The Misty Isles And House Rules Basic Character Creation: Gender and Age

Gender

For some reason biological gender has become a complex issue. Attempts to work out physical gender differences for game play have over the course of D&D been sometimes weird, complex or even deemed offensive. It has never bothered me one way or the other if game rules adjusted ability scores over gender. For my purposes players can choose what gender they wish their character to be or simply let the dice decide without modifications to any of the raw ability scores. I am however keeping it simple for now, male or female are the starting choices. It is a fantasy world however, so who knows what could happen in the long run as far as a PCs gender, race or any other aspect of their identity is concerned… magic and technology does strange things sometimes.

Be warned the Societies and Races in my World Setting are not however functioning under modern law, morals, values, ethics, and sensibilities. Thus one can not reasonably expect the fantasy societies to reflect modern society norms concerning gender equality they will be different not only from modern real life but will vary from “kingdom to kingdom” and race to race. Sometimes it will seem to  be better to be male, sometimes it will seem to be better female. 

Age 

Unless for some reason in the beginning Character Creation process age has already been determined as young or old because of low ability scores for instance. It will be rolled for so the character has a starting age. In addition at some point at my convenience I will roll and record the character’s maximum “natural” life expectancy, but I probably will wait to see if the PC survives at least one adventure. The below charts are based on the age charts on pages 12 and 13 in the Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide from 1979. I did not find anything like this in the 5e DMs Guide when I compared my tomes. I simplified the chart to these four basic options, as I add races I will update the chart.

Race       Young Adult       Mature      Middle Aged       Old                Venerable 

Dwarf         35-50              51-150       151-250              251-350          351-450

Elf              75-150            151-500      501-800             801-1100        1101-1350

Halfling       22-33             34-68          69-101              102-144           145-199

Man             14-20             21-40          41-60                 61-90               91-120

Dwarf PCs Fighter  40+5d4, Thief  75+3d6

Elf PCs Fighter 130+5d6, Magic-User 150+5d6, Thief 100+5d6

Halfling PCs Fighter 20+3d4, Thief 20+2d4

Man PCs  Fighter 15+1d4, Cleric 18+1d4, Magic-User 24+2d8, Thief 18+1d4

Elves that Multi-Class must choose highest age bracket and add maximum dice amount, they do not random roll.

As additional classes are added I will add them to this chart.

Adjusting for Age

With the exception of starting characters very young or very old because of the raw ability scores of the player character as the character advances in age it can and will effect the raw ability scores of the PC. Age adjustments can not exceed game maximums and minimums which for this setting is 18 and 3 respectively. I don’t think I ever had an active PC of my own ever not meet an unnatural death and actually die of old age in an active campaign setting. 

Young Adult

-1 Wisdom, +1 Constitution (note if a player starts as a Youth the chart will be a bit different for them, in that they will not loose Wisdom upon becoming a Young Adult).

Mature

+1 Strength, +1 Wisdom

Middle Aged

-1 Strength, -1 Constitution, +1 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom

Old

-2 Strength, -2 Dexterity, -1 Constitution, +1 Wisdom

Venerable 

-1 Strength, -1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution, +1 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom

Unnatural Aging

Unnatural Aging can be caused by magic, creating certain magical scrolls or devices and certain diseases for example, and this is why keeping track of such things can be important.