Aelsif age categories

This post was chosen by my kids. The little one wants to play somebody her own age, and the big one (also wants to play somebody her own age) wants to help walk her through it. So if this seems a bit out of nowhere, that's why.

Age categories in Aelsif are somewhat more important than they are in other tabletop RPGs. Rather than an inconsequential bump or loss in a couple stats, age categories can completely change the way a character functions. Having your character be a particular age may help complete your build, but do recall that time waits for nobody and if there's a timeskip it may permanently move you out of your ideal age range. If that happens it won't cripple your build, but it may suddenly be less effective than expected, and maybe some alterations to how you use your build will mitigate that. Thankfully, it's standard practice (or at least, it's recommended in the rulebook) to pair time skips with experience rewards to help players compensate for changes.

For example, a child witch may be able to rely solely on her primary casting while her charisma is extremely high, but if there's a 10 year gap between story arcs, she may find her spells weaker than they used to be and have to rely more on rituals, which are intelligence-based and won't have changed any. Rituals take time, so that means she's moving further into the backline, and looking ahead to try and predict when a ritual will be needed. By what is totally just a coincidence (it's not), this shift in behaviour from impulsive blasting to planning and forethought could be seen as her becoming more mature.

The actual impact of the age categories is as follows, and remember these are applied in addition to modifiers for your character's race, and you can still modify them further with traits.