Youth stats in TFT

[JohnPaulB]

Steve Jackson gave us data on Aging (ITL p10), but not really anything before the age of 20.

This is my attempt to fill in the gap. [These are taken from my notes from waay back and definitely included help from others, though I don’t remember who. I think Harry White may be one.

First off, this is what Steve has to say about it:

ITL p 10 Aging
You may assume that a character is 20 years old when he enters play. He is not affected by age until he reaches 50.
Most players I know start adulthood and beginning age of PCs at 18 years old.

ITL p100 Children
Children will have a low ST, medium DX, and Medium to normal IQ for whatever species they are.

ST ITL p 15
Anyone with a ST of less than 8 is either not fully adult or noticeably weak.
NOTE: Original ITL p8 states: Average strength for a human female is 9 to 11; average male ST is 10 to 12.

DX ITL p15
A DX below 8 (natural or adjusted) indicates clumsiness.

IQ ITL p 16
Where a player's character is concerned, an IQ of 6 is a childish intelligence. (It is illegal to start this low with most species; though misadventure can reduce your IQ.) An IQ of 8 represents slow-average. IQ 10 is average.
NOTE: Original ITL p9 states: Where a player's character is concerned, an IQ of 6 represents a moron.

Here is a gradiated chart for point distribution by age. This chart assumes that most capable characters can reach ‘character maturity’ by age 16. These are guidelines. There can be 1-2 point fluctuations for exceptional characters or late bloomers. Comments on handicaps and youthful talents are below.


Age.............Attribute Points..... .ST....... .DX............IQ.........MA........Comments...... ...........Updated Jan 25 using GURPS 3rd Edition
Age 20 Normal Starting age for PCs.
Age 19.............30 points
Age 18.............30 points............................................ ...........................*
Age 17.............30 points............................................ ...........................*
Age 16.............30 points...............ST 10....DX 10......IQ 10......MA 10.......*
Age 15.............27 points...............ST 9......DX 9........IQ 9.......MA 9
Age 14.............26 points...............ST 8......DX 9........IQ 9.......MA 9
Age 13.............24 points...............ST 7......DX 8........IQ 9.......MA 8
Age 12.............22 points...............ST 6......DX 7........IQ 9.......MA 8
Age 11.............19 points...............ST 5......DX 6........IQ 8.......MA 7
Age 9-10..........17 points...............ST 4......DX 5........IQ 8.......MA 7
Age 6-8............14 points...............ST 3......DX 4........IQ 7.......MA 6
Age 3-5............11 points...............ST 2......DX 3........IQ 6.......MA 4
Age 0-2..............8 points...............ST 1......DX 3........IQ 4.......MA 1
Age Infant..........3 points...............ST 1......DX 0........IQ 2.......MA 0

Here are some ideas for talents for youth that are phased out when the character becomes an adult (usually from 16 – 18 yrs old) and places aside the things of youth. They usually forget how to do them. These Youth Talents cost the same points as the regular adult talents, but you can ignore the IQ level. All Youth Talents should be appropriate to the age, so a Youth Architect talent would allow the kid to build treehouses and put holes in walls without bringing the house down. And Youth Poetry is probably either “Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat” or “Twinkle, Twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are” variety, though some of it might be very moving.
Youth Running...................+2 MA
Youth Climbing..................Usually tree-climbing
Youth Area Knowledge.......Usually their neighborhood, outside play area or local woods
Youth Brawling..................Same as normal
Mundane physical games....Futball, tag, horseshoes, kick the hornets nest…
Mundane games ...............checkers, 5 Man Morris, spying, nuisance creature (ITL p100)
Youth Dodge.....................Roll 4d6 instead of 3d6 to try and catch this kid.

In order to compensate for the ridiculously low IQ thresholds that might be required for children, I have implemented a Youth Success Savings Roll.
If a youth 13 years of age or younger fails a Success Roll (but not a critical failure), then a backup roll can be done. This gives the child a split-second to save himself. A failure (even a crit failure) on this second roll means that it is just a regular fail, but a success means that the event succeeded. With the raising of the Youth Stats, this unproven procedure has been dropped.

The Handicapped Characters article in TFT Companion by Forest Johnson & Ralph Sizer can be represented as quirks for Youth, unless the handicap selected are the type of handicaps that transfers into adulthood. These Youth Handicaps go away just like the Youth Talents above.


* During these transitional ages, the below Handicap can be picked up by Youth of 16, 17 or 18 years old.

Variation of Handicap (2 pts) TFT Companion Pg 18:

Odious - Teenage Youth (“Go back to bed, Yung'un!”)
This character is ‘just a kid’ and in that aspect is offensive to proper adults. Physically, victims are 1/5 of average size for their species and have a youthful face. They can learn Tactics or Strategist or even Architect and use them, but nobody else will ever take a youth seriously enough to let him command a battle or design a building. In a strategy conference, anyone wanting to take his advice must first make a 4-die roll against IQ (only very wise people will consider advice from someone so immature.)
He gets a -1 to all reaction rolls concerning “experience”.

This handicap needs to be ‘bought off’ for 400 experience points when owner reaches 18 years old.

If you don't want to raise character’s attribute any higher with these 2 additional points (after all, he is a supposed to be a teenager), you can instead convert the 2 attribute points to 2 additional talents points (for the beginning character) instead.



This can also be used to populate your towns with NPC youth. Use a D20 to roll for age. If you get a 20, it is a 32 point adult instead.

[hcobb]

Most modern kids are literate at age 7.

Did you look at the index of ITL entry of "Children, 100."?

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Most modern kids are literate at age 7.

Did you look at the index of ITL entry of "Children, 100."?

Thank you, hcobb. I added that to the references.

Even though Literacy is an IQ 8 Talent, you can pick it up as Youth Literacy at cost of 1 even if the kids IQ is below 8. This allows kids to read, although the low IQ rolls may force them to fail a lot. I would have them read at what you think is the modern grade level equivalent at a medieval period and don't do rolls unless its critical. And even then, with Youth Success Savings Roll, they have another chance to succeed if they fail the first time.

Admittedly those below 10 might have a hard time of it.

However, the mortality rates of kids in a medieval society was great.

[hcobb]

How do any children survive the uncontrolled plagues on Earth?
What the fnord are the Earth wizards doing?
Is it true that when humans die on Earth that nobody tries healing potions or other magics? That sounds like a really primitive place to me.
When an Earth kid looses a limb they can't afford the 35 silvers to have the limb regrown? What do they use for money, paper?

[David Bofinger]

I found this interesting and it would mesh well with generating a life history for a character.

I don't believe the IQ jump from 1 to 5 is that dramatic in reality. 2 year old people definitely have a mind in a way neonatal people do not.

If you want to do this properly I would dig up a detailed "what to expect your child to be able to do at each age" document written by developmental psychologists.

I'm not sure I believe in Peter Pan talents that inevitably go away with adulthood. It seems very complex for this application. Easier to believe these are lower level talents and adults can be assumed to have them or fake it somehow. Or, that anybody can ditch a talent to make room for another, and kids do this.

I think mostly the adult talents can substitute acceptably for youth equivalents. Of course there are things they can and can't do because of their attributes and smaller body, but that's mostly separate from the talent. There are issues with e.g. Brawling. Sex Appeal has a different interpretation.

Alternately I guess you could have a general rule that all talents are available in child form at an IQ level 3 points lower.

I have no idea why you need a Youth Success Savings Roll.

The Handicapped Characters article in TFT Companion by Forest Johnson & Ralph Sizer can be represented as quirks for Youth

So all the children start with a bunch of handicaps, and most get rid of them one at a time? Makes sense.

convert the 2 attribute points to 2 additional talents points (for the beginning character)

That's a nasty exchange rate, and I think few starting characters will take it.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by hcobb

How do any children survive the uncontrolled plagues on Earth?

Cidri answer: Which Earth would this be, there are so many. Maybe they live like animals? Animals seem to survive, mostly.

Medieval Earth answer: Uncontrolled? Do you think us barbarians? We know many ways of controlling plagues.

Modern Earth answer: Most based on spurious theories, nearly all doing more harm than good. But sure, controls.

[David Bofinger]

Another thought: there's not much value in knowing what an average child of a particular age is like.

If you're using this to randomise NPCs then you need to provide a typical range i.e. "90% of kids of that age are at least ST 5 and no more than ST 7." The attributes would be ST, DX, IQ, MA, number of talent points.

If you're using this to generate PCs then you need to provide a minimum ST, min DX, min IQ, MA, number of extra attributes, number of talent points.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by hcobb

How do any children survive the uncontrolled plagues on Earth?
What the fnord are the Earth wizards doing?
Is it true that when humans die on Earth that nobody tries healing potions or other magics? That sounds like a really primitive place to me.
When an Earth kid looses a limb they can't afford the 35 silvers to have the limb regrown? What do they use for money, paper?

I can see one answer to all those questions. The governments of Earth have mandated that in order to keep the Wizard's Guild corporation intact each card carrying member of the Wizard Guild and Alchemy Guild must donate 15 hours per week to healing potions or other magics to be given to the poor. This would help eliminate the children not surviving the uncontrolled plagues on Earth and make it less primitive.
So when an Earth kid looses a limb and is poor, they go to the Wizard's Guild and have the limb regrown. That should handle a lot of this problem.

[JohnPaulB]

The Youth Attribute Chart is something of a work in progress. The chart's stats could be vetted to make it better.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I found this interesting and it would mesh well with generating a life history for a character.

I don't believe the IQ jump from 1 to 5 is that dramatic in reality. 2 year old people definitely have a mind in a way neonatal people do not.

If you want to do this properly I would dig up a detailed "what to expect your child to be able to do at each age" document written by developmental psychologists.

I'm not sure I believe in Peter Pan talents that inevitably go away with adulthood. It seems very complex for this application. Easier to believe these are lower level talents and adults can be assumed to have them or fake it somehow. Or, that anybody can ditch a talent to make room for another, and kids do this.

The purpose of YOUTH TALENTS was to address the problematic issue of an 'In Reality' earth kid being able to do things, but a game NPC kid not being able to do it because the game mechanics are oriented towards adults. Perhaps the Peter Pan Talent Dissolution effect can be explained by this: Things learned as a kid are significant to him because he doesn't have a lot learned yet. By the time a kid becomes an adult, those YOUTH TALENTS learned become the generic things adults know or expect.

• Joe may have been the only kid who knew YOUTH HORSEMANSHIP, that is, he knew how to ride a horse when other kids didn't. Now that he is an adult, everyone can ride a horse, so the next level would be to buy Horsemanship Talent and be able to ride even in difficult situation.
• Joe may have been a great tree YOUTH CLIMBer as a kid, but now he is just average climbing trees. He'd have to buy Climbing talent now that he is a 30 point character to gain any benefit.
• Joe may have known in great detailed YOUTH AREA KNOWLEDGE-VILLAGE PARK & LOCAL WOODS as viewed by kids, but now that he is an adult, those areas go absorbed into knowing his village in general. If Joe wanted to recall specifically about the details of his park when he was a kid, he could do that. But it might not be worth that much right now because the neighborhood has changed. Perhaps Joe as an adult has now purchased Area Knowledge - Village and its Surroundings and can go into great detail about the current park.

I think mostly the adult talents can substitute acceptably for youth equivalents. Of course there are things they can and can't do because of their attributes and smaller body, but that's mostly separate from the talent. There are issues with e.g. Brawling. Sex Appeal has a different interpretation.

Most kids do not do good in a fight with other kids. They do generic punching, pushing, etc. There are certain types of kids, though, that would absolutely go for fighting and they would eventually learn YOUTH Brawling.
And I didn't include Sex Appeal in my YOUTH TALENTS, but it could be there. A 15 year old youth might pick up that talent and use it affectively.
Some things like Alchemy can't be learned by youth until their IQ is 14. However, they can be their mother's apprentice alchemist (YOUTH ALCHEMY) and grind the mixtures, tend the fires, clean up the shards of a failed potion. This might give them 1 point toward the purchase of Alchemy Talent in adulthood.

Alternately I guess you could have a general rule that all talents are available in child form at an IQ level 3 points lower.

That Child IQ Level -3 alternative could work.

I have no idea why you need a Youth Success Savings Roll.

It was just an idea to handle the difficulties of needing to make crit success rolls on the only try to do something. The thought was that if you failed you had another immediate chance to succeed. Probably the concept needs more work or the Attributes at those young ages needs to be raised.

So all the children start with a bunch of handicaps, and most get rid of them one at a time? Makes sense.

I was just thinking of Handicaps that one grows out of when they get older.
Things like Odious Personal Habits-Tells Fart Jokes, or Cowardly until he grows as a teenager to a 6 ft monster.
Reputation will probably change: Joe the Bedwetter may be stigmatizing as an 8 year old, but is forgotten at 20 years old.
One might even have Childhood Asthma which is gone by age 20.

That's a nasty exchange rate, and I think few starting characters will take it.

I actually developed this exchange rate for an adult character I had played. I had a particular vision for this character and he was going to be around a 34 point character. I had envisioned him not reading. Normally, you just don't choose Literacy and that is that. But I decided to go a little further and make him NOT able to read, so I cheesed it and gave him Dyslexia. But not wanting to give him another attribute point, I decided that if I can convert it to a Talent instead.

When I initially approached at this, I looked at the Improving Stats conversions and realized it could be applied to talents too. So for every point of handicap, a character can get a Talent instead of an attribute point. Thus someone who obtains Acrophobia has 2 points toward an attribute OR 1000 points for purchasing talents.

[Steve Plambeck]

Not unrelated to this stuff, I wrote some "training spells" for child wizards back here:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...9&postcount=56