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Thread: An Attempt to Stat Children
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2017-06-05, 05:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2016
An Attempt to Stat Children
I'm trying to think of a good way to assign reasonable stats for children. Here are my thoughts:
You gain HD as you progress from an infant to an adult. Upon reaching adulthood, you no longer gain HD (except for dragons and similar races), though you may gain HD from class levels.
The example stats are given for a human.
Fetus: 1/2 d8 (Tiny)
Infant (Under 1 Year): 1/2 d8 (Tiny)
Toddler (Under 3 Years): 1d8 (Small)
Child (Under 9 Years): 1d8 (Small)
Tweens (Under 15 Years): 2d8 (Medium)
Adult (15+ Years): 2d8 (Medium)
I would also propose stat penalties for those who are not yet fully developed. Upon conception, stats would be rolled as normal. For this example, I rolled the following:
STR: 12
DEX: 11
CON: 15
INT: 16
WIS: 12
CHA: 13
We then apply a percentage-based penalty across the board, rounding down (to a minimum of 3 for any stat). This penalty starts at 75% at conception and decreases by 5% every year on the child's birthday, ending once the character reaches adulthood at age 15. (Since the age of adulthood varies by race, so too would the rate at which this penalty disappears).
Spoiler: Stats
6 Month Old Infant (Tiny)
STR: 3
DEX: 3
CON: 4
INT: 4
WIS: 3
CHA: 3
2 Year Old Toddler (Small)
STR: 4
DEX: 4
CON: 5
INT: 6
WIS: 4
CHA: 5
4 Year Old Child (Small)
STR: 5
DEX: 5
CON: 7
INT: 7
WIS: 5
CHA: 6
9 Year Old Tween (Medium)
STR: 8
DEX: 8
CON: 11
INT: 11
WIS: 8
CHA: 9
15 Year Old Adult (Medium)
STR: 12
DEX: 11
CON: 15
INT: 16
WIS: 12
CHA: 13Last edited by SirNibbles; 2017-06-07 at 06:08 AM.
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2017-06-05, 05:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Is it your intention to have children happily walking around wearing multiple axes in their faces? Because this is how you get children happily walking around wearing multiple axes in their faces.
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2017-06-05, 06:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Why would they wear axes with their face?
Usually adventurers steal back the axes they gave you by hitting you.
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2017-06-05, 06:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Pathfinder has a pretty good way to deal with young characters
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2017-06-05, 09:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
I dislike the PF system for several reasons.
It implies that around 20% of 8 year-olds will be stronger than the average adult, assuming all stats are generated using the 4d6h3 system. It also fails to address children below the age of 8. Furthermore, it doesn't solve the issue of children not having HD until they take class levels.
I think a percentage-based system is better at representing the growth of a child over time.
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2017-06-05, 09:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Children, especially of most PHB humanoid races should never have more than 1HD without class levels. You get your first class level at adulthood. No classless adult should have more than 1d8 hp and no classless child younger than that should have that much. Maybe Teens get 1/2 d8 and younger than that they just get 1hp thats it, just 1.
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2017-06-06, 02:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Last edited by Mordaedil; 2017-06-06 at 02:13 AM.
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2017-06-06, 02:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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2017-06-06, 02:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Wait, so a child army is more powerful than an orc horde? I think this has some flaws.
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2017-06-06, 02:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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2017-06-06, 04:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Why do they have d8 hp? Are they not commoners? And why more than one HD? I mean they have not yet undergone any form of training or education that could make them anything else, except a level 1 commoner. And IIRC a commoner has d4 hp!
Ha ha ha.... This really hits the nail on the head! Flawed indeed!
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2017-06-06, 04:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
"The statistics presented here describe a fairly small dog of about 20 to 50 pounds in weight."
- Monster Manual, page 271
Poodles weigh between 45 and 70 pounds. Rottweilers weigh over 100 pounds. They'd be closer to a Riding Dog (medium) which has 2d8 HD.
Obviously the Orcs would have RHD as well.
Humans are humanoids. Humanoids have 8-sided hit dice. How does a human with no training (newborn) have any class levels?
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I'll take your suggestions into account and reduce the HD.
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2017-06-06, 04:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
It makes no sense that a human baby has a higher hd than adult commoner (or expert, wizard, sorcerer or rogue). But just going by humanoid from MM is not right. There is a huge difference between humanoids so obviously a child is not going to be some of the strongest humanoid. I checked all my 5 MMs and non of them had human non-classed. I suggest you just make them level 1 commoners, with severely reduces stats.
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2017-06-06, 05:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
So according to this a wizard becomes less powerful than a baby by reading a book.
Yes, how balanced and through-thought.
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2017-06-06, 05:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
It is obviously because spending 2d6 years in a row reading books without ever walking is not good for your health.
That is why they then gain hd by going out and fighting but in fact they would gain hd also by walking outside but somehow wizards think they must complete objectives and not just walk outside from time to time.
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2017-06-06, 05:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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2017-06-06, 06:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
So how many hit dice does an elf start with? Does a human become epic when he reaches level 18?
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2017-06-06, 08:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
IMHO, this is what you need to know for children/youth of any race:
Originally Posted by The GiantOriginally Posted by The Giant
Links to single posts, since they can't be properly quoted.
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2017-06-06, 08:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Although I generally agree that this system has some severe flaws, here's a couple questions to see its merits.
Are you augmented the system so that all adult humans have 2d8 racial hit die on top of their class level hit die? If yes, that solves the issue of children being more resilient than a level 1 <most classes>. Also, if orcs and other races also keep their racial hit die from being an adult, that solves the issue of a child army being stronger than an orc horde.
Additional reason to keep the racial HD if you include this change: You can explain spellcasters losing HP by their poor health choices to get mystic might--BUT that goes against the idea of HP incorporating luck, divine favor, and other non-physical aspects (which is fine, several folk disregard that). However, 2d8 averages 9 HP. That's more than a level 1 cleric gets, and they are a combatant-like class. If rolling for HP, a fighter would average around 5-6 HP and a barbarian around 6-7 at level 1.
However, I think most of the issue would be resolved by having the child be a level 1 commoner with reduced HP, as others have mentioned, instead of using racial hit die. Racial hit die seem reserved primarily for monsters (or 'monsters', in the sense of not normal PC races) that may or may not have classes. The common humanoids use class HD instead of racial HD, and humans default to the (admittingly weaker) Commoner instead of Humanoid.
Using the commoner template (with penalties for the very young) fits the rest of the game better, requires less augmentation of HP across the board, and seems to make more sense.
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2017-06-06, 09:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
I would suggest just giving -2 overall for an uberchild and -4 overall & -1 size for a child. Anything younger gets gross.
So taking that wizard example, a 12-years-old uberchild would have
STR: 10
DEX: 9
CON: 13
INT: 14
WIS: 10
CHA: 11
which is about a low-point-buy character would look. Or what you get when you try to roll a character but had bad luck. Not good, but she can probably adventure like a real adult to some extent.
and a 9-years-old child would have
STR: 8
DEX: 7
CON: 11
INT: 12
WIS: 8
CHA: 9
which is weak but still compares favorably to a random commoner.
I think such a simple solution would be good enough.
The dexterity bonus in pathfinder's article looks weird to me, as that implies a child is better at using a bow than an adult, which isn't that case. Instead, the child looks more agile and nimble because she is smaller in size, and we already have rules for that.
Also, please don't touch the HD. The level-1 characters are fragile enough and taking a -4 penalty to CON is surely a penalty significant enough.Last edited by ahyangyi; 2017-06-06 at 09:42 AM.
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2017-06-06, 12:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Also, why does a fetus get a stat block? >:|
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Old classes, new classes, and more!
Thanks to AsteriskAmp for the avatar!
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2017-06-06, 05:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
You can fudge the quotes by manually typing the post number, like this:
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1. Yes, you keep RHD on top of class HD.
2. All races keep RHD on top of class HD.
3. Using class levels for completely untrained characters just doesn't sit right with me. Also, if everyone is born with a class level in Commoner, why would any character be exempt? You'd have BBEGs running around with Commoner 1/Wizard 19 fighting PCs with Commoner 1/Cleric 19, etc.
4. Yes, a character with 2 HD would probably have more HP than a character with 1 HD. I'm not saying PCs and others with class levels shouldn't benefit from RHD as well. I think giving everyone RHD would set a reasonable baseline for what a normal, untrained character could survive. A level 1 Commoner (max 4 HP, but average lower if rolling) would be dropped by a single bite from a corgi. Falling from a 10 foot ladder while fixing a window would most likely drop a commoner.
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So that it'd be easier to know if it dies due to being hit while it's in the womb. I'm not encouraging falcon punch abortions, but I think having the mechanic there in case it happens is convenient.
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By the way, this isn't just for humans/humanoids. What about Centaurs, who have 3d8 Monstrous Humanoid HD at adulthood? Should they get all 3 at birth? What makes humanoids special, that unlike, for example, Pixies, they can't just have a single RHD?
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2017-06-06, 05:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
So now all wizards(and clerics and fighters and barbarians) will start their adventuring carrier at child age(for avoiding to have 2 racial hit dice slowing their progression)
You know when you have only one rhd you can replace it with a class level but you can not do that when you have two rhd.Last edited by noob; 2017-06-06 at 05:58 PM.
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2017-06-06, 06:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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2017-06-06, 06:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
I don't see why a child should be barred from having real class levels. They should just get -1 size category, -2 STR, -2 CON for each age category below adult, -2 INT, -2 WIS for each category below teenager, and -2 DEX, -2 CHA for each category below child, say - so a teenager would be a small creature, but could still technically be a powerful wizard in their own right. A toddler would have to contend with various penalties to all of its ability scores, and the fact that it's a diminutive creature, and that it probably only has one commoner hit die and nothing else.
There's nothing in me that thinks it particularly odd that children should be decent fighters, especially since in a lot of cultures they actually were in medieval times. Let them have their PC class levels already.
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2017-06-06, 06:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Not being born but having 2 rhd adds to your ecl so you need to fight monsters of a cr two higher to gain levels at the same pace.
Believe me a fighter with one level and two rhd is not nearly as strong as a cr 3 encounter(unlike a fighter with three levels which is balanced with a CR 3 encounter(50% chance of wining)).
So basically a wizard that starts adventuring as a child will have only wizard levels while a wizard that starts as an adult will have two rhd and so will be two caster levels(and one spell level) behind the child wizard quickly and the maluses to the stats of the child wizard will not be a penalty overcoming two extra levels in wizard(probably the same can be said of a fighter/barbarian/a whole of other classes).
So with your system people should start having classes and/or adventuring as fast as possible for avoiding the point of non return of becoming useless forever which happens when you become adult and have 2rhd.Last edited by noob; 2017-06-06 at 06:16 PM.
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2017-06-06, 06:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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2017-06-06, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
So I guess I just have to gain enough wizard levels before I age to use that spells that makes you younger to stay a child forever(or even younger for having only one half rhd but then I will need to umd horseshoes(do not ask it makes sense for wizards)) and thus never have that awful ecl increase from ageing(I mean it makes every humanoid of the universe weaker against monsters except for some commoners).
Well I guess than now I can not remove from my mind the image of wizards who reach ultimate arcane power by becoming babies(the lower rhd compensate the fact you now have 3 int and the 3 int can be increased through wearing horseshoes and an ring of intelligence and one other intelligence increasing boost).Last edited by noob; 2017-06-06 at 06:25 PM.
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2017-06-06, 06:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2017-06-06, 06:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Attempt to Stat Children
Dont you be statting at my daughter perv.