Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 XunValDorl_of_HouseKilsek Aug 11, 2009 21:32:33	Exactly how long in years does it take for your PC's to reach level 30? Do you even worry about using Age? Lets take the long lived races for example: Why would a PC such as an elf be in such a hurry to reach the end of their career? Are they doing it just because of the human that's in the party since he doesn't live as long? Normally elves take their time because they have a few hundred years to live. Why the hurry really or do you usually fit the longer lived races as having lived years before and they start later in life to balance out the years? How do you handle it?
#2 Herrozerro Aug 11, 2009 21:39:21	We use age, but most just play prime aged characters so it really doesnt matter. Why would a PC such as an elf be in such a hurry to reach the end of their career? The probably dont, but when destiny calls you either pick up or you ignore it. We have a inside joke at my table "Destiny called me... Twice" for when a PC ignored a huge hook that was practically dropped right in front of him and only later realized it and sought it out only to have it happen again. The second time he took it. I just think of it as the brightest candles burn the fastest.
#3 Duke5150 Aug 11, 2009 21:41:36	My dragonborn fighter was 40 before he got smashed by the foot of a titan. (level 11) and it only took him 3 years of in game time (5-6 days of play) to get to that level. I think its completely possible to play a character without ever hitting max level and dying from old age, at the same time I think its possible to take a character and hit max before they even hit old age. All depends on what kind of events you encounter in the game. Stumbling on a lost library of vecna for example, will yield a massive amount of knowledge which translates into XP in our games.
#4 salla Aug 11, 2009 22:05:45	Nope. I've never seen a PC die of old age, so there's really not much point to it.
#5 i_roll_ones Aug 11, 2009 22:11:03	Unless the elves were reflavored in your campaign, they tend to be pretty impulsive and follow short lived passions, probably obsessively so. So why wait to find a new party when the going is good now?
#6 misterfido_dup Aug 11, 2009 22:21:08	I've had PCs take a few years off from adventuring to build castles, academies, and the like--but nothing drastically aging. The only possibility would have been when they traveled back in time to kill Count Strahd before he became evil (it was somewhat disquieting how gleefully they cut down his frail, confused, begging mortal body), and one of them almost got left behind. And, the reason they had to go back and kill him was convoluted; his suicide/rising as a vampire had set off a series of events that ultimately allowed an evil god (The Shadow) to get a foothold into dominating the entire universe. So the party decided to go back in time, murdered him in cold blood, then went back. It was a nice way to loop the campaing (which had reached epic levels) back to the beginning (we started the campaign out of the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure) But I digress. Age is usually never a factor except under extreme conditions--I can imagine that parties who go to the Far Realm or equally physics-disturbing places would have their age accelerated artificially, and this might come into effect then.
#7 salla Aug 11, 2009 22:26:47	Unless the elves were reflavored in your campaign, they tend to be pretty impulsive and follow short lived passions, probably obsessively so. So why wait to find a new party when the going is good now? 'Tend' is the important word here. Not every elf is going to do that.
#8 Artifact Aug 11, 2009 22:32:01	PCs in our games typically start adventuring as adults (20-something) and age in real time. Sometimes a PC may start later in life (a dwarf or an elf for instance) but they still age in real time once the game starts. Our pace is about average, so aging isn't a concern, especially old age or dying from it. We have on occassion revisited a few retired PCs who are considered venerable. The 'history' of our games only covers about ten years of real time though, so we'll sometimes stretch the actual ages of these NPCs. In-game history is prolly closer to twenty years (at most).
#9 Dragoncat Aug 11, 2009 22:32:26	Elves may live a long time, but the world is in danger now. Some are born to greatness, some achieve greatness, some are tossed headlong 'twixt greatness's ample bosom by the fickle finger of fortune. And when all of reality is on the line, retirement or vacation simply isn't an option.
#10 Crimson_Concerto Aug 11, 2009 22:37:36	Most in my group think elves and other such races live stupidly long as written, so in general we actually just tend to assume all races have lifespans very similar to that of humans, maybe a little bit longer by ten or twenty years, but nothing as dramatic as centuries... But the longest time we've included the same characters within a campaign was... 28 years? And all of the characters started off relatively young, so no REALLY dramatic aging occurred, at least nothing that couldn't be staved off by magic or being really, really badass. :D
#11 i_roll_ones Aug 11, 2009 22:41:04	I sorta wonder why PCs onto the path of immortality don't pick up long life spans along the way, in the process of being awesomtastic. And yes, my bad. The race only tends to that way of thinking. However, that means that the elf wants to be epic now because of the motivation the player gives them. So ask the player!
#12 daidojitaidoru Aug 11, 2009 22:51:53	In my games there are 3 types of adventurers: 1 - Dead Adventurers. 2 - Adventures who quit before really getting started. 3 - Full time adventurers. People in category 3 who try to retire frequently find themselves either back in the game or in category 1. Once you've reached a certain power level adventure comes to you. Even if you've shanked all your enemies and Trapped their Souls so they can't come back, and even if those enemies didn't have any vengeful relatives, there's still a good chance that Bob the Soulripper will add your quiet little inn to the list of strategic targets that need to be taken out. If for no other reason then to make sure you don't decide to come out of retirement and whack his whole army like you did to the last dude. Thus events tend to force people to level, even if they can find a nice quiet mage college to run. If nothing else the skill challenges to handle the intrigue will be a steady stream of XP.
#13 Titanium_Dragon Aug 11, 2009 22:58:47	In my current campaign, which has been going on for less than a year, about the same amount of real world time and in game time have elapsed, but at entirely different rates. Some sessions didn't even last an IG day, while others lasted four months IG. Time has never been a real factor in any of my campaigns, and I suspect that is generally the case - few campaigns last more than a few IG years, I'd wager, and those that do typically would have lots of downtime. In my experience games generally take place on time scales of days, weeks, or months, and the last only when they're doing something really long and time consuming or travelling a really long distance.
#14 salla Aug 12, 2009 0:35:59	Most in my group think elves and other such races live stupidly long as written, I didn't figure 2-300 years was so bad, compared to the millenia of previous editions.
#15 Nyarlathotep Aug 12, 2009 0:43:26	I have always sort of handwaved it away, because I am lazy like that, but I have played with the idea of stealing a page from the old Pendragon RPG and having about a year between each adventure (though for D&D I might modify it to about a year between each level). That would give the PCs plenty of time to do things like raise the next generation of PCs and furthermore it would put a group of heroes that start at the age of 20-ish at 1st level be 50-ish by the end of their careers, which sounds about right. Haven't done it though, maybe next campaign.
#16 Kensan_Oni Aug 12, 2009 0:54:39	I forgot who said it... I think it was Hickman & Weis... but they said "Adventures don't live to a ripe old age." (Maybe Paraphrased, but you should understand). While I have no problems with players dictating their age when they start, the longest game-time any character lived through in a campaign is about 5 years. Age rarely is a factor to Characters fates.
#17 old_dog Aug 12, 2009 1:39:29	Age has not really mattered since 2e. iirc, that was when the Haste spell aged you a year and a ghost looking at you aged you 4d10 years. The long lived races did not care about this minor effect. The races that lived a human lifespan could die of old age in a few encounters.
#18 Crimson_Concerto Aug 12, 2009 1:44:59	I didn't figure 2-300 years was so bad, compared to the millenia of previous editions. "Not as stupid" is not the same as "not stupid." :P
#19 decivre Aug 12, 2009 1:50:07	I play with age (usually, see below for what I mean). In most of my campaigns, a running arc will have continuous events, but the characters will take a 1 to 2 year rest before going on another major adventure. In 2nd Edition, we've had characters die of old age on our party (the players created new characters to replace them). My current character doesn't, but there's good reason for it. As a shapeshifter without an original form, he really doesn't have an age to keep track of, much less a height or weight.
#20 Nameykins Aug 12, 2009 2:40:12	Character age and level are on completely separate meta-levels in my games. I don't run a simulationist game, so there is no reason for age to affect any game mechanics at all. It is simple another background or flavor aspect in the game, lik eye or hair color.
#21 Mr_Miscellany Aug 12, 2009 6:33:59	I use rules for age in our 3.5 Realms game. At least one of the players chose to start with an older character, so it was natural to use the rules on aging for him. It's taken approximately eight years of real life play for the characters to reach Epic level (20+levels in 3.5 terms). Some of those characters have gone to other planes where time flows faster to study and advance their skills. That plus the regular progression of the campaign through the Roll of Years has advanced the age of the characters by about one decade of game time. This has put some characters at middle age, so the rules apply there as well. In our Fourth Edition Realms game, the issue hasn't come up yet because the players created "young" characters and play hasn't advanced past the heroic tier yet. So I can't bring any experience to the OP's question about how long it takes for a 4E campaign to get to level 30. On the OP's question of elves: In our Realms campaigns we look at elves who live on mainland Faerûn as living "at the tempo" of humans, by nature of human dominance in many lands and the unavoidable interaction this causes between elves (some of them xenophobic, others simply preferring the natural company of their own People to that of other races) and humans. Many elves also desire to reclaim and defend their lost lands all over the continent, so interaction (i.e. combat, adventures and gaining experience in conflict) happen quite naturally. I think these ideas are applicable outside of Forgotten Realms games, even with places like the Feywild present in the game.
#22 Seeker95 Aug 12, 2009 6:41:23	Exactly how long in years does it take for your PC's to reach level 30? We have not reached level 30 yet, but three years of game time have passed and the PCs are level 13. I'm guessing that another three or four years will pass by level 30. Do you even worry about using Age? With the exception of a single campaign back in the mid-80s, I have never been concerned with age in the game. In that game, the fighter in the group had to complete a prophesy-quest by his 21st birthday.
#23 Shiftkitty Aug 12, 2009 8:54:33	While on their adventuring careers, whether to save the world or to get away from a harping wife, no aging occurs. We only discuss age when the PCs have been inactive for awhile. How the age is handled depends on the nature of the game. If it's the return of an uber-villain that has somehow escaped his banishment/imprisonment, it's going to be a case of the grizzled old veterans who know this evil best riding to the rescue once again. If it starts out with someone finding the old character sheets and us chuckling about good times and funny moments, then it's time to dust off the old geezers and have a "we're getting too old for this ****" game. Trading healing potions for prune juice, the illusionist looking like he had aged very diginified and well only to encounter an anti-magic zone tha revealed his high-mileage true self, losing your spectacles in mid combat and crawling around to find them while the gnolls are missing your head by inches, it was a blast! We deemed that a cane did the same damage as a quarterstaff.
#24 oxybe Aug 12, 2009 9:56:31	our characters age, but it has no bearing on the stats.
#25 alecthemad Aug 13, 2009 9:08:48	When I DM I use age. I like to have a couple years pass between events and I will tell the players to age their characters appropriately. I have never really liked games where everything is going wrong right now as if every villain has this complex fully formed parallel pathing plan. After each defeat I have the bad guys lick their wounds and come up with a new plan. In 3rd and 3.5 a few players moved into middle age through this process and had to adjust their stats. They seemed to enjoy it though and I let their players accomplish things during the long downtimes, building keeps, towers, churches, etc.
#26 wancow Aug 17, 2009 16:07:14	Most in my group think elves and other such races live stupidly long as written, Thank god 4E brought that down a few notches... :D In Middle Earth, Elrond was well over 2,000 and was present when Sauron lost his stupid ring!
#27 lord_raziere Aug 18, 2009 0:35:15	Thank god 4E brought that down a few notches... :D In Middle Earth, Elrond was well over 2,000 and was present when Sauron lost his stupid ring! Yea now, Eladrin and Elves can only be around since the 1700 and 1800's and tell us how Colonialism and Imperialism were like. take that you pointy eared blaggarts!
#28 orenthes Aug 27, 2009 18:09:38	I've yet to actually use age in a campaign, would be interesting though, have my dragonborn paladin with dull red scales complaining about being to old for this crap.
#29 cambion_incubus Aug 29, 2009 18:24:09	Nope. I've never seen a PC die of old age, so there's really not much point to it. I have, I take it you never faced Iuz. :P
#30 dcdm Sep 01, 2009 16:52:53	I actually played a 12-year old in one D&D campaign, so the aging of my character had a much bigger effect that it normally would.  You think adventuring is stressful, imagine adventuring while going through puberty!