Hi,

How many of you would be okay with someone playing a 14 year old sorceress to runs away from the orphanage where she has grow up, to become an adventurer and seek fame and fortune?  

She is a sorceress, and still level 1, so her powers are no different to a level 1 adult adventurer.  The difference is, that she is still a child.   

She has chosen the life of an adventurer, and even ran away to become one.  She doesn't know what it's like out there anymore than an adult does, the first time.they venture out into wild.

I like this character idea very much.  

The idea of a character whose entire story arc, is that they grow up and mature thought the game, and although her initial desires are to become rich and famous, that could change as her story progresses.

How many of you would be okay letting someone play this kind of character?

Thanks.  

Forge.  

What you are describing is like YA Fiction 101. Just make sure you tailor your game in a way that the players and yourself are comfortable. 

Currently playing a 14 year old (human) rogue; a classic street urchin, moving up in a world of petty crime and burglary. Obviously I see no problem with this, but others might due to social taboos in their real world existence.

Quote from TWForgeCleric >>

The idea of a character whose entire story arc, is that they grow up and mature thought the game, and although her initial desires are to become rich and famous, that could change as her story progresses.

 This could describe a character of any starting age. 

But to answer the question. Certainly, 14 is young, but not all 14-year-olds are of the same maturity level. In the end, it would come down to the group. It could easily get annoying since I get a sense that very few players know how old the other PCs are. Would you constantly remind everyone you’re 14? Would you expect them to treat you differently, cause it could edge into main character syndrome if you expect others (PCs and NPCs) to react to your age (And if others don’t respond to your age, it seems to partially defeat the purpose). Also, I’d want to know the player well enough to decide if they’re doing some creepy fetishizing thing — not saying you are, just that would be something I’d need to be clear on. 

Standard starting age for PCs used to be as young as 16 if I recall, so I’d have no problems with it.

easy, look at most adventure fiction, most adventurers are young adult, mostly the prime, so if you spread the character around multiple campaigns you can peak in power in chronological prime

As long as everyone at the table is comfortable, I'd be fine with it. I wouldn't want much younger though, and I'd be very firm that there be no sexualisation involved with the character, or other problematic issues regarding a child.

I would say it's fine if the dm says so you just might get a little bullied by fellow players!

REALLY depends on the people you are playing with/ hosting for. 

Plenty of groups for which this would be straight forward YA fiction, which is fine, particularly if it is mostly a younger player group in general and everyone's just fixed on the adventure. 

However, there are layers that make it a bit of a pickle: 

1) Depicting violence being done to characters that are very much kids. While you don't have to be super graphic, D&D is still a game where violent things happen, so you'd best be damn sure you and everyone at the table are okay with the possible scene of a battle-axe coming down on a 14 year old. Again, degrees of sanitization of such things aside. I bring this up because I've seen groups where people can get VERY skittish about this sort of thing, so it's a point to keep in mind. 

2) As Linklite said, be mindful of sexually charged scenes/ RP being brought up by the group around. Again, this is about knowing your gang and making sure everyone is on the same page with where things should be going. Having seen some very uh... not so great things come up in the Neverwinter Nights 2 RP scene, I feel this is especially a thing to be really careful of. 

If I were hosting the game? In general, I would make 16 the absolute LOWEST playable character age, largely due to the above reasons. But take that with a grain of salt; you know your own group and where everyone's mindsets are. That's the more important thing really.  

Quote from Daggerknight >>

REALLY depends on the people you are playing with/ hosting for. 

Plenty of groups for which this would be straight forward YA fiction, which is fine, particularly if it is mostly a younger player group in general and everyone's just fixed on the adventure. 

However, there are layers that make it a bit of a pickle: 

1) Depicting violence being done to characters that are very much kids. While you don't have to be super graphic, D&D is still a game where violent things happen, so you'd best be damn sure you and everyone at the table are okay with the possible scene of a battle-axe coming down on a 14 year old. Again, degrees of sanitization of such things aside. I bring this up because I've seen groups where people can get VERY skittish about this sort of thing, so it's a point to keep in mind. 

2) As Linklite said, be mindful of sexually charged scenes/ RP being brought up by the group around. Again, this is about knowing your gang and making sure everyone is on the same page with where things should be going. Having seen some very uh... not so great things come up in the Neverwinter Nights 2 RP scene, I feel this is especially a thing to be really careful of. 

If I were hosting the game? In general, I would make 16 the absolute LOWEST playable character age, largely due to the above reasons. But take that with a grain of salt; you know your own group and where everyone's mindsets are. That's the more important thing really.  

 Thats an amazing response thank you as I was going to play a kid player I think its better not too now :)

Historically, 14 wasn't that far off from adulthood as it is nowadays. Just ease off on anything involving sexualization, which I would do for adults, and you're good.

I like to run a game where you don't usually get your organs ripped out of your body every time you get hit in combat. But even so, I would hesitate a little, because in my view, there's only so long you can adventure with a child before it beggars belief that you haven't found a less dangerous way for that child to grow up.

In your example, the kid chose to determine their own fate -- I'm not sure it's appropriate for the adults in their life to just accept that. Yeah, they don't have parents, but (not to go too far down the anarchosocialism rabbit hole) it takes a village to raise a child. Would you, in your real life, allow a 14yo on a dangerous job site just because they want to be there and they don't have a legal guardian to stop it? I think 14 is too young.

Then again, in some stories, there really isn't a safe path. If death is coming for you no matter what, then you may as well die on your feet. This is kinda where The Last Of Us falls on the spectrum.

So it depends. But I don't love it, personally.

Quote from Thucydides >>

Historically, 14 wasn't that far off from adulthood as it is nowadays. Just ease off on anything involving sexualization, which I would do for adults, and you're good.

 I was thinking about that. If you go with the premise D&D is in a quasi-medieval Europe, where the life expectancy was really low, 14 could easily be an adult. But the the PHB puts human life span at about 100 years — higher than it is today — and it kind of complicates the equation. While there’s no penicillin in D&D, we don’t have paladins that can cure any disease with a touch, or folks that can brew up a potion to cure any non-fatal wound. So it’s like magic and modern medicine kind of cancel each other out.
There’s still the economics of kids that age bring more likely to work in the fields than go to high school, so probably they are growing up faster than modern day kids. In the end, there’s no real way to compare them directly. So it’s more relevant, imo, to consider what we players think of when we think of a certain age, rather then try to consider what a 14th-century peasant would have thought. 

I mean it's common in shows, particularly anime. Naruto - trained as a ninja to kill - began that show aged 14. Ash Ketchum was 10 years old when he went out to basically capture animals and make them fight each other. Ichigo Kurosaki became a badass shinigami slaying monsters aged 15 (his name is actually a pun, he's 15 and his name is ichi (1) and go (5) -- 15).

There are videogames with child characters - I think it's league of legends that has a kid with some mystical teddy bear they use to attack people with?

It's an exceedingly common trope.

As long as everyone at the table is fine, and are actually adults themselves, then do whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for all your excellent replies.

Although making the character older would change the concept a bit, having read all your comments, perhaps it would be better to make her 18 instead of 14.  

Instead of running away from an orphanage, she could have just aged out of being there, and once she didn't have her "home" or people to care for her anymore, she started to wander around the place for a bit, doing odd jobs here and there, but not finding anywhere to settle down.  So by the time she's 18, she hasn't put any roots down or have any connections to a specific area, so there's nothing holding her back from going off and becoming an adventurer to try and become rich and famous.  

Theres nothing complicated about why she wants to be an adventurer.   She just wants the money and the fame.  At least at first, but that might change as she becomes more experienced and makes friends with the other people in her party.  

Making her 18, would side step the unease people might feel about a child character.  She would still be young and relatively inexperienced, but she would be an adult and not a child.  

Making it a bit more acceptable, maybe?

It's not exactly the same as the original idea, but would that be better? 

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from Thucydides >>

Historically, 14 wasn't that far off from adulthood as it is nowadays. Just ease off on anything involving sexualization, which I would do for adults, and you're good.

 I was thinking about that. If you go with the premise D&D is in a quasi-medieval Europe, where the life expectancy was really low, 14 could easily be an adult. But the the PHB puts human life span at about 100 years — higher than it is today — and it kind of complicates the equation. While there’s no penicillin in D&D, we don’t have paladins that can cure any disease with a touch, or folks that can brew up a potion to cure any non-fatal wound. So it’s like magic and modern medicine kind of cancel each other out.
There’s still the economics of kids that age bring more likely to work in the fields than go to high school, so probably they are growing up faster than modern day kids. In the end, there’s no real way to compare them directly. So it’s more relevant, imo, to consider what we players think of when we think of a certain age, rather then try to consider what a 14th-century peasant would have thought. 

 As a counterpoint, people that were actually alive in medieval Europe had a life expectancy that's about as far from ours as ours is from what the PHB lists.  The stats get massively dragged down by a large portion of the population dying at age 0.

For an alternative view on the actual question, I played a very young elf for one campaign.  One young enough that they still hadn't clearly separated their current life from their previous ones.  This character would be very much a child in the world, at least if they met any other elves, but by our measure they'd be an adult.

If the intended development is that the character will mature as the campaign progresses, you might even have her be older than she acts. For example, if her society says she should get her act together and start acting like an adult at 18, maybe she's 25 when the adventure starts, and she still hasn't done it. Heck, maybe she's 40!

There's nothing that says you can't do the "forced to grow up quickly" thing, of course. But like I alluded to with my comment about The Last Of Us, it might not fit the vibes of the campaign. I would never develop a PC independent of a campaign.

the original  idea is not unacceptable.  I think you need more backstory   than she just wants money and fame.  How old was she when  she was given to the orphanage?  Did her parents give her up or where the killed,  Is the orphanage an arm of a religious order or is it a just  married couple who feel the need to look after children.  Perhaps she has heard tales  of a brave female <insert class here> who has had wonderous adventures and she wants to emulate that... Perhaps that adventurer was also  an orphan from this very orphanage. Maybe she is running away before they make her choose to be a nun or arrange a marriage for her   

I could go on at length in this vein but, i think you get the picture

I do not see the problem. I have played and in my games they have played even younger characters. Unless there is some impediment due to the narrative of the game, as a general rule I never impose age restrictions on characters. Obviously whenever it makes sense. Playing a baby would entail a series of problems that would make the character practically unplayable. In the same way, playing an extremely old character also brings problems. In both cases the player should explain to me how he wants to play the character. The baby might actually be a wizard whose soul has been locked in that body, but he retains his mental faculties (still, if his body is a baby, he will have mobility problems, etc...) . In the same way, an extremely old character should argue why he retains his physical faculties.

But with a teenager I don't see the problem. In fantastic literature there are many teenage characters. It's a trope from fantasy literature, actually.

I don't see a problem with it.