I'd like to get everyone's feedback on an idea I had. As I'm growing older, I'm developing weird aches and pains, my hair is gone, etc. Occasionally some really weird #### will go on and I'm in the doc's office - you get the picture.

What if all characters ended up with a random flaw (or two)? In order to prevent the quick deletion of characters who got a "bad" flaw, these flaws would only set in as the character aged. Hitting age 50 as a human? Your eyesight might go. Too many battles? Might end up with a gimp leg.

Thoughts?

Make it where if the person takes an 'aging' flaw it restores/negates
one of the stat loss things.

Ex: Take 'aging (str dex or con)' and you randomly might get a gimp
leg or something like that when you hit an age mark, BUT if say you
took aging (str) then you lose one less con or dex for example when
aging. You'd have to take the aging flaw BEFORE hitting an age mark
that loses you some stats. or make it aging mentally or physically
if aging mentally you DON'T get an up in int or wis, but lose less
physical stats and get some wierd flaw like paranoia to represent
an onset of dementia??

Personally, I think that's a better way, but it might be too complex
for little gain other than 'color'. Still it's something to think on
'how to make an idea work instead of dismissing it out of hand'
(usually my super power. Hehehe)

I think this is an interesting idea.

It popped into my head because the grandkids have been wearking me out
lately, so aging was on my mind when I read the post.

You mention having to take the flaw before hitting an age mark... I thought you had to take them all very early, mechanically. Or are you talking about someone who sat (just sat) for 250 hours to get to old age?

These would be specific to aging.

Dementia-1
Every so often there's a chance of losing a skill %. Ideally, it would be infrequently used skills that decay but that's a lot more implementation work (unless there's already a LRU heap of skills or something).

Dementia-2
You start to "lose your concentration" even at 100% on spells.

Oseteoperosis
Bone breaking effects have a higher chance of success against you, and saves are harder.

Cataracts
You have a permanent case of blurry vision

Arthritis
Dex-based skills can occasionally fail completely because of this.

I mean it's like real aging.

But also it's like real aging!

I really like the idea of some randomness - it really adds to the roleplay - if it isn't in addition to the stat loss. That's just a double hit in the nuts for arial players.

Having something like a random firing mini-stroke where you are
garbled for X amount of time... Ack!

Random forget effects.

Dropping stuff like you've been greased.

Wow there are thousands of things.
and most of the actually effects can be twisted from things
already in the game. Muhauahahaha.

nt

Not really, and hey it's not like you can choose what race you are
or anything right? What I mean is basically, you can decide to lessen
loss of stats or change what sorts of things you lose in exchange
for something bad coming down on you that you cannot predict.
So while you would be able to choose to leave things as they are
or risk some f'ed up things to compensate for not losing say con
from old age. So maybe choosing what category of stats you DON'T
want to lose is a better way of putting it?

If you don't force people to take random flaws at all. Stat loss and gains reflect the aging.

As someone whose characters get old, I think the drawbacks of stat loss are quite enough.

I don't need incontinence on top of that.

nt

Occasionally startles me .. Hehehe.

I can't see giving people flaws as really adding all that much, especially on account of this idea would only really affect players who are playing out their character to the end. I'd rather people be encouraged to try and play age/con death, rather than find yet another reason not to.

-1 con, -2 str and -2 dex as a penalty of becoming "old" is already a drawback of aging, since it's doubtful anyone actually needs the 2 wis or 1 int that they gain.

It's just a bad idea all around to stack flaws onto the negative stat loss from age as well.

If anything, I'd like to see the stat loss from aging be LESS than it is now, like no -1con from middle-age/old (long lived characters already tend to lose con by dying more than average, so why punish their waning con further?), and maybe even make old only -1dex/-1str (and +1wis/int, though these are probably irrelevant to most chars who get that far).

Oh yea! Because a game as un-newbie friendly as CF (what with its unlabelled death trap/no recall/suicide rooms) and steep learning curve really NEEDS this added to the mix...

To sum it up with a word

'No'

Two words

'Bad Idea'

Most people will hate it.