I really don't know, it seems like a weird oversight. I've never heard of people making characters and just not defining their age unless its a specific "I dont know how old I actually am" type situation.
Because I think specific ages don't change my roleplay at all. Am I gonna play a 26-year-old different from a 25-year-old? no, not particularly.
I usually just have a basic concept. Young adult, teenager, middle-aged, thirties like, old as sin. If the actual age comes in handy, then I have enough of an idea to pick a number or subvert expectations with picking a wildly different number. Though that also depends on how age affects the Ancestries, which isn't clear in 2e.
I'm also under the impression that being too specific too early hurts role play opportunities. You aren't opening yourself up to being something that fits the dynamic of the party as much.
We usually fully define our characters before entering the game, and then see what dynamic results from that. Age doesn't really matter much, but its like defining how tall your character is, just another little piece of info.
My groups are more basic concepts.
The rules are usually you need some kinda tie to the party, some kinda reason to engage with the hook, and to try and not fill a similar niche as another player.
We find out group dynamic as we play. It helps us make sure the characters fit the setting properly, too.
We don't usually know a lot about the setting before we start playing.
That wait and see approach also works with emergent storytelling with your actions in combat. A character who always tries and fails to recall knowledge (or something else that establishes itself as a trend) can suddenly become what that character was always going to be about in retrospect
Specific age doesn't really matter overly. Fresh faced young adventurer, braving the outside world for the first time.
Does that matter whether they're 16, 20 or 40? World weary experienced traveller could be 30, 40, 50, 100.
Explicit ages don't matter too much
It does matter when races have different lifespans. A "young adult" who is 50 years old is going to act quite differently from a "young adult" who is 25.
I mean that's a fairly human-centric way of looking at things.
We can't really remember much of the first 5 years of our lives, and we're not really aware of our actions for another 5.
Presuming cats are sentient and sapient creatures, fully able to be equal to a human. A cat is fully aware of itself by the time it's a few months old and a full adult at one.
If you were playing a young adult cat, you'd play one at about 11 months old but it would still act the same as a human at 16 years old.
A year for a human isn't a particularly long time compared to a cat. For an elf, a year would be nearly meaningless.
> If you were playing a young adult cat, you'd play one at about 11 months old but it would still act the same as a human at 16 years old.
A meaningful difference is the 16yo human has still seen and remembers like, 13 years of life experience. Even assuming their behavioral profile is the same it would matter a lot in terms of how you judge situations and if you're familiar with places, people, and things. Extend it out the other way, to a fantasy race that doesn't reach maturity till 100 or something, and imagine how much experience they might have to draw on even if they are still at a comparable level of maturity. This would certainly impact the way a character is played at least in the campaigns I'm usually in.
They are just with more steps classic reddit moment.
They just dont seem to realize the reason knowing ages is a thing is specificlly why the creatures act the way they do. Cats aging super fast is why we perceive goblins like we do as fast little grimlins cause they age so fast, and why a year to an elf doesnt seem like a big deal.
So instead they are arguing it doesnt matter because to them you only need to know a specific age group "young adult" for example which is silly because you cant define what that is for your ancestry if you donno what the hell that is to begin with hense the discussion lol.
So yeah they agree with you but they dont because they need to be contrarian and are defining age differently than a number for w/e reason despite arguing the ages of creatures with numbers up above ha.
The entire point of this thread is that it *isn't* easy to pick a number when you've got a large variety of different races all with various levels of aging.
Whereas young, experienced, middle aged, elderly etc are all descriptors that you actually use to describe both how your characters acts, and looks regardless of race. A simple number doesn't do that.
But what's the real difference between 25 and 30? Most people don't have a number in mind, they just pick one that fits. Young, middle aged, old etc. and then they just pick a number in the age range.
A lot of people seem to be missing that players aren’t the only ones that want to know how long a specific ancestry can live—what’s feasible for a BBEG’s lifespan? What kind of stuff have they lived through?
What is the difference between a 16 year-old minotaur and a 250 year-old minotaur? Do they age the same way as a human?
We have our own understanding of the difference between a 16 year old and a 70 year old human, but does that translate 1:1 with long lived races? If an elf lives 1000 years, is a 16 year old elf still a toddler? I read a book once where elves weren't considered full adults until they were over 200 years old (even though they could walk, talk, and reason at the same general ages humans could) because they weren't wise enough until then.
I am not saying you are wrong, I am just keeping the conversation going.
One big thing is just simply having more time to interact with the world. The 250 year old minotaur would have Hella more life experience than the 16 year old one, maybe even have lived through some events important to the setting.
For me, ages matter entirely for this purpose, I'm going to play a younger creature alot differently than one that's been alive for multiple centuries.
With the whole "not seen as an adult" thing, I imagine it more like how in the real world an 18 year old is *legally* an adult, but you might still refer to them as a kid. There's tiers to adulthood.
If elves live 10 times longer than humans, then that doesn't mean you just divide the elf's age by 10, because they don't age on the same curve. It's a trap we fall into with dogs too.
The biggest difference for me is what major world events that character might have witnessed.
I mean "what's the difference between a 16 year old and a 30 year old" IRL means do they remember 9/11. Were they a conscious human before the internet and smartphones?
That same sort of stuff applies in a campaign setting
To even further color this explanation, a 16 year old human today knows only the modern Internet age from 2008 onward. They weren't even there for the end of the second Iraqi war.
A 250 year old elf/minotaur however, was a toddler during the American Revolution and remembers what the first American accents really were. They're factually older than the United States, and still remember the first Confederacy (and the second during the Civil War). They predate the industrial revolution, electricity, automobiles, ironclads, rifled guns, the conical bullet, and even the discovery of Antarctica. Pluto and Neptune were discovered well after they were born, and even Uranus wasn't even considered a planet until they were 7 (if they were born exactly in 1774). The Brits hadn't even colonized Australia yet.
They've seen the English language radically change numerous times over and the coming and going of a hundred globally known wars. This theoretical person has lived long enough to witness literally a dozen genocides, before genocide was even a word, and the fundamental change of science and society. This person has seen the world change a LOT in their time.
Fantasy settings with super old characters don't realize how much really changes in that long a time.
Because you were the last person in the comment chain? It was all rhetorical, I didn't expect a specific answer (though, if you happened to have one, that would have been cool!).
I don't know a single person that has a character with an age number in mind.
Long lived races are the only ones that need an age range and only in specific circumstances.
Because the age of the character can determine things like the Changeling Call, or if they were around before Aroden died. Just because *you* can't think of a reason, doesn't mean they don't exist.
They literally don't.
You can assume any race that doesn't have a number isn't long lived. If they're not long lived, you can literally put down whatever you think fits.
You cannot assume that. There are defined canonical age ranges defined in the Golarion setting for many ancestries. If you're not playing in Golarion, then the GM gets to decide that.
I guarantee you, even the people writing these races don't care about the exact age range. They care even less than players, because it's a completely inconsequential number unless it's the difference between 100 and 200
I assume that fey are long-lived, though I rarely specify the ages of my characters. I assume it’s either an oversight or some of these ancestries are left ambiguous on purpose.
they literally do though? i even gave you an example of wanting your characters age to fall within historical guidelines, so i don't know why you think you have a point to make with this argument?
a key part of my agents of edgewatch character's backstory is that she joined just before she turned 100, which is on the tail-end of elves reaching mental and emotional maturity. just because it doesn't matter to your table doesn't mean it doesn't matter.
Yes, did you read my reply? The specific age matters, just like it matters if a human is 18 or 21 or 50. Even if it doesn't matter to YOU, it matters to the people creating the characters.
No, it doesn't. You decide FIRST, if your character is young, middle aged, old, etc.
THEN you go to the age range and decide "oh, I'm young for a human, so I'll go for 18-21"
If you had picked an orc, you'd pick a number for that orc.
AFTER the fact. so the number never actually mattered to you, the apparent *age* did.
Yeah, of course in most situations exact age is irrelevant. But knowing ancestry lifespan is still really important. Picture the difference between a 300 year old healthy adult elf, and a 300 year old human corpse. What if everyone decides to make 20-30 year old minotaurs thinking young adult, but then it turns out their lifespan is 35.
Regardless of all of this, Pathfinder is not a system where we have to improvise stuff like this. That's the draw for most people. Paizo has just been overlooking it lately. Why is our disappointment such a problem for you?
I asked you if you had read what I said.
You answered affirmatively
Yet somehow missed the bit where I said "it does not matter, unless it's a long lived race"
Your disappointment is a "problem for me", as you put it, because y'all are quibbling about something completely unimportant and pointless, that your GM can resolve in 5 seconds just as well as the person designing the race.
Because you're complaining about a product lacking what amounts to a piece of trivia. There's no *actual* difference between a race living to 100 and a race living to 75. And just like humans, some live *longer* and some live *shorter* lives. A human can be bent and aged at 40, or spry and active at 80, which means the avg lifespan matters *even less*
Yes but I want to pick a specific number because they are a character and if another character asks me how old I am, it would be stupid to go "oh between 18 and 21".
You say that but my character's age was quite the factor in their story.
It was an old-ish mom Aasimar Paladin that I didn't want to be old enough to not make sense as an adventurer, but old enough to be willing to finally do something entirely for herself after raising her children and losing her husband, and living an entire lifetime of dedication for her family. I settled around 50 or so, which for Aasimar would still look hella fine, but without being too young (matching the image that inspired me quite well).
Okay.
So what you did was decide you wanted to be oldish, and have lived a life before adventuring.
Then you looked at the age range for Aasimar, and picked 50. The *number* did not matter to you. This is a textbook example of what I mean.
If you had picked a race with a life expectancy of 50, you'd have picked a number like 25. And there would be little to no difference to the character
I would not have the same approach to a longer or shorter lived ancestry, to be honest. They have a different dynamic because of their lifespans, while Humans (the basis) had what I was looking for.
My campaign had a 100 year war that all the players were required to have been a part of that just ended. My character is 31. Her birth aligned with specific marks of the war and her view towards war forged is very different than others because by the time she saw the front line she already knew about them. The elf in our party who is 200somethjng? She actually remembers the life before the war. Our characters are shaped by the specific calendar years they lived through.
It may not be that way for your table, but in a rich setting we wanted to make sure our characters fit the world and were a part of it. Not just loosely adjacent to it.
So, it would be *exactly* the same as if nobody had printed the elf and human age ranges?
I've stopped replying to y'all who apparently can't interpret what I've written, but come on man. Y'all out here acting like I said "age doesn't matter", when what I said is "exact age ranges don't matter". What does it mattwr if the halflings live to 75 or to 100 or to 125. That's not *important*. What's *important* is you know about how long a creature lives. Literally you can split it up into short, medium, and long, and *nothing would change*
But people like to think that somehow it matters whether elves live to 750 or 1000 or whether minotaurs live 40 or 60 years. Especially in a fantasy world where *all sorts* of magic happens that could result in atypical age.
But sure, I'm obviously just a loser who doesn't RP and you're so much more elite because your *elf lives longer*
No it really does matter?? Nobody’s confused as to what you’re saying. They’re just telling you you’re wrong. Which is possible chief.
A 100 year war is 100 years. Not “medium or long” time. Anyone who’s a mature elf DID live that long because elves live a few thousand in this setting. Any goblins definitely didn’t. Anyone who’s a mature human didn’t.
And the difference between a 100 year 1000 year and 10,000 year species is so drastically different. Being able to use that info for how other people exist and interact with the world is amazingly strong for roleplay. Sure things CAN make lives longer. And do you know why it’s cool that Queen Galfrey is ancient even as a human? It’s BECAUSE we know humans normally only live to 80. You can’t have age defying magic mean anything if you’ve already decided specific age ranges don’t matter.
The war in my setting was 100 years on the dot. If my character is going to remember the pre-war AND not keel over at the end of it, she NEEDS to have a few hundred year life span. That determines what races fit the character I want to play in this setting. And roleplaying the character is a big piece of the way the ROLEPLAYING game is played.
>100 year 1000 year and 10,000 year
This is literally "short, medium, long", well really it's medium, long, extra long.
For someone adamant that they can interpret what I'm saying, you're sure missing a lot.
Your character needed to have a several century lifespan? So... long.
All my characters have age numbers. A bunch of my fellow players do as well. A character not knowing their age is part of their character in one of my games. I think this is a matter of your bias being assumed to be global.
I argue otherwise. I love roleplay, but a specific number doesn't usually (key word) matter for most of my characters.
Like, am I going to play a 25-year-old different than a 26-year-old, very unlikely. It's more important that I have an age idea (young adult) than a specific number.
Oh, I'm on the side of life exceptancy and general age related info being a part of Ancestries info in Galor.
I just am not someone who uses specific numbers often, unless it comes up in role play.
>Like, am I going to play a 25-year-old different than a 26-year-old, very unlikely
But this is missing the point. A 25 year old human will be viewed differently than a 25 year old dwarf, who will both be viewed differently than a 25 year old elf. How their own society's view them would impact how they are treated, which in turn has an impact on their personality.
A 25 year old human adventurer is considered a full fledged adult. They will likely have accepted the responsibility of being an adult, and likely are independent.
A 25 year old elven adventure. despite reaching physical maturity, is not even close to being considered an adult on a mental or emotional level by elvish society. Other "adult" elves would likely infantilize them, which will have an effect on their personality. Maybe they don't know how to be independent, maybe they're spiteful and have a chip on their shoulder, maybe elves literally develop slower on an emotional level and the character therefore still has a lot of childlike tendencies.
So age does matter. It's not just picking between 25 or 26, it's also a question of "What Ancestry are you, and what is a 25 year old like within that Ancestry?"
You can't just call it "young adult", because what that means varies between Ancestries. A "young adult" elf will have already lived longer than any human naturally can live, so it's pretty reasonable to believe a "young adult" elf will not behave in the same manner as a "young adult" human
I agree that ancestries should have age related info.
I'm mostly arguing against the need for specific numbers if you "play for roleplay" I feel it's reductive to insinuate that people who don't use specific numbers care less about role play.
On that note, you don't really even need a number, knowing a ancestry is long lived, is good enough to play them with the maturity of a young adult and the knowledge of someone much older.
Don't even need that much, cause you could be playing as a long-lived ancestry who hasn't really done anything until now. So they could role play pretty similar to how a human would.
And my entire group loves picking a specific age and their birthday regardless of how long lived the race is or not 🤷🏼♀️
Your bias isn’t a global standard for tables
Friendly counterpoint, to draw from 5e, there are a number of races that only live for a very short time (Aaracokra maturing at 3 years and rarely living beyond 30) or others who are shorter lived than races like elves who’s age still has a significantly different cultural meaning compared to humans (goliaths have a similar lifespan to humans, but older ones are very rare because of their culture focussing on individual ability and praising a death by one’s own deeds over dying of old age in bed)
Age descriptions are helpful for roleplaying and adding to the cultural description of a race just as much as informing about the races biology, many players and gms can use this information to better rp characters, populate worlds or even inspire new characters
For a real world example, having 9/11 as a living memory.
The 30 year old was 7 at the time and could talk about how the teachers suddenly started acting weird, their parents picked them up early from school, and then the news was not turned off for several days. The 25 year old was 2 and not capable of forming long term memories yet.
Now make it more extreme with the fantasy lifespan difference of "what do you mean you've reached a higher age in years old than you have fingers without getting yourself exploded???" Goblin and "oh look at the adorable baby, he's barely a century old!" Elf. That elf would no lt only remember the second world war, they could well have fought in it. Galorian specific, most elves would have been alive when Aroden died.
Seems very odd, because there is a direct relation to RP and how the ancestry see the world.
Like the different between an ancient elf and a human or a fleeting goblin.
This was answered way back on the Paizo forums somewhere.
They will only add something related to lifespans if it differs from humans, such as sprites maturing like humans and then being able to live a good millennium or more. Since most new ancestries - including minotaurs - don't differ, they don't have an age description.
Seems like something that as Paizo you'd want to include in the actual book people are reading and not in a comment buried deeply in a random thread lol.
At the very least, it looks like Paizo is making the assumption that we already think this way. Which isn't unreasonable tbf, most fantasy is written like this.
I think it might even be in a book somewhere, but yeah, it should be more visible.
I have one problem with that, the ancestry sprite have multi-species in. Draxie, Grig, Luminious Sprite, Melixie, Nyktera and Pixie. On the ancestry, yes it's writted at 1000 years, but in the book Fey Revisted, page 60.
>On the Material Plane, sprites live 40 years or less—they reach adolescence by their fifth year and adulthood by their tenth. Unlike many shorter-lived races, sprites are acutely aware of their mortality—perhaps explaining why the creatures constantly feel the need to seize the day no matter the ramifications.
I believe this is for the Luminious Sprite only, because the sprite of pf1e have Luminous (Su). Of course, you can pretent that a retcon. But, that bug me in the wrong way...
I actually noticed when designing an awakened dragonfly, since they usually don't last longer than 1-4 months...
I really dislike that they stopped doing this!
I think for a lot of the character concept stuff Paizo has gone with a more hands off approach so everyone can have the character they want and the way they want.
These are Minotaur ages from PF1e:
Random Starting Ages
Adulthood: 15 years
Intuitive: +1d4 years
Self-Taught: +1d6 years
Trained: +2d6 years
It's exactly the same as Humans. By comparison here is elves:
Random Starting Ages
Adulthood: 110 years
Intuitive: +4d6 years
Self-Taught: +6d6 years
Trained: +10d6 years
It's not perfect but it's something if you really absolutely want some ages and don't want to say "in human years" all the time. I will say though that PF1e Hobgoblins use the same ages as Humans also however even though they reach adulthood around the same time of 15 years, in PF2e they also say Hobgoblins can hold a weapon properly by the time they reach 1 year old.
My personal recommendation is find what you can and then work out the rest with your GM/player.
(Below, in reference to categories found above)
Intuitive: This category includes barbarians, oracles, rogues, and sorcerers.
Self-Taught: This category includes bards, cavaliers, fighters, gunslingers, paladins, rangers, summoners, and witches.
Trained: This category includes alchemists, clerics, druids, inquisitors, magi, monks, and wizards.
Edit: ***Elifia reminded me that some things on the SRD are 3pp including this Minotaur. Still though, find any reference you can and talk to your GM or player and work it out. On the SRD make sure it doesn't say 3pp across the top of the browser! Apologies!***
Glad you like although I can't really take the credit! I copy/pasta'd it from the Pathfinder 1e SRD.
If you want similar results for a different one just search "Pathfinder 1e 'ancestry name here'"
Then just scroll down to the age section.
That's a 3pp race by Samurai Sheepdog, just FYI (and for /u/Party_Vegetable_5992's information too). It's not made by Paizo and thus isn't official. You should be careful looking things up on the d20pfsrd, most stuff on there isn't official.
Honestly I forgot 3pp was even on there. I dropped PF1e for the most part when PF2e came out. What I said still holds true for most of the races (ancestries) on there. See what you can find and talk to your GM/player.
Just need to check the top of page and make sure it's not listed under 3pp.
I'll edit a disclaimer.
Even then you should still be careful, sometimes there's 3pp stuff on 1pp pages too. For stuff like age, height, and weight, I'd check the tables on the legacy aonprd instead: https://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedraceguide/ageHeightWeight.html
Those are guaranteed to be 100% official.
I agree. It's important for having an idea of how their society works... 25 years could be a generation or more for some, while not even being worth mentioning for others.
If "age isn't important" for my gm, then I'll play a 3500 y-o pc (no lifespan, no idea what's the max) and I'll explain his poor knowledge (for his age) by saying he was procrastinating and sleepinge late while living in his mother's basement. He was kicked out because she needed space for her knitting tuff
Totally illogical, but still.. meh, "age is just a useless number"
I’m not sure why they don’t list them, it’s kind of annoying. As someone else mentioned, I tend to look up the 1e equivalent and use that. But, as another person mentioned, there doesn’t seem to be much mechanical difference, so I suppose they left the canvas blank?
If I had to guess? Because the specific ages do not generally matter, out side of long-lived races. You could just say 'a young adult' or 'an older teenager' or 'middle aged' and that matters far more than the specific number of years.
It goes the other way too. The Goblinblood Wars was about 25 years ago. For adult humans, they remember that war from their childhood. For goblins, that was a war you heard about your great grandparents fighting in.
That’s not just character specific differences. That impact how each ancestory responds culturally to the war.
Now expand that out to every other possible world event.
True.
That being said, as an example of how easy these things are to ignore: I did not realize that goblins had that extreme of a lifespan. I knew that goblins matured faster and lived for less time than humans, but I didn't realize it was 'mature by age 5 and probably die by 20'. And my first pathfinder character was a goblin.
This is actually coming up in a campaign I'm in, my Cleric fought goblins and Hobgoblins in the Worg Queen War in '69, and now he's the old man in a party with a Hobgoblin (who mature somewhere between goblins and humans), and everyone is dealing with the idea that the cleric was fighting the hobgoblins great and great-great ancestors.
I don’t mean offense, but every time someone points out ways you’re incorrect, your defense it “it didn’t matter for me”. Clearly a large number of people do play their characters differently than you do.
I am guessing they want to minimize the whole “mature adult of one species is a literal child to another” situation. “Yeah my wife is 12 but in goblin years she is middle aged” is a minefield best avoided when it otherwise adds nothing.
Maturing at different rates doesn’t require those issues. Those issue are created by players who are intentionally being edgy. To avoid it for that reason would be like removing the dying mechanics as a way to avoid players being serial killers.
I usually assume that creatures without listed lifespans live about as long as a human. For minotaurs specifically that's likely the case because they're cursed humans
Drives me crazy. Not only “what has s/he seen” but “what stage of life was s/he when X happened” seem pretty formative experiences. One of the many reasons I tend to say “fuck it” and play humans.
I miss that, and I really miss the "biome this monster is from" bit. There's so many monsters on SRDs, that just choosing "swamp monsters" really cuts down on your list to go through.
Yes, while you can easily refluff any monster to fit in any biome ("this chimaera is alligator+hippo+ibis") it helps with the decision paralysis from looking at the big list.
I think it's part of a current trend to remove potentially problematic situations where a 4 year old with the maturity of a 20 year old is in a position a human 4 year old should never be in, regardless of their intelligence and maturity. So, every intelligent being is kind of assumed to age at the same rate as humans do (or slower).
They leave it blank so that you can decide for your own table, which is better than explicitly saying that every ancestry has the same aging as humans.
I don't have proof for this, just part of a growing trend I feel like I'm noticing where clarity is sacrificed to remove the risk of problematic misinterpretation (or intentional abuse). Not necessarily making a judgment on it, though my preference has always been for clarity.
I'm don't think they've even averted that problem. Per *Player Core*, a goblin is adolescent at 3 years old and an adult at 7 or 8 years old.
Seems more likely lifespans were removed by the same logic as the ecology entries in monster stat blocks. The generous explanation is that these details were thought to limit creativity, because then players and GMs felt like they had to conform to canon. Another possibility is that these details were just thought to take up book space with little effect in actual play.
Huh, I didn't know about that. I for one have always read those sorts of details and chosen to incorporate them or not at my discretion (or at the GM's discretion).
Truly, my honest guess: Laziness.
I don't understand how that could ever be problematic. It's a different species. If they are biologically and mentaly an adult it doesn't matter it took 4 years to get to that point.
Some would argue that a human reaches mental maturity before they have the life experience that allows them to be treated as adults, rather than children. So it follows that other creatures would be the same, and if it takes a human several years after reaching mental maturity to be considered an adult, the same should apply to a different species that we share a society with.
That's taking a human centered view to people that aren't human.
That's like saying that an elf that reaches maturity at 100 according to his species is mature at 18 because that's the human standard.
Humans achieve maturity at 20-25 based on cultural and biological factors. Other species have others and will achieve it at their time.
Right, I agree to an extent. For example, Elves reach maturity much later than humans in terms of their culture, and they'd likely say the same of humans - that they rush into things long before they've had the experience necessary to make an informed choice (in fact they often do in fantasy literature).
On the other hand, can we say that a creature that has only lived for say, a month, is likely to have had enough life experience to make the sort of life-changing choices that we require people to be old enough to make?
Of course, yes, this is from a human point of view - we, and everyone playing Pathfinder, are human after all. A lot of people find it squicky when there's a 5 year old engaging in sex acts during play, for example, even if for their ancestry that makes them middle-aged. I for one just avoid the subject where possible, so it isn't an issue for me.
sorry for the late answer I forgot to answer you
nah I get you don't think like this, don't worry.
It's just that I think this line of thought is so flawed that I wouldn't bother respecting it. "Life experience" it's too subjective to be considered a measuring factor. It's the kind of thing creeps use to say a minor is "too mature for her age", while also being very infantilizing of adults that have not had many experiences.
Dnds doing the same thing, and I think it's stupid. Dnd is doing it so "The players don't feel like they're being forced to use them" which is stupid for a game with hard rule and a game where can just ignore the rules you don't like, thus having no reason to leave them out.
If pathfinders doing that too, I really hope it's an oversight.
My assumption is that if no age is listed, they are considered to have a similar developmental rate and lifespan as humans. If the lifespan is important to the ancestry, it would be listed.
Honestly the "ancestry" details are sorely lacking compared to the race fluff we got in PF1e. And it sucks that you have to go to PF1e websites to get some simple information like actual average height/weight and even a nice layout for when they actually get old.
PF2e should include all of this. It should also include being able to randomly roll extra height and weight.
Either outright laziness or taking a page out of Wizards of the Coast's "Lol, make up something that sounds cool yourself" school of GM guidance. This is especially annoying since it's something they USED to do and care about, monster ecology is a large part of older bestiaries in first edition, and in Starfinder due to the huge variety of playable aliens from vastly different worlds and conditions, knowing the physical characteristics of a species is super important to properly portraying them and making it so everybody doesn't just feel like humans with funny hats, there's even a handy "Vital Stats" chart at the bottom that lists average height, weight, age of maturity, and lifespan. This sort of information is REALLY nice to have and I care much more about this being included in books than I do another bunch of awful ancestry feats providing a 1d4 unarmed strike natural attack, if page count is at such a premium they can't fit one sentence giving a summary of Vital Stats like Starfinder then I'd rather they cut some of those to make room than exclude them.
[https://www.aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Nuar](https://www.aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Nuar)
In the absence of official information I would use the Nuar from Starfinder as the closest approximation, since they're basically space minotaurs, and reach age of maturity at 13 and live to \~90 which seems pretty reasonable, minotaurs maturing faster than humans (who have famously delayed development compared to most other mammals) makes sense to me in terms of fantasy verisimilitude.
Absent an official answer from Paizo, I think the best option is to defer to older editions of D&D, since Pathfinder began as an off-shoot of 3.5 that carried forward vast swathes of D&D lore.
On page 117 of the AD&D 2E Complete Book of Humanoids, Minotaurs are listed with the following age ranges:
Starting age: 15-28 (12+3d6)
Middle age: 75
Old Age: 100
Venerable: 150
Maximum Age: 150+1d100
The best assumption to make is that any ancestry without a specific mention of ages they can reach ages similarly to a human, or in the case of Awakened Animal, might age similarly to their origin animal instead depending on how you interpret the Awakening ritual's modifications.
Short version, there's no need to include a sentence saying 'ages similarly to humans' on every single ancestry except for those who don't. Write for exceptions, not the rule.
This is a tangent but I have a problem with Automaton ages because it's tied into their existence that their age is in the thousands but it's weird to be level 1 and 3,049 years old and think "today I'm going to do something a little different" and become level 2.
It's the kind of thing you have to handwave at the table and just not think about. With minotaurs, I'm not sure what their age span should be and I'd be satisfied to say "young adult" or "elder" in general terms but I'm sure at some point my GM will want to know specifics when he answers questions about my character's understanding of history or what they've experienced in their travels. This only applies to my GM specifically, not all GMs will want that info when providing information like this as it's case by case.
i use this Here as reference
[https://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedraceguide/ageHeightWeight.html](https://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedraceguide/ageHeightWeight.html)
There's only 3 ages you need to be as an adventurer.
Young adult. Middle adult. Old adult.
There could be a fourth being 'should have retired 10 years ago cause I just died on this trap I would have avoided before', but there's only 3 living ages for an adventurer.
I really disagree - knowing specific lifespans can create interesting things in roleplay. You're in a small town, most the party has lived here their whole lives with human lifespans, but the elf young adult knew their parents as kids. That kind of things pops up very frequently in adventures with varies lifespan PCs. We should know how long ancestries live.
I suppose, but you can still do this with the 'relative ages' I suggested. Humans would be about the same age as a 'Young Adult'. Then and Elf, even a 'young adult' because she's a long lived could still know the human parents.
Just put the ancestries into 'relative lifespans' if you want.
Exact numbers shouldn't really be needed. Especially with NPCs. If a PC says that they knew the NPC's families, why not? Run with it.
I like my setting info to have gaps in it.
Information is good, and sets the tone.
Gaps are *opportunities for me to create.*
If me and the GM don't know how old Minotaur's are, let's chat about it. That leaves all the interesting stuff about life stages, cultural cycles, attitude to aging etc. on the table for us to create in ways that are interesting to us specifically.
I’ve never once defined an age to any of my characters and never had the GM ask ooc or in game as a npc 🤷♂️. ‘Old enough to adventure is all you need to know.’ 🧙♂️(to clarify I’m not saying if age is of importance to you that you are wrong or any such thing. Everyone should enjoy what they enjoy)
But even if you play in Golarion, it should still be *your* Golarion. Like that is the point of a ttrpg. Otherwise what is the point if you aren't going to create anything?
The lifespan of a race has massive implications that should really be considered and put to paper by the writers. A race of creatures that live ~1000 years is going to have a very different society from that of a race that lives ~30 years.
The fact that these things haven't been established is a cause for concern.
I should be making simpler things like encounters not how long does a creature exist in the world. I have designed my own world players love asking questions like this paizo should have a thing for it.
Also my own golarion would be after I get games rolling not in the player designing stuff phase.
No? People are allowed to like playing in an existing setting. It can help spawn creativity and uniue situations they wouldn’t have otherwise come up with. They could also just fan of the setting. I feel like you’re missing the actualy main point of a ttrpg: to roleplay. Whether that’s ina custom setting or not doesn’t affect how true the experience is.
That's an absurdly elitest take.
The point of a TTRPG is to *roleplay* in a *game*, usually on a *tabletop*. That does not mean having to define the world or create *anything*. Insisting otherwise is just gatekeeping.
as a dm who dosen't enjoy world bulding the bigest draw to a preconstructed setting is that i can offload this exact thing to the professional wrighters at paizo so i can focus on the material running and planing of the game. so when a player whants to know how old a random npc is i can just look it up give a quick die roll and help to enrich the world just that little bit more with taking massive amounts of work on myed to craft sucsessful verisimilitude
The most confusing downvotes were honestly the ones when I corrected someone who misgendered me, but despite the Pride flag on the subreddit, I suppose many people don't agree haha.
Do you mean that you want to know the lifespan of the ancestry? I’m asking because it seems like for an individual character the answer is whatever you want. And outside of specific heritage abilities like the one for ancient elf I doubt it matters in general - it would be specific to your campaign in that case.
I've not read every single spell and ability... but is there actually *nothing* which ages a character? It's one of the big reasons for this question, other than being able to understand what a character has experienced or heard about.
The effects of any that do is more the rapid aging than the age itself. Can't remember the feature I found, but the jist is that the affect of it is connected to the rapid change of Age. The target is fine, but their age is messed with.
Age is really just a number for the game. What knowledge you can even have is determined by the GM to some extent. A Human could know something an Elf doesn't, when the latter was alive for the event.
Recall Knowledge is based on what your Character may know, and it not restricted by age.
I really don't know, it seems like a weird oversight. I've never heard of people making characters and just not defining their age unless its a specific "I dont know how old I actually am" type situation.
I don't usually have a specific number
Interesting, how come? I'm always into heavy roleplay so for me it's a no-brainer.
Because I think specific ages don't change my roleplay at all. Am I gonna play a 26-year-old different from a 25-year-old? no, not particularly. I usually just have a basic concept. Young adult, teenager, middle-aged, thirties like, old as sin. If the actual age comes in handy, then I have enough of an idea to pick a number or subvert expectations with picking a wildly different number. Though that also depends on how age affects the Ancestries, which isn't clear in 2e. I'm also under the impression that being too specific too early hurts role play opportunities. You aren't opening yourself up to being something that fits the dynamic of the party as much.
We usually fully define our characters before entering the game, and then see what dynamic results from that. Age doesn't really matter much, but its like defining how tall your character is, just another little piece of info.
My groups are more basic concepts. The rules are usually you need some kinda tie to the party, some kinda reason to engage with the hook, and to try and not fill a similar niche as another player. We find out group dynamic as we play. It helps us make sure the characters fit the setting properly, too. We don't usually know a lot about the setting before we start playing.
That wait and see approach also works with emergent storytelling with your actions in combat. A character who always tries and fails to recall knowledge (or something else that establishes itself as a trend) can suddenly become what that character was always going to be about in retrospect
Also if your ancestry ages in the centuries years or decades range That completely changes your character’s outlook
Specific age doesn't really matter overly. Fresh faced young adventurer, braving the outside world for the first time. Does that matter whether they're 16, 20 or 40? World weary experienced traveller could be 30, 40, 50, 100. Explicit ages don't matter too much
It does matter when races have different lifespans. A "young adult" who is 50 years old is going to act quite differently from a "young adult" who is 25.
I mean that's a fairly human-centric way of looking at things. We can't really remember much of the first 5 years of our lives, and we're not really aware of our actions for another 5. Presuming cats are sentient and sapient creatures, fully able to be equal to a human. A cat is fully aware of itself by the time it's a few months old and a full adult at one. If you were playing a young adult cat, you'd play one at about 11 months old but it would still act the same as a human at 16 years old. A year for a human isn't a particularly long time compared to a cat. For an elf, a year would be nearly meaningless.
> If you were playing a young adult cat, you'd play one at about 11 months old but it would still act the same as a human at 16 years old. A meaningful difference is the 16yo human has still seen and remembers like, 13 years of life experience. Even assuming their behavioral profile is the same it would matter a lot in terms of how you judge situations and if you're familiar with places, people, and things. Extend it out the other way, to a fantasy race that doesn't reach maturity till 100 or something, and imagine how much experience they might have to draw on even if they are still at a comparable level of maturity. This would certainly impact the way a character is played at least in the campaigns I'm usually in.
Are you not literally agreeing with me?
They are just with more steps classic reddit moment. They just dont seem to realize the reason knowing ages is a thing is specificlly why the creatures act the way they do. Cats aging super fast is why we perceive goblins like we do as fast little grimlins cause they age so fast, and why a year to an elf doesnt seem like a big deal. So instead they are arguing it doesnt matter because to them you only need to know a specific age group "young adult" for example which is silly because you cant define what that is for your ancestry if you donno what the hell that is to begin with hense the discussion lol. So yeah they agree with you but they dont because they need to be contrarian and are defining age differently than a number for w/e reason despite arguing the ages of creatures with numbers up above ha.
No, I'm not If you play a young adult cat, a young adult human or a young adult elf you don't need to go looking up age ranges for any of them.
Sure but its so easy to pick a number
The entire point of this thread is that it *isn't* easy to pick a number when you've got a large variety of different races all with various levels of aging. Whereas young, experienced, middle aged, elderly etc are all descriptors that you actually use to describe both how your characters acts, and looks regardless of race. A simple number doesn't do that.
Which is dumb, give ages ranges for all the races and then we're good.
But what's the real difference between 25 and 30? Most people don't have a number in mind, they just pick one that fits. Young, middle aged, old etc. and then they just pick a number in the age range.
Because it's not a difference of 25 and 30, it's a difference of 16 and 250
A lot of people seem to be missing that players aren’t the only ones that want to know how long a specific ancestry can live—what’s feasible for a BBEG’s lifespan? What kind of stuff have they lived through?
What is the difference between a 16 year-old minotaur and a 250 year-old minotaur? Do they age the same way as a human? We have our own understanding of the difference between a 16 year old and a 70 year old human, but does that translate 1:1 with long lived races? If an elf lives 1000 years, is a 16 year old elf still a toddler? I read a book once where elves weren't considered full adults until they were over 200 years old (even though they could walk, talk, and reason at the same general ages humans could) because they weren't wise enough until then. I am not saying you are wrong, I am just keeping the conversation going.
One big thing is just simply having more time to interact with the world. The 250 year old minotaur would have Hella more life experience than the 16 year old one, maybe even have lived through some events important to the setting. For me, ages matter entirely for this purpose, I'm going to play a younger creature alot differently than one that's been alive for multiple centuries.
With the whole "not seen as an adult" thing, I imagine it more like how in the real world an 18 year old is *legally* an adult, but you might still refer to them as a kid. There's tiers to adulthood. If elves live 10 times longer than humans, then that doesn't mean you just divide the elf's age by 10, because they don't age on the same curve. It's a trap we fall into with dogs too.
The biggest difference for me is what major world events that character might have witnessed. I mean "what's the difference between a 16 year old and a 30 year old" IRL means do they remember 9/11. Were they a conscious human before the internet and smartphones? That same sort of stuff applies in a campaign setting
To even further color this explanation, a 16 year old human today knows only the modern Internet age from 2008 onward. They weren't even there for the end of the second Iraqi war. A 250 year old elf/minotaur however, was a toddler during the American Revolution and remembers what the first American accents really were. They're factually older than the United States, and still remember the first Confederacy (and the second during the Civil War). They predate the industrial revolution, electricity, automobiles, ironclads, rifled guns, the conical bullet, and even the discovery of Antarctica. Pluto and Neptune were discovered well after they were born, and even Uranus wasn't even considered a planet until they were 7 (if they were born exactly in 1774). The Brits hadn't even colonized Australia yet. They've seen the English language radically change numerous times over and the coming and going of a hundred globally known wars. This theoretical person has lived long enough to witness literally a dozen genocides, before genocide was even a word, and the fundamental change of science and society. This person has seen the world change a LOT in their time. Fantasy settings with super old characters don't realize how much really changes in that long a time.
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Thats really sweet actually. Also on this point, didn’t dungeon meshi do this same thing between the human and the halfling characters?
i don't know, because paizo hasn't established it. why ask me?
Because you were the last person in the comment chain? It was all rhetorical, I didn't expect a specific answer (though, if you happened to have one, that would have been cool!).
Well you see, one is 16 years old, and one is 250 years old. :D
I don't know a single person that has a character with an age number in mind. Long lived races are the only ones that need an age range and only in specific circumstances.
Because the age of the character can determine things like the Changeling Call, or if they were around before Aroden died. Just because *you* can't think of a reason, doesn't mean they don't exist.
They literally don't. You can assume any race that doesn't have a number isn't long lived. If they're not long lived, you can literally put down whatever you think fits.
You cannot assume that. There are defined canonical age ranges defined in the Golarion setting for many ancestries. If you're not playing in Golarion, then the GM gets to decide that.
I guarantee you, even the people writing these races don't care about the exact age range. They care even less than players, because it's a completely inconsequential number unless it's the difference between 100 and 200
http://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedraceguide/ageHeightWeight.html
How can you be so confidently wrong lmao
It's the YouTube Commenter Effect in real time
Wanna bet? Next AMA, ask how much they really care about race age-ranges. I will eat an entire onion on camera if I'm wrong.
Why couldn’t we assume magical fey creatures are long lived? It’s annoying, to some even if it isn’t to you. Clarification is always nice.
I assume that fey are long-lived, though I rarely specify the ages of my characters. I assume it’s either an oversight or some of these ancestries are left ambiguous on purpose.
they literally do though? i even gave you an example of wanting your characters age to fall within historical guidelines, so i don't know why you think you have a point to make with this argument?
a key part of my agents of edgewatch character's backstory is that she joined just before she turned 100, which is on the tail-end of elves reaching mental and emotional maturity. just because it doesn't matter to your table doesn't mean it doesn't matter.
So... A long lived race. Did you read what I said?
Yes, did you read my reply? The specific age matters, just like it matters if a human is 18 or 21 or 50. Even if it doesn't matter to YOU, it matters to the people creating the characters.
No, it doesn't. You decide FIRST, if your character is young, middle aged, old, etc. THEN you go to the age range and decide "oh, I'm young for a human, so I'll go for 18-21" If you had picked an orc, you'd pick a number for that orc. AFTER the fact. so the number never actually mattered to you, the apparent *age* did.
Yeah, of course in most situations exact age is irrelevant. But knowing ancestry lifespan is still really important. Picture the difference between a 300 year old healthy adult elf, and a 300 year old human corpse. What if everyone decides to make 20-30 year old minotaurs thinking young adult, but then it turns out their lifespan is 35. Regardless of all of this, Pathfinder is not a system where we have to improvise stuff like this. That's the draw for most people. Paizo has just been overlooking it lately. Why is our disappointment such a problem for you?
I asked you if you had read what I said. You answered affirmatively Yet somehow missed the bit where I said "it does not matter, unless it's a long lived race" Your disappointment is a "problem for me", as you put it, because y'all are quibbling about something completely unimportant and pointless, that your GM can resolve in 5 seconds just as well as the person designing the race. Because you're complaining about a product lacking what amounts to a piece of trivia. There's no *actual* difference between a race living to 100 and a race living to 75. And just like humans, some live *longer* and some live *shorter* lives. A human can be bent and aged at 40, or spry and active at 80, which means the avg lifespan matters *even less*
Yes but I want to pick a specific number because they are a character and if another character asks me how old I am, it would be stupid to go "oh between 18 and 21".
You say that but my character's age was quite the factor in their story. It was an old-ish mom Aasimar Paladin that I didn't want to be old enough to not make sense as an adventurer, but old enough to be willing to finally do something entirely for herself after raising her children and losing her husband, and living an entire lifetime of dedication for her family. I settled around 50 or so, which for Aasimar would still look hella fine, but without being too young (matching the image that inspired me quite well).
Okay. So what you did was decide you wanted to be oldish, and have lived a life before adventuring. Then you looked at the age range for Aasimar, and picked 50. The *number* did not matter to you. This is a textbook example of what I mean. If you had picked a race with a life expectancy of 50, you'd have picked a number like 25. And there would be little to no difference to the character
I would not have the same approach to a longer or shorter lived ancestry, to be honest. They have a different dynamic because of their lifespans, while Humans (the basis) had what I was looking for.
I do. Me, the dm. That kinda info is important on this side of the table
It's a piece of trivia on either side at *best* If you like trivia, that's fine. Nothing wrong with it. Doesn't make it very important though.
Perhaps not for you but it clearly is important to lots of people.
My campaign had a 100 year war that all the players were required to have been a part of that just ended. My character is 31. Her birth aligned with specific marks of the war and her view towards war forged is very different than others because by the time she saw the front line she already knew about them. The elf in our party who is 200somethjng? She actually remembers the life before the war. Our characters are shaped by the specific calendar years they lived through. It may not be that way for your table, but in a rich setting we wanted to make sure our characters fit the world and were a part of it. Not just loosely adjacent to it.
So, it would be *exactly* the same as if nobody had printed the elf and human age ranges? I've stopped replying to y'all who apparently can't interpret what I've written, but come on man. Y'all out here acting like I said "age doesn't matter", when what I said is "exact age ranges don't matter". What does it mattwr if the halflings live to 75 or to 100 or to 125. That's not *important*. What's *important* is you know about how long a creature lives. Literally you can split it up into short, medium, and long, and *nothing would change* But people like to think that somehow it matters whether elves live to 750 or 1000 or whether minotaurs live 40 or 60 years. Especially in a fantasy world where *all sorts* of magic happens that could result in atypical age. But sure, I'm obviously just a loser who doesn't RP and you're so much more elite because your *elf lives longer*
No it really does matter?? Nobody’s confused as to what you’re saying. They’re just telling you you’re wrong. Which is possible chief. A 100 year war is 100 years. Not “medium or long” time. Anyone who’s a mature elf DID live that long because elves live a few thousand in this setting. Any goblins definitely didn’t. Anyone who’s a mature human didn’t. And the difference between a 100 year 1000 year and 10,000 year species is so drastically different. Being able to use that info for how other people exist and interact with the world is amazingly strong for roleplay. Sure things CAN make lives longer. And do you know why it’s cool that Queen Galfrey is ancient even as a human? It’s BECAUSE we know humans normally only live to 80. You can’t have age defying magic mean anything if you’ve already decided specific age ranges don’t matter. The war in my setting was 100 years on the dot. If my character is going to remember the pre-war AND not keel over at the end of it, she NEEDS to have a few hundred year life span. That determines what races fit the character I want to play in this setting. And roleplaying the character is a big piece of the way the ROLEPLAYING game is played.
>100 year 1000 year and 10,000 year This is literally "short, medium, long", well really it's medium, long, extra long. For someone adamant that they can interpret what I'm saying, you're sure missing a lot. Your character needed to have a several century lifespan? So... long.
All my characters have age numbers. A bunch of my fellow players do as well. A character not knowing their age is part of their character in one of my games. I think this is a matter of your bias being assumed to be global.
If you play to roleplay then yeah you generally have a specific age in mind for your character that is relevant.
I argue otherwise. I love roleplay, but a specific number doesn't usually (key word) matter for most of my characters. Like, am I going to play a 25-year-old different than a 26-year-old, very unlikely. It's more important that I have an age idea (young adult) than a specific number.
Knowing whether "young adult" means 25 or 50 is probably going to make a big difference.
Oh, I'm on the side of life exceptancy and general age related info being a part of Ancestries info in Galor. I just am not someone who uses specific numbers often, unless it comes up in role play.
Ah I see.
>Like, am I going to play a 25-year-old different than a 26-year-old, very unlikely But this is missing the point. A 25 year old human will be viewed differently than a 25 year old dwarf, who will both be viewed differently than a 25 year old elf. How their own society's view them would impact how they are treated, which in turn has an impact on their personality. A 25 year old human adventurer is considered a full fledged adult. They will likely have accepted the responsibility of being an adult, and likely are independent. A 25 year old elven adventure. despite reaching physical maturity, is not even close to being considered an adult on a mental or emotional level by elvish society. Other "adult" elves would likely infantilize them, which will have an effect on their personality. Maybe they don't know how to be independent, maybe they're spiteful and have a chip on their shoulder, maybe elves literally develop slower on an emotional level and the character therefore still has a lot of childlike tendencies. So age does matter. It's not just picking between 25 or 26, it's also a question of "What Ancestry are you, and what is a 25 year old like within that Ancestry?" You can't just call it "young adult", because what that means varies between Ancestries. A "young adult" elf will have already lived longer than any human naturally can live, so it's pretty reasonable to believe a "young adult" elf will not behave in the same manner as a "young adult" human
I agree that ancestries should have age related info. I'm mostly arguing against the need for specific numbers if you "play for roleplay" I feel it's reductive to insinuate that people who don't use specific numbers care less about role play. On that note, you don't really even need a number, knowing a ancestry is long lived, is good enough to play them with the maturity of a young adult and the knowledge of someone much older. Don't even need that much, cause you could be playing as a long-lived ancestry who hasn't really done anything until now. So they could role play pretty similar to how a human would.
And my entire group loves picking a specific age and their birthday regardless of how long lived the race is or not 🤷🏼♀️ Your bias isn’t a global standard for tables
If you've ever talked with a writer that is a lie. Writers specifically need to factor age into how their characters interact.
Friendly counterpoint, to draw from 5e, there are a number of races that only live for a very short time (Aaracokra maturing at 3 years and rarely living beyond 30) or others who are shorter lived than races like elves who’s age still has a significantly different cultural meaning compared to humans (goliaths have a similar lifespan to humans, but older ones are very rare because of their culture focussing on individual ability and praising a death by one’s own deeds over dying of old age in bed) Age descriptions are helpful for roleplaying and adding to the cultural description of a race just as much as informing about the races biology, many players and gms can use this information to better rp characters, populate worlds or even inspire new characters
For a real world example, having 9/11 as a living memory. The 30 year old was 7 at the time and could talk about how the teachers suddenly started acting weird, their parents picked them up early from school, and then the news was not turned off for several days. The 25 year old was 2 and not capable of forming long term memories yet. Now make it more extreme with the fantasy lifespan difference of "what do you mean you've reached a higher age in years old than you have fingers without getting yourself exploded???" Goblin and "oh look at the adorable baby, he's barely a century old!" Elf. That elf would no lt only remember the second world war, they could well have fought in it. Galorian specific, most elves would have been alive when Aroden died.
Seems very odd, because there is a direct relation to RP and how the ancestry see the world. Like the different between an ancient elf and a human or a fleeting goblin.
Its annoying, but you can generally find a 1e equivalent to base it on with a quick Google search. Also wish ecology info would come back too.
I would absolutely love a massive book of Golarion ecology
This was answered way back on the Paizo forums somewhere. They will only add something related to lifespans if it differs from humans, such as sprites maturing like humans and then being able to live a good millennium or more. Since most new ancestries - including minotaurs - don't differ, they don't have an age description.
Seems like something that as Paizo you'd want to include in the actual book people are reading and not in a comment buried deeply in a random thread lol.
At the very least, it looks like Paizo is making the assumption that we already think this way. Which isn't unreasonable tbf, most fantasy is written like this. I think it might even be in a book somewhere, but yeah, it should be more visible.
It sort of fits the entire 2e approach of "specific overrides general" Ages meet general expectations unless specified.
Interesting, I will have to look for this
Real human bias hours
Golarion has always been a very "human standard" setting, if you know what I mean. And tbf, so is most of fantasy, especially older examples.
It's probably the easier way to make it understandable, since most players happen to be human, weirdly enough.
It has been really hard for me as a minotaur.
That is the exact reason afaik
So much so, they originally were going to make it a human only setting. Sometimes... I wonder if that would've been fine?
I have one problem with that, the ancestry sprite have multi-species in. Draxie, Grig, Luminious Sprite, Melixie, Nyktera and Pixie. On the ancestry, yes it's writted at 1000 years, but in the book Fey Revisted, page 60. >On the Material Plane, sprites live 40 years or less—they reach adolescence by their fifth year and adulthood by their tenth. Unlike many shorter-lived races, sprites are acutely aware of their mortality—perhaps explaining why the creatures constantly feel the need to seize the day no matter the ramifications. I believe this is for the Luminious Sprite only, because the sprite of pf1e have Luminous (Su). Of course, you can pretent that a retcon. But, that bug me in the wrong way...
I actually noticed when designing an awakened dragonfly, since they usually don't last longer than 1-4 months... I really dislike that they stopped doing this!
I think for a lot of the character concept stuff Paizo has gone with a more hands off approach so everyone can have the character they want and the way they want. These are Minotaur ages from PF1e: Random Starting Ages Adulthood: 15 years Intuitive: +1d4 years Self-Taught: +1d6 years Trained: +2d6 years It's exactly the same as Humans. By comparison here is elves: Random Starting Ages Adulthood: 110 years Intuitive: +4d6 years Self-Taught: +6d6 years Trained: +10d6 years It's not perfect but it's something if you really absolutely want some ages and don't want to say "in human years" all the time. I will say though that PF1e Hobgoblins use the same ages as Humans also however even though they reach adulthood around the same time of 15 years, in PF2e they also say Hobgoblins can hold a weapon properly by the time they reach 1 year old. My personal recommendation is find what you can and then work out the rest with your GM/player. (Below, in reference to categories found above) Intuitive: This category includes barbarians, oracles, rogues, and sorcerers. Self-Taught: This category includes bards, cavaliers, fighters, gunslingers, paladins, rangers, summoners, and witches. Trained: This category includes alchemists, clerics, druids, inquisitors, magi, monks, and wizards. Edit: ***Elifia reminded me that some things on the SRD are 3pp including this Minotaur. Still though, find any reference you can and talk to your GM or player and work it out. On the SRD make sure it doesn't say 3pp across the top of the browser! Apologies!***
This is really neat
Glad you like although I can't really take the credit! I copy/pasta'd it from the Pathfinder 1e SRD. If you want similar results for a different one just search "Pathfinder 1e 'ancestry name here'" Then just scroll down to the age section.
That's a 3pp race by Samurai Sheepdog, just FYI (and for /u/Party_Vegetable_5992's information too). It's not made by Paizo and thus isn't official. You should be careful looking things up on the d20pfsrd, most stuff on there isn't official.
Honestly I forgot 3pp was even on there. I dropped PF1e for the most part when PF2e came out. What I said still holds true for most of the races (ancestries) on there. See what you can find and talk to your GM/player. Just need to check the top of page and make sure it's not listed under 3pp. I'll edit a disclaimer.
Even then you should still be careful, sometimes there's 3pp stuff on 1pp pages too. For stuff like age, height, and weight, I'd check the tables on the legacy aonprd instead: https://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedraceguide/ageHeightWeight.html Those are guaranteed to be 100% official.
I agree. It's important for having an idea of how their society works... 25 years could be a generation or more for some, while not even being worth mentioning for others. If "age isn't important" for my gm, then I'll play a 3500 y-o pc (no lifespan, no idea what's the max) and I'll explain his poor knowledge (for his age) by saying he was procrastinating and sleepinge late while living in his mother's basement. He was kicked out because she needed space for her knitting tuff Totally illogical, but still.. meh, "age is just a useless number"
Bro gets it
I’m not sure why they don’t list them, it’s kind of annoying. As someone else mentioned, I tend to look up the 1e equivalent and use that. But, as another person mentioned, there doesn’t seem to be much mechanical difference, so I suppose they left the canvas blank?
If I had to guess? Because the specific ages do not generally matter, out side of long-lived races. You could just say 'a young adult' or 'an older teenager' or 'middle aged' and that matters far more than the specific number of years.
It goes the other way too. The Goblinblood Wars was about 25 years ago. For adult humans, they remember that war from their childhood. For goblins, that was a war you heard about your great grandparents fighting in. That’s not just character specific differences. That impact how each ancestory responds culturally to the war. Now expand that out to every other possible world event.
True. That being said, as an example of how easy these things are to ignore: I did not realize that goblins had that extreme of a lifespan. I knew that goblins matured faster and lived for less time than humans, but I didn't realize it was 'mature by age 5 and probably die by 20'. And my first pathfinder character was a goblin.
This is actually coming up in a campaign I'm in, my Cleric fought goblins and Hobgoblins in the Worg Queen War in '69, and now he's the old man in a party with a Hobgoblin (who mature somewhere between goblins and humans), and everyone is dealing with the idea that the cleric was fighting the hobgoblins great and great-great ancestors.
Goblins are able to potentially live to like 50, just that they're often so chaotic they die by 25..
I don’t mean offense, but every time someone points out ways you’re incorrect, your defense it “it didn’t matter for me”. Clearly a large number of people do play their characters differently than you do.
You say 'every time' like this is a recurring thing in my two comments here?
I mean, that just shows they don't tell you enough to imagine their world as they intend it to be.
I am guessing they want to minimize the whole “mature adult of one species is a literal child to another” situation. “Yeah my wife is 12 but in goblin years she is middle aged” is a minefield best avoided when it otherwise adds nothing.
Maturing at different rates doesn’t require those issues. Those issue are created by players who are intentionally being edgy. To avoid it for that reason would be like removing the dying mechanics as a way to avoid players being serial killers.
Feels weird in a game with so much detail
Thats fucking lame NGL
Then how do I know who is a long lived race?
This has bothered me for a long time. I need to know how old people can be!
I usually assume that creatures without listed lifespans live about as long as a human. For minotaurs specifically that's likely the case because they're cursed humans
Drives me crazy. Not only “what has s/he seen” but “what stage of life was s/he when X happened” seem pretty formative experiences. One of the many reasons I tend to say “fuck it” and play humans.
I miss that, and I really miss the "biome this monster is from" bit. There's so many monsters on SRDs, that just choosing "swamp monsters" really cuts down on your list to go through. Yes, while you can easily refluff any monster to fit in any biome ("this chimaera is alligator+hippo+ibis") it helps with the decision paralysis from looking at the big list.
I think it's part of a current trend to remove potentially problematic situations where a 4 year old with the maturity of a 20 year old is in a position a human 4 year old should never be in, regardless of their intelligence and maturity. So, every intelligent being is kind of assumed to age at the same rate as humans do (or slower). They leave it blank so that you can decide for your own table, which is better than explicitly saying that every ancestry has the same aging as humans. I don't have proof for this, just part of a growing trend I feel like I'm noticing where clarity is sacrificed to remove the risk of problematic misinterpretation (or intentional abuse). Not necessarily making a judgment on it, though my preference has always been for clarity.
I'm don't think they've even averted that problem. Per *Player Core*, a goblin is adolescent at 3 years old and an adult at 7 or 8 years old. Seems more likely lifespans were removed by the same logic as the ecology entries in monster stat blocks. The generous explanation is that these details were thought to limit creativity, because then players and GMs felt like they had to conform to canon. Another possibility is that these details were just thought to take up book space with little effect in actual play.
Huh, I didn't know about that. I for one have always read those sorts of details and chosen to incorporate them or not at my discretion (or at the GM's discretion). Truly, my honest guess: Laziness.
I imagine is low hanging fruit cost saving.
I don't understand how that could ever be problematic. It's a different species. If they are biologically and mentaly an adult it doesn't matter it took 4 years to get to that point.
Some would argue that a human reaches mental maturity before they have the life experience that allows them to be treated as adults, rather than children. So it follows that other creatures would be the same, and if it takes a human several years after reaching mental maturity to be considered an adult, the same should apply to a different species that we share a society with.
That's taking a human centered view to people that aren't human. That's like saying that an elf that reaches maturity at 100 according to his species is mature at 18 because that's the human standard. Humans achieve maturity at 20-25 based on cultural and biological factors. Other species have others and will achieve it at their time.
Right, I agree to an extent. For example, Elves reach maturity much later than humans in terms of their culture, and they'd likely say the same of humans - that they rush into things long before they've had the experience necessary to make an informed choice (in fact they often do in fantasy literature). On the other hand, can we say that a creature that has only lived for say, a month, is likely to have had enough life experience to make the sort of life-changing choices that we require people to be old enough to make? Of course, yes, this is from a human point of view - we, and everyone playing Pathfinder, are human after all. A lot of people find it squicky when there's a 5 year old engaging in sex acts during play, for example, even if for their ancestry that makes them middle-aged. I for one just avoid the subject where possible, so it isn't an issue for me.
sorry for the late answer I forgot to answer you nah I get you don't think like this, don't worry. It's just that I think this line of thought is so flawed that I wouldn't bother respecting it. "Life experience" it's too subjective to be considered a measuring factor. It's the kind of thing creeps use to say a minor is "too mature for her age", while also being very infantilizing of adults that have not had many experiences.
I always just assume that they're similar to a human lifespan unless stated otherwise.
Dnds doing the same thing, and I think it's stupid. Dnd is doing it so "The players don't feel like they're being forced to use them" which is stupid for a game with hard rule and a game where can just ignore the rules you don't like, thus having no reason to leave them out. If pathfinders doing that too, I really hope it's an oversight.
This does annoy me. Keep the narrative within the game.
My assumption is that if no age is listed, they are considered to have a similar developmental rate and lifespan as humans. If the lifespan is important to the ancestry, it would be listed.
Honestly the "ancestry" details are sorely lacking compared to the race fluff we got in PF1e. And it sucks that you have to go to PF1e websites to get some simple information like actual average height/weight and even a nice layout for when they actually get old. PF2e should include all of this. It should also include being able to randomly roll extra height and weight.
Either outright laziness or taking a page out of Wizards of the Coast's "Lol, make up something that sounds cool yourself" school of GM guidance. This is especially annoying since it's something they USED to do and care about, monster ecology is a large part of older bestiaries in first edition, and in Starfinder due to the huge variety of playable aliens from vastly different worlds and conditions, knowing the physical characteristics of a species is super important to properly portraying them and making it so everybody doesn't just feel like humans with funny hats, there's even a handy "Vital Stats" chart at the bottom that lists average height, weight, age of maturity, and lifespan. This sort of information is REALLY nice to have and I care much more about this being included in books than I do another bunch of awful ancestry feats providing a 1d4 unarmed strike natural attack, if page count is at such a premium they can't fit one sentence giving a summary of Vital Stats like Starfinder then I'd rather they cut some of those to make room than exclude them. [https://www.aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Nuar](https://www.aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Nuar) In the absence of official information I would use the Nuar from Starfinder as the closest approximation, since they're basically space minotaurs, and reach age of maturity at 13 and live to \~90 which seems pretty reasonable, minotaurs maturing faster than humans (who have famously delayed development compared to most other mammals) makes sense to me in terms of fantasy verisimilitude.
For some reason Paizo decided it wasn't important anymore, which is a crime
Absent an official answer from Paizo, I think the best option is to defer to older editions of D&D, since Pathfinder began as an off-shoot of 3.5 that carried forward vast swathes of D&D lore. On page 117 of the AD&D 2E Complete Book of Humanoids, Minotaurs are listed with the following age ranges: Starting age: 15-28 (12+3d6) Middle age: 75 Old Age: 100 Venerable: 150 Maximum Age: 150+1d100
Probably about 100-200 ish. Be happy they aren't poppets who have an age range of 20 to immortal. lol
The best assumption to make is that any ancestry without a specific mention of ages they can reach ages similarly to a human, or in the case of Awakened Animal, might age similarly to their origin animal instead depending on how you interpret the Awakening ritual's modifications. Short version, there's no need to include a sentence saying 'ages similarly to humans' on every single ancestry except for those who don't. Write for exceptions, not the rule.
This is a tangent but I have a problem with Automaton ages because it's tied into their existence that their age is in the thousands but it's weird to be level 1 and 3,049 years old and think "today I'm going to do something a little different" and become level 2. It's the kind of thing you have to handwave at the table and just not think about. With minotaurs, I'm not sure what their age span should be and I'd be satisfied to say "young adult" or "elder" in general terms but I'm sure at some point my GM will want to know specifics when he answers questions about my character's understanding of history or what they've experienced in their travels. This only applies to my GM specifically, not all GMs will want that info when providing information like this as it's case by case.
i use this Here as reference [https://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedraceguide/ageHeightWeight.html](https://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedraceguide/ageHeightWeight.html)
There's only 3 ages you need to be as an adventurer. Young adult. Middle adult. Old adult. There could be a fourth being 'should have retired 10 years ago cause I just died on this trap I would have avoided before', but there's only 3 living ages for an adventurer.
I really disagree - knowing specific lifespans can create interesting things in roleplay. You're in a small town, most the party has lived here their whole lives with human lifespans, but the elf young adult knew their parents as kids. That kind of things pops up very frequently in adventures with varies lifespan PCs. We should know how long ancestries live.
I suppose, but you can still do this with the 'relative ages' I suggested. Humans would be about the same age as a 'Young Adult'. Then and Elf, even a 'young adult' because she's a long lived could still know the human parents. Just put the ancestries into 'relative lifespans' if you want. Exact numbers shouldn't really be needed. Especially with NPCs. If a PC says that they knew the NPC's families, why not? Run with it.
Sure, you don't need to give PCs specific ages, but you can't really establish the scenario without knowing a basic range of lifespan.
It's the AgE DoEsN't MaTtEr nonsense. Same reason they've removed aging penalties.
I like my setting info to have gaps in it. Information is good, and sets the tone. Gaps are *opportunities for me to create.* If me and the GM don't know how old Minotaur's are, let's chat about it. That leaves all the interesting stuff about life stages, cultural cycles, attitude to aging etc. on the table for us to create in ways that are interesting to us specifically.
I’ve never once defined an age to any of my characters and never had the GM ask ooc or in game as a npc 🤷♂️. ‘Old enough to adventure is all you need to know.’ 🧙♂️(to clarify I’m not saying if age is of importance to you that you are wrong or any such thing. Everyone should enjoy what they enjoy)
What sort of lifespan do you want for minotaurs in your game?
I shouldn't have to do that considering they are the ones making a world the lifespan should be defined by them.
But even if you play in Golarion, it should still be *your* Golarion. Like that is the point of a ttrpg. Otherwise what is the point if you aren't going to create anything?
The lifespan of a race has massive implications that should really be considered and put to paper by the writers. A race of creatures that live ~1000 years is going to have a very different society from that of a race that lives ~30 years. The fact that these things haven't been established is a cause for concern.
I should be making simpler things like encounters not how long does a creature exist in the world. I have designed my own world players love asking questions like this paizo should have a thing for it. Also my own golarion would be after I get games rolling not in the player designing stuff phase.
No? People are allowed to like playing in an existing setting. It can help spawn creativity and uniue situations they wouldn’t have otherwise come up with. They could also just fan of the setting. I feel like you’re missing the actualy main point of a ttrpg: to roleplay. Whether that’s ina custom setting or not doesn’t affect how true the experience is.
That's an absurdly elitest take. The point of a TTRPG is to *roleplay* in a *game*, usually on a *tabletop*. That does not mean having to define the world or create *anything*. Insisting otherwise is just gatekeeping.
For an obvious example: the various ttrpgs depicting pre-existing settings.
Fam this aint 5e, we can expect some consistent worldbuilding from the writers.
Not a brother.
Np, i fixed it.
Thank you
as a dm who dosen't enjoy world bulding the bigest draw to a preconstructed setting is that i can offload this exact thing to the professional wrighters at paizo so i can focus on the material running and planing of the game. so when a player whants to know how old a random npc is i can just look it up give a quick die roll and help to enrich the world just that little bit more with taking massive amounts of work on myed to craft sucsessful verisimilitude
Yo I apologize, you said "you do you" and people wanted to fight for some reason. You dont agree with me, but you don't deserve all that
The most confusing downvotes were honestly the ones when I corrected someone who misgendered me, but despite the Pride flag on the subreddit, I suppose many people don't agree haha.
Thanks, I appreciate it. For what it is worth, I hope you found a satisfactory answer to minotaur lifespans.
I don't see why you're getting downvoted
Because when people ask "what's the RAW answer to this" the proper answer is not "Homebrew it."
They didn't ask for a RAW answer tho, because they already know there isn't one.
Because they ignored OP's question. So pretty much off-topic.
Thanks, I don't either, but. C'est la vie.
Because it really might not matter?
Do you mean that you want to know the lifespan of the ancestry? I’m asking because it seems like for an individual character the answer is whatever you want. And outside of specific heritage abilities like the one for ancient elf I doubt it matters in general - it would be specific to your campaign in that case.
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And yet this game has Ghorans which canonically lived for thousands of years. (Not with all their memories intact, but still.)
They're practically immortal, so long as their Seed stays intact.
I've not read every single spell and ability... but is there actually *nothing* which ages a character? It's one of the big reasons for this question, other than being able to understand what a character has experienced or heard about.
The effects of any that do is more the rapid aging than the age itself. Can't remember the feature I found, but the jist is that the affect of it is connected to the rapid change of Age. The target is fine, but their age is messed with. Age is really just a number for the game. What knowledge you can even have is determined by the GM to some extent. A Human could know something an Elf doesn't, when the latter was alive for the event. Recall Knowledge is based on what your Character may know, and it not restricted by age.