Adventurers and Age

[Archade]

In the rules, there are random stats for starting adventurer ages, but what about characters who want to be middle-aged, or old?

The rules are silent on options for starting an older character, and this is an area that widely differs from GM to GM and game to game. I’d recommend a clarifying comment in the rules.

The flip-side, of course, is that players could manipulate their mental stats with an older character ...

[Lehmuska]

I think the rules are quite clear on that part.

Pathfinder Role Playing Game Beta, page 122 wrote:

Age

You can choose or randomly generate your character’s
age. If you choose it, it must be at least the minimum age
for the character’s race and class (see Table 8–1). Your
character’s minimum starting age is the adulthood age
of his race plus the number of dice indicated in the entry
corresponding to the character’s race and class on
Table 8–1.

Alternatively, roll the dice indicated on Table 8–1 and
add the result to the adulthood number to determine
how old your character is.
With age, a character’s physical ability scores decrease
and his mental ability scores increase (see Table 8–2).
The effects of each aging step are cumulative. However,
none of a character’s ability scores can be reduced below
1 in this way.

Important parts are Bolded. I don't see anything unclear on that part. If a player chooses to create an older character, his or her character takes the appropriate modifiers to the characters stats.

[Jason Bulmahn]

This is something I really would prefer to leave in the hands of GMs. If you want to play an older character, you need to talk to your GM. Some might allow the ability score adjustments for later age categories, others might ask you to ignore them during creation.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

[kyrt-ryder]

On this topic though, there's another issue I'd like to raise. The most memorable character that I've ever played, was a 12 year old human child. Due to a lack of official rules we just used the simple size modifiers (+2 dex, -2 strength) for her stats, and when she got old enough for her body to change up, her stats changed accordingly.

Mythology and fantasy are absolutely rife with those rare exception characters who were especially gifted and saved the world at a young age. I don't see why there shouldn't be something in the rules to account for that. (perhaps tweak the random age rolling and make it only possible randomly, in such a way that one can't choose it for the stats?)

And yes, deffinitely make sure that the age adjustment on the wizard class is too high for the youngest random roll to generate a child wizard lol. (For the record, Shayla, my twelve year old girl, was raised in a monestary after her mother abandoned her, and began adventuring as a 2nd level monk)

[minkscooter]

Hey, it's a fantasy game, so why not Burpy the baby paladin, or Gerber the bearded baby dwarf who fights with a baby rattle (light mace)? If it's OK with the GM, it might be fun to play a teddy bear, or a puppet who wants to become a real boy.

Seriously, an Alice type character does sound kind of fun. There are child heroes in fantasy literature, like Atreyu in Neverending Story.