The recent '2e old school style pathfinder' thread and the 'how to handle wishes' and finally the 'new way to handle aging effects' thread got me thinking...
There arent really many ways to age a character in pathfinder.
Wishes dont do it anymore...
Haste doesnt do it anymore...
It looks like theres a curse that will age you a year per day till you make the save but other than that I don't see anything in pathfinder that ages you anymore except the passage of time itself...
Am I missing something?
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The magical ageing rules were removed. It didn't affect everyone. A half-orc might care that Haste aged him a year (with death from old age potentially occuring as soon as 45 years), but grey elves probably couldn't care less (where death from old-age could occur at around 1000, or as high as 2000 years old). Most campaigns didn't last long enough from the majority of races to really be affected.
The largest drawback of magical aging, though, was any amount (no matter how small) could kill you. If magically aged, you had to make a System Shock check. Fail that, and you died. (Magical aging was only one of the things that could cause a system shock roll).
It sucked to have the party caster Haste you (which aged you a year), and end up killing half the party because of bad System Shock rolls.
If you want to bring back the aging mechanics, it basically converts to a DC 7 Constitution check. A characters level had nothing to do with it - it was just a straight check based on constitution. And make aging a percentage effect, not a static number. It might age a half-orc by a year, but an elf by 10-20 years. And remove the aging benefits (boosts to mental scores) to prevent abuse.
Magical ageing like that never moved you up age categories.
I couldn't remember if it used to or not. I just included that because, if aging magic was allowed in 3.X, someone somewhere would try to use it as a benefit. Removing the bonuses from aging would prevent that.
(As a note, I remove all bonuses to mental scores from aging, even if I don't have aging magic. It doesn't make sense. The elderly tend to lose eyesight/hearing, not gain it (wisdom boost). There minds tend to go, not improve (intelligence). For every argument you can make to boost a mental score as you age, there is another valid argument to lower it. It all balances out, for a net result of no change. I keep the penalties to physical scores for aging though.)
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I really liked the idea of magical aging and regression too. Its a huge trope in fantasy stories.
It always seems to me like if you replaced the 25000gp diamond with 1% lifespan aging it would make wishes better...
Those people who want to make all the +5 attributes could get them, they'd just fry 30 years of their life away doing it.
Somehow miraculously made it to 17th level before your 18th birthday? Had enough money lying around to make all the attribute books? happy 47th tough guy!
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It always seems to me like if you replaced the 25000gp diamond with 1% lifespan aging it would make wishes better...
Those people who want to make all the +5 attributes could get them, they'd just fry 30 years of their life away doing it.
Somehow miraculously made it to 17th level before your 18th birthday? Had enough money lying around to make all the attribute books? happy 47th tough guy!
Suddenly the immortality discovery becomes very attractive for wizards.
That'd keep a wizard interested in continuing to level after 17, wouldnt it
True it would be easier to simply take a 30 year age hit than come up with 300000gp in diamonds... On the other I'm not entirely clear how its handled when you try making an attribute book and you take the +5dc for not casting the spell, does that save you from having to provide the 25000gp diamond spell component?
I can never see it affecting anyone at my table.
I haven't been GMing that long, but as it is, we've only kept the same characters for 2 adventures tops before switching to a new group. People usually have a dozen different characters they want to play, and since I'm mostly interested in tabletop as being a springboard for writing and art, I'm always interested in getting a new group of character backstories dropped into my lap and having to come up with a new story they all make sense in from scratch.
Plus, aside from my flatmates (who I'm always going to be gaming with at home), who's playing what game often changes every semester at my college since it's all run through a club, and it's easier to come up with something new.
Also, as for the arguments about mental ability scores going down, I think it's pretty safe to say that lots of people want to play a wise old man, but not nearly as many want to play a fragile man with Alzheimer's. Yeah, some old people lose mental capacity when they age. A lot of them don't, and the ones that don't are the ones people will be playing and the ones players are going to be interacting with in such a way that stats are going to be necessary.
That all the argument I need.
That's sounds more like an argument for adding the Senile category after Venerable.Magical ageing like that never moved you up age categories.I couldn't remember if it used to or not. I just included that because, if aging magic was allowed in 3.X, someone somewhere would try to use it as a benefit. Removing the bonuses from aging would prevent that.
(As a note, I remove all bonuses to mental scores from aging, even if I don't have aging magic. It doesn't make sense. The elderly tend to lose eyesight/hearing, not gain it (wisdom boost). There minds tend to go, not improve (intelligence). For every argument you can make to boost a mental score as you age, there is another valid argument to lower it. It all balances out, for a net result of no change. I keep the penalties to physical scores for aging though.)
Or, alternately, age-related illnesses which prey upon the weakness of a body at that time... you know, a body suffering from lower CON (specifically, from what I've seen/from what I understand, it's usually a function of a lifetime of subtle incidental poisoning or the result of some <currently incurable> age-related physical degeneration do to the generically termed 'disease'). ;)
But really, I can understand the problem some have with it. It's understandable. It just works better from a game-storytelling perspective to use the current set-up.
I might tend to suggest an alternative of actually just increasing experience one a one-to-one basis... but I'm sure that has problems too.