Dynastic New Game+

Family Tree

I've long desired to run a dynastic campaign, importing something like Pendragon's "after every session/adventure/tourney/happening, a year passes", where eventually you're expected to retire your character and their heir takes over -- D&D meets Crusader Kings (Crusader Kings having been designed in a lab to be precisely catnip to Malimars).

But that's the only thing I really like about Pendragon, so I want to hack it onto a system I do like. Seems like a half-decent fit for Daggerheart, but I don't yet know the likelihood of persuading my group to try that one.

The Issue

The main problem with hacking it onto D&D would be: presuming not everybody retires at the same time (so, presuming elves and humans in the same party); and presuming I don't want any given character's heir to just automatically straight-up start at the level their parent retired at; how do I make a mixed-level party more or less balanced? How might I let one player do a New Game+ while remaining in a party with a player who just keeps playing their original character?

My second instinct is: abandon allowing mixed-level parties: heirs just start at the level of their parent, and/or every character always retires at the same time. But I low-key hate both of those options? I want players to have the option to play an elf (eg, one player just straight-up hates the dynastic game idea and wants to opt out -- if multiple players hate it, of course I would run something else). I want players to be able to pick when their character is done (perhaps using the aging rules from 3.5e to encourage done-ness, though that does hardly encourage spellcasters to retire). I want players to be able to play an Obi-Wan from the previous generation or a sidekick/apprentice from the next.

My first instinct is: something like beginning with magic items or Epic Boons or bonus feats or something? Like, establish some exchange rate: new characters begin with some amount of Stuff for each level lower your new character is than your old character would have been.

New Game+

Assumption, while we think this out:

Every time the party would level up (so, basically every adventure/delve, ish), some number of years passes. I was thinking 1d6 or 1d8 or 1d10 or 1d12, but randomness does us no favors here; another solid possibility is 5, plus or minus a few depending on DM fiat; another possibility is that it can depend on how successfully and effectively the adventure's task was accomplished, that a party gets a decade or two of peace if they completely smash it out of the park, only a year or two if they straight-up fail.

Perhaps, in the middle of some adventures, there could be an extra level-up point that applies only to characters of below the party's max level. If this were 3.5e and we were playing with experience, the increased XP and decreased XP-to-next-level from being lower level makes it balance; we need to approximate that with an inelegant hack, because we don't want characters who are behind to remain behind forever.

A new-generation character begins with all the physical loot of the previous-generation character they're taking over for.

A new-generation character starts at any level below the level of the previous-generation character they're taking over for (this may get to be a bit of a wibbly muddle if, like, one player's new character takes over for another player's old character, or two PCs get together and make babbies who then take over as new characters, or whatever, but ad hoc DM adjudication is a thing).

For each level so sacrificed, a new PC begins with an additional Thing (eg, 1st-gen PC is lvl7; 2nd-gen PC elects to begin at lvl3; the difference is 4 levels, so they begin with 4 Things).

What shall be the Things?

My first notion: each Thing is a rarity level of magic item. A 1-level difference lets you start with an extra Common item; a 2-level difference lets you start with an extra Uncommon item (or 2 Commons); a 3-level difference lets you start with an extra Rare item (or 3 Commons, or a Common and an Uncommon); a 4-level difference lets you start with an extra Very Rare item (or a Rare and a Common, or two Uncommons, or an Uncommon and two Commons, or four Commons); a 5-level difference lets you start with an extra Legendary item (or a Very Rare and a Common, or a Rare and two Commons, or a Rare and an Uncommon, or an Uncommon and three Commons, or two Uncommons and a Common, or five Commons), etc. You cannot begin with an Artifact (unless the previous-generation PC gained it during play, of course). Raising the question: can a level 5 character with a Legendary item (plus level ten character worth of miscellaneous loot) hold their own with a level 10 character (with only ten levels worth of miscellaneous loot)? Can a level 5 character with three Legendary items hold their own with a level 20 character?

Another notion: each Thing is a free bonus feat (and every so many Things is a free Epic Boon bonus feat? no, I think not, some Epic Boons may be fine for this purpose, but some are very powerful). Can a level 5 character with 5 bonus feats hold their own with a level 10 character (with only the normal number of feats)? And what happens to the bonus feats as the character acceleratedly levels up -- do they evaporate; do they start to occupy real feat slots as such become available to the character; something else?

One big issue is hit points. PCs progress fast in terms of HP, so monsters correspondingly progress fast in terms of how hard they hit. I think some kind of free bonus HPs may be the only thing to do here, though that is an inelegant solution. Maybe 5 bonus HP for each level you are different from the party's level (which you gradually lose as you level up faster than the party does, until you have 0 bonus HP when you reach the party's level)? No, I think I like this better: all characters have Hit Dice, and consequently HP, in accordance with the maximum level of the party, regardless of their character level.

Another issue is hitting power. PCs progress fast in terms of how much damage they do (doubling at level 4, among other things); monsters correspondingly progress fast in terms of HP. A single really good weapon and/or some bonus feats can make up this difference handily.

See Also

Forum thread on the topic

Update

A point was raised on Bluesky: "If you give a lower level character extra hp, and extra items, and extra feats, and let them do damage above their level aren’t they functionally just higher level characters?"

Which: no... but also yes? Reoriented my perspective drastically.

A new character shouldn't have to be exactly balanced with the old characters; there just needs to be some incentive to retire a character (the Aging rules from 3.5e might take care of that, though I might have to bite the bullet and ban elves, perhaps plus being generous with maimery), and maybe a very low-key bonus to ease the sting of starting at a lower level.

Or maybe instead of straight-up banning elves, resurrect the thing in earlier editions where you can level up a lot faster if you're a shorter-lived species? You can, if you do desire, eschew the whole conceit of the campaign by playing an elf, at the cost of your human companions ding lvl 10 -> start over at 1 -> ding 10 again a few times times over the course of the time it takes you to ding 10 once?

Age Categories in 5.5e

So, 5e and 5.5e doesn't have Age Categories. I'm on the record as enjoying aging effects, but admittedly, it does get a bit fiddly, doesn't it. Figuring out what age category an elf is as compared to a human of the same age, or whatever? Fiddly.

The Modifiers

I do rather like 3.5e's numbers:

• At middle age, a character gains -1 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha
• At old age, a character gains an additional -2 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha
• At venerable age, a character gains an additional -3 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha

So being Middle-Aged is strictly a sidegrade; Old is a downgrade (with a silver lining); Venerable is an even worse downgrade (with a silver lining). Extreme min/maxers might choose to be Old or Venerable; Middle Age is an eminently reasonable choice for a moderate min/maxer.

What Age Category Am I?

We can probably mostly basically just use 3.5e's numbers for what age category a character of a given species is is at any given age.

(I believe 5.x canon is that elves age like humans until adulthood, and then just stay there; the relevant 3.5e charts indicate that they used to definitively hit Adulthood at 110 years; we could split the difference and let them Young Adult at a more human-like age)

Aging Effects

I used to use specific year amounts for aging magic and effects, but I'm leaning towards, instead: you don't advance specific year numbers; if you fail a save, you straight-up advance an age category; elves just have advantage on the save.

Maybe mix it up with a touch of what 3.5e used to have you do for Negative Levels: at the end of the day, make a save vs it becoming permanent. ...no, I low-key hate that, because I hated that about NLs in 3.5e.

Ooooh, here's an idea: You know how if you have 6 levels of Exhaustion, you just straight-up die? What if, instead of death, if you have 6 levels of Exhaustion (perhaps: "and at least one of them is from a magical or supernatural effect"), you straight-up advance an age category? Or maybe you go unconscious at Exhaustion 6 either way, and if you fail a save you also advance an age category?

Random Regnal Nickname Table v3.0

So we have random regnal nickname tables v1 and v2. The first one creates very realistic, Crusader Kings/real history nicknames. Having now tried the second one, it turns out to create some very bizarre nicknames -- most rulers in real history don't have multiple nicknames, but this one generates mostly 2-3 nickname rulers. If you want a nice balance, consider:

Roll d20:

* 1-6 not noteworthy enough to have a nickname 

* 7-10 "the Noun" 

* 11-14 "the Verber" 

* 15-18 "the Adjective" 

* 19 Roll on Table 1 

* 20 Roll on Table 2

Youth Draining Spells

This post will detail what my methodology is like when I create things, how I like to always have an existing framework, however rickety, to hang any homebrew on. It probably tells you more about me than about D&D.

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So imagine that I want to return negative levels from this:

• There are no negative levels. In place of each negative level bestowed, the victim immediately ages 3d10 years. The victim may immediately roll a fortitude saving throw at the same difficulty as removing the negative level; if this saving throw succeeds, the aging is halved. If the victim receives a restoration spell within 24 hours, the aging is reversed; otherwise, it is permanent.

...to being what they're supposed to be (which I kind of do, I've changed my mind about their badness), but I still want to include spells which prematurely age foes, so I don't have to rely on infinite ciruja plants and resurrection for all my aging effect needs.

My first instinct is to find spells that bestow negative levels, because I've already (sort of) balanced aging against negative levels. But I can find only one spell that permanently bestows negative levels: energy drain. There are several which do so temporarily, including enervation and Fell Drain anything (sonic snap, let's say). So let's briefly analyze:

• Fell Drain Sonic Snap: 1 temporary negative level. SL2.
• Enervation: 1d4 temporary negative levels. SL4.
• Empowered Enervation: 1d4*1.5 temporary negative levels. SL6.
• Maximized Enervation: 4 temporary negative levels. SL7.
• Repeat/Twinned Enervation: 2d4 temporary negative levels. SL7/8.
• Maximized, Empowered Enervation: 4+1d2 temporary negative levels. SL9.
• Energy Drain: 2d4 real negative levels. SL9.

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I was going to say that if we're casting with a caster level of 12 or more, we could extend the spell to raise its duration to 24+ hours (maximum 30), thereby making it potentially permanent. But these spells all have a duration of Instantaneous, and are thus not affected by Extend Spell. Nuts. Same with Persistent Spell. Nuts.

Permanent Emanation affects only emanations (i.e., cones and bursts), and anyway is [epic] and doesn't affect the spell level. Might be able to fiat that permanency can apply to enervation, but it's not metamagic, doesn't affect the spell level, and costs XP.

Oh well. Let's say this:

• The difference between twinned enervation and energy drain is real vs temporary negative levels, and 1 spell level. So the difference between temporary and real is 1 spell level.
• If Extend Spell worked on enervation, it would increase the spell level by 1 and make it permanent at a high enough caster level. So the difference between temporary and real is 1 spell level.
• If Persistent Spell worked on enervation, it would increase the spell level by 6 and make it permanent under all circumstances. So the difference between  temporary and real is 6 spell levels.

Let's take the average, then, and say the difference between a temporary and a real negative level is 2 spell levels.

We're already several levels of abstraction in, and we'll get even more abstract before we're done, because there's simply very little to compare to. That's okay; I just want there to be some basis, however remote, for what I'm doing.

Okay, so, applying this psuedo-metamagic thing that makes temporary negative levels into real negative levels:

• Realized Fell Drain Sonic Snap: 1 negative level. SL4.
• Realized Enervation: 1d4 negative levels. SL6.
• Realized Empowered Enervation: 1d4*1.5 (but let's pretend, as long as we're abstracting, that a roll whose possible results are 1,3,4,6 is a 1d6, so) = 1d6 negative levels. SL8.
• Realized Maximized Enervation: 4 negative levels. SL9.
• Realized Repeat Enervation: 2d4 negative levels. SL9.
• Energy Drain: 2d4 negative levels. SL9.

Spells higher than level 9 don't matter and are ignored.

---

So now we have a kludgy, hacked-together, abstracted sense of how many negative levels it's appropriate for a spell of a given level to do:

• SL4: 1 NL
• SL6: 1d4 NLs
• SL8: 1d6 NLs
• SL9: 2d4 (or 4) NLs

Long ago, we made calculations and concluded that one negative level ≈ 14.6 years. So if we wanted to create a line of spells that drain youth, we could convert:

• SL4: 14.6 years
• SL6: 1d4 x 14.6 ≈ 36.5 years
• SL8: 1d6 x 14.6 ≈ 51.1 years
• SL9: 2d4 x 14.6 (or 4 x 14.6 ) ≈ 65.7 years

We could come up with a straightforward years/SL number, but spells are exponential in power, not linear: a level 8 spell isn't just the same as two level 4 spells, and a level 4 spell isn't just the same as two level 2 spells, and so on. We need a more complicated formula.

At this point, I vaguely remember from high school algebra how to tell my graphing calculator to do this, but I don't know how to tell Excel or Google or anything else to do it. To the fresh batteries cabinet to bring my graphing calculator back to life!

I asked it for a quadratic regression, because I couldn't remember what a quadratic regression is, and it gave me a terribly ill-fitting one. Then I asked it for an exponential regression, and it gave me one that fits very well: y=5.199*1.335^x, where y is years drained and x is the spell level.

• SL0: 5.20 years
• SL1: 6.94 years
• SL2: 9.27 years
• SL3: 12.4 years
• SL4: 16.5 years
• SL5: 22.0 years
• SL6: 29.4 years
• SL7: 39.3 years
• SL8: 52.5 years
• SL9: 70.0 years

Certainly not terrible. But hm: I kind of don't want there to be a cantrip that can age a person at all, and I kind of want the lowest level aging spell to take 1 year. So I'm going to finesse the numbers a bit and wind up with...

• SL0: 0.50 years
• SL1: 2.54 years
• SL2: 5.32 years
• SL3: 9.14 years
• SL4: 14.4 years
• SL5: 21.5 years
• SL6: 31.4 years
• SL7: 44.8 years
• SL8: 63.3 years
• SL9: 88.5 years

...good enough!

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Now, some fiddling to match these numbers up with dice... Consider this chart:




The coloured numbers indicate how many of that size die would be needed to average out to approximately the desired number of years. They are colour-coded: red is most accurate, orange less accurate, yellow even less accurate, and blue least accurate of all. We could just use all the red ones, substituting for orange ones when there isn't a red one at that level, but that winds up with an ugly and inelegant progression of 1d10, 2d8, 4d6, 4d10, 7d8, 10d8, 6d20, 16d10.

Imagine we want to use all the same size dice. If so, you can clearly see that the d8 column is the most accurate.

But I don't want to use all the same size dice, because I'm biased against rolling large numbers of dice at once. We could, oh, say, start at d4, and bump up a die size every time we'd be rolling more than 6 dice at once. Then let's smooth them out a little when the die size would jump 2 at once, or would stay the same for 3 levels in a row.

Instead, we will consider that many spells vary in effective based on caster level. Oho! Everything suddenly got really complicated all up in this joint.

Let's pretend that the average caster has a minimum caster level of twice the spell level, minus 1. Then let's cap each spell's effectiveness at, oh, let's say, approximately twice that. Let's aim for the spell reaching its target effectiveness halfway between when it can first be cast and when it caps out.

To simplify slightly, the SL2 version can just be a flat 1d4. And let's just skip a couple spell levels where they make it particularly awkward.

So let's go with this:

SL1: 1 year
SL2: 1d4 years
SL3: 1d8 years per 4 caster levels, up to 3d8
SL5: 1d8 years per 3 caster levels, up to 6d8
SL7: 1d8 years per 2 caster levels, up to 12d8
SL9: 1d8 years per caster level, up to 24d8

---

Negative levels automatically take effect, but you can save against them becoming permanent 24 hours later. Moreover, the relevant spells and abilities always call for an attack roll. So let's have, oh, let's say the ability to defend against it with a Fortitude save. No need for any of that touch or ranged touch stuff.

But then the question arises: why would a character ever cast any of these spells? If your target is already old, or you use the very high level ones, it might kill them. Otherwise, you might advance them an age category or two. I suppose 1, 3, or 6 irreversible damage to three ability scores is nothing to sneeze at. Even so, the level 1 and 2 versions will never do enough aging with one application to actually advance the target an age category.

So I'm thinking one of two things: either you gain X temporary hit point for each Y years you drain, or your age is reduced by 1 for each Y years you drain.

I don't really want youthening to be so easy, so I'm inclined towards the temporary hit point thing. Usually, you get 5 temporary HP per point of thing you do, but this does a somewhat greater number of points of things, so I'm inclined to say one per one.

Let's next consider what spell lists this line is appropriate for. Let's go with... Cleric, Blackguard, Blighter, Dread Necromancer, Hexblade, Mortal Hunter, Sor/Wiz. The classes with only 4 levels of spells don't get the weakest or the strongest one.

Soooo...

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Youth Drain, Least
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 1, Blighter 1, Dread Necromancer 1, Sor/Wiz 1
As youth drain, except the target ages only 1 year.Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 1 year old.

Youth Drain, Lesser
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 2, Blackguard 1, Blighter 2, Dread Necromancer 2, Hexblade 1, Mortal Hunter 1, Sor/Wiz 2
As youth drain, except the target ages only 1d4 years.
Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 5 years old.In addition, you gain 1 temporary hit point for each year the target loses. These temporary hit points last for 1 hour.

Youth Drain
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 3, Blackguard 2, Blighter 3, Dread Necromancer 3, Hexblade 2, Mortal Hunter 2, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Short (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One living creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
You point at your target and years evaporate from their lifespan. They age 1d8 years per 4 caster levels (maximum 3d8 years). This is never beneficial to the target.
In addition, you gain 1 temporary hit point for each year the target loses. These temporary hit points last for 1 hour.
Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 10 years old.

Youth Drain, Greater
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 5, Blackguard 3, Blighter 5, Dread Necromancer 5, Hexblade 3, Mortal Hunter 3, Sor/Wiz 5
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per 3 caster levels (maximum 6d8 years).Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 25 years old.

Youth Drain, Grand
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 7, Blackguard 4, Blighter 7, Dread Necromancer 7, Hexblade 4, Mortal Hunter 4, Sor/Wiz 7
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per 2 caster levels (maximum 12d8 years)Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 75 years old.

Youth Drain, True
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 9, Blighter 9, Dread Necromancer 9, Sor/Wiz 9
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per caster level (maximum 24d8 years).Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 250 years old.

Adjucating Aging Effects

So, as I said a few posts ago, I kind of like my solution to the problem of how annoying negative levels are to to be inflicted with.

But I'm pretty confident that my negative-levels-are-aging system isn't actually balanced against real negative levels, and inherently couldn't possibly be. And, though it makes the game easier and simpler for people who don't already know how negative levels work, it does make it more complicated for people who do. So I'm considering going back to the original negative levels system.

But I love aging effects, and want to them to matter in the game as much as possible. I've already got the rule that every time you're resurrected, you gain some age, but resurrection doesn't happen all that often.

There are only two monsters I know of (from sourcebooks I allow) that have age-increasing powers:

• The phane, an epic-level (CR25) monster which has the ability, after putting characters into temporal stasis, to age them at a rate of 1d4 years/round, no save. It specifies that targets take the physical, but not mental, effects of aging.
• The ciruja plant (CR3) from Dragon Compendium. After a fairly complex and reasonably easy-to-avoid process of paralyzing the victim then burrowing into their flesh, it starts draining youth at a rate of 1d10 years/round, no save. It, too, specifies that "this has no positive benefits for the victim", specifically calling out things that "might grow more powerful with age" (e.g., True Dragons).

Obviously, there's going to be an epidemic of ciruja plants growing everywhere in my campaign world very shortly.

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But this brings up a good point: I really should have rules for adjudicating harmful aging effects in general. Obviously, you shouldn't ever gain any benefit from being prematurely aged.

I'm going to immediately discard the possibility of "you advance an age category without gaining the benefits, but you could gain the benefits next time you advance an age category".

Instead, I propose this solution: characters, once they've been subject to such an effect, track their physical age and their mental age separately.

If you advance an age category in physical age, you gain the physical penalties. If you advance an age category in mental age, you gain the mental benefits. You can't die of old mental age, but once you hit Venerable you stop benefiting. You can die of old physical age once you pass Venerable.

Harmful effects, like the phane, the ciruja, or being resurrected, only ever advance your physical age. Beneficial effects, like reincarnate or any potion-of-youth type effects we might choose to include (probably necessary if age is to be an important thing, though I could be really mean and make them apply to both physical and mental aging at once), also only ever reduce your physical age.

This has the side benefit of doing away with the "age to Venerable. get reincarnated. repeat." cycle of infinite mental score increases.

I suppose it also means True Dragon advancement is mental, but that's unlikely to ever matter in a session.

It's one extra number to keep track of somewhere on your sheet, but it's worth it.

A Foot In The Revolving Door of Death

Everyone complains about the Revolving Door of Death in D&D. You die; so what? The cleric will just resurrect you. You lose a level, psh, you'll earn that right back soon enough.

The answer, as it frequently does, comes back to Calibrating Your Expectations.

A character needs to be 7th level to cast Reincarnate, 9th to cast Raise Dead, 13th to cast Resurrection, and 17th to cast True Resurrection. But how many of these kinds of casters are there, in a world where level 6 is beyond most of the greatest heroes of yore?

Maybe the absolute highest high priest of the most popular religion in the world is high enough level to cast Raise Dead. One guy in the world, aside from any PCs that might happen to get that high. If the king has donated a heck of a lot of money to the Church of Pelor, maybe the high priest will deign to bring him back after an assassination. Maybe.

This is especially true if you maintain, as in some campaign settings, that the majority of priests aren't even clerics, but Experts or Commoners.

Perhaps there are more druids around who can cast Reincarnate than there are clerics who can cast Raise Dead. But good luck finding a friendly druid to cast natural-order-defying spells on your whim. I've also broadened the lists for Reincarnate to choose from; you're more likely to come back as a creature of your type, but it's always possible that you might come back as a creature of a different type. It seems reasonable that the High Librarian of the Elves might decide not to respond to the Reincarnate spell if it would mean coming back in the body of, say, an orangutan.

I also threw on a rule that every time you get resurrected, in addition to the normal loss of level, your body ages by {1d20 minus your CON modifier} years. In higher-level games, where resurrection is common, this makes death a little bit more than a slap on the wrist, in the sense that aging is more permanent than level loss. Unless you get reincarnated into a new body, of course, which always starts out base Young Adult age plus 1d20-CON years.

Alternatives for Negative Levels

I don't know anybody who likes Negative Levels. Part of this is (a) the fuss of recalculating all your stats (without the corresponding cognitive reward of adjusting them upwards, as with leveling up) and (b) that the rules are (or are perceived to be) simply more complex than they need to be. Part of it is that (c) people just don't like becoming permanently weaker.

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On the subject of (a) and (b): I recently reviewed the actual rules for Negative Levels, and they're not actually quite as bad as I thought. I was under the impression that, if you gain a Negative Level, that's equivalent in every way to losing a level, and you immediately lose everything you gained at your last level. Not so! A negative level is effectively a template you apply to your character. You lose 5hp, 1ECL, and take a -1 to every attack, save, and check you make. If you're a caster, you lose one of your highest level spell slots. That's it!

Of those things, one is even partially beneficial (it's nice to get experience as if you're a level lower, though things like caster level suffer). You don't need to figure out what you last spent your skill points on or how many hit points you rolled last, you don't lose feats or class abilities (aside from the aforementioned spell slot), you don't lose ability score increases.

At least, not until 24 hours later, when your negative level transforms into level loss if you fail your save, at which point you do have to figure out all those things. But at least you don't have to figure them out while you're busy getting your life force sucked out by undead creatures!

(C) is something of a different story, though. This is one of many places where WotC decided to reduce the risk of actual harm to characters in 4e, and disposed of it entirely. On its own, this is a sound notion. So let's get rid of level adjustment in 3.5e.

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But wait! All the undead creatures that deal energy drain are balanced with it in mind! They will be rated as a higher challenge rating than they merit, if we take negative levels out of the equation!

We could simply remove energy drain altogether, and bump everything that had it down by a point of CR. But this has the unfortunate side-effect of making these monsters kind of samey. What's the difference between a wight and a skeleton, if the wight doesn't energy drain?

So what else can we do to replace negative levels?

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Consider the Wraith of Stargate: Atlantis, consciously modeled after vampires. They feed on human life force, sucking it out with a touch attack through an organ in the palm of their hand. The Wraith's victim ages swiftly into a decayed husk.

This winter, I was playing a lot of Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan, and it struck me that Demise incorporates a lot of aging effects. Traps, spells, resting, some monsters, all sorts of things can age a character quickly. Drinking certain potions can restore youth and vitality.

Yet D&D has almost entirely stripped out aging effects in 3.5e. There are rules for aging, but there are precious few ways a character might age, aside from the normal way we're all familiar with. Earlier editions had spells that aged a character, now replaced with experience costs. Perhaps there were good reasons for this. But premature aging is such a prominent trope in fiction that it's a shame to leave it out of D&D.

So let's replace negative levels with premature aging.

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One school of thought seems to hold that magical aging should reduce the character's maximum age (the point at which they keel over and die of old age, no resurrection permitted) without increasing their current age. Another holds that magical aging should straightforwardly increase your current age.

The justification for the former is that, for anyone dependent on mental ability scores, advancing through age categories brings bonuses. If your maximum lifespan simply decreases, then you don't reap the advantages of these bonuses. Most compellingly, the intelligence, charisma, and wisdom that you gain are supposed to come through experience, of personally living through those long years.

Certainly, there are some characters who might trade a -6 to physical scores for a +3 to mental scores, but that deal is lopsided for nearly all characters.

As for experience: we already have a system to keep track of that. You know what really comes of experience? Experience points come of experience. Ability score increases come of experience, but only every four levels, and they don't necessarily go into mental abilities.

Most importantly, if your maximum age simply decreases, then you're not aging. If Robert Patrick gets his life sucked out by a Wraith under this model, he simply remains the same for several seconds, then keels over of old age without having aged a day. That's profoundly unsatisfying.

So let's have magical aging just add to your current age. You may keep track of your character's chronological age separately from his physical age (the wrinkled old geezer may firmly insist that he is in fact 23), but that's not strictly necessary. Only physical age is important.

I do dispute the notion that older people are necessarily more intelligent, wise, or charismatic than younger people, but I suppose having nothing but penalties would run into the problem of (c) in the first paragraph. "Oops, my character turned 35, now he's weaker, slower, and less hardy, without anything else to show for it. I guess I should roll up a new one now." Having magically-earned years apply penalties only would fall into this trap, and be undesirable.

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So, having decided that energy drain entails adding years to a character's current age, let's consider how to balance those creatures that deal energy drain.

To keep these monsters properly balanced (assuming they're properly balanced in the first place; an assumption some may find laughable, but there it is), they should add enough years per energy drain that it will take as many applications of age to kill the average character as it would take applications of negative levels to kill the character. So we must answer these questions:

1.) How many negative levels does it take to kill the average character?
This one's easy: it takes as many negative levels as the character has levels. Well, okay, so it turns out the real question here is: what level is the average character? Setting aside the fact that Aragorn son of Arathorn, Conan the Barbarian, and any fictional hero you care to name is at most 5th level, I'm inclined to just say the "average" D&D character is level 5, if only because the highest-level campaign I've been involved with was level 10, and because after 10 is where balance between classes completely falls apart.

2.) How many added years does it take to kill the average character?
This one's a little trickier, because it comes in two parts: how old is the average character now, and how old will he be when he dies of old age?

Well, I don't think it's particularly a stretch to suggest that the average character is human. In D&D as in much literature, humans are treated as the baseline, the default, the standard to which all others are compared.

So let's go back to those aging tables. A human of a simple class (barbarian, rogue, or sorcerer), just starting out on his adventuring career, is 15+1d4 years old. A human of a moderate class (bard, fighter, paladin, or ranger) is 15+1d6, and a human of a complex class (cleric, druid, monk, or wizard) is 15+2d6. Which is to say, the average level 1 simple class human is 17, moderate is 18, and complex is 21. In this case, let's take "moderate" as a synonym for "average", so the average level 1 character is 18 years old.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure it doesn't say how many years it takes an average person to gain a level, possibly because this is nigh-impossible to quantify. After all, the majority of people go through their whole lives without ever making it past their first level of commoner. So I'm tempted to just say the average level 5 human of a moderate class is the same age as the average level 5 human. Again, 18.

Now, a human dies of old age at 70+2d20 years of age, or 91 years old. So if you age the average human by 91-18=73 years, he dies.

So, we've concluded that the average character is an 18-year-old level 5 human who will die in 73 years. 5 negative levels will kill him, so 5 applications of aging should kill him. Each energy drain should therefore age a character by an average of 73/5=14.6 years. Because this is D&D, that should be randomized.

In descending order, the 5 sets of standard dice that average closest to to 14.6 are 6d4, 4d6, 3d8, 2d12, and 3d10. In general, more than 3 or 4 dice are insufficiently random, and fewer than 2 or 3 dice are potentially too random, so I'm inclined to rule out 6d4 and 4d6 for sure. Because it's slightly harsher than the others, I wound up going with 3d10, but 3d8 and 2d12 would both be solid choices.

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As a post-script, I shall attempt to tackle the inevitable objection: what about elves and other long-lived races? Well, yes, what about them?

Under this system, it would indeed take about 29 applications of energy drain to kill the average elf. But that makes sense, doesn't it? An elf has a massive store of life force, that's why he lives for so long in the first place. Of course he's got plenty to spare.

Maybe it's unbalanced, then. An elf is, by his very nature, more resistant to energy drain. But also consider this: what is an elf's favoured class? Wizard (well, in my campaign's world, druid, but never mind that). Wizard is a strongly single-ability-dependent class, which benefits from intelligence and hardly cares about anything else. Up until venerable age, a wizard can only benefit from being prematurely aged. So the very race who is most resistant to energy drain is also the race that could tend to benefit most from energy drain! I call that satisfactory.