One of my players wants to play a kid wizard like Harry Potter. Should i allow it?

[ART!]

There's always a way to make it work.

Off the top of my head, as a not-yet-fully-grown person, give her some ability score minuses and/or some roll or rolls that she will have disadvantage on.

Then - and here's the important part - give her some trait or feat or knowledge that makes her indispensable for this mission. I don't know ToA, so I have no suggestions there. How many times have we seen the spunky kid who the adult characters reralize they have to take along with them, despite their misgivings?

Possibly useful:

Playing Younger Characters - D&D 5E

Child class (DM's Guild, free)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

At one point in my life, I agreed with and used ability score maximums and minimums based on gender, age, etc. These days, not so much.

The constant counterpoint has been that PCs are adventurers, and adventurers are exceptional.

Well, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that, while Bell curves of various human attributes can still describe pattern differences in age or gender, those Bell curves keep moving the extremes further out, regardless of age and gender.

In 1978, Vasily Alexiev was in the Guinness Book of World’s Records as the world’s strongest man. In the 1990s, a teenaged Mark Henry had matched those numbers in high school. There are women playing tennis today whose serves are faster than those of the men in the 1990s.

So nowadays, I just wouldn’t even bother doing stat adjustments unless the player wanted to use them.

 

[Wiseblood]

There is also the issue of experience. If one player is 12 and another is 20 or more while still being the same class or species all while having high to elite MENTAL stats the older chracater should have the option of starting at a higher level. Hermione and Harry an whatnot were apprentice level wizards not grizzled veterans and they were treated as children.

 

[Nevvur]

I have a hard time buying into all these arguments that it's cool having young adventurers because you were considered an adult at age 13 (or whatever) in medieval times. Modern social mores are pretty much the norm in every game I've run and played in, and for most of the games I've read about when GMs/players post about their campaigns here. This is particularly evident in the treatment of women, who enjoy much greater equity with men than their historic counterparts. It's also apparent in player expectations of justice systems.

Nothing wrong with mixing which social mores apply to your setting, modern and historic, but I feel like if a GM is going to green light child adventurers based on this reasoning, it behooves them to review others.

 

[iserith]

I have a hard time buying into all these arguments that it's cool having young adventurers because you were considered an adult at age 13 (or whatever) in medieval times. Modern social mores are pretty much the norm in every game I've run and played in, and for most of the games I've read about when GMs/players post about their campaigns here. This is particularly evident in the treatment of women, who enjoy much greater equity with men than their historic counterparts. It's also apparent in player expectations of justice systems.

Nothing wrong with mixing which social mores apply to your setting, modern and historic, but I feel like if a GM is going to green light child adventurers based on this reasoning, it behooves them to review others.

I don't think it's a great argument either. It strikes me as thinking it's cool to have a Harry Potter-esque adventurer and then coming up with a reason after the fact and a somewhat weak one at that. No reason is needed in my view other than the player thinks it will be fun and help contribute to an exciting, memorable tale. It doesn't need any other justification in my opinion and there are plenty of examples in the fantasy genre for this to be perfectly reasonable. The rest is just figuring out the fiction that has it make sense in context which is remarkably easy once the DM accepts the idea.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think the best way to do it would be for the character to be a child of another PC (or an NPC that will be with the party the entire time). The parent will feel the child is safer with them than with strangers, especially during a major event. If no one else wants to be the child's parent, add in an NPC to be the parent, and kill them off early. The child will have nowhere else to go, and want to honor their parent to finish their job.

Oh, and as a side note, I'd think that Sorcerer fits the HP concept better than a wizard, but YMMV.

Sure.

People play tiny, stupid humans so often in D&D campaigns that we have a special name for them.

Halflings.

LOL. Disguising herself as a halfling was one of my other ideas

 

[BookBarbarian]

I have a hard time buying into all these arguments that it's cool having young adventurers because you were considered an adult at age 13 (or whatever) in medieval times. Modern social mores are pretty much the norm in every game I've run and played in, and for most of the games I've read about when GMs/players post about their campaigns here. This is particularly evident in the treatment of women, who enjoy much greater equity with men than their historic counterparts. It's also apparent in player expectations of justice systems.

Nothing wrong with mixing which social mores apply to your setting, modern and historic, but I feel like if a GM is going to green light child adventurers based on this reasoning, it behooves them to review others.

The Historical argument doesn't hold much water for me either.

For me the fact that child or at least teen adventurers are prevalent in the fiction I my games are trying to capture the feel of is enough to just say, sure sounds fun!

 

[Elderbrain]

Sure.

People play tiny, stupid humans so often in D&D campaigns that we have a special name for them.

Halflings.

1) Children are NOT (necessarily) stupid, at least not any more than adults. I know kids who have better judgement than some adults I know! I also know (or know of) plenty of stupid adults, people in their 20s, 30, 40s or even 50s who are not so bright. Sadly, wisdom (or Wisdom) does not necessarily come with age... Now, where there IS a difference is in the amount of life experience and education, and in physical strength. 2) Halflings are smaller than most child PCs would be. The cutoff line in 5e between Small size and Medium size is four feet, and most kid heroes would fall into the Medium category (even an eight-year old can hit the 4-foot mark). Also, 5e assigns no Ability Score penalties to elderly PCs or NPCs (as prior editions did), so for parity I wouldn't assign Ability Score penalties to child characters, either. Anyway, PCs are generally supposed to be exceptional individuals, so even if your average kid were dumb as a rock, that wouldn't preclude an intelligent child PC (or an unusually strong one, etc.)

That said, the player of a child PC who wanted a (semi-) realistic child could voluntarily assign some lower scores to appropriate stats - say, an 8 in Strength if playing a spellcaster, for instance, or a low Wisdom (to reflect a lack of life experience, say). You could also apply the penalties for Small size, even if the kid is technically Medium, if you "must" differenciate kids from adults game-mechanically.

 

[pemerton]

One of my players wants to play a young girl...

...the exact age wasn't really specified but this player saw a cool pic online and thought it would be a great idea to be a child prodigy ready for an adventure. By the looks of the picture she saw online, it looks like the child is probably a "tween" or a bit earlier, say 8 to 13 years old?

<snip>

Is there a way to let this happen? If anyone could help "spin" her background to make this work, I'm open minded...

I'm another poster who doesn't think this is a problem. In a Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy campaign I'm currently GMing, one of the PCs is a 14 year old child (I think of ambiguous gender) - a soothsayer and conjurer.

Many other posters have pointed to pre-modern norms as providing the surface level narrative justification for this. And the real justification is that it's what your player wants to do.

Also, I wouldn't worry about stats. If the PC is a wizard, it's unlikely that STR will be very high in any event, and there is no reason why a child can't have a high CON or DEX.