Miscellaneous
The rules presented here are optional house rules for Call of Cthulhu d20 and the d20 rules system, and will require the use of the Call of Cthulhu d20 rules book.
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Effects of Youth
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This rule is a supplement to the Aging Effects tables given on page 13 of the CoC d20 rulebook.
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While the typical foe or encounter is with adult characters, there may be the occasional street urchin that the characters need to chase down. In cases like these it might be handy and even important to know what the child's dexterity and strength are, for example.
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When rolling a pre-adult aged character, the game master (or, on RARE occasions, the player) rolls the character's ability scores as normal, and then records these for safe keeping - these scores will be the characters adult ability scores. To determine the character's childhood ability scores, the DM (or player) then adjusts those abilities according to age catagory, as follows:
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Pre-Adolescent:
(9-12 years)
-1 to Cha;
-2 to Con;
-3 to Str and Wis
Adolescent:
(13-15 years)
+1 to Dex;
-1 to Int, Con and Cha;
-2 to Str and Wis
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Adjustments ARE cumulative, so that if you roll up a character who is in the "pre-adolescent" age group, you should adjust the character's ability scores by the adjustments given for BOTH the adolescent and pre-adolescent age catagories.
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For example, the DM rolls up a character named Kay. The rolled scores are Str 10, Dex 15, Con 16, Wis 8 and Cha 14. The DM has decided that she is age 12; he therefore adjusts her scores twice, once for dropping from the adult age catagory to the adolescent age catagory, and a second time for dropping from the adolescent age catagory to the pre-adolescent age catagory. Her scores, at age 12, are then Str 5, Dex 16, Con 13, Wis 3 and Cha 12.
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If the character is in your campaign for sometime, she will age along with the rest of the characters in the world. As she does so and moves into higher age groups, simply reverse the adjustments for the previous age group.
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For example, above we determined that at age 12 the character, Kaye, had Str 5, Dex 16, Con 13, Wis 3 and Cha 12. In less than a year, however, she turns 13, and therefore leaves the pre-adolescent age catagory and enters the adolescent age catagory. To adjust for this, the DM reverses the adjustments made for dropping down into the pre-adolescent age catagory, e.g. +1 to Cha; +2 to Con; +3 to Str and Wis. Thus, Kaye's ability scores at age 13 (through age 15) are Str 8, Dex 16, Con 15, Wis 6 and Cha 13.
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Note that as a pre-adult, the character's ability scores CAN be adjusted to a score below 3. However, if upon adjusting a score down you find that it is below 1, you should note the below 1 score (for later use in 'aging' the character, if need be) and then use a score of 1 to determine all ability and skill bonuses.
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Pre-adult characters will typically have very few trained skills, simply assign 1d4 skill points, give or take a few, as appropriate for the character.
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Characters below pre-adolescent are almost completely at the mercy of any enemy, and would have few enough skills as to be below the resolution and scope of the d20 game system. The gamemaster should simply use good judgement when adjudicating the abilities, strengths and weaknesses of such a character.
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For reference, the real world average heights and weights for children are given in the following table. Any particular character will of course vary from these averages.
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Gender
Age
Height(in)
Weight(lbs)
Boy
9-12
57
80
13-15
65
120
Girl
9-12
57
81
13-15
63
110
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If the character thereafter becomes an adult, pick an adult height and weight, or roll randomly for the character's adult dimensions on the Random Height and Weight table on page 93 of the Player's Handbook.
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Comeliness
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Using this rule, physical beauty is separated from the Charisma score.
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After your character is completely finished, roll her Comeliness score. Roll this score in exactly the same way you would roll any of the other Attributes (Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha). See also Aging Effects on Comeliness below for modifiers due to age.
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This rule doesn't do much in the way of game mechanics, it simply makes sense and gives a numeric representation of the relative physical beauty of the character. If used with the optional feat Comely Influence, however, a character can influence people with her physical charms instead of her personality, i.e. she can use her Comeliness bonus instead of Charisma bonus in certain checks and DC modifiers.
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The Comeliness bonus, used for the Comely Influence feat, is determined as for any other Ability score by the chart on page 8 of the Player's Handbook. The character cannot, however, increase her Comeliness score as she advances in levels; in other words, you can't get 'experienced' at being beautiful. Comeliness can, however, be raised or lowered by any of the other methods mentioned in the Changing Ability Scores section on page 9 of the CoC d20 rulebook.
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Justification: The Charisma ability indicates the effectiveness of character's general personality: how nice she is, how good a leader she is, how good of a negotiator she is, etc. While physical beauty can affect these things, they are not the same thing. For example, Adolf Hitler (while incredibly evil) was an extremely charismatic leader - he lead an entire nation into doing, or at least ignoring and justifying, incredibly evil acts - and yet he was by no means attractive. In contrast, while Kathy Ireland is an incredibly beautiful person, generally speaking people wouldn't want to listen to her speak for more than about a minute, let alone follow her into battle.
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Aging Effects on Comeliness: Like other abilities, the age of a character has an effect on her Comeliness score, as follows: Middle Age -1; Old -1; Venerable -2. These penalties to Comeliness are cumulative (i.e. by Venerable age, you should have subtracted a total of -4).