Human (unchained) Summoner + Racial Linage + Ancestor Eidolon


Rules Questions


Hi guys,

Random question; if I'm a Human (unchained) Summoner, who takes the Racial Linage feat (selecting, say, ratfolk), can my Ancestor eidolon be a ratfolk?

Racial Linage:

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.

Ancestor Eidolons are in Blood of the Beast, but since I couldn't find an OGL source for them I'm not comfortable reproducing it. :( But basically the jist is, the eidolon has the same race as its summoner.

Would this work?


It sounds like that should work. You "count as" the other race, so you should be able to choose that race for your ancestor eidolon.


no, your race is human. It says select your race, not a race you count as.

The Exchange

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What's the point of counting as a race if you don't count as that race?


you count as that race for all options you do. But your ancestor eidolon isn't something you get to choose what you count as, nor is ancestor caring what you count as, only what race you actually are.

Do note, this is just how I believe the rule is, I'm not certain that this is the correct view that everyone must take.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Whether Racial Heritage matters depends on the question being asked.

If the question is "Are you a ratfolk?", then the answer is yes, you meet that qualification.

But if the question is "What is your race?", the answer is still "human".

The race of an ancestor eidolon is based on the answer to the second question, not the first.


Chess Pwn wrote:

you count as that race for all options you do. But your ancestor eidolon isn't something you get to choose what you count as, nor is ancestor caring what you count as, only what race you actually are.

Do note, this is just how I believe the rule is, I'm not certain that this is the correct view that everyone must take.

Feats that require a race also don't call out what you "count as," either.

By your reasoning, a Half-Elf couldn't take either a Human or Elf ancestor eidolon. The "Elf Blood" rule states that half elves "count as" both Humans and Elves, using the exact same language as Racial Lineage.


That's basically the question I'm asking. For example, could a half-orc have their full-orc mother (or full-human father) as their ancestor eidolon, or would their ancestor eidolon, bizarrely, have to be a half-orc?


Saldiven wrote:
Chess Pwn wrote:

you count as that race for all options you do. But your ancestor eidolon isn't something you get to choose what you count as, nor is ancestor caring what you count as, only what race you actually are.

Do note, this is just how I believe the rule is, I'm not certain that this is the correct view that everyone must take.

Feats that require a race also don't call out what you "count as," either.

By your reasoning, a Half-Elf couldn't take either a Human or Elf ancestor eidolon. The "Elf Blood" rule states that half elves "count as" both Humans and Elves, using the exact same language as Racial Lineage.

No because Half-Elves count as being Human or Elf without having to take a Racial Heritage feat to do so. it's part of their race description.

The Exchange

With the racial heritage feat you are saying one of your ancestors was literally a rat folk(or whatever) so I say it should work just fine just have to take it before your 1st level of summoner.Unless they want to nix this with an errata than it will definitely RAW.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Assuming that the summoner is of a standard, 0-Hit Die race, the relevant text is "At 1st level, an ancestor eidolon gains all of the racial traits associated with its summoner's race". This is a direct reference to the actual race of the summoner, not a racial prerequisite for which something like Elf Blood or the Racial Heritage feat would be relevant. It does not matter if the summoner has no ancestors of his own race (for example, if a Half-Elf is the offspring of a pureblooded Elf and a pureblooded Human).

It is analogous to what happens when an Elf Sorcerer with the Orc bloodline and the Racial Heritage (Gnome) feat is reincarnated -- you remove the physical ability score adjustments for the Half-Elf race, not for Human, Elf, Orc, or Gnome. Game elements that reference the character's race refer to the character's actual race, not to other races that he counts as.

The Exchange

Actually I think it comes down to the word "Effect". Are the Ancestor eidolons abilities an effect of the summoners race.

the effect my race has on my class ability is...
My Eidolons Orcish features are an effect of my Racial heritage
My Ancestor Eidolon is not an effect of my Racial heritage XD

When you Reincarnate you retain any class abilities you formerly possessed so that knocks that argument right out also quit trying to muddle this any more than necessary.


as long as its not for the no fun allowed pfs you could always ask your dm for some cusomization, honestly it would make sence if a human was adopted by a family of ratfolks that they could have their edolon be a ratfolk as their family is well ratfolk there for all their known ansestors would be ratfolk

The Exchange

Meh, I quite enjoy pfs.Sounds like it's just not fun for you ;). I would however expect some table variation in pfs XD.


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Well, the character concept I have is for the ancestor eidolon to be a kobold.

"It's not MY fault great-great-grandmother Tyvaria the Red had a *thing* for dragons but couldn't find any, and it's not MY fault that she... ... well, look, I didn't think you could make half-kobolds but apparently you can. And those half-kobolds can make quarter-kobolds. And one-eighth kobolds. And one-sixteenth kobolds. And here I am.

But, you know, the only thing worse than finding out that you're one-sixteenth kobold is having your great-great-grandfather manifest himself from your dreams, and *insist* on becoming your butler.

This whole thing is awful. I'm the victim here. I swear."

Silver Crusade

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Lady-J wrote:
as long as its not for the no fun allowed pfs you could always ask your dm for some cusomization, honestly it would make sence if a human was adopted by a family of ratfolks that they could have their edolon be a ratfolk as their family is well ratfolk there for all their known ansestors would be ratfolk

It's getting fairly old seeing you bash PFS every chance you get when you admit you've never played it. Maybe you should can it.


Some of you are drawing a distinction without difference.

Chess Pwn wrote:
But your ancestor eidolon isn't something you get to choose what you count as

Racial Lineage doesn't let you choose either which race you count as either, you always count as both things.

Otherwise you would choose to be human when hit with a dwarf bane weapon, and dwarf when fighting a Ranger with FE (human).

The Exchange

Samasboy1 wrote:

Some of you are drawing a distinction without difference.

Chess Pwn wrote:
But your ancestor eidolon isn't something you get to choose what you count as

Racial Lineage doesn't let you choose either which race you count as either, you always count as both things.

Otherwise you would choose to be human when hit with a dwarf bane weapon, and dwarf when fighting a Ranger with FE (human).

But you CAN choose options such as FCB and the like because of your multiple races. the real question is quite literally the following : can you choose which race your ancestor eidolon is if you legitimately count as multiple races for effects based on race.


Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
as long as its not for the no fun allowed pfs you could always ask your dm for some cusomization, honestly it would make sence if a human was adopted by a family of ratfolks that they could have their edolon be a ratfolk as their family is well ratfolk there for all their known ansestors would be ratfolk
It's getting fairly old seeing you bash PFS every chance you get when you admit you've never played it. Maybe you should can it.

maybe i would play it if it was worth playing

Silver Crusade

Lady-J wrote:
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
as long as its not for the no fun allowed pfs you could always ask your dm for some cusomization, honestly it would make sence if a human was adopted by a family of ratfolks that they could have their edolon be a ratfolk as their family is well ratfolk there for all their known ansestors would be ratfolk
It's getting fairly old seeing you bash PFS every chance you get when you admit you've never played it. Maybe you should can it.
maybe i would play it if it was worth playing

How can you say if it's worth playing or not if you've never played? I mean, obviously the thousands of people who play PFS aren't wasting 4ish hour chunks of their lives not having fun.


Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
as long as its not for the no fun allowed pfs you could always ask your dm for some cusomization, honestly it would make sence if a human was adopted by a family of ratfolks that they could have their edolon be a ratfolk as their family is well ratfolk there for all their known ansestors would be ratfolk
It's getting fairly old seeing you bash PFS every chance you get when you admit you've never played it. Maybe you should can it.
maybe i would play it if it was worth playing
How can you say if it's worth playing or not if you've never played? I mean, obviously the thousands of people who play PFS aren't wasting 4ish hour chunks of their lives not having fun.

im saying it not worth it for me to do so i see no benifit for me to go out and play an under powered character with little to no customization as many of the interesting things are banned races are limited and in order to play you need to own a hard cover of the book which means hundreds of dollars needed to spend in order to participate or thousands of dollars to have access to all the options


Guys, please, this really isn't the place for this.

This is a thread about pretending to have a kobold butler, not the merits of PFS.

Please just lemme check if I can have my scaley great-great-grandfather manservant in peace. :)

Liberty's Edge

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Lady-J wrote:
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
as long as its not for the no fun allowed pfs you could always ask your dm for some cusomization, honestly it would make sence if a human was adopted by a family of ratfolks that they could have their edolon be a ratfolk as their family is well ratfolk there for all their known ansestors would be ratfolk
It's getting fairly old seeing you bash PFS every chance you get when you admit you've never played it. Maybe you should can it.
maybe i would play it if it was worth playing
How can you say if it's worth playing or not if you've never played? I mean, obviously the thousands of people who play PFS aren't wasting 4ish hour chunks of their lives not having fun.
im saying it not worth it for me to do so i see no benifit for me to go out and play an under powered character with little to no customization as many of the interesting things are banned races are limited and in order to play you need to own a hard cover of the book which means hundreds of dollars needed to spend in order to participate or thousands of dollars to have access to all the options

Why don't you take this to another thread? It's not relevant here. People seem happy to discuss it with you, but try not to derail actual discussions.

David knott 242 wrote:

Assuming that the summoner is of a standard, 0-Hit Die race, the relevant text is "At 1st level, an ancestor eidolon gains all of the racial traits associated with its summoner's race". This is a direct reference to the actual race of the summoner, not a racial prerequisite for which something like Elf Blood or the Racial Heritage feat would be relevant. It does not matter if the summoner has no ancestors of his own race (for example, if a Half-Elf is the offspring of a pureblooded Elf and a pureblooded Human).

It is analogous to what happens when an Elf Sorcerer with the Orc bloodline and the Racial Heritage (Gnome) feat is reincarnated -- you remove the physical ability score adjustments for the Half-Elf race, not for Human, Elf, Orc, or Gnome. Game elements that reference the character's race refer to the character's actual race, not to other races that he counts as.

Racial Heritage allows you to count as that race for anything, essentially - if you've got racial heritage (dwarf), then you can take anything a dwarf could. The same type of language is used for a huge variety of things - such as archetypes: "The buccaneer is an archetype of the gunslinger class, available to human gunslingers". That's referencing the race of the person directly, but a feat that allows you to count as Human would clearly allow you to take this archetype. Why is it any different for 'associated with its summoner's race'?

Silver Crusade

It seems to me that the question is answered by order of operations. Do you gain racial heritage before you gain the eidolon?

There was a post some years ago about what the order of operations for leveling up is, it I don't remember which dev made it.


Arguments that boil down to ""It counts as X" doesn't actually mean that it counts as X" and any variation thereof should be ridiculed


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

The real question is whether an ability that lets you qualify as another race can be applied to an ability that mentions "your race" without specifically mentioning any race. Can anyone cite any generally accepted example of such a thing?

There is no question that a character who counts as an elf can select any game feature that has a prerequisite of "elf" as long as that feature does not have some other prerequisite that he fails to meet.

Silver Crusade

In this case I'd say no, you cannot use the Racial Heritage feat to get an eidolon that's another race. Before you get feats, you get class features. So the eidolon class feature takes effect before you can take the Racial Heritage feat. My argument for this is that a level 1 oracle can take the Extra Revelation feat. In order to take that feat, you have to already have the Revelation class feature.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
In this case I'd say no, you cannot use the Racial Heritage feat to get an eidolon that's another race. Before you get feats, you get class features. So the eidolon class feature takes effect before you can take the Racial Heritage feat. My argument for this is that a level 1 oracle can take the Extra Revelation feat. In order to take that feat, you have to already have the Revelation class feature.

That depends on whether selecting the effective race of the eidolon is considered to be part of step 3 (Pick your class) or step 6 (Finishing details). That character creation sequence is vague enough to leave a lot of wiggle room as to the order you pick things in.

Silver Crusade

David knott 242 wrote:
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
In this case I'd say no, you cannot use the Racial Heritage feat to get an eidolon that's another race. Before you get feats, you get class features. So the eidolon class feature takes effect before you can take the Racial Heritage feat. My argument for this is that a level 1 oracle can take the Extra Revelation feat. In order to take that feat, you have to already have the Revelation class feature.

That depends on whether selecting the effective race of the eidolon is considered to be part of step 3 (Pick your class) or step 6 (Finishing details). That character creation sequence is vague enough to leave a lot of wiggle room as to the order you pick things in.

I disagree. The eidolon is one of your class features and is gained as soon as you choose the class for that level. You could get around it by dipping into some other class at level 1, taking Racial Heritage, then taking summoner at level 2.


yes but the aplication of an archetype comes after everything else is done so he should have the feat before hand. even if it wasn't he could just say i had one racial hit die took racial haritage then turned the racial hit die into a summoner hit die

Dark Archive

Personally I would say that it is currently ambiguous, as is much of the subtype. I would allow it at my table, however, I would not say someone is wrong for not interpreting that the same way. If you play with a dedicated group I would just check with the Gm's first and clarify what you are doing. If they so "no that's not how I read it" then you'll have to wait for campaign clarification from paizo.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Lady-J wrote:
yes but the aplication of an archetype comes after everything else is done so he should have the feat before hand. even if it wasn't he could just say i had one racial hit die took racial haritage then turned the racial hit die into a summoner hit die

The Ancestor eidolon subtype is not part of any archetype.

A character can count as any number of races, but each has only one race. I don't think you can get around that with Racial Heritage.

Silver Crusade

Lady-J wrote:
yes but the aplication of an archetype comes after everything else is done so he should have the feat before hand. even if it wasn't he could just say i had one racial hit die took racial haritage then turned the racial hit die into a summoner hit die

The application of an archetype comes when you select the class. You don't pick rogue as your class, do everything else for leveling up your character, then say "Oh, I'm a thug rogue, by the way."


Bigdaddyjug wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
yes but the aplication of an archetype comes after everything else is done so he should have the feat before hand. even if it wasn't he could just say i had one racial hit die took racial haritage then turned the racial hit die into a summoner hit die

The application of an archetype comes when you select the class. You don't pick rogue as your class, do everything else for leveling up your character, then say "Oh, I'm a thug rogue, by the way."

exept you do as many archetypes dont kick in till level 2 or higher so even if it kicked in at level one you would pick the archetype after everything else is done


Whether Racial Heritage can qualify let someone qualify for archetypes was FAQ'd and answered years ago. Link.


It would make the names of the archetype and eidolon subtype meaningless if you could not "bring back" your ancestor as his own race. Racial Heritage and Ancestor Eidolon kind of point that way.


Bigdaddyjug wrote:
In this case I'd say no, you cannot use the Racial Heritage feat to get an eidolon that's another race. Before you get feats, you get class features. So the eidolon class feature takes effect before you can take the Racial Heritage feat. My argument for this is that a level 1 oracle can take the Extra Revelation feat. In order to take that feat, you have to already have the Revelation class feature.

But I can take a racial Archetype from level 1 if I take Racial Heritage immediately.


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Heya guys, just following up on this; the most recent FAQ officially crushes my dreams handily.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1hh#v5748eaic9vhi


Sasayaki wrote:

Heya guys, just following up on this; the most recent FAQ officially crushes my dreams handily.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1hh#v5748eaic9vhi

how so all it says is you need to have the boon for the race before you can use the racial haratige for it so just try and work towards getting the boon

Liberty's Edge

Lady-J wrote:
Sasayaki wrote:

Heya guys, just following up on this; the most recent FAQ officially crushes my dreams handily.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1hh#v5748eaic9vhi

how so all it says is you need to have the boon for the race before you can use the racial haratige for it so just try and work towards getting the boon

The reason this was being done, is most likely due to the fact that Kobold boons do not exist, and leadership has stated that they never will exist.


Arcaian wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
Sasayaki wrote:

Heya guys, just following up on this; the most recent FAQ officially crushes my dreams handily.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1hh#v5748eaic9vhi

how so all it says is you need to have the boon for the race before you can use the racial haratige for it so just try and work towards getting the boon
The reason this was being done, is most likely due to the fact that Kobold boons do not exist, and leadership has stated that they never will exist.

original post says ratfolk and i know theres a ratfolk boon

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