Aging     It is highly recommended that you give your PC an age within their species' prime adult age range, as it is the range in which you need not apply any extra penalties or rules related to aging. It is also the most common and culturally acceptable age to become an adventurer in Lur-Asko. However, if you want to play a different-age character (or if the GM needs to create NPCs of different ages), apply the extra steps in this chapter during character creation. Of course, if your group plays the same characters through multiple campaigns, the story might eventually last long enough for your character to apply aging effects between campaigns regardless.
    The following chart lists the five age categories for Legends characters, and summarizes the effects of each, which will be detailed later. Consider only the effects from your current row (e.g. do not add them to the effects of previous ages).

Age category
 WGT
bINT penalty
 Physical stat penalties
 Dead tiers
Adolescent
 80%
 -1
 -1 bSTR, -1 bSPD, -1 flexible
1 Appeal, 2 Arcana
Prime adult
 100% None
 None
 None
Middle age
 100% None
 -1 bSTR, -1 bSPD, -1 flexible
 1 Athletics, 1 Stealth
Elderly
 100% None
 -2 bSTR, -1 bDEX, -2 bSPD, -1 bCON, -2 flexible
 4 Athletics, 2 Close Combat, 2 Marksmanship, 2 Vehicles, 2 Stealth
Frail
 100% -2
 -3 bSTR, -2 bDEX, -3 bSPD, -2 bCON, -3 flexible 8 Athletics, 4 Close Combat, 4 Marksmanship, 4 Stealth, 4 Vehicles, 1 Appeal, 1 Arcana

    The next chart lists the year amounts those ranges cover for each playable species:

Species
 Adolescent
 Prime adult
 Middle age
 Elderly
 Frail
Human
 13-17
 18-50
 51-75
 76-92
 93-100
Elf
 13-17
 18-60
 61-90
 91-110
 111-120
Dwarf
 13-17
 18-45
 46-80
 81-92
 93-100
Orc
 13-17
 18-56
 N/A
 57-58
 59-60
Anthrosaur
 17-24
 25-70
 71-85
 86-104
 105-120
Dryad
 17-24
 25-65
 66-90
 91-111
 112-120
Koh-Trr
 9-13
 14-40
 41-60
 61-70
 71-80
Adlet
 8-11
 12-38
 39-55
 56-63
 63-70
Vitur Roc
 10-15
 16-42
 43-60
 61-70
 71-80
Minotaur
 6-9
 10-45
 46-50
 51-56
 57-60
Therbolgite
 22-34
 35-120
 121-135
 136-150
 151-160

    Children younger than the adolescent category are not plausible adventuring characters, and cannot meaningfully contribute to the challenges in Legends, thus rules for them are not included. If the GM needs to create a younger NPC for whatever reason, it is rarely necessary to give them stats, and they never have Study Abilities or more than 1 depth tier.

WGT     Characters of the adolescent category have their WGT reduced to 80%. This does not increase their bDEX.

bINT Penalty     Very young characters' brains are still developing, while the most elderly characters' are deteriorating. The listed penalty applies to initial bINT, just as if the number in the species entry was lowered.

Physical Stat Penalty     Like the bINT penalty, listed physical stat penalties apply to the initial base stat, just as if the number in the species entry was lowered. This section might also include a penalty listed as "flexible." This penalty is assigned to bDEX, bSTR, bCON, or bSPD, at your choosing. This might reflect actual choices of the character to preserve certain traits at the expense of others as they age, or it might describe deterioration outside of their control (but still chosen by their player).
    First, apply the non-flexible penalties; these can reduce a stat to a minimum of 1. After this, apply your flexible penalty. You may divide it up between multiple stats, but cannot arrange it in such a way that any initial stat is reduced below 2. Both of these steps apply before allocating your 6 starting stat points.

Dead Tiers     Dead tiers are Study tiers which become ineffective due to the effects of aging, or to a young character's insufficiently developed brain. They are essentially subtractive penalties to one's total Study tier. For example, middle age includes 1 dead Athletics tier, so a middle-aged character that would normally be 9th-tier in Athletics would instead function as 8th-tier. Dead tiers provide no benefit to your character in any way, similar to tiers that become ineffective due to a tier cap. There are two exceptions: dead tier rules are ignored when determining who an older character can train, as they still retain their experience and knowledge even if they can no longer fully apply them. They are also ignored when determining how many expertise re-rolls a character has in a given Study.
    Dead tier math is applied after any tier caps.
    Just as tiers lost to a tier cap "wait" until the cap is removed, dead tiers also "wait" in the event that an adolescent character ages, or an older character removes age effects via bionics or conditions. Whenever dead tiers are restored to effectiveness, you immediately gain the benefits those tiers normally provide. When tiers become dead, you choose which Abilities and other tier benefits you lose the use of; these benefits do not disappear from the record, but "wait" in case your dead tiers are restored. In other words, manipulating dead tiers is not a way to gain free Ability swaps.

Category Transitions     In the case of an existing character aging to the next category, you may work with the GM to take certain effects earlier or later than the exact year at which the category begins. For example, a human would not realistically gain all of their elderly aging effects precisely on their 76th birthday, so it is perfectly acceptable to spread the onset of the various effects over multiple years.

Natural Death     Characters do not necessarily die of old age at the exact age given for the end of the frail category. Although that year is the approximate average life expectancy for the species, individuals' lifespans may vary.
    Generally, adventurers retire permanently (or die from violence) a long time before their natural death. But if the GM finds it necessary to decide the year of a character's death from aging, they may vary their lifespan anywhere from 90-110% of the listed maximum age. A d20 may be rolled to decide that percentage, or player input may be considered in some cases (for a PC). Note that this will potentially lengthen, shorten, or (for some species) completely eliminate the frail category.

Bionics     Characters who implant themselves with bionics - especially those who take it to extremes - can stave off many of the more physical effects of aging. To avoid cluttering the device rules with usually-irrelevant aging effects, they are listed here instead.
    Each of the following devices negate certain aspects of aging. If you have applied a size increase to the device, apply its effect again. Also apply its effect again if it is an advanced device and you have at least one excess degree of Bionics competency (for a total of three times if it is both advanced and size-increased). Further size increases or degrees of competency have no effect, but multiple devices do. If a device lists "0.5" for any effect, round down only after considering all size increases, advanced status, or extra devices (for example, a single plain Bionic Arm would not negate any dead Close Combat tiers, but two advanced and size-increased Bionic Arms would negate a total of 3).

Bionics device
 Negated stat penalties
 Negated dead tiers
Bionic Arm
 0.5 bSTR, 0.5 bDEX
 0.5 Close Combat
Bionic Mobility
 1 bSPD
 1 Stealth
Bionic Vision
1 Marksmanship, 1 Vehicles
Bionic Internals
 1 bCON
 1.5 Athletics

    Negated stat penalties do not distinguish between flexible and non-flexible penalties.
    Bionics can be used to meet their own competency requirements. In other words, the Bionic Internals device may be safely installed if the character does not meet its requirements, so long as they would meet its requirements afterward due to the negated Athletics dead tiers.

Revenants     Revenants follow the age categories of whatever species their brain was sourced from, not counting any years spent in cryostasis. However, the only actual effects of aging they suffer are bINT penalties, dead Appeal tiers, and dead Arcana tiers. The other effects, being more physical, are not experienced by their construct bodies.

Conditions     Vampires slow aging by different amounts, depending on how frequently they can feed and the quality of their sarcophagi treatments (see Vampires).
    Liches completely remove all aging effects, just as if they were prime adults. A forced lich that is revived immediately regains their former aging effects. No type of lich may be formed from an adolescent.