| 40 people marked this as FAQ candidate. Answered in the FAQ. 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dear Design team, prehaps these answers fell through the cracks, mistakes happen, please confer and resolve these mutually exclusive anwers.
1. faq resonse
Racial Heritage: Can a human with this feat take levels in an archetype that requires you to be of a specific race?
Yes, the Racial Heritage feat allows you to qualify for archetypes that have the chosen race as a requirement, assuming you still meet all of the other requirements to take levels in the archetype.
—Jason Bulmahn, 07/27/12
Here is the feat in question:
Racial Heritage
Prerequisite: Human.
Benefit: Choose another humanoid race. You count as both human and that race for any effects related to race. For example, if you choose dwarf, you are considered both a human and a dwarf for the purpose of taking traits, feats, how spells and magic items affect you, and so on.
The given answer and the Feat description, make it clear that racial archtypes are considered a "effect" related to race.
However compare to a later Faq answer
Half-Elf or Half-Orc: Can a character of either of these races select human racial archetypes (such as from Advanced Race Guide?
No. While half-elves and half-orcs do count as humans "for any effect related to race", racial class archetypes do not count as an "effect."
—Pathfinder Design Team, 03/15/13
These answer are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be correct, please look into this issue please, and resolve, one way or the other.
Thank you.
Yes please!
If they want both rulings to stand, they need to Errata something to have clearly different wording than the other case.
I saw a quote from the ARG that conflicts with the second FAQ answer in another thread. Someone might want to add that in here.
I don't know why it was marked 'answered in FAQ' but perhaps they are just viewing the FAQ answers as being narrowly pertinent to each individual rules question subject, and not elucidating the meaning of a general rules term... So therefore the logical conflict doesn't matter, and they are just telling us how each case is supposed to work, whether or not there is any RAW basis for that. Of course, it seems that we are meant to understand other FAQs as being broadly applicable to whatever rules terms that are relevant, so that seems a dubious approach... That also makes the given explanations nearly irrelevant if we aren't meant to understand them and logically apply them where needed. *
If the following line: "If a humanoid has a racial subtype, it is considered a member of that race in the case of race prerequisites." is meant to be universally applicable (as it is phrased, despite being in the 'build your own race' section of the ARG), then either it needs to be Errata'd to match the 'any effect' wording, or the FAQ and/or the half-orc/elf and racial heritage wording needs to be updated/Errata'd (if it is intended, it should probably be in the next Errata for the Bestiary's rules for sub-types). As is, the given rationale of the FAQ for half-orc/elfs isn't sufficient to support the answer because if the ARG is correct, those races not only count for all race-related effects, but for purposes of race-related prerequisites [via sub-types]. The only reading I can see that doesn't lead to that conclusion would be to say that core half-elf/orcs don't have both the [human] and [elf/orc] sub-types, but that they are their own unique sub-type... But that isn't borne out by any NPC statblock, half-elfs/orcs DO have both sub-types by all evidence I've seen, even if the Core Rule presentation of them as PC races doesn't mention that detail (nor does it mention sub-type for Dwarves, Human, Halflings, etc).
* This reminds me of another even worse FAQ explanation, trying to use the lack of functional advantage for monks as a reason why Magic Fang should affect UAS as one weapon for EVERYBODY, for whom it is irrelevant whether or not a Monk finds the distinction to have no ultimate difference. A quarterstaff user might not find any functional difference between a Natural 20 and a Critical Threat, but a Scimitar user certainly would, which is why the difference shouldn't be negated just because it doesn't matter for the quarterstaff user. And even the Monk explanation falls apart once you introduce an ability that triggers when hit by a kick and a head-butt in the same round, i.e. distinguishing between UAS attacks)