Aging Rules?

[Wampyr]

Anyone know of a good home brew rule for age? (Particularly regarding stat changes)

[UrielAwakened]

All I know is my friend had just gotten a dog in-game and then we got attacked by something that aged you by 1d4 * 10 years if you failed your check.

The dog aged 30 years and died instantly after being gotten like five minutes prior and I have never laughed so hard in my life.

[Anymage]

You could port over 3e's, but a few questions before you bother:

-Does enough time pass in your campaigns for age to really be an issue? If your campaigns don't include truly prodigious amounts of downtime, there's no real point to aging. (The 3.5 idea of starting a caster at higher level for mental stat buffs is gaming the system. If you want to start elderly, just have low physical stats and roll with that.)

-Does decrepitude match the story you want to tell? Some people like to see the once strong warrior brought low by age, but most people who like the heroic power fantasy that D&D seems focused on would rather see their badass oldster continue kicking ass instead of going into a retirement home. If people like the latter idea, it's better to ignore age penalties and let age just be another bit of fluff on your character sheet, like height or hair color.

[Sigreid]

I'd either use the 3.5 rules or more likely just provide a means to bypass aging. The one exception would be to handle aging attacks mentioned up thread. Even with those as a DM I would have some method to reverse or negate it, if the party can find it.

[DanyBallon]

I'd use the 3.5 aging rules, except that only the ability score maximum would change.
i.e. if a character reach middle age each of his physical ability score maximum would go down by 1, possibly bringing a maxed out stat from 20 to 19, while the mental ability score maximum would go up by 1 allowing the character to take an ASI boosting a mental stat.

A character that would start his career in his middle age would need to follow his new ability score maximums based on his age during character creation.

It's not a perfect solution, but I think this would prevent much of the abuses we've seen in the 3.5 era, allow some character to go beyond 20 in a mental stat, while not being too harsh against characters that rely on physical stats.

[Tiadoppler]

Rather than changing stat scores or stat caps, my houserule for PC aging is:

Starting when you reach 75% of your species' estimated lifespan:
You lose max HP each year. (A human loses 3 per year, a dwarf loses 2 per year, an elf loses 1 per year. Roughly dependent on species estimated lifespan.)
You roll a d10 each year.
On a 1, you lose a skill or tool proficiency of your choice.
On a 9 you gain a skill or tool proficiency of your choice.
On a 0 you gain a skill expertise of your choice.

[Renbot]

No, aging SUCKS!


( sorry I couldn't resist. Must be the dementia)

[spankherbooty]

No, aging SUCKS!


( sorry I couldn't resist. Must be the dementia)

It's no worry for a lvl 15 Monk/ level X Wild Magic Sorcerer. Every spell he casts gives him a 1/1000 chance to de-age by up to 9 years (Timeless Body prevents him from magically aging). Just two spells a day for a year gives him better than even odds he'll get younger.