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I dunno why there's an argument. You only, per Reincarnate, lose things based on your body.
A Feat, skill ranks, etc. are not that.
Reincarnating from Human is generally the best Reincarnation since there's like a 90% chance you'll gain Darkvision though potentially losing your stat boost (likely in Str) can hurt.
Sooooo, you can easily accept that a person can die, and then come back to the world of the living as an entirely different kind of thing, but dismiss the idea that they forget something in the process as ludicrous.
I think there is a flaw there somewhere.
A reincarnated creature recalls the majority of its former life and form. It retains any class abilities, feats, or skill ranks it formerly possessed. Its class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, and hit points are unchanged. Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores depend partly on the new body. First eliminate the subject's racial adjustments (since it is no longer necessarily of his previous race) and then apply the adjustments found below to its remaining ability scores.
Hell, there's a 50/50 shot you remember all that complex preparation you made earlier in the day to prepare a spell.
And you're saying it makes sense that you forget a Feat and a bunch of your life skills?
Please.
I allow reincarnation as long as it makes sense. For example if a human turns into a hobgoblin, he loses the extra skills and feats because although the memories are there and they are in the soul, that person now has a hobgoblin brain.
Has anyone ever seen the first episode of Drop Dead Diva? That would explain how I would do it, or by being reborn. Memory is in the soul, but intelligence is in the brain, same soul different body, which means you now have different limitations and or gifts.
Mainly I allow reincarnation for one purpose, to retain the relationships they had.
For the human feat and skill bonuses as well as such things as intelligence drain, I would count up how many feats and skill ranks the character is entitled to and how many of each the character actually has. The character gains no more feats until he has more open slots than feats taken, and the same for skill ranks. That may not be RAW, but it is a lot less of a headache to adjudicate.
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I allow reincarnation as long as it makes sense. For example if a human turns into a hobgoblin, he loses the extra skills and feats because although the memories are there and they are in the soul, that person now has a hobgoblin brain.
Has anyone ever seen the first episode of Drop Dead Diva? That would explain how I would do it, or by being reborn. Memory is in the soul, but intelligence is in the brain, same soul different body, which means you now have different limitations and or gifts.
Mainly I allow reincarnation for one purpose, to retain the relationships they had.
Then, you are doing the character a disservice, and the rules clearly state that the person is the same feat and skillwise.
Thanks for the clarification Ryunjin.
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For the human feat and skill bonuses as well as such things as intelligence drain, I would count up how many feats and skill ranks the character is entitled to and how many of each the character actually has. The character gains no more feats until he has more open slots than feats taken, and the same for skill ranks. That may not be RAW, but it is a lot less of a headache to adjudicate.
Sounds like much more of a headache since the alternative is "Yeah let's go ahead and follow the rules on this one".
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We play that you don't lose "what you know" based on "what you've become".
You may gain or lose physical stats, but it's not like you wake up as a Dwarf suddenly speaking Dwarvish if you were formerly a Half Orc who didn't know the language before you died. If you lose INT or WIS you should play that, but in all honesty you shouldn't forget how to generally do something *just* because you died once. Perhaps you gain a new appreciation for something non-native to your previous experiences because of it: an example would be Dwarvish craftsmanship.
I honestly don't think you should lose mental ability score bonuses or penalties, because you aren't getting new knees according to the table.
The spell basically says you don't lose or gain mental ability scores anyway, only physical ones. That's why it makes a point of saying "Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores depend partly on the new body.". It would be superfluous to state that Str, Dex, and Con could possibly change if mental changes were possible too.
If a Human Reincarnates into an Elf, he gains +2 Dex/-2 Con, no +2 Int.
Likewise, when an Elf reincarnates into a Hobgoblin he gains +2 Con/Dex (leaving his Dex the same) but does not lose his Int bonus.
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The thing is, by a strict reading of RAW, you'd lose your mental adjustjust ments too.
"First eliminate the subject's racial adjustments (since it is no longer necessarily of his previous race) and then apply the adjustments found below to its remaining ability scores."
I know it's RAI that you're supposed to remove the physical ones only.
But that's not how Reincarnate (the spell) works in this game. It's same mind, different body.
Compare/Contrast with Samsarans who DO generally lose most of their skills and knowledge from previous lives (though special exceptions exist like Mystic Past Life and so on), and Rakshasa who keep everything.
It's not set in the lore, but since Reincarnate says you keep most everything from your memories and skills, it doesn't work as a Samsaran's reincarnation.
I could have sworn this was answered in the Ask JJ thread a while back. Looking now.
The thing is, by a strict reading of RAW, you'd lose your mental adjustjust ments too.
"First eliminate the subject's racial adjustments (since it is no longer necessarily of his previous race) and then apply the adjustments found below to its remaining ability scores."
I know it's RAI that you're supposed to remove the physical ones only.
No, RAW you only remove the physical ones too. You've misquoted. Here is the whole quote:
"Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores depend partly on the new body. First eliminate the subject's racial adjustments (since it is no longer necessarily of his previous race) and then apply the adjustments found below to its remaining ability scores."
As for the OP, RAW is clear:
"It retains any class abilities, feats, or skill ranks it formerly possessed"
Yes, this means reincarnating from human (especially if your floating stat is in a mental stat) is almost always a good thing. This is somewhat balanced by the cost, as you can't just spam it until you get what you want (blood money aside, but that's a whole nother issue).
Even then you've still got at least one negative level for a week, so it's not cost-less, just less cost.
Hm. I really thought it was inherent to the spell's text that it noted that mental ability scores remained the same. Fascinating.
I could see the sentence structure parsing either way, though the implication is certainly that only the physical scores are changed.
What's fascinating, though, is that if you take the line in which all scores are lost (including mental ones), reincarnate is strictly worse than rolling up a new character for any sort of caster, regardless of whether or not they roll up the same race.
Whether or not you roll up a halfing again, you're sorcerer has just forever lost a +2 to charisma that it can never get back, as,
then apply the adjustments found below to its remaining ability scores.
... and the only adjustments are physical. Similarly, humans or half-elves or half-orcs that put their floating bonus into a mental stat have it forcefully switched into a physical stat.
Do you lose skill ranks retroactively?
Hm... no.
It retains any class abilities, feats, or skill ranks it formerly possessed. Its class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, and hit points are unchanged.
(bold mine)
That means (first of all) that you keep all your skills, which would clash with the Paizo stated intent that INT boosts or penalties retroactively apply to skill ranks. So, there's a secondary argument for intent in parsing the text about racial ability scores.
The above quote also means that anyone who started as a human basically gets a free extra feat; regardless of the ability score parsing, since the character keeps any feat it formerly possessed, it still has that feat.
The reincarnated creature gains all abilities associated with its new form, including forms of movement and speeds, natural armor, natural attacks, extraordinary abilities, and the like, but it doesn't automatically speak the language of the new form.
... this could be badly "abused" (sort of) by randomly (thus the sort of) continuously reincarnating as a human. Interesting.
EDIT: I'm aware (and probably would encourage) GMs to not allow a continuous acquisition of bonus feats. That's almost certainly against the intent of the spell, or at least, the developers would not allow it in their home games, given their past history of explaining exactly these sorts of things. That said, RAW, it's a bit ambiguous, and I could certainly see an argument being built for that exact thing. Interesting.