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CRMcNeill
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 Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 9:24 pm Post subject: Age Modifiers for Stats |
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This was something I liked about the WOTC rules for D&D, that once a character reached a certain age, there were modifiers applied to their stats to reflect the aging process, both physically and mentally. I recall one specific instance in the WEG stats where it stated that Mon Mothma's stats were reduced because of advanced age. Has anyone ever worked up a system for this?
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 12:02 am Post subject: |
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Nope, and there is no need in my game. I don't run generational games where the same PCs grow significantly older over the course of the campaign. So no matter what age you make your character to start out, whatever attributes and skills he starts with are already thought to have previous aging factors retroed into the character's history arriving at the present...
In other words, your PC is whatever he is when you start him out and going forward he won't age enough (by in-universe game time) for aging to really impact the character.
But if you really wanted to I'm sure it would be easy to just convert the d20 modifers to D6 and use their aging charts (not that I'm condoning that) 8)
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 12:43 am Post subject: |
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I don't think I've ever had a character live long enough to age... I retired one, who didn't die, but he's retired and not coming back out.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 12:21 pm Post subject: |
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In D20, it is just a trade off. At age x you loose points off of phyical stats and increase mental stats.
Since in D6 you allocate you attribute dice this can be models suring character creation easily.
If you wanted to do something like this druing play, I7d say "middle aged" character could opt to trade a pip from DEX to KNO and from STR to PER.
"Old" characters could trade another pip.
That would be about all you would need.
In our games, about the only time aging came up was for "kids". I could see a campaignlasting a few years and a kid becoming an adult. What I did in my games was to assume that living and growing up counted as time spent training for attribute improvement. So a PC could try to up a stat every couple of game months, if he was willing to risk the CPs. |
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | | In our games, about the only time aging came up was for "kids". I could see a campaignlasting a few years and a kid becoming an adult. What I did in my games was to assume that living and growing up counted as time spent training for attribute improvement. So a PC could try to up a stat every couple of game months, if he was willing to risk the CPs. |
That makes a lot of sense, but shouldn't they also arguably start with less to work with? Maybe fewer skill dice in representation of having less experience?
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 6:13 pm Post subject: |
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Maybe. Though that would put out the Young kid template (who gets the same 18d the old characters get..
Check this thread out which has some what similar thoughts.
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jmanski
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 6:22 pm Post subject: |
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Um, which thread? You forgot the link....
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Guardian_A
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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I havent had to deal with this much, but the times I have, we have done one of two things. Both involve creating a new character. 1. The character goes out in a blaze of glory before resuming play with a new character. 2. The player retires the character, that character then becomes an NPC and is allowed to grow old.
Now, to address the actual intent of this thread, . . .
I dont think there are any official rules for aging, but I think atgxtg has the right idea for how to address the aging issue.
In the past, I have told players that I expect them to use their skills if they want to use it. If I feel that the player hasnt used the skill for an extended period of time, I will mention it to them. I treat this as a warning and start keeping track of the last time they have used that skill. If the skill dosnt see use in the next month "In game", then they loose a pip to that skill. This continues until the player makes use of the skill, or buys a new pip in the skill. |
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Whill
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 11:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | atgxtg wrote: | | In our games, about the only time aging came up was for "kids". I could see a campaignlasting a few years and a kid becoming an adult. What I did in my games was to assume that living and growing up counted as time spent training. |
That makes a lot of sense, but shouldn't they also arguably start with less to work with? Maybe fewer skill dice in representation of having less experience? |
| garhkal wrote: | | Maybe. Though that would put out the Young kid template (who gets the same 18d the old characters get. |
Garhkal, that brings up a good point alone the lines of what I was shooting for. In Star Wars game terms, characters in general come in all varieties of what I refer to as "caliber". The most basic and obvious aspects of caliber is the number of attribute and skill dice a character has. For PCs is it usually 18D with 7D in skills to start. For NPCs, they can range from below average in attributes (below 12D) to even more than 18D. Each character out there in the galaxy has a variable # of attribute dice.
So let's take 2 PC templates, the Kid and the Retired Imperial Captain. If human, they are both going to have the same starting attribute dice (18D) and starting skill dice (7D). Instinctively you migth react and say, wait a minute, that's not fair. What about all the experience the old character has over the younger one. But actually, it is not fair for them to not be equal when considering game balance.
How do we translate that game balance to retro-envision the character's developement over time? Easy. The Retired Imperial Captain may have forgotten things over the years. He maybe used to have higher STR and DEX than he does now. Or maybe he was just a lower caliber person to only have 7D in skills at an older age. A younger version of the character would have less than 7D is skills to explain his starting skills at character creation.
So when the PC starts being played, the 18/7 represents the sum of everything that has happened to the character up to that point.
On the hand, you have an 18/7 Kid. Obviously, a PC-level kid is exceptional. He is smarter, stronger, more skilled and more experienced than his peers. For a kid to start out the same caliber as an adult PC, that would logically imply that over time he would get even better than he is (like all PCs do in the game anyway).
My previous points in relation to this...
The old character highlights that the past of a PC should explain how the character (of any age) got to the point that he is, but that doesn't necessarily mean that when he was younger he was equal to a younger PC in the same PC group. No matter how you retro-justify it, at the beginning of the campaign, he is "equal" to the other PCs of any age.
And the kid highlights that in the future, the exceptional kid would develope into an exceptional adult, and in game terms maybe he might realistically be even more powerful than an adult PC. But in my campaigns that doesn't matter because any character is going to be retired as a PC before he should develop significantly due to age.
The past and future of PCs can be thought of as better or worse than 18/7. Character game mechanics were not designed to make all characters equal to each other at every age. It was made so that they all start out equally at the start of the campaign, regardless of ages. You just accept that a younger PC with 18/7 is a higher caliber person than the middle-aged character would have been when he was a teen. But they are the same caliber now.
Should there be some rules governing attribute dice allocation at character creation. There could be if you really want to micromanage things, but I think a healthy dose of common sense is all a GM needs to approve or disapprove characters. Should a player be able to play a 85 year-old human character with 4D strength? Maybe not. Just the same, should the exceptional Kid have 4D STR? 4D anything? I don't see the need for age "rules" at character creation. The Kid and Retired Imperial Captain templates both start out with less than 3D STR.
Remember, this is fiction. Your game creates fictional stories about fictional characters. Game stats are just translating qualities of fictional characters into game terms. The system as designed was more concerned about game balance. The stats for younger versions of your character really don't need to exist. When the character is made, POOF, his stats just come into being for whatever age he happens to be at character creation.
I am big on making sure that the PCs have a developed enough backgrounds to explain the attribute and skill dice allocation, but what the character would have been in the past and will be as he ages is not as important as what he is at character creation, which should be equal to the other PCs at character creation. It's called game balance, and it is much more important than minutiae like minor adjustments to attributes due to the character aging. Starting PC attributes have a lot of room to swim around in between the mins and maxes anyway.
The only thing regarding aging that really makes sense to me for this game might be over the course of a generational campaign where characters age significantly. I don't do that, but it makes a little sense. In the interest of game balance, a little trade-off like d20 does it might work. But even then it may not really be necessary.
I don't have interest in that because by my experience, a few years of in-universe game time is enough to develop a starting-level 18/7 PC into something so ultra-powerful that it is not so fun to play or run any more (and I even advance characters a little slower than what would seem to be average). That point is always reached before I would think that the character needs to be altered specifically to reflect aging. But it seems that at least some others have a different experience and do indeed play in long campaigns, with PCs advancing into movie-hero caliber ability. If that floats your boat, then enjoy the ride.
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2011 12:28 am Post subject: |
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Good points, Whill. I was thinking of reducing the skill dice in an effort to balance the easier attribute improvements the kid would benefit from, as a result of counting growing as attribute training time.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2011 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | atgxtg wrote: | | In our games, about the only time aging came up was for "kids". I could see a campaignlasting a few years and a kid becoming an adult. What I did in my games was to assume that living and growing up counted as time spent training for attribute improvement. So a PC could try to up a stat every couple of game months, if he was willing to risk the CPs. |
That makes a lot of sense, but shouldn't they also arguably start with less to work with? Maybe fewer skill dice in representation of having less experience? |
No, and yes.
No becuase starting characters in D6 are all built on the same number of dice. Much the same reason why the young senatorial has the same number of dice as the old senatorial. Or why a 30 something Corellian has more dice than his 200 something Wookiee partner.
Yes, because those who start with Force Skills have to trade off attribute dice for them. The net effect is that Padaan learners start off younger, and with lower attributes. Skill dice diverted to force trainingalso results in lower skill scores.
One of those nice cases where the rules "fix" the problem before it existed. |
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garhkal
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Bren
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2011 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | http://www.rancorpit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2355&highlight=aging |
Ah, yes. I remember cruising through that thread when reading archives. I wondered at the time what the point of taking away the character's skills was. Is this something from D&D? Does D20 take away levels if you haven't leveled up recently? I'm struggling to understand why a rule that takes away skills would make a Star Wars game more fun. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:28 am Post subject: |
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As mentioned by Crmcneill " I recall one specific instance in the WEG stats where it stated that Mon Mothma's stats were reduced because of advanced age. Has anyone ever worked up a system for this?"
There is already precedent for stats being lowered for age or atrophy. that was the basis for that other thread. BUT it also linked to just getting old.
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Bren
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| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 10:03 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | As mentioned by Crmcneill " I recall one specific instance in the WEG stats where it stated that Mon Mothma's stats were reduced because of advanced age. Has anyone ever worked up a system for this?"
There is already precedent for stats being lowered for age or atrophy. that was the basis for that other thread. BUT it also linked to just getting old. |
Most of the other thread focused on atrophy of skills for normal aged characters rather than attribute or skill changes due to aging. That's what I was responding to. Unless one is running a generational campaign, I don't see the point in age related atrophy. Sure Yoda may have had a better STR and DEX five or six hundred years ago, heck he may have been taller than too. But most of us aren't trying to play Yoda or any other character as both young and then old. So we only need the stats for the characters age now - whenever now happens to be for your game. |
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