Take it even farther, not all species get hammered on the same chemicals. “Barkeep, a glass of your finest room-temperature-aged milk, please!”
A rule book for all the different 'coming of age' ceremonies and that the proof of those are.
"Dar'grock the destroyer, soooooo you should have... A....oh! The skull of a foe slain in 1 on 1 combat"
Why you need see Dar'grock's Foeskull? Dar'grock forget Foeskull today, but look at Dar'grock face, he have full beard so Dar'grock clearly come of age already....
Please, Dar'grock will bring Foeskull next time!
I took a sacred oath, sir! I can't serve you Mr 40 year old Drow or I become an oathbreaker. Sorry, not sorry.
I know a lot of people homebrew this to be different in their games and that's fine, but just to clarify to anyone curious, if we're talking D&D 5e, elves mature at the same rate as humans, and the reason they only consider themselves adults at 100 is purely cultural.
How does sarcasm break my oath? As a lawful paladin I don't care if they're mad about being blocked from doing something illegal.
Now I'm just imagining the vegan paladin police "oh yea"-ing through the tavern wall and giving you paladin oath tickets.
"What do you stealing that healing potion is against my oath? No one caught me!"
I’m confused. In what way does sarcasm break paladin oaths? Not even devotion paladins would break their oaths via sarcasm. Here are the tenets of a devotion paladin:
Tenets of Devotion
Though the exact words and strictures of the Oath of Devotion vary, paladins of this oath share these tenets.
Honesty. Don't lie or cheat. Let your word be your promise.
Courage. Never fear to act, though caution is wise.
Compassion. Aid others, protect the weak, and punish those who threaten them. Show mercy to your foes, but temper it with wisdom.
Honor. Treat others with fairness, and let your honorable deeds be an example to them. Do as much good as possible while causing the least amount of harm.
Duty. Be responsible for your actions and their consequences, protect those entrusted to your care, and obey those who have just authority over you.
As you can see sarcasm isn’t mentioned.
Kelek's breath, I was mostly being facetious!
In all honestly, I don't believe it would be, but I'm sure it's a trait viewed as less than appropriate as it could be viewed as rubbing against the ideals of honor and honesty.
so it says here cyborg elvish catboomer
hmm...
I can only offer a dragon's vegan tonic with 2 Karmotrine or a pearl of shapeshifting water
if you aren't satisfied with our current selection please come back in 2 cycles, I'll make sure my successor will be able to better serve you with an expanded menu
Ah yes "optional" karmotrine. Which to me means fill the rest of the drink with it.
I feel like it would be the same as countries outside the US: If you can reach over the bar to order, you're allowed to drink.
So it must really suck to be a gnome or halfling.
Ah, yes, "outside the US", where there are no laws...
Funnily, despite what OP suggests, it's if anything MORE difficult to get alcohol outside the states, especially for teens.
Everywhere I've personally been outside the US either didn't have or at least didn't enforce any age for purchasing alcohol.
For reference, those countries were Ireland, Germany, Mexico, France and Canada.
I think all of those have alcohol laws. Personal experience with some of those it is enforced too.
I live in the UK and you still get ID checks for many places. It's not as lax as you make out, although it definitely depends on the specific establishment you are talking about.
Legal drinking ages are such a modern invention though. It's kind of funny but a weird fit for sure.
That’s not even what happens here though. Just because you can drink in Canada at 18 doesn’t mean I can go to the States, you’ve gotta be 21.
Of course, the values vary depending on which pub guild is controlling this particular pub.
Different species may have different ages of brain maturity at which point alcohol won't pose as much of a risk of stunting their mental development. Elves for example settle into adulthood at around 100 years of age.
So a responsible legislature would codify in its laws what the minimum drinking age is for each species based on science's best understanding of their physiology.
Dragons don’t really ever stop growing, although if there’s one in your bar you have much bigger problems.
Not really a good analogy, because the age at which you can drink is based on where you are, not in where you were born etc. An American 18 year old could go to Canada or well pretty much anywhere else in the world and they can get as drunk as they like.
age is based on where you are, not in where you were born
Age is based on when you were born, not where you were born, unless if you were born orbiting black hole /j
There's a reason why university students in Ontario like to go to Montreal to party, after all.
This concept goes so well in a spelljammer like setting. Imagine the Laughing Beholder with large Luigi doing this. "Okay, what sphere are you from again? Okay, next I need your planet, then your species, then your age."
EDIT:
Noncombat or low combat adventure idea that just came to me based on this. A group of grifters has conned Large Luigi or your version of this bar owner by posing as an interplanetary or interplanes alcohol enforcement agency. They pulled a fake sting and made off with something precious of the innkeepers as a fine. The party either hears this from the barkeep when they order or from the other patrons who are fed-up with the arcane ID system and long waits on drinks. Only recovering the fine or capturing the grifters can the situation be set right.
Not fantasy, but in the SciFi book the Draco Tavern is about the only alien bar on earth wherein the owner has to be careful not to feed his guests any poison that would be delicacies on Earth.
So we are ignoring jurisdiction? ... Well... even if we ignore the possibility of an infinite universe, tracking hundreds of thousands of legal systems and species biology (what is intoxicating to whom, the cognitive self-development thresholds, how much of a substance one may serve to whom) and being able authenticate/verify an ID (we have photo-ids, but maybe others are different)... like a slime-species that identifies each other by smell... or taste... I'm confident that for any interesting set size, this would actually be an unsolvable problem.
A universal biometric verifier checking against approved ID cards could be interesting in a setting like that
