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Thread: Battle Elves
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02-18-2008, 10:45 PM #81
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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.
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02-18-2008, 10:50 PM #82
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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.
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02-18-2008, 10:52 PM #83
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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.Duane Eggert
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02-18-2008, 11:25 PM #84
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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.
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.
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!
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.
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 http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?p=43179 for a report of the basic calculation.
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.
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.
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02-19-2008, 10:06 AM #85
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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.Last edited by Airgedok; 02-19-2008 at 10:11 AM.
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02-19-2008, 11:16 AM #86
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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.
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02-19-2008, 02:27 PM #87
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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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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02-19-2008, 02:58 PM #88
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.
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02-19-2008, 04:16 PM #89
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.The better part of valor is discretion
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02-19-2008, 05:21 PM #90
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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.
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