Anyone know how to stat an 8 year old?
- Thread starter Kugar
- Start date
Kugar
First Post
Actually Tewligan I'm glad you asked,
If you are playing a DnD game and your PC is named either Weems, Kael, or Rianna do not read the spoiler text below:
Spoiler Text
Said 8 year old Julianna had a rough life. Her twin brother. Jannereth. is the rightful heir of Cormyr, they were left at an orphanage by their mother, Julianna was then given an amulet that contained a demon. The demon tormented her in her sleep for years until she started to give in. Said demon used her nightly to start a cult to call a comet on Waterdeep / Undermountain and release something nasty. The cult was plotting along very well until Jannereth pushed Julianna down and the necklace fell off. Julianna then threw the necklace into the local river where it caught in the "Jaws"
This is where the campaign started.
The PCs are the "lucky" guys to find the necklace. I thought it would be a good moral dilemma to have to decide to keep a very powerfully magical necklace or give it to an 8 year old who seemed to be the rightful owner. Due to some particular stubborn choices, the local authorities got involved in the dispute. In the end it came down to one person storming out of the room both in and out of character over the demands to surrender the necklace. Then the others surprised me:
They offered to become the ophan's legal guardians.
I accepted because I thought it would make a better game, but now I need stats for a 8 year old just in case
. (I'm thinking like Jade from Jackie Chan so the "cinematic" approach would be good 
) I have a rules lawer in the game, so I thought I'd check with you guys before going to crazy with stats.
If you are playing a DnD game and your PC is named either Weems, Kael, or Rianna do not read the spoiler text below:
Spoiler Text
Said 8 year old Julianna had a rough life. Her twin brother. Jannereth. is the rightful heir of Cormyr, they were left at an orphanage by their mother, Julianna was then given an amulet that contained a demon. The demon tormented her in her sleep for years until she started to give in. Said demon used her nightly to start a cult to call a comet on Waterdeep / Undermountain and release something nasty. The cult was plotting along very well until Jannereth pushed Julianna down and the necklace fell off. Julianna then threw the necklace into the local river where it caught in the "Jaws"
This is where the campaign started.
The PCs are the "lucky" guys to find the necklace. I thought it would be a good moral dilemma to have to decide to keep a very powerfully magical necklace or give it to an 8 year old who seemed to be the rightful owner. Due to some particular stubborn choices, the local authorities got involved in the dispute. In the end it came down to one person storming out of the room both in and out of character over the demands to surrender the necklace. Then the others surprised me:
They offered to become the ophan's legal guardians.
I accepted because I thought it would make a better game, but now I need stats for a 8 year old just in case
. (I'm thinking like Jade from Jackie Chan so the "cinematic" approach would be good ) I have a rules lawer in the game, so I thought I'd check with you guys before going to crazy with stats.
Last edited:
My ruling on children is pretty harsh, but divide all stats by (base age/current age). So, an 8 year old human divides all stats by (15/8).
Rationale? I don't see many 15 Strength six-year-olds, even if they are 1 in 216. A flat penalty to stats makes nonsense if you compare them with adult statistics- no 2 year old should be able to beat an adult in a arm wrestle, even if he'll grow up to be a champion weightlifter, and even if he is fighting a slightly weedy adult.
Of course, this generates 'realistic' children. 'Cinematic' children might be better off with a flat penalty as per described in Star Wars d20...
Rationale? I don't see many 15 Strength six-year-olds, even if they are 1 in 216. A flat penalty to stats makes nonsense if you compare them with adult statistics- no 2 year old should be able to beat an adult in a arm wrestle, even if he'll grow up to be a champion weightlifter, and even if he is fighting a slightly weedy adult.
Of course, this generates 'realistic' children. 'Cinematic' children might be better off with a flat penalty as per described in Star Wars d20...
Celebrim
Legend
Al: That's basically how I came up with my numbers, plus or minus a little bit of rounding to use the even numbers D20 prefers. I have detailed rules for 1st edition character generation for children, but not for 3rd edition and definately not for point buy. The obvious place to start though would be giving a child a lower starting point and some fraction of there adult 'points' to spend depending on there age.
You can't assume fractions of a child's age entirely, because the stats of a baby - while pretty close to zero's, aren't zero's across the board. Yes, a newborn might well have effectively 0 str and 0 dex, but it does not have 0 con or 0 charisma. So con and charima need to begin at a baseline. Both are rather subjective stats, so I tend to begin with a baseline of 1/2 adult normal.
"no, theyre not realistic. they are just what YOU think."
That is a really assanine comment. Particularly since I was explicitly contrasting the goal of 'realism' with the goal of being 'cinematic'. As Al points out, cinematic rules for children's abilities - whether those be the story rules of a movie like 'Home Alone' or 'Spy Kids' - tend to give children abilities with respect to adults that they just don't have. The star wars rules, taken at face value as if they were some sort of racial modifier, generate children of a 'cinematic' quality which are capable of defeating average adults in virtually any contest. However, I as a goal want to get closer to the abilities that children actually have, since I'm not anticipating children themselves being major PC's. Therefore, my rules want to relate numbers like 'strength' to a child's actual physical capacities. If I had those numbers, I would make rules for generating childs statistics that would be more or less exactly capable of doing in the game what children are capable of in real life. I don't have those numbers, so I have to fudge them based on some personal experience and observation, but they are 'just' what I think as if my opinion that a child has a 6 str is equally as valid as an 8 year old child having a 14 str. I may not have an exact number, but for my stated goal of 'realism' its a alot better than existing published rules.
If you want to have children as PC's, well you'll have to have different goals.
You can't assume fractions of a child's age entirely, because the stats of a baby - while pretty close to zero's, aren't zero's across the board. Yes, a newborn might well have effectively 0 str and 0 dex, but it does not have 0 con or 0 charisma. So con and charima need to begin at a baseline. Both are rather subjective stats, so I tend to begin with a baseline of 1/2 adult normal.
"no, theyre not realistic. they are just what YOU think."
That is a really assanine comment. Particularly since I was explicitly contrasting the goal of 'realism' with the goal of being 'cinematic'. As Al points out, cinematic rules for children's abilities - whether those be the story rules of a movie like 'Home Alone' or 'Spy Kids' - tend to give children abilities with respect to adults that they just don't have. The star wars rules, taken at face value as if they were some sort of racial modifier, generate children of a 'cinematic' quality which are capable of defeating average adults in virtually any contest. However, I as a goal want to get closer to the abilities that children actually have, since I'm not anticipating children themselves being major PC's. Therefore, my rules want to relate numbers like 'strength' to a child's actual physical capacities. If I had those numbers, I would make rules for generating childs statistics that would be more or less exactly capable of doing in the game what children are capable of in real life. I don't have those numbers, so I have to fudge them based on some personal experience and observation, but they are 'just' what I think as if my opinion that a child has a 6 str is equally as valid as an 8 year old child having a 14 str. I may not have an exact number, but for my stated goal of 'realism' its a alot better than existing published rules.
If you want to have children as PC's, well you'll have to have different goals.
Celebrim said:
STR 6 makes the child half as strong as the typical adult (STR 10) which doesn't seem right. I'd suggest:
STR 4 DEX 8 CON 8 INT 10* WIS 6 CHR 8
Int in D&D reflects learning ability, hence its effect on skill points. Of course D&D's assumption that INT _increases_ with age has no real-world basis, so maybe to fall in line with age mods give child INT 8 to reflect youth.
Celebrim
Legend
Mal-2: The point is that some might find the idea of 8 year olds (or 3 year olds) with stats like 14,12,12,12,8,6 to be a little bit unbelievable. Technically, under your method you could have a toddler with 16 STR.
So while a -2 penalty to all stats might work fine for a 14 years old male, its probably not going to work for the same kid at 3, 6 or 10.
S'mon: You may be right. Strength is probably the easiest stat to derive exact numbers for, but try finding good cross cultural numbers on 6 year olds bench press ability. It's also a bizarre attribute. On the bizzarre side, two creatures with the same strength score can have vastly different strength. A huge creature with a 26 strength can lift, pull, and carry alot more than a medium sized creature with a 26 strength. That's the bizarre part, so my first point would be that as small sized creatures children have 3/4 the lifting and carrying capacity of a human with the same strength score.
And arguably that 3/4 score is being overly generous with small creatures (as is the fact that they dont' have a penalty to constitution) so that small demi-humans are still attractive as PC's.
I don't claim that 6 strength is exact. The actual number I calculated using a linear model was about a 5, but I rounded to 6 because 5 seemed a little low for Int, Wis, Dex and the other stats and I didn't want to get into the complexities of modeling strength (or anytthing else) in a non-linear fashion. The truth is that human males gain a disproportionate ammount of thier strength after the onset of puberty, so that while a rather linear model may work for something like Dex it doesn't work for Str. So yes, children probably have rather low strength compared to there other stats. Exactly what it is, I couldn't tell you, but I'd be interested to know.
If you want to start getting accurate though most 12 year children are as strong as most adult women (at least those not in an atheletics program) but the last time I asserted something like that thread just blew up in a swarm of contriversy so lets not go there.
I don't see alot of point in taking into account the puberty effect when D&D doesn't even take into account sexual dimorphism so I'll stick to a linear model. We should probably just put little boys and girls on the same curve and be done with it, ignoring the fact that girls hit puberty sooner and should have a faster curve on every stat (often including strength, remember 5th grade?) and that boys and girls don't normally end up with the same strength (or strengths). After all, its only a game right.
So while a -2 penalty to all stats might work fine for a 14 years old male, its probably not going to work for the same kid at 3, 6 or 10.
S'mon: You may be right. Strength is probably the easiest stat to derive exact numbers for, but try finding good cross cultural numbers on 6 year olds bench press ability. It's also a bizarre attribute. On the bizzarre side, two creatures with the same strength score can have vastly different strength. A huge creature with a 26 strength can lift, pull, and carry alot more than a medium sized creature with a 26 strength. That's the bizarre part, so my first point would be that as small sized creatures children have 3/4 the lifting and carrying capacity of a human with the same strength score.
And arguably that 3/4 score is being overly generous with small creatures (as is the fact that they dont' have a penalty to constitution) so that small demi-humans are still attractive as PC's.
I don't claim that 6 strength is exact. The actual number I calculated using a linear model was about a 5, but I rounded to 6 because 5 seemed a little low for Int, Wis, Dex and the other stats and I didn't want to get into the complexities of modeling strength (or anytthing else) in a non-linear fashion. The truth is that human males gain a disproportionate ammount of thier strength after the onset of puberty, so that while a rather linear model may work for something like Dex it doesn't work for Str. So yes, children probably have rather low strength compared to there other stats. Exactly what it is, I couldn't tell you, but I'd be interested to know.
If you want to start getting accurate though most 12 year children are as strong as most adult women (at least those not in an atheletics program) but the last time I asserted something like that thread just blew up in a swarm of contriversy so lets not go there.
I don't see alot of point in taking into account the puberty effect when D&D doesn't even take into account sexual dimorphism so I'll stick to a linear model. We should probably just put little boys and girls on the same curve and be done with it, ignoring the fact that girls hit puberty sooner and should have a faster curve on every stat (often including strength, remember 5th grade?) and that boys and girls don't normally end up with the same strength (or strengths). After all, its only a game right.
The Little Raven
First Post
For those arguing about realism and children's ability scores...
I've met a young body builder (about 8 years old) that can press almost 300 pounds. That certainly puts me (and probably many of you fellow D&D gamers) to shame.
I've also met children who are quicker and more flexible (higher Dex), incredibly intelligent, perceptive beyond anything I've ever seen before (this kid could count the amount of gnats in a cluster)...
It's not unrealistic for a kid to be better at things than some adults.
I've met a young body builder (about 8 years old) that can press almost 300 pounds. That certainly puts me (and probably many of you fellow D&D gamers) to shame.
I've also met children who are quicker and more flexible (higher Dex), incredibly intelligent, perceptive beyond anything I've ever seen before (this kid could count the amount of gnats in a cluster)...
It's not unrealistic for a kid to be better at things than some adults.
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