Age penalties.

[Tempest Fennac]

I was just thinking about how unrealistic the ageing penalties are in D&D due to how they seem to assume that everyone gets slight mental stat increases while deterriorating physically due to age while ignoring things which wold have an effect such as nutrition and exercise levels, and I was just curious about whether anyone had created a more realistic system. i was thinking that giving players a choice of penalties at the Old and Veneable ages such as a -2 to any stat, -2 to any 2 inclass skills (assuming they have at least 2 points in that skill and -3 vs. 1 save. 2 penalties would be picked at old and venerable, nd the same penalty can't be picked more then once. Also, players wouldn't be allowed to reduce stats to below 3. If anyone has any other ideas, please could you tell me what they are.

[paigeoliver]

The mental age adjustments have nothing to do with reality, they are more there to support to common fantasy archetypes of old white-bearded spellcasters.

[Tempest Fennac]

I forgot to mention this when I first posted the thread, but I decided that, being as the penalties which I suggested would probably work out to be less of a problem then the existing penalties, there won't be any bonuses for getting old with this system, so it would just be a case of picking 2 penalties at old and venerable (I also decided that stat or skill reductions shouldn't stop the character fromaccessing feats which are dependant on those skills).