I honestly do not understand why an aasmir requires 40 years to become an adult. If an aasmir is normally sired by humans, and assuming that the parents are 20 when they have their aasmir child, then they will 60, that means the "average" human would only have 4 years left in their life... this just doesnt make sense to me.
Adulthood by Aasimar standards, not human.
That's not 40 years to reach physical maturity, it's 40 years to reach accepted mental maturity for such a long-lived race.
Put simply, Aasimar don't get recognized as an adult by other Aasimar until age 40, much as no matter how mature you might be (or THINK you might be) at 16, 18 is the age of majority for humans IRL.
I disagree with Rynjin, if that was simply a matter of acceptance from other Aasimar, and humans would consider them adults 20-25 years earlier, then there would be options for Aasimar children to begin their training in the chosen profession way earlier.
Because let's face it. There aren't many Aasimar. There certainly isn't a culture of them around. Probably a young Aasimar will not even meet another of it's kind for a very long time. It really doesn't matter when "Aasimar society" thinks they're adults, because there's no such thing as an Aasimar society.
No, they're just growing up slower, much like half-elves, but even more extreme.
In fact, I just see that Aasimar actually take 60 years to reach adulthood, not simply 40, so its even more extreme.
Yes, parents that have an Aasimar child will have to be there for it for most of it's life, and it's even possible that they die before the child really reaches adulthood. Maybe they then get raised by their own siblings who are well into their 40s from some point on.
Another possibility is that parents eventually give their Aasimar child into the care of a church who then raises them. Or, yes maybe other Aasimar. I know that contradicts what I said earlier, but if the church seeks them out for that purpose it's not a random chance meeting.
Weird? Sure it is. Little bit hard to explain? I agree. But shouldn't they, after 40 years have at least learned to care for themselves? Who knows. Maybe. But their brain is still not evolved like a 40 year olds brain, more like a 10 year old. The same with their body.
There are 10 year old humans that survive on their own obviously, so possible? Yup. Not necessarily the "natural" thing however.
Also keep in mind that Aasimar are rarely born Aasimar, their heritage awakens later in life a lot of the time.
Edit: As it turns out, that's not explicitly stated on the Aasimar page unlike the Tiefling one. Still, it follows logically that if one does the other can too.
And I've always thought that "it actually does take them that long to mature" thing was silly. It's similar to the "retarded elf babies" form of logic where they're in diapers for the first 80 years of their life.
So that means an Aasmir raised in a human community would not mature as quickly as those around him/her. To me that would make an aasmir far more of a social outcast, at least by their peers, because of they act like children longer.
This is how I am seeing it right now. Aasmir tend to not look that much differently then their parent race, so that would mean for the first 20 to 40 years of their life, they would be treated like they were mentally handicapped.
I just cant get behind this age thing. If you look at the part human children of gods from past mythologies, they often had more wisdom then the human elders, and were usually stronger then multiple grown men.
Sorry I didnt post this in the first post, I just handn't thought about this as much as I could have.
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Elves aren't just "humans with pointy ears", they're a completely different species. Aasimar are also not simply "humans with glowing hair" or some such.
Just because they take 8 times as long to mature to complete adulthood does not mean that all the phases in their lives are equally prolonged. They might not even have some of the human phases, or have entirely new phases. Maybe a second puberty. Who knows.
I think an elf maybe would be for 3-5 years in diapers. Or who knows maybe they're potty trained fresh out of the womb?
But after that they slow down the older they get and it takes them more and more time.
Does that make them outcasts (same for Aasimar)? Heck yeah.
Look at the Forlorn elves and how "real elves" view them. Those poor bastards went through 2 or 3 generations of "parents", saw them grow old and die, and at the end are probably raised by the grandchildren of their own childhood friends (who also long ago died).
Does that leave them mentally messed up? You bet it does.
It's not quite as extreme with Aasimar children I would believe, but similar.
So all this said, let me add: Some of this seems stupid, I agree, but it's in my opinion the least stupid way to explain the given ages.
I'm sorry but "The elf is physically matured around the same time as a human and then just sits on his ass for 90 years, doing NOTHING at all. And more importantly. EVERY SINGLE ONE of them does that", is just equally retarded, if not more so.
It works fine in an elven society. But it breaks down when an elf would be raised outside of it. And that is where it already stops working for Aasimar, since there's no such thing as Aasimar countries/societies.
Elves are considered to be born to Elves, so it could be a social thing. Aasimar are considered to be born to humans. So the default ages would reflect those Aasimar, not the rare ones that get born to two Aasimar parents.
However nothing stops you from changing this in your own game.
Maybe the elves in your world are actually matured with 20-30 years, and then spend the next 80-90 years contemplating the choices ahead of them. Which is normal in elven society so no one thinks them slackers and losers. But if said elf was to be raised in human lands, he'd be tossed into a "normal life" far earlier. So a 30 year old Forlorn Elf adventurer? Sure why not.
Maybe Aasimar are similar in your world. Maybe most of them just wander around trying to find their place, till they finally decide what to do with their life? A 17 year old Aasimar who just discovered her heritage, and so far thought she's just a normal human? Go ahead.
Or of course maybe Elves and Aasimar work differently, and what works for the one might not work for the other.
They don't do nothing. They're being trained and taking their time to become "attuned with nature" or whatever it is elves do that make them adapt to their surroundings.
Maybe it's just that I'm used to reading stuff in the Forgotten realms setting (where that IS how elves work, they mature at a normal rate and then spend a while learning how to do things CORRECTLY), but it really is just silly to have elf children stay that way for multiple human generations.
And I'm not changing anything for my home game, there's nothing in the text that explicitly states "all long lived race' life cycles are extended too", unless you can find me where it says that in the race' descriptions.
Elves taking forever, I understand, they are not humans, and are not related to humans. They are and always have been fey, or closely related to the fey world, one that is older, and totally alien to us.
I do kind of like some of the roleplaying that could come from being so much older, and likely would be some form of pariah until they prove otherwise.
Basically, I dont think the flavor of the race matches with age guideline given, and I would like to know if anyone knows were the idea of them taking so long to mature came from.
My Paizo search-fu isn't that strong, but I understand that (according to James Jacobs) both Aasimar and Tieflings are going to be ret-conned back to Human age categories. Otherwise an important plot-point in RotRL would be non-existent.
Maybe the shortened life-span (which matches that of Humans) is due to the mortal frames being unable to sustain the celestial/fiendish energies of their ancestry. I don't know what the ruling is for the ages of half-Celestials/-Fiends, but presumably they match the other half's race. (In this case, there is a stronger connection to the celestial/fiendish energies, one which could sustain the mortal frame for longer if it was normal for that frame?)
Also, it was implied in at least one of the "Blood of ..." books on Aasimar and Tieflings that members of those races could be descended from any humanoid race, not just Humans.
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@Bellona
The strange and anomalous ways in which a tiefling’s taint influences his growth puts massive stress on his growing body, and even those tieflings spawned from dwarves and elves often have only human-length lifespans, with most meeting violent ends long before their allotted time is up.
Aasimars often live slightly longer than other members of their base race, yet this difference seems much greater
because their beauty tends to last as they age, giving them the outward appearance of aging more slowly. Once an aasimar reaches adulthood, she retains her youthful glow for decades, and even very old aasimars appear graceful and vital, with a few fine lines instead of deep wrinkles and elegant silver or white hair that rarely thins or goes bald.
I think the key is James Jacobs wants their lifespans shorter and that reflects in the Golarion Fluff text, will the (setting neutral) APG gives them longer ages.
Elves taking forever, I understand, they are not humans, and are not related to humans. They are and always have been fey, or closely related to the fey world, one that is older, and totally alien to us.
No they aren't. They're quite likely to be aliens from another planet in the same system as Golarion.
I do have a question on elfs and their starting ages. If it takes an elf 80+ years to become adults. It would take one war to kill of the race, lets say 25% of the elfs die in the war, ant it took them 80 years to replace the fallen elfs, and the humans it takes 17 years, the humans could easly kill off the elfs, so its 5 humans to a elf to get to adulthood. So if they kill one elf a generasion the elfs would never recover and die out. How do they fight orcs, and goblins? Yes 1 elf is as good as 10-15 goblens but if those goblins kill that elf they will win the war with them.
Great question. Perhaps it can be explained by post-war baby booms, suplemented by an inrush of half-elven babies.
I do have a question on elfs and their starting ages. If it takes an elf 80+ years to become adults. It would take one war to kill of the race, lets say 25% of the elfs die in the war, ant it took them 80 years to replace the fallen elfs, and the humans it takes 17 years, the humans could easly kill off the elfs, so its 5 humans to a elf to get to adulthood. So if they kill one elf a generasion the elfs would never recover and die out. How do they fight orcs, and goblins? Yes 1 elf is as good as 10-15 goblens but if those goblins kill that elf they will win the war with them.
I believe this is why Humans are the dominate race in Golarion, becasue while they aren't as long lived they also reproduce much more quickly. The Goloinoid and Orc races have even shorter live spans and would probably reproduce even more quickly, but their penchant for violence would also seem to get them killed at an even greater rate.
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The aasimar and tiefling ages are incorrect in Advanced Race Guide.
Aasimars and tieflings alike age pretty much exactly the same rate as humans. We'll be incorporating that change into the book's errata eventually.
(We've got 2 adventure paths that more or less set this precedent years ago—Both Rise of the Runelords and Council of Thieves have tiefling characters who, if they DON'T age at the same rate of humans, suddenly don't function as characters in those Adventure Paths.)
The aasimar and tiefling ages are incorrect in Advanced Race Guide.
Aasimars and tieflings alike age pretty much exactly the same rate as humans. We'll be incorporating that change into the book's errata eventually.
** spoiler omitted **
Hmm. I have a character with an Aasimar sibling who's back story this ruling helps, and another Aasimar character who's back story this ruling hurts.
I guess I can ask the GM on the second character to rule that my Aasimar character has some sort of long lifespan celestial heritage trait or something. Either that or completely re-write her back story... She'd previously been a bit like a Forlorn elf.
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I'd love to see a longevity trait or feat added though, James. The 'outlive all my friends' trope is a favourite of mine, and I hate to see it limited to half elves and Forlorn.
I kind of prefer that trope to be limited to elves and gnomes, honestly, because having PC races that live that long causes a LOT of weird logic problems in a lot of different storylines.
For example... with elves reaching adulthood at 110 years of age, and with some PC elves not starting until as late as 170 years old, that means there's likely to be PC elves who were alive before the Age of Lost Omens began, which is a little awkward.
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The aasimar and tiefling ages are incorrect in Advanced Race Guide.
Aasimars and tieflings alike age pretty much exactly the same rate as humans. We'll be incorporating that change into the book's errata eventually.
** spoiler omitted **
Hmm. I have a character with an Aasimar sibling who's back story this ruling helps, and another Aasimar character who's back story this ruling hurts.
I guess I can ask the GM on the second character to rule that my Aasimar character has some sort of long lifespan celestial heritage trait or something. Either that or completely re-write her back story... She'd previously been a bit like a Forlorn elf.
It's not home campaigns I'm worried about, thoguh. It's making our core rulebooks match our core campaign setting.
To me, saying "Aasimars become adults at 60" in a core rulebook when we've already said 5 years before that that "this aasimar became an adult at 18 (more or less)" is as bad as saying something like "fighters can cast cleric spells" and then not having any fighters in anything we ever publish for Golarion support that.
It's a plain and fundamental rules error, in other words, that simply needs to be fixed, so that our own publications don't contradict each other.
We can't control or customize the rulebooks to be 100% accurate for any one home campaign, but we can and should do so for OUR campaign.
I do have a question on elfs and their starting ages. If it takes an elf 80+ years to become adults. It would take one war to kill of the race, lets say 25% of the elfs die in the war, ant it took them 80 years to replace the fallen elfs, and the humans it takes 17 years, the humans could easly kill off the elfs, so its 5 humans to a elf to get to adulthood. So if they kill one elf a generasion the elfs would never recover and die out. How do they fight orcs, and goblins? Yes 1 elf is as good as 10-15 goblens but if those goblins kill that elf they will win the war with them.
Obviously, elves and other long-lived races need to be very picky about what wars they get involved in, for the reason that you cite. Either they don't do anywhere near as much fighting as humans do, or they are (slowly or quickly, depending on how often they go to war) dying out. I would personally go with the approach that they are less violent than humans, just as humans are less violent (and longer lived) than orcs.
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Elves taking forever, I understand, they are not humans, and are not related to humans. They are and always have been fey, or closely related to the fey world, one that is older, and totally alien to us.No they aren't. They're quite likely to be aliens from another planet in the same system as Golarion.
Not just quite likely, they are, plain and simple. The original Golarion-setting elves came from Castrovel via various gates and portals.
Fey heritage in Golarion among PC races is pretty much the gnomes' schtick.
@James
Would this errata be applied to the other plane-touched races (oreads, sylphs, ifrits, and undines) as well? They share the same age tables as aasimar.
The aasimar and tiefling ages are incorrect in Advanced Race Guide.
Aasimars and tieflings alike age pretty much exactly the same rate as humans. We'll be incorporating that change into the book's errata eventually.
** spoiler omitted **
I privately figured something like this, thanks for the confirmation. I also have the idea that a lot of tieflings and aasimar don't develop their more, ahem, unique personal traits until they hit puberty.
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@James
Would this errata be applied to the other plane-touched races (oreads, sylphs, ifrits, and undines) as well? They share the same age tables as aasimar.
I'd like to do so, yeah, but since we've not published contradictory age ranges for those four races in other products as we have for aasimars and tieflings it's not a lock.
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What I'd really like to see is their ages more normalized with humans' up until adulthood, then the capability to age more like they do now. It'd keep in line with RotRL and CoT, but also reflect that immortality you see in outsiders.
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Aasimar should live longer than humans, however not as long as elves, dwarves, etc. An Aasimar would grow to adolescence in the same timeframe as their non-celestial lineage and then perhaps age at 75-85% of the normal lineage. I too remember something about some Aasimar being born of other core races; dwarven aasimars, elven aasimars, orc aasimars, etc. I know it complicates things but I think it is certainly a possibility that should be explored. I smell Aasimar supplement... $$$ Personally I would love to play a celestially touched dwarf.
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What's an Aasmir?
I'd love to see a longevity trait or feat added though, James. The 'outlive all my friends' trope is a favourite of mine, and I hate to see it limited to half elves and Forlorn.I kind of prefer that trope to be limited to elves and gnomes, honestly, because having PC races that live that long causes a LOT of weird logic problems in a lot of different storylines.
For example... with elves reaching adulthood at 110 years of age, and with some PC elves not starting until as late as 170 years old, that means there's likely to be PC elves who were alive before the Age of Lost Omens began, which is a little awkward.
Could you then also make the change for elves too ??
They could become adult at the same age as hal-elves and stay adult until 170 years old. That would really make them more interesting than the forever teenager that they are now.
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I'd love to see a longevity trait or feat added though, James. The 'outlive all my friends' trope is a favourite of mine, and I hate to see it limited to half elves and Forlorn.I kind of prefer that trope to be limited to elves and gnomes, honestly, because having PC races that live that long causes a LOT of weird logic problems in a lot of different storylines.
For example... with elves reaching adulthood at 110 years of age, and with some PC elves not starting until as late as 170 years old, that means there's likely to be PC elves who were alive before the Age of Lost Omens began, which is a little awkward.
I'm actually interested in this as I'm writing a story from a Sylph who goes out adventuring after she buries her parents... who died of old age. Thus I'm curious as to the biological aspect of these part-human races and if they literally age at one quarter of humans... or if they started growing as normal and then at around the "age" of eight or ten just stop and remain like that for a while, slowly and gradually growing older.
It also creates a certain tragic element to these races. I mean, imagine how they're treated by their peers? The children they grew up with... who start calling them "changelings" (as in being switched by faeries in the crib) or "witches" and parents who may end up moving someplace remote to try and raise their child in safety.
You also have the question of just how much of maturity is due to biology. Would a 60-year-old person who biologically just turned 16 behave like a teenager? (Well, Sylphs might! Their archetypes seem to fit well for that.) And would someone raised in isolation for so many years end up not knowing much about the world?
As for being born before the Age of Lost Omens began? If they were children, why would it matter? Their parents might feel lost and all that, but they wouldn't know what it means. Heck, unless you buy the Paizo books to learn more of the world itself, the PLAYER might not know anything about it! ;) (Or in my case, the GM.)
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Could you then also make the change for elves too ??
They could become adult at the same age as hal-elves and stay adult until 170 years old. That would really make them more interesting than the forever teenager that they are now.
Nope. The reason we're making this change for tieflings and aasimars is because we have, hard-coded into Golarion in two Adventure Paths, plot elements that more or less REQUIRE tieflings and aasimars to age as if they were humans. The exact opposite exists for elves—we've got even MORE hard-coded elves with their long lives affecting adventure paths and campaign material.
It's not an idle change, in other words. It's an error we're fixing to match what we've been saying for years about tieflings and aasimars.
Changing elven life spans would be at this point committing the exact same type of error that started this thread up in the first place. We won't be doing this.
Why not just have them age like half-elves then? It gives them a few extra years, as would make sense for their "other" ancestry, but would also let them mature fairly quickly. And in the case of a certain young "confused" aasimar, she got started in certain practices earlier than others of her kind. ;)
Still curious about the childhood of slower-aging species and part-humans... especially with the Sylphs and their ilk.
BTW, this also works in reverse. One of my players in the Runelords campaign is playing a half-orc... where his orcish mother married a human out of love. But given that orcs are adults at 10... she's a grey-haired old orcish woman now. Still quite the terror in some ways, but you've a young half-orcish man getting ready to go adventuring... but seeing that his mom is this grey-haired old woman. But human mothers aren't.
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Why not just have them age like half-elves then? It gives them a few extra years, as would make sense for their "other" ancestry, but would also let them mature fairly quickly. And in the case of a certain young "confused" aasimar, she got started in certain practices earlier than others of her kind. ;)
Still curious about the childhood of slower-aging species and part-humans... especially with the Sylphs and their ilk.
BTW, this also works in reverse. One of my players in the Runelords campaign is playing a half-orc... where his orcish mother married a human out of love. But given that orcs are adults at 10... she's a grey-haired old orcish woman now. Still quite the terror in some ways, but you've a young half-orcish man getting ready to go adventuring... but seeing that his mom is this grey-haired old woman. But human mothers aren't.
Because, again, we've already established for major NPCs that they age like humans.
And what about giving these half-mortal races a point in their life when they start to age slowly and "attune" with the table as it is now?
I mean, in general they would grow old the same as humans, but there's could also be one point in their life when they suddendly start aging slowly. Some could have this change at an advanced age, some a little after maturity, some at birth... some even earlier (1-2 years of pregnancy). Some may even die of old age before "activating" their long-lived heritage.
They have the blood of the most alien creature you can think of (not another solar system, not another galaxy, but entirely another not related plane where even laws of physics are different), giving them different "aging rules" from other mortal creatures from would be pretty characterizing.
P.S. i don't know which major NPC James is talking about, so i don't know how this may contraddict established traits for those characters...
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I expressed no aesthetic preference in that quote. I provided no reasons for my preference. If you would like a logical reason I will give one.
The Aasimar is derived from Celestial Blood somewhere in their lineage. Most players and GMs infer that the celestial in question is angelic. To the best of my knowledge Angels are immortal. In every other core 1/2 race (elf & orc) the age categories are older than the younger race yet younger than the older race.
Eg. 1/2 Orc- orcs have a shortened lifespan when compared to BOTH 1/2 orcs and humans and 1/2 orcs have a shortened lifespan compared to humans. The same rule applies to 1/2 elves and humans. Although an Aasimar is not technically a 1/2 race it is not outrageous to assume an Aasimar would live longer than your average human because of the celestial blood coursing through their veins. This would especially be true if both parents were Aasimar. In fact because they are not a true 1/2 race the older race doesn't have as large an impact on the age as it might if it were the offspring of a human and an angel.
While not the authoritative explanation, it certainly is A logical explanation.