Hey everybody, this is a question regarding the meanings and implications of age in Golarion. Specifically, what I'm wondering is as follows: You all know those tables that say a human or half-orc is an adult around age 16 or 18, whereas a tiefling, for instance, isn't one until age 60 (or whatever; I don't have the book in front of me. What I'm wondering is what that really means. First, I wonder about the cognitive level. Your average five year old human doesn't know multiplication, but by age nine it's pretty standard knowledge; if you didn't know how to multiply by age 15 you might be considered developmentally disabled. Does logic apply for races that live to a later age? Would it be considered normal for a 15 year old elf to be ignorant of multiplication?
Second, I wonder about physical maturity. Human females usually can't conceive children until they're maybe 13. Does that mean eleven females can't conceive until their forties or even later? Lastly, human kids that are half the age of a young adult (i.e. 8 to 10) are pretty defenseless. By the elf scale are elves who are 30 years old (or whatever) pretty physically defenseless?
Interested in all your thoughts!
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Well, considering that brain development doesn't finish, and we don't have full emotional maturity, until our mid-twenties, I suspect a lot of it is emotional development.
If elven and tiefling development is that slow, perhaps they don't form the emotional attachments (adult love or responsibility) until later. They might be able to have children, but they would behave like teenagers.
Outside of Golarion, Tolkien's elves formed emotional attachments only a few times in their lives, conceived by choice (they could control their body's reactions) and were sexually attracted only toward those they were sincerely attached to. However, this isn't the case in Golarion, so are there a lot of teen single parents in Elvendom? Perhaps they can't bear children and don't reach puberty until then.
Any more thoughts on this question? Are elves, tieflings, etc. physically mature at age 20 but emotionally or somehow cognitively immature until much later in life?
I believe there's a bit of variation in there, with different races maturing physically and mentally at different rates, with the age tables just showing what's generally considered to be the age of majority for that race, culturally.
With elves for instance, I'd honestly imagine they don't hit puberty until 100 or so, and keep growing for a few decades after that, but next to a human of the same apparent age, an elven kid would seem a bit wise beyond their years (although roughly as interested in childish activities as their appearance would suggest).
Goblins meanwhile I would figure are completely matured physically by the age of around 12 or 13, but don't really attain any sort of emotional maturity at any age.
What I can say with some confidence on the issue though is that I recall James Jacobs saying the longer age categories for aasimars and tieflings in the ARG should be disregarded, because they directly contradict various printed NPCs.
Also, I seem to recall hearing Ultimate Campaign is going to have a section on the opposite end of the aging spectrum, which will hopefully clear things up a little.
Tieflings have been retconned to mature earlier btw...