The description for your
character’s ancestry in Chapter 2 gives some guidance
on the age ranges of members of that ancestry. Beyond
that, you can play a character of whatever age you like.
Your character’s age is a major factor that shapes how
she interacts with the world. There aren’t any mechanical
adjustments to your character for being particularly
old, but you might want to take it into account when
considering your starting ability scores and future
advancement; for instance, an old and wise character
might have a higher Wisdom score, so you might want
to make sure to put one of your free ability boosts in
Wisdom. Particularly young characters can change the
tone of some of the game’s threats, so it’s recommended
to play characters who are at least young adults.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. One one hand, paizo saved space by excluding a simple table, on the other hand I find the lack of mechanics a little bit troublesome if I want age effects in game. a character magically aged or de-aged is something that can happen, from time to time. and in that case it is nice to look up the effects instead of telling the player: 'shuffle around a couple of the free ability boost you gained at first level'
How do others feel about this?
I figure for the spells put it in the spell
My experience with the age bonus chart was casters being old to take the bonuses and using spell slots to ignore the penalties. It was super easy. I don't think it would be so easy in PF2 (at this time) but I like to avoid the whole problem. Not providing a mechanical bonus or penalty due to aging is exactly what I want. Now you can play an old fighter without penalty. You can also play an old wizard without penalty, or bonus. Thus it puts everyone on a (more) equal playing field.
I'm kind of fine with all the mechanics of this being removed, it's an area where a GM or table which want to have age effects can house rule something up (the old rules aren't going away).
I like the old aging effects.
I think there should be templates:
Infantile:
-10 to all ability scores (minimum 1)Very Young:
-6 to all ability scores (minimum 1)Young:
-4 to all ability scores (minimum 1)Normal:
-0 to all ability scores (minimum 1)Middle Aged:
-2 to Str, Dex, and Con (minimum 1)Elderly:
-4 to Str, Dex, and Con. -2 to Int and Wis. (minimum 1)Ancient:
-6 to Str, Dex, and Con. -4 to Int and Wis. (minimum 1)
I vehemently disagree. What is the point of this? If everything is negative no one will be a different age so you are just eliminating choice. If there are trade offs people will just min max. It's so much easier to just not have mechanics for age. Plus, these modifiers are ridiculously unrealistic.