Middle aged, Old, and Venerable

[Douglas Muir 406]

Aging in Pathfinder:

At middle age, –1 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha.
At old age, –2 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha.
At venerable age, –3 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha.

So, if a character reaches venerable (70+ for a human), then s/he is -6 to all physical stats, +3 to the mental ones. For melee characters, I'd say old is CR-1, and venerable is probably CR-2. Spellcasters, not so sure...

Have many people played PCs into middle age or later? Or, has anyone tried throwing aged NPCs into the mix? It seems like a venerable NPC could be an interesting mentor, rival or even BBEG. Anyone?

Doug M.

[Ivan Rûski]

We've had a couple of middle aged PCs, and plenty of NPCs of all ages, but we've never used that rule. The players wanted to have the characters middle aged for fluff reasons, and most of the NPCs didn't need stats.

[Spaetrice]

In our STAP campaign I'm playing a Witch. But, I have replacement character concepts on the back burner and one of them is an old-aged human barbarian. I'd be willing to take the penalties for fluff reasons.

[stuart haffenden]

Yep, I've played a number of characters with those boons and penalties.

It's never really been an issue in our groups. The reason I do it is for fluff and/or optimization.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Character concept: a middle-aged PC who discovers his destiny late in life.

-2 to all physical stats is pretty harsh, but if you play it carefully you could do allright. For instance, consider this wizard build:

Str 11
Dex 12
Con 12
Int 17 (racial 19)
Wis 11
Cha 7

Applying the middle-aged adjustments would give you

Str 9
Dex 10
Con 10
Int 18 (racial 20)
Wis 12
Cha 8

-- in terms of point buy, you actually go up a bit, from a 15 to a 16 point character. Yes, you can tweak this to gain a couple more points on point build. But no amount of tweakage is going to soften the blow of -2 on all your physical stats. Overall this doesn't seem unbalanced, and I'd be inclined to allow it if any player should ever ask.

Doug M.

[Rezdave]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

It seems like a venerable NPC could be an interesting mentor, rival or even BBEG

"Mentors" in my campaign are often "old", but rarely have stats.

Every so often a Player decides to make their PC Middle-aged and take the adjustments.

I routinely stat up middle-aged NPCs for the party to encounter. Sometimes it is a BBEG wizard or priest who benefits from the stat adjustment. Otherwise it is generally an NPC in a "leadership position" such as a local sheriff or prosperous merchant or town elder with whom they interact.

FWIW,

Rez

[stuart haffenden]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

Character concept: a middle-aged PC who discovers his destiny late in life.

-2 to all physical stats is pretty harsh, but if you play it carefully you could do alright. For instance, consider this wizard build:

Middle aged is -1 to physical and +1 to mental

Old age is -3 to physical and +2 to mental
Venerable is -6 to physical and +3 to mental

the penalties/bonuses stack.

[RickSummon]

Keep in mind that Ultimate Magic has the age resistance spells which allow the caster to ignore all age-related penalties to his physical ability scores for 24 hours (while keeping any age-related bonuses to mental scores).

They are personal-range spells, so they might be best used by eldritch knights; however, they can also be prepared as alchemist extracts, so an alchemist could give one to an old fighter each day as an infusion.