Did I read that first 'about the playtest' article correctly, and see that ra ... *ahem* ancestry ... is decoupled from culture? There's no 'I'm a dwarf, therefore I inherently dodge giants and hate goblins'?
If so, that by itself gives me some hope for the next edition.
Yeah, that's how I read it as well. You could have a human raised in the "dwarf culture" or a halfling raised in the "elf culture." Which opens a lot more room for setting books / homebrew settings to then actually stat out unique national / regional cultures, with their own bonuses separate from race... ahem, "ancestry."
I feel like the point of ancestry is that you can throw nature and nurture in the same bucket and not worry about how much of what you get is from one as opposed to the other.
Which is great, honestly. My guess is that ancestral archetypes will serve to differentiate between a Dwarf from Cheliax and a Dwarf from Alkenstar, and these archetypes will be universal in the sense that you can use the Chellish one for humans, and halflings, and tieflings (when they exist).
Oh, I hope that’s the case. I always hated how elves all know how to use swords and bows and how dwarves all know how to use axes and hammers, even the ones that don’t come from a background where they’d ever learn these things. For that matter, there’s something I’ve wanted to know since I first read the Inner Sea World Guide: what is the in-universe reason why dwarves in Golarion have their dodge bonus against Giants? As far as I ever read, dwarves have zero special history or enmity with Giants and I don’t even recall the two being mentioned on the same page.
Yep, dwarf culture totally needs to be a thing, dwarf ra... spec... ancestry needs to be a thing, and they need to be able to align or not align as the character concept needs.
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I very much hope it is as you outline (That rather than a race-class your character would be described as a culture-ancestry-class).
However, I didn't get that impression from the comments from staff. It sounded to me that they were envisaging an elven ancestry and a kellid ancestry or a dwarf and chelaxian (or whatever - basically that a whole bunch of human cultures would become ancestries alongside the current non-human races).
Personally, this is something I hope might be changed in the playtest period - I'd like it to be a chelaxian-elvish-fighter and a kellid-elvish-fighter. Where the skills/weapon proficiencies/etc came from culture but stats and physical attributes (darkvision and so forth) came from ancestry.
I do like how Adventures in Middle Earth handled it with their cultures. Elves of Mirkwood, Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, as well as Men of Dale, Gondor, Rohan and such. I'm pretty sure that elves of Rivendell have different stats than those of Mirkwood.
I'm for the traditional racial ancestral features system. Elves have always been good with swords and bows (and skilled magic users), dwarves have always battled goblinoids (goblins are somewhat dangerous pests and require extermination) and giants (it's a stature enmity). It's their hat . If for some reason a dwarf is not an enemy of all goblins and hasn't been trained with Dwarven weaponry those racial features are swapped with alternatives as provided with the Advanced Race Guide or to GM discretion.
I think it's fair that the CORE rulebook has the basics; further personalization options should be provided on future books.
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I'm for the traditional
racialancestral features system. Elves have always been good with swords and bows (and skilled magic users), dwarves have always battled goblinoids (goblins are somewhat dangerous pests and require extermination) and giants (it's a stature enmity). It's their hat . If for some reason a dwarf is not an enemy of all goblins and hasn't been trained with Dwarven weaponry those racial features are swapped with alternatives as provided with the Advanced Race Guide or to GM discretion.I think it's fair that the CORE rulebook has the basics; further personalization options should be provided on future books.
I'm for settings which make sense rather than everyone having the same culture regardless of where they live in the world and their history.
I believe there was a special category of ancestry feats mentioned - "heritage feats," maybe? - that could only be taken at first level. That's an obvious place to put particular cultural backgrounds, though we know there will be backgrounds too and it's not clear what the division of labor will be between them.
If this is how it works and I had my druthers, I'd probably try to give each ancestry three heritage feats, two that were within the stereotypical image but different from each other (high elf vs wood elf, hidebound dwarven kingdom vs technophilic dwarven republic, whatever) and one that was more out of left field. But that's without knowing what these are really supposed to cover, space requirements, &c.
TBH I'd prefer it based on two aspects:
race and ancestry as two separate but completing elements:
first being about inherent biological elements: like elves being frailer from human, dwarves being less charismatic than halflings and so on, and Azlanti being freakin' ubermensch
and another about cultural background of your rise
standard dwarf living in citadel would have training against giants and goblins, while city dwarf would get ancestry traits of city merchant or smth
nature, nurture? I say BOTH!
I hope that Culture type stuff just gets put in Backgrounds.
I'm for settings which make sense rather than everyone having the same culture regardless of where they live in the world and their history.
In a setting where goblins are a pyromaniac race of (albeit cute and goofy) psychopaths, i think it makes perfect sense to hate them; same goes for giantkin (trolls, ogres etcetera).
In PF1 cultural diversity within the same race was achieved through alternate racial traits and different skillsets. We were even offered some racial subtypes (the ancient subrace) for the core races. I think that's good enough to satisfy every need for diversity.
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In a setting where goblins are a pyromaniac race of (albeit cute and goofy) psychopaths, i think it makes perfect sense to hate them; same goes for giantkin (trolls, ogres etcetera).
In PF1 cultural diversity within the same race was achieved through alternate racial traits and different skillsets. We were even offered some racial subtypes (the ancient subrace) for the core races. I think that's good enough to satisfy every need for diversity.
A setting where goblin culture is "Pyromanic race of psychopaths" instead of having actual cultures is the exact type of thing I'm against.
Considering how often I had to houserule away stupid stuff like weapon proficiencies, or things like Greed and Hatred, I really don't think the level of choice they gave to remove those racial traits were enough especially since they often only gave it the option of replacing it with other culture traits.
For racial and cultural paragon i use the 3.5 Races of Faerun, an in depth guide to those aspects in what i thing is the setting with the greatest diversity.
With few exceptions (aquatic subraces, ECL>0 subraces) the races presented have almost the same mechanical traits (savage subraces tend to have different weapon proficiency) and are characterized in the descriptive text. Eberron doesn't even have those small mechanical changes, leaving it only to fluff and lore to differenciate (which is something i like).
EDIT: As for ancestry race/background, the parents define the race; the class, skills (background skills in PF1, thanks to pathfinder unchained) and first feat(s if human) define the background. As simple as that.