Ability Bonuses, and Immortality

[Witness]

The setup: A group of PC's discover a portal that leads back in time one-thousand years. A number of characters (not mine) decide to go through the portal and remain in the past. As the character's are fairly important to the campaign, the DM allows those player's whose characters went into the past to reassume control of those characters after having been in the past for the last thousand years. It is an evil campaign, and those character's who went into the past have stayed alive by a ritual that steals the life from the living. The ritual has slowed their aging, not stopped it completly, so they've all physically aged only 50-75 years over the past one-thousand years. Those who went into the past are all elves. Because of the amount of time the've physically aged, the characters all received the ability score adjustments from being middle aged.

The problem: In addition to the adjustments for being middle-age, they received the bonuses to mental stats for being venerable, despite not suffering the penalties to physical stats. They argued that the bonuses were a result of experience and knowledge acquired over one-thousand years. I argued that no correlation exists between actual age and ability adjustments; despite living hundreds of years, elves gain no more bonus for being old than humans do. To further complicate things, during the in-between time, one of them became undead (vampire), and the other became something like a monstrous humanoid or shapechanger.

The question(s): Are ability adjustments from aging a result of physical age or actual age? Do immortal creatures continually gain bonuses to Int, Wis, and Cha? Do certain creatures gain bonuses and penalties to aging at a different rate? Are these guys munchkin *BLEEP**BLEEP*'s or what!!???

 

[Xarls Taunzund]

Take the monk for example. After a certain point they do not physically age anymore, (though they still die of old age). They do not get the negatives for aging, but DO gain the bonuses.

 

[Malicene]

Don't know the level of character involved. But gaining some mental stat bonuses shouldn't change the script do far ....

 

[Lareit]

If the dm let them go back. I'd have to say yes. I think it was something of a mistake to let them go back, and then sorta fast forward back to the "now" time since alot can happen over the course of a 1000 years.

Course a 1000 years is a long time for any none immortal. A few of them could go Senile if they wanna play that game.

 

[Drawmack]

I'd probably give them a wis detriment for living so long. They went back, no doubt made new associations, then watched those people, those that the loved die. In 1000 years they have basically seen an entire civilization come and go, even all the elves from when they first went back are dead. The wis detriment symbolizes two things:
1) a disconnectedness with the world around them
2) (since we use CoC style sanity) they are just a little bit less sane for watching the atrocities time commits on beings.

 

[Staffan]

IIRC, the physical age modifiers are tied to biological age whereas the mental modifiers are tied to time experienced. I know that was spelled out in 2e, but I'm not sure if it is in 3e.

This cuts both ways: someone artificially aged loses out on the mental boosts, but on the other hand someone who drinks longevity potions avoids the penalties while getting the boosts.

 

[Witness]

A related question: The Druid an Monk's Timeless Body ability specifically mentions that they cannot be maically aged. I could not however find a spell that causes someone to be aged magically. So how can someone be aged magically?

 

[The Souljourner]

Sounds like total cheese to me. If the DM allows one of them to become a vampire (a template that adds +5 to his ECL), and the rest get bonuses due to old age without the penalties, then you are at a distinct disadvantage (especially with respect to the vampire thing - sheesh!).

Anyway, you should talk to your DM about it. He's the one who can change things, not us.

-The Souljourner

 

[Staffan]

A related question: The Druid an Monk's Timeless Body ability specifically mentions that they cannot be maically aged. I could not however find a spell that causes someone to be aged magically. So how can someone be aged magically?

There aren't any that I know of. Back in 2e, effects that aged someone magically were moderately common - the most common probably being Haste. Now, such effects either drain XP instead (when they were used to balance spells) or inflict ability drain (when used as an attack form, like the Horrific appearance ghosts have).

 

[Witness]

Sounds like total cheese to me.

Not quite total cheese. The character doen't have all the powers of the standard D&D vampire. The DM has integrated some stuff from Savage Species, so the character has one or two levels in the vampire "class."

The ultimate decision is the DM's of course, but he has already ruled in their favor. If I'm going to ask him to go against a previous ruling, and nerf other player's characters, then I need as much information to support my interpretation of the rules as I can get.