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I was looking at the starting ages of the Sylph (and thus also the Aasimar, Ifrits, and other similar races) and realized something potentially disturbing. These races achieve "adulthood" biologically (equivalent to a 16-year-old human) at age 61. But usually their parents are human.
How retarded is the growth and maturation of these races? Is it four times slower as a result? Do they remain infants for four years and toddlers until they're over 15?
And what does this do for the parents of such a child? I mean, imagine how the townsfolk would talk about a Sylph... wouldn't there be accusations of her being a changeling or a witch?
I'm wondering because I started writing a story from the point of view of a young sylph (having just reached 60 years) who just buried her parents... who had died of old age. And I'm wondering just how much like a teenager would this 60-year-old woman be? Especially when you consider she's still growing and maturing biologically.
I don't suppose any of Paizo's editors and writers could chime in on this and give us an idea on how their aging works for childhood. I mean, do they start out aging normally and then when they reach eight or ten suddenly "stop" for a while? Do they just not reach puberty for the longest time, being "mostly" adult but never going that final step? And if that's so, why don't they leave to become adventurers at an early age then?
(There's also the somewhat disturbing thought as to why it takes a Sylph or Aasimar 8-48 years to learn wizardly and an elf 10-60 years... but a human picks it up in 2-12 years. But what I'm primarily interested in is the "aging" of these longer-lived semi-human races... and possibly how humans and others react to this.)
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I've always played it like they mature just as quickly but remain young and vigorous. I like the old man in a young man's body persona. The 20 year old man who's actually 100 and wiser than he looks. Also gets rid of much of the problems that comes with slowly maturing. Thats a long time to spend in gradeschool.
Aside: Am I missing something? You say "usually their parents are human". Isn't the whole point that one of the parents is not?
Depends on your setting. Plane-Touched are merely beings who have some sort of contact with another plane and take on its aspects. This could be by having an ancestor with blood and it just happens to pop up as an assimar or tiefling now and again. They are usually born to 2 mortal parents, rather than an angel and an orc or such. Settings vary though.
That's kind of a shame about the Aasimar ages being wrong. I was rather enjoying the concept of Nualia from Runelords being forced for DECADES to be a child and young woman and having to constantly put up with stuff. It would even better explain why she went nutters. ^^ But then, I guess that would end up with her being older than Sandpoint.
The problem I see with the "mature quickly but remain young" bit is that why do they wait 'til they're 60 before going out in the world? Or even longer if they're a wizard. So it seems like their ages might be retarded up until a certain point (they're extreme late bloomers). But I'm still trying to figure out the whys and wherefores.
And of course you still have the question: how much of maturity is due to the length of years you've lived... and how much is due to biology? Would a 60-year-old in a 16-year-old's body behave more reservedly and with caution? Or would he or she be as antsy and reckless as a teen?
(Though with Sylphs, their very nature and inquisitiveness does kind of hint at them being eternal teenagers in some ways.)
James Jacobs recently addressed a similar topic here:
We've actually not covered that in detail, alas, but yes, that's the idea.
Frankly, I really REALLY RELALLLLY wish we'd set ALL the starting ages to be identical, so that all the core humanoid races reach adulthood at the same time. That keeps things from being weird. We can still have long lived races—natural life spans rarely if ever matter for PCs anyway.
If I were to go in and set it in stone, I'd say precisely this... that an elf matures to be about the equivalent to a 13 year old human in about 13 years... but then spends the next 100 years or so in a long-drawn out "teenage" year. They're not stupid or slow learners as much as they are more distracted and curious and I guess scatterbrained during those years.
If it really bothers your verisimilitude, though... I strongly recommend simply using identical starting ages for all core races.
It might also help to separate the difference between biological maturity and "societal maturity". Humans IRL biologically mature at one age but aren't considered "mature" (usually) until a different age and that different age varies by culture (and thus, by law).
An elf could mature by age 16 but he still doesn't get to vote or legally buy cigarettes until 100 years old, for example.
That would actually bother me a lot more. I can accept that races will biologically mature more slowly far more easily than that I can accept that teenagers will accept being treated as children for 100 years. They'll run off and adventure, fall in love, get pregnant, generally do stupid things and screw up. You know, like human teenagers, but with decades to make mistakes in.
The Secret Life of the Kyonin Teenager
I also have a lot of trouble imagining a culture that wouldn't take advantage of that population for that long. Wouldn't put them to work, use them to fight wars, etc. If they're that close to physically mature, why wouldn't they?
I'm sure they would, if they were pressed to do so.
Speaking from a psychology perspective, there's something most of you have missed.
There are 2 types of brain tissue, one helps with raw processing (called gray matter), and the other (called white matter) is great for storage. As you get older, your brain slowly converts to white matter. This means you retain your memories of useful things, but you lose out on raw ability to deal with panic situations/reaction time worsens.
That means no Elf, especially since they can interbreed with humans and are essentially the same species, can possibly get away with having that kind of lifespan and coordination, THEN manage to deal with emergencies etc. In this case, Int is white matter, while Dex is gray matter.
That means no Elf, especially since they can interbreed with humans and are essentially the same species
o_o
We still don't know the specifics of memory. There is some belief now that there are biochemical processes within the cells that are responsible for memories - it's not the grey and white matter, it's what goes on within them.
With elves? There may be some further element responsible for memory. And it could very well be that half-elves die much quicker than elves because they lack that cellular structure, or it doesn't live as long in hybrids like half-elves.
I always imagined it as being a process that was slowed exponentially until they reached the point where they were venerable. Infant -> 5yrs is normal, 6yrs-13yrs is slower than normal but not overtly abnomal, while 14yrs-20yrs takes twice as long.
I've never been a stickler for starting ages so I haven't had to enforce it, but I'd houserule that most of these races become physically mature in just a stone's throw from the normal age so that things don't get too weird, and then after that they progress much slower.
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I kind of like the idea of the Sylph finally reaching physical and mental maturity as her human parents die of old age. I think that makes for an interesting character seed--how does the sylph react to that trauma?
Of course, I'm also a big fan of the Forlorn elves, who have the same problem.
In our games, to deal with the age discrepancies for aasimars and tieflings, we decided that players can choose between the half-elf age ranges and the listed plane-touched age ranges, with the idea being that the closer you are to your planar antecedents, the longer lived you'll be.
So a quarter celestial (child of a half-celestial and a human) would use the listed age range and be mature at 60.
An aasimar that popped up several generations removed from the celestial would use the half-elf range, and be mature at 20 or so.
Speaking from a psychology perspective, there's something most of you have missed.
There are 2 types of brain tissue, one helps with raw processing (called gray matter), and the other (called white matter) is great for storage. As you get older, your brain slowly converts to white matter. This means you retain your memories of useful things, but you lose out on raw ability to deal with panic situations/reaction time worsens.
That means no Elf, especially since they can interbreed with humans and are essentially the same species, can possibly get away with having that kind of lifespan and coordination, THEN manage to deal with emergencies etc. In this case, Int is white matter, while Dex is gray matter.
If they're the same species, they obviously don't live for hundreds of years. :) Obviously there's some magic involved in the interbreeding. Or normal species/breeding limitations don't apply in fantasy worlds.
All that aside, there's no reason the elven brain couldn't convert to white matter far more slowly than the human one, allowing that change to occur at a rate proportional to their lifespan.
Or of course, their brains don't work that way at all.
If the brain matter conversion was slower, so too would learning capacity. Elves would be incredibly dull as a result in comparison to humans.
That means no Elf, especially since they can interbreed with humans and are essentially the same specieso_o
Yup. Turns out different species can't interbreed and produce viable offspring. HOWEVER, our type of human and Neanderthals did in fact interbreed; most Europeans have some ancestry shared with them. But those were two very closely related versions of humanity.
Kinda a bummer, isn't it?
Wouldn't it be interesting if our idea of the orc was in fact related to humanity's relations with Neanderthals? We outbred and outsurvived them, but we did interbreed....
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No, no. I took biology. I know how it works, dude.
On Earth.
I don't know if it's already been clarified in this thread, but James Jacobs has said flat-out that the numbers (at least for Aasimar and Tiefling) as incorrect in the ARG and contradict previously established Golarion canon. Tiefling and Aasimar are supposed to age as humans, though he conceded that if you want to extend their end of life time that is fine.
The other planetouched races he hasn't given an official stance on, but he errs on the side of not wanting more extremely long-lived races.
I just go with "The numbers in the ARG are way off".
That's been confirmed as the case for aasimar and tieflings. I'd certainly consider that holding true for the other planetouched as well.
Actually, as far as I remember, the devs' reply regarding the elementally planetouched races was along the lines of 'There are very few canonical examples of these races in Golarion, so we just don't care', as opposed to Aasimar/Tieflings, where the 60+ age for adulthood would clash with existing storylines.
No, no. I took biology. I know how it works, dude.
On Earth.
Yup, but I was assuming that most games go by real world rules as a default, and it turns out Pathfinder has malleable biology not just with "magical" races like dragons, outsiders etc, but with the standard races like elves. I used to object to half orcs, but then I realized those orcs might be a stand-in for Neanderthals. Half elves don't really fit that mold, although they have been there since waaaaaaaaay back. Never liked them then, either. Too boring.
We still don't know the specifics of memory. There is some belief now that there are biochemical processes within the cells that are responsible for memories - it's not the grey and white matter, it's what goes on within them.Hell, there are schools of thought that say the brain merely acts as a "bio-transceiver" between a non-physical mind/soul/whatever and the physical body and that memories are entirely non-physical in nature. But the final word is... it's a fantasy game. Any argument is invalid because 'dragons'.
Meh. Turns out much of the personality is formed from brain structure, genetic tendencies to form that brain structure in the first place, and hormones etc.
Using the brain as a stand-in for a soul is fine by me. It amounts to the same thing: a person. Turns out that much of what we think of ourselves is actually a matter of how the brain interacts with the body and the senses. The things that define our personality are not just confined to the brain case either. The body has feedback which helps to dictate that. This also means that gender has a surprising amount of influence on what we are like as a personality, but not in ways most of us THINK are defined by gender.
As a side note, I've been mulling with the idea of having slight gender rules for Pathfinder. What do you think about females getting a +1 Constitution, and males getting a +1 Strength?
don't you think that the genetic differences between humans, elves, orcs, the elemental and outsider etc are enough to stop breeding? According to the game history, they evolved separately.
Do outsiders even have genes? I never considered them biological entities.
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That's kind of a shame about the Aasimar ages being wrong. I was rather enjoying the concept of Nualia from Runelords being forced for DECADES to be a child and young woman and having to constantly put up with stuff. It would even better explain why she went nutters. ^^ But then, I guess that would end up with her being older than Sandpoint.
Nualia is one of the PRIMARY reasons why the age thing is in error. Because Sandpoint is only 45 years old.
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That's kind of a shame about the Aasimar ages being wrong. I was rather enjoying the concept of Nualia from Runelords being forced for DECADES to be a child and young woman and having to constantly put up with stuff. It would even better explain why she went nutters. ^^ But then, I guess that would end up with her being older than Sandpoint.Nualia is one of the PRIMARY reasons why the age thing is in error. Because Sandpoint is only 45 years old.
Of course, plane touched are freaks of nature. There is no reason you couldn't say YOUR plane touched is a freak in such a way that also makes them age slowly.
As James Jacobs mentioned above, Nualia is a primary reason for them reversing course on Aasimar ages, and there's apparently young Teiflings as well thus explaining them. He said in the Aasimar thread (linked earlier in this thread) that while he'd prefer that for the Sylphs and other semi-humans, there's nothing conflicting it thus it's not a lock.
So I'm going to run by the assumption that they DO age slower. Maybe they outgrow the infant stage like a normal human, but their aging likely slows down significantly from 6 to 60. This also helps explain why their behavior tends to be different from the human norm despite being raised by humans. They aren't teenagers with funky hair and a few extra powers. They have lived for a long time. Many buried parents and even siblings.
One of the wonderful things about Advanced Races is that it expanded things so you're not just playing generic fantasy races. Having ratfolk and catfolk age faster than humans, having orcs be adults at 10 and old at 40, and sylphs and the like growing up with humans but being alien from the getgo helps make them special and not just funny-looking people.
Having ratfolk and catfolk age faster than humans, having orcs be adults at 10 and old at 40, and sylphs and the like growing up with humans but being alien from the getgo helps make them special and not just funny-looking people.
Unfortunately, to truly have an alien mindset, you'd have to talk with a psychologist, since they'd be in a position to know. These are game writers we are writing about, most don't have phD's in psych.
Karzaan's right, we really don't know what their aging rate is, just the average.
A good real world example is canines. Dogs. They don't age 7 years for every human one, it's actually very different rates depending on where in the lifespan they are when you check it out online.