Plus, a few elves against a few druids with the support of dozens if not hundreds of huskarls, are totally outmatched, because the druids can play in the woods and have heavy fighter support.

Another problem I see is the elves in trees. This is death for the elves in trees. Troops with no retreat are always basically dead. Again the perfect counter are Rjurik. Those huskarls are masters of the axe, and the axe is the foremost weapon for attacking trees. A 4th level huskarl with a bunch of axe related feats and a couple of buddies will have that tree down faster than you can say "sidhelien go deo". If the fall doesn't kill the archer, the axemen will.

The elves need to stick with raid and strike tactics, attack in large numbers, but fall back before the humans get to bring their heavies up to the elves and then use their superior terrain skills to keep the heavies from getting close. The elves must attack in mass or the humans will just heal up from each attack. The elves can never press an attack for long, because even in a forest, heavies can move pretty quickly in a charge. Once the heavies make it up to archers, the archers are food for the wolves. So if the elves don't concentrate their fire and put a lot of arrows in the air in a very short period of time, they may as well be yelling unfriendly greetings and running around. They need to score some criticals and eat up the invaders ability to take arrows to the body. This can only be done in mass.

[Airgedok]

Its not so much about levels, my mistake for not making that clearer earlier.

IMO it doesn't matter if the elves are 2nd, 3rd, 4th levels...

What point I'm attempting to make, has more to do with terrain and tactics.

The elves are never going to meet the Knights and Huskarls in mass formation. They would stay spread out, attacking them from the front and sides, above and below... small groups with arrows and spells. Staying up in the tree tops, using cover and concealment, using small unit tactics.

Its a matter of how they fight, Gorilla style, shoot and retreat, attack and draw them into a trap, killing off one man here, two there, etc.

Manueverability in a heavily forested region would be slow and ponderous for such heavy units as Knights. A Horse charge would be impossible, strict lines would be impossible.

Thats why I agreed with you, that if a very large and powerful force set up on the edges of the forest, set up camp for a longterm seige, and started cutting and firing up the forest and working their way slowly in, this would have effect IMO... but it would be a slow ponderous campaign, like trying to assail a fortress with Walls a mile thick, taking forever to get to the heart of the Keep.

Many of the advantages that give humans the upper hand in battle against the elves out in the open plains, or on the coastlines, would be a dis-advantage or unavailable to them in the middle of a forest.


I would not equate elven small unit tactics as guerilla warfare. Infact it is far more accurate to compare it with WWII squad tactics. Elves would be broken up into small unit squads that have their own set of orders they target a formation unit and strike when the formation unit "charges" they fall back into favourable terrain. Terrain that is either forest or even open rough terrian. No formation unit can maintain its formation in broken/rough terrian or a forest. And infantry of the time period is required to maintain formation to be a fighting force. Without that formation they are nothing but an armed mob easy pickings for a squad with armed missile weapon. The key is they would have both superior intelligence and superior communications. Add in superior mobility and they are near immune to Human forces. Which is again why I do not think Elves should be protrayed realisticly.

[kgauck]

Infantry of the time period is required to maintain formation to be a fighting force. Without that formation they are nothing but an armed mob easy pickings for a squad with armed missile weapon.

What time are you refering to? Close order fighting did not exist between the Legion and the Tercio. Medieval armies were armed mobs. Further, this does not make them easier to harder to target with missile weapons.

[Airgedok]

Actually, this is a recipe for total elf defeat. Guerrilla war is a weak form of war that pits large number of inferior forces against small numbers of superior forces. If the elves are spread out, they'll get defeated piecemeal. A dozen elves here and a dozen elves there is suddenly two dozen dead elves. Guerrilla war works only when they bring large numbers of (inferior) forces against a small number of (superior) forces. If humans are on a search and destroy mission, they are in a group, and you're putting large numbers of humans into contact with small numbers of elves.

The elves should be using a raid style of warfare. Here, they pick an obstacle they can easily cross, but which will block humans. A revene with overgrowth works nicely. The elves en mass, fire from that position and fall back when the humans charge. If the elves break up into small groups, they will never kill any humans, just annoy them. Plus, a few elves against a few druids with the support of dozens if not hundreds of huskarls, are totally outmatched, because the druids can play in the woods and have heavy fighter support.

Another problem I see is the elves in trees. This is death for the elves in trees. Troops with no retreat are always basically dead. Again the perfect counter are Rjurik. Those huskarls are masters of the axe, and the axe is the foremost weapon for attacking trees. A 4th level huskarl with a bunch of axe related feats and a couple of buddies will have that tree down faster than you can say "sidhelien go deo". If the fall doesn't kill the archer, the axemen will.

The elves need to stick with raid and strike tactics, attack in large numbers, but fall back before the humans get to bring their heavies up to the elves and then use their superior terrain skills to keep the heavies from getting close. The elves must attack in mass or the humans will just heal up from each attack. The elves can never press an attack for long, because even in a forest, heavies can move pretty quickly in a charge. Once the heavies make it up to archers, the archers are food for the wolves. So if the elves don't concentrate their fire and put a lot of arrows in the air in a very short period of time, they may as well be yelling unfriendly greetings and running around. They need to score some criticals and eat up the invaders ability to take arrows to the body. This can only be done in mass.

Elves do not need to retreat in your example. First they are not using classic raiding tactics in a medieval scense. Elves use small unit tactics not guerilla tactics. They use terrian to break up the enemy and given their superior mobility and intelligence and communication they choose when and were they fight the enemy. This means they can choose a field of battle that appears open yet is actually broken. THis breaks up a formation. A medieval unit no matter how heavy and elite that breaks formation is dead. What gives these units strength is mutual support support you can only get with a tight formation. This allows the elves to target a broken unit and crush it. First they weaken it with missile weapons then the close with their own infantry IN FORMATION because the terrian doesn't hinder them.

One problem people seem to be having is they are doing equal equating to a situation which is a pretty bloody good way to view an historical event. If you are in terrian that is broken then if either side moves through it it will have an equally adverse effect on both sides. If this was the case then the archers would be dead meat. They could not maintain their own formation they could not move through the terrian to better firing positions and they would not have superior communications. Yet you CAN'T use equal equating with Elven vs Human forces. Elves are not hindered through terrian this means they could and would move faster through terrian that would break up the human formations and No elven commander would not choose a battle where terrian didn't favour them. Do not think a plain is the same as clear terrian. It is very easy to find open terrian that is broken and rough.

With superior command and control, superior itelligence and mobility Elves get all the most important advantages in war. Even a full assult on a forest would be suicide. Elves stand at the edge of the forest and fire into the human units as the yarrive elves stand about 5 feet in the forest close enough to see the enemy and target them and yet far enough inside to ne in concelment and some will have cover as well. They atttack until the humans charge then fall back slighly and if the human stop at the edge of teh woods they are still going to be in clear view of the elves deeper in the woods (Just go into a wooded area and you can see outside the woods from a far greater distance than you can see into a wooded area.) Any Human units that push into the forest breaks up their formation which means they are broken up into small packets of troops easy picking for elven infantry that can strike in a far more cohesive force, VITAL to medieval warfare.

Now BR does not take into account that units in some types of terrian loose their combat effectiveness. History has shown time and time again what can happen to a hevier armed unit ambushed in a forest and this is a situation where both sides are human and both have the forest act in an adverse way to unit cohesion. What if one side didn't have that negative effect?

Also do not misunderstand me while the elves would likely use small unit command structure they would not send one or two sections against a full company. They would simply break up their battalions into a more modern command structure of sections/squads. This allows for more flexability on the battle field and that mean a potent force multiplier for the elven units.

[rugor]

You give me an elf or two that can cast Entangle and Fog spells (low enuf level spells) and a handful of good Archers, and I'll wipe out an entire unit of some 200+ Knights and their Priests.

The Archers would take out the Priest(s) and Commander with aimed shots, first and foremost, and the rest would have no chance, and be killed at leasure.


~ units in some types of terrian lose their combat effectiveness. History has shown time and time again what can happen to a heavier armed unit ambushed in a forest and this is a situation ~

You don't send Scouts to assault Mounted Knights on the open plains, and you don't send armored Knights to run around in the woods.

[Airgedok]

What time are you refering to? Close order fighting did not exist between the Legion and the Tercio. Medieval armies were armed mobs. Further, this does not make them easier to harder to target with missile weapons.

Thats not true at all. The Scots used formations called schiltrons. Which was a tighly pact unit of pike-men. Often called a medieval phalanx. The saxon in the 11th century and earlier had something called the saxon shield wall similar to the roman shield wall except using the large saxon round shields. Such a formation requires tight formations. The Swiss perfected pike formations by creating a mobile pile formation that could attack without breaking up the formation. With the asscention of calvalry on the battle field infantry units were forced to develope tight cohesive formations less they be struck down. If fact the medieval age saw the beginnings of the rise of infantry the english archers had great effect against French calvalry. The Swiss Pikemen were so successful that they were hired as mercenaries by most medieval armies in the late medieval period just before the rise of small arms units. And the classic fantasy knight was a product of the LATE medieval period as well. Chain armour was the standard arour in 1066 its not until the mid stages of the 100 years war that plate armour begins to become the standard for knights. So we are talking 15th centry here.

I think you suffer from a misconception that medieval warfare was just armed mobs it wasn't like that at all. infantry fought in formation. Even Calvalry fought in formation and calvary's biggest problem was that it lost unit cohession very easily in the attack. Which is why disipline calvary units moved slowly towards the enemy until the last possible moment to break into gallop. This help to maintain unit cohesion which was so impotant to help destroy enemy units.

[Airgedok]

At 02:55 PM 2/20/2008, Airgedok wrote:

>I do not agree with this assessment of Elves. First it concludes as
>a basis of elven nature that decay and fire are not vital to the
>health and welfare of the land. Science is begining to understand
>just how vital fire is. Fire is not a destructive influence but a
>regenerative influence. It is why most forest services now engage in
>controlled burns. Elves would know this and view fire and decay as vital.

I think it`s safe to say that the elven concept of nature isn`t that
of modern forestry services. Elves want a seemingly (in fact, a
factually) magical realm that is often described as "sylvan" or
"idyllic." Fire is not rejuvenation in such a mythical
construct. The elven ideal of a forest is the kind of thing that
teams with life and most forestry services fear will result in a
blackened wasteland when the inevitable fire sweeps through the area
because the "overgrowth" will burn so hot as to destroy
everything. However, in truly sylvan lands the inevitability of the
fire sweeping through the land isn`t actually inevitable, and what
modern humans would view as "overgrowth" is to elves the very
point. It`s what makes the lands magical. And as part of their
magical nature, under elven influence and control, they burn down no
more often than dryads wear blue jeans....

>The reason elves are writen the way they are is that they were
>written by humans with a flaud understanding of nature.

Fire does have a role in the modern HUMAN understanding of nature,
but I`d counter that this understanding of nature is essentially
mundane and, therefore, does not apply to how elves think.

>I put forth that an elf would see the benifits of detroying the
>crops of human farmers and thus starving the humans forcing them to leave.

Starving humans is a human tactic. Elves want them driven away and
their lands returned.

Elves favor modification and alteration to destruction. To elves the
processes of nature is magical. In that context, the destruction of
human farms and crops by fire would act as a kind of counter process
to simply leaving them as they are and "treating" the region with
their own magical influences.

From the elven POV, which would be easier to turn into a faerie
wonderland? Would one take living things as they are and "husband"
them into forms more suited to elven magical esthetics, or burn large
sections of real estate to ash? Elves _like_ to modify living
things, and it would make more sense to an elf to take a flower grown
in a greenhouse into a more natural setting (by taking down the
structure) to let it grow wild. They`d prefer that to burning the
flower and then starting over with something new entirely.

From the human POV land that has been burned is highly
productive. However, from the elven POV such lands are dead. They
might still be brought back to life, but there are aesthetic,
practical as well as "magically real" reasons for elves to avoid a
scorched earth policy.

Gary

i think you misunderstand what overgroth is. Its not living material its dead dry material that chokes life from a forest. Elves are magical yes but they are also "in tune" with nature. They find a balance with in it. The arguement of mundane vs magical isn't really applicable. Simply because elves are magical doesn't somehow negate natual aspects of a forest. Forests burn its a natual process that rejevinates a forest and forests that burn are far more healthy than a forest that has not had fires. The overgroth chokes the life out of teh forest because it dries and doesn't decay. Fire burns it away allowing trees and plants to grow in teh renewed soil.

Fires do not create barren dead terrian that is a flawed view. We know that fire is not a destroyer of forests but a bringer of life. From the Elven POV the forest that never has fire is a dead and sick forest. Life gets choked out of it and life is no longer renewed. Fire brings life to a forest. It is the HUMAN point of view that fire is a destroyer and a barren landscape. Forests recover almost immediatly from fire it does not take years, It is only the hot fires from forests fires that have had all fires suppressed in them for a 100 years (the old policy of forestry services) that are these dead an barren areas from fire. Elves would see fire as stimulating growth (which it does) to allow them to magically shape the land to the faery lands your decribe. Fire does not make teh land sterrile or make it a waste land that is a human conception of fire and the land after fire.

You have switch points of view between humans and elves because of faulty HUMAN understanding of what is healthy for a forest, A belief now know is wrong. BR is made by humans thus policies and understandings about what we though was good for a forest were used in developing elves. We now know otherwise and elves would view fire in a far more positive light then they do in BR.

[Airgedok]

For example, elves have a racial ability that allows them to move thorugh challenging terrain, Nature Stride, but this doesn't extend to their objects, such as wagons or carts, or to their animals. Animals, and vehicles as well, can be enhanced by spells, but this isn't a free ride. Elves can also, one imagines, use other kinds of magic, from bags of holding and extra-dimentional spaces, but I think there are serious questions about how much permenant magic exists in the setting.

Rather than adding a very large amount of magic to make fantastic logistics possible, I would prefer that elves try and do without any logistic baggage. I don't think elves really eat, pace Ryan, so for short missions, some gear could be reduced. If missions are short raids, the logistical needs of the raiders are small, some amount of gear (perhaps extra arrows) can be reduced, and all seems well.

Humans eat 2 lbs per day, so a 250 man company would eat a ton of food every four days. Moving a ton of food requires animals, and those animals need a quarter of the humans they accompany. Humans will, under the best conditions, be like the Romans, slow, well provisioned, and decisive in battle.

Elves, I think, lack supply trains altogether.

I was not viewing elves using their abilites on horse and carriage. Elves could and would use such supply trains were and when it was safe. But should supply not be safe they could and would use elven porters to extend supply lines through terrian notnormally possible. I would suggest the Elves have supply but most setting have elves with superior food technology. They are able to make food that provides what is needed to live in a much smaller package that is easy to pack and lasts for long periods. Such supply could be moved from a supply centre to units in the field quickly and efficently via elven porters when horse and carriage is vulnerable. its not an ideal situation but its an option that other races do NOT have and thus elves have loggistical supperiority.

If we take your view point of elves do not have supply they have even greater loggistical superiority and that is yet another advantage they have in a war. One that I wouldn't give them.

[kgauck]

I don't think elves have superior intelligence. Actually I think humans have as good or better intelligence. Humans have vast guild networks and I think they spend more time with divinations that elves do.

I don't think elves have better communications than humans do. I can see why you might imagine that elves have superior intelligence, but I cannot fathom why you suppose elves have better communications.

That leaves elves with superior mobility in difficult terrain. Mobility is mostly for running away. Its not a route to victory.

Mediveal armies were assembled quickly, and disbaned when the levy call expired. Many of their weapons prevent close order fighting. These two factors disprove the generalization that close order fighting was the norm. Most medieval combat is of the "heroic" style in which a warrior fights as in individual in a group.

I have been posting on pikemen for over a decade, and have noted on more than one occasion that examples such as the Swiss and Flemish pikemen require a very specific social order to take the place of drill to create unit cohesion. For instance, here:

Because proper formations require that everyone (at least in the first rank or two) have a special feat to take advantage of the formation, proper formations and close order fighting is kind of an elite or otherwise special phenomena.


I would point to the excellent post by John Machin which follows:

I think that fundamental changes in formation probably represent
"Advances" (as per BoR). Developments in military science are hard to bring about and I have some problems with medieval forces using sophisticated `modern` formations. That is the province of those crazy genius commanders with Battlewise in my opinion. Most commanders would be limited to the regular old formations.

A perfect example of this is the schiltron. Normally a pretty ineffective formation, it was occasionally used very effectively by special commanders at battles whose names are familiar to moviegoers. The game provides a mechanic for this in the Blood Ability Battlewise. It also provides various feats, as I originally suggested in the thread, for this kind of thing.

Gary started the thread on formations I cited, just as he started this thread. Nice work.

Anyway, 15th century (and even 16th century) infantry generally doesn't fight in a formation. Formations were begining to return to military organizatons, but this was only possible because other parts of the military revolution, such as permenant standing armies, were also comming into widespread use. As long as its typical in BR to raise large forces after war is declared, close order fighting will remain unusual.

[kgauck]

You give me an elf or two that can cast Entangle and Fog spells (low enuf level spells) and a handful of good Archers, and I'll wipe out an entire unit of some 200+ Knights and their Priests.
This is just silly.

[Airgedok]

I don't think elves have superior intelligence. Actually I think humans have as good or better intelligence. Humans have vast guild networks and I think they spend more time with divinations that elves do.

I don't think elves have better communications than humans do. I can see why you might imagine that elves have superior intelligence, but I cannot fathom why you suppose elves have better communications.

There are some very low level spells that allow communication over distances. Given that there are more magic users in an elven community I submit that elves since they are magical by nature would incorporate magic into their unit structure. They would therfore have more access to magical communications. They would therfore has superior communications. Would their communications be exclusive? No but they could make it a normal part of military operations and thus be more efficent with it than their human counter parts.



That leaves elves with superior mobility in difficult terrain. Mobility is mostly for running away. Its not a route to victory.

What!!?? Where do you get this? Mobility is far more important. Mobility is for choosing when and where you fight. Mobility forces the enemy to react instead of initiate. Mobility is the route to victory. This is such a fundemental aspect of warfare. Lack of mobility kills.



Mediveal armies were assembled quickly, and disbaned when the levy call expired. Many of their weapons prevent close order fighting. These two factors disprove the generalization that close order fighting was the norm. Most medieval combat is of the "heroic" style in which a warrior fights as in individual in a group.

Define "assembled quickly" if you are talking days to a couple weeks then yes. If you are talking hours to a day then no.

THe heroic style of combat ended in the western world with the Greeks. When the greeks developed formation warfare of shock combat (ie walk up to the enemy at arms length and pound that crap out of him as fast as possible) This form of combat has given the west a deceive advantage in warfare. john Keegan's History of warfare first published by Huchinson in the UK, is a great book that I think you should read because you have some odd ideas about warfare. (Vintage Canada is the canadian pulisher. I don't know who published the book outside canada or the UK. Keegan was a lecturer in military history at the Royal military Academy, Sandhurst, so he's not a layman.)



I have been posting on pikemen for over a decade, and have noted on more than one occasion that examples such as the Swiss and Flemish pikemen require a very specific social order to take the place of drill to create unit cohesion. For instance, here:


I would point to the excellent post by John Machin which follows:


A perfect example of this is the schiltron. Normally a pretty ineffective formation, it was occasionally used very effectively by special commanders at battles whose names are familiar to moviegoers. The game provides a mechanic for this in the Blood Ability Battlewise. It also provides various feats, as I originally suggested in the thread, for this kind of thing.

Gary started the thread on formations I cited, just as he started this thread. Nice work.

The schiltron was not a pretty ineffective formation. It had its limitations but was highly effective at what it was design to do. It was a tacticly defensive weapon used best to secure the flanks of a force against clavalry. If was used incorrectly as in the attack, tacticly, or used without support where archers could attack it with impunity then it didn't do well but I could say the same with any unit. Units used in a manner that they were not design to be used in makes them weak and "ineffective."



Anyway, 15th century (and even 16th century) infantry generally doesn't fight in a formation. Formations were begining to return to military organizatons, but this was only possible because other parts of the military revolution, such as permenant standing armies, were also comming into widespread use. As long as its typical in BR to raise large forces after war is declared, close order fighting will remain unusual.

Formations have been a vital part of infantry warfare since the greeks. Something that was NOT lost in the medieval period. The saxon shield wall was so effective in the battle of hastings that if it wasn't for Superior unit disipline the Normans would have lost. It was in fact saxons breaking unit cohesion and charging after routed normans that allowed William to counter attack and break through the saxon lines. This is 1066. This is by a CLASSIC medieval army. Your premiss that formation fighting is specialised just doesn't add up. I will submit that pike warfare required far more training to be effective on the attack on the defence unit cohession could be mantained by a non professional army which the scots proved on multiple occasions. Does it have its limitations? Yes but it is a PERFECT example of formation fighting just as the SAXON wall was a perfect example of formation fighting. Formation fighting that was over 400 years earlier.

The english used formations against the french in the 100 years war, one clasic one was something that looked like this -V-V-V-. Imagine the 'V' as archers facing the bottom of the post the '-' in between are infantry units in formation. The 'V's have calvalry barries, long logs with pointed ends. When the enemy attacked the - which was easier to attack because of the calvary barriers.The archers would attack the enemy flanks after they had attacked the unit as it approached. If an archer formation was attacked the flanking infantry units would sally out to attack the flanks. It was a highly successful against a force made up large portions of heavy calvalry. Such a force requires units to be in formation and to act in formation. Were do you get the idea that medieval warfare is a bunch of armed mobs? You do not get the saxon shield wall or the English archer placements without formations. Unit cohesion is vital. A unit with poor cohesion is less effective than a unit with strong cohesion.

You do not need a professional army to have formation fighting. A professional army allows units to be better train and thus hold unit cohesion and unit discipline better but that is a far cry from saying a none professional army equals an armed mob.

[geeman]

At 08:48 PM 2/21/2008, Airgedok wrote:

>Elves are magical yes but they are also "in tune" with nature. They
>find a balance with in it. The arguement of mundane vs magical isn`t
>really applicable. Simply because elves are magical doesn`t somehow
>negate natual aspects of a forest.

The Sidhelien are more magical than you`re suggesting, and in fact
what you`re describing is really just another human (albeit a more
modern and scientifically supported) perspective on things.

Elven magic extends the natural environment beyond what you are
describing. That`s what magic does. You`re description of balancing
with nature is the modern, human perspective on forestry matters
that`s completely incompatible with the attitudes of elves. Their
view of nature is intrinsically natural and super-natural (in the
most direct sense of that term) at the same time. They do not
distinguish between the two. It is their nature to cast magic, just
as magic is natural to them.

Like other Cerilian wizards, elven magic spans provinces and whole
domains, but that magical ability is innate in elves. Cerilia`s
elves live in forests without altering their magical potential in any
way. In fact, there is evidence to suggest elves increase the
magical environment of the provinces they occupy or have
occupied. Elven structures are actually source manifestations and
their presence has been used to increase the source potential of a
province higher than its terrain type.

We know little about what elves do to rejuvenate their forests, but
their population itself does it as part of their magical
nature. What you`re suggesting is that they must use mundane human
methods of controlled forest fires, but such methods are not only
necessary to them, they are offensive. Elven forests are already
beyond the health and development of those that could be achieved by
such methods, so having forest fires isn`t necessary.

>Forests burn its a natual process that rejevinates a forest and
>forests that burn are far more healthy than a forest that has not
>fires. The overgroth chokes the life out of teh forest because it
>dries and doesn`t decay. Fire burns it away allowing trees and
>plants to grow in teh renewed soil. Fires do not create barren dead
>terrian that is a flawed view. We know that fire is not a destroyer
>of forests but a bringer of life.

Actually, that`s not the whole story. Overgrowth is a problem for
forests because trees can and do survive normal, periodic
fires. Undergrowth is burnt off, as well as residual ground material
and that burn off rejuvenates the soil because fire releases the
nutrients in that material very quickly into the topsoil. (It`s the
same basic concept as early slash and burn agriculture.) However,
when fire is unnaturally suppressed or fires are put out by humans we
create denser areas of overgrowth, and when overgrown areas burn
those fires become much hotter than normal forests fires do. Such
fires burn trees down completely and right down into the root system,
loosening up topsoil so that when the rains come entire regions are
not only deforested but subsequently rendered unable to support
anything more than scrubs without some sort of long term project to
bring back the topsoil.

> From the Elven POV the forest that never has fire is a dead and
> sick forest. Life gets choked out of it and life is no longer
> renewed. Fire brings life to a forest. It is the HUMAN point of
> view that fire is a destroyer and a barren landscape. Forests
> recover almost immediatly from fire it does not take years, It is
> only the hot fires from forests fires that have had all fires
> suppressed in them for a 100 years (the old policy of forestry
> services) that are these dead an barren areas from fire.

That`s actually the human POV on an overgrown forest that has not
been inhabited by elves. The Sidhelien take on nature goes to
another level. The only method that the elves would have to keep
their forested provinces healthy would not be fire.

>Elves would see fire are stimulating growth (which it does) to allow
>them to magically shape the land to the faery lands your decribe.
>Fire does not make teh land sterrile or make it a waste land that is
>a human conception of fire and the land after fire.
>
>You have switch points of view between humans and elves because of
>faulty HUMAN understanding of what is healthy for a forest, A
>beleive we now know is wrong. BR is made by humans thus policies and
>understandings about what we though was good for a forest were used
>in developing elves. We now know otherwise and elves would view fire
>in a far more positive light then they do in BR.

Actually, what your calling a faulty human understanding is really
just a new name for yet another human POV, and one that from the
elven perspective is just as faulty. It`s updated, and more
biologically correct, but has little to do with the dynamics that are
in place in the fantasy setting we are discussing. It`s no more
legitimate to make elves 21st century forestry service than it is to
make them a 20th century one. Quite simply, the Sidhelien have an
entirely different take on things.

The modern take on forestry and forest fires has nothing to do with
the local unicorn population. Slow burn fires do not lead to dryads
who die of old age rather than having their trees choked away by
undergrowth. Fires do not support the lifestyle of satyrs, nor make
sylvan living more magical for sylphs. The view of "balance with
nature" might get your a merit badge, but the magical elves of
Cerilia would be just as insulted by it as they would by the
farmer. A human suggesting that "I only want to burn away your
forests a little bit... don`t worry, they`ll be healthier when I`m
done" is ridiculous. Requiring that the Sidhelien have to mimic the
modern US Forest Service is just another way of anthropomorphizing them.

Gary

[rugor]

Originally Posted by rugor
You give me an elf or two that can cast Entangle and Fog spells (low enuf level spells) and a handful of good Archers, and I'll wipe out an entire unit of some 200+ Knights and their Priests.


This is just silly.


:rolleyes: Well thats how it works in reality. least from my RL experiences.

A few good, well prepared men, can make mince meat out of a conventional army unit that doesn't have the advantage of air support or mobility.

Elite Knights would be nothing more than prime targets in a forest environment.

Without magic, without spells and supernatural abilities... if you dressed up 200 guys in full platemail and sent them into a heavily forested area filled with brush and vines, pitfalls and fallen trees... and gave 20 other guys Composite bows, steel tipped arrows, who are wearing nothing but cloth and leather, those 20 guys would finish off those 200 guys in platemail in less than 20 minutes... and shouldn't take one casualty.

They can outrun the guys in armor, all they have to do is stay out of reach of their swords, maces, or whatever they carry, and just keep firing away... so long as those arrows are penetrating the armor, the Knights would stand no chance.

Actually I just thought of a good RW example, Henry V, and the English longbows decimating a vastly superior force of armored french knights.

[ConjurerDragon]

Airgedok schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ...
> There are some very low level spells that allow communication over distances. Given that there are more magic users in an elven community
Is that so?
As humans are much more numerous than sidhelien than even if a lesser
percentage of them than of the sidhelien population consists of
spellcasters they still have more of them.
Not necessarily wizards but also clerics and a whole lot of all sorts of
Magicians (from the majority of the population that is unblooded).
> What!!?? Where do you get this? Mobility is far more important. Mobility is for choosing when and where you fight. Mobility forces the enemy to react instead of initiate. Mobility is the route to victory. This is such a fundemental aspect of warfare. Lack of mobility kills.
>
That depends on the situation and the adversaries. Even the highly
mobile hungarians, mongols or whoever in history have at some time been
beaten by less mobile enemies. The battle at the lechfield is an example
from my country:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechfeld

> The schiltron was not a pretty ineffective formation. It had its limitations but was highly effective at what it was design to do. It was a tacticly defensive weapon used best to secure the flanks of a force against clavalry. If was used incorrectly as in the attack, tacticly, or used without support where archers could attack it with impunity then it didn`t do well but I could say the same with any unit. Units used in a manner that they were not design to be used in makes them weak and "ineffective."
>
The english wikipedia is far shorter and it leaves out much of the
weaker points of the schiltron as compared to the german wikipedia
entry. And even the english entry mentions that Robert the Bruce
employed it successfully in the offence -requiring highly disciplined
and experienced in formation fighting troops to be successful. The
Schiltron left those outside vulnerable to enemy cavalry and those
"heroes" that charged out of the Schiltron to pursue some enemy were
easily chased down as they left the protection of the formation. A dense
formation is pretty vulnerable to arrowfire - only against the right
enemy (the english knights and heavy cavalry) and at the right place
(e.g. chokepoints on the other side of a bridge) is it a brilliant use
of the very limited scottish resources regarding material.

> Formations have been a vital part of infantry warfare since the greeks. Something that was NOT lost in the medieval period. The saxon shield wall was so effective in the battle of hastings that if it wasn`t for Superior unit disipline the Normans would have lost. It was in fact saxons breaking unit cohesion and charging after routed normans that allowed William to counter attack and break through the saxon lines.
And that several times not only once. However important to remember is
that most of the saxon armys "soldiers" were not professional soldiers
but the fyrd and that the army had already fought a major (victorius)
battle before against vikings in the north and had done some forced
marches to reach Hastings in time.

[ConjurerDragon]

rugor schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> rugor wrote:
> ...
> :rolleyes: Well thats how it works in reality. least from my RL experiences.
>
> A few good, well prepared men, can make mince meat out of a conventional army unit that doesn`t have the advantage of air support or mobility.
> Elite Knights would be nothing more than prime targets in a forest environment.
> Without magic, without spells and supernatural abilities... if you dressed up 200 guys in full platemail and sent them into a heavily forested area filled with brush and vines, pitfalls and fallen trees... and gave 20 other guys Composite bows, steel tipped arrows, who are wearing nothing but cloth and leather, those 20 guys would finish off those 200 guys in platemail in less than 20 minutes... and shouldn`t take one casualty.
> They can outrun the guys in armor, all they have to do is stay out of reach of their swords, maces, or whatever they carry, and just keep firing away... so long as those arrows are penetrating the armor, the Knights would stand no chance.
>
An untrained real human person with a composite longbow is more likely
to hurt himself and the trees than anyone else in that situation.
Good Archers are highly trained soldiers and need regular training to
accurately hit an enemy. The english longbowmen had as far as I remember
nearly daily training when not in battle and every other sparetime
activity was even forbidden for a while in england to encourage training.
That is one of the reasons that it was several times suggested by
different people to have Archers have a longer mustering time before
they become available for fighting in BR.

The question what tactics to use is depending on the goal.
What are both parties to achieve? The archers can?t control the area as
they fire and retreat all the time and can never met the enmy in close
because that means their death.
With a 10:1 superiority and a somewhat intelligent commander the knights
would employ shields or simply stay behind a tree before advancing to
the next - no archer will have more than say 20 to 30 arrows with him so
they will run out of arrows if they fire at all possible targets and
will miss at least sometimes. Human archers in woods will probably see
the knights advance through the trees - but firing an arrow (not a gun
or crossbowbolt) through a dense forest is much more difficult than in
open terrain due to the ballistic flight curve.

[rugor]

An untrained real human person with a composite longbow is more likely
to hurt himself and the trees than anyone else in that situation.
Good Archers are highly trained soldiers and need regular training to
accurately hit an enemy. The english longbowmen had as far as I remember
nearly daily training when not in battle and every other sparetime
activity was even forbidden for a while in england to encourage training.
That is one of the reasons that it was several times suggested by
different people to have Archers have a longer mustering time before
they become available for fighting in BR.


Are you trying to make my argument for me?

We are discussing the elves' ability to make pin cushions out of knights stumbling around in a dense forest.

20 elves with elven bows, would have no problems with 200 knights in a dense forest, that the elves know well, and the knights don't.

Due to the armor the knights would be ponderously slow, and exhausted easily if on foot - on horse forward progress would become restricted if not impossible eventually, or they would be funneled into an ambush zone that they could not manuever out of...

The knights could never move faster than the elves, so they could never catch up to them. They also would have difficulty spoting their targets before they revealed themselves when loosing an arrow.

Their deaths would be certian if they persisted into the forest after their enemy.

[kgauck]

Rugor, you keep adding disabilities to the humans that should not be assumed. If you want the elves to win by definition, just say so. Then we'll know that elves should beat humans regardless of weapons, tactics, and the relative quality of the combatants.

Otherwise even with advantages, elves are not invincible. If elves are simply advantaged in quality then even with a home field advantage its possible to calculate what force should expect a reasonable victory.

[rugor]

What I'm trying to say, IMO, is no more difficult to recognize and accept, than saying ocean-faring-ships don't work to well in the mountians.

And I've given plausable examples of why Humans were able to maintain their control of coastal and plain regions, and why they would be trounced in Elven forests... which would damned sure help explain why Elves were still around at all considering they can't reproduce in numbers to validify their continued existance otherwise

If it were as simple as you claim, goblins and humans would have eradicated elves long ago... so what reasons are their that they have lasted these thousands of years against humans and humanoids?

I've even cited examples used in LoR, and touched on historical reference to the original works of Faerie and Elves.

Trying to broaden the differences between the way elves perceive things, think about things, and react to things, because of their ties to nature and magic, and because of their immortality... trying to move them further away from human/humanoid type norms rather than describe them, and their military units as equivalent to humans/humanoids.

Elves as they were meant to be, or should I say, elves as it seems to me Baker presented them, would kick the holy crap out of standard human units in an Elven forest. And IMO game mechanics should reflect that, humans entering into Elven territories should have major negatives to overcome.

[kgauck]

[Elves] would therfore have more access to magical communications. They would therfore has superior communications. Would their communications be exclusive? No but they could make it a normal part of military operations and thus be more efficent with it than their human counter parts.
I think ConjurerDragon answered this. Magical communications are just as easy for humans. But there is another important issue here. The modern mind tends to use communications in a modern way, establishing C3I. I don’t find it very interesting to have a very modern tactical situation in medieval clothing. Things could very easily devolve into having signals corps where both sides are sending messages and both sides are trying to listen to the messages of the other side. Given that this is a role playing game in a fantasy setting, isn’t it more interesting to banish the modern solution, and either develop fantastic situations or build on medieval and renaissance situations to maintain the flavor of the game setting. Magical communications that work just like radios ends up producing a game of squad leader.


What!!?? Where do you get this? Mobility is far more important. Mobility is for choosing when and where you fight. Mobility forces the enemy to react instead of initiate. Mobility is the route to victory. This is such a fundemental aspect of warfare. Lack of mobility kills.
I think this is an example of a little information being more dangerous than no information. This is only true when one side can out maneuver troops of the same type. And even then, the purpose of a mobility superiority is to create opportunities where you can outnumber an opponent, or seize advantageous terrain. Outnumbering an opponent presumes that forces are divided so that the whole of one force can concentrate on a part of another force. Medieval type forces traveled as a single group and did not break into pieces for complex operations.

If they had modern communications, they would tend to adopt modern operations, but then you have the wehrmacht in tights and a cloak. I prefer not to see elves or humans become modern armies using modern tactics and magic as a technology substitute.

Since whole forces will operate as a single large unit, mobility is significantly less important than it is in modern combat, where the goal is to travel separately and fight united. The elf advantage of mobility is just an exaggeration of the pre-existing advantage of light troops over heavy. But light troops are inferior to heavy troops because heavy troops kill their opponents far more effectively. When you enhance the advantage of light troops, you can expect that they can pull off some victories more often, but until they start to be more effective than heavy troops in close combat, all they can hope to do is delay, detour, distract, and harass the heavy troops, who, though slow, remain decisive.


Define "assembled quickly" if you are talking days to a couple weeks then yes. If you are talking hours to a day then no.
ROFL. Hours. You have got to be kidding. Try months. It takes a season to raise a small force such a single realm might organize, but it would take a full year to mobilize all of Anuire to respond to the Gorgon, or a major war with all the elves.

My definition of assembled quickly is that there is no time between assembly and use to permit training, drill, or preparation for sophisticated maneuver.


john Keegan's History of warfare is a great book that I think you should read because you have some odd ideas about warfare.
I do mean to bust your bubble, but I cited this book early in the tread. Check out post 28. Speaking of John Keegan, you should check out his Face of Battle to check out his odd ideas about the way Agincourt was fought. Don’t presume to educate me about military history.


The schiltron was not […] ineffective.
As we get into the nature of formations, its useful to make certain things clear. People fighting in groups, even the typical mob of heroic warriors, are doing so in an organized way. Homeric armies had archers, chariots, and spearmen. They attempted to coordinate each force to achieve victory. Likewise medieval forces were sensibly arranged and made use of their tools sensibly. Using obstacles, natural or man-made, is useful to any combatant, no matter how primitive.

What the formation does, is to increase combat effectiveness by substituting the cohesiveness of the unit in place of the individual prowess of the warrior. To do this, drill and training is generally required. In special circumstances, some defensive formations can be built on social cohesion of family groups (Scottish clans) or clearly defined bounded groups, like a town (Flemish) or valley (Swiss). Pointing to a shield wall or the notion of utilizing troops types in cooperation does not indicate the kind of special unit cohesion that will be sufficient to shift the balance from victory through individual champions to a victory through drill and training.

Further, it seems to me that in a game based on heroic combat, advancing through levels, and the power progression of D&D advancement, dominance will always be held by heroic leaders, especially rulers, who turn the tide of battle and win the day despite odds, terrain, tactics, and such things. Certainly its fun to make plans and make meaningful decisions, like choosing this troop type and that formation, using terrain this way, and so on. But given the historical period analogous to the setting, and the centrality of the PC, I don’t see formations, drill, and training, becoming more important than character level, feats, and mechanical player options.


Formations have been a vital part of infantry warfare since the greeks. Something that was NOT lost in the medieval period.
Its one thing to suggest that medieval, and even dark age armies, did more than just run at one another with weapons, but there is no sense here that something was lost in military discipline as the Roman empire gave way to the Germanic tribes. And that likewise with the military revolution and the study of Roman methods, that the renaissance didn’t restore something in terms of organization and discipline.


A professional army allows units to be better train and thus hold unit cohesion and unit discipline better but that is a far cry from saying a none professional army equals an armed mob.

Well this is really dependent by what we mean by mob. If you mean random violence by excited persons, then it is unfair to call medieval armies a mob. But I think it is fair to mimic the criticisms of the later era of drill that did consider medieval armies “a mob”. This is because from the point of view of a drilled unit, like a Roman Legion, a medieval army, a celtic horde, or a crowd of rioting citizens amounts to the same thing: an undisciplined mob that is only dangerous to a Roman legionary who falls out of formation.

To a medieval knight or man-at-arms their strength and vulnerability was not so connected to the body of men around them, and much more on their luck and personal skill.

[kgauck]

Elves as they were meant to be, or should I say, elves as it seems to me Baker presented them, would kick the holy crap out of standard human units in an Elven forest. And IMO game mechanics should reflect that, humans entering into Elven territories should have major negatives to overcome.

No one is arguing that. Indeed, there is a general agreement that elves have additional class levels, that their racial abilities are substantial (I'm surprised that no one has mentioned low light vision, because I always have goblins attack at dusk), and that they have built in advantages on their home turf. Indeed, the question at hand is not (and has never been) what an elven unit would do to a standard human unit in an elven forest, but rather, just how powerful would a human unit need to be, to stand toe to toe in these conditions. So for several pages, I've only been discussing the most elite human units (specifically huskarls and knights, but I presume Vos, Brecht, and Khinasi have elite units that could be just as impressive) and arguing that they are not hapless babes. I certainly have not argued that they are poised for conquest, but rather, as stated originally, able to go into the elven forest, look for trouble, and come out again having given as good as they got. That's all.

Do you think some body of elite soldiers, be they knights, huskarls, elite infantry, whatever, is capable of doing what I have described? If so, what do they look like?

I contend that the elite units could do it, but I will happily point out that no realm on the map could assemble enough elite units to fight an elf realm, and that I consider all elf units elite. I think a realm like Stjordvik could have one, maybe two huskarls. Assembling enough huskarls and elite Rjurik archers to attack an elf realm would require all of the Rjurik realms to combine for this war. I don't see that unity for any of the human nations, so the elves are unconquerable.

[Airgedok]

Airgedok schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ...
> There are some very low level spells that allow communication over distances. Given that there are more magic users in an elven community
Is that so?
As humans are much more numerous than sidhelien than even if a lesser
percentage of them than of the sidhelien population consists of
spellcasters they still have more of them.
Not necessarily wizards but also clerics and a whole lot of all sorts of
Magicians (from the majority of the population that is unblooded).

If magic is so common with human populations why are humans not described as magical? Why is magic used to describe the elven way of life? Why is magic more common in elven culture? If there was so many spell casters in human society why is magic something an average human is less likely to experience and see compared to an average elf? The idea that the humans have more magic but less of a percent than elves doesn't hold because of the descriptive information given about both cultures. Elves are described as magical by nature. Humans are not. We can't use non descriptive data because we are not given quantitative data. So only qualatative data is what we can use as the measure. And given that most humans will never experienced magic in their lives but Elves expeience magic as an everyday almost mundane fequency. Something that could only happen if Elves had a vastly greater pool of magic users to draw from than humans. Just because humans have three times as many different types of spellcasters, Wizards,Clerics and Magicians, doesn't mean that they have more nor does the idea that humans have far greater populations does this mean that Humans have more spell casters. Yet all the descriptions of every day human activity is not described as magical because magic is not something that humans experience. With elves the descriptions are just the opposite.



> What!!?? Where do you get this? Mobility is far more important. Mobility is for choosing when and where you fight. Mobility forces the enemy to react instead of initiate. Mobility is the route to victory. This is such a fundemental aspect of warfare. Lack of mobility kills.
>
That depends on the situation and the adversaries. Even the highly
mobile hungarians, mongols or whoever in history have at some time been
beaten by less mobile enemies. The battle at the lechfield is an example
from my country:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechfeld

Yes that is true. But you take the exceptions and make it a norm. Most battles are won by forces that are moblie its not always the case but it is where you should place your bets as its more likely to be true. History proves that forces that are highly moblie are more likely to win against forces that are not as mobile. The fact that you point out the exceptions only strengthens my arguements.



> The schiltron was not a pretty ineffective formation. It had its limitations but was highly effective at what it was design to do. It was a tacticly defensive weapon used best to secure the flanks of a force against clavalry. If was used incorrectly as in the attack, tacticly, or used without support where archers could attack it with impunity then it didn`t do well but I could say the same with any unit. Units used in a manner that they were not design to be used in makes them weak and "ineffective."
>
The english wikipedia is far shorter and it leaves out much of the
weaker points of the schiltron as compared to the german wikipedia
entry. And even the english entry mentions that Robert the Bruce
employed it successfully in the offence -requiring highly disciplined
and experienced in formation fighting troops to be successful. The
Schiltron left those outside vulnerable to enemy cavalry and those
"heroes" that charged out of the Schiltron to pursue some enemy were
easily chased down as they left the protection of the formation. A dense
formation is pretty vulnerable to arrowfire - only against the right
enemy (the english knights and heavy cavalry) and at the right place
(e.g. chokepoints on the other side of a bridge) is it a brilliant use
of the very limited scottish resources regarding material.

How is this strengthening your arguement? Again we are talking about a NON professional army using formations in medieval warfare. Your example of "Heros" is further proof of what I have been saying units/or men that leave the strength of a formation are easy to be cut down. Sounds like you are arguing why elves will win most engagements against humans. Elves will be able to maintain unit cohesion far easier than their human counter parts because terrian does not have the same adverse effect.





> Formations have been a vital part of infantry warfare since the greeks. Something that was NOT lost in the medieval period. The saxon shield wall was so effective in the battle of hastings that if it wasn`t for Superior unit disipline the Normans would have lost. It was in fact saxons breaking unit cohesion and charging after routed normans that allowed William to counter attack and break through the saxon lines.
And that several times not only once. However important to remember is
that most of the saxon armys "soldiers" were not professional soldiers
but the fyrd and that the army had already fought a major (victorius)
battle before against vikings in the north and had done some forced
marches to reach Hastings in time.

And whats your point? The fact that the majority of teh saxon army was not a professional army Strengthens my point. It proves that formation fighting was the norm not the exception and could be executed by a non professional army. Are professional armies better? Yes but that is not the arguement. THe discussion is that medieval armies are not aremed mobs and that formations the lose cohesion and vulnerable to units that have high cohession.

[kgauck]

Most battles are won by forces that are moblie its not always the case but it is where you should place your bets as its more likely to be true. History proves that forces that are highly moblie are more likely to win against forces that are not as mobile. The fact that you point out the exceptions only strengthens my arguements.
This is simply not true. The Greeks and Romans, who won a lot of battles, were almost never the more mobile force. They were the heavier force.

Battles are won by the forces that do the most killing, and those, by far, are the heavy infantry, followed by the heavy cavalry. The mobile forces are good for pinning heavies down, while our own heavies come to get them in the spot we picked, but if left to themselves, the lights would be crushed by the heavies.

Take the Greek developments of the peltasts. When peltasts fought the phalanx alone, despite thier considerable advantage in mobility, they were always defeated. When the peltasts were advantageous is when they were accompanied by their own hoplites who did the real killing and won the battle. What the peltasts did was hold the enemy hoplites in place, tire the hoplites out before our own hoplites attacked, skirmish, scout, and surprise. But in so doing they are a force multiplier of the heavy forces, without whom, the light mobile forces are either destroyed, or driven off.

Light, mobile forces alone do not wage the kind of decisive face to face battle to the death that is the central thesis of John Keegan's A History of Warfare. To use the US Army's nomenclature, ideally one has mass and maneauver, becuase with both, you will overcome mass alone. But the question at hand is give either mass or maneauver, which is the stronger form of war, and history clearly favors mass.

If Marathon, Thermopylea, and Platea aren't good enough examples, look to the Anabasis in which the 10,000 Greek mercenaries march to the Black Sea while fighting along the way. The Persian forces, lighter, faster, in home territory, familiar with their area, could not defeat the Greeks despite their being 800 miles from home, out of contact with any friendly places, and desprived of their leader, the pretender Cyrus the Younger.

[rugor]

Some snippets I found, just food for thought -ref. Races of the Wild

Designer Skip Williams (along with such D&D luminaries as Rich Baker, David Noonan, Jesse Decker, Gwendolyn Kestrel, Penny Williams, and James Wyatt.

"One new twist on elves is self-sufficiency and nonspecialization," Williams explains. "The long elven lifespan gives them plenty of time for learning to do things for themselves. "

Rich Baker considers the exploration of the elven society to be one of Races of the Wild's most illuminating sections. "D&D's human demographics don't seem to represent an elf society as well as we might like," he points out. "For example, you'd expect that 95 percent of all humans are probably 1st-level commoners, and most of them are probably peasants or farmers. But I found that unsatisfying for elves. It just doesn't seem to ring true to ride into the elven village, look around, and see a bunch of elf peasants."

This led him to the idea that perhaps elves don't adhere to the human model of civilization. "Way back when humans invented agriculture," he says, "we took a path in which increasing specialization was the better way to organize your society. For humans, it makes sense to have some people specialize in growing food so that other people can specialize in doing different things -- making tools, creating art, fighting, ruling, praying, whatever. What would a society look like if that weren't true? Could elves just dispense with the first tier of the social pyramid and not have a peasantry that accounted for a huge hunk of their total population?"

"I'm most fond of the up-close-and-personal looks at elven life," Williams says. "I hope people read and think about that material and really consider what it would be like to grow up and live in [such a] culture."

[kgauck]

If you go back and review the elf threads Gary has started, in addition to this one, I think you find those ideas throughout. Its nice when the designers catch up with the players.

[Rowan]

WOW. Tons of good discussin here since last I visited.

The BR rules systems, as I see them, try to capture a huge variety of possible in-game realities with the a relatively few abstractions. I don't think elves need break out of existing mechanics much if at all to explain their advantages, whichever advantages we may wish to apply to them.

I, for one, DO think the elves enjoy more spellcasting than the norm, and, in comparison to humans, essentially lack supply trains and set unit formations. Since all units are scouts, they're mainly skirmishers, and I DO think they attack individually in Kgauck's "heroic" style, but in a manner that seems quite random and chaotic even to humans used to that style. That is, the elves form and break squads very quickly, forming a very amorphic attack pattern similar to the final, homeworld scenario of the Buggers described in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

However, whether you agree with me or not, consider this, the simplest way I know to account for possible elven advantages: If you give the elves a bonus to Warcraft and/or Defense rolls equal to the Source level (or even original potential, if you're just going for terrain factors and not magic), this means they can make use of terrain like humans use fortifications (per BRCS and BrWiki). I think that's realistic, and it means that elves generally will choose their battlefields and troop placements better than humans, and only the greatest human commanders have a chance of matching elves tactically and strategically in elven forests.

If elves control the battlefield (whether by superior intelligence, communication, mobility, magic such as Entangle or Obscuring Mist, stealthiness, etc.), then you can bet on these terrain based advantages:

Forest: This terrain can be used for any area forested enough to interfere with visibility and mobility. Movement: Mounted units have a maximum movement of 1. Combat: No units can make charge attacks. All missile attacks suffer a –4 penalty to their attack rolls.
OR
Jungle: This terrain can be used for any area with dense, constricting undergrowth. Movement: All units have a maximum movement of 1. Combat: No units can charge or make missile attacks.
(I'd bet on Jungle, the elves choosing the thickest parts of the forest, and the exception being that elves suffer no terrain penalty to missile attacks)

Hills: This terrain can be used to represent any battlefield with areas that provide advantages to the first unit to occupy the area. Movement: No effect. Combat: Units moving into an area occupied by hostile forces cannot charge. The preexisting units are may charge the engaging unit normally. A unit stationed in an area has a +2 to defense and all attack rolls during the first round of the engagement against a unit moving into the area.

Limited Visibility: This visibility condition represents limited visibility due to darkness, heavy fog, or other impediments to vision. Movement: No effect. Combat: Units may not use missile attacks against units in adjacent areas. Units receive a –1 penalty to all attacks. Units composed of races with special sense may overcome the penalty. For example, dwarves, elves, and goblins, do not suffer visibility penalties at night.

You might even throw in the Weather disadvantage of -2 penalties to all attacks for units unaccustomed to it.

This leaves the elves with no handicap, and with whatever Warcraft/Defense rating bonus you want to give them for Source potential. Also, the elves get a +2 bonus to attack and defense ratings during the initial engagement (whether from hills, broken terrain, or superior elven skill and use of trees as cover before the units fully engage and the elves start to become surrounded, losing their initial advantage)

It leaves humans with movement rates of 1, no charging, no missile attacks or not against adjacent area and with a -7 penalty, and a total of a -3 penalty to all normal attacks.

To get to your strategic calculations, Kgauck, you can then find that knights are no better than elite infantry, and human archers are useless. Your best bet is elite infantry and pikemen to ward against the elven cavalry--which CAN otherwise charge. Basically, the Roman legion approach. They're still left with Melee ratings of +3 and +1 respectively, as weak against the elves in the forest as goblin infantry is against heavy dwarven infantry. Numbers are still the advantage. If the lightly-armored elves get that fortification defense bonus, they can have defense ratings of up to +21, equal to Skeletons, if I remember right.

This all works out pretty well, without even having to alter units. If you want to get into unit alterations, I've sometimes thought of such things as using the Tribal Units rules variant for elves; allowing elves to spontaneously muster as irregulars; giving all elves all elite training options (allowed in BRCS); attaching elven Hero units to many units; allowing elven Snipers to be Archers with Artillery range; and even allowing elven knight units to be mounted on giant eagles or griffons.

All of those unit modifications just serve to make the elves even more powerful, nigh undefeatable, particularly in the forests, but they're only really interesting in games where players are loading on the optional trainings to many units in human realms as well.

The best units for fighting elves in their forests that I know of are (limited to two special training options per the BRCS):
1. Elite Pikemen with heavy armor and with Toughness and Shield Wall training, for forming strong points on the battlefield, creating mobile walls that channel the enemy and nullify the advantage of elven cavalry charges; devastating if you can corner an elven unit
Melee +6, Def 16, Hits 4, Move 1, Morale +8, Cost 6GB (Def is 20 vs. missile; +2 vs. mounted and double damage vs. charge)

2. Elite Scouts (based on infantry, not on irregulars) with Berserk training, for rushing and engaging elven units bogging them down (for the Shield Wall pikemen to catch up); particularly effective if contained within the defensive Pike walls, then allowed out in small gaps when close enough to Charge and engage
Melee +6, Def 10, Hits 2, Move 5, Morale +8, Cost 5GB (+2 to attack irregulars--which should be all elves; +2 to attacks when charging)

3. Elite Infantry with Toughness and Berserk training, heavily armored to increase the impact of a Charge (if they can charge in the terrain); these troops are the second wave after the Elite Scouts are able to bog down the enemy, slamming in from behind with incredible force until the Elite Pike catch up as the third wave
Melee +8, Def 14, Hits 4, Move 2, Morale +10, Cost 6GB (+2 to attack irregulars--which should be all elves; +2 to attacks when charging)

These compositions should fare rather well against elves--at least better than any other human combination I've seen. The best unit mechanically is actually the Elite Berserking Scouts based on infantry units (you'll never match elven archery, so why try?). They can match elven mobility and nullify the archers, even with Fortification-level Defense ratings. They'll be cut down quickly if pit against elven knights, cavalry, or just elven units with all elite training options and Battle Arms, but they can even run down Sniper units with artillery range. Numbers are the key advantage. Also, realm spell back up like Battle Bless, Battle Fury, Battle Arms can buff the human units as well.

So this is how elves can be run down in their own forests, even giving them all of the legitimate game mechanic advantages currently possible.

[Mirviriam]

Given my answers to all of the above, how can it be possible that the elven realms are still in retreat, or ever were?

You can kill humans till you are blue in the face. Those suckers breed like rabbits though! Then remember it only takes a few humans to poison the land. Go upstream of the elves & setup a mining operation - if they realize the effects too early, dump the loads of coal or whatever into the river furthering the effect. The basic destruction of the forest can happen, without much danger to the humans if done right.

Once the plants are gone, the elves will flee too. It is what makes humans so scarey - they aren't the best warriors, but every single bloodsucker is out to destroy the world or allow for the protection of those who are destroying it.

That's what I love about D&D it resembles real life. Everytime people retaliate against the US for things our business interests do to their nation & by extent family - we break out the "freedom bell" or whatever tune is needed to allow the President to send forces off.