In my opinion, if you play from a young noble then its anywhere between 4 and 5 years real time before you get to this point. A 2% chance of dying each day is not a far cry. This is 1013 for petes sake, it really should be 40 because life expectancy for nobles was like 35-45, less for peasants. 50 was considered ancient, and we have a ruler in Perdan who is currently 90 in game. People barely live to 90 now, let alone in 1013.
It's difficult to find good sources for medieval life expectancy, since you really need to know what are the assumptions. We should completely discount child mortality, for example, because the characters start at 16. I found an interesting one that says that in the 13th century, members of the royal family of Wales (which were of similar social classes as most nobles in BM) that reached adulthood had an average and median life expectancy of 49:
http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/We also have to remember that this is a game. What would a 1% chance to die at 19 bring exactly? It would only kill your character before you start to actually do anything interesting with him. I think it would just be aggravating for no reason. I can see the advantages of starting the counter around 50/60 years old, which is roughly 4 years real-time, a reasonable time to create an interesting character story arc with closure.
Also, can we get a statistics of how many characters are 70+ in the game? 90+? I have the feeling it's a very small number, as it should be.
