Shattered Kingdoms

Codependency (mastered)

Why wouldn't you want to roleplay as a a 60-year-old character or have a society of elders?

I always thought SK was lacking this aspect of society. There's no respect for elders nor any reason to respect them. A 25-year-old GM sorcerer with all his spells mastered can do anything an 70-year-old can do and just as well, especially if played by a player who knows all the ins and outs of the items and areas and can transfer that knowledge to the PC.

Keeping elders around puts life into history.

There's got to be something we can do to encourage longer-lived characters. There have been a lot of ideas thrown around, but none that seem to really work.

Maybe something to do with teaching. Movies always use the old fighters to teach the young hero, whether it is Rocky or Zorro.

Here are some possibilities:
As characters age, they can gradually expand the level of skill and spells that they can teach. I don't think it would unbalance the game to allow characters with 50+ years played to be able to teach mentor or master level skills if they have them mastered.

Old characters can teach skills with less trains, at less xp-cost. This would essentially be an int boost for the student, ideally, enabling very old characters to allow even dim students to learn as though they were omniscient.

Old characters can teach skills to a higher degree of proficiency, perhaps even to mastered.

These changes would make old characters a valued commodity. An ancient sorcerer capable of teaching mentor-level spells to mastered level in a single session would likely be able to command a high price for his services-- something that rarely (if ever) happens for teachers currently.

I would also allow old characters to attain mentor points at a faster rate.

I actually like that suggestion better than the OP.


The fault I find with the OP is that it forces you to need someone else. And being as there are many people whom play solo characters this would only cause them to group up simply for the bonus. It's an unneeded bonus to people that always want to be in the uber group. I have other reasons for not liking this but right now thats what I put to paper.

I like Drifters suggestion. I don't like Lolths. Too many people seem to follow each other around from character to character as it is, Lolth's idea would only further this.

I like the idea of a boost to the mentor system as well.

At the moment I don't consider oldies that much of a priority only because the pbase is of a size that, frankly, we are in places lacking a council of young to veteran members, let alone a council of extremely old members. On this character at least I've met a high number of fairly aged characters anyway.

And if young characters don't choose to treat venerable characters with respect, then that's their RP perogative, really. There's some implication in your statement that respect is something that only occurs when you consider someone's mechanical abilities, rather than their reputation or pool of experiences. My young rogue always viewed Gallus (a 151 year old half-elf rogue) with the utmost respect, despite being able to do all the same things but better.

Significant bonuses might include something along the lines of +accuracy AND +saves for melee, +spell power for casters. Keep the age-tick attribute losses. That'd be balanced. Melee needs two things because of the int/wis increase which obviously benefits casters much more than melee.