Cole wrote:
I think the thing Hal is missing here is "Breeding" aspect, the demi-Human races would simply out live, thus out breed the human race. Now, I'm not talking over a small time of say 100 years (which most campaigns would be or less), I'm talking about 10,000 years and up.
I honestly don't think the breeding issue can, by itself, justify the rule. I'll explain why as we go through the details.
For example; When I started my new world "Arkuth", I had to consider ALL of my world geography, populations, topography, history etc all at once. I wanted to have a large section of "evil" orcs, but needed to test out their breeding capacities. I started out planning the start point with 10,000 Orcs over various areas (all near each other) and then started doing the math. I didn't take long and myself and a close friend of mine through basic D&D research figured out the whole eastern seaboard of my largest continent would be OVERRUN in only 5 years! No elven army or human army would be able to stop them. They BREED like rabbits literally.
Well, humans would be
out-populated, sure. But does that necessarily translate into being
dominated or worse yet
exterminated? I'd say no, for several reasons.
First, the humans and elves (and dwarves, and gnomes, and...) are more intelligent and more civilized than the orcs. Better technology, smarter, more advanced. The higher level of civilization would prevent the orcs from dominating. Elves control high elven magic. Humans can achieve very high levels as paladins and monks and druids and magic users and what not. One elven wizard can take out hundreds of orcs again and again. One human druid can turn the entire forest against an army of orcs. Orcs are 1HD, classless, level-less beings. It's similar to how a highly trained Navy SEAL team of 6 to 9 members can take on a much larger enemy force and win.
Second, what happens if the orcs live on one continent and the humans on another? Or the races are separated by desert, raging rivers, mountains or other obstacles? It would be hard for either side to invade and conquer the other, though even then in every case the advantage would go to the elves or humans.
Third, while orcs may breed like rabbits, other races (such as elves) may not. So the argument would not apply to those races. Plus, you have the orcs dying off at a much earlier age, which helps offset some of their reproductive advantage. Then there's the problem of in-fighting amongst the various orcish tribes, which also reduces their numbers. Lack of sanitation leads to disease, which also speeds their depopulation.
My argument with Halaster's point of view wouldn't matter for 99% of all DMed worlds, as most people don't care about realism or history that derives from the beginning of time. Level Limits don't matter IF your campaign is not keeping a perpetual time line, historical records or realistic population growths, wars, or ever evolving borders and immigration shifts.
I don't agree there at all. I also prefer realism in my campaigns, with history and world events having meaning. But again, I've never needed level limits to achieve that. I have always argued over the years that population control in the game world can
only be controlled by DM whim and design,
not by game mechanics. And
certainly not by level limits. In fact,
with level limits being used, you might be able to argue that the elves would fall to the orcs for the precise reason you mention - the orcs breed too quickly, and if the elves cannot achieve high levels, they won't be able to overcome the population advantage.
Another point you mention is ancient history. Let's look at that. Tolkein did not seem to have trouble creating a generally humano-centric world. There was a time when the elves ruled; now they are on the decline and retreating from the world of man. Or look at the Forgotten Realms, no doubt inspired by Tolkein. The elves once had high elven magic and ran a powerful empire in Myth Drannor. Now the area is an overgrown forest of ruins, with the elves retreating to Evermeet and the surrounding areas dominated by humans. Even while the elves had more presence and more power, you still had the might of human nations like Netheril. Humans survived all of those settings. So I'm just not seeing the logic or the precedence of humans being extincted by races that live longer or breed more frequently.
If, for example; At 60 years old a human maxed out at 15th level fighter (on average), that same elf would also be 15th level as well, but the human dies of old age and the elf gets to do that 100 MORE TIMES ... on average with 4 levels being gained every 15 years that Elf would be 150th etc level. Nothing could stand in his way
Again, the
ability to do something does not necessarily infer the
desire to do something. For example, in real life I have a lifetime of training in various aspects of combat - from martial arts to knives to firearms. And I'm always armed. I could easily take out just about anyone I come across on a whim. And yet there is less than zero desire to do so. So while I walk down the street, no one need worry. Having the ability does not confer the desire. That's the same for most martial artists and combat experts. I do armed security work at an FDA facility. Several of the scientists there work with anthax, abrin, botulinum, and other nasty, nasty things. Very lethal shit. Any of them could easily poison or infect the entire facility if they desired to. They have the ability. Hasn't ever happened though. Again, ability does not equate with desire. The USA has enough nuclear power to destroy all its enemies and pretty much the entire world. And yet that isn't happening. Ability does not equate with desire.
Now if you use birth rates and death rates, you have this human generation that is dying off after 4 generations or so (maybe less) and these elves who are cranking out more babies because they are just young adults. Simple math will tell you that IF this world started out in equal parts that elves, dwarves etc would simply overrun all other races. (You technically could stunt this by saying your elves don't breed often, or have kids rarely)
Again, there are several points we need to consider. As you mentioned, there is the idea of low birth rates, which could simply be a part of the physiology of elves and dwarves. Or we could say that elves are careful not to overpopulate, since they know the problems that brings. Or perhaps the dwarves are militaristic and believe in having only one child per family. Or maybe the gods cursed them with infertility. Or perhaps disease is wiping out their populations. There are literally countless ways a DM can control population without the need for level limits (which would accomplish nothing, I would note, as far as controlling population numbers). Even if you use level limit, you would have so many more elves that the rare and small number of humans of higher level would not matter. Would 50 or so 18th level humans matter when facing off against 1,000 elves of 9th level? No.
Halaster, you made tons of good points, like the thoughts about the Elves not being war mongers and even wanting to wipe out the humans, but IF you consider populations, expansion, interbreeding, migration and death/birth rates, you will soon see why level limits matter.
The population count isn't relevant though. Only if humans live in indefensible areas and are surrounded by openly hostile demihumans would you possibly have a problem. You're also overlooking the fact that dwarves really don't like elves and vice versa. If you had a nation of elves who wanted to destroy a nation of humans but who had to cross a dwarven kingdom to get to the humans, then the elves would be going up against an alliance of humans and dwarves. They're not likely to succeed.
It's simply only a matter of time where these 40,000 - 150th level warriors (1,000,000 elves at 4% as an example) will become hostile/bored/vengeful/forced/bribed/segregated/religiously motivated or a million other reasons to wipe out the "Evil" humans in the next kingdom and for DAM CERTAIN their tiny army of 1st level warriors with a handful of 5th level captains and a few knights can't stop. Hell, those same elves have another 300 generations of soldiers ranging from 4th level to 135th level and that's JUST 4% of their TOTAL population
Again, in order for your argument to hold water, we must make the assumption that the elves are and/or will become evil - very evil! Evil on the level of Nazi Germany where the normally reclusive elves for some inexplicable reason as a nation become fanatically hostile towards all humans. This goes against most literature and the standards for elves set in the game system (they tend to be good-aligned, reclusive, and not aggressive).
We
further have to make the assumption that the elves have easy access to invading the human kingdoms - that the humans live in an indefensible area, not protected by mountains, oceans, plains, or other non-human kingdoms who would ally with the humans.
And
then we have to assume the
opposite of your argument *, i.e. that a very tiny and insignificant number of higher level humans can balance out thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of low to mid level elves. An army of 30,000 elves with just several hundred in the 5th-to-9th level range will destroy a human army of 5,000 with just a few dozen 18th level human characters.
So level limits fail on that level as well. How are a handful of humans of somewhat higher level going to compete with hundreds of mid level elves per high level human? I mean, sure, a group of 6 Navy SEALS can probably take on and win against 50 or so normal soldiers or marines, but they won't likely survive a fight with just 20 rangers or green berets.
So that's a
lot of assumptions we have to make, just to hold that argument together. And most, perhaps all of those assumptions have no grounding in the game as designed, or the rules as written.
Now think about the other 1% of this elven population that are wizards, 3% that are clerics (healers), 2% that are specialty warriors (elven archers etc) and that's shooting really low. My math isn't meant to be exact here, but I'm just making a point. Without level limits I indeed agree with Gary that any "realistic" world would be overrun with Elves, Dwarves and the like. Human's would be extinct within 100 generations or so. Even IF you play the "Elves won't attack humans card", interbreeding would simply eradicate the human race. Eventually everyone would be a half-elf.
Not necessarily. In AD&D, half-elves are sorta discriminated against. Half-orcs even moreso. And how many races interbreed with dwarves?
Race mixing in AD&D terms is a lot more rare than in the real world, because in the real world every race can interbreed, and in most areas it's accepted. In AD&D, half-orcs are shunned by just about everyone, and half-elves are merely "tolerated" by humans. Humans and elves are mutually neutral, defined in the PHB as "N [neutral] shows that the race is thought of neutrally, although some suspicion will be evidenced". It would seem obvious that interbreeding isn't going to be that big an issue. Beyond that, if it were, the DM has countless better ways to alleviate the problem that work better than level limits.
Level limits won't discourage interbreeding - it would literally have no effect.
On top of all that, we see that humans and elves interbreed more readily than other races. So what you would actually end up with, according to the interbreeding argument (and as you noted), is a world overrun by
half-elves!
Which means that not only would humans cease to exist, but so would elves!
____________________________
* The argument I mention above refers to the effect of high level characters on populations. This has never been argued with any logic (or success) by anyone, at any time, that I've ever seen. Here's the gist of it...
The argument for level limits is that because elves live longer, there will be more high level elves - and elves
of much higher level than humans can ever achieve due to shorter lifespan. While both are true, the former is meaningful while the latter is meaningless. The latter is meaningless because by game design and assumption,
very, very few members of any race go on to become adventurers who go adventuring and gain levels. So while there would be more extremely high level elven wizards, for example, than humans, that would not matter because
elves as portrayed in AD&D are reclusive and of good alignment. So for these mythical 100th-level elven wizards to be a threat to human existence, we would have to make
numerous unfounded assumptions:
1. That those very high level elves are
all (or all become) aligned towards evil. We must assume that a reclusive, good-aligned, advanced race would
uniformly turn evil simply because they achieved high levels of power.
2. That no
good high-level elves come into existence to fight the high level evil elves - i.e. no elves who reach 30th or 50th or 100th level are good. They all become inexplicably evil and also inexplicably violent and aggressive/genocidal.
3. That even if those rare very high level elves become evil,
the entire nation of reclusive, good-aligned elves will
inexplicably choose to side with these powerful, evil elves against the human race as opposed to purging the evil from within.
4. That the dwarves, gnomes, halflings and other races would
not team up with the humans, as each race is equally threatened by the elves [
I noticed that no one ever speaks of ultra-high level gnomes or dwarves taking over the globe - it's always "Look out! Here come the elves!"] And if the elves are powerful enough (with or without level limits) to overcome an alliance of humans, dwarves, gnomes and halflings, then what are we even talking about?
All worlds would simply become exclusively elven worlds, so why worry about it?
5. That elven populations are
not on the decline as presented by Tolkein, the Forgotten Realms, and even the core AD&D 2E rules (noted under "Elf" in the MM - it also refers to elves leaving the world of man). If the elven population is on the decline, then there are even fewer high level elves (even
with level limits being in place) and eventually the human population explosion would eradicate any advantage the few high level elves had.
6. That the elves had easy access to human kingdoms, which would lack allies, natural barriers (oceans, mountains, friendly kingdoms, etc).
7. That the elves would have
any compelling reason to eradicate humans. Remember, the elves are generally
good aligned, and they are presented by Tolkein, Forgotten Realms, and 2E as being
in decline and
retreating from the world, not going out to conquer it.
8. That the elves would allow interbreeding to eradicate not only the human kingdoms,
but also the elven kingdoms so that both races would cease to exist and it would become a world of half-elves (and perhaps halflings, gnomes and dwarves, but no humans or elves). Somehow the proud elves, who are so very haughty and protective of their bloodlines, would simply allow themselves to be bred out.
9. That humans, who are suspicious of half-elves and not totally trusting of elves,
would also give up their race to an interbreeding program that turned all of their descendants into half-elves.
I could go on and on, but I think that suffices to show how many inexplicable, illogical, unfounded assumptions we have to make in order to back the argument of high level elves conquering the world. All of these assumptions (or at least most of them) would need to be true in order to establish the idea that the existence of some very high level elves would threaten the existence of mankind. And just about all of them are not only absurd, they all also go against the rules and standards set in the game as well as the literature the game is based on as well as the situation as defined in several world/game settings.
Now, why is the former (that there will be more high level elves than humans in total, as opposed to elves of much higher level) meaningful? Let's assume we use level limits. In 2E, elves top out at 12th level as clerics, 12th level as fighters, 15th level as mages, 15th level as rangers, and 12th level as thieves. Humans have no level limits. The rules, however, only cover up to 20th level. And given the much shorter lifespan of humans, let's assume 20th level is a realistic achievable limit.
Humans begin adventuring at a minimum of age 16. They can live to a maximum of 130 years. Humans hit middle age at 45 and lose 1 point of STR and CON. By age 60 they hit old age and lose 2 pts. of STR and DEX and another point of CON. By the age of 90 (venerable), humans lose another point each of STR/DEX/CON. So by age 60, humans have lost a cumulative total of 2 pts. of CON, 3 pts. of STR, and 2 pts. of DEX. By age 90, they've lost 3 pts. of CON, 4 pts. of STR, and 3 pts. of DEX.
Guess what? Elves are still in the prime of their lives and do not lose any ability scores until
at least 45 years after those humans are all dead and buried (i.e. at 175 years of age). So even assuming we use level limits, the humans will be able to achieve higher levels in general. But few of them will live long enough to reach anything beyond 20th level (the 2E game was originally designed to go only to 20th level - but we can even ignore that, it changes nothing). Worse yet, the humans lose shitloads of ability scores (along with the associated loss of hit points, thaco, damage, AC, etc.) while the elves are still in the prime of their lives. Before the elves lose a single ability score, the humans have lost 3 pts. of CON, 4 pts. of STR, and 3 pts. of DEX. That very much neuters even very high level humans. The fact that those humans will all be dead and buried before the elves lose a single ability score means the elves will always have the advantage.
Now, if we look at lifespan, we can see that elves will achieve levels of around 12th-15th level and be at full youth and vigor by the time most humans hit 20th level and have lost multiple points of several ability scores. A human fighter who is old and had an initial CON of 18 will lose 9hp at 45 years of age, 18hp by the time he hits 60, and 27 hp total by the time he hits 90. Humans get weaker much faster than elves.
So we have a bunch of 20th level humans, but many of them are already losing ability scores and associated benefits (hp, AC, etc). Even so, very high level humans will be few and far between. Elves, having much longer lifespan and therefore spawning more children who will reach adulthood and remain in the prime of life long after humans deteriorate, will eventually outnumber the humans. Vastly so over the years, as has been pointed out. So we quickly see a situation in which, over the centuries, the elves have produced thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of 12th to 15th level fighters, wizards, etc. And they are all still in their prime! In the meantime, there are far fewer 12th to 15th level humans simply due to old age, and even those who reach 12th to 15th level, or even 20th level, are much weaker due to ability score loss while the elves are in their prime.
Now who wins here? Thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of elves of 12th - 15th level with full vigor and ability scores, or dozens, perhaps hundreds or even (at most) a few thousands of humans of 20th level, but most of whom have vastly diminished ability scores? Level limits here are so utterly meaningless as to be absurd. Higher orders of magnitude of relatively high level elves in their prime will always overcome lesser numbers of slightly higher level humans with severely diminished ability scores.
Once again,
levels limits simply do not stand up to the challenge of logic and common sense.
But seriously, ignoring for the moment the mass migration problem coming from the south (Mexico), America has remained isolated and therefore pretty much not attacked. Likewise, Australia and New Zealand. It would be difficult for dwarves to sail across an ocean to invade a human kingdom - and for what reason? They're not a sea-going race! Likewise, it would be difficult for lizardmen to invade a cold northern human nation due to their metabolism. And so on and so forth. 
Using that unknown person's own argument, there should be no human or demihuman races left in the world due to dragons, liches, etc. 
YES IT's THAT FAST!
