Elven Age Tables in the DMG

Beyondthebreach · Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 3:05 pm Post subject: Elven Age Tables in the DMG

I just received a stack of semi-old Dragon Mags and was reading "The Elven Point of View" in issue #60.

Anyway, in the Sage Advice column, there is a Question:

Why are elven thieves always children?

The Answer provided is:

Anyone who has a relatively recent edition of the Dungeon Masters Guide will probably think this question doesn't make sense. The latest edition of the DMG lists 100 +5d6 as the starting age for player-character elven thieves (page 12). This puts them into the "yong adult" range according to the Age Categories chart (page 13) for high elves. However, it wasn't always so. Earlier editions of the DMG gave 50+5d6 as the starting age, which would indeed mean that all elven thieves would start their adventuring lives as "adolescents" of 55 to 80 years old. Fortunately, this inaccuracy was spotted and corrected in later editions . . .

Interesting . . . when did this change take effect? Between which printings was it corrected? Unfortunately, I do not have any older DMGs here to research this myself . . .
_________________
"Ah, Blackadder. Started talking to yourself, I see."

"Yes . . . it's the only way I can be assured of intelligent conversation."

Mars · Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 3:42 pm Post subject:

Since I have my DMGs handy here, I'll take a look. The change has not been made in the DMGs with the Wizard logo and TSR address on spine but it has been made with Wizard logo and ISBN on spine.

The Collector's Trove · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 4:21 am Post subject:

Howdy,

Well, well, well...

March of 1982 or earlier given the Sage Advice answer.

Looking here, the first I see the change to is in the DMG just before the Face logo (the 8th printing or so).

Futures Bright,

Paul

Chromatic-Knight · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 2:54 pm Post subject:

The change is made in the 7th printing.

Neat little piece of information - thanks.

Mars · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 3:38 pm Post subject:

The change is made in the 4th printing and maybe even the 3rd but not the 2nd. The Acaeum printing info gets very cumbersome in the 3rd alpha beta gamma so I'm not sure if there are actual textual changes in these or just production bits.