I find the fact that elves don’t reach adulthood until they are 110 relatively straightforward to work with, since the children and parents are aging at the same rate and their cultures are built around their rate of maturity.
On the other hand, aasimar, tieflings, oreads, etc. seem trickier. Many plane-touched humans are born to two regular human parents (due to plane-touched blood further up their family tree). These children don’t reach maturity until they are 60, but their siblings are adults at 15. If their parents were 25 years old when the child was born, the parent will be 85 when their “little angel” is ready to support himself. In many families, this would mean that plane-touched children will be a terrible burden — likely one born by two or even three generations.
Consider:
- Our “little angel” took 4x as long to mature mentally and emotionally as his human siblings, not learning to read until his early-20s, and not safe to leave unattended until his early-30s
- Our “little angel” took 4x as long to mature physically, crawling until he was 5 years old and staying in diapers until he was 12
- Our “little angel” will often end up being raised by three generations, with his parents, siblings, and finally nieces or nephews each raising him for 20 years apiece before handing off the young aasimar to their own children.
I don’t have any problem with saying some plane-touched humans live like this…it's very interesting, plausible, and flavorful.
Saying all plane-touched live like this on the other hand seems counter to the flavor of the world. Frankly, this "kid" (living in a medieval world) is going to likely be seen as stupid and weak, and likely a horrible curse on his poor parents.
Flavor-wise, I’d imagine many plane-touched people are just as fast learners as their sisters and brothers; it's just that their aging slows to a crawl when they reach adulthood. (This doesn't seem to be supported by the rules saying they won't be able to reach 1st level until they are 64+ years old…but the fiction of the world just seems poorer if there aren't aasimar who are exceptional as youths…for a reason other than exceptional developmental delays.)
How do you play this? Or do you hand-waive it differently?
Has this been addressed by Paizo in any way?
(In this case, I’m curious about official statements, but just as interested in how you’ve had success playing it).
Also note, if Alex the Angel has a plane-touched daughter each with Hanna the Human and Emma the Elf, both daughters will reach maturity at 60, but the one with human siblings will see her brothers mature at 15…and the one raised by elves will speed past her fellows, maturing in half their normal rate.
Best Answer
Aasimar are addressed in Blood of Angels. "Women that carry an aasimar child report easy pregnancies and deliveries..." There's an entire page of info on Childhood, another on Adolescence, etc. They don't come out and say it explicitly but there's no sign of any time disparity; they are described as maturing to age 5-6 like other human kids and having some issues during puberty with their peer group. BoA says, "An aasimar might spend a good portion of her childhood thinking of herself as human." This is odd as the Advanced Race Guide indicates that the adult age of an aasimar is 60, which would seem to indicate there's some kind of slowdown between birth and there... Same situation for oreads etc.
Bastards of Golarion has nothing to say about this for the other races, it's more of a crunch book really.
I think this falls into the general category of "poorly thought out things in the D&D cosmology," which are manifold. Just like the high intelligence of many aberrations, it's an interesting note trotted out every once in a while as a plot point and then conveniently forgotten 99% of the time.
So your playbook: