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Can you use the young creature template to play an under-age PC?
Sorcerer: In 3.5, the book said a sorcerer's magic starts to manifest once they hit puberty.
Barbarian: In the D&D cartoon, the barbarian was still a kid.
Rogues: Pick pockets and guttersnipes are usually children.
Wizard: One rather famous wizard was 11 when he first started his training.
Cleric: A child believes strongly in almost anything.
Bard: The voice of a child fits well with this class.
Monks and Fighters: Formal weapons training starts early. Who expects the little girl to drop a grown man with her fist?
Rangers and Druids:Who knows the forest better than a child with time on his/her hands?
Paladin: Anyone can hear the call of a deity at any time.
I think it would be a good way to do it. Why not?
seems like a ok way to do it
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It would be an interesting way to have an adventure path start out. Perhaps Paizo should consider it...
After all, it would let the PCs already know one another(thus avoiding the "We meet in a tavern 10 minutes ago, let's go do some dangerous adventuring together!" scenario) before the the town goes to crazy(or whatever else set the basis for the AP).
Can you use the young creature template to play an under-age PC?
Sorcerer: In 3.5, the book said a sorcerer's magic starts to manifest once they hit puberty.
Barbarian: In the D&D cartoon, the barbarian was still a kid.
Rogues: Pick pockets and guttersnipes are usually children.
Wizard: One rather famous wizard was 11 when he first started his training.
Cleric: A child believes strongly in almost anything.
Bard: The voice of a child fits well with this class.
Monks and Fighters: Formal weapons training starts early. Who expects the little girl to drop a grown man with her fist?
Rangers and Druids:Who knows the forest better than a child with time on his/her hands?
Paladin: Anyone can hear the call of a deity at any time.
Probably not unreasonable, especially considering that our modern Western society is unusual in that childhood is dilated, and in that we have an adolescence, sometimes a really long one. If a fantasy campaign world is more like medieval or early modern Europe (most seem to be comparable to late Middle Ages or Renaissance, at least in terms of technology), you can expect that kids don't have the luxury of a period of 10-15 years or more before they have to take on full adult responsibilities.
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I think this is a question that is best answered by the person running the game. As it is, the youngest PC you can make using only the PFRPG core rulebook is a 15-year-old half-orc (if you're using table 7-1.) I'd also hazard to add that Jason Bulmahn has stated the Bestiary is intended for use by GMs to create monsters and NPCs and not a tool for players to create their characters. People are going to do what they want with the book; it's their money. I'm just saying I doubt you'd be able to sneak a child PC into a Paizo-hosted game at a con.
I also don't think child PCs were presented as an option in the core because of the concerns some people have with sending heavily armed, spell-flinging children into harm's way. Some GMs might cringe at the idea of subjecting children of a certain age to the trials most adventurers face (even make-believe children.) If it isn't the prospect of a nine-year-old rogue being stabbed by an orc, you have to take into account said child may likely have to stab an orc himself. Sure, orcs are monsters so maybe they're fair game to some GMs but what happens when the kid is challenged by one of his own race? What happens if the challenger is another child? I think you can see where I'm going with this.
Now for the part you probably wanted to hear...
There is nothing I've seen that says you can't do this. I've even created a couple NPC children just to see how the system works. If it were my game, I might allow a child PC if I trusted the player to actually role-play a child well. I might also be up to run a game where all the players are children. It just wouldn't be the sort of game where you've got a bunch of super-powered brats running rampant over the countryside.
On a side note, Bobby the Barbarian from the D&D cartoon was just a kid with a magic stick. He wasn't born or raised as a barbarian. All the kids from that show were supposed to represent an archetype of the type of kid who might enjoy the game and was given a class based on their personality. Bobby was made the barbarian because he was brash, impulsive and enjoyed simple pleasures like smashing things and playing in fields of wildflowers with unicorns. I think a better example of a child barbarian might be the Feral Kid from The Road Warrior (though he could have been a ranger.) Alternately, some of the children from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome or even Lord of the Flies would make good barbari-kids. And then there's Barney Rubbles' kid Bam-Bam...
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Actually Velcro, I liked all of that post. Very informative. So, while a Ap that starts when the PCs are kids works well, a kid adventuring with adults may not be a perfect(or well thought out) choice.
Pretty much. Admittedly, some of my reasoning comes from the annoyance I have for super-kid style cartoons and movies where you've got some chosen wunderkind who is way too precocious saving the world from evil on a daily basis. However, take a published adventure like, say, The Skinsaw Murders, and drop a child PC into that adventure. Suddenly you have a pint-sized Perseus facing off against an unholy serial murderer of the Leatherface variety. Unless the GM pulls no punches and stresses the inherent horror of the adventure, it becomes almost comical. Home Alone meets Friday the 13th. Of course if the GM doesn't hold back, you've got a story about an 11-year-old child being stalked and possibly murdered in a horrible fashion.
That's probably a pretty drastic example but it makes the point. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a kid in a danger-filled adventure. There are some really good adventure stories out there with children among the heroes (Gully from the excellent Battle Chasers by Joe Madureira for example.) I'm just saying, as a GM, know what you're getting into before you allow it. If the thought of telling a story where one of the protagonists is a 10-year-old girl who stands the chance of being dissolved by acid doesn't bother you, you also have to consider the ridiculous and potentially game-breaking character builds that might be unleashed.
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Don't get me wrong. I'm sure having a kid in the party can be fun, and even useful, if it's done right. I'm just advising caution when it comes to the decision to let somebody play a kid. A child is one of those things like pixies and kender and crazy that alot of people think they can pull off but then it just turns out to be really annoying and uninspired. I'd be willing to let the right person play a child PC. Hell, I let somebody play an awakened raccoon ranger in one of my games.
There is something else to think about as well, and this was one of those suspension of disbelief things for me even before the idea of child PCs came up. I'm thinking that, in many campaigns I've played in, it doesn't take a whole lot of game time to gain a level. A 15-year-old kid, barely able to kill a single kobold, can leave his village with a rusty sword his father left him and return home in less than a year with a shiny suit of magic armor, a +5 weapon, and the ability to kill over 200 men while playing a pretty mean six-string at the same time. So let's suppose the kid is 8 instead of 15. Less than a year later, this 8-year-old kid has probably racked up a body count in the hundreds, he's literally been to Hell and back, he's probably even been raised from the dead at least once, all before hitting puberty. Sure, it'll probably get him some tail but is it believable? I don't bring this up to shoot down the idea of playing a kid. It's just something to think about.
Go and have fun with your preteen halfling sorcerer (aka the Tiny Terror.)
i played my children with no stat changes compared to thier adult counterparts, i just arranged thier stats differently. i beleive the same can be done with older ages. no reduce person effects are really neccessary. nor special templates, if they are within a reasonable age, none of my characters were younger than 10. much less 12. 5 feet tall and weighing 80-100 pounds is within medium range. i think a 12 year old shouldn't have different modifiers from a 15 year old, not much difference. i wouldn't throw the penalties unless they wanted to be the single digit numbers of age.
I saw some rules on making underage characters, something like only rolling 1d6 per certain age categories. I think from 9-13 you had 2d6 in all stats but dex, which was 3d6, and from 1-6 you had 1 in all stats but 1d6 in dex and 1d6 in charisma.
Something weird like that!
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In fact, one of the favorite characters of one of my players when running Star Wars was an underaged Padawan character, and the "classic hero" is either a child or just out of childhood in many cases.
The original Star Wars d6 RPG even had a character template called "Kid." I have the mini: little dude with a huge blaster rifle.
You should definitely play a kid! Fun fiction is full of 'em. Short Round, Teen Titans, Goonies, crazy kid in The Road Warrior. I'm a big fan of this idea.
Just don't forget that if you play the character long enough you'll end up losing that pretty sweet +4 Dex when you grow up. Any feats that used that high Dex as a prereq. will become unavailable. All the weapons and armor you've been using your whole career will have to be traded/sold for bigger ones too. :)
Here is the rules for d20 modern:
Children
Children (newborns to age 11) are handled differently from other characters. They do not have classes or levels. They begin with the same ability score package as ordinaries (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), but their ability scores are reduced as follows:–3 Str, –1 Dex, –3 Con, –1 Int, –1 Wis, –1 Cha
Children have 1d4 hit points plus their Constitution modifier (minimum 1 hit point). They have no skills, feats, action points, or occupations. Their base attack bonus is +0, they have a +0 modifier on all saving throws (plus any modifiers for high or low ability scores), and their Reputation bonus is +0. Children have a +0 modifier to Defense and a normal speed of 20 feet. Children have no effective attacks and should be treated as noncombatants.
When a child turns 12, he or she is considered a young adult and takes his or her first level in one of the six basic classes. At that point, the character becomes an ordinary (or hero, in some cases).
My suggestion is if a child character is between the children above and the full fledged adult, you might give them a half class. That is cut basically all the numeric values in half (BA, Spell slots per level, saves, etc).
Playing a kid PC seems reasonable enough to me. For example, just look at Arya Stark from George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice & Fire -- if that's not a prepubescent rogue-going-towards-assassin, I don't know what is. *grin*
I certainly think you can do this if you wish, not sure if it would work out well, a -4 con? on an elf thats -6 thats steep. I think if everyone was young in the party it could work if the dm compensates by slightly easier challenges. Although the difference in the way the races age might be a problem there in a long campaign (in game time i mean).
i played my children with no stat changes compared to thier adult counterparts, i just arranged thier stats differently. i beleive the same can be done with older ages. no reduce person effects are really neccessary. nor special templates, if they are within a reasonable age, none of my characters were younger than 10. much less 12. 5 feet tall and weighing 80-100 pounds is within medium range. i think a 12 year old shouldn't have different modifiers from a 15 year old, not much difference. i wouldn't throw the penalties unless they wanted to be the single digit numbers of age.
That is a completely valid approach and easy to handle in the game.
However, if you want realism you should modify the stats for children. Especially for strength there is a huge difference between a 10/12 year old and a 15 year old. But the same can be said for intelligence. The brain is ussually not fully developped until age 20 (approximately).
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I did manage to get one of my DMs to allow it, so I have an 11 year old changeling Favored Soul2/Arcane Bloodline Battle Sorcerer2. So far even the other players don't know she's a kid. We had to have a personality flaw, and the DM suggested I role-play her as a typical 11 year old(whines, stubborn, cranky without sleep, etc).
So she's my playtest character.
Most of the classes assume the character has spent their childhood mastering basic skills, then spent some time as an apprentice / journeyman to learn their trade. Much like most modern tweenagers and younger teens would not know how to drive, work efficiently, interact well, or do have any trade / skill of note, most fantasy tweens and young teens will be in the process of learning their craft.
Allowing people to play young characters is fine if you want them to be able to play the "kid" archetype. The only thing to recall is, aside from cinema, this "helpful" kid in Fantasy is not the most common trope. Movies love it because it brings it to the kid's level, but kids used to identify with the "newbie" character in a story over the "kid with adult powers". Bilbo was inexperienced, not young. Ask the player if they can't play the "wet behind the ears" sort of character rather than the "many inches shorter with little muscle mass and an incomplete brain development" kind of character.
This all being said, the modern age makes kids out to be more helpless than they actually are (though some gladly slip in to that role). To be fair, the advantage of being 5 to 10 years younger than other PCs rarely comes into play. The Curse of the Ages (Pathfinder 557) is one of the few aging effects I've seen, and this youth will give you 5 to 10 days of extra resistance, but otherwise what advantage does it hold? In an epic game spanning generations, it would make a short-lifespan character able to participate for longer. It's tempting to "realistically" reflect the downsides of children and teens and to lay the hurt down on the character, but it's largely "fluff" in game.
If you want a realistic setting, the less-than-minimum-roll-age of any race is too young to have picked up an adventuring class. My own children, 8 and 9, have problems lifting anything heavy or paying attention / retaining data enough to not be helpful in a workplace, much less fight with sharp weapons and cast spells. I've dealt with a lot of young teens in my work, and most of them aren't focused or governed enough to master anything as complex as formalized fighting and calculus (ie: wizardry!), but are getting closer physically.
If you want a cinematic, fun and frolic feel to your game, allow under-age but impose some penalties to interactions with serious adults (ie: imagine if Aragorn was a young teenager trying to counsel Theoden to ride to the summons of Gondor). Sorcerer's are the ideal young class, as a lot of the talents are natural.
A last touch is the classic "immortal child" or "too much Potion of Youth" scenario. I played a Wizard who had been "blessed" by the Goddess of Youth, and was a six-year old child for eternity. We represented it by low, low, low maximum Strength and Constitution scores, though she was chronologically in her twenties. An adult made child has to deal with mostly physical problems, ie: low Strength and Constitution. It may be tempting to give kids more Charisma, but a trip to the mall or a McDonalds will likely cure anyone of that delusion.
A final note of caution. In my own group we have a player who loves playing the young, spunky kid. This causes the campaign to constantly shift in certain directions, and can turn out to be frustrating for other character who constantly have to deal with it. Certain series have done well with having "the kid" along but not letting the tone be set by it (Firefly for example, before River became a Slayer in the movie *groan*).
You have a player or two who want serious role-playing in towns, who want to mix it up in bars and brothels? The kid will be left out of certain action real soon (or your game gets very, very odd in a hurry). Imagine the awkwardness if the 12 year old male Bard does manage to seduce the barmaid, as any 12 year old boy would... and lets not even start about underage females and sex and violence.
Likewise, the player playing the kid may have to deal with being told to shut-up in character, which can become painful after a while.
The young template might work pretty well, in Savage Worlds there's a Hindrance called Young, it effectively trades some attribute points and skill points at character creation for an extra luck bennie. When the character becomes an adult they don't have to buy-off the hindrance, but they do lose the extra luck bennie.
I actually stated up my kids in Savage Worlds, gave them the Young hindrance and sent them to an alternate dimension where there are two moons and the sky is purple...(They're SUPER Stoked about that game so far.)