Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

Elves in Forgotten Realms are supposedly as tall as the average human, and though far more slender, still would be heavier than they're currently portrayed. The height-weight tables for Sun and Moon Elves for instance, is as follows, from Races of Faerun: For Wood and Wild Elves it is as follows: The Drow are the shortest and most slender of the Elves, but they'd still not fall into the realm of the midgets they currently are. By these tables it should be as likely to get a 6'5" Elf as it is to get a 5" Elf. While it isn't a big deal by any means, it would be nice to be accurate, and for future Elves to be born of the proper height.

90lbs. multiplied by 2d4? That's up to an 8x modifier, making them possibly 720 lbs? The average, at four, would be 360 lbs? Maybe I don't quite understand the way that table works, but that's a little crazy.

The way it works is this... your base height is 4'10" for an Elven male. You roll 2d10, say you get a 7. You then take that 7 and multiply it by 2d4 weight multiplier, say you get a 5 there. So that is 35. The 35 is what you add to your weight. The reason this happens is so that people are more height/weight proportionate.

With two completely independent values being used for height and weight, you could get a 6'5" Elf who only weighed 92 lbs, which would be pretty strange. Hence to achieve the maximum weight for an Elf, you'd first need to achieve the maximum height, then roll an 8 in the weight multiplier, you'd end up with an Elf who weighs 250 lbs max, not that odd for someone who is 6'5" tall, but pretty bulky for an Elf.

What edition are you looking at for the heights and weights? The ones which we use on FK may well be 2nd edition and pre-date those.

I compared some characters with my old AD&D character generator and they seem to match.

If this helps any, here is a picture out of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (I think it's 3.0 but could be 3.5), showing all the different elves next to a human:

This information is from the 3.5 version of the Forgotten Realms-specific book Races of Faerun. In standard D&D cosmology (i.e. the Player's Handbook, DMG, Monstrous Manual, etc), Elves are shorter than humans. In Forgotten Realms, Elves have, so far as I know, always been about the same height as humans, as these Elves tend to be a lot more Tolkien-influenced, especially the Sun Elves who are pretty much as close as one could get to Tolkien's Elves as possible without infringing copyrights.

You realise that this still doesn't change the fact that both your drowies are midgets, right?