Battle Elves

[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.