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Thread: Elven longlivety
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02-16-1999, 06:36 PM #21Pieter SleijpenGuest
Elven longlivety
Tim Nutting wrote:
> I have argued time and again about the complete lack of realism
> displayed by the level progression system of AD&D. Simply put it does
> not work for average people. If the game were true to life then
> because I didn't go join the Navy SEALs I never could have learned to
> read, nor would I have acquired an AA in English, nor would I have
> acquired any computer skills. Modern vs. old? Think again, by the
> logic of AD&D, a master chef who worked for Reole himself would never
> have improved at his craft once he achieved the ripe old age of 15.
> That's like saying that the best cooks in the world can be found among
> the masterfully skilled and enormously dedicated artisans at the grill
> in McDonald's. Oh, and BTW, the cook could only be a cook, he could
> never learn to read, write, drive, ride a horse, shoot a bow, etc.
I use the PO: Skills&Powers proficiency system, including the character
points. This system allows exactly the kind of growth in skill, instead
of the "you have it OR not" from the old system. This system also talks
about the amount of CP's a skilled but non-leveled NPC could get. I also
allow people to train for this, just as the training action in the
Rulebook (to I have changed the time needed to raise the score by 1 a
little). Hence, old elves in my campaign might not be high level
warriors or wizards. They do have high scores in relevant skills like
tracking, wood carving, animal lore and so on and every human would be
dying to find an elven tutor (if someone tried to hard, they might
actually really die :-) )
Pieter Sleijpen
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02-16-1999, 09:08 PM #22David Sean BrownGuest
Elven longlivety
Ya know..I sort of clued into this about .00002 seconds after I sent the
post, and REALLY hoping no one would notice..doh! :)
Sean
> > Remember, that even at the turn of the century, life expectancy for the
> > average American Citizen was only about 40 years...
> >
> This would be a very appropriate comment, if we weren't discussing the
> most
> difficult for the DM race in Birthrigtht, the elves. Elves are immune
> to
> disease and aging effects. Every elf is effectively at their physical
> prime
> from the time they reach adulthood to the time they die.
>
> --
>
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02-16-1999, 09:59 PM #23Kenneth GauckGuest
Elven longlivety
Since you were originally refering to elves, I do not see the connection
with MTV cartoons.
- -----Original Message-----
From: Pieter A de Jong
Date: Tuesday, February 16, 1999 9:34 AM
>Kenneth Gauck wrote:
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Pieter A de Jong
>> Date: Monday, February 15, 1999 4:27 PM
>> >.....stereotypical empty headed california valley girls.
>>
>> Appreciation of aethetics is not empty headed. Indeed it approaches
truth
>> more honestly than the material ever does.
>
>You are correct. I cannot say however, that appreciative of aethestics
>is the appropriated description for people who think Beavis and Butthead
>is the highest possible form of humor.
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02-19-1999, 01:26 AM #24Tim NuttingGuest
Elven longlivety
Because humans have access to quick and easy cure-alls presented by people
applying their faith. The means to cure any illness are readily available
to Cerilians, simply visit a priest. That the local priest might not have
the power to achieve the desired result is no different than discovering
your family doctor can't effectively do major cosmetic reconstruction.
There has been no real pressing need to invent new medicine, quite the
contrary to Earth. Here, every time we happen upon an new (to us) section
of the world and are exposed to diseases we know nothing about, or are
exposed to new mutating ones, we must struggle to find a cure. And yet, to
Cerilians, the cure is a simple matter of awaiting the attentions of the
local high priest or a very gifted and kind hearted noble (Great Healing is
an amazing blood power). I am certain that as time has progressed, medicine
has proven better and better, but simply put, necessity is the mother of
invention, and with no REAL necessity, no real need of advanced medicine, it
is not there.
Contrary to this statement, wizardly magic is NOT prevalent in Cerilia. Oh
the land is very certainly magical, but not in the way that Faerun or even
Oerth is. Many inhabitants of Diemed will grow up never seeing a goblin,
only hearing strange stories, but go to Halskapa, and you are likely to hear
that elves are fairy tales and don't exist anymore. Likewise, not every
regent can count on having a good dozen wizards at his disposal. As
presented, there aren't that many. So men have had to accomodate this lack
in other, more inventive methods. Dragons are gone, and flying mounts are
viturally nonexistant, yet your neighbor has wide access to a great many
catapults and big rocks, so the development of rounded towers and the
perpetual search of a better way to kill keeps on chugging.
One thing too, I think that we go a bit to far in calling certain cultures
of Cerilia "renaisance." Whilet McComb writes that Khinasi and Anuire are
renaisance cultures, I feel that refers to the internal structure of AD&D,
and it is a handy reference for looking at period divided equipment lists
and determining what is and is not available. This is not a true
representation of their cultural "progression". Technology develops
seperate of cultural revolution. Keep in mind that as recent as 200 years
ago in Anuire, the serf was still an underprivelaged class and completely
socially immobile.
Yes, it can be that, but it is not. To go further, the Sidhe IMC are
fantastic surgeons (comparatively), but they do not know the slightest about
curing diseases among themselves, it never came up. But broken bones and
cuts must exist to a great degree, especially if you take Simon Hawke's
description of the Sidhe of the Aelvinwode in "The Iron Throne" to heart.
Dosiere's elven companions during his and Michael's stay as guests shows a
few encounters of elves "frolicking" with swords and very little armor,
vaguely shrugging when a cut is dilivered. As the elf explaines to him,
they are skilled enough to not seriously wound one another.
No, I didn't think that is was... We never change, do we?
Absolutley right. The game does a great job of showing adventurers for the
heroic types that they are, and that's why I play it! :) I have had
players who "want something new" and "want more realism" and when they get
there hands on that cook, they are singularly dissappointed to find out just
how boring this person is to be in the context of an adventure game.
I allow characters to use the Training action to acquire proficiencies even
if they don't have slots available. It uses the system to good effect.
Likewise, I follow Player's Option on the idea that not all 0-levels have 6
hit points...
Excellent comments Ken! You got me thinking there above about the medicine
issue, thankx!
Tim Nutting
zero@wiredweb.com
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02-20-1999, 10:20 AM #25Tim NuttingGuest
Elven longlivety
Ummmmm.... why the hell not? Think about that statement for a minute.
Translate it to "I have lived 1,000 years and in that time have cared so
little about the world around me and failed to pay even the slightest bit of
attention to my life experiences and therefore am no wiser or smarter than
when I was young, dumb, and full of ___"
I'm sorry I hit this with such a lack of tact, but the only possible sense
the statement makes is that the only way to get wiser is to lose stat
points... well by golly, hand me the axe and razor blade and I'll start
dropping STR and DEX and CON! ;)
Later guys...
Tim Nutting
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02-20-1999, 11:06 AM #26Tim NuttingGuest
Elven longlivety
Immortality in all its scientific aspects I have no desire to delve into
here. Read Dr. Ben Bova's book, very good and very insightful, especially
on the social side effects imagined.
Immunity to disease. By our understanding, IMMUNITY is impossible. There
are methods to make someone incredibly resistant, but recently it is being
shown that not even the immunization drugs we use today are fully effective.
In essence you could boost a person's white blood cell count to such a
superhuman level that his immune system would be incredibly effective (heck,
it might even decide the bacteria in yogurt is bad for you and kill it
too...), but such a person would be no more immune to disease than I would.
It would only require a sufficiently deadly and strong disease to affect
such a mutant.
The night vision of the sidhe of cerilia is much more scientifically
acceptable than infravision. Infrared (ture IR sight) requires that the
viewing unit be cooled significantly to avoid the problematic bleed of body
heet. An AIM-9M Sidewinder uses an argon cooling device to allow the
infrared tracking head to more easily spot engine exhaust, or the Sun ;)
Sight extending into the ultraviolet spectrum requires less modification,
but to realistically duplicate the extent to which elves have it (a single
candle lights an auditorium completely...) the organs would seem to be
totally inapropriate for perception of the "normal" spectrum.
I take issue, Pieter, with the last statement. I cannot myself percieve
most emenations of the electromagnetic field that surrounds our planet, and
yet RADAR was invented in an era where Mach 1 didn't even exist, because it
was impossible. Having no direct experience or perception does not mean
that one cannot study an object. I cannot percieve an atom without special
aid, and yet our science revolves around them and lower structures. Sidhe
could just as easily turn to animal expermintation as humans did.
And folks, a Chaotic Evil elf is still CE. He won't give a fuzz about the
cuty fuzzy bunny, and better yet, why can't they experiment on goblins and
humans? Your comment insinuates that because they can't get sick, they are
too stupid to look at the nature they revere.
Also, we've all been going on about averages, right? I have a die-hard
rules lawer that thinks that every NPC has a stat of 8 cause it's average,
and that is that. Well, if any of you think thusly, understand that an
average is taken from the possible range of results. I don't have my books,
so you all feel free to correct my numbers, but if an Elf range of INT stat
is from 8 to 19, then his average intelligence wiould be 14, while the human
with the range of 3 to 18 would have a gross average of 10.5. On average
I'd say that elves sort of rock the humans world as far as science goes.
Tim Nutting
zero@wiredweb.com
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02-20-1999, 06:01 PM #27Kenneth GauckGuest
Elven longlivety
>I'm sorry I hit this with such a lack of tact, but the only possible sense
>the statement makes is that the only way to get wiser is to lose stat
>points...
Its a crazy idea tied to the notion of game balance. Since Intelligence
refers to apptitude, not proficency, it in fact makes no sense that it
should climb over time. Proficencies may accumulate, as one learns new
things, and experience has its own special reward in D&D. But the idea that
stats should change is a primitive facet of D&D which pre-dates certain
later concepts in the game which are much better suited to modeling the
benifits of age.
Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net
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02-20-1999, 06:17 PM #28Kenneth GauckGuest
Elven longlivety
> I don't have my books, so you all feel free to correct my numbers, but if
>an Elf range of INT stat is from 8 to 19, then his average intelligence
> [would] be 14, while the human with the range of 3 to 18 would have a
>gross average of 10.5. On average I'd say that elves sort of rock the
>humans world as far as science goes.
>
These figures apply the the pool from which adventurers are drawn, and not
the general population. We must also keep in mind the intended effects of
game mechanics when discussing them. When rolling for a character a 3d6 is
still used, a result lower than an 8 in INT simply disqualifies an elf. No
special die combinations are used to calculate elven intelligence, hence one
imagines that the curve for elven INT is the same for humans, shifted once
to the right for racial bonus, and that the bottom results are simply not
present. See rough ascii art below.
Human Elf
*** ***
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
** ** * **
3 7 18 4 8 19
So we see that the average elven intelligence is 11.5, rather than 10.5, and
there are just no idiots among the adventuring classes. What describes the
general population, or why statistics is so poorly understood remains up for
grabs.
Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net
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02-22-1999, 07:51 AM #29Tim NuttingGuest
Elven longlivety
I disagree. I think that the listed stat range is what is found commonly
among the society. If the game is to be played with adventurers of truly
heroic proportions, then the mechanics change from 3d6 to something else
entirely, take your pick of the other 9 methods or make one yourself.
In actuality, the original Unearthed Arcana tome dealt with the concept that
your character's class changed the dice you rolled, which I liked
tremendously.
Tim Nutting
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02-22-1999, 03:13 PM #30Pieter A de JongGuest
Elven longlivety
Tim Nutting wrote:
>
> I take issue, Pieter, with the last statement.
Hey, be specific. Are you starting something with Pieter Sleipjen, me,
or both of us :).
> Tim Nutting
> zero@wiredweb.com
>
> ************************************************** *************************
> > - --
Pieter A de Jong
Graduate Mechanical Engineering Student
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
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