So, one of my players had the idea of making a younger character, like 7 years old.

Most of the others are in the 16-20 range.

So I'm thinking of a couple things.

First, the timeline: We're post-Order 66 right, so I have 19 years between that and A New Hope.

If this one is 7, I was thinking about making her a survivor or Order 66 but because of the age she doesn't remember any of it. But this would make all the others very aware of the existence of Jedi and all of them would have to have a background where they also survive Order 66.

Or, I could push them a little further ahead, but if I do that, then our current position in the timeline would have to be AFTER ANH.

Hmmm what to do...

And then I think about character stats: A 7 year old human would most definitely not have 2 in every characteristic, for starters... right?

That's tricky. If we'd go by D&D rules, yeah we'd know what stats go with a kid.

:S

7 is very young. Nothing is anywhere near fully developed (though children can still be very Cunning, the guile isn't really there). I could see a -1 to all Characteristics (so, in the case of a human: 1 in all Characteristics) being appropriate. Maybe they get to select 1 Characteristic that doesn't get the minus? How that would be balanced for/with alien races... I dunno.

Or maybe, no skill ranks at all (until age ~10 or 12)? Only green die equal to Characteristics (selected/purchased as normal)?

Automatic Disadvantage dice as appropriate for things like physical combat, athletics, knowledges, etc. etc., of course.

I mean, this is something your player would have to choose entirely for RP purposes, without expecting some sort of mechanical balance or parity in it, right?

I wouldn't be too focused on restricting characteristics per se. I wouldn't let him increase Brawn beyond the starting value, but other than that it's all good. Skill ranks too, there's no reason to restrict those. I think it's much more important to maybe restrict which specializations the character can take. A 7-year old with Assassin or Heavy or Marshal would look very strange...

I wouldn't be too focused on restricting characteristics per se. I wouldn't let him increase Brawn beyond the starting value, but other than that it's all good. Skill ranks too, there's no reason to restrict those. I think it's much more important to maybe restrict which specializations the character can take. A 7-year old with Assassin or Heavy or Marshal would look very strange...

This sounds good for me.

A child will have a lot of restrictions in-game, let that be the biggest factor.

I wouldn't be too focused on restricting characteristics per se. I wouldn't let him increase Brawn beyond the starting value, but other than that it's all good. Skill ranks too, there's no reason to restrict those. I think it's much more important to maybe restrict which specializations the character can take. A 7-year old with Assassin or Heavy or Marshal would look very strange...

I mean, yea, I proposed a pretty straight representationalist approach for this narrative system, but, for example; a friend of mine brought over her 6 and 7 year olds last night to my house.

I lifted both of them, one hanging from each arm, to shoulder height. I'm not a big guy.

They play soccer, I could out dribble them with a soccer ball sitting on the couch. I do not play soccer.

There is no way a kid that age would ever pose a physical threat to an adult. Much less mental (barring the memory things some kids that age can be good at, and your 1 in a million child-geniuses), or in some sort of a social situation. No.

7 years old is a chiiild, in every sense of the word. They have no capabilities that can match an average adults. To say they should be able to choose Characteristics and Skills and have Triumphs in combat and compete on equal terms as any other PC is ludicrous... whether narrative or representationalist, IMO.

Careers and Specs are just meta-labels. Driving interests. Doesn't mean the PC ever had a job doing the thing, it's flavor through mechanics - and vice versa. Talents are only extensions of Characterostics and Skills (for the most part). And would be more appropriate modifiers of what would be a child's very low base abilities, than allowing the achievement of Triumphs and 4 or 5 die pools.

IMO, of course.

[edit] But then again, I am also not a big (or even small) fan of the special snowflakes.

Setback Dice on Social encounters for sure, especially with adults. Multiple Setback dice if dealing with a culture that really disregards children.

Were it my game, I would handle the differences through RP. and Setbacks as Oden Gebhac suggested.

As it stands the PCs are the exceptions to the rules. So a 1-in-a-million child genius is completely reasonable at my table.

All very good points.

I like the 1 in all characteristics, except maybe one and that's definitely NOT brawn.

I also like the no ranks.

But then she's at a very big disadvantage in pretty much ANY situation in the game... If I play it that way, it'd only be fair and fun if the whole group was kids. Hmmmm

In other modern RPGs where character age is a meaningful dimension, I've seen the relevant luck-point mechanic being used to offset the drawbacks from being very young.

Unfortunately, this one doesn't have an individualized mechanic by RAW, but you could always bolt one on.

All very good points.

I like the 1 in all characteristics, except maybe one and that's definitely NOT brawn.

I also like the no ranks.

But then she's at a very big disadvantage in pretty much ANY situation in the game... If I play it that way, it'd only be fair and fun if the whole group was kids. Hmmmm

I think the important thing is: why do they want to be a child?

IME, special butterflies like this want to be a special butterfly because they are seeking more time in the spotlight, call me a cynic. But I don't indulge that kind of motivation. There's plenty of ways to make a unique character without trying to do something that's as potentially disruptively divergent from everything/one else, as this is.

If the player wants to do this because they really want to RP out what a child force user would experience in this world, then they should expect and be fine with the substantial mechanical disadvantage that a kid would be at, by any rational reckoning.

Maybe they'd be willing to be a little older? I could see myself allowing a 11-12 year old to be built fully as normal, just with Disadvantage dice handed out at GM discretion.

My 2 cred.

Yeah I offered her the options. If she really wants to role-play a kid, she will be fine with the disadvantages.

Otherwise she'll change her mind about the age.

I like your 11-12 suggestion though. I'll present that too.

Thank you!

I like the 1 in all characteristics, except maybe one and that's definitely NOT brawn.

I also like the no ranks.

.....................no... just no.

I get WHY you think this sounds good, but put it into the perspective of the actual story and narrative and not just some arbitrary penalty based on "reality."

This is Star Wars, not reality. Even the young spunky kid is able to run with the greats in her or her own way. A child slicer, engineer, thief, scout, droid tech, charmer and so on are all totally viable, and statistically identical to an adult counterpart.

Heck, the original pass on Hera was as a spunky kid engineer.

Some reasonable limits to prevent ludicrous bodybuilder children with similar adults-only professions makes sense. But turning a player character into almost a minion level NPC is just... lame.

I'd say the 10-11 range would be better, as well. A kid character can be successful and fun. Back in the day, I started a side campaign at work (I ran our deep nights team) in the WEG system, and had one player who hadn't played an RPG before choose The Kid as his template. He had a lot of fun playing the character, and it wasn't a hindrance to the game.

He'd been living on his own on the Wheel for a few years, since his parents died/disappeared. He "adopted" the nominal group leader, a Shistavanen smuggler, as his "Uncle Woof." He carried a dead, hamster-like pet in his pocket. And, having lived on his own for so long, was quite the little con artist.

Just don't. Any backstory should only have narrative implications, how are you going to explain her suddenly rapid progression in a couple of weeks of adventuring? unless you plan to run a game over a very long period of in game time and she will get to "grow up" i just think its not going to be an enjoyable character for the Player.

In the end you will be setting the difficulty of tasks for her character much lower just so she can pass, in which case you may as well have let her have the bigger dice pools to start with.

Dont think of these characteristics as being an exact representation of the pure strength of the character, rather they are a way of comparing them to the world around them and their ability to interact with it. eg She may not be the smartest person in the universe, but she is much smarter than other 8 year olds. I think what i would be asking the player to do is try to suggest age appropriate Actions for the character; they are not the PC who bashes doors down, but they can crawl through ducts others cant, then open the door from the other side.

PC's are the Heroes, not the plebs.

Yeah I remember the Kid thing from WEG... didn't the d20 system also have that?

And yeah I think Richard is right. Hmmm

Now if you do want to actually do this, there are rules in FaD for Juvenile Beasts (FaD p415), i would just use those to modify the species your player wants to use:

Decrease Silhouette by 1 (minimum of 0)

Decrease WT and ST to half (rounding up)

Decrease damage of any weapons to half (rounding up), I would only apply this to Brawl/Melee weapons where the damage of the weapon is a +X damage (Lightsabers, blasters and ships cannons don't care how strong you are, they still hurt the other guy)

Yeah that sounds fair! I'll see if she wants to do it.

Remember Anakin in Ep 1? He was a venerable 9. Yeeeah...

This player is asking about being 7... ... 7. That is very young. Like, gets along with toddlers better than adults, young.

Not just, "haha, I'm spunky and irreverent" young, that's like, "I can barely read and write, and am barely capable of the most basics of gymnastics" young.

The point is well taken about Star Wars not being reality, and the PCs are heroes, not just average joes, etc. etc. but 7 is just too young, IMO.

Good luck with whatever you/she decides.

Being the parent of an 8, 5 and 2 year old i can tell you the 8 year old has a lot more fun with older kids and adults than with the 2 year old. He also kills me in Dominion, rides just as far as me on his bike, bounces around the house like its a trampoline fun park, and climbs almost fearlessly. I do get your point, but i think the Juvenile Creatures idea does a good job of covering that difference.

Does your playgroup have the emotional fortitude to successfully manage outcomes of failure, including possible child-age character death?

Is this the same "difficult player" who wanted to RPG Venom: Jedi Knight a few weeks ago, and who then presented a different challenge when telling them, "No?"

To me, your question is less about simply slapping a juvenile template on any existing species, but more about how mature your players will be. What kind of game do they want for their characters, and how do they handle a child in the middle of a galactic war?

We here in the star wars community do not condone violence against children. We do however find it hilarious.

Does your playgroup have the emotional fortitude to successfully manage outcomes of failure, including possible child-age character death?

Is this the same "difficult player" who wanted to RPG Venom: Jedi Knight a few weeks ago, and who then presented a different challenge when telling them, "No?"

To me, your question is less about simply slapping a juvenile template on any existing species, but more about how mature your players will be. What kind of game do they want for their characters, and how do they handle a child in the middle of a galactic war?

The only question in there I can answer is: No, it's not the same player. That was a dude. This is a girl.

We haven't played yet. We're meeting tomorrow for character creation and background story evaluation (this is basically me saying yes or no to their background ideas)

Also some of them can't read english so I'll be going over all of the game rules, from dice system to character advancement to starship combat.

And a few are a little rusty on Star Wars lore, so I'll fix that as well.

I'd say it's hard to compare a child in Star Wars to a child in the real world, because the former exist in a universe where the story protagonists do amazing things, regardless of age. I mean, most 9-year-olds wouldn't be able to win a near deadly race against adult racers, or destroy an enemy station that TRAINED adult pilots couldn't. It doesn't matter whether the child is Force Sensitive or not - as the protagonist of the story, child heroes can do things most wouldn't expect of them, just like the humans of the story, even as adults, pull of things that most of us wouldn't be able to compare to.

In the end, go with what's enjoyable, and what fits with your table.

Or maybe, no skill ranks at all (until age ~10 or 12)? Only green die equal to Characteristics (selected/purchased as normal)?

I wouldn't allow this, as you can easily have kids who are highly skilled in things at that young of an age. I mean just look at the number of children who do martial arts, and who are really talented at it. That's technically skill. Or kid savants that are master programmers or engineers, who built their first computer from spare parts by the time they were 8. There's no reason a kid couldn't be good at things like that. In fact, I would say that skills is the one thing the child PC should be able to excel in. If you handicap the character too much, they won't be fun to play. If you limit their characteristics to one, this would hard cap them at 1 yellow die no matter how many ranks they put in the skill, until they could buy into Dedication.

Every specialization I can think of in this game, I can think of an example from the news about some genius kid who was super awesome at that thing. Complete with higher characteristic and skill ranks. So my thought would be as such:

1. All characteristics start at 1 (just like droids), but they can buy them up if they wish. However, and this is key they don't get any extra XP from their species amount to buy up those traits. That way if a PC really wants a 2 or 3 in some traits for their concept, they can totally do it, but it's going to cost.

1a. Conversely, you could be a little more generous, and say you can have 1 trait that starts at 3 (to reflect your savant-ness in that field, and your special snowflake PC status just like everyone else). Doesn't matter what species you are, all traits but that one, are 1. You get to pick which one it is, maybe you are a sickly Whipid (1 Brawn), but you are super smart (3 Int). Or a really burly Gungun (3 Str), but you're not as agile as the others (1 Agility), etc etc.

2. No limit other than the regular limits on skill ranks. Genius kids that are super awesome at things at a young age is hardly rare. The characteristic limitation will offset any massive investment into skills anyway. Besides, kids are known to pick up things really quickly when you expose them to it. So there really isn't any reason a kid couldn't learn astrogation, computers, mechanics, Knowledge, etc, if they are being inundated with it during a campaign. So no limit there. Buying new ranks would only get them additional green dice, but that's still really nice. Adding another dice to your pool is always really satisfying.

3. Lower their wound and strain thresholds by...maybe 1/4th? Don't want to make it so low they drop at a single attack, because that's just not fun, but they should feel more squishy than their adult counterparts.

4. If the campaign lasts long enough for internal game time to let them grow up, periodically uncap their characteristics to reflect this maturing nature. I personally would have any points they invested into those characteristics, to be on top of their baseline, this might technically mean they end up with cheaper characteristics in the long run, but personally, I feel the handicap they put themselves in, and the higher risk they took as a child PC, offsets that potential discount. Example: PC buys up their Wisdom from 1 to 3, only spending 50xp that way. Their race's baseline wisdom is 3 as an adult. In my book, that would mean they would be a 5 Wisdom once all is said and done. Yes this would mean they save 40xp compared to buying up to 5 as an adult PC at start, but they played at a major handicap for a long time. To me, that's a fair trade

5. I'd probably give them a flat setback die, or possibly a flat difficulty upgrade on any and all Fear checks, to reflect their developing emotional state, and feeling those things at a greater intensity than an adult would likely feel.

That's about all I would change off the top of my head.