Aging

[prophet118]

ok... so is aging an instant aging, IE if someone ages 7 months, do they have to deal with 7 months of hair growth, and all the nasty stuff that comes with it.........or is it taking those months off of your total life span?..

like a character who is supposed to live to be 70, casts a huge spell and screws up, he ages 8 months.....would that mean his current life expactancy is 69 years and 4 months?

[Durgil]

I would think that you would just keep track of a character's actual age and their apparent age.  So you have a character that was born August 5th, 1967.  Until he casts a spell that causes him to age, you have listed his birthdate and 35 in both actual age and apparent age blocks.  If he casts a spell that causes him to age 7 months, then you mark down 35 years 7 months in the apparent age block.

As far as life span works, a character dies of old age when one of their attributes reaches 0 through aging (see book 5, The Laws of Nature), so how would even the GM know what the life span of any character is unless you’ve pre-rolled all of that secretly?

[prophet118]

lol, i have no clue, im trying to figure things out... like i said though...immediately aging 7 months, do you age in real terms?, like does your hair and nails show 7 months of growth?... wonder what jake or ron thinks

[Shadeling]

lol, i have no clue, im trying to figure things out... like i said though...immediately aging 7 months, do you age in real terms?, like does your hair and nails show 7 months of growth?... wonder what jake or ron thinks

I am pretty sure the sorcery section says so..that is how I've played it. Makes sense since you are physically aging that ammount.

[Stephen]

...immediately aging 7 months, do you age in real terms?, like does your hair and nails show 7 months of growth?

I am pretty sure the sorcery section says so..that is how I've played it. Makes sense since you are physically aging that amount.

It indicates in the rulebook that your hair and nails do grow, though that's more out of "colour" than actual scientific consistency; realistically, if your metabolism was accelerated to that degree by the imperfect spell, you'd die of dehydration, starvation, AND oxygen deprivation from any spell that aged you even one month.  But this is magic, so you don't need perfect scientific consistency, after all.

Personally, I don't use the hair and nails thing; aging's visible signs are subtler and harder to notice until you've lost a lot of it....

[Shadeling]

...immediately aging 7 months, do you age in real terms?, like does your hair and nails show 7 months of growth?

I am pretty sure the sorcery section says so..that is how I've played it. Makes sense since you are physically aging that amount.

It indicates in the rulebook that your hair and nails do grow, though that's more out of "colour" than actual scientific consistency; realistically, if your metabolism was accelerated to that degree by the imperfect spell, you'd die of dehydration, starvation, AND oxygen deprivation from any spell that aged you even one month.  But this is magic, so you don't need perfect scientific consistency, after all.

Personally, I don't use the hair and nails thing; aging's visible signs are subtler and harder to notice until you've lost a lot of it....

Aging 7 months would be quite visible. People who see me, and then don't see me a few months later tend to notice the facial hair growth, and that my hair is longer on my head. Not to mention, 7 months of fingernail growth would be probably almost an inch!

[Jake Norwood]

I use hair and beard growth as color all the time. Sure, it isn't really feasable, but it *does* explain why wizards always have long beards. =)

As for the rest, I'm with Tony (Durgil).

Jake

[Ron Edwards]

(looks up, mumbles)

I just do what Jake says.

Best,
Ron

[prophet118]

well obviously the reasons behind this thread are because one of my players did age 7 months, and got a little peeved that he had 7 months of beard and hair and nails, my main thought though is of course the hunger part...

course this player kinda asked for it, casting a CTN 7 spell with a sorcery pool of like 6......an total pool of 6....in other words, 6 dice to divide between the 3 areas

[Brian Leybourne]

course this player kinda asked for it, casting a CTN 7 spell with a sorcery pool of like 6......an total pool of 6....in other words, 6 dice to divide between the 3 areas

Three areas? You've confused me (which isn't that hard really, I'm probably just being dense). Casting and Aging... what's the third thing to assign dice to?

Brian.

[Valamir]

7 months in one shot I'd do alot more than hair and nails.  I think your spot on to note the hunger.  I'd be dropping physical stats like crazy reflecting the concentration camp physique he'd likely to have at the end of 7 months with out eating.  Technically, it would also be 7 months without physical activity either, so the actual number of calorie equivelents that would be used over the time would be much less (which is what would prevent actual death from starvation IMO), but he'd still look like a wretched island castaway in my game.

Of course, one could make the same arguement about water and oxygen too, but as someone pointed out, it is magic so you have a little room to play in that regard.

Aging isn't supposed to be a non event...especially 7 months at once.  I imagine it would be quite painful and should leave the caster virtually impotent...at least temporarily.

[Durgil]

I gathered from Jake's reply, that the hair and nails stuff was just for show.  I take the aging thing to be more like aging on the inside, like the told my 57 year old Father-in-law, "you've got the arteries of a 90 year old.  At worst, I think that the most obvious thing that could happen is to suddenly have a big streek of white through their hair like they have seen a ghost or suddenly have a large tuff of it fall out.  I most definently would not go into starvation/dehydration bit, but TRoS does have chances for the spell caster to be knocked out if they age too much at once.

[Brian Leybourne]

TRoS does have chances for the spell caster to be knocked out if they age too much at once.

Hell, even one single month of aging means your knockout roll is TN6. Given that knockdown is derived from Strength and Agility, it wouldn't be unusual for a sorcerer (certianly a starting one) to have a knockdown of only 3-4 dice. Even at 4 dice that's a 1/8 chance of falling unconscious, or 1/4 for 3 dice. And how often do you only age one month...

Brian.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

knockdown or knockOUT? you got me confused as to which you are refering... I beleive knockout is teh appropriate stat.

[prophet118]

course this player kinda asked for it, casting a CTN 7 spell with a sorcery pool of like 6......an total pool of 6....in other words, 6 dice to divide between the 3 areas

Three areas? You've confused me (which isn't that hard really, I'm probably just being dense). Casting and Aging... what's the third thing to assign dice to?

Brian.

the 3 areas being the actual spell, the resist aging part, and the knockout part.....granted i think i may have misread, but i was under the assumption that this 1.) came from your sorcery pool, 2.) you had to divide your pool into those 3 before you cast

EDIT, nevermind, i did misread...lol