Shattered Kingdoms

Short version: When you age tick melee classes stance perks improve slightly to off set some of the cost of aging.
Reasoning and logic below.

As I get closer and closer to age ticking, Im wondering if there is really any point to keeping a melee focused class past the age tick. There is RP however in a game "Where Roleplay and Tactics Collide" if you cant back up your tactics your RP is going to be weak. However most melee focused classes do not survive an age tick. Even if they do survive one age tick their play time normally goes down significantly as they are flat out not as good as they where. Casters are more likely to stick around as they get perks to offset their negatives for aging. An argument for some combinations are only viable after the age tick. I was thinking what if melee focused classes (warriors, adventures maybe paladin and hellion) stances where to improve with age ticks. Increasing the bonus of the stance to offset some of the curse of losing all of the physical stats. Not to the point where you are better off with an aged warrior but to where there is still a point to doing it. Real life comparison is found in sports. Aging sports stars are not as good as their where but they start building different tactics and better technique.

With aggressive stance increasing damage more after an age tick will help offset the loss of strength. Defensive stance helps off set the loss of Constitution. Although I dont think the bonus should completely offset the age tick str and con even if it did, the fact that you could only increase one would leave you with a weakness. The only classes where this might be an issue is rogue hellion and scout for their one shot wonder attacks at the start of combat. How many people would consider playing past an age tick if the change was added.

Not even necessary. The reason melee classes (especially when played by large and giant sized races) are undesirable after they age is not because of damage loss (which is minimal), but because the loss of strength reduces carrying capacity.

Giants are hard-pressed even without aging, but any melee character that can't stay below half carrying capacity is nearly useless. That is why people give up on melee characters after they age - not because of a slight drop in damage that can be overcome with buffs.

Finney, that half carrying capacity only affects the prob to dodge stat, and only slightly at that. There's no way that aging makes melee chars useless. Unless you're a giant.

Or a centaur or a minotaur. Or a even a non-human mercenary, since your strength is sub 20 even before you age as any race but a dwarf. Aging sucks for all races as a melee class. It just makes the large/giant races unplayable - giants especially so.

I really enjoyed the fact that my age ticked giant could not wield ANY appropriately-sized diamond polearm, since they were too heavy.

I had reasonable success with my elf mercenary. Of course, she won't be able to hold that diamond bill when she ages the third time because it requires a minimum 17 str. Wish there were some mithril or energy weapons of that subtype. There are just weapon subtypes that are so ignored by builders. Makes me wish we could craft our own weapons at the blacksmith.

I actually had a question about age. What aging benefits are there that are not apparent, such as the mercenary getting another spec. At least ones that can be discussed and not the attribute changes.

They include:

Good to know.