Should Sindarin PCs start off as having amazing martial skills? In Evael 7 it says



Similar question for woodcraft and stealth.



Thanks.

Interesting question. Having a player roll up a Sindarin character will result with such glowing terms being laid bare as great exaggerations...or the opinion that the game rules are greatly mismatched to way elves are presented and described.

Sure; elves do have some stat modifiers; but these if rolling averagely will still leave most of them inferior to some humans. To describe them as astronomically superior to humans in fields of perception; woodcraft; martial prowess etc IMHO means something else is going on. I think these come into play:

1) Veteran status. If one allows veteran rules for skill accumulation (without aging penalty); then elves (like other veterans but more so) can be very highly skilled. It seems to me reasonable to suggest that the Sindarin Demographic is horribly skewed away from young adults or adolescants

2) Equipment superiority. Especially the Hartbow. I think it is also reasonable to suggest that Elven equipment is superior with a higher frequency than in human populations. This would also apply to enchanted items.

3) Lack of fair testing grounds! I think it is reasonable to state that the field of competition between humans and elves is small; and mostly chosen by Elves. I am thinking of Elven woodsmen disorientating visitors to Evael with the help of the grand sorcery there or the battle of sorrows; which could hardly be called a fair fight in a 'man to man sense'.

4) Sorcery. Even if one disregards the statistical higher probability of turning out more powerful wizards; it is clearly stated that Evael is guarded by powerful magics and ruled over by powerful almost mage-kings. With such a small population; the impact of such government by sorcery is even more keenly felt. Melderyn has a similiar Magiocracy; but a large population to boot. If a Melderyni faced up to you and said "You had better watch it...I know wizards in high places"...you might briefly calculate the consequences..If an elf said it you would be a fool to think it bravado.....

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

Actually rolling 13 sets of abilities with 3d6 each the 24 points of ability bonuses puts the average sindarin on equal footing with the 98.8-th percentile of human beings.
An elf rolling 4d6 drop the lowest plus 24 points of ability bonuses averages at the 99.999703-th percentile of humans.
(and the similar margins exist for the number of elves that "only reach" average human scores)

Based solely on ability scores practically any sindarin considerably exceeds human norms even before considering hundreds (or thousands) of years of experience, skills, tools, magic, psionics, wealth, superior healthcare, regeneration of injuries, immunity to disease, etc.

Certainly in combination with those and the other advantages you have mentioned it is no question the elves would be practically untouchable and invisible in their prefered battle grounds.

Limiting the comparison to only physical abilities puts a human at slightly less of a disadvantage but reasonably speaking almost any human would be vastly overmatched in a one-on-one encounter with an average Sindarin on average terrain. Only the richest, most gifted, most experienced human knight at the top of their game would compete on even footing with the average Sindarin found wandering outside the Shava forest. (ie exceptional human/player character rolling 4d6 vs a 3d6 average sindarin in a straight martial combat, without magic and with equivalent equipment)

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Well, I bow to superior maths!

I was merely thinking along the lines of '...if an elf rolls an eleven; gets +3; he has 14...putting him not too high in my books!". It makes sense to look at all of the stats though

Another thing I was going to mention was the difficulty of success or probability of failure in the Harnmaster world even if you are super human. To have +3 in all the stats for stealth; probably means you have +9,+12,15 more than an average human in it.....but stilll this does not result in the extreme prose descriptions found in Canon IMHO.

So for me; part of the reason they are considered to have god like woodsman abilities is because there are only five of them and they take it turns to go out. Once every 200 years. No wonder a human never hears or sees them

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

To me, the main reason Elves are superior to other races in certain skills is not only from their attribute bonuses, but also from the fact that they live incredibly long lives.

A male elf usually takes the time, when they are still young, to tour the Evael and visit all the clans and clanheads. This itself could take many years (in human terms). By the time they are ready to journey beyond the Evael they would probably be at least 30 and it would not be unreasonable for them to be well over 100 years old. Anyone living that long and still remaining physically vital would have had the time to develop significant skills in anything they put their mind to. It is said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. If I had 100 years, I could become an expert in very many things and world class in some. It just seems incredibly unreasonable for a 100 year old elf to have an OML in Bowmanship of SBx2 or even SBx4. Similarly for all the other skills mentioned in the OP.

Elves are not superior to humans simply because of their racial advantages, although these are not insignificant. However, it is far from controversial to suggest that hard work and long hours practicing are far superior for attaining a high skill level in an activity over natural talent.

It seems to me that either a PC must play a young elf and stick to the stats generated during normal character creation as outlined in Evael and the Player's Guide, or they play a mature elf with the stats that would be expected of such an individual, ESPECIALLY if they want to play an elf that has left The Evael and traveled through the barbarian territories into the heart of Harn.

I assume when you say stats you mean skill levels...as stats should remain fixed (Except condition I believe and through aging..not that this applies to elves too much).

But yes; I think it is inferred that the PC be a young elf; which is a useful hook for character generation at least. Such Characters are not the superhuman types referred to sometimes in the literature.

I cannot think why any player would want to play an older elf; any suggestions?

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

Two things. First, when talking about elves, what is considered "young?" Even an elf of 100 years would be considered quite young by elven standards, but old enough to have become an expert in many skills, especially those that are considered a core part of Sindarin identity (woodcraft, marshal abilities, tracking, etc.).

But one important reason to play an older elf is so that it makes sense for the character to be journeying out of the Evael and into places where it is likely they will interact with humans. If all your PCs rolled up random characters, then nearly all of them are going to be human. An elf of 35 years or so is extremely unlikely to be travelling out of the Evael. Most elves that age would still be on their tour of the Evael. In order to leave Evael and get to Jarin society, they must travel through the barbarian territories which surround the Evael. No easy task, unless you are a mature Sindarin with considerable skills.

An older elf in some ways makes more sense; but the waywardness of youth; even in the elder race, could explain an adolescent running away to join the circus so to speak. The possibilities are endless really. We have in our group currently a randomly rolled Sidhe who's backstory includes a juvenile banishment from Evael for...well...naughty behaviour.

All our players randomly roll characters; (although not historically so), and I consider it a mature facet of an experienced player to make interesting of what the dice dictate. Whilst I have and would consider a player 'choosing' a character, I am always suspicious of this route; especially if a player repeats this tendency with narrow choices (Knight; Man at Arms, mercenary gladiator etc). If the player really must I will let him; just wish he wouldn't

If a player really wants to play an elf; the first question I would ask is why? The natural suspicion is that a rules junkie has spotted the stats bonuses and 'reasonable potential' for arguing (as you have thus far ) that one should be veteran and highly skilled. My next suspicion would be that they want to be really good at shooting arrows. It would not be my first suspicion that the player has a penchant for exploring the otherworld/alien psyche of the Elder race and enjoys coming at situations from an...eldritch stance for example.

You could argue it doesn't matter what the reasons are as long as everyone enjoys themselves; I guess so. There are inter-relational problems that arise with...disparity in the PC starting powers; but if everyone is cool with it..cool. Either that or let all the players roll up veteran Sindarin

But I agree with the premise that; statistically; it is more likely an elven adventurer have higher skills than a human counter part; because, as you say, even a young elf has lived a long time.

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

This makes a huge difference.

Per HM3:



An Elf, who will likley be a good 100 years old before "venturing out" is probably going to have a good 225 option points of so to "advance himself"

Now, they may decide to spend a lot in glassmaking, woodcrafting, and/or other non-combat skills, but they will have a LOT to expend on combat related skills as well.



Well, it still possible to get elves in the 6-8 range in agility. Common - no, but about 5% of elves will be in this range.

For me, I can't see an elf with agility or similar stats below that of an average human. I'd set a minimum of maybe 11 on them, and if less than an 11 is rolled, re-roll the dice, in addition to the +3 mod.

Of course, I think this might set the "average a bit higher than the 13-14 ag a +3 gives you - probably more in the 14-15 range. Which is still fine for me

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Well that is true also. +24 over 13 abilities is "only" about +2 each but mathematically / statistically over that many abilities +24 points is actually very significant. It is about equal to the advantage of rolling 4d6 instead of 3d6. (Rolls averaging 15 across 13 ability scores while it sounds "exceptional" is actually like "1 in 3 billion" - or maybe one human in all of Ketheria!)

Someone suggested giving an occupation for every 50 years of age and/or massive numbers of option points. While that is fairly reasonable I am a little less giving or maybe just different: I assume they master an occupation about every 100 years (+1 SB from normal human starting occupation). They may have one or two occupations they are in practice in and those are ones they can put generally additional option points into. I assume they do get out of practice and spend a lot of time vaccationing / working on skills that are either not common skills in the skill lists or music art etc. Unless they are mage specialists I give them a couple of reasonable low level fyvrian/elvish spells. History, common-lore and esoteric-lore are something they have to have had a lot of exposure to over that much time.

The combination of high ability scores and numerous skills still tends to give them very high skill MLs even in skills they are out of practice in and "inhuman" skills in several areas.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

I actually agree here. I would think they have a different outlook due to longevity. THe idea of focusing solely on the perfection of a craft seems a little too much, I would see much time spent doing other things, getting a very well rounded "education", but not devoting themselves tirelessly to one pusuit for their lifetime.

The other thing that would also compensate for their longevity to reduce skill value a bit - their memory systems are constantly regenerating per canon. I would think this would mean a more rapid degenration of skills than with a human. \

Plus something like losing skill ML to lack of practice would really need to be but into play with an elf. THey may have been a master glassblower 1000 years ago, but if they have not done much with it since they will be at a lower ML.

I actually think a little bit differently than the standard HM system for "protecting" skills. It's not tough to maintain a 50 ML. But to maintain a 100+ ML requires far more practice than HM specifies. Instead of making skill protection "automatic" if used, and automatic protection is not done by using one SMP.

I like to have it as having an unprotected skill require a developmental roll - if failed, the skill declines by 1 (makes the high ML skills tougher to protect). For every SMP spent, there are two rolls, you must excede the current skill level when rolling D100+ Skillbase, +20.

Sucessfully using the skill in a game session allows an SMP to protect that skill.

This means with a pretty well "maxed out" skill, you have a 20% chance to protect, or on average it takes 2.5 SMPs to protect.

You can be master of one skill, but it is difficult to be a master of many.

Using this with elves would take away some of the effects of their longevity.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I don't subscribe to the regenerating memory concept , canon or not. The idea of immortal bodies and shoddy memories is just illogical and inconsistent and tries to explain something legendary (immortal elves) and magical into something pseudo-scientific and doesn't fit with the legends or the tied in connection with the elves of Middle Earth, which Robin heavily alluded to in several instances. It's one fo the few instances where I have looked at the canon material and disagreed so heartily with the intent of the statement being made. They certainly aren't ageless memory recyclers in my p-Harn. I envision elves as something both wonderful and a bit dreadful if opposed all at once. Alien compared to man, longer vision and greater range of outcomes, absolutely. At the expense of something that happened 3 centuries ago? Not in my estimation. Elven Alzheimer's cheapens them and tries to explain away something that does not require an explanation.

As for skill levels, I see no reason why a sindar would not be at the very least, a veteran compared to a human. Even a relatively youthful elf is likely considerably older than a human. It is not at all unreasonable to belive that even an elf-of-all trades is likely going to be pretty good at something they have practiced for decades or centuries. Even a "dabbler" in some skill might have a pretty healthy skill. While I can't imagine a sindar devoting their entire lives to a single skill and developing it at the expense of all else, it's not hard rto believe that a mature sindar who was a warrior in the Battle of Sorrows has certainly seen more "war" and gained skills beyond that of a normal mortal man, just from the actual experience of surviving the event itself. I'd hate to see the outcome of a man of reasonable skill standing up to such a warrior...now imagine if the elf was a sidhe.

Just my 2d.

Mostly depends on ability generation (random or point) profession and sunsign.

Whether the Sindarin starts as a Journeyman or Veteran with a few or more years under his or her belt.

Whether or not you cap skill mastery in your P-Harn.

Don't forget many have high auras and would open Sjari skill. Probably have a few or more psionic talents if using psionics.

Skill and experience the elves have.
but don't forget they also generally have far better access to weapons and armor.

And even if not for all that their ability scores give them a decisive advantage.
rolling 13 sets of ability scores
136 is the average for a Human
160 is the average for a Sindarin (+24 compared to a human)
the 99th percentile of humans totals 161 - the same as the average Sindarin

When we talked about this earlier I put it on a chart.




A Sidhe with even higher scores, thousands of more years of skills and experience, better weapons and armor, etc I don't think they would even consider a one on one against a human. I've had Khudzul characters talk about wandering down to Kaldor for the human tournement and kicking ass but there is no honor in it. You have no buisness entering such a lopsided battle. For one thing if you win you deserve only scorn for abusing a weak child, if you loose...

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)