Elves should *not* be balanced with humans in 5e and the justification that they just “develop more

slowly because they’re less motivated due to living for so long” makes no sense narratively when
they are given the same narrative grandeur of Tolkien’s elves with ageless wisdom, magic and craft
far surpassing the ken of any other mortal. It makes even less sense when you start playing and all
level up simultaneously.

It’s true that some people develop their skills at a faster/slower pace than others for a number of
reasons, and I could accept elves developing about half as quickly on account of the luxury of long
life, baring in mind also that elves don’t sleep and in the lesser time they spend in trance, they can
learn from their ancestors!

Elves reach adult hood at 100, so they age about 5x slower than humans. If you mean to tell me that
a 300 year old elf has acquired no more knowledge, no more skills, no more experience or anything
else of use than a 60 year old human – then elves of your setting could never have survived early
history or developed the lofty grandeur they are given in the setting.

It could happen as an edge case. Sometimes people go through life and absolutely refuse to learn
from their mistakes or make any effort to improve themselves. But it cannot be the norm if you also
want super-powerful Tolkien elves. Even if you were a child for 60 years and a civilian for the other
140 and just became an adventurer – civilians learn things! You should have skills, intelligence,
wisdom and charisma that reflect 140 years of experience.

You have two choices. One is that elves in your setting are slovenly and inept. They are little to no
more advanced than people. They are innocent creatures of a forgone era now dying because
everything else is so much more efficient than they are. Elven PCs who level up with the party are
the remarkable exception doing everything they can just to keep up.

The other option is to embrace the imbalance and answer for it. If you’ve got a party of 20 year old
humans, all level 1, then for an elven PC to be balanced with them – you’ll be playing a tweenager
of perhaps 65 years old. To be older, there should be a damn good reason why you still aren’t better.
Very intense sheltering or imprisonment, stolen memories, stolen powers, etc. By the same token,
elves touching on 600+ should live up to the narrative hype. *Very* high level adventurers with
incredible repertoires of stats and skills that reflect their experience. Also, if you’re a 300 year old
elf and your entire back story is “I milled about with a single tribe being a hippie in the forest my
entire life. Doing nothing. Nothing important happened ever.” No you’re not.