[D&D 3E/Pathfinder/Starfinder] Feat advice/input needed

[Angel Tarragon]

So I could use your advice input on the feats I share in this thread.

General Feats

• Youthful Vitality

[Angel Tarragon]

Youthful Vitality
You age gracefully due to being a veritable powerhouse of healthful energy.
Prerquisite: Constitution 15, Character Level 1st
Benefit: You ignore the penalty to your ability scores for middle and old age. At Venerable age you suffer the negative effects of aging as if you had entered Old Age.

What do you think? Over-powered, under powered, just right? Does it need to be tweaked, what tweaks does it need?

[Ashtagon]

Youthful Vitality
You age gracefully due to being a veritable powerhouse of healthful energy.
Prerquisite: Constitution 15, Character Level 1st
Benefit: You ignore the penalty to your ability scores for middle and old age. At Venerable age you suffer the negative effects of aging as if you had entered Old Age.

What do you think? Over-powered, under powered, just right? Does it need to be tweaked, what tweaks does it need?

The age rules always struck me as one of the least functional sections of the core rules. Even sticking to core only, they invite min-maxing as characters who need mental stats but don't care so much about physical stats fine-tune their age for maximum rules benefit. It stops being about role-playing an older person and becomes... something else. It's also somewhat counter-intuitive that a person's hearing and other sense get better as they get older.

If I were re-writing the age rules from scratch, I'd drop the stat boosts entirely and just leave the stat penalties. That leaves players with no rules-based reason to want to play an elderly character.

That said, there is room to add feats that have being a certain age as a prerequisite. I'm not sure what would conceptually make sense though. A Youthful Vigour feat that essentially just negates the penalties for ageing but otherwise has no advantages seems pointless (why not just play someone younger), but I'm not sure what would make sense to replace that.

[Angel Tarragon]

The age rules always struck me as one of the least functional sections of the core rules. Even sticking to core only, they invite min-maxing as characters who need mental stats but don't care so much about physical stats fine-tune their age for maximum rules benefit. It stops being about role-playing an older person and becomes... something else. It's also somewhat counter-intuitive that a person's hearing and other sense get better as they get older.

If I were re-writing the age rules from scratch, I'd drop the stat boosts entirely and just leave the stat penalties. That leaves players with no rules-based reason to want to play an elderly character.

That said, there is room to add feats that have being a certain age as a prerequisite. I'm not sure what would conceptually make sense though. A Youthful Vigour feat that essentially just negates the penalties for ageing but otherwise has no advantages seems pointless (why not just play someone younger), but I'm not sure what would make sense to replace that.

Hmm...that is definitely food for thought...and giving me ideas.

[willpell]

With the exception of silliness such as Perception rules, I think the aging rules are more or less fine. You absolutely should have better physical stats when young, and it at least makes some sense to have better mental stats when old. I don't have a problem with the idea of playing an old character specifically because you get to be a better Wizard or Bard that way. I do think the system should be expanded upon, so I'm on board with the general idea of AT's feat (I'm not sure on the feat itself, balance-wise, but in general feats like this should be considered, as should rules enhancements and variants); these would take care of the problems of players who want to be old for flavor reasons while playing a physically competent character, or a character who isn't meant to be old but who needs a mental stat bonus in order to ever achieve 9th-level spells (or multiple bonus spells at low levels - you need 20 INT to get more than one bonus spell even at 1st level, and that's a problem for characters who specialize in low-level spells), and other such variations.