If Elves live for centuries can you imagine how beastly their veteran warriors are...

If Elves live for centuries can you imagine how beastly their veteran warriors are? I'm really surprised they are portrayed as le nimble stealth archers when the experience they accumulated could let them steamroll most opposition
>inb4 muh strenght
unless you play some Mary Sue setting where every levy looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger and frontal charge is an amazing tactic that works all the time I fail to see how not being the best powerlifters around handicaps them. Also Elf hate is pathetic in LOTR and Warhammer Fantasy Elves are fucking badass what spawned this''le sissy Elf'' meme?

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>beastly veteran warrior vs. le nimble stealth archer
why not both?
pic related

>Implying after centuries of combats you don't have at least one or more major wounds that impaired you even after you healed
>Implying after centuries of ptsd you aren't a raving shell of yourself

Increased lifespan doesn't really help the rank and file, yeah your generals would be amazing but the average footsoldier would be unlikely to see many more melees than a human and most would wash out to become craftsmen or the elf equivalent of farmers/hunters just like humans did if they could.

Elven advantages would be exactly what they were in Tolkeinesque works, great leaders, great equipment, great organisation, very few actual soldiers and not much in the way of manual laborers to work supply lines.

>what spawned this''le sissy Elf'' meme?
How about them being effeminate cuteboys?

>I fail to see how not being the best powerlifters around handicaps them.

You strongly underestimate the necessity of strength in a military. It's not just a case of how hard you swing, how big a weapon you can carry and how much plate you can strap on, it's also matter of logistics, soldiers carrying their own weaponry many miles.

Not only this, but most of the time Elves are portrayed as slightly frailer than Humans in most more modern settings, further handicapping their ability to carry heavier equipment and resources over long distances, and ensuring that they run out of energy quickly once they start taking hits.

>what are diminishing returns?

>yeah your generals would be amazing
that's why chess players are always at their height in their 60s?

>Also Elf hate is pathetic in LOTR and Warhammer Fantasy Elves are fucking badass what spawned this''le sissy Elf'' meme?
This site. Though it kinda started as a joke, but newfags don't know that.

The problem with that mindset is that even if their males would look like bishie boys that must not mean that they haven't seen hundreds of years of warfare and fought against things your average grizzled veteran hasn't even heard of. It's basically a pretty superficial view on masculinity, in which how you look is more important than what you do.

>that's why chess players are always at their height in their 60s?

The whole idea of elven lifespans is that they DON'T have to deal with the fact that their brains go to shit after a couple decades.

If human brains held together for our entire lifetime you bet your ass the centennial grandmasters would kick the shit out of everyone else.

Yeah I would bet against morons like you because they still lack the drive of untested and unproven youth

Again. Logistics. Less strong warriors means they're more dependent upon supply lines. An army literally marches on its stomach. And don't assume you can make up the difference 'foraging' if you're a goddamned army.

This is why elves tend to be deadly on the defensive, where they have terrain advantages that they've experience and tons of practice to exploit, and short lines of supply.

I never talked about whole armies marching, but about individual combat capabilities.

>If Elves live for centuries can you imagine how beastly their veteran warriors are? I'm really surprised they are portrayed as le nimble stealth archers when the experience they accumulated could let them steamroll most opposition

And how do you know there isn't a ceiling, or at least a soft ceiling, in that martial efficacy? At least in WW2, the biggest difference in unit performance was in the first three months when it came to not doing stupid rookie things. The difference between a veteran of four years and a veteran of one year was fairly minimal.

> Also Elf hate is pathetic in LOTR

Why? One of the lessons of LoTR and the extended legendarium is that for all their power and supposed wisdom, the Elves ALWAYS fail, and need to be bailed out by the men.

You mean those humans that fought in the majority for Melkor and not against him?

Yeah, and yet even a minority of humans (or partial humans) manage to do the things that actually affect Morgoth, instead of just chopping up yet another orc legion.

Meanwhile, the united Noldor accomplish what exactly? Beat up some orcs, head over to Thangorordrim, and then decide it's too hard to get in and sit on their asses for the next 4 centuries?

And what did the humans manage prior to the ring wars?

It comes from the fact that most 'faerie' elves are sylph-like and slender. Tolkien himself said he came to regret naming his Quendi 'elves' because of the connotations and the art this produced.

You can spin it many ways, cultural inertia being a problem for instance - the hundred year old veterans still think that plate-mail is stupid and that these firearms are inferior to bows, because they don't want to admit they need to keep with the latest developments, for instance, is one idea to counter this experience advantage.

A certain sort of strength is most important for being an archer among other things, as no doubt you know, but the conflation with 'fay' elves means that they're doomed to inherit the build of them in a lot of art.

Bigger dicks

Read the Silmarillion, it will cut down on your shitposting.

Lots. The history of the First Age is largely about the Edain and their successes. Beren, Turin, Tuor, and others are renowned even among the elves.

But then, the smarter elves don't see themselves as too far from humans - they are ultimately brothers - and in the first age as in later ages there were human captains in elven armies and human vassals to elven kings, until men were rewarded by the Valar with the island of Numenor.

Let's see, steal a silmaril, kill Glaurung, be the prime cause of the Noldor defeat at Nirneath Arnoediad, hold the retreat of the Gondolindrim from said debacle.

Are you counting Second age stuff as "ring wars"? Because they save the Elves repeatedly during those. If not, I'll have to content myself with the knowledge that you're eliminating roughly 90% of Middle Earth's history to even give the Elves a chance.

experience>drive every time, provided the experienced one takes the other seriously

Probably the same plothole that allows mages to not run whatever world they live in.

>a race of 500-year-old military tacticians that don't win every battle
>mortals that command the elements with their mind and bend time and space, but do odd jobs and slave away in labs

user please, that is the response to all retards that think elves can never do anything.

So, and if the elves never showed up, what then? All these minority humans against all the other humans under Melkors command and everything else? What about the actual civilization the elves build and humans migrated into? What about the times humans fucked up? *cough* Nargothrond *cough*

I'm not denying these few accomplishments of actual just some heroes, but saying they did all is really disgusting HFY-wank.

And I'm excluding the ring wars because the elves were already in decline, leaving and most of the Noldor dead in a war humans could have never fought on their own.

>Probably the same plothole that allows mages to not run whatever world they live in.
MAD, user, do you understand what that is?
When the difference between one mage killing you in your sleep and keeping him at bay is perhaps a few weeks of study into new spell works, you are going to try and rule the world?
Stupid posts like your can only exist if there is only a handful of mages in the entire setting and ALL of them agree to get along, rather than take the whole pie for themselves and have everyone out for their hide.

>So, and if the elves never showed up, what then?

Yeah, the humans would be boned. Same as the way the Elves would be boned if the humans never showed up.

>What about the actual civilization the elves build and humans migrated into?

If you don't want to count Human civilization because the techniques were loaned to them by the Elves, then you'll have to do the same for the Elves, since they learned pretty much everything from the Ainur, they didn't develop it themselves. The Avari are so primitive that the Elves first thought orcs were them that degenerated; and the Silvans were essentially a protectorate of the Sindar.

> What about the times humans fucked up?

What about them? I never said that the Humans were perfect, or even good. But the Elves have a terrible track record against the Shadow, and it's likely because their feär are tightly bound to the fabric of Arda in a way that the human soul isn't, which makes them vulnerable to Morgoth's corruption/influence.

>And I'm excluding the ring wars because the elves were already in decline, leaving and most of the Noldor dead in a war humans could have never fought on their own.

So, 90+% of Middle-Earth's history post the sunrise. They shot their wad awfully quick. Why is it, by the way, that ONLY the Noldor count? They were the minority even within Beleriand, don't forget. Could it be that they were the ones who came over from Valinor, armed with techniques and magic that the Valar taught them?

Then git gud and stop getting hit you fucking shitter.

I honestly can't believe I'm being called HFY for saying the history of the First Age is human-centric. The three great stories of the First Age are based around that, that's selection bias and is the product of the stories that the author wished to tell (and I would say are best) this doesn't make elves inferior, or anything of that nature.

As mentioned, the Quendi are most properly the older brothers of man, and badass about it. There's no grounds for conflict there nor is acknowledging that the main narrative of the Silmarillion after the arrival of the Edain becomes one of the Edain, somehow reducing the importance of the Quendi.

It's mentioned at some points that elves and some humans did advance science, but never really specified what that entails. But that wasn't my point. With civilization I mean building great cities, fortresses, roads and bridges. Civilizations that were so praised everything afterwards looks like a shallow copy. Oh and also some of those hidden realms that some of the human heroes took refuge in.

>But the Elves have a terrible track record against the Shadow
Compared to who? The gods that were the only one that could actually beat a god? The elves created the only mortal that hurt Melkor, while the humans had one guy sneaking in with the help of an elf girl and being a thief. Aw shit, I actually don't want to badmouth Beren, but you get my point. They fought as equal, and judging by the numbers the humans would be more fucked if the elves wreen't there, but the elves would have to deal with less enemies if the humans wouldn't exist.

And I'm excluding everything after the first age because the elves are actively taking less part in the worlds affair, which means it becomes difficult to compare them both. And the discussion started with it.

I'm calling it disgusting HFY-wank because I have to deal with anons thinking the elves were useless pussies that couldn't do anything until the brave humans appeared, waving their big manly dicks into everyones face and single-handedly saved the day. Sorry, this part was directed at you, but I don't think that the first age is human-centric, only in the later parts we get more stories about single heroes, not really much about all humans.

Tolkien's stories are very human-centric in general. The Elves were in a way Tolkien's idea of, for lack of a better term, ideal humans, but their society had flaws. They were for example so infatuated with their idea of beauty that they became terrified of change and would probably have preferred to put Middle-Earth in a glass bowl rather than letting history run its course.

Humans are consistently portrayed as being equal to them as Children of Eru, if not favoured before them as humans are the only beings not bound to Arda.

>Sorry, this part was directed at you
*Sorry, this part wasn't directed at you
Godddamn.

>. With civilization I mean building great cities, fortresses, roads and bridges.

And again, the Elves never did that, unless they were elves that came into contact with Ainur. The Ainur civilized the Elves. The ones that don't have contact with the Ainur live in trees and get beaten up by Orcs.

>Compared to who?

Compared to the Humans, obviously.

> The elves created the only mortal that hurt Melkor,

Which didn't actually change any of his policies or activities.

> but the elves would have to deal with less enemies if the humans wouldn't exist.

The Elves had given up trying to actually win the war against Thangorordrim before they even knew the Humans were around.

>And I'm excluding everything after the first age because the elves are actively taking less part in the worlds affair, which means it becomes difficult to compare them both.

So again, FOR THE OVEWHELMING MAJORITY OF MIDDLE EARTH'S HISTORY, it's the humans running the show. And I would hardly call the second age "taking less part in the worlds affairs", as you had huge elven kingdoms, spanning all of Eregion, most of Greendwood and the Anduin vales. They were trying to throw down with Sauron in the middle of the Second Age, and only got saved by the Numenoreans.


Look, I'm not denying the Elves were badass. They were. But one of the overarching points that Tolkien constantly tries to drive home, and especially does so with the whole Ring arc, is that it's bravery, humility, the knowing of your inadequacies and trying to do the right thing in spite of them, that provides the true victories against Evil. The Elves don't do that. The Elves inevitably try to overwhelm the Shadow with their might and their fury, and it never, ever works. And when that fails, they give up and go across the sea where they don't have to deal with it. When they were locked out in the First Age, they make a mass retreat into hidden citadels and just wait for Morgoth to kill them, one by one.

It's worth noting that the three major stories of the later Silmarillion (Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien and the Fall of Gondolin) were the areas Tolkien considered most fundamental to them, and produced stand-alone versions of a few times, and the parts such as the Quenta Silmarillion were, while important, not intended to be functionally stand alone in the same way. I believe (but can't source) the three great tales also have a heavier word-count than the rest of the book combined.

And again, the Elves never did that, unless they were elves that came into contact with Ainur. > The Ainur civilized the Elves. The ones that don't have contact with the Ainur live in trees and get beaten up by Orcs.

This is a particularly weak argument, humans also learned the art of civilization from either elves (Edain) or Ainur (Morgoth).

> And again, the Elves never did that, unless they were elves that came into contact with Ainur. The Ainur civilized the Elves. The ones that don't have contact with the Ainur live in trees and get beaten up by Orcs.

And humans learned civilization from other either elves or Ainur (Morgoth & Sauron) themselves.

>This is a particularly weak argument, humans also learned the art of civilization from either elves (Edain) or Ainur (Morgoth).

I didn't raise the original argument. Post stated, and I quote

>What about the actual civilization the elves build and humans migrated into?

I merely raised the lack of originality as a counter-point to that. If you want to credit the Elves for humans being able to live in a civilization, then you have to ultimately credit the Valar because they're the ones who gave said civilization when the Elves moved into their home. I don't mean to imply that humans invented civilization in Arda. Rather, I was aiming at the notion that pretty much all that the Elves have or are they owe to their contact with the Ainur, and you can see that the elves that don't have said contact do very badly. This in turn implies that Elven accomplishments aren't innate to their elvenness, but rather due to their contact with a more advanced people, which they in turn pass on to the humans.

>And again, the Elves never did that
They build it with their own hands. That is my point. I don't care about the rest. They build that shit.

>Compared to the Humans, obviously
And they don't do much better than the elves that were the first actually fighting against Melkor, under the worst conditions, driving his forces back and make him cower in Thangorodrim. No user, manly, heroic human heroes weren't there, they did that shit by themselves. They fought the wars and they did the best they could. At the end it was the Valar that ended it and I don't see humans making such a difference in this war alone.

>The Elves had given up trying to actually win the war against Thangorordrim before they even knew the Humans were around
They had only "given up" because for Tolkien some fortresses are unsiegeable. Like Norgothrond, that could only get taken because a huge retard called Túrin did a retarded thing. The mistake was getting too comfortable in the civilization they build, enjoying normal lives. The arriving humans didn't really change that. They were still at war with him.

>So again, FOR THE OVEWHELMING MAJORITY OF MIDDLE EARTH'S HISTORY, it's the humans running the show
I'm not denying that. But we are discussing the first age here.

>And when that fails, they give up and go across the sea where they don't have to deal with it
Wait, am I missing something here? Did it escape me that the elves were already leaving in great numbers BEFORE the Valar finally came in chained up Melkor again? Because I think they fucking stayed until that ended. And afterwards they had every right to leave, this wasn't their place. They could all have just fucked up immedtialey, no help in the ring wars, no guidance for humans.

>they make a mass retreat into hidden citadels and just wait for Morgoth to kill them
Everyone was hiding. There were no humans prancing in the open and facing orc armies one-on-one. Everyone was in skirmish mode. It was the end times.

>implying elven youth has drive
This is why they are ahead of everyone in tech progress and population, right? Oh wait...

High living standard or burgeoning population. Past a certain point you get to choose one of those.

>I'm not denying that. But we are discussing the first age here.

No, YOU are discussing the first age here, because for some damn reason, you think it's the whole of Middle-Earth's history, and not a single piece of it. I am discussing the roles of Elves vis a vis men for the entirety of the Legendarium.

>Wait, am I missing something here?

Yes.

>Did it escape me that the elves were already leaving in great numbers BEFORE the Valar finally came in chained up Melkor again?

No, they weren't. They were literally forbidden from doing so. None of their emissaries from Falas made it back until Earindil.

>Because I think they fucking stayed until that ended.

They wanted to leave. They weren't allowed to.

>And afterwards they had every right to leave, this wasn't their place.

Say what? I mean hell, the overwhelming majority of the Elven population had never been to Valinor and weren't descended from Elves who did.

>Everyone was hiding. There were no humans prancing in the open and facing orc armies one-on-one. Everyone was in skirmish mode. It was the end times.

Except that the construction of Nargothrond, Gondolin, and Menegroth all pre-date their defeats at the Battle of Sudden Flame. The Elves were in hiding mode when they had Morgoth more or less bottled up.

> decades of drilling and practice make elves the best duelists in the world
> after 50 years, all drills and sparring are done with live weapons at full speed
> so thorough and disciplined is their training, any wound that scars during practice is given a name and is a mark of shame; the wounded shamed for failing his defense, the attacker for not having enough control or foresight to stop the blow from cutting
> honor duels between elves, each seeing dozens of steps ahead, to outsiders appear to be more of a ritual than a combat, most often ending with a single clash of swords and a concession of defeat before blood is drawn.
> legend has it that two masters once dueled. they held position for six days, motionless and silent. on the seventh day, a cloud of butterflies passed between them. both swords shifted imperceptibly to all but the masters. they sheathed their swords and parted ways. Only they know who won.

Put the second part first, this post is also meant to respond to you.>They build it with their own hands. That is my point. I don't care about the rest. They build that shit.

The humans also built their own communities, aside from a few men who "intern" in Elven courts, they lived seperately.

>And they don't do much better than the elves that were the first actually fighting against Melkor, under the worst conditions, driving his forces back and make him cower in Thangorodrim. No user, manly, heroic human heroes weren't there, they did that shit by themselves. They fought the wars and they did the best they could. At the end it was the Valar that ended it and I don't see humans making such a difference in this war alone.

Which is never what I said, but enjoy pounding that strawman. My point is that the Elves never once score a victory that changes Morgoth's policy from pure elven hands. At best, they support mixed breeds and humans who do so, and they do provide necessary infrastructure. But they were in way over their heads, and had no way to deal with it.

>They had only "given up" because for Tolkien some fortresses are unsiegeable

So yes, the elves are inevitably doomed, because they can't come up with a way to actually strike at their enemy.

>Like Norgothrond, that could only get taken because a huge retard called Túrin did a retarded thing.

Except the Children of Hurin notes that sooner or later, Morgoth's creeping scouts would have found them. Turin sped it up, sure, but you can't stay invisible forever.

Goddamn it, I seem to have forgotten how to format.

Both are in response to

I'm already getting really tired of and there are several points at which I would only shout: "No, you are dumb!" So I concentrate on some points that might contribute something meaning make me look better in this.
>My point is that the Elves never once score a victory that changes Morgoth's policy from pure elven hands
Aside from human actions? I don't see them changing the course of the wars, at least the elves won Dagor-nuin-Giliath without them, making Melkor retreat so he wouldn't roam Middle-Earth freely and collect all the humans.

>So yes, the elves are inevitably doomed, because they can't come up with a way to actually strike at their enemy.
And the huamns changed that? It's almost like the Valar ending the whole deal in the War of Wrath was the end result and the humans arriving and bolstering the ranks of the elves didn't change much at all. This is not the story of great human heroes saving all the days and getting all the elf pussy as a reward, this is some doomed struggle against impossible odds and humans are part of it.

>At best, they support mixed breeds
Wat. They were so rare, i don't know what you mean.

>Except the Children of Hurin notes that sooner or later, Morgoth's creeping scouts would have found them
As far as I remember it was Túrins idea to build a bridge which made Nargothrond siegeable.


This is my last post in this discussion. Do with it what you want. Fëanor did nothing wrong.

The whole strength thing baffles me. Aren't tolkien elves basically supposed to be superior in both physical and mental strength and dexterity to humans? I always figured elves, one for one, are presented as simply BETTER than humans, but humans outnumber them to a terrifying degree and have more heart or whatever because they're not immortal. I mean, if elves are usually taller than humans yet share the same rough skeletal and muscular structure they're going to be MUCH stronger by virtue of vastly increased muscle amount. Yeah, yeah, square-cubed law, but that works both ways.

It's worth noting that in the History of Middle Earth series it's said that humans in-setting believe that Morgoth corrupted their physical bodies to not be as good as elves.

Given the Numenorians are of greater stature and vigor than other men - and certainly on the same general tier as elves - after learning from the elves, it's likely that some of it's nutritional and medical too.

>Aside from human actions?
>And the huamns changed that?
>And the huamns changed that?

tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Eärendil

>As far as I remember it was Túrins idea to build a bridge which made Nargothrond siegeable.

Because he wanted to fight against Morgoth openly. It made Nargothrond visible, and thus vulnerable. There was no siege, there was Glaurung leading a huge host of orcs which overrun the place in about a day. When/if Morgoth finds the place through just scouting, or capturing the right elf, or however Valar powers work, it won't be the lack of a bridge that prevents him from taking the place over.

And as a total side point, the Elves didn't build Nargothrond, the Petty dwarves delved those caves first.

>Aren't tolkien elves basically supposed to be superior in both physical and mental strength and dexterity to humans?

Dexterity, yes. In pure lifitng physical strength though? While we never get an objective race to race comparison, the few comparisons between individuals we do get always pit the humans stronger than the elves they're with, although I should note that these are exceptional members of both groups.

Where Elves really outstrip humans (physically) is stamina. If you wanted to DnD Tolkien Elves, they'd have like a +4 con.

>I always figured elves, one for one, are presented as simply BETTER than humans, but humans outnumber them to a terrifying degree and have more heart or whatever because they're not immortal.

Extremely unlikely. Elves have a "tighter" connection between soul and body, and are thus more "magical", and they've benefitted from the teaching of the Valar, but you see Elves on their own don't do so great. In the Silmarillion, the difference between the Sindar and Noldor on one hand, and the Silvans who try to fight off the orcs without them is MASSIVE, and is mostly due to "technology" for lack of a better word, as the latter lack armor or weapons much better than hunting bows.

>I mean, if elves are usually taller than humans yet share the same rough skeletal and muscular structure they're going to be MUCH stronger by virtue of vastly increased muscle amount. Yeah, yeah, square-cubed law, but that works both ways.

Elves are usually taller, but humans are almost always wider in the shoulders and waist and heavier.

Not meming, but it depends on the setting. I.e, it depends on how you have them age.

Do they age at a much slower rate? Like stay at human equivilent of 14 for like, 9 years? Or do you have them reach a point and then the metabolism just slow to a crawl?

I would think that its like a tree with elves: hundreds of years to grow strong, 30 seconds to cut down.Guess its like the old saying: You have old fighters and bold fighters. You have no old, bold fighters.

How can Elves be weak if they are fond of bows which are strenght based weapons?

In how many settings are elves really "weak" in that sense that they can't draw a warbow? Mostly they have the same strength as humans, but lack CON.

This is exactly right. Look at nearly any trade, art, or academic pursuit. Yes old people tend to have more experience than the young, but there's a point of diminishing returns on study and experience. With humans, you hit that point and then a decade or two later go into decline and die. With elves, you hit that point, practice regularly to stay at that point, and meanwhile increase the breadth of your knowledge and skillset.

But it's not as dire as you think. Consider the colossal losses that most premodern human armies took from disease. It was common to lose far more men to disease rather than combat. Elves in most settings are resistant to disease, so their armies tend to operate at nearly their full notional strength. I think your interpretation of why logistics leads them to not leave their own territory holds lots of water.

Plus, remember, they've got America-tier phobia of taking casualties. With a human civilization, you can harden your heart and remember that most of these guys will be dead in a decade or two regardless of what you do. A human has to give his life to something, or nothing, but he won't have his life for long.

An Elf has the option of living forever (or, in many settings, for a very, very long time). So he's much less likely to risk his life if he can avoid it, either by avoiding combat or using what we'd call "dishonorable" tactics. A human sees that as cowardice or treachery or sneakiness. But an elf would see a lot of what we call human courage as nihilism and being resigned to the inevitable. If you'll be dead soon no matter what you do, then how much courage does it really take to charge into battle? Especially since a death from old age is such a humiliating and disgusting way to go.

Additional to this post; it's interesting that Aragorn is stronger and longer lived than most of his kin even in the royal line, after being raised in Elrond's house.

Yeah, Tolkien would most likely explain it as being the mastery of the Elven Fëa (Spirit) over the Hröa (body) and that Numenorians being raised in elven-lore would give them greater resilience by the spirit's control over the body also. This is if I recall rightly, his explanation for why elves never get sick.

Their veteran warriors are dead, because luck is the single most important factor in surviving a battle, and elves have a lot of chances to roll 1's

I think people are thinking too disproportionately.

Lets say elves live to be 200 and we assume that their aging is relative to humans (for example a 40 year old would be equivalent to a 20 year old)

That means that the elves have had effectively twice as long to learn and practice while their body is still in peak shape.

...

>Elves in most settings are resistant to disease
In DnD and its derivatives elves have -2 constitution, making them more susceptible to disease and injury. I always thought it was funny how the longest living race was the least hardy.

-2 Con

Up until recently in my setting, the best swordfighter in the world was a 700-year-old wood elf assassin.
His secret was that he was actually extremely passive due to having been filled with ennui over the course of his life and not knowing his parents-who sold him into slavery and then secretly gave him the money so that he wouldn't starve to death like they did. He ended up being freed by an assassin who adopted him and taught him the tricks of the trade.
Over generations and generations of his old teacher's family, he taught each generation about the art of assassination because he really had nothing else to do and no ambition in his life to do otherwise. As a result, a sort of mythos started to surround him and the assassins he trained became basically experts, eventually turning the city he lived in into a mob-run hellhole.
Then a paladin showed up, nearly killed him, and he fell 200 feet nearly to his death before being restored over the course of years because the damage was that bad, they couldn't find a cleric that was willing to do the job, and he was too weak to cast spells on himself.
Eventually his attempt to restore his 'assassin's guild' failed as well and he and his old teacher's descendant went into exile.
He was finally killed for good by an exarch of a god of war, and was a 20th-level ranger waiting to die when he finally went.

The Noldor elves are on average like 7 feet.
Fingolfin could leap like 10+ meters from standing still. (speculation on his fight with Morgoth.)
A Legolas from the first age could distinguish a stuff that's several miles away.

Basically, if you wanna know what elves were, look at the Wild Hunt in the witcher 3 game. That's pretty much how tall and strong elves should be.

Elves in my setting are very low in number but nigh on all of them are nightmares to fight.

They consider a punitive invasion force to be anywhere from 3-6 individuals. The largest elven army ever fielded was 13 elves, and it sacked three cities on a seven month campaign of slaughter across the continent.

Jesus Christ implement a max level?

Epic fantasy man

It was some whacky shit. The party ended up stopping that army by dropping a moonlet on them, which inflicted enough casualties that the remaining eight decided to return home.

I'm guessing you've never served in the military before otherwise you'd know about diminishing training returns.

But since that's probably not what this thread is about, I'll make it an open option; I can leave and take my information with me because this thread isn't ACTUALLY about wanting information and instead discussing this topic in a vaguer context, or I can stay and go on a lengthy explanation leading to a boringly mundane truth that most people probably don't want to hear.

Come on, let's hear it.

Because people like to wank off to Tolkien but always forget his elves aren't just le sneaky archers and have a world's worth of lore to explore with them.

Basically Tolkien and, in turn, D&D.

Okay, so this is going to be lengthy, for which I apologize beforehand. My experience comes from my time in the service.

Combat training and combat experience is NOT about getting things right, and the more you get you do no reach new levels and tiers of skill and ability. That's a pleasant mechanical abstraction for D&D and other games, which I am okay with BTW as it is meant to be heroic fantasy.
Instead they are about NOT doing things WRONG. When you have excellent training and hours of combat experience you are not "doing things best or better", but you are "doing things correctly", as in not making mistakes that an untrained or unknowledgable person would make. Long hours of combat training and drills are a way to beat muscle memory into the subject and to impart as many potential skills into them that can be done in a correct fashion, but is equally about unit cohesion, which is actually as much or more important.
The constant training afterword isn't about getting better so much as it is about maintaining those skills, much like how a professional athlete must maintain his muscles and skills; the training can't make you do it "more correct" because there's either "doing it right" or "doing it wrong". Any other differences come from physical ability changes based on physique, age, and vision.

The downside to this is that most professional soldiers do what they are trained to do right almost 100% of the time (frequently they're told to do stuff they AREN'T trained for, which I'll get to), but despite this they can still fail and still die because it just means they are 100% in control of the aspect of the engagement that relates ONLY to themselves, which is actually one very small part of combat.

Confined next post

On the subject of elves and their long lifespans and how they relate to combat training and experience;

Elves in most D&D-themed media have physical capabilities at or around humans, though slightly more nimble then us and with better hand-eye coordination. Mind you, not ALWAYS better because humans can have equal or greater stats fairly easily. In addition D&D-style elves are less physically heavy (not a good thing in melee combat) and frequently have less endurance (an AWFUL trait to have in ANY combat).
Most importantly they have the human physical range of motion; same limbs, same joints, same eyes, same eye position, slightly less heavily build. This build combined with basic physics limits how effective any type of attack would be to more or less the exact same maneuvers and techniques we use; the only things that would alter which of THOSE are effective are either tremendous physical build (hundreds and hundreds of pounds more made put into attacks), tremendous physical strength (we're talking enough to carve chunks out of granite by punching it here) or tremendous speed (like a bullet or close to it).

The greatest advantage elves have over humane would be accuracy with ranged weapons (usually already portrayed) and their lifespan meaning they ALWAYS have time to train citizens into competent soldiers. I mean think of it; you could ask an elf to spend 20 years training so he's an equal to any regular human and then he can go off and do a more economically productive trade for the rest of a millennia and it would be easy because 20 years is like 2 years for them.

Continued

Continued
Now, you could say that elves because they live so much longer then humans that their skills reach magical levels of competence. This was how Tolkien did it; his elves didn't use magic, but they just got SO GOOD at crafting or swordfighting or whatnot that it appeared from normal eyes to basically be sorcery.

However, I could also say "once you reach 150 years of age with permanent physical youth you gain the ability to sprout venomous barbs that fly out of your dick and explode into multicolored fireworks that always spell out the words 'ficas tree' no matter what", and that is equally an accurate statement, mostly because we have literally no real-world frame of reference for a century-old humanoid person who remains in their physical prime forever and thus literally ANYTHING you say could be equally accurate as you are in fact just completely making stuff up based on your personal tastes or needs of the plot.

Once you go outside the bounds of human logic and knowledge it becomes by definition "fantasy" and thus anything and everything is equally possible.
So should elves get more and more powerful as they age? Sure, if the setting and plot requires it. Should humans be able to beat them anyway, without any real explanation? Sure, if the setting and plot requires it.

That would be why it's "fantasy" in the first place, so the boring but undeniable truths of real world logic don't necessarily need to apply all the time and an elf or human or gnome CAN reach greater and greater plateaus of skill and ability that make them no longer subject to such boring truths, as is often in the case of D&D.

Okay. Done now.
Apologies for the length of it.

The nimble stealth archers are the only ones who live that long. You can be the best swordsman in the world but it still only takes one lucky shot to cripple you.

> I mean think of it; you could ask an elf to spend 20 years training so he's an equal to any regular human and then he can go off and do a more economically productive trade for the rest of a millennia and it would be easy because 20 years is like 2 years for them
This makes sense and reminds me of the Eldar. Couldn't this also mean that your average elf could field huge armies compared to their total population? Basically it could be mandatory that an elf has to train some kind of fighting for several years and afterwards do a normal job of society and on a regular basis just train enough to take up arms whenever there is a need. This could be an advantage over your standard human army with their warrior class and professional soldiers that do that for a living and have to be supported by the rest of society, with all the problems that could bring.

Anyway, thanks for the dump, not even the one asking you to write all that down. Made me thinking.

>Couldn't this also mean that your average elf could field huge armies compared to their total population?

Not him, but probably. While you don't get direct statements to the effect, Tolkien seems to imply that at least in his world, "elven armies" of a given area are "every adult male elf"

Add to that that in some settings there is no huge sexual dimorphism among elves but let's forget that it's still stupid to let women fight and you get a surprisingly large number of combatants.

>Couldn't this also mean that your average elf could field huge armies compared to their total population?

This is accurate, though this would require the DESIRE to do that, which is variable depending on setting.
In standard D&D (such as Faerun) I'd say wood elves on average have more fighting-capable individuals because they've got a more siege-mentality because they are ALWAYS under threat from hostile forces, and thus every single physical adult would have at least SOME combat training, but high elf types that live in secluded elven islands or valleys would have more civilians due to a more peaceful life but perhaps conversely better equipped and more dedicated soldiers.

Another downside to this is something that as far as I can tell is nearly universally consistent among elves in fantasy; their low birthrates means ANY losses in the field could be devastating to elves, since low birthrates are a consistent thing meaning that to even begin to field the numbers a human army can you need to field more of your younger and older people, and numbers ARE the determining factor in most direct engagements of any kind.

A D&D-esque late medieval large human kingdom that looses three units is hurt really bad due to the loss of skilled manpower and training and equipment that represents.
An elven army that looses the same is actually probably closer to loosing three GENERATIONS of people, heavily depopulating itself and loosing much of it's worker base.

True, but remember, the overall elven populations do seem to be pretty low (long generational gaps, perhaps) There were probably less than 100,000 Noldor in all of Beleriand during the first age, quite possibly far less.

Eldar aren't D&D elves though.

The Eldar are legit superhuman beings, that move so fast that they seem like a blur of color to human eyes, think faster than humans, possess enough physical strength to shit like jump over 2 times their height, and other ridiculous acrobatics, are just as skilled in combat, both ranged and melee, as fucking Space Marines are (Bs and Ws of 4) and atop of that, are all innate psykers.

Eldar are hardcore mofos.

>40k stronk, udder franchize wiek
You know my 22 year old younger brother who has no interest in 40k and is never planning to play it could repeat what you guys say in any thread you show up in? Any thread at all?

That's how repetitive if a fandom you guys are. Seriously. I used to play 40k and all I can say is that if the ONLY things you can say about a setting are the same fucking things everyone says on every other thread on this board every fucking day, then maybe instead shut up because there's literally nothing you could do that all of us, and I DO mean EVERYONE on this board, haven't already heard at least three times.

That's why a lot of the time we don't bring up 40k in conversations like this; everyone already fucking knows what there is to say because your fandom, which I am increasingly ashamed to have EVER been a part of, repeats it to everyone weather they want to hear it or not.

I meant that when it comes to the society. Every Eldar can fight as guardian, but most Eldar will at some point be an aspect warrior, at least once. The general, civilian Eldar is actually more warlike than the general civilian of most other races. Except orkz, if you want to call them civilian.

>In standard D&D (such as Faerun)
All elves start with longswords and longbows, martial weapons. This always struck me as a contradiction that elves are supposed to be peaceful tree-hippies when they are by default proficient with weapons of war.

Eldar were mentioned in the post I replied to you nignog. I didn't even say other franchises are weak. I just said that Eldar aren't really D&D elves, which are more or less comparable to humans on equal terms in regards their physical capabilities, because the Eldar are in fact, superhuman beings that are flat out superior to baseline humans in most regards.
No need to get all butthurt about 40k.

True, the Eldar societies are sorta under siege, and they live with a very survivalist mentality, as every eldar is expected to be able to fight in the defense of their Craftworld.

>All elves start with longswords and longbows, martial weapons. This always struck me as a contradiction that elves are supposed to be peaceful tree-hippies when they are by default proficient with weapons of war.

This of course is because all elves serve time in a local militia of course, due to low population and need for defense.
Interestingly in Faerun wood elves while they GOT proficiency in longsword as a racial trait actually didn't have a lot of swords available to them, instead using spears and bows.
It turns out being forest-dwellers with low populations and not wanting to despoil nature is shit for having access to stuff like iron which by nature involves tearing up a shitload of land and digging messy holes in it.
Swords wood elves DO have they either inherited, traded for, or traded for the steel to make them in the first place.

Contrary to what you may have read, wars aren't won one on one. In fact, being a superlative warrior usually gets archers sicced on you.

Too bad I wasn't talking about wars either.

Because it's fucking hard to balance immortality and 100s of years of experience in game terms. Working the slender, forest dweller angle if so much easier.


Personally when I run D&D elves I give them a kind of memory loss. They are immortal but they only have enough space in their heads for 100 years of memory or so, anything beyond that is murky and dream like. This explains how an elf adventurer can be level 1 despite having 300 or more years under his belt.

Why don't you just forbid playing elves that are much older than your average human character? Your player might bitch, but I find that this is the most reasonable solution to the problem of the 100 years old level 1 character. They just don't exist.

>I'm really surprised they are portrayed as le nimble stealth archers when the experience they accumulated could let them steamroll most opposition
They live at kinda different pace, usually. Also, long life doesn't mean long time spent on training and self-mastery. Plus, average elf already is considered somewhat superhuman in most settings so we're kinda there.

Lastly, fight long enough and it may start fucking with your head.

Imagine the awe-inspiring yet terrifying prowess of a centuries-experienced elven general that STILL manages to keep his face moisturized and his hair on fleek in the field.

>Plus, average elf already is considered somewhat superhuman in most settings so we're kinda there.

This is actually fairly rare once you actually start reading shit and not memeing on Veeky Forums for info.
Depressingly most settings just copy D&D, which means elves are more graceful then humans but physically slightly less durable, and that's about it.

Even Tolkien's elves weren't superhuman and didn't even have magic, though the Noldor when they practiced a skill long enough got so good at it that it SEEMED like magic. Not so much the Sindar and Avari though.

>Depressingly most settings just copy D&D

To clarify, D&D isn't inherently bad (it's hardly anything inherently at all what with how it's set up), but I take issue in creatively copying it over and over for video games and stories because it sort of stifles their own creativity and inventiveness by taking shortcuts.

>Even Tolkien's elves weren't superhuman and didn't even have magic,

Not him, and in fact the guy upthread arguing for elven worthlessness in Arda, but that's in no way true.

Elves are, off the top of my head

>Immortal
>Immune to disease
>Don't need to sleep
>Can project their spirits to physically affect the world in minor ways
>Have enormously better vision and hearing than people
>Can push their skills well into the supernal when crafting, making things like swords that glow in the dark
>Can heal people with a touch


You can argue that the line between the mundane and the magic is blurry in Tolkien, but to say that elves aren't actually supernatural is ridiculous.

Don't forget they were psychic. They could beam thoughts into people's heads to overcome any language barriers

Some of the humans can do that too (Denethor most notably), so you could argue it's some kind of extreme mundane skill.

>Even Tolkien's elves weren't superhuman
Nigga the light of the two trees made them demigods. Fingolfin literally started glowing when he got mad. Feanor burst into flames upon death because his spirit was just so goddamn juiced up

>Fingolfin literally started glowing when he got mad
Wait a minute, we had a thread with large amounts of posts about Tolkien, but one thing is missing...
LOOOOOOORD OF ALL NOLDOR

Finrod had a sing off against Sauron. Pretty sure that was magic

Lotr was gay as well as boring.

well, it was pretty gay I admit

STAR IN THE SKY AND A BEARER OF HOPE

>e mundane and the magic is blurry in Tolkien
That's what I meant.
Elves had supernatural powers, but it wasn't "magic" to them at all and guys like Denethor could replicate some of the shit they did to a lesser degree.
Instead it was all basically some kind of mundane skill that got pushed to a blatantly impossible level; that's why the elves had no idea what the hobbits were talking about when they asked if the cloaks were magic. To the hobbits their capabilities seemed clearly supernatural with how well it let them hide, and yet the elves didn't cast "spells" on them or anything like that.

They just made them really, REALLY well.

In Tolkien's universe a person's "spirit" could be powerful enough to overcome physical limitations, but really all it did was made you better at being YOU, though Tolkien himself had a curious idea of what that actually meant.
Hurin for example was such an incredible warrior that arguably he was one of the best in the history of the setting, someone so feared that even Morgoth refused to meet him in battle though he'd killed a great elf-lord before, and he was just a human.

It's more that by the time of the novels much of the "awesomeness" had gone out of the world, and the Men and Eldar Folk left in Midde-earth had lost much of their incredible potency and amazing abilities, and by the end of the Third Age it wasn't just faded but completely gone entirely.

Morgoth was diminished repeatedly, by investing bits of himself into so many creations and in battle with the aforementioned elf lord. It's quite possible he really was just too beaten and fucked up by then to deal with even a human

Even if true Hurin is still among the most stupidly competent warriors in the Silmarillion, what with Morgoth's strategy for beating him literally being "throw as many warm bodies as I possibly can at him until he's killed so many that it's no longer possible for him to actually move anymore".

It's like the ridiculous thing where you blow a hole in a castle wall and keep sending guys up into the breach to die until it makes a bridge with which you can easily get inside, only instead of a castle it's one fucking guy.

>shouted "the day shall come again!" for every troll he slew. the cry was heard 70 times
>was only captured because he was weighed down by all of the still clinging limbs he chopped off
Hurin was Grade A humanity