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"Why the retcon?" I thought to myself and then read the Lashunta entry in Starfinder.
Considering how they presented it in Starfinder and everything I know about Paizo, the thought occurs to me that Paizo did it because they didn't want to be thought of as supporting externally defined gender roles and the like.
Yes, no, can't say for legal reasons?
No, that's pretty much the state reason. I believe Crystal has gone on record in at least one of the many various info release places mentioning it, but I can site no sources and have no way of tracking it down other than Google. It makes sense - I liked the other way, because it was cool to have many standard tropes reversed, but it makes sense - it fits with their ethos, and I understand if people feel happier the other way. And, really, that's what's important, I'd guess - the comfort and enjoyment of those playing the game.
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Yeah, they've gone out of their way to make sure there aren't any gender roles, stereotypes, etc. in their games. Not even in aliens. Gender differences are effectively meaningless in all species now. Honestly, that makes aliens a lot more boring to me, when they're just humans with antennae or four arms or whatever. I'd like some that showed meaningful, stats-level sexual dimorphism (not just "males have beards/different colored hair/etc"), or had different sorts of life cycles, or something to make them something besides an RPG version of rubber forehead aliens. But c'est la vie.
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Okie dokie. Thanks Tac.
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I imagine it's for two reasons:
1) It expands the pool of racial choices
2) They didn't want to be in the position of telling a player "you MUST be female to play a damaya or male for korasha" as you suggest. It's one thing when they're a NPC race, but quite another when they're a core race.
As for me, given that this is the first I've ever encountered Lashunta in a paizo product (I know they appeared elsewhere, but no DM has ever allowed them) it doesn't bother me one way or the other. Plus, in a setting where you can get a magic sex-change for the cost of a decent battery, worrying what gender something is or isn't is kinda low-key.
Maybe THAT's the secret! The Lashunta government has secretly subsidized the cost of sex-shift serums for all their citizens! :)
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I look at it more as SCIENCE! and the evolution of thousands upon thousands of years of MAGIC! making things more understandable and less tied to a given thing from a story perspective.
Sort of like if one took humanity say, a thousand years after easily available sex and/or gender-swapping/morphological freedom/transhumanism but retaining 'basic humanity'.
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Nobody's said you can't make every female Lashunta you play damaya and every male one korasha. If you still like the gender-based breakdown you can do it that way.
Anyways there's a post on an earlier version of this that goes over the in-universe explanation. Basically the phenotype is environmentally determined, and historical Lashunta society was fairly heavy on gender roles. Most males were exposed to environments that triggered the korasha expression, while females were in roles that triggered damaya. Modern, Starfinder-era Lashunta society is less rigid, and hormone treatments are available to ensure individuals can choose which phenotype they will express. It's still really unique and nifty.
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Yeah, they've gone out of their way to make sure there aren't any gender roles, stereotypes, etc. in their games. Not even in aliens. Gender differences are effectively meaningless in all species now. Honestly, that makes aliens a lot more boring to me, when they're just humans with antennae or four arms or whatever. I'd like some that showed meaningful, stats-level sexual dimorphism (not just "males have beards/different colored hair/etc"), or had different sorts of life cycles, or something to make them something besides an RPG version of rubber forehead aliens. But c'est la vie.
Why does it have to be sexual dimorphism? Lashunta still exhibit stats-level dimorphism, it's just not tied to their sex.
Shirren and androids both have different lifecycles.
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Nobody's said you can't make every female Lashunta you play damaya and every male one korasha. If you still like the gender-based breakdown you can do it that way.
Anyways there's a post on an earlier version of this that goes over the in-universe explanation. Basically the phenotype is environmentally determined, and historical Lashunta society was fairly heavy on gender roles. Most males were exposed to environments that triggered the korasha expression, while females were in roles that triggered damaya. Modern, Starfinder-era Lashunta society is less rigid, and hormone treatments are available to ensure individuals can choose which phenotype they will express. It's still really unique and nifty.
Its not a matter of like or dislike. It just wanted to know if my guess was right.
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Yeah, they've gone out of their way to make sure there aren't any gender roles, stereotypes, etc. in their games. Not even in aliens. Gender differences are effectively meaningless in all species now. Honestly, that makes aliens a lot more boring to me, when they're just humans with antennae or four arms or whatever. I'd like some that showed meaningful, stats-level sexual dimorphism (not just "males have beards/different colored hair/etc"), or had different sorts of life cycles, or something to make them something besides an RPG version of rubber forehead aliens. But c'est la vie.Why does it have to be sexual dimorphism? Lashunta still exhibit stats-level dimorphism, it's just not tied to their sex.
Shirren and androids both have different lifecycles.
Exactly. Rubber forehead aliens are aliens that are basically people with some make up on, maybe with some elements of an 'exotic' historical culture, like klingons and the sort of samurai Japanese honor shtick. Starfinder aliens are pretty far from just rubber foreheads, kasatha have extra limbs and are very culturally different, ysoki are ratpeople, shirren are three-sexed bug people, and androids are functionally immortal.
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Yeah, they've gone out of their way to make sure there aren't any gender roles, stereotypes, etc. in their games. Not even in aliens. Gender differences are effectively meaningless in all species now. Honestly, that makes aliens a lot more boring to me, when they're just humans with antennae or four arms or whatever. I'd like some that showed meaningful, stats-level sexual dimorphism (not just "males have beards/different colored hair/etc"), or had different sorts of life cycles, or something to make them something besides an RPG version of rubber forehead aliens. But c'est la vie.Why does it have to be sexual dimorphism? Lashunta still exhibit stats-level dimorphism, it's just not tied to their sex.
Shirren and androids both have different lifecycles.
Because that's what it was pre-retcon, and sexual dimorphism of that extreme (or more in, say, anglerfish) exists in nature. It'd be nice to see non-human races who actually exemplified things we see in nature that humans don't. Perhaps a race that hibernates periodically (though that's harder to explain when we're not planet-bound), or one that, like salmon, become sexually mature and spawn only near the end of their lives (I guess androids are sort of like this if you squint hard enough). Lashunta presented a chance to take a really interesting look at a race with a whole different paradigm than humans, where there was a real difference between the sexes that shaped their society. Now they're much more bland, effectively just giving you a choice of two stat lines depending on the class you're playing, which you've pretty well always been able to do with humans and their flexible bonus anyway.
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The only Lashunta retcon I object to is the switch from a universal Int bonus to a universal Cha bonus. Half of them are stupider but more charming now. Which is weird.
This.
Their entire entry in Distant Worlds established them as a highly intellectual race. It makes no sense to remove Intelligence as their universal ability score when all existing material emphasizes them as a race of super smart telepaths.
The only Lashunta retcon I object to is the switch from a universal Int bonus to a universal Cha bonus. Half of them are stupider but more charming now. Which is weird.This.
Their entire entry in Distant Worlds established them as a highly intellectual race. It makes no sense to remove Intelligence as their universal ability score when all existing material emphasizes them as a race of super smart telepaths.
Urge to equate real world items to this rising...
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I also approve of the new and improved Lashunta.
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In my game I will keep the original Lashunta sexual dimorphism because I am okay with it (I breed tarantulas, and it's not uncommon for the females to be almost twice as big as the males). That being said, like a previous poster said I'm more disappointed that they gave them all +2 cha instead of +2 int like before.
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The only Lashunta retcon I object to is the switch from a universal Int bonus to a universal Cha bonus. Half of them are stupider but more charming now. Which is weird.
The cool kids ate some weird mushroom growing in the jungle.
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I wonder whether the change to stats was what pushed the old sexual dimorphism over the edge of the cliff. As bad as it was to have one sex as wiser and more charismatic than the other, can you imagine the fan reaction if one sex was actually smarter than the other?
Of course, this whole change does make for some interesting speculation about what happened on Castrovel during the Gap. I am imagining that the first step was the loosening of gender roles so that we had Damaya of both genders with +2 Int and Cha and -2 Con and paleo-Korasha of both genders with +2 Str and Int and -2 Wis. Somewhere along the line, a third subspecies -- the neo-Korasha, with +2 Str and Cha and -2 Wis -- developed.
What I haven't worked out is why the neo-Korasha increased to become half the population of the race while the paleo-Korasha eventually became either completely or nearly extinct. And if a few stray paleo-Korasha still pop up on occasion, could there exist other rare subspecies of Lashunta?
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I feel like the name of this thread is misleading.
Starfinder takes place X,000 years in the future from Pathfinder. Creatures change and evolve over time, even if it's slowly and fueled by scientific discovery / social norms changing rather than genetic progression or change.
If anything, this thread should be called The Lashunta Progression.
Exactly. Rubber forehead aliens are aliens that are basically people with some make up on, maybe with some elements of an 'exotic' historical culture, like klingons and the sort of samurai Japanese honor shtick. Starfinder aliens are pretty far from just rubber foreheads, kasatha have extra limbs and are very culturally different, ysoki are ratpeople, shirren are three-sexed bug people, and androids are functionally immortal.Yeah, they've gone out of their way to make sure there aren't any gender roles, stereotypes, etc. in their games. Not even in aliens. Gender differences are effectively meaningless in all species now. Honestly, that makes aliens a lot more boring to me, when they're just humans with antennae or four arms or whatever. I'd like some that showed meaningful, stats-level sexual dimorphism (not just "males have beards/different colored hair/etc"), or had different sorts of life cycles, or something to make them something besides an RPG version of rubber forehead aliens. But c'est la vie.Why does it have to be sexual dimorphism? Lashunta still exhibit stats-level dimorphism, it's just not tied to their sex.
Shirren and androids both have different lifecycles.
I disagree. Those are pretty much rubber forehead traits... One meaningless, but visual, difference but otherwise they're just like everyone else. I find the Starfinder races extremely bland- I'd much rather have the PF races in center stage, and reading several of the write ups (particularly halflings) in universe, they still are.
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I'm not a fan, they took something alien and made it more human.
Yeah, cause all the human kids I grew up with eventually diverged into two distinct phenotypes based on personal choices. Definitely a human trait there.
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I feel like the name of this thread is misleading.
Starfinder takes place X,000 years in the future from Pathfinder. Creatures change and evolve over time, even if it's slowly and fueled by scientific discovery / social norms changing rather than genetic progression or change.
If anything, this thread should be called The Lashunta Progression.
It's more how people feel about it rather than what it is. When all existing material for a race says X only for it to be changed to Y in the future, it still feels like a retcon. Especially when existing material establishes them as a highly intelligent race of telepaths for thousands of years. And then the new lore of the race doesn't explain why that changed in the last 1000 or so years.
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The only Lashunta retcon I object to is the switch from a universal Int bonus to a universal Cha bonus. Half of them are stupider but more charming now. Which is weird.This.
Their entire entry in Distant Worlds established them as a highly intellectual race. It makes no sense to remove Intelligence as their universal ability score when all existing material emphasizes them as a race of super smart telepaths.
They still get the intellectual side of things.
They get to add +2 to any two skills you choose since they love learning. That's equivalent to a +4 intelligence boost for any knowledge skills you might put those into.That makes them a very strong race for any skill monkey you're thinking of making.
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They did explain it: They can now get a cheap, permanent sex change by drinking an elixir.
edit: maybe that was a dev comment, and not part of the official lore.
Except Cyrad is talking about the lower Int/higher Cha of one type, not the two types no longer being linked to sex.
Which is the part that weirds me out, too.
I have a very mildly annoyed that the specific wording used implies that Pathfinder era Lashunta were sexist (rather than, say, lacking the proper psychic techniques to reliably ensure which type the child wound up), because it makes them less nice people in that era. But that's minor and easily passed off as an inaccurate assumption of modern Lashunta.
No, my issue is why the heck are half of them less intelligent now? How do advances in effecting what traits present themselves lead to that?
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I feel like the name of this thread is misleading.
Starfinder takes place X,000 years in the future from Pathfinder. Creatures change and evolve over time, even if it's slowly and fueled by scientific discovery / social norms changing rather than genetic progression or change.
If anything, this thread should be called The Lashunta Progression.
I have heard it described not as a retcon but rather more development on a species that was rare in Pathfinder but has come into the spotlight in Starfinder. Few people on Golarion knew about lashuntas, and even fewer knew what "korasha" or "damaya" meant. Who knows if future Pathfinder material featuring lashuntas will have the new details.
For mechanical reasons I am a fan of the new stats, as I am loving the Strength and Charisma for my solarian.
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Crystal's explanation:
If we're looking at getting into specifics—and I'm happy to having helped rework this aspect of lashunta biology—the lashunta evolved two distinct types of adolescent developments as a response to the severe swings in environmental pressures of their homeworld. Depending on the pressures they faced at puberty, they would either mature as hardy, combative korasha, or they would mature as adaptable, observant damaya. When their culture later developed a tradition of strong gender roles, the kinds of pressures that triggered development as a korasha fell almost entirely on males, while the pressures that trigger damaya development fell almost wholly on women.
As lashunta have move towards leaving their sexism in the past and opening social roles, education, and careers up to everyone regardless of gender, the distribution has become much more even, and many city-states even allow a child to choose how they will develop (by way of meditation and/or medication) rather than just relying on ambient environmental pressures. There are still a few conservative city-states where the gender divide exists and the subspecies are still largely divived by gender, but these are increasingly rare.
I rather liked the retcon once I saw the in-universe explanation. But yeah, I wasn't as happy with the stat change, especially since Charisma is much less of a key skill (it went from 'awesome for a bunch of classes' to 'need a bit if you're an envoy or solarion, and any you can spare if you want to be Captain')
Personally I say it isn't even a retcon.
Back before the Lashunta had access to what is basically HRT for them, males and females were just naturally predisposed to becoming a certain subrace, be that from genetics or societal pressures.
Nowadays a guy that wants to develop Damayan traits just pops some pills/gets a different job until they pass puberty.
Not that I like the change, honestly, but it makes sense to me.
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Maybe the reason for the stat change was that there were already too many core races with INT as racial stat (Android, Ysoki). Now Cha is the main stat for LAshunta with Int being a choice rather mandatory.
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Yeah, they've gone out of their way to make sure there aren't any gender roles, stereotypes, etc. in their games. Not even in aliens. Gender differences are effectively meaningless in all species now. Honestly, that makes aliens a lot more boring to me, when they're just humans with antennae or four arms or whatever. I'd like some that showed meaningful, stats-level sexual dimorphism (not just "males have beards/different colored hair/etc"), or had different sorts of life cycles, or something to make them something besides an RPG version of rubber forehead aliens. But c'est la vie.Why does it have to be sexual dimorphism? Lashunta still exhibit stats-level dimorphism, it's just not tied to their sex.
Shirren and androids both have different lifecycles.
Short answer is that the only way to have a divergence in the appearance, sixe and capabilities of different members of a species and have those changes not be tied to a racial subtype that won't eventually diverge into two separate species is to have the changes tied to the sex of the individual. Other wise from a scientific version you have to come up with an explanation why in this case evolution does not work as it does for every other species.
Seriously though if there is sexual dimorphism it would be in the shirren. The females would be bigger, badder and probably more intelligent than the males who would be smaller, much weaker than the female mates and probably would become food for them after mating. One could rule that all Shirren adventurers you meet therefore are female.
Humans have a massively diverse morphology that isn't going to lead to evolutionary separation of the species.
So do many species of fish, in particular African Cichlids. Cichlids have both sexual dimorphism and subspecies colour morphs. But they cross breed very easily which means they won't spectate any time soon.
As long as there's a process of genetic flow between populations, the evolution into separate species just isn't going to occur. In this setting there's only been three hundred years since "The Gap" wiped out memory. 300 years won't lead to speciation unless there's extreme selection pressure going on. Prior to the gap the capacity for gene flow across entire plaentary systems was just as likely occurring.
If you want sexual dimorphism, it's not wise to place it in a playable race in all honesty. The player base for roleplay games has truly diversified now days. It's pointless to make something playable that would alienate a portion of the player base.
However, no ones going to get upset if you explore those species concepts in monsters and other non player character aspects of the setting. After all, if you don't like it, they can become the bad guys in the setting and your group can crusade against the unfairness of it all ( assuming it's a societal issue and not actual biological stuff of course)
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Humans have a massively diverse morphology that isn't going to lead to evolutionary separation of the species.So do many species of fish, in particular African Cichlids. Cichlids have both sexual dimorphism and subspecies colour morphs. But they cross breed very easily which means they won't spectate any time soon.
As long as there's a process of genetic flow between populations, the evolution into separate species just isn't going to occur. In this setting there's only been three hundred years since "The Gap" wiped out memory. 300 years won't lead to speciation unless there's extreme selection pressure going on. Prior to the gap the capacity for gene flow across entire plaentary systems was just as likely occurring.
If you want sexual dimorphism, it's not wise to place it in a playable race in all honesty. The player base for roleplay games has truly diversified now days. It's pointless to make something playable that would alienate a portion of the player base.
However, no ones going to get upset if you explore those species concepts in monsters and other non player character aspects of the setting. After all, if you don't like it, they can become the bad guys in the setting and your group can crusade against the unfairness of it all ( assuming it's a societal issue and not actual biological stuff of course)
If you can wrap your head around playing a giant, anthropomorphic space lizard or a child-sized space rat, either of whom might be able to perform universe-altering magic, conjure a magic sword from thin air, or have an AI grafted into their brain, why would it be that hard to play a species where men and women are different?
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Modern politics. Simple as that.
Personally I'd have no issue with it. But I'm not trying to sell a game system to a group of people made up of near equal numbers of men and women.
No matter which way you go, applying different stats to one gender over another is going to upset people.
Paizo have always been about equality in representation for their players.
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If you can wrap your head around playing a giant, anthropomorphic space lizard or a child-sized space rat, either of whom might be able to perform universe-altering magic, conjure a magic sword from thin air, or have an AI grafted into their brain, why would it be that hard to play a species where men and women are different?
Humans have a massively diverse morphology that isn't going to lead to evolutionary separation of the species.So do many species of fish, in particular African Cichlids. Cichlids have both sexual dimorphism and subspecies colour morphs. But they cross breed very easily which means they won't spectate any time soon.
As long as there's a process of genetic flow between populations, the evolution into separate species just isn't going to occur. In this setting there's only been three hundred years since "The Gap" wiped out memory. 300 years won't lead to speciation unless there's extreme selection pressure going on. Prior to the gap the capacity for gene flow across entire plaentary systems was just as likely occurring.
If you want sexual dimorphism, it's not wise to place it in a playable race in all honesty. The player base for roleplay games has truly diversified now days. It's pointless to make something playable that would alienate a portion of the player base.
However, no ones going to get upset if you explore those species concepts in monsters and other non player character aspects of the setting. After all, if you don't like it, they can become the bad guys in the setting and your group can crusade against the unfairness of it all ( assuming it's a societal issue and not actual biological stuff of course)
Every player wants to be different and break the mold and have a unique character. It is easier to just not include certain molds.
I don't. The subgroup of players that want unique characters are super annoying, and mostly exist to derail the game in favor of their personal monologues.
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I don't. The subgroup of players that want unique characters are super annoying, and mostly exist to derail the game in favor of their personal monologues.
So you prefer a bunch of cookie cutter characters with little differences?
I don't enjoy playing in a game where what I'm trying to do with my character overlaps with other players characters too much. It leads to situations where some characters are truly just superfluous to needs.
The greater the ability for the designers to grant flexibility in build so that people can play something different as often as possible leads to a much better game.
Maybe you're thinking of the special snow flake syndrome where players want it to be all about them and how their character is the exception to every known norm in the setting. If so, that's a very different story to what's being discussed here.
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Why am I reminded of the angst from certain individuals over Pathfinder changelings only being females*?
*- If you want a traditional (not the more modern sanitized versions) fairy-tale answer,
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So are the Lashunta really completely okay with how their race works?
I mean, I feel like a classic blue vs white collar conflict.
Are the taller and more intellect Lashunta snobs towards the shorter and more workman Lashunta?
This is very human culture reading on a fictional alien race, but are the values of "being more physically strong" and "being more intellectual" in harmony or does one have more cultural value?
So are the Lashunta really completely okay with how their race works?
I mean, I feel like a classic blue vs white collar conflict.
Are the taller and more intellect Lashunta snobs towards the shorter and more workman Lashunta?This is very human culture reading on a fictional alien race, but are the values of "being more physically strong" and "being more intellectual" in harmony or does one have more cultural value?
I mean, considering it's optional now, I figure they're just glad to have the option.
On a planet they intentionally preserve in a 'wild' state having some muscles could help, so it's not like they're that much worse off for it.| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
Every player wants to be different and break the mold and have a unique character. It is easier to just not include certain molds.
Sometimes it's as simple as players wanting to play a PC who's...
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
...a funguy.
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I don't. The subgroup of players that want unique characters are super annoying, and mostly exist to derail the game in favor of their personal monologues.
That's an extremely unfair and antagonistic generalization.
That's like me saying, "Roleplayers in a roleplaying game are super annoying, and mostly exist to ruin the game for everyone."
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Seriously though if there is sexual dimorphism it would be in the shirren. The females would be bigger, badder and probably more intelligent than the males who would be smaller, much weaker than the female mates and probably would become food for them after mating. One could rule that all Shirren adventurers you meet therefore are female.
yeah, if there were only two genders of Shirren, but the Shirren have that third sex...
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Alternate Lashunta: Lashunta are now genderless with two castes instead. Pic related:
http://pm1.narvii.com/6199/fba02dd5bbc63b43cac98124a3b3e8fdb42ee4a3_hq.jpg
Heh. Well played, CountArioch. Well. Played.