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Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: Coffee Zombie on December 06, 2014, 09:04:40 PM

Title: D&D 5E: Age Bonuses / Penalties
Post by: Coffee Zombie on December 06, 2014, 09:04:40 PM
With a few effects and monsters that can alter age (Wild Magic and one of the Sphinxes), my friend and I began to think of an old character he ran back in Rifts who had been reduced to a child after a cloning mishap. Anyways, we thought that a cleric of a goddess of youth would be a fun fit for this concept. I figured the age adjustments would be in the DMG...

But either I'm totally blind, or they're just omitted from 5th edition.

I have a few different editions I can lift age adjustments from, but I thought it was a bit weird that there's no real section on aging in this edition of D&D. Cutting room floor material perhaps?

Anyways, does anyone here want to take a stab at thinking what age adjustments might look like in 5th edition?
Title: D&D 5E: Age Bonuses / Penalties
Post by: FaerieGodfather on December 07, 2014, 12:06:52 AM
There's a section in the PHB where it describes how your character's age might be justification for your (normal) stats-- I very much get the impression that age modifiers were deliberately omitted.
Title: D&D 5E: Age Bonuses / Penalties
Post by: Tommy Brownell on December 07, 2014, 03:45:24 AM
Yeah. Age was clearly left out on purpose. Hell, some of those backgrounds don't really work if you are a fresh faced kid from the farm.

I, for one, don't care. It's not like people age, mature or degenerate at the same rate anyway.
Title: D&D 5E: Age Bonuses / Penalties
Post by: Kiero on December 07, 2014, 05:59:55 AM
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;802864I, for one, don't care. It's not like people age, mature or degenerate at the same rate anyway.

True, this is why I dislike aging rules that have fixed categories that are the same for all.

In a D&D context, I went with a fixed number + HD roll +/- Str and Con modifiers. That set the Middle Aged number, then just added a fixed number to that for each category afterwards.
Title: D&D 5E: Age Bonuses / Penalties
Post by: Necrozius on December 07, 2014, 07:29:03 AM
I'm gonna handle this pretty loosely and simply hand out advantage / disadvantage when a young child's size and appearance would matter depending on context. Same with very old age.
Title: D&D 5E: Age Bonuses / Penalties
Post by: RPGPundit on December 11, 2014, 12:02:40 AM
Quote from: Necrozius;802872I'm gonna handle this pretty loosely and simply hand out advantage / disadvantage when a young child's size and appearance would matter depending on context. Same with very old age.

Advantage/disadvantage seems like a great way to handle it.