Elves are long lived, more intelligent/wise than humans...

They're not Veeky Forums

>muh agility
>muh bows

Yeah? Well suck MUH dick you knife eared pansies

>more intelligent/wise than humans, generally have better organized governments

+2 dex -2 con
Wheres the more wise or intelligent part?

Bows, at least war-bows, require real strength dude.

>Longbows were very difficult to master because the force required to deliver an arrow through the improving armour of medieval Europe was very high by modern standards. Although the draw weight of a typical English longbow is disputed, it was at least 360 newtons (81 pounds-force) and possibly more than 600 N (130 lbf), with some estimates as high as 900 N (200 lbf).

>Considerable practice was required to produce the swift and effective combat shooting required. Skeletons of longbow archers are recognisably adapted, with enlarged left arms and often osteophytes on left wrists, left shoulders and right fingers.[24]

Slow breeding, for one.

The more complex reasons are social, but one of them is that elves live a long time, and aren't very robust. As such, they can't really afford to take risks, and everything about their society revolves around individual safety.

>They're not Veeky Forums
Neither were Roman manlets compared to natty Gauls, but look how that turned out.

If Elves regularly use warbows and have their populace train in their use, then it's likely that when they have a bow equipped they also have +1-3 STR or some such thing.

>Elves are long lived, more intelligent/wise than humans, generally have better organized governments (as evidenced by how long they survive) and are often considered master craftsmen second only to the dwarves
In the only setting you know, perhaps. Also you may have forgotten they reproduce at a horribly slow pace.

Anyway, in my setting:
>They are long lived but also physically frail
>They're not smarter or wiser than human, except from the wisdom that comes from their long life
>They all share a pretty shitty social organization, consisting of small settlements ruled by a court. Every court rules over few hundreds, or rarely thousands, of subjects, and they tend to be dozens if not hundreds of miles from each other.
>They are very patient in every craft and take their sweet ass-long time to do anything, thus everything they do is very pretty and OCD-level perfect, but that's not enough to give them substantial advantages when it comes to weapons or armor.
>They are perfectionists,but also stupidly traditionalist and won't innovate their techniques or technologies. They make the best bows, but won't even consider crossbows. They make the finest sabres, but they didn't get the memo that those aren't good anymore now that full plate is a thing
>They are more inclined to magic than humans. In this setting, this is hardly a straightforwardly good thing.

youtu.be/rvJsG4F2Img

The standard answer is they aren't well orginized. They are a mass of powerful indeviduals that do what they enjoy doing. It is hard to get a near imortal to march to war unless there is an actual threat to their life. Getting a human to risk a potential 40-80 years of further life is already a pain. Possibly 1000? More? They are not conquering shit.

Add to that there birth rate is tiny. Even assuming the gestation period dosen't scale for their longer lives, the necessary time investment for the parent is huge. Over a century of child rearing, foisted on a race known for not really doing what they don't enjoy.

So basically, birth rate and self-preservation. Humans don't run them over because they are scary on the defensive, but they won't conquer any human lands.

Simple, it's a human-only setting :'^)

But besides that, you could do things like the following for "raw numbers'
>Elvish Flu
>Some other natural disaster (The elven homelands got krakatoa'd/yellowstoned)
>Fertility is extremely low, one babby a century is considered extremely fertile
>Male:female ratio in births is heavily skewed towards male, meaning "new breeders" are rare

If you want them to be common enough but not dominant in a political sense
>Naturally withdrawn
>Non-interference policy from religious standpoint
>No interest in what isn't their homeland/sacred sites
>The empire collapsed relatively recently and the remains are now ruled over by others/infighting

Romans were fucking fit manlets.

Because they're all trapped in the moon.

>warbows
But they use regular hunting bows not warbows.

Aren't Elves known for their archery? Why would they limit themselves to hunting bows?

Why do people go out of their way to throw out nonsense like "muh 1 birth a millenium" or a total inability/refusal to make use of their intelligence and years of experience, in any context? Why bother? Why is it so important to have humans as the "dominant species"?

Elves AREN'T special/creative/versatile/[insert other buzzwords here], and end up becoming confined in their own little elf cities due to their utter lack of ambition.

Anyone who asks "why aren't elves the dominant race" needs to be hit with the Silmarillion.

Look at the modern world for a reflection. As countries modernize, their birth rates go down. On the surface, modernization should make child-bearing and child-raising easier, but a life of comfort steers people down other paths.

There's a lot of fantasy rationales that usually mix and match the following:

-slow reproduction
-magical apocalypse destroyed ancient empire
-invaders from across sea/space/some other place destroyed their empire
-civil war destroyed their empire
-alien mentality renders them unable to cooperate as effectively
-they actually aren't more wise than humans, just rumoured to be
-they are dominant, just not where humans are
-have no ambition to dominate

>As countries modernize

These fantasy stories are all typically set in some anachronistic variant of the middle ages. Hardly "modernized." Why would Elves that shit in forests and don't have anything that could be confused for agriculture or metallurgy described as "modernized"? Moreover, why is this never true for humans in these settings either? It's always a point that they're the so-called "dominant race" because they breed like rabbits.

Curse that destroyed Fae looms within them, and it's hard to progress and conquer if you have a magic landmine in your soul

> Explain why they're not the dominant race in your setting.
Because they don't exist in my setting.
Only humans do.

thats why they take so long to learn magic

>Because they don't exist in my setting.
So why reply?

They succumbed to decadency and despite all their numerous positive attributes they still have a fatal flaw which is their downfall, either slowly or cataclysmically. For example they started to war among each other for some difference which in the end cause their own demise.

Like imagine something like a smaller scale nuclear war only with magic that fucked most of their own civilization. Why didn't they know better? Because despite being smart their arrogance is greater than their judgment.

Yet Ireland's fertility rate is the highest in all of Europe, the only fertility rate in Europe above replacement level and highly comparable to that of a shithole like Tunisia despite having the 6th highest HDI in the world (same as Germany with the lowest fertility rate on the planet -even lower than Japan as of recently) and ranking 12th on the "where to be born" index. It's also a country so Catholic that it's on about the same level today as France in the 1920s. As a result, the Irish really like to "go forth and multiply" (though Rome holds progressively less sway over Ireland).

Values matter more than wealth in that regard. Though it could be argued that elves have a shit-tier fatalistic culture for some reason.

>Elves have longer natural lives, they can die just as easy
>Not necessarily more intelligent, but have a greater understanding of magic. They live amongst magical phenomena.
>Implying elven communes aren't small enclaves of anarchists living in remote and beautiful reaches of the world, coming together a few times a year to the Elfmoot.
>Master craftsmen yet nothing is mass produced. Each set of armor or weapon is tailored specifically for a wielder. This is why elven goods are so valuable, the uniqueness of each piece. It's also implied the magic of elves is imbued in all they create. It's not always true.

They're not the dominant race in my setting because of these things. Elves have their small communes which are magically constructed and beautiful. They don't have the man power or inclination to build huge cities. The one huge city they have was gifted to them by the dwarves, and it's a more metropolitan place run by elves than an "elfhome"

I'm giving an example of why elves who are supposedly smarter and more advanced than humans would reproduce less.

Also, elves live longer. There's less survival pressure on them. Factors that reduce the pressure to survive also reduce the pressure to reproduce.

How else would you know about that setting?

this

>It's also a country so Catholic that it's on about the same level today as France in the 1920s.
There you go.

Have you ever read of an elven religion that has similar reproductive values? It's always about magic and art. Intellectuals and artists aren't generally dedicated to everyday survival.

They found their niche and decided they were fine where they were, so as a result became very complacent and stagnated for millennia. It's the younger races that are finally causing them to change to survive now that some of them are finding old doomsday weapons and threatening each other with them.

That's not how elves are in my setting at all.

>elves in setting are a non-playable, occupy something more like fey
>live out in the woods covered in their own shit and someone else's blood holding sharp rocks and pointy sticks
>don't have ordered society like humans do, instead build massive magical symbologies in order to display political leanings to other elves
>humans do not have this, so humans simply appear incorrect to elves
>elves killing one another means nothing, the body rots and they simply walk out of the forest again. Two elves stabbing each other with point sticks amount to a political debate
>a human could attempt to interpret what they were talking about based on the state of the remains
>elves need not eat/sleep/drink, their only commodity is opinions, sometimes they will come together to commit acts of war if any with similar political leanings deem it necessary
>elves physically are wisp thin, pale, and almost entirely hairless. Their bones and veins are clearly visible against the skin, they look constantly unhealthy and are prone to dropping dead on their own (not that dying particularly matters to them). One particular feature is their lack of faces, they simply have smooth skin stretching across a skull.

>put party against elf that is sociopaths by elven standards
>realized humans have "thoughts on the inside"
>goes looking for those thoughts on the inside in a major city
>kills random citizens at night, writing on the walls in blood "thoughts on the inside" while leaving partially dissected corpses
>players need to hunt him down before he gets in his mind to kill important folk (as he has mostly be running around the slums)
>find him covered in bloody scabs he has carved in himself to try and make "thoughts on the inside" for humans to see

>Explain why they're not the dominant race in your setting.

Aside from the fact that they reproduce incredibly slowly, they also have huge fucking egos. Almost every single elf in a position of power considers him or herself a special snowflake. They're always trying to one-up each other to prove how much better than their peers they are.

Now, when shit hits the fan and they need to come together to face a threat, they do so. It's not an easy thing, however. Even when facing genocidal hordes from the asscrack of Hell, they're still arguing and jostling for power. They manage to overcome, but usually not without a few losses. They could be much more efficient if they weren't all undermining each other for personal gain.

Not to mention, they aren't very expansionist. Their lands are perfect and with good natural borders. Their population isn't exploding, so they don't need to expand.

>more intelligent/wise than humans, generally have better organized governments (as evidenced by how long they survive) and are often considered master craftsmen second only to the dwarves

This is all elven propaganda.

"Thinking" your more intelligent or wise doesn't mKe you more intelligent or wise. The elves in LOTR are cocky idiots who let their people fall to ruin. In Warcraft they don't live longer then the other races since the great tree was destroyed by Archimon.
Elves are weak dumb cocky cunts whos only advantage is that they dabble in magic.

And reproduction is difficult when your gay.

I don't know where this retarded short Romans bullshit comes from.

After the Marian reforms (so basically what you think of when you think "Roman") legionaries were required to be at least 5'10". That might sound manletty but, and this is important, everybody was a fucking midget in the olden days, 5'10" then is like 6'4" now. Legionaries were big tough motherfuckers.

>And reproduction is difficult when your gay.
Not if you have hermaphrodite elves!

In my setting, they live maybe 4 times as long as humans, and if you look into Elf eyes, you instantly experience his experience, remember his memories, share his pain, grok his grokkings. It's startling and intimate and a huge weakness for elves. It's why they use bows so much. It's why they are socially awkward, avoiding prolonged eye contact. It's why elves who grew up among elves have very poor facility with language, and interpersonal communication (social skills). Because, among elves, their very nature facilitates the best communication.

Also fuckin' far vision, yo.

That's more survival pressure. If they live longer, there is much more pressure to survive, because there's much more to lose. Maybe less pressure to reproduce, but definitely more pressure to survive.

>I don't know where this retarded short Romans bullshit comes from.
Because Italians are still some of the shortest people in Europe? Especially considering Caesar commented how the Gauls were taller than the Romans, there's no reason to believe the Romans weren't shorter than the uncivilized, arsemunching lanklets up north.

They've only recently started colonizing the planet, cut them some slack. Besides they're offering a better deal then most of the native power blocs.

>Elves are long lived, more intelligent/wise than humans, generally have better organized governments (as evidenced by how long they survive) and are often considered master craftsmen second only to the dwarves
>Explain why they're not the dominant race in your setting.

Because they did one simple mistake and that was to settled in the north. That and having most of your population killed in the war of the gods and then settle in the north. This kicked off a chain reaction of elven mistakes.

Then why does the opposite happen in nature? Longer-lived creatures reproduce less.

Also. I don't make some bullshit up about how they reproduce slower or something. They reproduce as often as others, with communes eventually all becoming interconnected families and clans. Families are full of half-siblings as elven relationships can't be expected to last forever. New blood is brought into a clan by marriages, usually arranged during Elfmoots. Even if the marriage doesn't last, the new elf is officially blood of the commune now.

When a commune becomes to overpopulated, schisms usually form between groups that likely split to form their own communes. You can trace the lineages of communes all the way back to the first. It's because of all these things that all elves affectionately refer to one another in familial terms.

The Elf Queen is really just an honorary and symbolic title that refers to the first communes where their people came to the Feywild and made pacts/bonds with the fey spirits, mixing their blood to make the elves. The Elf Queen is married to the Fairy King, as a symbol of this union. As such, all elves among fairy circles are revered as a kind of nobility. This connotation has extended into human lands, where the wealthy elite and nobility seek out the crafts, skills, and company of elves. The common man considered elves part of the genteel.

Hey, OP didn't specify my setting had to have elves for my answer to be pertinent.

Not existing seems like a pretty good reason to not be dominant, to me

Elves have pretty darvinist societies instead of low birth rates.
Their extreme adulthood ritual initiations kill of roughly 80% of their young adults.

Because they are natural born herbivorous pacifists with no desire to kill and dominate other creatures.

(this is why most elves had been reduced to heirloom sexslaves milenia ago)

Because they aren't differentiated from other faeries and they can't stay on the material plane for long. Place is too mundane for them.

When one of my players had a really cool idea for a half-giant character but I didn't have half-giants in my setting, I asked him to create some reason to explain why his race was so rare and this is almost exactly what he did, except the mortality rate was even higher.

"Me have 12 brothers and sister but me only child." He killed his brothers and sister and that was normal for half-giant society.He was a humorous psycopath.

The same reasons the Nazis lost.

There's just more humans. Simple as that.
>elves try to invade
>better armor
>better weapons
>better tactics
>and the humans just
>keep
>coming

On top of that:
>obsessed with efficiency and making things easier
>over many years they make bows that are easier to draw with the same punch
>thus you dont need to be as strong to use said bows
>nobody has a reason to get natty
>humans get natty fucking gains because longbows

They keep to themselves. That's not to say their society isn't large, they just don't care to.

Because it makes it possible for them to familiarize with the setting due to the setting and the real world sharing a single fundamental aspect - that is, the majority of the sapient world population being human.

In a setting where humans are at best an endangered species, the mostly-human readers are going to have a very difficult time identifying with anyone.

Because they genuinely just don't give a fuck about being the "dominant race". They live longer than any other race, have a society that is very well structured, a culture rich with music, stories and art of all kinds and wherever they settle down, it's pretty well known that it's Elvish territory and you'd best not encroach on it or they'll be pissed.

They're perfectly content living in their woods, caves, halls, or whatever the fuck place they put down roots and just enjoying being fucking elves because they're awesome. Why would they want to go to the trouble of conquering the world when most of it is nowhere near as beautiful as their chosen territory and the only thing it would net them is a bunch of subservient other races that don't even live long enough to be properly educated or trained? You'd have a constant stream of infants from the other races that you'd be responsible for keeping alive, which they don't currently deal with, adults who live just long enough for you to break them before they die and they'd be nowhere near as skilled as would be expected from an elf, so they'd be nothing but a disappointment.

Basically, elves don't need that shit. They generally leave the world alone and the world returns the favor and everyone is happy.

>The same reasons the Nazis lost.
Germans are a fucking joke though, the punchline among of the European empires.

1871 was just a cruel mistake with horrible consequences that cumulated in Europe's ongoing destruction. Just like 1813 was a cruel mistake. Or 1648 was a cruel mistake.

why is there a need for a dominant species to exist?

They don't fuck fast enough to outbreed humans.

I though this was common, accepted knowledge, that even in conventional fantasy settings elves don't feel a need to reproduce as long as they have some form of family, and hence they are outbred by "babby every 20 years" humans.

FPBP never fails

But they are OP. My elves were originally all long lived but got hit by a curse cause they tried to blow up heaven and now they stop aging at age twenty-five but die with six months of their hundredth year.

Also, no half elf bullshit. Elves in my world have dominant genes. If you got one elf parent, you get fully elf kids. You fuck an elf, you get more elves.

There is an enduring idea that life naturally forms hierarchies - that not only does nature abhor a vacuum, but it doesn't like sharing, either. Thus, two species occupying the same niche must compete - and either one adapts to a slightly different niche, or one dies out.

There can be only one summit.

Because they were too busy huffing their own farts to realize that if they kept to the alliance they could have helped against the Scourge instead of getting pissy that trolls burned some trees.

>Also, no half elf bullshit. Elves in my world have dominant genes. If you got one elf parent, you get fully elf kids. You fuck an elf, you get more elves.
But if two elves, each with one human parent, had a child there'd be a 25% chance that child is human.

Being human would be like having blue eyes.

No, there are only elves and the humans they fuck into nonexistence.

It's because elves are bunch of enternal teenagers who their amazing gifts for granted. You ever notice how in a setting where elves are the oh so wonderful and powerful, magical glitter farting twinks we all know and loathe, they always have some amazing artists or poets or diplomats, who are responsible for some great art or treaty or what have you, but almost never hear about elvish architects, or engineers, or farmers, or miners, or accountants or governors (sure kings queens and other assorted noblemen, but never governors); Do you know why that is? It's because elves feel that they don't need them: "why do we need architects, miners and engineers? We'll just sing/magic trees into being suitable homes." They say, "And why do we need farmers, we can live off the land better than anyone. And accounts, elves have too much potential to be mere bean-counters, let those other races' merchant companies handle that. And Governors are for those peoples who are in charge of unruly children, let the other elves handle their own affairs." Even those Elves with more practical grounded skills such as swordsmen or wizards or generals, don't treat their subject of expertise as an occupation or profession, but as an art form or a game, because these are the only terms they can think in. That is where their perfect, glamorous, little world topples.

You see, elves can best be described as a race of enternal beatniks. They have no drive, or ambition, or goals, neither personally nor as a species.
"What?! What am I gonna do with my life? Man I got a thousand or so years of life, I don't need to rush. I think I'm gonna go spend half a century learning how to cook. After that, idunno. Maybe I'll go learn painting, or speechcraft, or underwater basket-weaving!"
I mean for Pelor's sake they can barely even have sex enough to keep up a sustainable population, let alone an expanding one.

>more intelligent/wise than humans, generally have better organized governments (as evidenced by how long they survive) and are often considered master craftsmen second only to the dwarves
These things aren't true of elves in my setting. They're belligerent, have so much political infighting that the average lifespan of elves outside of elven society is twice as long as those inside it, and the only thing they can craft of any worth is wine, which just lets them get drunk enough to start more fights and kill each other.

Elves are descendents of the Fey, specifically their servants. The ancient proto-elves were little more than willless puppets mechanically playing out their roles. The modern elves have gained sentience, but are still incredibly incapable of deviation from tradition and assigned niche. An elf will be the best at what they do, but borderline unable to do anything else. As descendents of beings engineered to serve, they're also really bad at taking initiative. Elven civilizations tend to last for a really long time, because elves are immortal unless actively killed, and tend to keep the status quo like a mother fucker. Humans tend to overestimate length of elven rulers reigns, because every elf in a given position acts the exact same, and often use glamour to look The same, too

Cont.
Even in the dark ages cities were sights to behold simply for its size, but all elves cities are just a glorified collection of treeforts with a much lower population than any other races cites because elves are too busy living like there's no tomorrow to settle down, get married, have kids, and get real jobs like any other good human, dwarf or halfling lower to middle class member. How often do you encounter Elvish settlers looking for new lands to make homes in? Their magical gifts make it so that one elf is worth ten humans, but for all their wisdom and experience, they can't see the value in ten elves. And that is where all archetypical elves fail: they all have shit attitudes and no motivation, because they already believe that they are at the top and that there is nothing more to achieve or discover.
Fuckin Elves.

So they're basically the Celts with drinking habits of their Irish descendants.

Tolkien is responsible for that bit

Elves can't have children whenever they want because a part of the mothers' soul goes into each child she has, and having children at all is less a biological imperative and more a creative pursuit for elves

They USED to be the dominant race on Middle-Earth until they decided there was no longer any actual reason to be there instead of Valinor at separate occasions.

The thing being that all the writers who ripped off Tolkien didn't have the whole story yet

Nelves and belves are still both longer lived than the other mortal races because of the well of eternity and the sunwell. The only playable race that lives longer are the draenei. Also illidan implied all the dhs are fully immortal because they have the rare undying spirits that all player controlled characters have that can be ressurected and fel magic.

The elven equivalent are overevolved. They have a weak fight/flight response, weak and rare adrenaline rush, and an absence of anxiety and neurosis. They are happy, and superior to humans in many ways, but they are lazy fucks hard pressed to get motivated about anything but art and comfort.

Elves become adults at around 100 years in D&D. If you have a kid you get stuck raising a teenager for three decades. Obviously they aren't going to have as many kids.

Because the elves in my setting are genetically modified humans made specifically for higher dexterity and aren't too much different otherwise besides aging slower and living a little longer.

They're also stuck on the inside of a hollow Earth fighting mutants and other anomalies sealed away after Ragnarok, as well as the foul spawn of Nidhoggr, thus cutting them off from the rest of the topsoil civilizations.

Because Dwarfs are better than Elves

Their society adopted Nihilism. Everything sort of worked itself out naturally after that.

They don't care about anything outside their borders, and want to be left the fuck alone.

In my setting Elves are nazis and Dwarves are communists

Nazis lost
Commies won

better with sound
youtube.com/watch?v=KjHclWPVij0

because they are so perfect they are imperfect.

Elves live on the moon. Elves on the planet are either diplomats, exiles, spies, or forced into isolated communities.

They are Prussians. They might be all that, but at the end of the day their lack of numbers means they rely on lightning strikes, and often lose in anything approaching longer lasting wars due to attrition.

They're decadent as fuck

totally! they are dead as fuck, i agree

that sound stupid and unorganized. you sure you know what those words mean when you say they are organized, intelligent, or better.

>Explain why they're not the dominant race in your setting.
because most people have the iron in their heads.

What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You're right. I'm older. You've lived longer than me, but I'm older than you. And better 'n' you. And that ain't hard.

>overevolved
>devoid of evolutionary advantages

They all left a while ago.

And they steal kids away when there parents aren't looking, lure 'em away with the bright faces and pretty music and the kids hardly ever come back.

>all this headcanon
>all those ebin memes
>all these "in my setting"

The only guy that knows a thing about elves and can cite something is this guy and maybe some more that metioned Tolkien. Often they aren't even that op like OP make them sound. I mean, how many settings are out there in which elves are really humans +1? How many systems in which in which you can look at their stats and they are really better at almost everything? Most of the time they have their weaknesses as well, but you let the memes decide how it is. Sometimes th writers don't really care to consider how their lifespan would effect the world.

That's dumb. You're dumb.

>He doesn't know based Pterry.
Shame on you.