[quote=@Mae]
[@Zeroth] I think story beat wise that'd fit in really well. Would you be willing to fit in having some sort of curse or wound from his last battle that butchered some of his high tier skills? A seasoned veteran should definitely start with some upgraded skills if his specialty. But I don't want a vastly different power level if it might tilt the balance too much. I think it'd be fun for his resistances to stay intact so we could do the tropes of the old man thing out to be a bit of a beast when he does need to be. And also his key weapon skill. But there would be a reason why he doesn't have access to some abilities he might of picked up...although if you prefer, we could instead say it's his ages that's made him rusty. Of course he can develop as oyu like through the roleplay either way.

Also yeah - the warzone is far to the south and won't affect the story, but it gives an opportunity for people to want to travel here and join the village. Any dangerous dungeons would have reasons to be sealed and people would have to go out of their way to find them.
[/quote]

My thoughts on progression were definitely along the lines of: For everyone else, they're growing and getting stronger. For him, it's more like "shaking the rust off." Rather than a curse or wound, though, a big limiter on his abilities aside from his actual age getting in the way would be his own sheer stubbornness--he [i]really[/i] never wants to take another life again if he can at all help it, and he wouldn't even be willing to fight in self-defense or for his own honor in a large number of cases. Something like stopping an angry boar or cutting off fish heads wouldn't bother him, but he'd go pretty far out of his way to avoid violence as long as there wasn't someone else who needed his help--and in that case, it's easier to grab the dumb kid or whoever got themselves into trouble and drag them away than it is for him to actually inflict harm on someone again. If it were just him, and somebody wanted to kill him...he might just stand there, honestly. 

Also, if it helps at all, I hadn't envisioned him having many magic-oriented skills aside from, maybe, some representation of "Murderous Intent that inflicts Fear status". If something like "Dynamic Vision: Able to see and track fast moving objects" counts as magic rather than something that could be trained, maybe some of those would be there, but no like "Enchant weapon with an element/Shoot a sword beam while screaming the move's name/Create shadow clone" type abilities. His whole deal is cutting--to the point that he could probably actually serve a secondary purpose to the village as a surgeon, if the need required it, because he's mastered not "swordsmanship" on its own, but the concept of "dividing substance using a sharp edge."

Maybe you could represent the degeneration of age by having "higher level" versions of skills with a strikethrough, and the lower level versions of them that are still usable until he "gets back into shape?" Some of them might have "degraded" multiple times, even, or it might not be a question of physical ability, but mental state--like maybe that "Murderous Intent" move from before isn't usable to the same extent anymore cause he doesn't have enough hatred in his heart anymore.