Would you play an elderly character? A female elderly character? If yes...

It's quite amusing how ancient, powerful male wizards are often portrayed as actual old men, while the mere thought of aging is enough to make ancient, powerful witches and sorceresses faint in despair. They waste their youth obsessing over magic and power, and then try to steal the beauty of others or conceal their decay in layers and layers of glamour.

Definitely. A character is a character.

Problem is I would try to put a voice to her, and my girl voices sound like bad trannies

It's like beauty is the only trait that actually matters for women.

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This. The spellcasters at least.

Mim could appear young and sexy if she wanted to. She just prefers to be a hag because she knows it fucks with people.

It seems to be a theme with sorceresses and witches. They can look hot or horrible if they damn well please. Most of them just choose hot most of the time.

idk man, sometimes evil old wizards look decrepit and gross too

evil magic is known to take its toll on the body and i think thats why evil witches look gross

not saying theres no difference in the way males and females are treated but i think in this case the difference is between wise old wizard and fucked up evil magic witch, not just male-female

I have done so before. An old barbarian tasked by his tribe from an occult ritual with guarding an ancient relic that was in a cavern that I never entered. Never questioned why he wasn't allowed to enter until a party came looking for something within the cave. Turned out the relic had been stolen before my guy was guarding it so he accompanied the adventurers to recover the relic and return it. Also did an aging paladin who worked as a guard captain nearing retirement but that story isn't as interesting.

I'm pretty sure monks stay perfectly formidable as they become the exact sort of elderly kung fu masters they learned their own skills from. I'm pretty sure that's even a class feature for them in a couple of editions.

The mercenaries, too.

Except when they don't.

YES! My last character was an elderly female character who was a swamp witch. It was a lot of fun, OP!

I recommend it. Cackling is really enjoyable.

A witch. Duh.

One day I want to play what is basically Kreia from KOTOR ||

I get the feeling a lot of male magicians could use their power to appear young if they wished, but choose to sport the bearded old sage look as a status thing. For them, looking elderly and wise is the goal, and the long flowing beard is synonymous with magical power and skill. Sort of like the staff and the pointy hat.

For female magicians it seems to be the opposite: The power to deny aging and remain young and beautiful is their status symbol. Sporting a wizardly beard wouldn't have quite the same impact for a woman. On the other hand, the ability to keep looking 18 when you're actually pushing 80 is a striking way to demonstrate talent.

And of course, being a pretty girl has other uses as well.

So I wouldn't necessarily say that appearance only matters to female magicians. It matters to male magicians, but in a different way...unless they're evil. It's often seems to be the evil wizards that choose to keep looking young and handsome.

Whereas female magicians traditionally have a higher tendency to be evil in general. Go figure.

For a gritty, medium to high powered space-opera
>Sheeba. Was a sort of space-ranger in youth, travelling from place to place as a stowaway on ships. Got into a lot of fights, saw some very strange things. Having nowhere to settle she continued her adventures into old-age. Of course now she needs a bit of back-up to keep going.
>This is her last her round. One last glorious look at the galaxy. She's interested in how long she'll last.
>She's quiet and little viscous, but less so than she was in youth. She'll gladly share stories and anecdotes of her past travels but will leave out details she finds too precious. She's afraid if she speaks these things to often they will leave her. Because of this many of her tales seem a little "off" or "hollow."
>Sheeba's normally decked out in an armoured spacesuit with all manner of tools and survival gear lashed to it. She fight's mostly from the shadows with a compact, magnetic carbine. If an enemy gets close she has long, curved dagger designed to puncture ship hulls. Her body and mind are weakened by age but many of her skills are still sharp. She's even developed subtle precognitive powers from some of her stranger adventures.
>At night she likes to sleep in the cargo bay. She was happy to have quarters at first but she couldn't hear the engine from there. No matter how much time passes the thrum of the ship will always be what rocks her to sleep.

Knight of Cydonia?

Cute older women are such a rarity in fiction.

Oh. but it is.

Would you go soft if she was giving you a blow job and she looked up at you with that one dead eye?

That depends. Would she be forced to punish me afterward?

I did, but it was an old lady-thief who constantly played up the fact she was old and looked so harmless to get everywhere. I'd walk with a stick despite not needing one and complain about eyesight despite it being perfect and deliver the mean sort of kick nobody expects in battles. Sure my fighting stats were crap but if they don't see your dagger coming it still hurts.

It was golden, actually.

Anytime we needed entry somewhere I'd be the one knocking on doors and asking if there was still some place to stay for a poor old lady, or some food, then I'd open a door or a window during the night to let the others in.

Or the rest of our party would do go around asking, saying "oh look we found this poor old lady on the road" and we'd be instantly thought of as good, respectable people.

The character I most enjoyed playing was an elderly fighter named Jericho, though he preferred to be called Grampa Jerry.
He was a hunter and helped keep watch for anything that could pose a threat to the small town he was born in.
He ended up signing on as a caravan guard after hitting it off with a merchants daughter.
He eventually wound up marrying the daughter and they settled down in one of the larger towns, she opened a shop and he joined the guard.
Lots of things happened but it left Jericho as a widower with no living children, he was already an old man and was starting to lose his memory.
His goal was to help as many young people as he could, seeing them all as surrogate children, before dying and joining his family.
His greatest fear was to continue living when he was already forgetting the people he loved.

See, somehow that makes a character instantly more interesting than the "I was raped and my parents murdered" crap background trope.

Only character I ever played that was old was my Human Hexblade. And he was only old because he aged.

When I started the game he was 21 years old. Young and head strong, he believed he could take on anyone and everyone. As the campaign progressed and the years slipped by he grew old. He watched his friends die and a kingdom fall in a war that was not their own. I quit playing him at the age of 65.

I wasn't actually talking about anything as specific as the effects of the wise use of magic and the reckless abuse of unholy sorcery.

I just meant women dread looking like hags, while men generally don't give a shit. Take Elmister and The Simbul as an example. Both are unbelievably ancient, but while he has no problem to expose his apparent age, she takes great care to appear as young as possible, her appearance contantly oscillating from a 25 y old girl to a 40 y old woman.

I thought the same. There's a lot of ass-kicking old monks in popular media. For some reason, the old age does not affect them at all.

That absolutely batshit insane witch was the single best thing in the movie. I fucking love how she does not give half a shit about looking gorgeous, instead prefering to troll people with disturbing transformations.

The only thing about playing an Elderly character I find is starting at level 1, especially with background like in 5e, there's not a lot to go on.

Ofcourse you could do the whole "I'm a little rusty" thing but it doesn't explain how the 18 Year Old Farm boy Fighter is around the same level of skill as your 68 Year Old Paladin

You know?

Their reasons sounds so vapid and shallow in all honesty. They truly make justice to the saying "men ages like wine, women ages like milk".

Frau Totenkinder was a pretty nice example, but then this happens..

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I played an old man in a GoT RPG once. He was crazy, vulgar, and lived in his own house off in the woods away from the our group'so keep. He could also fight better than half the party.

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She was a lich, right? She was never referred to as such, but she seems to fit the description, ie an undead sorcerer/necromancer.

That is fucking cool. I love the "naming things of power" trope.

My current Vampire the Masquerade character is a bubbly old Italian-american lady who mostly sits in Elysium reading and gossiping about what the young kids are up to these days. Kind of chubby, walks with a cane because of arthritis, going a little deaf.
She's also, as it turns out, a massively powerful necromancer who's been quietly amassing an army of ghosts for when shit inevitably goes down. Half of these ghosts are dead vampires that got killed thanks to Camarilla politics and are pretty happy with getting to even the score.

The great thing about being elderly in WoD is everybody assumes the important people are young and sexy and glamorous. You can completely slip under the radar by being a bit wrinkly and pudgy.

Yup

>built Granny, a level 20 grave walker witch
>goes around in a wheel chair pushed around by a zombie
>spends most of her time possessing undead
She's actually one of the strongest characters I've ever built.

>Would you play an elderly character? A female elderly character? If yes, what are your ideas to make him/her interesting?

My adventurers tend to skew older and I've played a couple women so...

One was a Druid of the Children of Winter in Eberron. Their whole deal is that they believe a plague/disaster is comming that will cleanse the world of life and leave only the strongest behind. They have a fascination with vermin. She was particularly interested in wasps, ants, and other colony insects, believing that there might be some secret to their survival that mortals could emulate to survive the coming apocalypse. She began adventuring in order to better understand how outside society was actually functioning in relation to her ideals and actively seek out signs of the apocalypse.

>One of my favorite characters I ever played was an elderly Voodoo King in a modern setting. He was mostly support but also cooked and kept those whippersnappers in check.

I've also played a couple of voodoo queens/mambos/obeahs/santeras. Classic old wise woman/witches. One of my favorite games is Tribe 8, and these kinds are basically the leaders of society in that setting.

In Heavy gear (another similar setting) I played an older veteran Gear pilot.

Sometimes I prefer to DM, because it makes me feel less creepy for playing a diverse variety of characters. I like playing older/younger, different genders, different outlooks, etc. As a player, such characters are a little more likely to seem special snowflakey or magical realm at first, which can put other players/DMs off.

Somewhat of an older guy, at least older than the rest of the party.

A partially insane hobo the party bumped into on the way to the plot after my last character died, who decided to follow them because he was bored, had nothing better to do, and fighting an emperor of the nation he was a hobo in sounded fun.

He also happened to be an incredibly powerful Warlock who made a number of pacts with creatures for power and extended life(mechanically, a 4e Vestige Pact Warlock).

Later in the plot after the evil emperor plot, he eventually ended up being the only party member left of that group, and the subject of many a legend afterwards.

He also ended up taking Vecna's job after the campaign went full mythic tier adventures and we killed him and a Demon Lord, who's name escapes me right now.

>I thought the same. There's a lot of ass-kicking old monks in popular media. For some reason, the old age does not affect them at all.

In Asia, it's not (just) about your muscles. It's about your fighting spirit/enlightenment.

Carrying buckets of water and punching the same tree and doing 1 million leg kicks isn't about building muscle. It's about building resolve and focus.

>Would you play an elderly character? A female elderly character?
Do a Nosferatu "orphan mother" character concept count?

One of my favorite characters was a half elf nearing death. He was somewhere around 140, very close to the age he'd die.
He'd done everything, more or less. He'd learned magic, fought in wars, got married, cheated on his wife with an elf, got some commendations and land, all the adventuring stuff.

The people he adventured with had greater ambitions, when he stopped, they moved on. The Wizard went mad and led a doomed cult the army cut down. The Knight married well and eventually died. The orc sired a clutch of children and became a warlord somewhere to the west. Even his dwarven friend died, some thirty years ago to a bad heart. The druid is gone now, to other world in need of her.

So now he's ancient in a human kingdom, unremembered, surrounded by relatives he doesn't know, and with a bastard elven son who's frightened by how quickly the old man is dying.
His family looks upon him as a respected stranger, the commoners who once cheered his name pass him by without a second glance and the nobles who know of him look down with scorn and clear contempt.
He's going off on one last adventure, even though he's forgotten nearly all the magic he knew, he's nowhere near strong enough to fight, and too slow to run. He was Dunaewen Gildorfin and this time they would not forget his story.

I played him like an old fashioned, out of touch chivalrous knight (in the GMs gritty, dark game) who did everything he could to promote the group's deeds and names, making sure to sing songs of valor, befriend everyone and give everyone a fair chance. He ended up realizing that nothing he did could truly last the ages, that the gods weren't going to make him young again and that he was going to die, the same as everyone else, which he did, just short of the final fight. (Red Hand of Doom)

My excuse for why my 40 year old combat veteran was the same starting level as the party was that he had broken his spine and was still rehabilitating. The party was shocked when he was suddenly brought back to full strength (by dark magic) and started slaughtering things due to the effects it had on his mind.

You sound like you use your characters to escape.
That's what I do. I play basically anybody BUT myself.

>Ctrl+f "Weatherwax"
>0 results
Veeky Forums, you disappointed me.

Granny Wetherwax

Fuck, that sounds awesome. I love wheelchair/chair bound caster types.

Had an idea for a skilled old blacksmith character, who envisions guns as a weapon when he was younger on his old adventures. By the time the beginning of the campaign roles around, the smith has finally succeeded in creating a basic gun. Something like a six shot revolver. So he embarks on the quest with the party to test out his new weapon. The reason he gets to grow along side all these youngsters is because he's using his prototype weapon for the first time.
I'd imagine him as something like the old man from Without a Paddle.
youtube.com/watch?v=BLNQrlY4HMY
Of course, this only happens if the DM allows me to inject my boner for gunslingers in his game of swords and sorcery

I don't think I do. I like who I am as a person and am very content with my life.

I very much enjoy the great variety of backgrounds, outlooks, and appearances found in humanity juxtaposed against the universality of the human condition.

I'd say I'm more of an explorer.

I recommend you don't do it. Having guns in a swords and sorcery campaign just wont work.

I'd recommend waiting for a campaign that allows gunslingers or changing the gun to something else

There's an Exalted quest going with a Sidereal who Exalted at like 80 after she retired from her work as 'not a spy'.

In Feng Shui, "Old Master" is the hands down *strongest* PC starting class.

i didn't literally mean the actual game swords and sorcery if that changes anything. I just meant in general a world that typically uses bows swords and magic. I admittedly have a boner for injecting guns where they don't belong.
I blame bloodborne.

While most old cultures respected/respect the elders, china (and therefore all cultures influenced by confucianism) was obsessed with this. It's against their cosmovision to invent fantasy where being old is bad and you will only see it if there's a very powerful reason. Often, if the old man is physically weak, he is granted other qualities that compensate it.

played an angry old hobgoblin woman
constantly told people "they would regret this"
>this being literally anything at the time, no matter how minor

My Twilight is as old as the DM would let him be. I wrote him as a thaumaturge that went on one last job before retiring and then shit got crazy and he Exalted. I play him as cynical and a little paranoid, and inclined to think of his circlemates as slightly foolish and in need of supervision. This being Exalted, he's right.

"Names have power", they say..

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Counterpoint.

To live is to suffer.

>Conan-esque half naked barbarians
He must be feeling cold.

It's bitterly ironic how, nowadays in rural China, old people too weak to walk let alone work are abandoned in the wilderness to be eaten by animals or starve to death.

In case my first char dies I think it could be fun to play an older man.
Hopefully with something like high strength low dex, or low con.

I played an old paladin woman before.

Her motivations for adventuring again after decades was basically a mixture of boredom, loneliness, helping out an old friend, and feeling the world was just worse and more confusing than ever and thus her work wasn't done.

I really had a lot of fun trying to play somebody who was out of touch, occasionally confused, and grumpy as all hell, but always largely selfless and a true paladin. She just needed a bit of direction from the rest of the party, but cared for them back. She was sort of a mother/grandmother figure of the party and sometimes the moral center.

Best granny.

Well, why not?

youtube.com/watch?v=3EtByaOxiwE
Remember moments like this.

I've had a player who specifically said he wanted to play a kreia type character before, and the result was basically an Ayn Rand sorcerer the other PCs ended leaving behind sealed in a cave because he was a jackass who talked down to them and refused to help when they needed it.

What I mean is Kreia is a complex character so if you wanna try to play somebody like her, you need to try to study her and make sure you get it right.

If adapted to Mage the Ascension, would Madame Mim be a Verbena? A Marauder? She seems to be at least a Master of the Life Sphere.

Her battle against Merlin is surprisingly brutal.

youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VpkXd1TKA

I recently mad ea character based on don quixote, he has phisical limitations and disavantages but i compensate it with intellect.
He can avoid fights or end them pretty quickly with less effort thanks to experience.
I am having a lot of fun with him, and i'm glad i had the random idea of making an old knight that was tired of retirement and wanted adventure back into his life.
I am only hoping any drawfags will draw him, but i had no luck so far.

I wouldn't mind playing a knobbly-kneed gnarled-son-of-a-bitch Monk sometime.

I like these character models a whole lot.

I also like how they are attractive but look to be in their 40's or so.

Do I look like a pleb to you?

Ah. my sensei-fu. Excellent taste.

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Her waist weirds me out every time.

>Would you play an elderly character?
Gladly. Closest I did play was a middle-aged man.

>A female elderly character?
Unlikely. Wonder if speaking a gendered language makes it less appealing.

>If yes, what are your ideas to make him/her interesting?
Pair him up with an elf of the same age. Probably make them old friends, too.
Make him fairly incompetent - and blaming it on his age.
Have him threaten people with curses and fiery damnation. Without any magical talent, obviously.
Give him lots of largely inconsequential contacts from his backstory. Most don't remember him.
Make him new at adventuring for whatever reason.
Make him a young bloke hit by an aging spell and actually enjoying the benefits of being "old".

Not all at the same time, of course.

Stopping to think now... really really old elves start to look decrepit too or they keep being pretty and fabulous until the very end?

who is she?

Really old elves become angrier and they shrink, strength generally increases and they also get more body hair

Thats fucking awesome user

Depends on the setting!

I'd say they age differently from humans, to an extent where non-elves wouldn't be able to tell easily.

God what a great scene

stat her

I once played an old, tough, cynical Russian Babushka who was an ex-adventure, but due to my tracksuit wearing grandchildren who spent all my gold, had to get back into the adventuring business.

She thinks current adventurers have it easy. Back in her day she remembers adventuring for 2 silver coins and a loaf of yesterday's bread and she liked it. A lot of her humor was based off of Yakov Smirnoff