What is the optimal age category for a caster?

[Trikee747]

I'm a 5e player who is only checking out 3.x for the first time. One of the features that stood out to me was the age categories' ability modifiers. Though any martial character would probably try to avoid every passing into a greater age category, it seems less one dimensional for a caster. So, is it worth the hit to constitution, dexterity and strength for an increased casting stat?

[JNAProductions]

It depends.

How are you generating stats?
Are you going to be an undead, rendering Con penalties moot?
What class are you going?

[Shinoskay]

I'm a 5e player who is only checking out 3.x for the first time. One of the features that stood out to me was the age categories' ability modifiers. Though any martial character would probably try to avoid every passing into a greater age category, it seems less one dimensional for a caster. So, is it worth the hit to constitution, dexterity and strength for an increased casting stat?

Wrong forum for 5e.

middle aged is optimal unless you can remove age penalties, then go venerated.

[icefractal]

Depends a little on the stat method / point buy, and on the type of caster, but in general -
Middle-Aged is almost always good
Old is often worth it, but could be risky at low levels. If you're going to be undead, then it's almost always worth it.
Venerable is mainly worth it if you have a way to mostly ignore your physical stats. Someone who's going to operate in Magic Jar most of the time, for example. Or, of course, Reincarnate.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Venerable is mainly worth it if you have a way to mostly ignore your physical stats. Someone who's going to operate in Magic Jar most of the time, for example. Or, of course, Reincarnate.Or if you're playing a kobold with Dragonwrought, which ignores age-related penalties to stats while gaining mental stat bonuses from the same.

Really, so long as the campaign isn't going to be stretching over the course of decades, there's not much point in playing a Dragonwrought kobold and not going venerable, unless it's an RP-related decision.

[noce]

It also depends on which caster (and what race to an extent).
For example, Clerics need WIS, CHA and rarely dump INT, but they often need also STR and CON.

Sorcerers only need CHA among mentals, but often value DEX if picking rays and obviously shouldn't dump CON. On top of that, most ECL 0 races with a CHA bonus also have a CON penalty, so -3 CON could be a bit much.

Meanwhile, classes like Favored Souls and Druids almost always want to start at middle age.

[Biggus]

I think the key questions are "how cheese-tolerant is your DM?" and "what level are you starting at?". If the answers are "not very" and "low" respectively you're going to want half-decent Con (and probably Dex) to survive the first few levels, so adult or middle-aged are probably the sweet spots. Otherwise you're probably good to go to venerable as an optimised caster by mid-levels (or a very optimised caster at low levels) can find other ways to make themselves hard to kill.

[Remuko]

Wrong forum for 5e.

middle aged is optimal unless you can remove age penalties, then go venerated.

OP said theyre a 5e player trying to learn about 3.x. as this is the 3.x forum and the op is trying to learn about 3.x, this is the correct forum, not the wrong forum. the op never said they were here for 5e stuff.

[Pugwampy]

Has anyone here actually experienced a player wanting an oldie hero wizard so they could take advantage on the improved ability stats ?

[H_H_F_F]

You've gotten a lot of answers, so I'll just try to make sense of it all in one post:

You'll usually start a game with either Point-Buy or rolling. Rolling is more likely to have "useless" points - a 15 as your second best ability, for example, which'll be con/dex. Might as well be 14. If that's the case, middle age usually has no significant downsides. Otherwise, it's something to consider.

If you're willing to go a bit more heavy handed, Kobolds with the Dragonwrought feat [races of the Dragon] can start as venerable without suffering any consequences. Necropolitan [Libris Motis] is a template making one undead - which can still be a risky move early on, but being undead in 3.5 sets your Constitution to "-", which means you ignore penalties, and necropolitan is usually the easiest way to get that type. Most DMs won't let you start as a necropolitan if you're starting at level 1, though, so beware: being a venerable level 1 wizard will get you killed pretty much immediately.

Assuming you're playing at a low-op, low-level table (appropriate, if you're a 3.x beginner), I wouldn't go older than middle aged, and avoid weird tricks like the ones mentioned above.

Good luck!

[Thunder999]

Middle Aged is usually managable, small penalty for small boost.

To go higher than that you basically need a way to ignore the downsides, otherwise you end up with low hp, low AC, bad fort/ref saves, low initiative and low carrying capacity.

[thethird]

In my experience middle aged works well when you are using point buy to generate stats. It's cheaper to go from a 10 to 11 than from a 17 to 18 so it can be used to give you more well rounded stats. I don't go over that as a player but it's mostly because I don't want to play older characters.

[Zanos]

Has anyone here actually experienced a player wanting an oldie hero wizard so they could take advantage on the improved ability stats ?
I've often played middle-aged wizards; both because it lets you even out a "bad" set of rolled stats(17 int, 13 dex and con for example), or because it's cheaper to have a wide array of okay stats in PB if you use the +1 from middle aged to get int up. And to be honest, a wizard that isn't at least starting to grey doesn't fit my aesthetic for the class. Most DMs in my experience don't really care if you want to play an 80 year old without stat adjustments, though.

You can manage higher age categories with a variety of tricks, but I generally wouldn't recommend it. DMs tend to look rather poorly on generating a character with +3 to all mental stats and then disappearing the penalties with polymorph any object or magic jar or age resistance or mind switch or...

[Gusmo]

I admit to playing an old gray elf in a real meatspace game and using polymorph. We still had fun, I miss that group.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I tend to play high Int characters, and at higher levels, I prefer to be constantly shapeshifted (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#skinofProteus) anyway, so I tend to also play older characters as a result. Especially useful if I can dump Con and/or Str entirely and distribute those points elsewhere (like into Dex). Or I can pull a body-swap. Numerous ways to do that.

It's a bit harder to justify playing low level older characters, but not impossible. The main character in this story (https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/project-gamer-ver-2-young-justice-gamer-multicross-oc.92217/) is in his 50s and reincarnated as a Gamer with his memories intact, so it's definitely doable.

[Mordante]

Do people use age groups in 3.5? I know in theory your stats change as you get older. However I have never seen in being used. My characters tend to age just like the Simpsons,

[Pugwampy]

My original club always went for heroic stats including a hail mary d20 roll to swop out with a low stat .
There was no need to age up any hero to score a couple extra Ability bonus points .

[pabelfly]

I don't really make use of upping age categories for stat changes (exceptions being where I don't care as much have already been mentioned, like Dragonwrought Kobold). As nice as mental-based stat boosts are, I typically also want DEX and CON for Initiative, AC, Fort and Reflex, and HP. If I've got a lot of odd ability scores, I'll use ability score increases to help make them even - I don't mind spending an ASI to make my DEX or CON an even number to get the various bonuses that come with that.

[bekeleven]

Do people use age groups in 3.5? I know in theory your stats change as you get older. However I have never seen in being used. My characters tend to age just like the Simpsons,

Yes, although you'd need a DM invested in timeskips for aging to happen anywhere besides character creation.

I mean, the game assumes you level up every 13.3 encounters and assumes that you'll have what, 3 to 4 encounters per day? So a level 1 adventurer, who survives, will hit level 20 in under 3 months of in-game time.

[47948201]

I mean, the game assumes you level up every 13.3 encounters and assumes that you'll have what, 3 to 4 encounters per day? So a level 1 adventurer, who survives, will hit level 20 in under 3 months of in-game time.

Just curious, where does it say that you're expected to have 3-4 encounters per day? I've seen the 13.3 encounters per level thing in the DMG under rewards, but I don't think the DMG was written with the super efficient healing-per-gold of wands of vigor in mind (not to mention, travel time and NPC interaction in most adventures) so surely 3-4 encounters isn't something that you're going to do every day, right?

[Bavarian itP]

Just curious, where does it say that you're expected to have 3-4 encounters per day?


The average adventuring group should be able to handle four challenging encounters before they run low on spells, hit points, and other resources.

ten characters

[JNAProductions]

It doesn't say how long it should take to recover from a four-encounter day, though.

This isn't 5E, with Long Rests being basically a full reset.

[Bavarian itP]

It doesn't say how long it should take to recover from a four-encounter day, though.

This isn't 5E, with Long Rests being basically a full reset.

So what? Even if it takes one week to recover, it's still only 5 years until Level 20. A half-orc wizard with the max starting age of 26 would be 31 then and therefore middle-aged, but almost no other character will.

[JNAProductions]

So what? Even if it takes one week to recover, it's still only 5 years until Level 20.

That's a lot longer than three months. 20 times as long, in fact.

Still unrealistically fast, but... Well, it's D&D. It's NOT realistic.

[Bavarian itP]

That's a lot longer than three months.

But not long enough for age categories to matter except for some fringe cases.

Also, my calculations were wrong, it's actually 1.2 years.

19 levels * 13,33 encounters/level / 4 encounters/week / 52 weeks per year

Or, for another fringe case: An elf rogue with the lowest possible starting age (114) could do one encounter per month and still get to level 54 before they reach middle age (175).

It's ridiculous, really :smallsmile:

[icefractal]

Or, for another fringe case: An elf rogue with the lowest possible starting age (114) could do one encounter per month and still get to level 54 before they reach middle age (175).

It's ridiculous, really :smallsmile:Well, assuming that 50th level encounters for them even exist. In 3.5, your level is effectively capped by the strongest opposition that exists, since past a certain point you won't get XP.

PF1 isn't caped that way (though reaching L20 by fighting CR 1 stuff would be a lot of encounters / time) but there also aren't levels past 20.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, assuming that 50th level encounters for them even exist. In 3.5, your level is effectively capped by the strongest opposition that exists, since past a certain point you won't get XP.Do remember that singular base creatures aren't all that can be used to grind XP from. Groups of creatures and those with CR-boosting templates (and a combination of the two) can, as well.

If someone really wants to continuing leveling in a world without native high-epic creatures, there're always breeding programs to add templates to existing high level things, and using spells to craft such things. Also using spells to boost creature CRs, like Complete Divine's curse of lycanthropy to add the lycanthrope template to high level humanoids and giants multiple times. Also gate to pull in creatures to pit oneself against.

[47948201]

This is slightly tangential but I guess it's related to the amount of time it takes to gain levels, so...

Do people actually find that to be true? Your party can take on 4 challenging encounters, then maybe the following day the cleric burns all their slots to heal everyone up, and then on the third day you can do 4 more challenging encounters?

I feel like at least when I've played from levels 1-5, unless enemies got really unlucky and just didn't hit the frontliners (and the mages called the dices' bluff and saved their good spells), after 1-2 challenging encounters a "normal" party is reaching the point where any more fights carry a serious risk of death.

[Zombulian]

It’s always been hard for me to justify advanced age on characters below, say, level 5. I personally have little experience with it but I have been interested before.



It doesn't say how long it should take to recover from a four-encounter day, though.

This isn't 5E, with Long Rests being basically a full reset.

I’d never actually considered this. I feel like the “4 encounter day” was such a mantra here I never realized that the “other resources” portion likely refers to returning to town and stocking up, resting for long periods, etc.


Wrong forum for 5e.

middle aged is optimal unless you can remove age penalties, then go venerated.

At least read the post before responding.
Unless the case is that you’re saying 5e players can’t participate in 3e discussion - in which case, kick rocks.

[Bavarian itP]

Well, assuming that 50th level encounters for them even exist. In 3.5, your level is effectively capped by the strongest opposition that exists, since past a certain point you won't get XP.

They have 29 days per month to search for every encounter (minus preparation time). If you have access to Gate, Plane Shift, Greater Teleport and high-level divinations, you can search many, many places in that time.



It doesn't say how long it should take to recover from a four-encounter day, though.

I mean, the party has a hard day and a lot of resources are drained, maybe some party members are petrified or even dead. The next day, the party casters prepare and cast the spells to heal/restore/ressurect their teammates, which drains on their spells. But that's only one day, on the third day, they should be ready for another four encounters.

Unless the party casters are themselves incapacitated or there's even a scenario like in Don't Split the Party, then it could get more complicated. On the other hand, that kind of complications may lead to quests, encounters and XP gain themselves.

But again: It doesn't matter that much, because PCs advance ridiciously fast even if they do only one encounter per day instead of four.

[tyckspoon]

Just curious, where does it say that you're expected to have 3-4 encounters per day? I've seen the 13.3 encounters per level thing in the DMG under rewards, but I don't think the DMG was written with the super efficient healing-per-gold of wands of vigor in mind (not to mention, travel time and NPC interaction in most adventures) so surely 3-4 encounters isn't something that you're going to do every day, right?

I don't recall where the actual description of this is (probably one of the 'why we did it this way' sidebars in the print DMG?) but the idea is an average encounter (CR = Party Level) 'should' use up about 20% of a party's resources - spell slots/other limited-but-restorable usage effects (/day abilities, items with daily charges) and available HP being the main ones. So after four of those a party theoretically is at major risk of defeat if they take on a fifth, so that last 20% of resources should be saved for/used for getting the party out to a safe place to rest and recover.

Of course it almost never works out that way - printed CRs often do not accurately reflect a monster's threat level and power levels among PCs can vastly outrange what the CR levels were supposedly calibrated for even when they're right, so any given 2 parties will expend a hugely different amount of resources against the same encounter - but AFAIK that's the genesis of the '4 encounter day' as a system assumption.


I feel like at least when I've played from levels 1-5, unless enemies got really unlucky and just didn't hit the frontliners (and the mages called the dices' bluff and saved their good spells), after 1-2 challenging encounters a "normal" party is reaching the point where any more fights carry a serious risk of death.

Two things: the standard encounter isn't really meant to be 'challenging' - if you consistently fight over-CR or over-numbered enemies (probably because your DM feels the 'correct' encounter balance is 'too easy' - this is intended! PCs aren't actually supposed to be 'challenged' in most of their fights! But fights also take up a lot of table time, so if your table feels like you spend too much time handling attritional trash fights then you will probably correct in the other direction by having fewer higher- danger combats) then yes, you would expect to get to the point of retreat faster.

The other is low level 3.5 is just notoriously rocket-taggy purely because very low level characters have no HP to absorb hits with, and your casters only have maybe 2 encounters worth of slots to use good spells with. There's a reason later editions of D&D start out characters at what would be roughly 3rd level capability under 3.5 rules, and even then 5th edition explicitly says that if you're starting at 1st level then you should very rapidly level to 3 or 4 before settling into a more regular pace.

[Zanos]

It's just in the DMG, pg. 49

What’s Challenging?
So, what counts as a “challenge”? Since a game session probably includes many encounters, you don’t want to make every encounter one that taxes the PCs to their limits. They would have to stop the adventure and rest for an extensive period after every fight, and that slows down the game. An encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PCs’ level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources—hit points, spells, magic item uses, and so on. This means, on average, that after about four encounters of the party’s level the PCs need to rest, heal, and regain spells. A fifth encounter would probably wipe them out.

You are correct that an ECL=APL encounter is not supposed to be a major challenge; it says so right in the book that DMs are supposed to read. Shockingly, there are several sections in a book called the Dungeon Master's Guide, that Dungeon Masters would benefit from reading. Like the section about downtime between adventures, which means that generally, no, characters aren't hitting level 20 within 3 months of being generated. :smalltongue:


Of course it almost never works out that way - printed CRs often do not accurately reflect a monster's threat level and power levels among PCs can vastly outrange what the CR levels were supposedly calibrated for even when they're right, so any given 2 parties will expend a hugely different amount of resources against the same encounter - but AFAIK that's the genesis of the '4 encounter day' as a system assumption.
Well yeah, and the DMG again has nearly 2 full pages on circumstances that DMs should take into account when generating encounters with regards to the CR of monsters. The book is quite good, even if somewhat outdated.

[tyckspoon]

It's just in the DMG, pg. 49

Well yeah, and the DMG again has nearly 2 full pages on circumstances that DMs should take into account when generating encounters with regards to the CR of monsters. The book is quite good, even if somewhat outdated.

Yes, 'here is a number that gives you the difficulty rating of this monster. BTW, you are never going to actually use it as printed, you will need to manually adjust it for every encounter you make' is anothe failure of the CR system >.>

[icefractal]

On the speed of leveling, I've had a couple thoughts on how reconcile the rapid pace of PC levels with a world where people aren't all max level by their 30s, without just going "the PCs are special" or "it's a narrative abstraction".

Thought 1: Dungeons are Unnatural
Dungeons (and the creatures that come from them) represent an alien reality invading the world. Mostly this is a bad thing, but it does have the silver lining that absorbing the alien energies can lead to very rapid growth of skills, as well as superhuman durability (explaining HP = meat nicely as well).

Thought 2: Lots of Variables that all align for PCs
People absorb energy from the plane to fuel their growth, but how fast depends on what they're doing - just doing nothing notable is the slowest, active training/study is faster, and utilizing the skill in life-or-death situations is the fastest. Separately, different people have different growth rates (PCs have the highest possible). Also separately, you grow significantly faster when on a ley-line, and even faster on a ley-line intersection. Some people (including the PCs) are 'free floating' and get the ley-line-intersection growth rate regardless of where they are. While to an extent this is just "the PCs are special" it's all made of factors which other NPCs can possess as well.

[Thunder999]

This is slightly tangential but I guess it's related to the amount of time it takes to gain levels, so...

Do people actually find that to be true? Your party can take on 4 challenging encounters, then maybe the following day the cleric burns all their slots to heal everyone up, and then on the third day you can do 4 more challenging encounters?

I feel like at least when I've played from levels 1-5, unless enemies got really unlucky and just didn't hit the frontliners (and the mages called the dices' bluff and saved their good spells), after 1-2 challenging encounters a "normal" party is reaching the point where any more fights carry a serious risk of death.

Pretty true yeah, at low levels it relies on finding healing potions as loot, but once the Wands of Cure Light Wounds (or Lesser Vigor/Infernal Healing) it's pretty manageable. It's easier in PF1e where clerics and paladins have a bunch of free healing (Lay on Hands/Channel Energy) that's not eating up other resources, but healing potions are pretty standard low level loot anyway.

At higher levels you can go longer, but have much less need to as magic makes resting far easier, just hop in a rope trick, maybe even simply dimensioon door out and back in tomorrow.

[tyckspoon]

On the speed of leveling, I've had a couple thoughts on how reconcile the rapid pace of PC levels with a world where people aren't all max level by their 30s, without just going "the PCs are special" or "it's a narrative abstraction".


Even if you aren't building entire aspects of the world around trying to justify XP, the PCs -are- special. They're not unique, tho, they're special in a way a small selection of other people are.. what most PC adventurers are is adrenaline and challenge junkies. They're the people who IRL go climb radio towers so they can take a selfie from the top or make blind first-run attempts at extreme difficulty mountainbike paths or have a goal to summit every mountain that has killed a hiker or bungie-jump from every bridge. And when they have achieved that goal, they set a new, even more dangerous and implausible one. Doing this and not dying requires building an ever greater set of skills and resources. (Doing it and dying is very easy, which is what actually happens to most people who get into this lifestyle.)

The majority of population looks at the people who do this and says they're crazy. It's too dangerous and too disruptive - they're not going to leave their homes and go seek out goblins to fight, then upgrade to Hobgoblins, then take a detour to the Druid Forest in order to try their chances at arm-wrestling the Elder Grizzly Bear. So they don't level, and that's fine. They get good enough, gain enough XP from whatever their daily life challenges are, to do what they need and they stay at that level. Even the people who do adventuring-adjacent tasks (soldiers, wilderness rangers working in Troll Country, whatever) only get good enough to be successful and reasonably safe at the particular thing they need to do. PCs - adventurers - are the people who continually and consistently seek out an escalation of more and more dangerous things to throw themselves at, and the reward they get for surviving it is levels.

Normal people get dragged into an adventure, and if they manage to survive it they get home and say "Wow that was crazy, I almost died so many times. I'm glad I'm safe now and I hope I never have to do that again." And they have a really good few stories to tell while they're working their farm or crafting stuff in their artisan shop or whatever it is they actually do. PCs say "That was fun! What else ya got, I want to do that again!" and go try to find something else that will probably kill them.

..and combine with a tendency to have very little down time, where people want their characters to actively and always be doing Adventurer Things and you get the rapid levelling.

[Thunder999]

The difference between adventurers and the real life adrenaline junkies is that adventurers get wealth and power, rather than just a few nice photos.

[Vizzerdrix]

381. After becoming a necropolitan at the age of 80 and gaining evolved undead template 3 times and buying it off.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

381. After becoming a necropolitan at the age of 80 and gaining evolved undead template 3 times and buying it off.Elves are still practically in diapers at that point. [/snark]

[Thunder999]

Elves are still practically in diapers at that point. [/snark]

Now now, it's not nice to bully the elves just because they're slow learners, it's not their fault it takes them longer to become toilet trained (latrine trained? what's the medieval equivalent?) than it does a human to ascend beyond mortality.