How would you do children as characters?

[exempt]

So I'm beginning my new campaign with one adult and three children (the characters, not the players... the players and I are all 30+ year old children).

So I am wondering how to do stats for kids. The PHB has age 15 as the beginning age for human adulthood, for example, but doesn't tell you what to do before that.

My idea is to have the players roll their stats dice and then scale them linearly with the age ofthe charcater. If you're 15, you get the value of the full role. If you're < 15, you get the value of (roll * (age/15)). For example if you assign 16 to strength but are 10 years, old, you get 10.667 or 10 for Str because you are small.

I am less sure on what to do with size effects for AC and some skills like Hide. When should these be changed?

The classes the players chose for the children are sorcerer, psion, and shaman (OA). I think these are OK, but if one of them had chosen to be a fighter, for example, it would have been a bit difficult (OK, sonny, put this helmet on. Can you see me? Son?) Plus I a not sure society would like 5-year olds walking around with weapons.

Finally, if you kind of winced when you read the subject line because you don't think children should normally be charcaters in a dark and dirty game like DnD, don't worry, I won't let anything too bad happen to them. This will be a low-fighting, much roleplaying campaign, and as for the few melee belows that will occur, that's what the adult charceter is for (samurai/ranger/big red obvious target).

 

[Nifft]

IMC, "Childhood" is levels 1-3. After that you're assumed to be old enough to take care of yourself and have decent judgement.

-- N

 

[CombatWombat51]

For abilities, I kinda like that a character's age is the cap on his ability scores. So a 14 year old may have rolled a 17 Int, but it's 14 for now. At 15 years old, his Int rises to 15, and so on until he's 17 years old and his Int reaches its full potential.

I wish I had more help to give, because I've often tinkered with the ideas myself, but I haven't yet seen anything good enough to steal

 

[Ion]

In the Star wars RPG, there is a aging effects table(6-1) on page 120

For child it suggests -3str, and con, and -1 dex int, wis and chr.

For a young adult -1str, dex, con, int, wis, chr and for an adult, no modifier, and it then continues to middle age and old etc.

It also has another table on that page with a child being of the ages 1-11 and a young adult being 12-15 (for humans).

If it’s this sort of thing your going for, I don't see it being too hard to make up the child and young adult ages for some of the other DnD races.

 

[Felix]

I like the (age/maturity)* ability score and round down for the calculation of childhood stats... you can use this for the long-lived races as well as for humans. For simplicity, assume one size category smaller until age of majority, so +4 to Hide would go away when the human boy turned 15.

Lesson: FEAR the 8 year old halfling thief!

 

[dcollins]

As far as statting out children goes, I would certainly say they are Small sized (with all apropriate modifiers). Using the ability adjustments from d20 Star Wars, posted above, seems like the best thing to do.

However, I'll just point out that it's highly nonstandard in D&D for children that young to have any class levels. The starting age brackets in the PHB assume that the training required to get the first class level takes until at least age 16-27 (depending on class). Having pint-sized "fighters" in overly large armor and helmets may be cute in some kid's fantasy, and it may work fine for you, but it's really not compliant with the core D&D rules as written.

 

[Scion]

With appropriate size modifications, stat adjustments, and just haveing them have a level of commoner I think you could simulate it pretty well to some degree.

When they get old enough and have training they trade in whatever they have for a real level of something, or continue on as a commoner.

Would be pretty cool to have kids go through levels 1 - 3 levels of commoner, and then as they get older change the levels over to something else (or gain new levels, or change and gain new ones, I would say gaining levels would be for commoner, changing and adding for things like nobles and experts and changing then adding for pc classes). It would be difficult to achieve, but pretty cool.

Also, to be fair to dcollins, it'll be completely against whole sections of the dmg.

Dcollins, do children even have hp in your campaigns? I am guessing that you treat them as 0th level, no skills, 1hp.. or something similar. That isnt covered in the dmg either So I am curious what you do.

 

[Nifft]

IMC, Humans get 8 HP just for waking up in the morning. These are "racial HP" -- every race gets some. Halflings get 4, Elves get 6, Dwarves get 8 and Half-Orcs get 10, for example.

So, a 0-level Human would still have 8 HP.

(I do this, and require all class levels to roll HP, even at 1st level. Thus, a 1st level Human Wizard may be tougher than a 1st level Halfling Fighter. This makes sense to me. Your mileage may vary.)

-- N

 

[Olive]

Check the d20 Modern SRD:

Children
Children (newborns to age 11) are handled differently from other characters. They do not have classes or levels. They begin with the same ability score package as ordinaries (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), but their ability scores are reduced as follows: –3 Str, –1 Dex, –3 Con, –1 Int, –1 Wis, –1 Cha.
Children have 1d4 hit points plus their Constitution modifier (minimum 1 hit point). They have no skills, feats, action points, or occupations. Their base attack bonus is +0, they have a +0 modifier on all saving throws (plus any modifiers for high or low ability scores), and their Reputation bonus is +0. Children have a +0 modifier to Defense and a normal speed of 20 feet. Children have no effective attacks and should be treated as noncombatants.
When a child turns 12, he or she is considered a young adult and takes his or her first level in one of the six basic classes. At that point, the character becomes an ordinary (or hero, in some cases).

 

[dcollins]

d20 Modern rules look good to me.