Buying your age down.

[Astromancer]

Okay, assume either readily available magic or supertechnology and your PC wants to be younger physiologically. What would it cost in experience points? Cash varies wildly, but the point cost of moving from let's say sixty to fourty years of physiological age should be easier to state. Assume the PC has already bought Unaging but now needs to enter the marriage market for political reasons and they want to be more palatable to a potential spouse.

What is a good rule of thumb for buying down your age?

Thank-you ahead of time.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Okay, assume either readily available magic or supertechnology and your PC wants to be younger physiologically. What would it cost in experience points? Cash varies wildly, but the point cost of moving from let's say sixty to fourty years of physiological age should be easier to state. Assume the PC has already bought Unaging but now needs to enter the marriage market for political reasons and they want to be more palatable to a potential spouse.

What is a good rule of thumb for buying down your age?

Thank-you ahead of time.

There is no point cost unless you are buying off traits which have a point value. If you have lowered Attributes or lost Advantages due to age, buy them again to represent getting younger. Same for Disadvantages, like Bad Sight, Deafness or Social Stigma (Old), if the character has them.

In real life modern Western culture, characters of advanced age might well have reduced Appearance and Social Stigma that affects marriage and job prospects due to their age, but tend toward higher Wealth and Status to compensate.

Aside from explicit traits, whether a character looks his chronological age or not is worth a Perk, at most. With Unaging, though, being able to select any age you want at character creation (or taking the trait) should definitely be assumed.

[CraigR]

If he has Unaging already, then the question is, what is the point cost for cosmetic surgury. If it's altering the character's attractiveness level, the difference in costs is reasonable, but if it just makes the PC look younger without really changing who they look like, I wouldn't charge points.

[Anthony]

Buy age control (+20%) on unaging.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Cash varies wildly, but the point cost of moving from let's say sixty to fourty years of physiological age should be easier to state. Assume the PC has already bought Unaging but now needs to enter the marriage market for political reasons and they want to be more palatable to a potential spouse.

Zero. What age you look like is a feature, just like how tall you are or what color your hair is. It doesn't cost (or return) points by itself. If you got some points back for "Too Old To Be Attractive" then sure, it costs whatever the GM let you have for that in the first place to buy it off.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Okay, assume either readily available magic or supertechnology and your PC wants to be younger physiologically. What would it cost in experience points? Cash varies wildly, but the point cost of moving from let's say sixty to fourty years of physiological age should be easier to state. Assume the PC has already bought Unaging but now needs to enter the marriage market for political reasons and they want to be more palatable to a potential spouse.

What is a good rule of thumb for buying down your age?

Thank-you ahead of time.

Age only had a point value in Classic GURPS, in 4e it is a feature (worth 0 points) Now Unaging has the Age Control (+20%) enhancement.

I might point out that some people age extremely well naturally. In my late mother's case a little too well as it resulted in what has to be the most awkward situation we were ever in.

We were traveling and stopped at a hotel and my father didn't want to get out of the car as he was having some trouble with his legs due to him still recovering from a stroke about 2 years previously

Anyway we went in and got a room for 2 adults and 1 child (i was 17 at the time, my mother 50, my father 58) and the the front desk lady asked "Oh where is the child?" I looked her in the eye and said "I'm the child."

So yes by the calendar my mother was 50 but she could easily pass for mid 20s to early 30's.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Buy age control (+20%) on unaging.

Either this or Elastic Skin (age appearance only -80%) [4]. Both allow you to change your age fairly rapidly, the elastic skin a bit faster. I'm not sure if -80% is the correct number, but you can slow it down to take days rather than 10 seconds and get down to the -80% number.

If its a one time thing, I may not even bother with points. Unaging gives a sort of narrative permission that way. If they want to use that more than once, make them buy something like the advantages above.

[Plane]

One problem with B444:

Even without magic or high technology, you can spend earned character points to raise your attributes to combat aging.

Normal humans make their HT checks at most every 3 months once they pass 90. There's no rules I know of which increase the frequency of those rolls.

Even if you crit fail all four rolls and lose TWO points to each attribute, if you earn 120 character points in that month (IQ+2[40] DX+2 [40] HT+2 [20] ST+2 [20]) you can offset the attribute loss.

So in theory, if you had a generous GM, you could just adventure so hard that your character growth offsets the loss to aging, basically making you unable to die of old age (attribute reaching 0).

There is a solve though:

At the GM’s option, you may lose advantages or gain disadvantages of equivalent point value instead of losing an attribute point.

If this became a problem, a GM might say that instead of losing a point of HT or ST, you gain a level of Short Lifespan instead (2 levels if you fail an IQ or DX roll).

4 levels of this would have you making the checks every 5 days, making it harder to earn Character Points quickly enough to offset your losses.

B125 "Cannot Learn" might also work, since it stops you from buying up IQ or DX.

Of course, part of the problem is still that a character could just spend character points to buy off Cannot Learn =/ B291:

Mental Disadvantages and Odious Personal Habits: You may buy these off at their original bonus value. Assume that you simply got over your problem.

B292 is a little better for this purpose: you need to target the HT attribute:

Physical Disadvantages: Your game world’s tech level – and the supernatural powers available – determine the degree to which you can buy off these traits

Since the GM can forbid you from buying these off, you could for example (even as earlier as age 50) when they fail a HT roll, instead of losing 1 point of HT, say they gain the pair of Unfit (-1 to HT rolls) and Slow Healing, for example, and forbid them from buying these off.

A second option for fixing it might be to continue the observed pattern, where every 20 years (50/70/90 so 110 next) you halve the waiting period between the quartet of HT rolls. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

A third option would be to apply your species' attribute maximums BEFORE subtracting age.

You are meant to indefinitely keep track of attribute losses to age in case your age is ever reversed, because you don't need to pay character points to regain those attributes, as B444 (Artificial Youth) mentions, you increase the value without paying for it:

Should you become younger through any means, you regain all attribute levels lost between your new age and your old one.
This simply increases your point value; you do not have to “buy back” the recovered attribute levels.

Since this requires tracking it, I'd make a note like:

IQ 20
IQ -1 (Age)
Net IQ: 19

If you failed 15 checks for your IQ, supposedly you could go from effective-IQ-5 back up to effective-IQ-20 by paying 300 points for +15 IQ, right?

But since your base IQ wasn't actually lowered (instead you have a penalty it won't cost you points to buy off, if you find Artificial Youth) what you're actually talking about doing isn't going from 5 to 20, it's going from 20 to 35 which the -15 penalty brings down to effective 20.

Where that matters is where GMs apply a hard racial cap (sometimes 20 for humans) or where it's a soft cap where going beyond 20 requires more points than usual.

PU2p21 "Special Exercises (IQ)" for example.

This also suggests being limited to 2 or 3 levels. Meaning a max IQ of 23 for humans, so if you failed 23 HT checks for your IQ, you're dead!

Of course... that still requires actually FAILING the checks, which is never a guarantee.

To make it a guarantee, here's an idea for a house rule: each time you pass a HT roll, add a cumulative -1 penalty to upcoming HT checks until a failure occurs.

That seems like a good (but not too harsh) way of guaranteeing that eventually a failure will occur, IF when effective HT is below 3, you forbid rolling altogether. That doesn't apply to active defences or savings throws AFAIK but applying it here feels right because there should be an eventual guarantee of aging decline.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

assume either readily available magic or supertechnology and your PC wants to be younger physiologically.

What would it cost in experience points?

What is a good rule of thumb for buying down your age?

B361 mentions "each year of age counts as -3 points" so I'd go with that. You could perhaps simpiify that to 1 point per 4 months past 18 years old.

This is actually even more generous than in 3e, B27 only had "-3 points per year over 50". I think it makes sense for it to have value even prior to 50 though because even though you're not making HT checks yet, you're CLOSER to making them.

I assume that's for the Level 0 version of Short Lifespan, so if you went by B154, I'd say 1 point per 2 months for SLS1, per month for SLS2.

B53 similarly should give a lesser discount (1 point per 8 months at ELS1, per 16 at ELS2, etc)

These would have different starting points than 18 or course.

B130 "For each HP lost, you also age two years" needs a mechanical representation, after all.

Originally Posted by Icelander

There is no point cost unless you are buying off traits which have a point value. If you have lowered Attributes or lost Advantages due to age, buy them again to represent getting younger.

That doesn't represent getting younger though.

If you're 91 years old and used experience to buy back the attributes you lost, you're still over 90 and making your HT checks every 3 months.

Actually getting younger would move you back into the "per 6 months" (70-89) or "per 12 months" (50-69) or "not at all" tiers.

That progression into HT checks is why I think it makes sense to value it as a disadvantage.

Originally Posted by malloyd

What age you look like is a feature, just like how tall you are or what color your hair is. It doesn't cost (or return) points by itself.

It should, since age means more frequent HT checks to avoid permanent attribute loss. B361 seems like the only guideline in 4E.

Originally Posted by maximara

in 4e it is a feature (worth 0 points)

Did you get that from B20's "If you start at an advanced age, you have no special disadvantages." ?

One could interpret that as more along the lines as "disadvantages resulting from failed aging rolls".

In theory you could (non-realistically) start off as a 100 year old human who totally never failed all of his HT checks, but all of a sudden needing to make HT checks every 3 months is clearly an inherent problem compared to non-centenarians.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Plane

That doesn't represent getting younger though.

If you're 91 years old and used experience to buy back the attributes you lost, you're still over 90 and making your HT checks every 3 months.

Actually getting younger would move you back into the "per 6 months" (70-89) or "per 12 months" (50-69) or "not at all" tiers.

That progression into HT checks is why I think it makes sense to value it as a disadvantage.

The OP is asking about an Unaging character. Age isn't a Disadvantage for him, doesn't lead to HT checks and effectively exists as roleplaying characterization only. As such, it doesn't cost points unless in the specific instance where some trait which does have a point cost is affected.

I'm not saying this can't be a valid goal or important process in the setting. Just that you don't need to bring point budget into it. If you have the in-setting magic, contacts, money, secrets or whatever other justification, you can do it. This might require adventuring or having certain game-mechanical traits to pay for it, but you don't need to pay any more character points than you already did for Unaging.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Icelander

The OP is asking about an Unaging character. Age isn't a Disadvantage for him, doesn't lead to HT checks and effectively exists as roleplaying characterization only. As such, it doesn't cost points unless in the specific instance where some trait which does have a point cost is affected.

Artificial Youth sounds like it's free (or at least it costs cash or negotiating with a wizard, not character points)

I still like the idea of paying 3/year if you were buying it with character points.

After all, if he's hit with Negated Advantage: Unaging then suddenly him being older DOES matter.

I guess in that sense "Age Control" lets you buy off an inherent disadvantage.

Affliction (advantage) isn't meant to cause permanent point differences, but it seems like it can, since Affliction (unaging w/ age control) under the afflictor's control lets them move you toward a permanent risk of HT checks at the snail's pace of a year per 36.525 days. Leech (Steal Youth) too!