Elder PCs

[diaglo]

*blink*

Why all the assumptions that someone wanting to play an older PC is trying to be a munchkin? What happened to things like "Hey, I've got this nifty character concept..."?

that went out the window in 1985

 

[awayfarer]

That said, when starting a character at that age, we don't bother with stat alterations; we just assume such alterations are already accounted for in his starting stats. Only if a character were to change age categories in game would I, as either a player or a DM, even consider bothering with the age modifiers.

I'd be inclined to go this route too.

 

[Joshua Randall]

For munchkiny fun, a venerable druid rocks. Spend all your time wildshaped, and your physical stats don't matter.

But. Like a lot of other people, I don't use the stat modifiers at character creation... only if the PC somehow hits a new age category in-game. This rarely happens.

It used to be more common in 1e/2e, where haste and other spells/potions would physically age your character.

 

[The Shaman]

Mark, just wanted to tell you that I think you ask some of the the most consistently interesting questions on the board.

I played a 1e dwarf fighter/cleric who was something like 260 or 270 years old, putting him squarely in the "old" age category. The DM allowed stat mods for aging per the DMG, but I would've played the character with or without the bumps and penalties, 'cause I liked the character concept.

I've made the passage of time more significant in D&D by including events that "slow the game down." For example, the adventurers have found themselves stuck in town for a winter when the mountain passes were snowed in, or forced to wait a week for a flooded ford on their route of travel to become passible. There's also training downtime, and time spent travelling, and time spent on their own initiative just pursuing activities other than adventuring.

This isn't usually a big deal - the players can do as much or as little with the time as they like, as in, "The ford is flooded and the locals tell you that it will take several days before the river is likely to be passable." The players may simply opt for their characters to wait it out, in which case there may be a couple of random encounters in the town or village where they're staying, or they may choose to use the time for getting to know the locals, which means we can spend the time roleplaying their efforts, or they can opt to do something else altogether, from searching for a cleric to wind walk them across the river, to an expedition upstream to find another crossing, or whatever.

And here I thought "Elder PC" meant something with tentacles...

 

[Khairn]

One of the more memorable characters that I have ever GM'ed was played by a good friend of mine. The character's name was Nickademus, and he was an elderly (60+) year old human wizard (specializing in summoning) who RPed his low physical stats very well. He even spent time, money and xp to create a flying wok that he sat in so he could keep up with the rest of the party. The wok was also used for cooking which did cause mopre than a few upset stomach's.

His consistency with playing his characters' attitudes that were out of time with his younger patry members, really helped to make him unique.

I dont get many players wanting to play older character's, but Nickademus illustrated to me how well it could be done .

 

[Banshee16]

I've aged all of my characters in-game during my campaigns. It all depends on how long the game persists though. In my last campaign, the characters aged about 12 years over the course of the campaign. Based on the starting age of the characters, most of the characters were about 28-33 in age by the time the campaign ended...so aging effects hadn't applied yet, though they were getting close for several of them.

Banshee

 

[Mark CMG]

Mark, just wanted to tell you that I think you ask some of the the most consistently interesting questions on the board.

Thanks! As long as I stay away from my dreaded binary polls!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I played a 5000-year-old elan. Of course, we completely ignored aging modifiers (a psionically created race that has no max age shouldn't have those).

He was part of an organisation (or rather "secret club") who first turned themselves into elans and created what they called the Nexus, where they collected experience and knowledge: They'd go adventuring and sight-seeing and all that, and then, when they were brimming with knowledge and experience (i.e. when they hit level 20-something) they'd remake themselves, giving up all the knowledge they've accumulated and starting off anew, usually in another class so the experiences stored in the Nexus would not be all the same all over again.

In the game, he was a kineticist, looked like a human of not-quite-definable age who wore clothes that probably went out of fashion a couple of millenia ago. He'd treat others (even ancient elves) like the youngsters they were from time to time (I didn't overdo it, though), with lines like "I forgot more in my live then you'll ever know".



Other than that, most characters started quite low, so I always found it more appropriate to let them be quite young, too (plus I never liked the concept of playing an old geezer too much )

 

[Angel Tarragon]

And here I thought "Elder PC" meant something with tentacles...

Oh well, -- N

And I thought it had something to do with the recent Dragon article.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I've been having this odd compulsive desire to play an old monk with Zen Archery.