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.