Weapon Familiarity (pgs 4-7) - Instinctive Racial Prociency?

[Bob King]

Example (pg 5): "Elves are proficient with longbows..., longswords, rapiers and shortbows..."

This does not seem to pass the realism test. Every elf - without regard to background, class, parentage, etc. - is assumed to be proficient with a certain set of weapons?

What about an elf that's orphaned and raised somewhere else?

What about the clumsy elven boy that has a powerful affinity for magic, but has never wielded a sword? One day he picks up a longsword and instantly knows how to use it?

In keeping with my "Why?" approach to reading and analyzing the Pathfinder rules I'll ask the following:

Why automatic proficiency? What is the purpose of this change?

[Locke1520]

Bob King wrote:

Example (pg 5): "Elves are proficient with longbows..., longswords, rapiers and shortbows..."

.....
Why automatic proficiency? What is the purpose of this change?

SRD wrote:

Weapon Proficiency: Elves receive the Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the longsword, rapier, longbow (including composite longbow), and shortbow (including composite shortbow) as bonus feats.

It's not a change.

[Bob King]

Locke1520 wrote:

It's not a change.

I used one example - and perhaps a bad one - to make my point.

Halfings (pg 7) - Halflings are proficient with slings and treat any weapon with the word "halfling" in its name as a martial weapon.

SRD on Halfings - No mention of an automatic weapon proficiency.

And perhaps it's semantics, or interpretation, but I've always treated the racial "receive a weapon feat" as "[MAY] receive a weapon feat" for the same reasons I've posted above.

Stating "Elves ARE proficient with..." (emphasis added) just seems to me more declarative and that is why I'm asking about it. In order to be somewhat constructive, I'd suggest change each of these to state:

"[Insert Race Name] may choose to be proficient with...." Perhaps this a free choice, or perhaps they are given some advantage when using it. By making it less declarative it does not shackle those with limited imagination that may not consider the option of NOT being proficient with a given weapon.

Dwarves (pg 4), Gnomes (pg 5)and Half-Orcs (pg 6) also gain some innate weapon proficiencies in the Pathfinder rules.

Whereas in the SRD only Dwarves and Elves are granted racial weapon familiarity.

[JoelF847]

I think the problem is that you're ignoring the assumtion that these rules apply to adults of the species. Many of the rules in the game don't apply to newborns, not only can a 1 day old (or 1 year old) elf not use a longsword, but they can't take a class level, make a bull rush attack etc.

The race rules assume that the PC is a) an adult, and b) was raised in his people's culture. The rules break down a bit when you deal with orphans raise by another race (or by wolves for that matter). I think a good solution would be to clearly label racial abilities as physical or cultural. The rules don't need to go into options about what if your PC was raised by a different culture/race, but if racial abilities were labeled that way, a DM can easily make a call on that issue. This clarification would also have benefits when applying the results of the reincarnation spell, which could then only replace the physical traits of your race changing, and let you keep the cultural ones.