Hello!
After a long break, I'm back.

So I'm surprised I haven't through of this before, and even more surprised when I went to look in the books and found nothing about it.

Where do we find information on how certain species age!?!? A friend asked me about how Togrutas are and I couldn't answer him!

Wizards of the Coast included ages of many species. Wookieepedia will include them if they exist, but you can find Ultimate Alien Anthology for a big list.

Wookieepedia says nothing about Togruta's age...

I know that Cerean men age very quickly showing a large amount of gray hair way before they are 40, this combined with the low birth rate of men makes it as to why they are Polygamous.

Ahsoka seemed to age roughly on par with Humans. No mention of her actually being 6 or 600 or anything silly like that. She's 14ish when we first see her... she seems 19ish when she leaves in season 5...

Only weird thing about her is her choice in clothing. Tube-tops aren't exactly what I'd consider Clone War appropriate attire....

According to Ultimate Alien Anthology, Togruta live roughly as long as humans, about 95 years. The difference is they apparently age better than humans, with their middle age being 55-74.

For most species it's the same as for a human. I think the longest lived species in the books that are already printed would be Hutts, who live 1000 years or so, Whiphids who live to 250, and Muun, who average 100 years.

Given that there is cloning and all sorts of crazy medical technology in Star Wars I wouldn't rule out that there are means of increasing your life span, or at least, maintaining youthful appearance for longer as well.

12 hours ago, baterax said:

Hello!
After a long break, I'm back.

So I'm surprised I haven't through of this before, and even more surprised when I went to look in the books and found nothing about it.

Where do we find information on how certain species age!?!? A friend asked me about how Togrutas are and I couldn't answer him!

There's really not much point to devoting page space to aging rates for the different species. It's the rare campaign that's going to have PCs move from one age category to another (such tween to adult or adult to middle-aged). WotC's various Star Wars games had it because it was based on 3rd edition D&D, which pretty much tried to categorize all the things. WEG's D6 never bothered, even having certain templates (The Kid and Young Jedi) be on par with the adult templates in terms of starting allotments of attributes and skills.

Mechanically, there's probably not a lot of difference between characters of the same species but in different age categories. To use Rebels as an example, you've got Captain Rex who probably counts as being "old" given his accelerated aging process, but he's still able to keep up with younger combatants such as Zeb and even keep pace with Kanan and Ezra, both of whom are Jedi in their physical prime.

With a few exceptions (Wookiees and Hutts) most species in Star Wars tend to age at about the same rate as Humans would, some a little better and some a little worse.

Also worth noting is that with the compressed ability scale (compared to D&D and some others), even one point of difference is a huge change. The galactic average of 2 in all/most abilities also represent people at both ends of the age spectrum as well as differing physical ability and fitness. I think that this is probably best handled narratively, with young/elderly PCs who roll well summoning reserves of will & effort.

I think that changing stats to represent aging is more work than it's worth. For me, that kind of granularity just isn't worth the extra bookkeeping in this system.

Age is generally very hard to do mechanically anyways, because the vast majority of roleplaying games are predicated on the idea that you get more powerful as you play. That makes sense for a story where you're young and inexperienced and you grow along with the story, but it doesn't make any sense if you're stepping into the role of an older character who already has a lifetime of experience. I mean, every single traditional white bearded wizard in RPGs has to go through like 10 levels of just being mechanically nonsensical, because you just wonder how someone spent 100 years of their life accomplishing nothing and then suddenly experiences a meteoric rise to being a powerful wizard.

9 hours ago, SFC Snuffy said:

Also worth noting is that with the compressed ability scale (compared to D&D and some others), even one point of difference is a huge change. The galactic average of 2 in all/most abilities also represent people at both ends of the age spectrum as well as differing physical ability and fitness. I think that this is probably best handled narratively, with young/elderly PCs who roll well summoning reserves of will & effort.

I think that changing stats to represent aging is more work than it's worth. For me, that kind of granularity just isn't worth the extra bookkeeping in this system.

At most, if you're going to have a mechanical effect for a PC being too young or too old, then I'd say don't go any further than a single setback die to checks involving certain characteristics.

Perhaps a setback die on Brawn and Agility checks (barring combat and possibly piloting checks) for the old folks crowd (those in the senior citizen range) to reflect that they're bodies aren't quite as up to snuff as they used to be, while a setback die on Cunning and Intellect checks for kids (pre-teens mostly, maybe tweens) to account for their mental reasoning abilities still being in development and not always being able to think things all the way through.

This is bearing in mind that as PCs, these characters are inherently remarkable individuals, so their age, be it really young or really old, shouldn't be a severe limiting factor in their ability to do things. In terms of task difficulty, a lone setback die isn't that much of a hurdle to overcome, and for certain tasks a setback die is easily removed; Rex might be up there in years by the time of Rebels, but he's probably got talents that remove setback dice from most physical-based checks, so his age doesn't really slow him down all that much.

Not that I'd ever use such a thing myself, especially since most of the PCs in my games (whether I'm running or playing) tend to be in the 16 to 40 age bracket, i.e. individuals that are in both their physical and mental prime.