AD&D Rule Spotlight: Character Age

Today we talk about starting age. The Dungeon Master’s Guide gives real tables for how old your character is at creation. I cover how the tables work, how to handle multiclass, what age does in play, and a quick story where I had to clamp down on min-maxing.

#TSR #OSR #RPG #Gygax #Greyhawk

Episode Transcript

(00:17):
Hey, welcome back to the podcastEvil Dungeon Masters AD and D
Universe Podcast. I am your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. Hopefully you're doing well
today there. Today is Monday, think I mix a
couple words together there. It's still early in the morning.
Hopefully we're doing well out there.
It's Monday, as I said, and it'stime for another podcast.

(00:37):
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(01:01):
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Anyway, talk to today's topic asI'm trying to promote and keep
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week. At least.

(01:23):
So anyway, we're going to flip to page 12, the Dungeon Masters
Guide. Today we're going to talk about
character age. It's something that a lot of VMS
have no kind of hand wave and pass off and don't really keep
track of. I thought it'd be an interesting
little topic to talk about because there's some little,
little things going on here thatyou probably just kind of

(01:46):
skimmed over or more than likelyyou've read many times over and
over. And I know me personally, as I
read things and move forward andlook at things, I notice that I
forget things and I kind of justgo and not worry about certain
things inside the book and, you know, just move on.

(02:07):
Anyway, let's talk about this onthe on the onset of every
character's creation is necessary to establish his or
her age. For player characters and hench
men, you must use the appropriate tables below.
You may do the same for other characters, or you may assign
them an age as you see fit in the light of the milieu you have

(02:31):
developed. I've never actually seen Adm
assign people ages when it comesto playing this game at all.
I've always had him DM say go ahead and pick your age and
generally people pick weird agesor just not really care about it

(02:52):
so but I've never seen Adm go OKroll boom you're you know 15
you're 22. You're there are two tables.
There are one for non humans which is Demi humans are humans
and the like and then one for humans.
It's interesting that they have the two separated that way that
humans have their own special table while all the Demi races

(03:16):
and whatever and part humans andpart this and that have their
own table. But we get all the races listed
here, dwarf all the way to half orc and then listed by each
column Cleric, fighter, magic user and thief.
And whatever class you pick falls under those main classes
and you could start your career depending if you're a fighting

(03:40):
type creature. If you are, let's see here
fighter type thing it it makes sense because casters would
start older fighters and thieveswould start younger because they
have less training to do than the others.
Though one can argue a thief would take some time to actually

(04:02):
get the skills going. So we'll see what happens there.
But when it comes to something like if you're playing a dwarven
cleric, which by the way, if you're just using this book, you
really wouldn't be using that. Well, I guess for MPCS you would
so. But I've always allowed people

(04:23):
to play dwarven clerics, even though that didn't come into
existence until we unearthed Arcana.
But it's interesting to see these ages here.
For a cleric, you start at 250 years old, adding 2D20 to your
age for your starting age. Now let's just say you're 250,
and we'll say you rolled 2 fifteens that give you 30.

(04:44):
That's 280 looking on page 13 under the aging chart.
Let's see, a dwarf is now considered, well, you're
considered old, so you're right off the bat.
Your character is out there playing a dwarfing cleric and

(05:06):
you roll 2 fifteens and you got 250 plus that 30, so 280.
Looking on the chart here on page 13, you are considered old.
Now, if you look at that old chart, you're subtracting 2
points from your strength, 2 points from your Dexterity, and
you can, and I'm sorry, and one of from your Constitution right

(05:28):
off the bat. So right off the bat, you're
losing 5 points on your statistics, but you're adding
one point of Wisdom and your lifespan, according to this game
will end anywhere between 350 to, I'm sorry, 351 to 450 years

(05:50):
old. So you approximately have around
about maybe 200 years before you're probably going to be at
the end of your lifespan. It's kind of interesting that a
cleric for a dwarf is going to start that late in life.
Now, if we look at the elf, you're going to be starting at

(06:13):
500 + 10 D 10. Now, just looking at the chart
and let's just say you rolled, Idon't know, let's say 10 D 10.
So let's say you had rolled about, we'll just go to
straight, you roll fives on everything.
So you got 50. So you're not 550 years old

(06:35):
according to this chart. And we'll look at the chart here
and we have elf, we have a bunchof elves here, but generally
you're a high elf or a Gray elf,one of those two.
When you start the game, you areconsidered mature.
You are a mature elf and you will be adding one point of

(07:00):
strength and one point of wisdom.
Not bad. You got a good, good deal there.
Now the we'll just look at some other things here.
So for a magic user, obviously they don't want dwarves, the
magic users. So if you want to do that into
your game, you're the DM, whatever you want to do.

(07:21):
Elf 150 + 5 D 6. So you start younger.
Let's see here, let's look at the human chart for example,
because I always found that kindof interesting.
If you're going to be a human clerk now you are going to be
adding one D4 to your age starting at 18.

(07:41):
That really isn't too bad. I mean, that maybe would put you
at 22 years of old. And that is not even anywhere on
the chart below for aging. So you're perfectly fine running
out there and adventuring in theworld and a fighter you're
starting at age 15 plus 1D four.So the most you could be is 19
when starting out there. If you're lucky you get a roll 1

(08:05):
you get 16 and boom. Even a paladin started 17 and
one D4A Ranger started 20 and one D4 magic user we get 24.
You start at adding two D 8. So even if you roll the amount

(08:27):
here, you're still not going to get on the chart an illusionist.
OK, That's when you start actually getting on this chart.
So if you roll, you start a 30 and you roll 1V6, you're going
to get a 36, and that'll put youa young adult, which you
subtract the point of wisdom andadd a point of constitution.

(08:50):
I mean as a magic user, I mean yeah as a magic user you really
don't really need wisdom when itcomes to that class.
And that's it. The rest of them are generally
20/21/18. I think the magic user and
illusionist is the highest 2 on there.
Comparative to other things though, the half orc does have a

(09:11):
similar look because the half orc with a cleric will start at
20 and add 1D4A Fighter, they start at 13 years of age adding
one D4 and the thief is 20 + 2 D4.
Half elf kind of. Now half elf has a bunch of yeah

(09:32):
so human and half work are the ones that start at lower ages
when it comes to these classes. Now, when you're doing this, it
just, it makes sense. Time and training makes sense.
Casters start older fighters andthese start younger.
But it's just, it's interesting that Gary decided that while I

(09:55):
know this is a human centric game, and I 100% agree with that
because humans really don't get much of an advantage of
anything, that they would start a little bit younger for
anything and they're faster to learn things.
Maybe I'm looking at it that waybecause the other races are
starting generally at a higher rate and longer they get longer

(10:20):
lifespans. Yeah, definitely humans.
Your lifespan is 120 years old if you're lucky.
Young adults 14 to 20, mature 21to 40, and 41 to 46 is middle
age, and then 61 to 90s old, andthen venerable.
It would be 91 to 120 if you even make it to 120.

(10:43):
And let's be, let's face it, this is D&D Middle Ages, Dark
Ages, whatever time frame you'regoing to play in Renaissance,
whatever, you ain't making it the 91.
Especially if you're going to besome type of magic user that's
using magical aging affecting unnatural aging on your life.

(11:04):
Like casting alter reality spells, gate spells, limited
wishes, things like that. Even with the cleric with
restoration or resurrection willget will knock you up a whole of
a lot of years there looking at it.
And there is a loophole for these aging consent things here.

(11:26):
If you're reading them from a scroll, it does not count as
unnatural aging, but such. But placing such a spell upon a
scroll in the 1st place will do so.
So this is not really any. Well, there's a tiny loophole, I
guess. If you find these, at least when

(11:47):
you cast them, you won't age. But if you do write them or
scribe them onto a scroll, you will age.
So pay it upfront, pay it later.I mean, it's up to you how you
want to handle that. Now I remember a story of a
character trying to choose theserules and I purposely didn't
read a little paragraph that's here because I wanted to tell

(12:10):
the story first. I had a player that wanted to
play an an half felt fighter magic user who started, you
know, at the young age, like a fighter, and he wanted to dodge
the older casting age rules and then multiclass into magic type
thing. He argued that the fighter
column should should set start his age, which generally it

(12:31):
would, but there is a rule here and then he would add the caster
later. I I ruled that the multiclass
characters and I'll read the paragraph now.
For multiclass characters, use the column which developed the
highest age and used the greatest possible addition to
the base age, IE do not generatean age variable by random die

(12:52):
roll, but assigned the maximum. So he had no choice because the
rule was in the book. Generally, I'm not a stickler
for rules when it comes to reading every little thing in
the book and I want players to be happy.
But when you're going to try to choose rules when it comes to
playing the game, that's when I get a little annoyed and we'll

(13:14):
we'll refer to the book if you want to play that game.
So there's also another good idea is when you do establish
the character and his age is to establish his birthday.
You may want to ask your dungeonmaster if he has some type of
calendar days like I have when I'm I'm playing games.

(13:36):
I do keep a internal calendar for the game.
Right now I'm playing basic fantasy and I will mark off the
days on the calendar, tell the players another day has passed
and even provide them with a weather for the day as why not.
That's something interesting it,it actually makes the campaign
feel alive. So as the days check off and

(13:57):
they move around on the map and do things, I tell them day past,
day past, today is I, I, I don'treally have a like original
calendar. I just use like January 30.
I don't really care and they don't care as well.
Just as long as we're all havingfun and we have some type of
tracking in place. So have your character, you

(14:19):
start your character, your players choose the birth date of
their character. You can even choose the year
based on the calendar as well because you have to when you
roll on this table, but keep track of that, have it on the
character sheet. So when it comes around and what
you should do is notate it on your on your your sheet.

(14:40):
That way when the time comes around and it's the character's
birthday, they will have to add a year onto the age of their
character. And it's also maybe you can give
them some type of small, you know, hey, it's your character's
birthday and maybe they have a different attitude that day.
Maybe you give them a free, freeroll for lock or something, or a

(15:01):
lock roll. It might be a good idea to do
something like that because it'stheir birthday and maybe their
birthday would be a good day forthem.
I mean, it could be a backgroundthing that it isn't, but it's
really up to the player character.
But write it on your calendar aswell as the DM.
And if if your layer characters have not done an age thing like
that, you can just basically sayafter a year on the calendar

(15:23):
time, all right, we're starting a new year.
Make sure you raise your character's age by 1 and then
that's it done. I think it's an interesting idea
to have that in the game as well.
Kind of makes it feel a little more alive.
I don't know, tell me what you think all about this aging and
stuff like that, or character age inside the Dungeon Masters

(15:43):
Guide, how you handle in your campaigns.
Now I know each edition did similar things to this and
probably changed it here and there when it came to later
editions and I'm not picturing it in my mind what they did for
3rd or 4th and don't care about 5th, but I know they did

(16:05):
something similar in second edition.
But I'm sure the people that arethose fans of those will chime
in. And I appreciate the chime
insurance in the comments because it's always interesting
to see what everybody comes up with and what rulings they have
or house rules they have. So go ahead and comment Spotify
or even on YouTube, whatever youwant to do.
Don't forget to like the videos,Don't forget to follow the

(16:26):
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unless you want to go view that anyway.
Evil the Evil dm.com is my website, [e-mail]

(16:49):
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goodies for your games. With that said, I'm going to
head out. Keep it original, keep it old
school tonight, and God bless everything.