AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

I had an interesting thought. In real life as a person lives, learns and gains experience, they gain wisdom through these experiences. I wonder if this, somehow could translate to D&D. I mean to be more realistic. Say every 5th level or so your Wisdom goes up automatically. Kind of makes sense. Just an idea I had... :roll:

Pretty sure there's an age scale that reduces your CON and/or STR and increases WIS and such in PnP.

Middle age - -1 physical, +1 mental
Old Age - 1 physical, +1 mental
Venerable Age - 2 physical, +1 mental

Also, that's a really bad idea 'cuz that a free +6 wisdom.

ok, it doesn't have to be every 5th level, that was JUST AN EXAMPLE, it could be every 10th level, whatever, it just seems like it would add realism

...but then again some people go through life and don't learn a damn thing

for added realism, why not make our characters need to eat, drink, and rest?

Make it Lore instead of WIS.

This is one of those situations where realism yields to mechanics and balance, I think.

Jan wrote:

Make it Lore instead of WIS.

Aye. if anything, lore, not Wis.

"That bloke's dodgy looking as hell, with that hood over his face, I'm going over there to see what's up"

"I'm not running in there after that dodgy looking guy in the hood, it's bound to be an ambush"

"Last time I ran after a dodgy looking guy in a hood, it was an ambush. Not falling for it again"

The first and third one is what a high INT, low WIS person would say. But if you've got any INT at all and have adventured or fought a lot, you'll have so much experience that you'll be very wise. There isn't any difference in the WIS score of the second and third statements, in my Humbledore.

All pointless musing, of course. I just collect examples of why the huge gaps in possible WIS/INT/CHA scores are impossible to RP correctly, so we might as well relax and just call them a dash of flavour.

TormakSaber wrote:

Also, that's a really bad idea 'cuz that a free +6 wisdom.

Clericy Dhoom

Besides, not all players play as the lvl's increase, so does their age.

I think if you want your character to age, ask a DM to change your stats, subtracting just a simple 1 from CON/STR and add 1 to Wisdom, and maybe a bit of lore. This would be a large age jump. But I do feel that people would abuse the stat increase, so Lore is a better solution. But even this being said, not everyone wants their characters to age at the same rate as everyone else. So it'd all be Player-DM workings.

555444333 wrote:

TormakSaber wrote:

Also, that's a really bad idea 'cuz that a free +6 wisdom.

Clericy Dhoom

A very happy cleric and monk.

I think ... no, really bad idea.

I wonder, though, is it possible to convince a DM t do the full extent of aging? Agree with them what one year is and live out the entire characters life, dying when the DM says so? Because that sounds fun.

Edit: Feels bad to shoot down an idea without justification. Sure, you may increase in wisdom with enough experience, but that is extremely unbalanced mechanically. Plus is it your inherent perceptiveness has increased, or you just have more experiences to compare to? I prefer to see the ability scores as inherent ability and skills as your trainable ones.

Quote:

I wonder, though, is it possible to convince a DM t do the full extent of aging? Agree with them what one year is and live out the entire characters life, dying when the DM says so? Because that sounds fun.

No need for us, do it yourself. We don't enforce aging and permadeah and I gaurantee we'll forget when it comes time for your PC to "die".

TormakSaber wrote:

Quote:

I wonder, though, is it possible to convince a DM t do the full extent of aging? Agree with them what one year is and live out the entire characters life, dying when the DM says so? Because that sounds fun.

No need for us, do it yourself. We don't enforce aging and permadeah and I gaurantee we'll forget when it comes time for your PC to "die".

Full extent including attributes

Never. We do not leto attributes, skills, stats, etc.

Fair enough, just wondering.

very old age shouldn't really have + anything especially wisdom, people begin to forget things, even close family in cases, even a monk who somehow lives to 200 would lose his/her mental capacities eventually. Elves and elementals and such I suspect would have different changes, and necromancers I don't know enough about to guess..

That's just the rules in PnP. There is no 'gradual decline' in the rulebooks besides the physical decay. When your time is up, you drop dead for absolutely no apparent reason and can't be raised.

o0GuNz_N_RoSeZ0o wrote:

Jan wrote:

Make it Lore instead of WIS.

Aye. if anything, lore, not Wis.

That.

Lore you could get by since that's not going to break anything on balance. +6 to your lore only means you can ID what; lowbie gear? [if you don't apply any other points to it]

Although overall... I really don't see a need or use to having an age system of any kind in place. Age seems to go perfectly well by PC control.

Plus, you want Wisdom for your experiences? [example] If your character has no spellcraft, but still sees people outside in Cordor when it is raining with sparkles, they can begin to realize that those sparkles are protecting from the rain. Or better, somebody told them, and they can reasonably guess the effect from there on. Although they may never be perfectly sure without the spellcraft check popping up. You already get "Wis" for your character just from OOC perspective. Just not in the form of a rolling stat.

"Old people, tsk, their hearing gets worse the older they are and they can't see as good anymore."

"Not true sonny."

"What?"

"The older we get the more Wisdom we get, which gives us boni to our Spot and Listen."

"..."

I think Order of the stick did that.

I think the whole idea, that people gain wisdom as they get older is debatable.

It's an old myth that comes from the fact older people in the old times likely knew which types of plants to avoid eating to survive etc. Those people were sssumedly good as village leaders, given how much they had experience. But is that wisdom? Does it give you better tools to communicate with other people, does it make you more diplomatic? Does it give you understanding of the general world?

I don't think there's any social wisdom that one automatically gains with age. Old people can be just at stubborn, selfish, uncompromising and bigoted as young people. Often they are even more so. It depends on the person, not on their age.

So I'd say what you gain as you age is practical knowledge. We don't really have a skill for that, as Lore deals with other type of knowledge.

Nekhy wrote:

Does it give you better tools to communicate with other people, does it make you more diplomatic?

Isn't that Charisma?

"people gain wisdom as they get older "

that was not what I said. I said that people gain wisdom from experience.

I believe that wisdom could give you tools to communicate with other people. If you choose to do so.

For example: Say in the past when you have gotten pulled over by the police, you have been unruly and uncooperative. This led to you getting a larger fine or worse thrown in jail. But now as you have learned from this experience, the next time you get pulled over you will most likely choose to be polite, show respect and cooperate with the police officer.

"Old people can be just at stubborn, selfish, uncompromising and bigoted as young people"

right, they choose to be so.

I for one have never met a wise infant, but I have met older peopl, not necessarily elderly people, but people that have lived many experiences that I consider to be wise. Practical knowledge? I think that is the same thing as wisdom.

my initial point was that the charcters in the game are obviously adveturers and out and about gaining experience. They are not your average schmo sitting behind a computer screen. And as adventurers gaining experience I would think that they would gain wisdom from their experiences. But I suppose there are too many variables that go into this so what's the point...

Well, in PnP your wis ends up going a total of +3 before you irreversibly die.

If you want to invest ability points in Wisdom as you level up, that's on you. I don't think we're touching anything that has to do with aging, given that aging is also completely up to the players.

As for people in general getting wiser as they get older. Every person is different. Some get wiser, some get more foolish, some stay the same. It just depends on the person.

if you could get skill points from rp'ing I wonder what Xaviera's ride skill would be...

I simply agreed with the suggestion of Lore over Wisdom because it makes sense and won't break the balance of things. With that said, I don't think it should be touched at all personally. Leave it how it is.

another example: it is usually wise to read all of other people's comments before you write a respone. Otherwise you may look foolish.

mayormccheese wrote:

I had an interesting thought. In real life as a person lives, learns and gains experience, they gain wisdom through these experiences. I wonder if this, somehow could translate to D&D. I mean to be more realistic. Say every 5th level or so your Wisdom goes up automatically. Kind of makes sense. Just an idea I had... :roll:

Ever fourth level it can go up if you choose.

oh really? thanks Yurell! I did not know that. [/quote]

You are quite welcome mayormccheese.

Um, so there's no confusion, Yurell ism talking about using your ability point you get every 4 levels, and putting it in Wisdom. She's not talking about any free wisdom points.

Nekhy wrote:

I think the whole idea, that people gain wisdom as they get older is debatable.

Very true indeed.

The Ancient Spartans used a council of 28 citizens over the age of 60 as an advisory council to the Kings called the Gerousia. They had the power to ignore the vote of the General Assembly (Appella/Ekklesia) if it did not suit the outcome of the two kings.

Athens and primarily the writer Aristotle on the other hand thought the complete opposite. Aristotle wrote that men in their old age became senile and made poor decision makers as opposed to the Spartan's godlike respect of their seniors.

uh ya thanks tormaktsaber I knew what was up with Yrell's "advice" I was being sarcastic I just couldn't find the sracstic button..fuck it

mayormccheese wrote:

uh ya thanks tormaktsaber I knew what was up with Yrell's "advice" I was being sarcastic I just couldn't find the sracstic button..(censored) it

Relax, I was just clarifying.

mayormccheese wrote:

uh ya thanks tormaktsaber I knew what was up with Yrell's "advice" I was being sarcastic I just couldn't find the sracstic button..(censored) it

My apologies, I assumed you weren't being sarcastic, since that would defeat the purpose of a debate (the last time I used it I apologised to Wonwon immediately, as I usually do when I know I am in the wrong (note that this may not intersect at all points when I am wrong - no one is perfect)).

However, let us have a look at the wider implications and mathematics of your suggestion, since you feel sarcasm to bean appropriate response (please correct me if my mathematics is flawed) :

One is constantly fighting monsters - fighting involves a large amount of force and would increase your strength. Furthermore, there is a considerable amount of exercise in running about with full plate and tower shield, which would improve your overall fitness i.e. Constitution.
I'll leave dexterity alone, since I have no idea what kind of stretching exercises you do.

Now, with this your Strength, Constitution and, by your logic, Wisdom, should increase with time. Now, let us have a look at the rate at which these change.

Strength - for someone starting out I think an increase of 2kg of maximum weight lifted per month would be realistic for weight lifting (if not more: I would expect the first few months to show a much more substantial increase). at a strength of 10 (average for a human) an increase of 1 str point is an increase of 5lb, which for or purposes is close enough to the expected increase.
Thus our strength is increasing at one point per month.

Constitution - To take an action while holding your breath you can last 6 seconds per constitution point, and afterwards take a DC 10 Constitution check. This would mean that 90% of average people will have ran out of breath after 78 seconds. Now, I would imagine it would be a stretch at increasing this much beyond the two minute mark on average in a year, which would mean 42 seconds (7 rounds) in 12 months or 0.58 rounds per month - so it would take just under two months to extend the time by one round.
Thus we can roughly estimate Constitution to increase at a rate of 1 constitution point per month (since two points are needed to increase the modifier).

Wisdom - This is difficult, as hearing actually decreases with age an appreciable amount, even at young ages, making a rate for this difficult to find. Let us assume your ability to see through someone by a 'hunch' increases by 20% per year (a very rough estimate indeed). This means that you are increasing in wisdom at roughly 2/3 of a point per month.

So I would counter request that in the same time we go up 2 Wisdom (10 levels by the 1/5 level suggestion) we increase Strength and Constitution by 3. This way, at level 30 we receive +6 Wis, +9 Str, +9 Con.

As you can see, by game mechanics all of this, while being somewhat 'realistic' would be extremely unbalancing - who would need RDD in their build? This is not meant to be sarcasm directed at you, but attempted denigration does tend have this effect on me.

EDIT: Typos removed and some sections reworded.

You could always pay DCs for a character rebuild to represent the aging. I was tempted to with Jackie-Boy but instead he got a whole surgery team to jazz him up with drugs, magic and augmetics. He'll be strength based till he drops.

i simply say no cuz people don't know how to RP wisdom (at least from what i see) and it would just be beneficial for people looking for free stats. if u had free wisdom without negatives people would build their characters around that

EX:
Ur standard orc with neg wisdom doesn't put anything into wisdom anyway because he knows his negatives are useless when you can jump 20 levels in a week and gain a free 4 pts wisdom possibly putting him at 10 or 12 which is... not feasible

---
it makes more sense with age instead of levels

An orc knows that when something's bigger you don't push your luck and try to tell it what to do because you're going to get hurt. Its common sense in orcish society. An orc on the other hand wouldn't know that scrawny humans can be potentially dangerous with hidden traps and/or spells because it's not something they'd think about off the top of their head.

That's the best example I can think of by having a moderate wisdom modifier but low intelligence modifier.

That being said, in my opinion wisdom is more a measure of a character's common sense that can only be learnt by watching. An illiterate hunter could still be considered smart with a moderate wisdom score because he knows where to look for tracks, how to use the direction of the wind so that his scent doesn't alert his prey and finally how to kill his prey efficiently without bringing unneccesary harm to himself.

Charisma on the other hand is how people percieve you in general. An old man with a negative/very low charisma modifier but extremely high wisdom might have the meaning of life trapped away in his head but when it comes to explaining it, it would seem like ramblings of an old man whose seen too many winters which noone can understand.

All the physical and mental attributes pair off with each other. Increase some but decrease others, you're going to get different effects. But because ability modifiers don't affect character personalities on amia beyond what the player is willing to do, it is only mechanical benefits.

I'm against age effects on ability scores. If the player wants them done, they can do it themselves with a rebuild.

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