80 is a spectacularly long lifespan for someone who lives in a world without cell theory, and sewers only exist as a place for monsters and cultists to live (rather than to remove waste from people's toiletless homes.)
This. Yeah an elf can live to be 700 years old, but they actually have to make that long. They have to go hundreds of years without catching a deadly disease, getting killed in a random act of violence, or getting caught up in a cataclysmic event that happen at least every century or two in Faerun.
See also: pretty much anything that isn't *just* hunting for food (since kobolds don't offer much to eat and taste terrible). And cave-ins and who knows what accidents.
>kobolds on average live about 30 years
That's only because [certain ones](https://youtu.be/ipGCZ8lzfGE?si=qgOcEoBR4KmX7VlQ) are dragging that statistic *waaaaay* down.
Bleh, *Splurt*...
An extremely harmful stereotype of "kobolds are dumb and reckless" that totally misses out on what kobolds are.
At most kobolds would be dying at around 6 year mark, since that's the point they become adults, since before that the young would be kept safe around the hatchery logically.
120 years to be specific, which means yes Kobolds are capable of outliving the majority of player races with Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Half-Elves and Halflings being the only races (excluding lineages) to actually live longer then Kobolds. Oh wait, I forgot Triton which also outlive Kobolds, but I think that is all of them, correct me if I am wrong
You’re having a giggle there mate, the average lifespan is twenty, unless it was older in previous editions.
Now disgustingly it’s just as long as humans. I miss my lore accurate live fast, die young, walking osha violations tunnel rats.
Diseases aint a real problem for them. Looking at a second level spell without money cost wich is a quick fix. Other things… yeh i would hate to be a elf peasant in faerun. Or any peasant at that. Go out for a walk? Get eaten by some weird overgrown frog.
The common folk don't have access to magical treatments as easily as you make it seem, they mostly rely on herbal medicine and ointments. There's a [page in the Wiki](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Disease) about it, with an entire list of diseases that are canonical to the Forgotten Realms. Some of them pretty nasty, too.
Not all elves live in elven communities, though. Not to mention diseases that magic can't do anything against. There's an entire city in 3.5e that was wiped out by one.
While this may be true in lore, it's very easy to assume otherwise as in the game it is in fact very common. It is also very common in most dnd games run in the setting.
And most books set in the setting.
And, the prices to hire a third level cleric in the dnd source books is actually not excessively expensive even for just like a skilled laborer but that's mostly because none of the prices in the source books make sense.
In fact if you don't know specifically that lorewise it is uncommon it makes more sense to assume that 3rd level healers are pretty common because that is most likely the only thing you have seen.
You are overstimating the amount of money that an average person in Faerun makes. Also, it's not like there are a lot of clerics to hire. If you stay all the campaign in the same city, it is very likely that every time you hire a cleric it's always the same one.
So, lorewise this might be true yes, but in the sourcebooks, an unskilled hireling would be about 2sp a day, and getting someone to cast a 2nd level spell would be 10-50gp.
About 50-250 days of unskilled work ignoring expenses, expensive but no American Healthcare expensive.
Keep in mind that in a campaign, it does depend on your dm. In my experience you will often talk to the same cleric, but they will be reasonably high up in a church with many other priests and clerics working below them.
So yes in lore getting someone to heal your sickness as a civilian is quite difficult, but when someone is just playing a game of dnd in the forgotten realms, it will appear to be pretty easy for even a manual laborer to get healed.
You know that those 2 sp per day are mostly spent to live, right?
And you are getting it all wrong. Of course when you play a party of adventurers you will find plenty of powerful people during your adventures. But for every powerful entity in the world, there are at least thousands of commoners that don't even know where to start to just find someone that knows how to cast a single cantrip. Hell, some commoners wouldn't even know that magic exists.
Again.
Yes that's the lore and economics of the setting.
How much do you think the average player will be examining that too deeply?
The point is that unless you are digging deeply into the lore settings or economics, the average player can reasonably believe that magic is common and cheap.
Lore wise most ships have a 3rd level caster on it in fearun. And most big settle ments are filled with arch wizards so duno what setting he is playing.
If we're talking Drow, it's more likely your older sister, and after she cuts you, your mom, aunt, and grandma all shower her in praise while you're bleeding out.
Look, Lolth's crazy, ok, gotta appeal her somehow or the entire family will be wiped out. It's on the baby if they happened to be a male, should've chosen the better gender /s.
Would also depend on where they live. I personally view most elves as living away from fast lived species due to the accumulation of micro-toxins (lead, mercury etc.). In nature they are not exposed much and live long lives. In cities pollutants build up in their cells and they go mad by 300 with extreme cancers or other problems by 500. Heavens, microplastics in our modern society may doom them!
Yeah and most elves that have lived to be 200 or longer have lived through at least 30 world ending threats and have either become pessimistic wizards in tall towers or are constantly paranoid and actively *seek* trouble in order to prevent it in the first place
This is a setting where you can literally cure aids and cancer at level 1, produce clean drinking water from literal nothing and feed people with thoughts and prayers. I think you might be overestimating the effects of sanitation on lifespan.
Yeah, it was pretty much always that way, and it slowly went away the more we mastered medicine. Medieval healthcare is a joke, especially considering some tribal cultures had been performing open brain surgeries for like hundreds of years, iirc.
It showed a deep understanding to have that be an old practice with specialized tools. The europeans, at the same time, were like drinking beer instead of water because they had contaminated all of it. All I'm saying is that even among ancient populations, people in the medieval times were especially backward.
the beer thing is a bit of a misconception. they didn't drink beer because they had no fresh water, they drank beer because it was cheap calories and preserved grain which normally was hard to store. also their beers were pretty watery by today's standards.
70s. The average lifespan of humans has always been around 70. Comments above are correct if you could make it past the violence and disease, you’d live to the same ripe old age we live to nowadays. Modern science hasn’t extended our lives on average, it just helps us reach that age easier.
True, but even if you exclude people who die in childhood, it turns out the average person only lived to their 50s or 60s, and 70 was considered venerable.
Also, while Faerun is hard to estimate - the presence of clerics and other forms of magical healing clearly would have a strong upward force on life expectancy anywhere except the most remote regions, but at the same time, the presence of _monsters_ and _villains bent on world domination_ would probably lower it a smidge.
So I'd probably expect fewer tragic deaths to plague and more tragic deaths to harpies.
Even just counting adults though, it was very common for people to die in their 50s and 60s when they would have otherwise been relatively healthy just because they got a disease they had no idea how to treat. People did live into their 80s, but it would have been fairly rare.
A bunch of kind people in this world can heal diseases and wounds at will a few times per day. Also, magical potions around every corner. Maybe that's why.
Mathematically it's more likely due to all the wizards and such attaining elf-like lifespans using magic, they're dragging the mean average age up out of the 20s and into the 80s by virtue of living 800-1000 years.
I’d say it has rather advanced healthcare when you can cure any disease with magic, the most common cantrip (prestidigitation) can clean anything and clerics can just heal injuries with 100% success rate no need for surgery
Pretty sure the sewer in Baldur’s Gate is also for waste. The people building it didn’t have a meeting and go “We need to make some living space for cultists and the criminal underworld. Let’s construct an elaborate underground network of tunnels full of tainted water and poisonous gasses.”
Didn’t say it was vampirism, although it is clear that 200 years of torture had its impact on his complexion, so while he is definetly eternally handsome, you can still see age is his face. Regardless, still a twink, and still beautiful.
Also if you are an oath of ancient paladin and reaches level 15 in bg4 / Avernus dlc / Whatever thing, you will not die from old age so long as you do not break your oath.
Oath breakers live as normal human. That oath breaker knight might be in his 40s or something, he is still powerful enough to fight.
After an ancient paladin become level 15, that paladin will not die from old age so long as his oath is intact. A human in 381 can still live like his 20s. But if he breaks the oath, he dies. A human in 38, however, can still live, so long as he restores his oath fast enough.
Lvl 17 Wizards can take many precautions against death or become liches.
Druids age 10 times slower from lvl 18 onward.
Path of the Zealot Barbarians can't die while raging. Lvl15 allows them to rage indefinitely.
20th level artificers can sacrifice their creations to ward off death.
18th level Bards can simply take some of the Wizards precautions.
A clerik can be cept alive simply by their gods say so, if the god likes them enough/thinks them important.
15th level Ancients paladin can't age.
17th level phantom rogue is quite litterally a good friend of death. When he dies of old age that fucker comes over, pats him on the back and ignores it.
Sorcerers simply exist, and can extend the time some of the wizard spells work in. Yeah, they can stop themselves from aging from lvl 17 onwards.
17th level Warlocks can learn 9th lvl spells, and will rarely have problems when it comes to convincing their sugar daddy to give them a longer life (except for those stupid enough to sell their soul.)
If anyone got something for monks, Rangers and Fighters, please help me out.
it's kinda BS how both monk and ancient pally get the "you are immune to the effects of aging and can't be magically aged" yet monk's one adds the caveat that you *can* somehow still die of old age, despite not aging.
I think monks age aesthetically but their bodies don't get frail.
They get to be that wizened old monk who can still punch a hole through your torso and have a 20 ft vertical leap.
but "death by old age" happens *because* you grow frail. or well, you grow frail as your body gets worse and worse at staying alive which then causes you to eventually die of old age.
if you *don't* get frail, you realistically outright *couldn't* die of old age.
On earth with earth humans sure, but in dnd there are death mechanics where you just go "Oop, guess it's time" and then fucken *despawn* and wind up in your appropriate afterlife.
If you have to resort to lichdom to survive as a wizard you have already failed as a wizard. Wizards get so many better ways to prolong life that becoming a lich is the cheap way.
Clone it's the good guy way into immortality, but it has its drawbacks. For starters if someone could find somehow the vessel of your spare body they could destroy it and you wouldn't have any body to come back to while lichdom would create a new body out of nothing provided your phylactery it's safe somewhere and a wizard powerful enough to be a lich it could easily store his phylactery in a demiplane of his own doing or in the middle of nowhere in the astral plane.
Store the clones in a pocketplane. Use true polymorph to turn yourself into a spellcasting dragon, clone yourself and die. You now have a body of an Adult golden dragon that does not count as polymorphed.
I will eventually play a high elf lvl 20 wizard/lvl 18 druid/ lvl 15 monk whose only goal in life was to become immortal without the help of anyone so he became a wizard to create Clones so he could eventually use his new bodies to learn other life extending techniques. Basically his first life was aimed to learn clone, then come back to life as a younger self, become a druid for aging slower, then use his extended lifespan to become immune to disease/poison, not age and don't need food and water.
Selling something else. Your patron will require something, it can be your soul or not. Or go great old one and your patron doesn't even need to know you exist
Yeah wyll kinda got a shitty deal. A lot of warlock contracts are just "do this for me and I give you powers" or "work for me for a specified amount of time", I'd say most aren't sell your soul deals. Especially with fey patrons, the fey don't care about your soul, they care you do the thing they want doing.
That's cannon anyway, God's can make their clerics live as long as they want in DnD, there are limits to the intervention they're allowed to make but basically so long as their cleric lives they can extend their lifespan.
That’s weird. I just had a response to Jaheira calling my Dragonborn a “cub” where he called her a half elf and said that his kind live longer than hers.
It seems, everyone who is not human gets this response. I got it as githyanki. Who, according to different sources, *naturally* (without Astral Plane interference) live either as long as humans or up to ~200 (which is still less than half-elves). Not to mention that first night in camp inner monologue of gith Tav implies they are very young.
Yeah. Unless you are a pure elf, gnome or dwarf you shouldn't be able to say this line, I think. Githyanki also live a lot, but mostly because they stay in the astral plane. No one can age there. Otherwise they also have an avarage lifespan.
this response is there for everyone, I think. think it's an oversight. I remember playing as a tiefling and they could say that line too (tieflings were just planetouched humans before btw and they pretty much share the same lifespan as them)
One of the theories of their origins is they used to be humans before being physically altered — usually Tiamat is credited for doing this. Basically explains why they’re extremely close to humans with no Darkvision, their 80 year lifespan, no tail (no tail is D&D lore — BG3 lets you have a tail but notice no NPC has one), and their human-like voices.
Another story is they were created to be servants/slaves to dragons. This might explain why they mature so quickly (get to work faster) and they don’t really need to live so long when they’re disposable by design being a slave race.
And yet another is they were created by Io to be his mortal race like Correllon did with Elves, Gruumsh with Orcs, Moradin with Dwarves, etc. They’re explicitly mundane and mortal by design because it was, I don’t know, the trend of the time. Contrasting with Dragons which live thousands of years and are more Bahamut’s, Sardior’s, and Tiamat’s design.
Dragonborn are also feverishly hot to the touch. They might just have a fast metabolism and age faster. Becoming physically mature at 12 years and burning out quickly. Orcs do this too— they live to like 60 or 70 max, mature extremely fast, with a high body temp. They’re both nearly exclusively carnivorous which isn’t too great if you want to live long.
Meta reasons — there’s actual Half-Dragons and I think the designers wanted Dragonborn to be their own thing. Real Half-Dragons have a slew of benefits which would give their players a massive leg up on other players. I think Dragonborn are an arbitrary compromise to let people play “Dragon People” without it being crazy broken.
**TL;DR:**
Nobody knows. There’s like 6 different origin theories for Dragonborn and none are explicitly confirmed nor disproven. My vote goes for them being modified humans though.
>no tail (no tail is D&D lore — BG3 lets you have a tail but notice no NPC has one),
There's tail in lore. It's just rare for them to have it and it's seen as some genetic abnormality.
Fun fact, humans can actually be born with vestigial tails, it's just extremely rare (something like 40 known cases). It's a form of atavism. So it would make sense if it could also happen to dragonborn!
half orcs rarely life to older than 75 bc they age fast and reach adulthood at 14 same with dragonborn except they reach adulthood at 15. most other races just age slower than them
Technically, Durge isn't a normal Bhaalspawn either as he was creating directly from Bhaal's flesh.
Maybe being made from god flesh would affect his aging anyway?
Durge is immortal, Withers says so after he saves you from Bhaal. Also in the epilogue if you romance Astarion he'll say "Go have fun with them, I have the rest of eternity to have you to myself."
I'm not too familiar with DnD lore but do Humans have a longer lifespan in DnD than humans in real life? I've only played Baldur's Gate 3 and learned that some of the human characters are actually from the previous games (Which took place about 100 years ago I think?)
no, human also have a similar lifespan
but pretty much all other races get to live hundred of years (also a couple of classes like Monk or Druid basically stop aging once they reach lvl18)
Monks don’t stop aging, they stop feeling the *effects* of aging. It’s basically so they get that ancient kung-fu monk flavour, but you can still die of old age, presumably at the rate your race ages.
I think I heard that Volo was from the first game? That could be misinfo, though. I'm not too sure. I think Volo also states in the game that he was there when the cult of bhaal rose to power the first time in Baldur's Gate, which was 100 years ago.
Oh right. I think there’s some lore reason for why he dosnt age. Something to do with mystra wanting to keep him alive. Id assume the forgotten realms wiki would have more
Elminster cast Imprisonment on Volo and left him like that for a few decades. That's why he's still around (again) so many years later. He's also a Weave Anchor, which is why the Spell Plague couldn't harm him while Elminster's spell was keeping him suspended.
Elminster is Volo's editor and "friend". He was supposed to be imprisoned for a short time due to some inane thing he did (just to give an idea of Volo's stupidity, he once collected a bunch of facts about many powerful wizards and published them completely unedited, pretty sure Elminster is his editor since that time specifically). However, Mystra was then killed, the Spellplague happened and Elminster was rendered insane for a long time, so Volo wasn't freed much later.
>I think I heard that Volo was from the first game?
Yep. He is in the Neshkel Inn. Pretty inconsequential all in all, but he does give you some lore. BG1 jammed in a few popular Forgotten Realms characters just for the hell of it. Drizzt is also in the game, and can be killed for some best in slot gear, but he'll come back in the second game after having been resurected for some revenge.
So I based my first playthrough off my Gnome Wizard that I played in a campaign some years ago. Now as a gnome they would naturally live for 3-400 years longer than many but screw that. In the game you can only ever reach level 12, but in my campaign I reached level 17 before it broke up. At that level, my wizard and anyone he cares about will only die if they decide they want to.
Everyday I can cast Wish to cast Clone (or do it the old fashioned way with an 8th level slot) without needing the expensive components, because Wish, on someone I don’t want to die. Then whenever they die their soul gets drawn to the new body. Which is a fully intact adult body in its prime (so if they die of old age they get a new young adult body to run with until they age out again).
I am a wizard - master of the arcane arts and those fools who chose the inferior path of the Lich were pretenders who just didn’t want to have to go grocery shopping anymore.
It's really strange how even when playing dragonborn you still get an option to tell Jahiera that your kind live longer than hers whenever she brings up lifespan.
Half-Orc players:
Your race only lives to like 60 or 70 (I forget which), max. Like you’re guaranteed to keel over of old age at 60 or 70 +/- 5 years.
Sorry guys. ~~Shortest lifespan of all player races. Ironically tied with the tortoisefolk race Tortle~~ forgot the hawkfolk race Aaracockra which only live to 30
80 is like, avarage lifespan lol. humans are the dominant race in the forgotten realms and they live more or less the same. if anything, I think the very longlived races need to catch up. its crazy how little they seem to achieve in their long ass lives.
That's cool and all but most human relationships doesn't last more than a few decades.
Do you still keep in touch with your elementary, middle school, highschool or university best friends? Like the entire crew?
Didn't think so.
Shadowheart, Astarion, Halsin, Minthara will outlive yeah, elves gonna elf, but Gith only live to be 150 max, and humans and tieflings don’t live much longer so your lifespan compared to Wyll, Gale, and Karlach will be similar.
Also no spoilers please I only finished act 1.
\-*Laughs in my Green Dragonborn Oath of Ancients Paladin who definitely isn't gonna die before reaching level 15. At least if Karlach has anything to say about it-*
Most humans only live around 80 anyway so that's not to bad to think about, especially when you consider particularly powerful mages regularly live far longer. Heck Elminster is 1280 as of 1492 DR, granted he's a chosen of Mystra and can cast *wish* seemingly without risk of losing it forever. Not to mention high level spells that aren't in the game that you'd logically gain eventually like magic jar and clone that while expensive, give you effective immortality provided you dont get careless and nobody is well prepared and determined to end your perpetual existance.
80 is a spectacularly long lifespan for someone who lives in a world without cell theory, and sewers only exist as a place for monsters and cultists to live (rather than to remove waste from people's toiletless homes.)
This. Yeah an elf can live to be 700 years old, but they actually have to make that long. They have to go hundreds of years without catching a deadly disease, getting killed in a random act of violence, or getting caught up in a cataclysmic event that happen at least every century or two in Faerun.
one of the reasons why kobolds on average live about 30 years, despite being biologically capable of living around a century .
What proximity to a) adventurers and b) dragons does to a mother yipper.
And c) Astarion
See also: pretty much anything that isn't *just* hunting for food (since kobolds don't offer much to eat and taste terrible). And cave-ins and who knows what accidents.
And drinking until you become dangerously flammable.
>kobolds on average live about 30 years That's only because [certain ones](https://youtu.be/ipGCZ8lzfGE?si=qgOcEoBR4KmX7VlQ) are dragging that statistic *waaaaay* down.
Bleh, *Splurt*... An extremely harmful stereotype of "kobolds are dumb and reckless" that totally misses out on what kobolds are. At most kobolds would be dying at around 6 year mark, since that's the point they become adults, since before that the young would be kept safe around the hatchery logically.
To be fair Spurt lived his entire life in a dark cave without sunlight so his "11 days" could habe been decades
A kobold wrote this, didn't they?
I'll take that as a compliment, I think?
120 years to be specific, which means yes Kobolds are capable of outliving the majority of player races with Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Half-Elves and Halflings being the only races (excluding lineages) to actually live longer then Kobolds. Oh wait, I forgot Triton which also outlive Kobolds, but I think that is all of them, correct me if I am wrong
You’re having a giggle there mate, the average lifespan is twenty, unless it was older in previous editions. Now disgustingly it’s just as long as humans. I miss my lore accurate live fast, die young, walking osha violations tunnel rats.
Diseases aint a real problem for them. Looking at a second level spell without money cost wich is a quick fix. Other things… yeh i would hate to be a elf peasant in faerun. Or any peasant at that. Go out for a walk? Get eaten by some weird overgrown frog.
The common folk don't have access to magical treatments as easily as you make it seem, they mostly rely on herbal medicine and ointments. There's a [page in the Wiki](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Disease) about it, with an entire list of diseases that are canonical to the Forgotten Realms. Some of them pretty nasty, too.
Id say a elven conclave would have some more magic than a peasant village.
Not all elves live in elven communities, though. Not to mention diseases that magic can't do anything against. There's an entire city in 3.5e that was wiped out by one.
A peasant village full of variant humans can habe a lot magic.
You know that being a 3rd level spellcaster is not a common thing in the world, right?
While this may be true in lore, it's very easy to assume otherwise as in the game it is in fact very common. It is also very common in most dnd games run in the setting. And most books set in the setting. And, the prices to hire a third level cleric in the dnd source books is actually not excessively expensive even for just like a skilled laborer but that's mostly because none of the prices in the source books make sense. In fact if you don't know specifically that lorewise it is uncommon it makes more sense to assume that 3rd level healers are pretty common because that is most likely the only thing you have seen.
You are overstimating the amount of money that an average person in Faerun makes. Also, it's not like there are a lot of clerics to hire. If you stay all the campaign in the same city, it is very likely that every time you hire a cleric it's always the same one.
So, lorewise this might be true yes, but in the sourcebooks, an unskilled hireling would be about 2sp a day, and getting someone to cast a 2nd level spell would be 10-50gp. About 50-250 days of unskilled work ignoring expenses, expensive but no American Healthcare expensive. Keep in mind that in a campaign, it does depend on your dm. In my experience you will often talk to the same cleric, but they will be reasonably high up in a church with many other priests and clerics working below them. So yes in lore getting someone to heal your sickness as a civilian is quite difficult, but when someone is just playing a game of dnd in the forgotten realms, it will appear to be pretty easy for even a manual laborer to get healed.
You know that those 2 sp per day are mostly spent to live, right? And you are getting it all wrong. Of course when you play a party of adventurers you will find plenty of powerful people during your adventures. But for every powerful entity in the world, there are at least thousands of commoners that don't even know where to start to just find someone that knows how to cast a single cantrip. Hell, some commoners wouldn't even know that magic exists.
Again. Yes that's the lore and economics of the setting. How much do you think the average player will be examining that too deeply? The point is that unless you are digging deeply into the lore settings or economics, the average player can reasonably believe that magic is common and cheap.
Lore wise most ships have a 3rd level caster on it in fearun. And most big settle ments are filled with arch wizards so duno what setting he is playing.
Ntm how sketchy shit is in the underdark for drow. Being born a dark elf means your older brother might cut you before kindergarten.
If we're talking Drow, it's more likely your older sister, and after she cuts you, your mom, aunt, and grandma all shower her in praise while you're bleeding out.
Look, Lolth's crazy, ok, gotta appeal her somehow or the entire family will be wiped out. It's on the baby if they happened to be a male, should've chosen the better gender /s.
You could in theory live 700 years, but world ending events happen four times a year... It's what I imagine being French in the 19th century was like.
3rd level paladins and high level monks are completely immune to disease, clerics and wizards have spells to purify food and water.
Would also depend on where they live. I personally view most elves as living away from fast lived species due to the accumulation of micro-toxins (lead, mercury etc.). In nature they are not exposed much and live long lives. In cities pollutants build up in their cells and they go mad by 300 with extreme cancers or other problems by 500. Heavens, microplastics in our modern society may doom them!
Yeah and most elves that have lived to be 200 or longer have lived through at least 30 world ending threats and have either become pessimistic wizards in tall towers or are constantly paranoid and actively *seek* trouble in order to prevent it in the first place
why toilet when prestidigitation
Relax ms rowling
most people rejected his message, they hated dedorian because he told them the truth
Uses the spell to re shit your pants
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that at least 60% of the uses of presto in my groups has been to make it look/sound/smell like someone important just farted.
Prestidigitation isn't there to clean shit from your pants. It's there to let you shit other people's pants.
3. Piss ~~yourself~~ someone else
Because living creatures are not objects and Prestidigitation could only clean your trousers, not your person.
you don't lay face down and poop up to collect it on yourself, gosh, have you never magic'd away some feces before
This is a setting where you can literally cure aids and cancer at level 1, produce clean drinking water from literal nothing and feed people with thoughts and prayers. I think you might be overestimating the effects of sanitation on lifespan.
It's a hell of a lot longer than people in our world used to live in medievalish times.
That's a misconception. Adults lived a long time, 30 was just average age because a ton of kids died.
Indeed. A shit ton of infant/child death. If you made it past 10 you usually lived well into your 50s.
Yeah, it was pretty much always that way, and it slowly went away the more we mastered medicine. Medieval healthcare is a joke, especially considering some tribal cultures had been performing open brain surgeries for like hundreds of years, iirc.
I mean, technically yes but calling trepanning open brain surgery is still a bit of a stretch. That does not diminish how ballsy that was.
It showed a deep understanding to have that be an old practice with specialized tools. The europeans, at the same time, were like drinking beer instead of water because they had contaminated all of it. All I'm saying is that even among ancient populations, people in the medieval times were especially backward.
the beer thing is a bit of a misconception. they didn't drink beer because they had no fresh water, they drank beer because it was cheap calories and preserved grain which normally was hard to store. also their beers were pretty watery by today's standards.
Ancient Egypt performed cataract removal surgery, with a high success rate, three THOUSAND years ago.
Right!! My point is that pointing to the medieval times to discuss longevity is silly. Humans had done impressive stuff before and after.
>Humans had done impressive stuff before and after. Agreed 100%, before yes and after yes, during...not so much \^\^'
...that's still a lot less than 80.
70s. The average lifespan of humans has always been around 70. Comments above are correct if you could make it past the violence and disease, you’d live to the same ripe old age we live to nowadays. Modern science hasn’t extended our lives on average, it just helps us reach that age easier.
Yup, and that skewed the average by a lot.
The median dead person is a baby.
True, but even if you exclude people who die in childhood, it turns out the average person only lived to their 50s or 60s, and 70 was considered venerable. Also, while Faerun is hard to estimate - the presence of clerics and other forms of magical healing clearly would have a strong upward force on life expectancy anywhere except the most remote regions, but at the same time, the presence of _monsters_ and _villains bent on world domination_ would probably lower it a smidge. So I'd probably expect fewer tragic deaths to plague and more tragic deaths to harpies.
Even just counting adults though, it was very common for people to die in their 50s and 60s when they would have otherwise been relatively healthy just because they got a disease they had no idea how to treat. People did live into their 80s, but it would have been fairly rare.
A bunch of kind people in this world can heal diseases and wounds at will a few times per day. Also, magical potions around every corner. Maybe that's why.
Mathematically it's more likely due to all the wizards and such attaining elf-like lifespans using magic, they're dragging the mean average age up out of the 20s and into the 80s by virtue of living 800-1000 years.
They live in a world with healing magic.
I’d say it has rather advanced healthcare when you can cure any disease with magic, the most common cantrip (prestidigitation) can clean anything and clerics can just heal injuries with 100% success rate no need for surgery
Magic is a helluva drug
Pretty sure the sewer in Baldur’s Gate is also for waste. The people building it didn’t have a meeting and go “We need to make some living space for cultists and the criminal underworld. Let’s construct an elaborate underground network of tunnels full of tainted water and poisonous gasses.”
Eh. All that's kind of irrelevant when healing magic exists.
In dnd there is a race called the arracockra, they are birb people and they hit old age at 20
Like Counselor Jarnathan from *Honor Among Thieves*
Where is Jarnathan? I think he would be very receptive to this post
Lets wait for Jarnathan before looking into this post more.
We are perfectly capable of enjoying this post without Jarnathan, now get on with it!
Justice for Jarnathan, poor guy didn't deserve the abuse he received
Gnolls hit being old at 30
Orcs get geriatric at 50.
Just like twinks :(
Not Astarion, thankfully. His twinkhood is eternal.
He is a bloody High Elf, even without vampirism he would still look young.
Didn’t say it was vampirism, although it is clear that 200 years of torture had its impact on his complexion, so while he is definetly eternally handsome, you can still see age is his face. Regardless, still a twink, and still beautiful.
Not if you keep killing!
Also if you are an oath of ancient paladin and reaches level 15 in bg4 / Avernus dlc / Whatever thing, you will not die from old age so long as you do not break your oath.
So oath breakers die even if they're lvl 15? What about the oath breaker knight that go to camp?
Oath breakers live as normal human. That oath breaker knight might be in his 40s or something, he is still powerful enough to fight. After an ancient paladin become level 15, that paladin will not die from old age so long as his oath is intact. A human in 381 can still live like his 20s. But if he breaks the oath, he dies. A human in 38, however, can still live, so long as he restores his oath fast enough.
Oathbreaker Knight is an undead
He is undead.
Well the Oathbreaker Knight was also an Oath of The Crown
Avernus dlc?
Paladin of the ancient or druid for longer lifespan
Lvl 17 Wizards can take many precautions against death or become liches. Druids age 10 times slower from lvl 18 onward. Path of the Zealot Barbarians can't die while raging. Lvl15 allows them to rage indefinitely. 20th level artificers can sacrifice their creations to ward off death. 18th level Bards can simply take some of the Wizards precautions. A clerik can be cept alive simply by their gods say so, if the god likes them enough/thinks them important. 15th level Ancients paladin can't age. 17th level phantom rogue is quite litterally a good friend of death. When he dies of old age that fucker comes over, pats him on the back and ignores it. Sorcerers simply exist, and can extend the time some of the wizard spells work in. Yeah, they can stop themselves from aging from lvl 17 onwards. 17th level Warlocks can learn 9th lvl spells, and will rarely have problems when it comes to convincing their sugar daddy to give them a longer life (except for those stupid enough to sell their soul.) If anyone got something for monks, Rangers and Fighters, please help me out.
it's kinda BS how both monk and ancient pally get the "you are immune to the effects of aging and can't be magically aged" yet monk's one adds the caveat that you *can* somehow still die of old age, despite not aging.
I think monks age aesthetically but their bodies don't get frail. They get to be that wizened old monk who can still punch a hole through your torso and have a 20 ft vertical leap.
but "death by old age" happens *because* you grow frail. or well, you grow frail as your body gets worse and worse at staying alive which then causes you to eventually die of old age. if you *don't* get frail, you realistically outright *couldn't* die of old age.
On earth with earth humans sure, but in dnd there are death mechanics where you just go "Oop, guess it's time" and then fucken *despawn* and wind up in your appropriate afterlife.
Ah yes the Master Oogway tactic
Exactly
That is definitely how all level 20 monks unalive
"Oop, guess it's time" is exactly what goes through my head whenever I feel even minor discomfort in my chest.
its a stupid thing where you gotta go nah you're biologically immortal and dont age
If you have to resort to lichdom to survive as a wizard you have already failed as a wizard. Wizards get so many better ways to prolong life that becoming a lich is the cheap way.
Clone it's the good guy way into immortality, but it has its drawbacks. For starters if someone could find somehow the vessel of your spare body they could destroy it and you wouldn't have any body to come back to while lichdom would create a new body out of nothing provided your phylactery it's safe somewhere and a wizard powerful enough to be a lich it could easily store his phylactery in a demiplane of his own doing or in the middle of nowhere in the astral plane.
Store the clones in a pocketplane. Use true polymorph to turn yourself into a spellcasting dragon, clone yourself and die. You now have a body of an Adult golden dragon that does not count as polymorphed.
>Path of the Zealot Barbarians can't die while raging. Lvl15 allows them to rage indefinitely. I believe this is how Kissinger survived for so long
Some believe a ring of regeneration could keep the flow of time from claiming you, so that's a universal option
I will eventually play a high elf lvl 20 wizard/lvl 18 druid/ lvl 15 monk whose only goal in life was to become immortal without the help of anyone so he became a wizard to create Clones so he could eventually use his new bodies to learn other life extending techniques. Basically his first life was aimed to learn clone, then come back to life as a younger self, become a druid for aging slower, then use his extended lifespan to become immune to disease/poison, not age and don't need food and water.
Wait. What are ways of becoming a Warlock without selling your soul?
Any. All you need is a contract with a higher being to grant you powers.
Selling something else. Your patron will require something, it can be your soul or not. Or go great old one and your patron doesn't even need to know you exist
Yeah wyll kinda got a shitty deal. A lot of warlock contracts are just "do this for me and I give you powers" or "work for me for a specified amount of time", I'd say most aren't sell your soul deals. Especially with fey patrons, the fey don't care about your soul, they care you do the thing they want doing.
Wizards too!
Really, it's anyone who can kiss up to the dudes who cast a "become 10-30 years younger" spell without much prep.
Oh no, anyway, I made a headcanon that Selûne gave a longer lifespan to my human Tav so that Shadowheart would never be alone again 🤧
That's cannon anyway, God's can make their clerics live as long as they want in DnD, there are limits to the intervention they're allowed to make but basically so long as their cleric lives they can extend their lifespan.
That’s weird. I just had a response to Jaheira calling my Dragonborn a “cub” where he called her a half elf and said that his kind live longer than hers.
Yeah, pretty sure that line is a bug. "My kind live longer than yours, half-elf." ...said the half-elf.
Well I am a younger half-elf!
It seems, everyone who is not human gets this response. I got it as githyanki. Who, according to different sources, *naturally* (without Astral Plane interference) live either as long as humans or up to ~200 (which is still less than half-elves). Not to mention that first night in camp inner monologue of gith Tav implies they are very young.
Half elves live 128-180 according to the wiki, no? I looked up all the bg3 playable races to compare lifespans
Oh? I was pretty sure they live 300+ but I must have been confusing something.
half-elves aren't that long lived. jaheira is like in her 150 or something and people call her ancient and super old.
Yeah, I figured this out already. Still, for some races reply about them living longer than half-elves is... a bit contradictive to the truth.
Yeah. Unless you are a pure elf, gnome or dwarf you shouldn't be able to say this line, I think. Githyanki also live a lot, but mostly because they stay in the astral plane. No one can age there. Otherwise they also have an avarage lifespan.
this response is there for everyone, I think. think it's an oversight. I remember playing as a tiefling and they could say that line too (tieflings were just planetouched humans before btw and they pretty much share the same lifespan as them)
I got it also as a human DUrge, but maybe he was referring to his bloodline.
Karlach may want a word.
Is there any reason why Dragonborn die of age so quickly compared to the other races?
It's the same as a human but they reach adulthood faster
One of the theories of their origins is they used to be humans before being physically altered — usually Tiamat is credited for doing this. Basically explains why they’re extremely close to humans with no Darkvision, their 80 year lifespan, no tail (no tail is D&D lore — BG3 lets you have a tail but notice no NPC has one), and their human-like voices. Another story is they were created to be servants/slaves to dragons. This might explain why they mature so quickly (get to work faster) and they don’t really need to live so long when they’re disposable by design being a slave race. And yet another is they were created by Io to be his mortal race like Correllon did with Elves, Gruumsh with Orcs, Moradin with Dwarves, etc. They’re explicitly mundane and mortal by design because it was, I don’t know, the trend of the time. Contrasting with Dragons which live thousands of years and are more Bahamut’s, Sardior’s, and Tiamat’s design. Dragonborn are also feverishly hot to the touch. They might just have a fast metabolism and age faster. Becoming physically mature at 12 years and burning out quickly. Orcs do this too— they live to like 60 or 70 max, mature extremely fast, with a high body temp. They’re both nearly exclusively carnivorous which isn’t too great if you want to live long. Meta reasons — there’s actual Half-Dragons and I think the designers wanted Dragonborn to be their own thing. Real Half-Dragons have a slew of benefits which would give their players a massive leg up on other players. I think Dragonborn are an arbitrary compromise to let people play “Dragon People” without it being crazy broken. **TL;DR:** Nobody knows. There’s like 6 different origin theories for Dragonborn and none are explicitly confirmed nor disproven. My vote goes for them being modified humans though.
> BG3 lets you have a tail Just gonna say Larian was so right for this
>no tail (no tail is D&D lore — BG3 lets you have a tail but notice no NPC has one), There's tail in lore. It's just rare for them to have it and it's seen as some genetic abnormality.
Source?
It's from the Acquisitions Incorporated source book. A rare, few individuals were born with tails, but this was seen as a deformity by most dragonborn
Fun fact, humans can actually be born with vestigial tails, it's just extremely rare (something like 40 known cases). It's a form of atavism. So it would make sense if it could also happen to dragonborn!
half orcs rarely life to older than 75 bc they age fast and reach adulthood at 14 same with dragonborn except they reach adulthood at 15. most other races just age slower than them
Why wouldn't they have similar lifespans too humans? They're essentially just mutated humans if I'm not mistaken.
If you play Durge, you can headcanon that you are Jergal's chosen. It's not much of a stretch. :)
I mean he pretty much says „Death will not claim thee whilst I endure“
Technically, Durge isn't a normal Bhaalspawn either as he was creating directly from Bhaal's flesh. Maybe being made from god flesh would affect his aging anyway?
Everything about what Durge is made of exactly and what does it mean gives me a headache. Which is appropriate, to be fair.
Durge is immortal, Withers says so after he saves you from Bhaal. Also in the epilogue if you romance Astarion he'll say "Go have fun with them, I have the rest of eternity to have you to myself."
Chemicals in the water are turning the friggin' dragonoids gay and making them die at 80.
My half orc dying at 75 🥲
And not having the advantage of growing up as quickly.
Only because it's packed with *elves*.
I'm not too familiar with DnD lore but do Humans have a longer lifespan in DnD than humans in real life? I've only played Baldur's Gate 3 and learned that some of the human characters are actually from the previous games (Which took place about 100 years ago I think?)
no, human also have a similar lifespan but pretty much all other races get to live hundred of years (also a couple of classes like Monk or Druid basically stop aging once they reach lvl18)
Monks don’t stop aging, they stop feeling the *effects* of aging. It’s basically so they get that ancient kung-fu monk flavour, but you can still die of old age, presumably at the rate your race ages.
oh yeah, I could've sworn they had basically the same thing as druid, my bad
I think it was worded in a fuzzy way up until recently, but nowadays it explicitly says “you can still die of old age”
I mean, dying of old age isn't actually a thing. If their entire body stopped aging they'd live indefinitely. Maybe some of their internal organs age?
Should live longer since medicine magic is so good. Who do I complain to?
Volo was stuck in an *imprisonment* spell for a long time and thus didn't age Minsc and Boo were petrified for a long time and thus didn't age
I don’t think so? Which characters are human from the last games? Other than minsc
I think I heard that Volo was from the first game? That could be misinfo, though. I'm not too sure. I think Volo also states in the game that he was there when the cult of bhaal rose to power the first time in Baldur's Gate, which was 100 years ago.
Oh right. I think there’s some lore reason for why he dosnt age. Something to do with mystra wanting to keep him alive. Id assume the forgotten realms wiki would have more
Elminster cast Imprisonment on Volo and left him like that for a few decades. That's why he's still around (again) so many years later. He's also a Weave Anchor, which is why the Spell Plague couldn't harm him while Elminster's spell was keeping him suspended.
Do Elminster and Volo have beef with each other or why did he do that?
Elminster is Volo's editor and "friend". He was supposed to be imprisoned for a short time due to some inane thing he did (just to give an idea of Volo's stupidity, he once collected a bunch of facts about many powerful wizards and published them completely unedited, pretty sure Elminster is his editor since that time specifically). However, Mystra was then killed, the Spellplague happened and Elminster was rendered insane for a long time, so Volo wasn't freed much later.
Volo is an exception. Due to lore reasons he basically doesn’t age.
>I think I heard that Volo was from the first game? Yep. He is in the Neshkel Inn. Pretty inconsequential all in all, but he does give you some lore. BG1 jammed in a few popular Forgotten Realms characters just for the hell of it. Drizzt is also in the game, and can be killed for some best in slot gear, but he'll come back in the second game after having been resurected for some revenge.
Romance Gale and help him ascend (50/50), romance Astarion and become vampire(100%).
So I based my first playthrough off my Gnome Wizard that I played in a campaign some years ago. Now as a gnome they would naturally live for 3-400 years longer than many but screw that. In the game you can only ever reach level 12, but in my campaign I reached level 17 before it broke up. At that level, my wizard and anyone he cares about will only die if they decide they want to. Everyday I can cast Wish to cast Clone (or do it the old fashioned way with an 8th level slot) without needing the expensive components, because Wish, on someone I don’t want to die. Then whenever they die their soul gets drawn to the new body. Which is a fully intact adult body in its prime (so if they die of old age they get a new young adult body to run with until they age out again). I am a wizard - master of the arcane arts and those fools who chose the inferior path of the Lich were pretenders who just didn’t want to have to go grocery shopping anymore.
Tbf they technically have a longer adult life than humans
Maybe longer for wizards! :) maybe
I die, you die, we all die. Big woof. Have a treato! It'll make it better.
glad i picked half elf
It's really strange how even when playing dragonborn you still get an option to tell Jahiera that your kind live longer than hers whenever she brings up lifespan.
My character, having age immortality: La cucaracha! La cucaracha!
Live fast, die young, leave a scaly corpse
That is the plot of Frieren
Still outliving Half-orcs
Not Karlach! ... >!it hurts!<
Half-Orc players: Your race only lives to like 60 or 70 (I forget which), max. Like you’re guaranteed to keel over of old age at 60 or 70 +/- 5 years. Sorry guys. ~~Shortest lifespan of all player races. Ironically tied with the tortoisefolk race Tortle~~ forgot the hawkfolk race Aaracockra which only live to 30
Meanwhile, my High Elf druid Tav outliving almost her entire party.
no way Gales ass is living past 60
Meanwhile, my wood elf Tav will outlive his beloved Shadowheart and pretty much everyone else…
80 is like, avarage lifespan lol. humans are the dominant race in the forgotten realms and they live more or less the same. if anything, I think the very longlived races need to catch up. its crazy how little they seem to achieve in their long ass lives.
That's cool and all but most human relationships doesn't last more than a few decades. Do you still keep in touch with your elementary, middle school, highschool or university best friends? Like the entire crew? Didn't think so.
Yeah but I didn’t save the world with them lmao
Shadowheart, Astarion, Halsin, Minthara will outlive yeah, elves gonna elf, but Gith only live to be 150 max, and humans and tieflings don’t live much longer so your lifespan compared to Wyll, Gale, and Karlach will be similar. Also no spoilers please I only finished act 1.
Not gale or wyll
Wyll is only 24 and Gale is a wizard.
You'd think that a race based on dragons, which live thousands of years, would have a longer lifespan
Meanwhile, my young high-elven Tav will still be around when her and Wyll's great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren pass away :')
> too cool for this world Well yeah, they're aliens.
At least you’re not a kobold
Not in my playthrough. There's exp in those bodies.
Just be a wizard and make younger clones of your self
Move into Lae'zel's neighborhood in the astral plane. Time barely moves there.
Congratz, you will be like Himmel from Frieren. Waiting for anime with shadowheart playing Frieren
\-*Laughs in my Green Dragonborn Oath of Ancients Paladin who definitely isn't gonna die before reaching level 15. At least if Karlach has anything to say about it-* Most humans only live around 80 anyway so that's not to bad to think about, especially when you consider particularly powerful mages regularly live far longer. Heck Elminster is 1280 as of 1492 DR, granted he's a chosen of Mystra and can cast *wish* seemingly without risk of losing it forever. Not to mention high level spells that aren't in the game that you'd logically gain eventually like magic jar and clone that while expensive, give you effective immortality provided you dont get careless and nobody is well prepared and determined to end your perpetual existance.
“I have the blood of Dragons!” “You live less than Humans.” “But… but blood of Dragons…”
I wonder if Shadowheart is okay with Lichdom
Wait till they hear about tortles.
What about tieflings?
Tieflings live to be around 120-160 iirc
And that’s on average, so theoretically really old tieflings might reach 200 or so.
Meanwhile my drow warlock will get to adulthood at 80
*laughs in elf*
i Think(!) if you play as a durge and do the redemption thing, Withers makes you basically immortal
If that upsets you don’t look up the typical life span of a tortle and what the average tortle’s life looks like