Ages of Aasimar and Tieflings (Dev feedback)


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


So I've been thinking about the ages of such characters.
The Advanced Race Guide has a chart that shows their ages, having them hit adult hood by 60ish.
Yet the Blood of Angels and Blood of Fiends books contradict this by saying they live slightly longer then their parent race.

I'd prefer to go with the second option, because the first makes little sense.
If a human Aasimar hits adulthood at 60, and let's say when they were born their parents were an average age of 20 (which is actually kinda old to be having kids in a medieval setting).
If adult hood is considered about 18 (which again in a medieval setting adult hood is more like 15-16) and 1/3 of that age being 6, then by the time the Aasimar's parents are 40, their child is the equivelant of a 6 year old.
Most people don't live past 30 in medieval settings, and 40 is even more unlikely, so that means nearly every human Aasimar's parents die when they functionally are 5-7 year old or so.

Not only does this very much contradict much of the fluff material, it also just makes for a very formulaic story. The fluff talks about how most Aasimar's parents are proud of them, and even though they sometimes have hardships for being different they usually have good childhoods.
If every Aasimar was orphaned at 6, the chance of the majority of them growing up to be healthy adults is pretty low, and most would end up in a bad place (not saying all Orphans have this problem, but they do often deal with hardships the rest of us don't, and that would be even worse in a medieval setting since the world just sucks more).
So, the aging scale in Advanced Race Guide further contradicts the way Aasimar's would turn out.
It also cuts off a great deal of personal story, since their families would always be dead and gone, meaning no story to write there and no possibility of writing any sort of legacy story.

Now, for Tieflings, the Blood of Fiends talks about how they often live lives even shorter than their parent race, because their demonic parts don't get along as well with their humans parts. So even more contradictions, though them all being orphans does increase the odds of them turning out to be bad guys due to rough childhoods (not that all tieflings are bad guys either).

So I'd like to discuss these contradictions, and possibly other age related contradictions in the settings, and see if any Devs have an opinion.

I don't even really like the way Elves or other longevity races age either, since it makes little sense that it takes them 120 years to figure out how to be a 1st level character level of competency.
I know of 10 years olds that can do Calculus, so I somehow doubt a society of advanced learning would require 120 years before their people can do basic spells, or swing a sword with proficiency...not to mention the fact that any such society would be wiped out by the shear numbers of societies with faster procreation rates....
Though the Elf conundrum is harder to deal with since they also live a very, very long time, and as such even if you said they hit adulthood like everyone else but then aged slowly from there then it wouldn't make sense that every PC starts out as an 18 year old Elf, and hits level 20 by the time they are 25-30ish, and yet there are 300+ year old elves that aren't nearly as powerful.
So I'm more willing to table this and focus on the Aasimar and Tiefling discussion because of the contradictions with them having a different parent race compared to their own.
Really...Aasimar and Tiefling should be templates you add to a race...but perhaps that's another discussion.


Two issues, off the bat:

1. Golarion is much closer to Renaissance than Medieval.

2. Even in Medieval times, it was common for people to live past 60. High infant mortality brings the average lifespan nearer to 30. This means that if you survived infancy, you had a good chance of living to at least middle age.


Manimal wrote:

Two issues, off the bat:

1. Golarion is much closer to Renaissance than Medieval.

2. Even in Medieval times, it was common for people to live past 60. High infant mortality brings the average lifespan nearer to 30. This means that if you survived infancy, you had a good chance of living to at least middle age.

Even during the Renaissance people didn't live much longer on average then Medieval times, life spans didn't start to really extend until we started to develop sanitation and medicine, and we didn't even know what bacteria was until the last 100 years. In 1800s France they still poured their s!$* water out their windows on the streets below, the fester into disease which killed many.

I would not say that it was common for people to live to 60, sure some did, but almost all of those were upper class who were sectioned off enough from those s%*! covered streets to be lucky enough to avoid the majority of the diseases that afflicted everyone else.

I even put the average age of the Aasimar's parents at 40 when they died, which takes into consideration much of what you are implying anyway, even with that included nearly every Aasimar is an orphan by the time they are 10.

I don't really want to get into an arguement about actual medieval times though, that's besides the point and just a general jumping off point to start with.
Either way, the Age table in Advanced Race guide contradicts the fluff in the way that Aasimar's mature.

Silver Crusade

Third issue, they are living in a world with MAGICAL healing


I understand it isn't exactly like medieval times, but it's still similar. Most people don't have access to magical healing...

Sure, if an Aasimar's parents where magic users then they'd be fine.
Most Aasimar's are born to regular folk who don't even have access to such things though.
There isn't a Paladin on every corner using Cure Disease Mercies on everyone in every town after all...

There also some places that are probably very much like the modern world.
Nex for example, is probably comparable to a modern metropolis, with plumbing, and disinfection to make it very sanitary.

That doesn't change the fact that the majority of people in the world live on farms, or small towns, with no access to such things.
Even if their country does have access to such things do you think it gets passed down to commoners?
Do you think Cheliax is approving it's Clerics of Asmodeus to go around and heal all the common folk?

Let's not forget, that even though this is a magical world, it's a horribly oppressed magical world. Tyrants keep the little people in filth as much as possible.

All of this aside, this is still somewhat off topic.
The point is that Aasimar's aging at roughly a third as fast as regular human makes it not only not makes sense for the childhoods that the fluff describes, but also makes for lame story because suddenly...their childhood friends are grown adult and possibly dead before they even hit their teens...
Their parents aren't there for them after a certain point, whether that's 6, or 10, or maybe push it to 12, they are being orphaned.

Also, if you are born on a farm, and you can't do chores to help the family until you are 20-25 years old...how long do you think such a family is going to put up with taking care of you? Farmers have kids so they can help on the farm. Craftsmen have kids to help with the business...an Aasimar child won't be able to do any of that until it's far too late.
The extra burden of taking care of such a child would make such families poor, which would create even more troubled childhoods for Aasimar in general.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Aegys wrote:

So I've been thinking about the ages of such characters.

The Advanced Race Guide has a chart that shows their ages, having them hit adult hood by 60ish.
Yet the Blood of Angels and Blood of Fiends books contradict this by saying they live slightly longer then their parent race.

The second option is correct for Golarion, and it SHOULD have been the case in Advanced Race Guide (which, while it isn't world specific, should have assumed Golarion as the baseline). It'll be corrected in an upcoming reprint of Advanced Race Guide.


People regularly lived into their 40's, 50's and 60's in the Middle Ages. The Upper Classes could expect to live much longer. The reason the "average" is so low is because it counts the rediculously high Infant Mortality rate as well as death by violence.

Median age is what you want to look at for anyone who lived past age 5.

If you lived till 21, odds were good you'd make it to well over your forties.


James Jacobs wrote:
Aegys wrote:

So I've been thinking about the ages of such characters.

The Advanced Race Guide has a chart that shows their ages, having them hit adult hood by 60ish.
Yet the Blood of Angels and Blood of Fiends books contradict this by saying they live slightly longer then their parent race.
The second option is correct for Golarion, and it SHOULD have been the case in Advanced Race Guide (which, while it isn't world specific, should have assumed Golarion as the baseline). It'll be corrected in an upcoming reprint of Advanced Race Guide.

Does that mean their age categories are going to be lowered as well?

I just told my players to use the half-elf starting age and use the listed age categories for the rest.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Wolf Munroe wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Aegys wrote:

So I've been thinking about the ages of such characters.

The Advanced Race Guide has a chart that shows their ages, having them hit adult hood by 60ish.
Yet the Blood of Angels and Blood of Fiends books contradict this by saying they live slightly longer then their parent race.
The second option is correct for Golarion, and it SHOULD have been the case in Advanced Race Guide (which, while it isn't world specific, should have assumed Golarion as the baseline). It'll be corrected in an upcoming reprint of Advanced Race Guide.

Does that mean their age categories are going to be lowered as well?

I just told my players to use the half-elf starting age and use the listed age categories for the rest.

Yes; tieflings and aasimars should be close to human in age categories overall. Simply having players use human ages and categories is the best solution in the meantime.


Personally, I think that things descended from immortal celestials and fiends should live longer. I prefer having them age like humans until adulthood, then age as per normal for an aasimar/tiefling. That way, they can still grow up with humans, but once they hit adulthood, they become very long lived.


Odraude wrote:
Personally, I think that things descended from immortal celestials and fiends should live longer. I prefer having them age like humans until adulthood, then age as per normal for an aasimar/tiefling. That way, they can still grow up with humans, but once they hit adulthood, they become very long lived.

I'd be fine with this option too.

My biggest issue was with the way that they couldn't lead even close to normal lives within human society and how much family related back story that just cut out of the potential RP.

Thanks James for the quick response, and I'm glad to see we are on the same page. I figured at first that the age chart was some sort of hold over from the way Aasimar's and Tieflings were run out of 3.5 and that the companions were your way of making it your own (which I love that you guys are doing that more and more over the years), I'm glad to see you guys continuing along this path.
Golorion is one of the most detailed and complicated worlds for a game that I've ever seen developed, keep up the good work.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

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I personally like the half elf aging rate for plane touched. It makes the "not quite right" nature more subtle. If your starting human bard is 21 and your starting half-elf or planetouched is 24, then it just seems he is a slow learner. It is when your human is 50 and slowing down but your half elf is still in his prime that he feels an "outsider". Works for the planetouched too.

Just my two c-bills.


Just found this and I am so happy to see official statement that it will be changed in a future printing.

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