History Main / StrongerWithAge

** Vampires in the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' game ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' are stronger with age in two ways: experience and Generation. Older vampires are more experienced (obviously), have more and stronger Disciplines than neonates, and have influence over vampiric and human society. A vampire of lower Generation is closer to the blood of [[MonsterProgenitor Caine]] than a 13th-Generation neonate (the game's "default" new player characters), increasing their stat {{cap}}s and allowing them to spend more Vitae faster. And going even further, it starts getting scarier: There are sleeping vampires that were embraced before the Great Flood. They're strong enough that, when one of them woke up, ''large-scale orbital weaponry'' was needed to put it back down. However, at the same time, neonates of higher generations can gain more power through committing diablerie on a lower-generation vampire, seen as a cardinal sin among the Kindred unless on a blood hunt, which will allow them to go up a generation.

** Midgardsormr, progenitor of all dragons, is on speaking terms with [[GodOfGood Hydaelyn]] to the point of gainsaying her decisions. Ten years ago, single-handedly brought down the [[TheEmpire Garleans']] colossal flagship ''Agrius'' and treats being reduced to a charred husk by its explosion like a chance to take a nap. In prehistory, he fought the planet-scouring alien superweapon Omega to a draw.

** Midgardsormr, progenitor of all dragons, single-handedly brought down the [[TheEmpire Garleans']] colossal flagship ''Agrius'' and treats being reduced to a charred husk by its explosion like a chance to take a nap. In prehistory, he fought the planet-scouring alien superweapon Omega to a draw.

** In general Oda has [[WordOfGod confirmed]] Devil Fruits get more powerful over time (eventually awakening) as the user ages and gets better at using it. Both Luffy and Robin as children had shoddy displays of their power, especially the former, but they time they’ve grown up they turned their respective Devil Fruits into a SwissArmySuperpower.

* The ''Literature/NightHuntress'' novels have a variation on this: age brings power, but how much depends upon the vampire. Some take centuries to become masters, while others reach that level in a few decades. When Cat first fights Ian and learns that he's around 200, she comments "You're strong, then. I've met 700-year-olds who don't hit as hard as you do." One vampire comments that he'll never be a master, suggesting that some unlucky ones might have a ceiling on their potential power, or it might be that his power just grows so slowly that the day he reaches master status is so far off that it might as well be "never".

** In fact, in ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' the Super Mutants of Broken Hills are said to be slowly going weak and senile. This is probably due to being infected with a different strain of FEV (found in the Mariposa Military Base) than the mutants in the Capital Wasteland, though when the Courier encounters some of those same mutants in [[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas the Mojave]], they seem to be as strong as ever.
** Even the Capital Wasteland Mutants don't all follow the rule -- it is ''heavily'' implied that Fawkes, one of your companions, was one of the first East Coast Super Mutants, yet he's still a regular Super Mutant (albeit a ''supremely'' overpowered one if you've got Broken Steel installed.) This may be tied to the oddities of his transformation; he's one of the very few to fully hold on to his sanity and morality.

--->'''Daniel''': But I saw you standing in the sun.\\
'''Armand''': As we age, the sun loses its power over us. What's a mediocre star to a 514-year-old vampire?

** Lestat de Lioncourt is significantly more powerful than Louis de Pointe du Lac and Claudia because he's 117 years older than [[ILoveYouVampireSon his vampire son and lover]], and 143 years older than his vampire daughter.

** At the beginning of [[ComicBook/Maestro his own miniseries]], he was initially weaker than [[spoiler: ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules]] who first held the title of Maestro.

* Trolls in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' are theoretically immortal, but as they get older they get bigger and slower and tend to be more inclined to sit and think. They call this "getting philosophy". Eventually they just stop moving altogether, gradually "decomposing" or eroding into an oddly shaped heap of minerals with a tiny living spark in the center. Many of the Discworld's mountains are actually very old trolls. Shown to be true when a troll warns a character about his grandfather, who is one of the mountains and is very annoyed when some adventurers light a campfire in his mouth.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':

* ''Franchise/MarvelUniverse'':
** The ComicBook/{{Maestro}}, the future version of the ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'', who is stronger and smarter than present day Hulk (even when PDH is in smart mode). Part of the rationale is that there had been a nuclear war, and since the Hulk is radiation-powered, this made him stronger at the expense of his sanity (well, at the expense of Smart Hulk's sanity).
** ''ComicBook/SpiderMan''’s SuperStrength explicitly grows as he gets older, as a teenager he could crush metal and lift tons of debris off himself while as a 20-something (which he’s been for years thanks to ComicBookTime) he can support the weight of an entire building and stagger even Hyperion with his punches. This subject to DependingOnTheWriter however mainly in alternative universe/elseworld comics like ''ComicBook/SpiderManLifeStory'' where Peter’s strength decreases as he grows old to the point of him needing the [[ComicBook/{{Venom}} Venom Symbiote]] to keep up.
** ''ComicBook/TheMightyThor'' is a clear case of this, as a boy-god in ''Son of Asgard'' he has trouble slaying a single dragon. Thousands upon thousands of years later in present day Marvel Thor can smash planets into pieces, beat up Galactus and literally reverse fate by pushing the World Engine connected to Yggdrasill.
** Explicitly stated to be the case with ''ComicBook/TheInhumans'', with regards to their powers. A Kang-made ComicBook/SpiderMan robot once tried to disable Crystal and ''Franchise/TheAvengers'' by rapidly aging them, only to be HoistByHisOwnPetard when Crystal suddenly had double the ElementalPowers.
** ComicBook/TheThing once met a future version of himself who easily overpowered him. His future self noted that Ben will never stop getting stronger.

* A problem to overcome in one of the ''ComicBook/XXXenophile'' comics. A human girl and a troll girl fall in love, but the troll is very strong, roughly on par with a bear, and liable to hurt the human in throes of passion. They manage by using restraints... but then the troll girl reveals that with age she'll become ''much'' stronger.
* This seems to be the case for the artificial bodies in ''ComicBook/{{Miracleman}}'', though it's as much physical improvement as it is growing accustomed to their bodies and pushing the limits of their abilities. Kid Miracleman is dangerous largely because he's had his powers for a lot longer than Miracleman, having gone from his sidekick to his physical superior.
* ComicBook/{{Lobo}} the Main Man as an adult is on par with Superman in terms of strength and durability. As the younger Lil' Lobo, he's far less durable. Lil' Lobo found this out the hard way during ''Comicbook/OurWorldsAtWar'' when he tried to fight an army of Para-demons and was shot to pieces.

A subtrope of OlderIsBetter. See also {{Monster Lord}}s, who are often older members of their species, and contrast EvilMakesYouMonstrous (for the latter, they get eviler with age and thus get uglier and stronger). For the human equivalent, see the OldMaster, OldSoldier, and SicklyChildGrewUpStrong. Often overlaps with the MonsterProgenitor and MotherOfAThousandYoung, who are the first in a line of monsters and are thus '''the''' strongest of their kind. See also GiganticAdultsTinyBabies,

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': This is how bending ability is presented, with the oldest characters becoming ancient masters of the art. King Bumi who was well over 100 years old and argued as the greatest earthbender in the world, and an even more extreme example was Kyoshi, who lived ''over 200 years'' with no apparent decline in combat ability.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': This was originally how bending ability was presented, with the oldest characters becoming ancient masters of the art. Particularly King Bumi who was well over 100 years old and argued as the greatest earthbender in the world, and Kyoshi who lived ''over 200 years''.
** Becomes subverted in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', where character strength follows the arc of normal humans, and even great benders become lousey fighters past their 80s.

** Vampires in the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' game ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' are stronger with age in two ways: experience and Generation. Older vampires are more experienced (obviously), have more and stronger Disciplines than neonates, and have influence over vampiric and human society. A vampire of lower Generation is closer to the blood of [[MonsterProgenitor Caine]] than a 13th-Generation neonate (the game's "default" new player characters), increasing their stat {{cap}}s and allowing them to spend more Vitae faster. And going even further, it starts getting scarier: There are sleeping vampires that were embraced before the Great Flood. They're strong enough that, when one of them woke up, ''large-scale orbital weaponry'' was needed to put it back down.

* ''Franchise/MarvelComics'':

** ''Franchise/SpiderMan''’s SuperStrength explicitly grows as he gets older, as a teenager he could crush metal and lift tons of debris off himself while as a 20-something (which he’s been for years thanks to ComicBookTime) he can support the weight of an entire building and stagger even Hyperion with his punches. This subject to DependingOnTheWriter however mainly in alternative universe/elseworld comics like ''ComicBook/SpiderManLifeStory'' where Peter’s strength decreases as he grows old to the point of him needing the [[ComicBook/{{Venom}} Venom Symbiote]] to keep up.

** Explicitly stated to be the case with ''ComicBook/TheInhumans'', with regards to their powers. A Kang-made Franchise/SpiderMan robot once tried to disable Crystal and ''Franchise/TheAvengers'' by rapidly aging them, only to be HoistByHisOwnPetard when Crystal suddenly had double the ElementalPowers.

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'':

** Said Quirk, [[PowerParasite All for One]], is also revealed to get stronger with age due to its ability to keep stealing stronger Quirks of later generations of wielders. [[spoiler:However, All for One's own ''body'' can't strengthen itself to keep up with said development, forcing the villain to devote resources to research necessary to augment his body to handle the strains of so many powerful Quirks.]]

** In general Oda has [[WordOfGod confirmed]] Devil Fruits get more powerful over time (eventually awakening) as the user ages and gets better at using it. Both Luffy and Robin as children had shoddy displays of their power especially the former, but they time they’ve grown up they turned their respective Devil Fruits into a SwissArmySuperpower.

* This is a common assumption in most ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' fan fiction. Buffy and Faith, as the oldest living Slayers are portrayed as being stronger, faster, and more durable than any of the other activated Slayers, and Buffy -- who has two years more experience than Faith as a Slayer -- is usually portrayed as having a slight edge over her counterpart.
** One ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' story subverts this. Everyone thought the Slayer grew stronger as she aged but Willow discovers that they actually grow stronger from fighting. Buffy, who hasn't fought in over five years, has fallen to second strongest while Faith, who never stopped fighting, is a fair bit stronger than her. Several of the older Slayers are noted as only being a year or so before they outstrip Buffy as well.

** ''FanFic/TheImmortalGame'': Applied in alicorns. Luna, the weakest of them all, is a hundred years old -- due to her being imprisoned in the moon for the past thousand years -- Terra is nine hundred years old, Celestia is more than a thousand years old, and Titan is more than THREE THOUSAND YEARS OLD, which puts him to Discord's level.

** ''Fanfic/{{Traveler}}'': Any Pokémon that's [[TheAgeless biologically immortal]] (mostly Rock and Steel types) only becomes more powerful, and usually larger, as it ages. The King Under the Mountain is an Onix that's over two hundred feet long and is the strongest of Bruno's Pokémon, despite being a relatively new member. Even more so, the First's Rhydon is over a thousand years old, can manipulate rock on a level that would make [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Toph]] proud, and is stated by Lance to be the strongest non-legendary Pokémon in the world.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfVoxMachina'': As an adaptation of an ActualPlay [[CriticalRole Dungeons & Dragons web series]], this is played straight with dragons. The titular team is able to down a young adult dragon early in the first season with some measure of difficulty. When four ''ancient'' dragons show up at the beginning of the second season, they find themselves thoroughly overpowered by just one of them.