I not great with estimating sizes, and i often have trouble converting things from feet to meters on the spot. Last session i presented the players a quest to slay a sea monster. They cleverly decided to scout first with a familiar, and i described the creature and its size. I ended up exaggerating the size i bit too much and they’ve decided to avoid it until they’re higher level. So what was supposed to be a simple “monster of the week” type of encounter has now turned into a late game boss fight.

Maybe those are the modifiers and Jerry has a fucking 24 Charisma.

My head-canon is that they have a shorter window of fertility. I mean humans have menopause as well.

Though it would make more sense if that happens later in their lives, otherwise you’re saying every adventurer has given up the possibility of raising kids. Also, i suppose if that’s the case they haven’t really matured in the sexual sense, so much as they’ve just grown enough to be independent.

I seem to remember some bit of lore saying dwarves only settle down to have kids near the end of their lives, but i can’t find that anywhere ( Might’ve just imagined it, lol).

Maybe adventuring across ages with different heirs of humans who go from weak to strong extremely fast while elves start strong and grow slowly?

That sounds cool but you’d need all your quests to span generations and leveling in general would be very slow. Probably harder to make it balanced as well.

Rules don’t apply to you when you’re a motherfucking dragon, lol. They’re so broken they don’t need to hurry up growing, cause they’re already at the top of the food chain at basically any stage in their lives.

Leveling in general gets more confusing the more you try to explain it.

Why has my old character never leveled up before i started playing them?

Why has my Elf/Dwarf/etc never leveled up in hundreds of years?

If i can level up from 1 to 20 in a matter of days, why isn’t every adventurer level 20 by now?

Also, even outside of level:

How isn’t there a massive overpopulation issue when these races have hundreds of years to procreate? Instead they always seem to be rarer than humans.

Why would any job ever hire humans when elves/dwarves exist? They could acummulate way more experience and be better at basically anything.

In fact, why aren’t Dwarves/Elves just better at everything? Do they learn things at a slower rate? But if that’s the case, how come they can level up so fast once we start playing them?

I mean, really, at some point we gotta draw a line in the sand and decide that some things just need to be handwaved for the sake of fantasy.

They grow into adulthood at the same rate as humans, but after that point they age at a slower rate.

As per the PHB, page 23:

“AIthough elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood and an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 750 years old”

And page 20:

“Dwarves mature at the same rate as humans, but they’re considered young until they reach the age of 50, On average, they live about 350 years.”

So i did get some things mixed up, for Dwarves it’s 50, not 100. Same idea though.

I know it sounds weird at first, but It actually makes a ton of sense. I mean, even outside of fantasy, the amount of time an animal takes to reach maturity isn’t really proportional to how long it lives, it has more to do with its intelligence, which is about the same for all D&D races. For a lot of animals, reaching full maturity only takes a couple of months tops. Turtles can live way longer than humans yet they mature in about 5 to 8 years depending on the species.

Humans are already pushing it with about 2 decades worth of growing, having to spend a literal century as a kid, especially in a world as dangerous as the forgotten realms would be insane.

Friendly reminder that although you can homebrew it to be like this if you want, in the official D&D 5e lore, Elves and Dwarves mature at the same rate as humans, so they’re all adults at 21.

Culturally is a little different, much like some older humans still view people in their 20s as “kids”, elves and dwarves will only consider themselves to be truly adults after at least 100 years or so, but that’s just a social stigma, not how they are biologically.

I used to have a problem with this as a DM, where i’d get kinda anxious if nothing is happening or no one’s talking and just start moving things too fast out of fear they’d be bored.

But moments of silence are an important part of it, especially if you want them to roleplay. Players usually don’t have stuff planned ahead of time like you do, so you gotta give them some time to think about what to say, lol. Plus if feels way more natural to have them speak to eachother on their own time instead of rapid-firing lines.

Ya also can’t force roleplay. Just give them some space, maybe some chill moments in between the action and they’ll take it if they feel like it. Though if they’re shy/new it can be good to start the convo with an NPC or simply ask them what’s going through their characters minds at the moment. I find that tends to help.

l mostly agree and i don’t really ever fudge, but i don’t really like instant death, as it’s mostly just luck. If they die from poor choices or failed death rolls i don’t mind, but like, i’ve had players at full healh “die” because the monster rolled a crit and the highest number on both damage rolls. I ended up just downing him and giving him a cool scar after he got up cause that’s bonkers and it was literally the first fight of the campaign, lol.

I might make changes to the number of monsters or their stats, but that’s always something i do before the fight, never during it. Homebrewing is alot different than fudging imo. Once the players have seen it, it’s set in stone.

Faeladelfia

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I mean, they are from down under…

Idk, that feels a bit too technical. Trying to apply real world physics to D&D breaks way more things than just this, so we gotta be careful when to do it. Gotta keep just enough believability and consistency, without letting it ruin the feel.

For me, the fact that “starwars lasers go pew pew” is enough reason to disregard how sound actually works in real life, lol.

Or find any art for an unnatractive PC/NPC at all. Or at least one that doesn’t look like a supermodel.

Why is everyone hot?? Sometimes i just need an ugly pirate or something. Even the monstrous races all just look like attractive humans with a new coat of paint.

The issue is only if the DM penalizes you for it. I think the result should ultimately be up to the dice, but explaining what exactly you’re doing helps the DM move the story in the right direction.

Also, the game will inevitably require irl skills to play. You can’t “roleplay” combat strategy or how much you pay attention irl, so there’s no escaping that. I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to expect players to at least come up with simple descriptions of what they’re trying to achieve during a dialogue.

Yeah, that sucks. I do the “elaborate” thing as well, but that’s mostly because i want the player to have a chance to roleplay and give creative input. If they’re having trouble coming up with something i’ll just try to fill in the gaps.

That or i’m deciding if what they’re asking is even possible, in which case they shouldn’t roll until after i make the call. ( In general you shouldn’t roll unless prompted by your GM)

I know a lot of people homebrew this to be different in their games and that’s fine, but just to clarify to anyone curious, if we’re talking D&D 5e, elves mature at the same rate as humans, and the reason they only consider themselves adults at 100 is purely cultural.

Just to clarify, that’s usually 2 d10s. One with the decimals (10,20…90) like you said, and another with the units. (1,2…9).

Also, zeroes in both dice are considered 100.

On another note, there are actually single dice that go from 1 to 100, but they’re more of a novelty thing and don’t roll super well.

In D100 systems that’s usually good. You typically want to roll under a certain number to pass.

For example, if i have a 70% chance of sucess, i want to roll a 70 or under on a D100.

It’s actually a much better way to visualize your odds than with a D20.

That’s where half orcs come from, yes.

In 5e it’s explained as sometimes Orc camps make alliances with human settlements.

In older editions the explanation was a bit more concerning, and rhymed with grape.