What is the ideal age for a fantasy adventurer?

Going by the narratives that provide the foundation of the fantasy genre and the story of the hero's journey? Young, usually an age where they set off on their own, an age of independence where there's a lot of room for growth and exploration in their lives. In our culture, 18, though early twenties to mid thirties given how long we've been living and how prolonged adolescence has become (without getting into any "I'm angry! Angry about millennials!" shit).

After that, you start getting saddled with adult responsibilities, families, children, saving up, having a job, retiring... There's really not a whole lot of room for exploration when you've been anchored down by more important things, and very little room for growth left. A fifty year old man probably isn't going to fit the narrative of someone learning and exploring the world, and bringing back that knowledge to help his own people. Really, at that age heading out on an adventure is just extended suicide; you've already done your growth, and now you're taking one last job doing what needs to be done to keep what you've built for yourself and your legacy going, even if it kills you.

Depends on what you are after, I mean a slightly immature character who's just starting out and going to make mistakes fits better at 17 or so, while if you want someone who is going to seem appropriately competent I'd suggest something like 23
>semen demon.
Nanako is pure! You're just playing the game wrong!

...you really are using this pic for this question?
I have played that game user. I know what happens to that girl. I hope this thread is purged for your sins user.

Depending on the system, anywhere between 5 and 25. In most fantasy systems a level 1 character is so incompetent I'm impressed that you don't have to spend skill points to tie your own shoes.

Depends. What race are we talking about? Also, how is the healthcare? Can clerics patch you up as good as modern medicine or will one arrow to the knee end an adventuring career?

If we go with modern standards, I'd say early 30's. Your body isn't fighting against time yet and you should have enough life experience to make decent choices.

20-40

As every character should be

I think that makes the most sense. After wanderlust is over, you want to have the financial support in order to settle down. That can be acheived with the trove of treasure that you have likely collected through your journeys, and have already seen what you are looking for.

After that is medieval family life on a farm somewhere.

If they're old enough to be working a job in the setting, they're old enough to be adventuring. I'd say 16, maybe 15 at the youngest.

Late teenager although if you want to push it you can even go as low as just below the teen years if the story is more straightforward or noblebright. A good adventure should never start at a characters prime or at a stage where he is truly rock solid in his beliefs, that should be an accomplishment gained by the end. There needs to be growth, change, and learning. Adult can also work well if they had a life experience that shook their foundations. Slavery, poverty, death of loved ones, yadda yadda.

I'd have to agree with you here, except in the case of the job in question requiring an apprenticeship or education like with being a wizard
Nonhumans have their own standards of course

Old enough to have finished growing but still young enough to be stupid and reckless.

Depends on what you're going for. "Teenage hero with a ton of potential" is fun, but so is "Old badass whose best years are behind him."

>In our culture, 18, though early twenties to mid thirties given how long we've been living and how prolonged adolescence has become (without getting into any "I'm angry! Angry about millennials!" shit).

on that note, the 2e complete barbarian's handbook actually states that, for cultural reasons, a level 1 barbarian can be as young as 13. it says that because barbarian life is often nasty, brutish and short, they have no time to waste, and tend to confer the rights and responsibilites of adulthood on people as soon as possible.

A little off topic, but did that show actually take place in Mystara or any of the proper D&D settings?

>18, though early twenties to mid thirties given how long we've been living and how prolonged adolescence has become

>staying at home because there is no other financially sound option is adolescence

You got it backwords, dummy

Gotta be at least 200. Any younger than that is just reckless.

You're projecting awfully hard there user

Nobody said anything about your parents threatening to kick you out if you didn't start paying rent

Not on the clock, climb on my cock.

Yeah that sounds pretty reasonable. Why do sorcerer and wizard have different dice pools for starting age, though?

Sorcerers have innate magic, they don't have to learn it, while wizards have to learn magic.

This.
Being in your physical prime is one thing but knowledge and experience while still being "near-top" physically fit is much much better.
Your earlier years of physical peak are for bouncing back from mistakes.

That said no one really likes reading stories about the "Middle Aged Adventurers!" so there is that.

That's for humans ofcourse, an elf in most setting for instance can pick up physical peak and years of experience at the same time.

>Really, at that age heading out on an adventure is just extended suicide; you've already done your growth, and now you're taking one last job doing what needs to be done to keep what you've built for yourself and your legacy going, even if it kills you.

People think this is a bad place to start a narrative. If you needed proof Veeky Forums and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the fantasy genre as a whole is creative bankrupt just see the quote above; then think to yourself how many stories you see that have protagonists that aren't some variant of the 20-something !American white guy with no responsibilities.

>age of adulthood for humans is 15

Why is 3.X/Pathfinder so retarded?

Because in the age D&D tries to emulate it is not uncommon for a 15-16 year old to be more or less independent.

I don't have time to write why AD&D is superior to every new edition.

Why are you so retarded? 15 is a perfectly reasonable age of adulthood. (History records general variation around 12-21 in most cases.)

The age of dragons and dwarves? Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk is not emulating middle-ages Europe.

I once had a player play as a four year old. No lie.

Judaism put the age of adulthood at 13 loooooong before the middle ages. 15 is hardly out of line.

>That said no one really likes reading stories about the "Middle Aged Adventurers!" so there is that.
It's like you've never even heard of the Black Company, user.

Depends on the setting, the campaign, and the individual. I usually go 18-30, when they're still around their physical prime.

I had an ancestor in the 17th century that got married at age 8 and had born at least one kid before she was 12, according to Mormon genealogy records (which were probably cribbed from Catholic church records). Like, I'm willing to hope they maybe got some numbers wrong, but still.

Who let Aragorn into this thread?

If I'm not mistaken, adolescence is a fairly recent concept. Like, in the last couple hundred years when people began to understand how the brain works and develops.

Way back when, you were an adult when you were mature enough to act like an adult.

I think that's at least half-right, but I have trouble imagining a 15-year-old acting like an adult.

People were expected to have more responsibility in medieval times, especially when the average person lived much shorter.

You lack imagination, then. While I had the usual teenage conceits, I was perfectly capable of behaving like an adult at that age. It's a matter of how the kid is raised - give them responsibilities early on, and they learn to be responsible quickly.

People were commanding warships and winning battles at that age.

The infantilization of teens is a relatively recent phenomenon.

While they were insinuating that one or more of their colleagues were insufficiently endowed, I guess.

While hormone-wise and sex-wise they were still pretty stupid (that's a biological thing), there's lots of young conquerors and warriors in history.
The fact is in modern society we insulate our teenagers from the consequences of their actions, so basically from age 10 to 18 nothing they do matters or helps them learn in the real world because for many next to no actual responsibility is given to them at all unless the individual parent determines that they need some.
That's why so many early collage kids make so many mistakes in the US; they are allowed on their own for the first time and many never really learned the maturity needed to handle adulthood and so have to learn really fast and really hard that they weren't well-prepared for life after high school.

In history you have guys like the not even 20 yet Edward the Black Prince proposing a strategy that involved the burning of much of the French countryside and killing of many peasants to cripple France's long-term ability to wage war even though some of the older men around him were rather appalled at the sheer viciousness of the strategy because Edward knew that that was the only way to ensure the French didn't win back Britains initial gains.

Shit - talking isn't exactly recent, either.
Just read Shakespeare.

Most of the Shakespearean dick jokes that come to mind were spoken by teenage male characters, but I'll admit it's not my forte.

Ther have been remarkable RPG-worthy individuals like Joan of Arc and Alexander the Great start their journey at tender ages, It certainly isn't unusual for people to strike out on their own, with or without land, early on in the past.

I doubt he read any fantasy at all. The middle aged soldier is a classic archetype.

>Like, in the last couple hundred years when people began to understand how the brain works and develops.
Part of it had to do with the general irrelevance of the development of the brain and its attendant functions to the livelihood of the average person.

In the pre-industrial world, the vast majority of people made their living through manual labor. A teenager was an adult because that's the age where you've basically reached your full size and can now perform enough labor to support yourself.

Napoleon was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the French Army at the age of 16 and that was in 1785. It wasn't unusual for people to start pursuing careers as teenagers until fairly recently.

No, it didn't.

>Elf: 110 years
Pathfinder is retarded. This doesn't need to be a question

Elves have always become adults at high ages. Here is a picture from the 5th edition rules. I only used Pathfinder as an example as it adjusts by careers.

Did he, though?

That's not a teenager thing, user. That's a military thing.

What they physically LOOK like at different ages depends on the setting though.
In Greyhawk they age like human of equivalent age group until they hit 100-ish at which point they stay relatively young-looking, but in Forgotten Realms they physically mature at human rates but aren't considered adults until they're 100-ish, and in Dragonlance they stay young looking but ages elves look OLD and not necessarily like well-preserved people in their 40's, and in Eberron they age at physically human rates again and so on and so forth.

>bunch of young adventurers
>Party Dad

There is no greater party composition.

This, having a wise cleric to act as a moral compass for the rascals that make up the party is important

>wonder why parents in fantasy worlds always try to keep their rebellious children from having adventures
>have kids myself
>oh fuck God no

By the age of 15, a young nobleman would have been training as a page for up to 8 years. That's almost a decade of on-the-job training to become a badass warrior.

>bunch of young adventurers
>Party mom

>Not both
Fun for the whole family.

Old enough to know better, Young enough not to care.

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It was thanks primarily to the idea of schooling.

Prior to that, most people would simply work with their family and learn "on the job." So by the time you were 10, you probably had a good understanding of your father's profession, by the time you were 13 you'd be able to run the place if he died.

At that point, you'd be considered an adult and typically by about 15-16 you would get married and be out on your own.

Once schooling got popular however, people would be 10-13 and they wouldn't have the actual life skills necessary to do a job. So parents had to start taking care of their children longer and longer.

Now some people are in school until they're 30.

11-13

I want to hear this story

You.

People like you are why I post porn crops.

Every time, there's going to be that one guy who gets indignant. Every time, I pokerface and go "dude, it's just a funny image I found on reddit." Every time, it's fucking hilarious.

I won't say I outright masturbate to the thought of people like you getting yourself in a self righteous indignant fury only to be revealed as the only weird perverted deviant at the table, but I will say that I imagine this is what it feels like if your personified ego rubbed one out.

All you had to do was ignore the bait. But you couldn't.

Oh god, it feels so good.

what is the game anyway? Google finds some more copies of the image but no conclusive source answer.

>Every time, I pokerface and go "dude, it's just a funny image I found on reddit." Every time, it's fucking hilarious.
Oh and also, Pineapple Ami D. is my favourite and standard go-to user avatar for the purposes.
It definitely hits "funny weird 'lolwut'" to be the alibi. While kaminitro is some real freaky stuff to trigger people.

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15-28. Any younger and the muscles aren't sufficiently developed. Any older and reflexes are shot.

>the only weird perverted deviant at the table
>Using "deviant" as an insult
>on Veeky Forums
Oh my sweet summer child...

That's not even a porn.

I respectfully disagree.

>Goddamn rules lawyers

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