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  1. #131
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    ----- Original Message -----

    From: "RaspK_FOG" <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET>

    Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 7:42 PM





    > tettix? I am Greek, yet have never heard of the word...



    Its a Homeric word. The Latin word cicada is taken from it. As a word

    several thousand years old, its no surprise its no longer current. I can

    find many much younger English words that no one would recognize. Wrecan

    (to banish), Byrne (a coat of mail), Raed (advice, counsel) are examples

    useful for BR. (Well, no one except Homericists and Beowulfians,

    respectively.)



    http://www.earthlife.net/insects/cicadidae.html

    Gordon`s Cicada page contains some history and mythology of the insect in

    question.



    Kenneth Gauck

    kgauck@mchsi.com

  2. #132
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    Again i see a typical responce to anything elven on the forums. There is a huge reluctance to provide any sort of positive benifit to them and there is a constant push for more restrictions. Specificly creating mechanics to limit them.

    I would claim that your charge that i feel immortality is useless is unfounded and merely added to make it appear that I&#39;m asking for "hack & slash" freindly rules. I have NEVER ASKED for ANYTHING of the kind. have been very much a flavour proponent but i also understand that a d20 conversion is going to have to use the tools of the core rules. That means making the old rules fit the new rules. That also means dealing with the new philosophy of these rules.

    The idea that the new rules cosmology is FR or greyhawk "only" is misleading. The way magic is is used now is different then in teh older versions. The restrictions on magic have been open up greatly. Far more open then FR and greyhawk. There has been no great push to make magic cosmolgy reflected in the rules either. Rangers are still divine spell casters, Divine magic is still constidered to be nature and diety driven and arcane magic is still considered arcane seperate from nature and teh gods. Where has been teh push to make the rules fit the BR cosmology?

    It seem to be that if anyone actually wants to talk rules you brand them as a proponent of the halk & slash mentality. If thats the case why even bothering with a conversion? Who needs rules? Most of my posts have been about curbing the "get the elf" mentality thats been cultivated on the forum. I find this to be systematic the "no clerical healing for the elf & no age advantages (like thats a real hack and slash push on my part) are simply examples i presented.

  3. #133
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    RaspK_FOG schrieb:



    >This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.

    > You can view the entire thread at:

    > http://www.birthright.net/forums/ind...ST&f=36&t=1956

    >

    > RaspK_FOG wrote:

    > Potential misunderstandings:[LIST][*]What I meant was that elves do not physically age past the border of being middle aged.[*]A tettix? I am Greek, yet have never heard of the word...[*]There is one greek myth of a creature who could not die, but I do not remember who was he... By "could not die", I am talking about the blessing-curse dualistic motif.

    >

    Prometheus? Whos liver was eaten by an eagle, yet could not die and

    regenerated liver so that the eagle came day after day to feed on his

    liver so that Prometheus would have to suffer endlessly as punishment?

    bye

    Michael

  4. #134
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    Kenneth Gauck schrieb:



    >----- Original Message -----

    >From: "RaspK_FOG" <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET>

    >Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 7:42 PM

    >

    >

    >

    >

    >>tettix? I am Greek, yet have never heard of the word...

    >>

    >>

    >

    >Its a Homeric word. The Latin word cicada is taken from it. As a word

    >several thousand years old, its no surprise its no longer current. I can

    >find many much younger English words that no one would recognize. Wrecan

    >(to banish), Byrne (a coat of mail), Raed (advice, counsel) are examples

    >useful for BR. (Well, no one except Homericists and Beowulfians,

    >respectively.)

    >

    Except for Raed you are right, never heard of Wrecan and the others. But

    Raed looks similar to the german Rat which actually means advices even

    today :-)

    bye

    Michael

  5. #135
    Senior Member Osprey's Avatar
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    Its a Homeric word. The Latin word cicada is taken from it. As a word
    several thousand years old, its no surprise its no longer current. I can
    find many much younger English words that no one would recognize. Wrecan
    (to banish), Byrne (a coat of mail), Raed (advice, counsel) are examples
    useful for BR. (Well, no one except Homericists and Beowulfians,
    respectively.)
    Heh, well, I&#39;ll bet most Scandanavians would recognize Byrne, as Swedish &#39;brynja&#39; has the same meaning (also "ringbrynja", a chain shirt or hauberk). And &#39;rad&#39; (except the a has an umlaut above it, but I don&#39;t know how to type it) is the same as Old English &#39;raed.&#39; I think...it&#39;s been about 12 years since I spoke much Swedish. :huh:

    Of course, Old English is a lot closer to Danish and Old Norse than it is to modern English, so probably this isn&#39;t a big surprise

  6. #136
    Birthright Developer irdeggman's Avatar
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    Originally posted by JanGunterssen@Mar 15 2004, 07:29 PM
    I know that I&#39;m touching a point already touched by previous posts, but I&#39;d like to add some logical ideas regarding of elven immortality, just
    in the spirit of creativity:

    As elves are immortal (live forever young), and we assume sexual reproduction, they could bear children during the whole of their lives.
    Why we assume they have low rating births?

    If they only have one or two children in their lives, should we assume longer pregnation times as they have longer maturation times?

    If so, their bloodlines will be less mixed than humans, so they could usually possess greater bloodlines. Of course there would be minor lines (as elves at Deismaar would be closer or farther to the deceased gods), but the inevitable process of blood diluting that seems to be the norm in human lands wouldn&#39;t be in elven lands. We can see that every elven regent has at least major bloodline.

    Why (if they can live forever) there should be no epic-classed elves? Arguing that they doesn&#39;t learn as fast as humans... shouldn&#39;t be any important individual of levels beyond 20? I know that BR is a low level setting as opposed to FR, but for me makes no sense that every 3000 years old elven has not any interest in advance his powers... Or is that is no elf older than 1000 years? If so, why?

    Any suggestions?
    Any ideas?
    There was good article in Dragon awhile back (When WotC still owned it) concerning elves. It was a 3.0 article by the way. In it, IIRC, they talked about the &#39;low birthrate&#39; of elves compared to their long lives. It had something to do with them only becoming fertile at certain times, hence thy could be sexually promiscuous without having a large number of offspring.
    Duane Eggert

  7. #137
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
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    At 01:29 AM 3/16/2004 +0100, JanGunterssen wrote:



    > As elves are immortal (live forever young), and we assume sexual

    > reproduction, they could bear children during the whole of their lives.

    > Why we assume they have low rating births?



    Generally longer lived creatures tend to have lower birth rates. That`s

    not always the case and it`s nothing like a straight line relationship when

    it is, but in general long lifespan and birth rate are on either end of a

    teeter totter. Of course, one needn`t maintain that in a fantasy RPG, but

    it does seem to keep some sort of verisimilitude in the campaign,

    especially if one recognizes that without a lower birth rate there is

    increasingly little explanation for why elves haven`t taken over the planet

    by now....



    > If they only have one or two children in their lives, should we assume

    > longer pregnation times as they have longer maturation times?



    That`s generally the assumption that I`ve heard for pretty much the same

    reasons as those above. (It also needn`t necessarily be the case... for

    the same reasons as those above.)



    > If so, their bloodlines will be less mixed than humans, so they could

    > usually possess greater bloodlines. Of course there would be minor lines

    > (as elves at Deismaar would be closer or farther to the deceased gods),

    > but the inevitable process of blood diluting that seems to be the norm in

    > human lands wouldn`t be in elven lands. We can see that every elven

    > regent has at least major bloodline.



    It`s kind of debatable if there are more bloodlines in the population of

    Cerilia now than there were right after Deismaar or if both the number of

    scions is on decline and the power of bloodlines is as well. There are

    several methods for maintaining or improving bloodlines. The most powerful

    blooded characters in the setting tend to be ones who got their bloodlines

    at Deismaar, but it`s difficult to say whether their bloodlines were that

    high to begin with or if their modern manifestations are the result of

    centuries of maintenance and RP expenditures. After some past discussion

    of this kind of thing I think its reasonable to assume that bloodlines went

    through a pretty dramatic "die off" period in the generations right after

    Deismaar, but have been steadily increasing in both numbers and strength in

    the centuries since in a way that would be commensurate with population

    growth and technological advances.



    >Why (if they can live forever) there should be no epic-classed elves?

    >Arguing that they doesn`t learn as fast as humans... shouldn`t be any

    >important individual of levels beyond 20? I know that BR is a low level

    >setting as opposed to FR, but for me makes no sense that every 3000 years

    >old elven has not any interest in advance his powers... Or is that is no

    >elf older than 1000 years? If so, why?



    Well, that one`s definitely a stickler. The short answer is that it`s a

    sort of game designer fiat that the setting is "low level" and that the

    characters in the setting should, therefore, be of standard 1st-20th level

    for the most part. It doesn`t necessarily make sense given the way D&D has

    always worked and it still doesn`t make a lot of sense, though some folks

    do like to point out that one stops getting XP awards for encounters that

    have CR values only a few levels below that of a character, so "on average"

    elves (or characters with Long Life) will get ever dwindling XP awards and

    eventually stop getting them at all unless they participate in events that

    are, essentially, DM inspired adventures. I`ve never really been able to

    accept that myself. It seems to me that characters have a tendency to at

    least occasionally seek out challenges or the kinds of things that would

    grant them XP awards in D&D terms, and as long as there are people about

    who have also capped out the "average" awards one could always find others

    in a similar predicament and duke it out with them (and thus gain XP for a

    more appropriately CR`d encounter.) But as a rationalization goes I guess

    it`s as good as the next one.



    Gary

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