Editing Characters (section)

== Aging ==
As your characters age their skills and abilities will degrade.  As far as I know no character has lived long enough for this to happen, yet, but it apparently is possible.

Every 12 weeks of real-world time, the characters of Darkwind will gain 1 year of age. As characters reach about 30 years of age, their abilities (strength, dexterity, speed) start to drop. Beyond about 40, their skills start to drop too. 

A character with zero strength will die. This will typically be around the age of 45, but could vary a lot. A few might be capable of reaching 60, and a few (especially those who started with low abilities) only reach 35. 

Certain skills (e.g. mechanic, first aid, leadership, courage) do not drop at all.

Characters also have a natural life span, and will die eventually of old age. 

=== It's not the years, it's the ===
'''Mileage''' is a hidden attribute that
* goes up with heavy injury and radiation poisoning 
* goes up with the abuse of certain drugs 
* is added to Age for computing aging effects 

Mileage starts at 0 for ''new'' characters.  In this case, ''new'' does not necessarily mean 'newly recruited' as it is possible to recruit a character who has been active, and therefore have a mileage value above 0.

A character's actual age has less effect on a character than the character's mileage.  In other words, characters who are relatively inactive can expect to live into their 60s or 70s, but a character who has been injured, and subjected to the aurora and radiation poisoning, will have a much shorter lifespan, i.e. 30s or 40s.

Characters have a narrative ''General Health'' rating shown on their detail sheet to indicate their overall Mileage state

{|class = "wikitable" border = "1"
!  General Health
|-  
|Excellent
|-
|Good
|-
|Weakening
|-
|Worn Down
|-
|Deteriorating Fast
|-
|?
|}

==== Mileage & Injuries ====
Any ''critical'' hit, i.e. anything with a descriptive part to it rather than just being reported as a ''concussion hit'', can increase a character's ''Mileage''.  These additions are often tiny amounts, however.

=== Mentoring<ref>http://www.dark-wind.com/forums2/index.php?a=topic&t=13708&min=12&num=1</ref> ===
# Older characters (age 36+) with skills over 100 can boost the training of those skills in the same town or camp that they're in.
# A character has to be age 27 or younger (and in the same town) to receive help from a mentor
# The mentor has to be set to train the skill they want to mentor others in.
# The effect of the mentoring is substantially stronger than a low-level motivator, and the effect gets stronger the higher the mentor's own skill is. However it affects only one skill, and it forces the mentor to be training in that skill themselves.
# Motivator and Mentor have their training effects stack.