The Guide to Ages
Age is a part of our character that is often overlooked when it comes to mechanics. While the vast majority of characters are adults, you may choose to make older or younger characters. Using this guide, you can quickly reflect your character's age in its mechanics, or alter NPC stats to do the same.
Developmental Stages
As you progress through the years of your live, your body develops, as does your personality. This progression takes the form of individual development stages, which represent different points in your life, from your birth to your dying breaths.
Age as Exhaustion
We're all born in this world as infants, unable to take care of ourselves, and without the ability to properly interact with the world. As you grow up, you become better at carrying out your will, gain intelligence, and become more and more independent.
Conversely, with advanced age comes deteriorating faculties. Your aging body presents unique challenges, and frustrations.
These changes, the progression from childhood to adulthood to elderly life, can be simply expressed by utilizing an existing mechanic: exhaustion.
The normal rules assume that you are an adult. If you wish to play a character which is younger, or older, you will have to contend with a minimum level of exhaustion, representing your developing or declining capacities.
You always have these levels of exhaustion, and are unable to restore past it.
Using These Rules
These rules were made as a way to quickly and simply establish the effects of playing young and old characters. However, they're rather punishing. Your DM should consider what is reasonable for the purposes of their game. It might be beneficial to only use the effects of young age, and to provide no penalties for playing older characters.
These rules offer a very simple way to quickly age NPCs. By giving an NPC the appropriate amount of exhaustion, you can very quickly change how it behaves, and how players will interact with it. As a DM, you may wish to use these rules exclusively for NPCs.
The Stages of Life
| Developmental Stage | Minimum Exhaustion Level |
|---|---|
| Newborn | 5 |
| Infant | 4 |
| Toddler | 3 |
| Child | 2 |
| Adolescent | 1 |
| Young Adult | 0 |
| Adult | 0 |
| Late Adult | 1 |
| Senior | 2 |
| Elderly | 3 |
| Venerable | 4 |
| Dying | 5 |
Growing Up
Young characters are dependent on others. Their bodies are not fully developed, and neither are their minds. Characters will have a minimum level of exhaustion until they grow into a young adult, at which point the character will have grown and experienced enough to no longer be held back.
Each race develops at a slightly different rate.
| Developmental Stage | Dragonborn | Half-Orcs | Humans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newborn | <2d4 hours | <1 Year | <1 Year |
| Infant | <1 Year | 1 Year | 1 Year |
| Toddler | 1 Year | 3 Years | 4 Years |
| Child | 3 Years | 6 Years | 8 Years |
| Adolescent | 6 Years | 9 Years | 12 Years |
| Young Adult | 9 Years | 12 Years | 16 Years |
Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Half Elves, Halflings, & Tieflings reach young adulthood at the same rate as humans.
Reaching Adulthood
Adulthood is a concept which differs for each race. Humans consider themselves adults at age 18, when their bodies are nearly done developing, whereas elves consider themselves adults once they've accumulated a significant amount of worldly experience.
Late adulthood is the point where a character starts to begin to experience the effects of aging. As you age past adulthood, you begin to take on the ill effects of aging, as your body enters a slow decline.
Adulthood and Beyond (Years)
| Developmental Stage | Dragonborn | Dwarves | Elves | Gnomes | Half-Elves | Half-Orcs | Halflings | Humans | Tieflings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | 15 | 50 | 100 | 40 | 20 | 14 | 20 | 18 | 18 |
| Late Adult | 60 | 250 | 500 | 300 | 125 | 45 | 75 | 60 | 62 |
| Senior | 70 | 300 | 600 | 350 | 150 | 64 | 120 | 70 | 74 |
| Elderly | 75 | 325 | 700 | 375 | 165 | 68 | 135 | 75 | 78 |
| Venerable | 78 | 345 | 740 | 400 | 175 | 72 | 145 | 78 | 82 |
| Dying | >80 | >350 | >750 | >410 | >180 | >75 | >150 | >80 | >85 |
Variant Rule: Growing In Size
The vast majority of creatures are born into this world smaller as a newborn. Newborns are smaller than their adult size, and have room to grow. To emulate this gradual growth, creatures have a size modifier which depends on their age. Newborns and infants are two sizes smaller than their adult size (with a minimum size of tiny). Toddlers and children are only one size smaller than their adult counterparts (with a minimum size of tiny).
Hi, Im Slaximillian
This guide is an effort to provide simple and useful guides to players and DMs that can enhance their games.
If you end up using these rules, let me know I'd love to hear your thoughts.
If you see any erors you'd like to point out, or if you wanna chat about this or any of my other projects, you can contact me on discord. I'm Slaximillian#7230 <@376444444024504331>, and I frequent the Haven, and Prisons and Pseudodragons servers.
Lately, I've mostly been working on a Sci Fi setting, which is reaching its halfway completion point. If you wanna see or talk about that, hit me up.