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There were some weird changes in the advanced race guide errata, among them this:
Page 249—In Table 5–5: Featured Race Aging Effects, change the Aasimar, Dhampir, and Tiefling entries to use the same numbers as the Human entry from Table 5–4: Core Race Aging Effects.
Adulthood: 60 years
Intuitive: 64 - 84 years
Self-Taught: 66 - 96 years
Trained: 68 - 108 years
Tieflings follow the same progression.
Dhampirs have it worse as adulthood for them was previously 110 years and of course the various categories increase from there.
This interacts very poorly with Pathfinder Society as it stands, in particular this line:
A character can not be younger than the minimum age listed on Table 7–1 of the Core Rulebook, or listed on Table 5–1 of the Advanced Race Guide, and must be younger than venerable, as listed on Table 7–2 of the Core Rulebook and Table 5–4 of the Advanced Race Guide. A character that ages past venerable, for whatever reason, dies of old age and is removed from the campaign. Characters do not alter their ability scores as a result of this choice.
Humans are considered venerable at age 70. As a result, the vast majority of aasimars and tieflings, and every dhampir, are now considered dead due to old age.
The retraining rules I can find do not discuss "retraining" ages. (They are on page 29 of the guide.)
This is clearly dumb and hopefully not intended; I don't know many GMs who would enforce this. However, all it takes is one GM to rule that a character has died of old age in order to make that character unplayable in PFS.
I would really appreciate not having to rely on table variation in order to simply play some of my characters! I have an aasimar who has apparently just died from old age, and my wife has both an aasimar and a tiefling who have "aged out" of society play as a result of this change. Can we get an official clarification on age "retraining" in cases where errata change a race's viable age please?
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Yesssss. Kill the filthy aasimars. Cull the Cullens!
Er, I mean, yeah, this should probably be noted somewhere if it's as silly as it sounds. :P
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As noted in Blood of Angels/Fiends the age of those creatures were supposed to be similar to humans. The enhanced lifespan noted in ARG was an accidental holdover from previous editions, I think.
For the purposes of PFS, dial back your characters' ages and retcon character histories. Simpler the fix is better. Also who really keeps track of character ages when age categories aren't even a mechanical thing in PFS?
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Nostalgic for the days of Traveler when you can die of old age at character generation? Seems Paizo is too, and they rid us of a random roll to do it with too.
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As noted in Blood of Angels/Fiends the age of those creatures were supposed to be similar to humans. The enhanced lifespan noted in ARG was an accidental holdover from previous editions, I think.
For the purposes of PFS, dial back your characters' ages and retcon character histories. Simpler the fix is better. Also who really keeps track of character ages when age categories aren't even a mechanical thing in PFS?
It does have some in-game function, which for official purposes means I don't think we're technically allowed to change our character's ages, except maybe every year as we hit a new season and age++. I know as a GM I don't care, but some clarification that nobody else should care either would be appreciated. :)
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It does have some in-game function, which for official purposes means I don't think we're technically allowed to change our character's ages, except maybe every year as we hit a new season and age++. I know as a GM I don't care, but some clarification that nobody else should care either would be appreciated. :)As noted in Blood of Angels/Fiends the age of those creatures were supposed to be similar to humans. The enhanced lifespan noted in ARG was an accidental holdover from previous editions, I think.
For the purposes of PFS, dial back your characters' ages and retcon character histories. Simpler the fix is better. Also who really keeps track of character ages when age categories aren't even a mechanical thing in PFS?
While you're technically right no sane GM would try and enforce that rule by killing the character. I'd go so far as to say that any GM that tried would be violating the "don't be a jerk" rule.
It is unclear if we change ages, are grandfathered as weird old characters, or get to choose
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It does have some in-game function, which for official purposes means I don't think we're technically allowed to change our character's ages, except maybe every year as we hit a new season and age++. I know as a GM I don't care, but some clarification that nobody else should care either would be appreciated. :)As noted in Blood of Angels/Fiends the age of those creatures were supposed to be similar to humans. The enhanced lifespan noted in ARG was an accidental holdover from previous editions, I think.
For the purposes of PFS, dial back your characters' ages and retcon character histories. Simpler the fix is better. Also who really keeps track of character ages when age categories aren't even a mechanical thing in PFS?
While you're technically right no sane GM would try and enforce that rule by killing the character. I'd go so far as to say that any GM that tried would be violating the "don't be a jerk" rule.
It is unclear if we change ages, are grandfathered as weird old characters, or get to choose
Aging is something weird they've never really written rules for in PFS. It's clearly intended for characters to age over time given the wording on the "venerable" rule, but they never actually spelled out that you increase your character's age every year. At least, not as far as I've seen. Maybe it's hidden somewhere in the forums?
While I'd certainly agree that the GM was being a jerk in this scenario, they would technically be in the right in this case as they're enforcing the rules as written and as GMs we're not supposed to allow for table variation when things are explicit like this.
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Aging is something weird they've never really written rules for in PFS. It's clearly intended for characters to age over time given the wording on the "venerable" rule, but they never actually spelled out that you increase your character's age every year. At least, not as far as I've seen. Maybe it's hidden somewhere in the forums?The venerable rule is actually there because there are magical effects that can permanently age you.
Oh, true. There is that.
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Honestly, all three of these races are "crossbreeds." I know this isn't an option in Society but it makes sense to me for them to just vary...
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but they never actually spelled out that you increase your character's age every year.
I once guesstimated how much time my character had spent as a PFS agent, assuming "travel by ship and horse" as opposed to teleport to get her from scenario to scenario.
IIRC at level 7 or so she had spent something like 50 years in the society. Those trips to/from Then and Irisen etc add up :-) :-).
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Age is not tracked in PFS, because time between scenarios is indeterminate. You can't accumulate a series of indeterminate numbers and know what that number actually is.
If age isn't tracked, that means that if a character of mine were to be permanently, prematurely aged, that is also not a condition I have to track? As Jeff hinted at, if I were to gain, say, 1d20 years of age, without age tracking I could simply lower my previous age by 14 years to make it balance out. That doesn't seem right to me, and a few other things that depend on age seem to suggest that age is supposed to be tracked at least some of the time--maybe in the sense that you pick a starting age and are forever after that same age. (For example, the Breadth of Experience feat.) Because it exists in Core, has a mechanical effect, is referenced in the PFS guide, and attaining a certain value of it can actually kill you, that suggests that character age is actually tracked in PFS (or should be!) and I as a player shouldn't change my character's age once s/he's past the level 1 rebuild point.
I agree that it shouldn't be a big deal, but there are several possible options for how to deal with the issue and none of them are currently consistent with the PFS rules. The simplest solution is to allow existing characters to keep the old age categories, right? Another solution would be a one-time reset of age to some legal value for your race. Either seems both easy and reasonable, it just would be nice to have an official answer on which approach to take. :)
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I remember a discussion about tiefling starting ages about two years back, when it was brought up that several APs feature tieflings/aasimars that are around 16-25ish and acting all grown up. Apparently the result of some miscommunication between writers.
Back then it was said that the ARG age table would be altered to fit the story, not the other way around.
Personally I think that's the right way: given all the stories about most parents being unhappy with tiefling births, if they're mewling kids for forty years, I think they don't stand a chance.
Anything that's not loveable needs to grow up fast.
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Adjust the age, using their current maturity as a guide to where they would fit in the 'new' age bands. For the vast majority of characters, it's not going to make a difference (apart from maybe a minor retcon to their background).
all it takes is one GM to rule that a character has died of old age in order to make that character unplayable in PFS.
Are there really people like this out there? In the unlikely event that I came across this situation, I'd get a VC involved.
(Personally, my aasimar/tiefling characters have been of the correct age since the Golarion lore was clarified a couple of years ago.)
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Tiefling and Aasimar have always had the ages of Humans.
Hell, I had my Tiefling with the staring age of a Human, and had full Developer support.
No one batted an eye, and now I have additional proof, that I was always right.
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I believe I've seen a forum post that clarified that characters age by 1 year at the start of each season.
Terminalmancer, if some GM does try to claim that 'by the rules' your character is dead
"A character that ages past venerable, for whatever reason, dies of old age and is removed from the campaign."
you can point out that your character has not aged past venerable and never will, as venerable moved past your character.
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Tiefling and Aasimar have always had the ages of Humans.
Hell, I had my Tiefling with the staring age of a Human, and had full Developer support.
No one batted an eye, and now I have additional proof, that I was always right.
Congratulations, but as far as perhaps 90% of the player base ever saw, that wasn't the case! :) Coming in from 3.5 a couple years ago, the table in the ARG wasn't something I ever realized was inaccurate. I don't know that I've seen a human-aged aasimar or tiefling in my local PFS group, although not having consistently looked at ages on character sheets I could have easily missed one or two. The ARG table is also the one that's used in the vast majority of most compiled references which are where most players get their information nowadays.
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Adjust the age, using their current maturity as a guide to where they would fit in the 'new' age bands. For the vast majority of characters, it's not going to make a difference (apart from maybe a minor retcon to their background).
all it takes is one GM to rule that a character has died of old age in order to make that character unplayable in PFS.Are there really people like this out there? In the unlikely event that I came across this situation, I'd get a VC involved.
(Personally, my aasimar/tiefling characters have been of the correct age since the Golarion lore was clarified a couple of years ago.)
Yes, I'm probably just going to check with my VC next time I see him and things'll be fine for me. As I've explained, I feel like this silly situation could just use some official clarification on the correct way of addressing the problem for other folks in different situations. There are some edge cases that might not be too uncommon as well--like if your tiefling gained the full 20 years in Thornkeep but didn't change age categories, should you gain that age category when converted over to the human lifespan?
Developer
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I don't have the Guide open on this device (somebody else can find that reference by searching for the word "old") but I know that the campaign allows PCs to be up to Old age but uses none of the age modifiers. In Pathfinder Society, age is cosmetic and left to the player to decide from a roleplaying perspective (minimum the race's starting age). If you were playing your tiefling as 200 years old, just change the age to what would still work with the concept in the age band you intended. This won't result in a PC keeling over from old age at a GM's whim.
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This is kind of frustrating, as my Aasimar's backstory actually hinged on him being over 100 =/ (Former Cleric of Aroden; shifted to Asmodeus as part of Cheliax's identity crisis). I can finesse it away from that, but he loses a lot of his "oomph".
Is there anyway for characters be grandfathered on this at all? As explained above, I don't want to keep the PC in an age category that causes problems later on mechanically, but to suddenly shift his backstory so much mid career purely due to errata stinks.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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This is kind of frustrating, as my Aasimar's backstory actually hinged on him being over 100 =/ (Former Cleric of Aroden; shifted to Asmodeus as part of Cheliax's identity crisis). I can finesse it away from that, but he loses a lot of his "oomph".
Is there anyway for characters be grandfathered on this at all? As explained above, I don't want to keep the PC in an age category that causes problems later on mechanically, but to suddenly shift his backstory so much mid career purely due to errata stinks.
That is very easy to fix.
He spent a few weeks or so on a plane where time passes one day for every 5 years on the prime material plane at some point. Maybe this happened a couple of times. Fit in his time in on the plane around the events you need him present for.
Bam. He's 30 years old, but was born 200 years ago.
(Note that the plane has to be slow enough to get the time spacing you want, but not timeless, since when you leave a timeless plane time is applied retroactively.)
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This is kind of frustrating, as my Aasimar's backstory actually hinged on him being over 100 =/ (Former Cleric of Aroden; shifted to Asmodeus as part of Cheliax's identity crisis). I can finesse it away from that, but he loses a lot of his "oomph".
Is there anyway for characters be grandfathered on this at all? As explained above, I don't want to keep the PC in an age category that causes problems later on mechanically, but to suddenly shift his backstory so much mid career purely due to errata stinks.
That is very easy to fix.
He spent a few weeks or so on a plane where time passes one day for every 5 years on the prime material plane at some point. Maybe this happened a couple of times. Fit in his time in on the plane around the events you need him present for.
Bam. He's 30 years old, but was born 200 years ago.
(Note that the plane has to be slow enough to get the time spacing you want, but not timeless, since when you leave a timeless plane time is applied retroactively.)
Backstory, at least, is definitely one of those things where nobody cares what you do as long as it doesn't mechanically effect the game. So a backstory wherein Aroden's death gradually sapped him of his divinely-granted lifespan or a bargain with Asmodeus gave him an extra hundred years of life (to be spent entirely in servitude to the god) could all be reasonable solutions....
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Backstory, at least, is definitely one of those things where nobody cares what you do as long as it doesn't mechanically effect the game. So a backstory wherein Aroden's death gradually sapped him of his divinely-granted lifespan or a bargain with Asmodeus gave him an extra hundred years of life (to be spent entirely in servitude to the god) could all be reasonable solutions....This is kind of frustrating, as my Aasimar's backstory actually hinged on him being over 100 =/ (Former Cleric of Aroden; shifted to Asmodeus as part of Cheliax's identity crisis). I can finesse it away from that, but he loses a lot of his "oomph".
Is there anyway for characters be grandfathered on this at all? As explained above, I don't want to keep the PC in an age category that causes problems later on mechanically, but to suddenly shift his backstory so much mid career purely due to errata stinks.
That is very easy to fix.
He spent a few weeks or so on a plane where time passes one day for every 5 years on the prime material plane at some point. Maybe this happened a couple of times. Fit in his time in on the plane around the events you need him present for.
Bam. He's 30 years old, but was born 200 years ago.
(Note that the plane has to be slow enough to get the time spacing you want, but not timeless, since when you leave a timeless plane time is applied retroactively.)
Except then he wasn't present for the slow slip away from a Good Aligned faith to a Lawful Evil one? I'm all for creative solutions, but it sounds like the most feasible one is going to be to rewrite the backstory to be sans Aroden and just "Aasimar raised in Cheliax".
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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If he was in and out of the plane, he would be there for significant events. How long was the transition?
If he was in there from 4605 to ~4630, emerged at 20 years old, spent ten years watching house Thrune consolidate their hold, grew disgusted and went back to the demi plane only to emerge recently. (Perhaps when some calamity collapsed the demi plane.
If the demi plane had scrying available, he could even have watched the fall in fast forward.
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The alternate plane thing could work, or replace it with a magic item... or you could use one of my suggestions, or you could come up with your own ideas for why a race with a human life expectancy has managed to live a very long time. :) There are many ways of solving this particular problem... you don't need to give up on the Aroden angle by any means.
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I've always found it stupid that races start at 1st level with such high ages. I know it's a fantasy game, but if you've spent more than half a century on the planet and you haven't picked up more than basic skills then you have a severe learning disability.
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Except then he wasn't present for the slow slip away from a Good Aligned faith to a Lawful Evil one? I'm all for creative solutions, but it sounds like the most feasible one is going to be to rewrite the backstory to be sans Aroden and just "Aasimar raised in Cheliax".Backstory, at least, is definitely one of those things where nobody cares what you do as long as it doesn't mechanically effect the game. So a backstory wherein Aroden's death gradually sapped him of his divinely-granted lifespan or a bargain with Asmodeus gave him an extra hundred years of life (to be spent entirely in servitude to the god) could all be reasonable solutions....This is kind of frustrating, as my Aasimar's backstory actually hinged on him being over 100 =/ (Former Cleric of Aroden; shifted to Asmodeus as part of Cheliax's identity crisis). I can finesse it away from that, but he loses a lot of his "oomph".
Is there anyway for characters be grandfathered on this at all? As explained above, I don't want to keep the PC in an age category that causes problems later on mechanically, but to suddenly shift his backstory so much mid career purely due to errata stinks.
That is very easy to fix.
He spent a few weeks or so on a plane where time passes one day for every 5 years on the prime material plane at some point. Maybe this happened a couple of times. Fit in his time in on the plane around the events you need him present for.
Bam. He's 30 years old, but was born 200 years ago.
(Note that the plane has to be slow enough to get the time spacing you want, but not timeless, since when you leave a timeless plane time is applied retroactively.)
you could always role play him as a crazy Aasimar and have him walk around with a end is nigh cardboard sign while spouting out random facts about the pre-Thrune era... you could probably make it up and with the low emphasis on Knowledge History a lot of PC's may believe you.
You guys also overlooked that they changed the base age from 60 to 20 -- so it is still possible to create a character of any class of any of these three races who is below middle-aged.
The screwy thing with this errata is that the random rolls added to the base age are unchanged, so (for example) anyone playing a dhampir wizard and randomly rolling a starting age would roll 10d6 and add it to 20, which gives a result of anywhere from 30 to 70 with an average result of 55.
Presumably what they forgot to include is that you're supposed to us the human random formulas as well.You guys also overlooked that they changed the base age from 60 to 20 -- so it is still possible to create a character of any class of any of these three races who is below middle-aged.
The screwy thing with this errata is that the random rolls added to the base age are unchanged, so (for example) anyone playing a dhampir wizard and randomly rolling a starting age would roll 10d6 and add it to 20, which gives a result of anywhere from 30 to 70 with an average result of 55.
Of course, that also raises the question of why they set the base age to 20 instead of 15.
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you could always role play him as a crazy Aasimar and have him walk around with a end is nigh cardboard sign while spouting out random facts about the pre-Thrune era... you could probably make it up and with the low emphasis on Knowledge History a lot of PC's...Except then he wasn't present for the slow slip away from a Good Aligned faith to a Lawful Evil one? I'm all for creative solutions, but it sounds like the most feasible one is going to be to rewrite the backstory to be sans Aroden and just "Aasimar raised in Cheliax".This is kind of frustrating, as my Aasimar's backstory actually hinged on him being over 100 =/ (Former Cleric of Aroden; shifted to Asmodeus as part of Cheliax's identity crisis). I can finesse it away from that, but he loses a lot of his "oomph".
Is there anyway for characters be grandfathered on this at all? As explained above, I don't want to keep the PC in an age category that causes problems later on mechanically, but to suddenly shift his backstory so much mid career purely due to errata stinks.
That is very easy to fix.
He spent a few weeks or so on a plane where time passes one day for every 5 years on the prime material plane at some point. Maybe this happened a couple of times. Fit in his time in on the plane around the events you need him present for.
Bam. He's 30 years old, but was born 200 years ago.
(Note that the plane has to be slow enough to get the time spacing you want, but not timeless, since when you leave a timeless plane time is applied retroactively.)
You've played with this Aasimar and know "bitter" is a little more his thing than "crazy". I'll manage; most of this was just me grousing at an errata actually forcing role-play changes vs. just mechanical ones.
Backstory, at least, is definitely one of those things where nobody cares what you do as long as it doesn't mechanically effect the game. So a backstory wherein Aroden's death gradually sapped him of his divinely-granted lifespan or a bargain with Asmodeus gave him an extra hundred years of life (to be spent entirely in servitude to the god) could all be reasonable solutions....
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This is kind of silly. I can understand errata'ing mechanics, and fixing broken rules, but telling people you've been roleplaying wrong? I don't understand that.
Why couldn't it just be said that there's a wide variability in ages? Some people inheriting an outsider age range, and some people inheriting a human age range? They're a crossbreed. Some have wings. That's not a human characteristic. Should those Tieflings with descriptive horns, wings, and tails, clip those off? You know, because that's bad roleplay. It should be errata'd.
And what's super annoying is that they decided to leave the elemental races alone.
Question for those responsible for this errata: are Sylphs, Ifrits, Oreads, Undines and Sulis "doing it wrong" as well?
Because I'd like my character development restricted, please.
Are there any known NPCs that are now impossible due to this clarification?
Like one that definitively was involved in events a couple hundred years apart?
Affecting PCs is one thing, won't someone think of the poor NPCs?
:)
-j
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Are there any known NPCs that are now impossible due to this clarification?
Like one that definitively was involved in events a couple hundred years apart?
Affecting PCs is one thing, won't someone think of the poor NPCs?
There is one NPC in an adventure path whose backstory only works with the 'new' age categories; I believe that this piece of canon was part of the reason for this errata.
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Because it exists in Core, has a mechanical effect, is referenced in the PFS guide, and attaining a certain value of it can actually kill you, that suggests that character age is actually tracked in PFS (or should be!) and I as a player shouldn't change my character's age once s/he's past the level 1 rebuild point.
(Emphasis mine.) In PFS, there is no mechanical effect until you die of old age, which never happens. I challenge you to take enough age damage in PFS to push you into another age category!
It seems to be in the same category of eye color - one probably shouldn't change that after the level 1 rebuild is past either, but it just doesn't matter.
As soon as age is tracked, people will want to start spending that downtime doing things, and that way madness lies. ;)
There is one NPC in an adventure path whose backstory only works with the 'new' age categories; I believe that this piece of canon was part of the reason for this errata.Are there any known NPCs that are now impossible due to this clarification?
Like one that definitively was involved in events a couple hundred years apart?
Affecting PCs is one thing, won't someone think of the poor NPCs?
Of course, since they didn't bother to update the random die rolls added to the new base value of 20, we have to assume that she got some unlikely low rolls with those dice.
Interestingly, all of the aasimar and tiefling PCs in my current game are now of illegal ages -- two who were generated by the old rules are now too old, and my scion of humanity aasimar that I created using human age stats is still too young.
