Pathfinder 1E How do you guys handle young characters?

Puxido

First Post
I know there are rules in ultimate campaign, but what do you do about it yourself? Ultimate campaign does +2 dex and -2 strength con and wisdom, they make it so they can only have the skill ranks of a first level character rather than taking from their intellect and charisma, but I don't see that as fair for pc characters, so I would take the -2 from intellect, though not charisma because I don't see the point. They also limit them to npc classes, I personally don't see that as fair either, and I would also treat them as one size category lower (depending on the race, not sure about halflings or gnomes) and add the stats for that as well.

But I'm curious as to what you dm's do when this happens, your thoughts?
 

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I feel this way about older characters, since I love The Dark Knight Returns. Honestly, just play it by ear and do what you want. Your idea of making them a size smaller, that's cool. Although, how small is Small? Are children larger than Halflings?
 

I feel this way about older characters, since I love The Dark Knight Returns. Honestly, just play it by ear and do what you want. Your idea of making them a size smaller, that's cool. Although, how small is Small? Are children larger than Halflings?

I believe human children are around the same size to Halflings, Halflings do get a +1/2 on disguise checks on disguising themselves as human children. I think its best to bring them one size lower, it even makes them rely on small sized weapons, I hardly feel (but may be wrong) that a human child would feel comfortable swinging an adult sized bastard sword, or a claymore.
 

On the other hand, I like the visual of a pint-sized Half-Orc kid with giant hands and feet, with a mean case of underbite, just suckerpunching adults and throwing them around city streets, bashing in rat heads with a big giant wrench or something.
 


I know there are rules in ultimate campaign, but what do you do about it yourself?

In general, I don't think that it can be handled for PC's. I have rather elaborate rules for infant, child, and youth NPCs and have since 1e, but I never apply them to PCs. They are more appropriate for keeping track of a PC's children or modeling important NPC youths or just having a generic stat block for children if you need one for some reason.

I find that there are generally only two ways PC's taking 'youth' mechanically works out. Either the player is punished for taking a young character concept because the young character is inherently inferior as a starting character - less mature, less knowledgeable, less skilled, etc. - and the player finds the rules, though 'realistic' unsatisfactory in some fashion.

Or else, taking a young character constitutes a loophole in chargen where the player starts out 'balanced' with characters of normal age but 'levels up' not only through the normal means by aging so that the resulting character is more powerful than they would have been had they started without the 'youth' tag.

Neither works. For that reason and others, immature PC's are thus banned as concepts in my game.

Basically, my method for handling NPC children treats their ability scores as being a percentage of their maturity, with Str, Dex, Int, and Wis starting at zero and going up linearly, and Con and Chr starting out at 1/2 the mature level and increasing proportionately with increase in age. Infants are two size classes smaller than adults, and children are one size class smaller than adults and have the Lithe trait (that lets them add their size class as a modifier to certain skills, making up for their otherwise low dexterity). Youths are the same size as their adult counterpart and lose the lithe trait. Characters are 0th level commoners until they qualify for a class, usually by obtaining at least a 9 in one ability score (my classes have minimum ability score requirements), and having appropriate background (schooling, apprenticeship, tutored, mentored, acolyte, etc.). At this point they become 0th level characters in the appropriate class. Zeroth level characters have -400 XP, and become first level at 0 XP, which usually requires a character spend about 1/4 of their youth in training (more or less depending on the aptitude of the student and the skill of the teacher). For humans, this means that they are generally 1st level at some point between age 10 (well before they've obtained their full ability scores) and age 20 (somewhat after obtaining their adult ability scores).

Considering that we've been playing for 4 years, and the game time has moved about 4 months, I can't imagine that playing a 10 year old under these conditions would be attractive. A typical stat array for a 10 year old male human PC under my chargen rules would be something like. Str 9, Dex 9, Con 11, Int 9, Wis 9, Chr 8. They'd be a lithe small sized character, and thus slightly more nimble than their low coordination and manual dexterity might suggest. That represents a human PC with a 14 Str, 14 Dex, 14 Con, 14 Int, 14 Wis, and 10 Chr at maturity. This otherwise prodigal child of prodigious ability for his age would probably be at most a 0th level apprentice. While they would be about the equal of most non-heroic adults, they'd be far inferior to mature PC heroes. I'd treat being say a 16 year old human as basically color, with no mechanical effect important enough to make note of for game purposes.
 

In general, I don't think that it can be handled for PC's. I have rather elaborate rules for infant, child, and youth NPCs and have since 1e, but I never apply them to PCs. They are more appropriate for keeping track of a PC's children or modeling important NPC youths or just having a generic stat block for children if you need one for some reason. I find that there are generally only two ways PC's taking 'youth' mechanically works out. Either the player is punished for taking a young character concept because the young character is inherently inferior as a starting character - less mature, less knowledgeable, less skilled, etc. - and the player finds the rules, though 'realistic' unsatisfactory in some fashion. Or else, taking a young character constitutes a loophole in chargen where the player starts out 'balanced' with characters of normal age but 'levels up' not only through the normal means by aging so that the resulting character is more powerful than they would have been had they started without the 'youth' tag. Neither works. For that reason and others, immature PC's are thus banned as concepts in my game.
So, most PCs are banned as concepts in your games? Also, what if the player is ok with his Robin not being as good as the Batman? Alternatively, what if for PCs, there just is no mechanical difference? They aren't as weak as other kids, but they don't get better than the other PCs when they "grow up"?
 

So, most PCs are banned as concepts in your games?

How did we get from, "I won't let you play a child in D20/D&D family games.", to "Most PCs are banned as concepts."?

My reasoning is pretty clearly spelled out.

Also, what if the player is ok with his Robin not being as good as the Batman?

If this is Mutant and Masterminds, then we have entirely different conceptual possibilities. Terrific Tom the Wonder Boy could be an alien or he could have 'mutated' or been granted magical powers so that his status as a child is entirely flavor and by superhero genera convention being a kid only matters when you want to do a scene about that. Otherwise, they get treated by grownups as if they were adults because well, 'superhero'.

However, in general, I find that parties with widely disparate power levels for the characters cause dissatisfaction and table concept. If Terrific Tom the Wonder By is just as powerful as Gravity Girl, The Blur, and so forth, then I'm ok with that. For unbalanced characters, well I'd have to have very high trust in the skill of the players, preferably because I've completed games with them before.

Alternatively, what if for PCs, there just is no mechanical difference? They aren't as weak as other kids, but they don't get better than the other PCs when they "grow up"?

My post was made in direct response to a post asking how to mechanically handle children. I provided my answer to that as well as an answer as to why PC's couldn't be handled the same way as NPC's. Not giving PC's a mechanical difference at all would be one way to handle that, but I'm not sure that it would be a very satisfying one for every player, and again I'd have to have absolute full trust in the players skill as a role-player to pull it off and handle all the issues that 'I'm a kid' brings up which includes everything from lack of process simulation to potential issues with child victimization and violence perpetrated by and against children. I find that putting children 'on stage' just makes already difficult subject matter more difficult, and for me as a GM it breaks emersion for NPCs to neglect or overlook the minority status of a character as well as rendering the point of RPing the child well pointless. In general, I'd strongly encourage someone that wanted to play a younger character to play someone who was 16 or 17 - still young by modern standards but 'practically' physically mature.

I generally do not try to draw spotlight to the fact that in ancient societies, the concept of childhood as we know it doesn't exist. In general, I find that when you highlight something like that, people take it is as an endorsement. So, no, that isn't the answer either, even if I am well aware of persons like Charles XII of Sweden.
 


..The youngest character that I have seen in a PF campaign was a 14 year-old sorceror. Given that most 12-14 year-olds functioned as adults in medieval socities, we did not impose any restrictions.
..I'd suggest imposing stat limit maximums in certain stats at certain ages rather than negative adjustments. For example, maybe in your campaign you decide an eight-year fighter shouldn't have an 18 strength and impose a maximum limit of 16.
..I have not dealt with a character under the age of 14. Aside from the stat reductions, I think that they are generally not considered as playable due to the ideology that responsible adults would not agree to put children in hazardous situations. Realistically, I just cannot see a party of hearty adventurers taking an eight year-old into a dungeon. Unless you ran an adventuring party of all children, which could be an interesting challenge.
 

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