You can have only two races in your setting, and they have to be either:

But dwarves also live for long-ass time

Is this a Veeky Forums meme Dwarf?

>yet you have the same base mental skills as a 30 year old human

What you are describing is a bad attempt at expanding a D&Dism. Even in D&D, your average elves have much more accumulated knowledge and experience than your average human, but the game stats are not intended to reflect that because that would upset the balance of the PC races and secondly fails to appreciate that the stats are not intended to directly quantify every single aspect of a character.

It's why a forty-year old human isn't automatically more experienced than a twenty-year old human, despite being twice their age. You're not quantifying things that have little mechanical effect on the game like appearance, allergies, phobias, genetic disposition, etc, and in the case of the Elf Age paradox, its not taking into account the thousands of little hints of accumulated experience that an elven character drops, like an emphasized appreciation of the fragility of life. That's good for roleplaying, hence the spot on the character sheet for Age, but doesn't really contribute much mechanically. Sometimes though, this does actually get reflected as a bonus to Int/Wis, depending on edition/subrace.

Above all else, the simple rationale in solving the "paradox" is appreciating that PC stats reflect exceptional individuals, but that the racial stats shouldn't just be used under the assumption that the world is just filled with level one commoners with the racial bonuses.

To reflect even how elves are in the various D&D/FR novels, it would be better to assume most elves past a certain age have accumulated a fair number of character levels.

And this all only applies to D&D. Outside of that, elves tend to just be smart and wise with no reason to try to put them in the same "playable" category as humans.

Who would want dwarves in their right mind when you can have elves?!

Dwarves and elves. Humans aren't race, they're pets bred by both races.

This guy gets it...
>they're pets bred by both races.
Nevermind

My African-American Brethren

>doesn't want to have a loyal, fluffy companion human, guarding your home, hunting with you and playing with your children
Both elves and dwarves have long lives. Humans are social animals and would make perfect pets to them.

In the setting my group is in, PC Elves are typically the same age as humans. Elves develop at a similar rate to humans, get antsy and wunderlusty by their thirties and go off into the world.
It's considered the 'teen' years of an elf and as they enter their seventies or so, they slow down and finally start to act 'elfy'.

Tl;dr, Thirty year-old elf 'teens' run away from home only to return in a few decades time once it's out of their system.

You can't post something like that and not post a source along with it.

Humans and elf waifus

La abominacion de Japon...

Franken Fran... she is pretty much a lovechild of insane Fae and scientific Monkey paw with no sense of right and wrong. Elves should be like her, it would explain many mythical races chimeras, minotaurs, pegasi...

My current PC is a 600+ year old elf who left his lifelong career as an apothecary to make a warlock pact because he wanted to go on one last adventure. You can make it work with a little creativity in background, and dwarves also live several hundred years so your point doesn't hold up anyway.

Humans and Elves so the humans have something to purge. Fucking elves...

Humans and Elves, then we can get Half-elves and cheat the system.

...

>To reflect even how elves are in the various D&D/FR novels, it would be better to assume most elves past a certain age have accumulated a fair number of character levels.

In AD&D they haven't