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Old April 11, 2008, 10:43 PM   #4 (permalink)
Lyssoryl
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As a biologist (well, molecular biologist, but still), I thought I'd chime in with a probably pointless and unnecessary comment about the racial age chart.

I'm not sure that it makes sense for long-lived races to spend a lot of time in childhood. From one angle, it would be a tremendous evolutionary disadvantage for a race like dwarves to spend 79 years being small and relatively helpless.

From another angle, while it certainly would be possible for a Dwarf or Elf to stay in childhood longer, there isn't any biological need for a long lived race to spend more time in each stage of life. Given that Dwarves and Elves can heal from a cut at the same rate as humans, we can assume their actual tissues can grow at similar speeds.

From another angle, long periods of childhood mean that either there are races running around with fully developed adult brains but little immature bodies, or else young dwarves, elves, and halflings are just terrible learners, needing 4 or 5 years to learn what human kids learn in one year. Imagine raising a young dwarf for 50 years and him still making fart jokes and fighting with his brother for the window seat in the carriage. That just doesn't seem intuitive to me.

Of course, it only matters if someone wants to play a child, otherwise it's easily glossed over.
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