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Races and Ages - Balancing Short-lived and Long-lived
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<blockquote data-quote="Herremann the Wise" data-source="post: 5605392" data-attributes="member: 11300"><p><em>Assume for this discussion that the players involved prefer for there to be a measure of balance between the PCs regardless of race or age.</em></p><p></p><p>How do you reconcile the differences between short-lived and long-lived races in your game? By this, I mean how do you "balance" between a 300 year old elf and an 18 year old human in terms of their abilities? Surely the elf is going to be much more highly skilled (even if most game systems seem to ignore this), particularly if they left their Elvish family when very young? And what happens if you compare that 18 year old human with a 35 year old human who has seen almost double the years? How do you "balance" them at the game table?</p><p></p><p>Robert Schwalb's A Song of Ice and Fire RPG takes an interesting look at this in terms of age (assuming all characters to be human), with numerous benefits and advantages to younger characters while older characters find most forms of development expensive and drawbacks start getting more heavily applied. The young have their destinies on their side (lots of destiny points to spend on new skills or changing poor results to better ones), while the older you are, the more your destiny has been woven into the tapestry - so to speak - with almost no destiny points to spend. </p><p></p><p>Now this seems like a good idea - although I have not been fortunate enough to put my books to any greater use than reading. I imagine it should balance things nicely though. However, I was wondering whether any game system had done something similar in regards to races, balancing the long-lived races with the short-lived? Have you any ideas how some measure of balance may be applied to this? Should long-lived races start at a higher level of skill with more "stuff" but then develop more slowly across the breadth of a campaign or is such an approach doomed to failure? Or can this idea be rectified in some way?</p><p></p><p>All input and ideas highly appreciated!</p><p><span style="font-size: 9px">[Read: I'm a silver subscriber and can hand out globs of XP by the bucketful<img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />]</span></p><p></p><p>Best Regards</p><p>Herremann the Wise</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Herremann the Wise, post: 5605392, member: 11300"] [I]Assume for this discussion that the players involved prefer for there to be a measure of balance between the PCs regardless of race or age.[/I] How do you reconcile the differences between short-lived and long-lived races in your game? By this, I mean how do you "balance" between a 300 year old elf and an 18 year old human in terms of their abilities? Surely the elf is going to be much more highly skilled (even if most game systems seem to ignore this), particularly if they left their Elvish family when very young? And what happens if you compare that 18 year old human with a 35 year old human who has seen almost double the years? How do you "balance" them at the game table? Robert Schwalb's A Song of Ice and Fire RPG takes an interesting look at this in terms of age (assuming all characters to be human), with numerous benefits and advantages to younger characters while older characters find most forms of development expensive and drawbacks start getting more heavily applied. The young have their destinies on their side (lots of destiny points to spend on new skills or changing poor results to better ones), while the older you are, the more your destiny has been woven into the tapestry - so to speak - with almost no destiny points to spend. Now this seems like a good idea - although I have not been fortunate enough to put my books to any greater use than reading. I imagine it should balance things nicely though. However, I was wondering whether any game system had done something similar in regards to races, balancing the long-lived races with the short-lived? Have you any ideas how some measure of balance may be applied to this? Should long-lived races start at a higher level of skill with more "stuff" but then develop more slowly across the breadth of a campaign or is such an approach doomed to failure? Or can this idea be rectified in some way? All input and ideas highly appreciated! [SIZE="1"][Read: I'm a silver subscriber and can hand out globs of XP by the bucketful;)][/SIZE] Best Regards Herremann the Wise [/QUOTE]
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