I was made king in our Kingmaker game and after a few sessions we have established a consort. We are both Aasimar, though of different heritages, and I am aware that my heirs will not be Aasimar at all. How do I manage this?
I will be playing the consort when she is not busy popping out heirs, which is way she is an Aasimar in the first place. I know I could've married an elf so that my heir would live a long life like myself but I wanted to play a swashbuckler so I needed the dexterity and charisma. I am ok with having heirs that I'll out live since I could just make more or let my grandchildren run the kingdom when I die. I realize that our party will likely die one day and the heir won't matter since the campaign would be over but I want to look into this for story purposes.
If I have a human heir, I risk assassination because of him wanting the crown. Even if my son doesn't covet the throne, his son might or his son's son. I can imagine it now, after 200 years of running the kingdom, the king is slain by his grandson who had no real connection with him and was pressured by his wife. My being assassinated is unlikely as my bodyguard is a paladin with ultimate mercy so I'd have to be sent to another dimension or killed by a death effect. I am also a Witch so by the time my son or grandson is old enough to betray me, I'd be a high level and pretty powerful.
If I pull an Abraham and have an heir with an elf, my heir would have a long life like me and could inherit the throne when I die and he'd still be fairly young. My problem with this is that it'd pretty much defeat the purpose of having an Aasimar consort in the first place. It would also be kinda of messed up for the consort too. I know I wouldn't like to be one who has let his wife get with a celestial to create an Aasimar so this off the table.
I am interested if I can pull a Sarah and have an Aasimar heir with my Aasimar consort. I'm pretty sure that Aasimar skip several generations but I like the idea of only having Aasimar rule my kingdom. Is there some boon I can find/earn or can a wish give me an Aasimar heir. While my character isn't greedy or selfish, he'd see spending the gold for a wish as a selfless act for his son.
I'd like suggestions for what everyone thinks the best course of actions I could take for my kingdom are.
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Why would your descendants not be Aasimar at all? Aasimar are not just the immediate descendants of celestials, but can be the progeny of two Aasimar or can skip generations, unless I'm missing something that has been stated outside of the main Aasimar statblock?
I guess it isn't guaranteed, but if you'd really like to have only Aasimar heirs, I think you'll need to take it up with your GM - I don't know of any ways to guarantee it RAW, but I don't think it would be too much of an ask for the GM to create some sideplot involving celestials who could do such a thing.
You're both Aasimars, so "have some fun" and pop out as many heirs as possible. If your kingdom allows harems/concubines without the cliche/taboo derision from the nobles of this country (but if you're king, who gives a rat's derriere about the opinion of nobles), marry other wives and pump out as many children as you can. Create a Dynasty. Create 40+ children in the next decade. Create the Dynasty, and your family name will live on and be remembered forever, and not for a couple centuries, but rather a Dynasty that lasts a millennia or several millennia.
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I just checked the Pathfinder reference documents and aasimar have the same lifespans as humans. (The starting ages do seem to deviate a lot.)
There are other sources published by Paizo that contradict this but James Jacob has stated that this was an editorial mistake. Aasimar on Golarion are supposed to live slightly longer than humans, while Tieflings have a slightly shorter lifespan.
That would kinda solve your problem of patricide, without solving the problem of what race your unborn baby might be. It's hard to mix genetics into fantasy. I'd say generic aasimar with a small chance of being more the same kind of aasimar as one of the parents and an even smaller chance of being human. Theoretically, if both parents are about a quarter celestial they could have a half-celestial baby. The chances of that happening would be about as big as two aasimar having a human baby, or in other words, very small.
Don't forget that Pathfinder is a game and you're supposed to have fun. Just make up some odds that the other players in your group can agree on. The same goes for aasimar lifespans. It doesn't matter as long as you have fun.
Sidenote: If a human has about 23000 genes, (I'm not exactly sure.) a "quarter celestial aasimar" would have about 5750 celestial genes. It's gonna be hard to calculate the exact amount, and the rules don't exactly determine what is necessary to be considered an aasimar. (Except for game statistics) This is why it's hard to mix fantasy with genetics.
Edit: I suddenly have this idea for a tiefling eugenics programme...
It certainly seems to me that an Aasimar (or Teifling) occurs once in a while when their is an appropriate outsider ancestry. So your kids (or grandkids or greatgrandkids) probably all have a small chance of manifesting their Celestial heritage and being an Aasimar, but it isn't certain or likely for any of them.
One thing to think about though, is the unlike elves, your character doesn't come from a long lived culture. As you point out, this could lead to great-great Grandpa being on the throne and that causing all sorts of problems. Their are other choices, and some of those choices are ones your character could make, in particular abdication and going on to do something else.
Someone who wasn't from a long lived culture, without anything to support him in his uniqueness, lived through most of his friends getting old and dying, and/or was just plain bored of ruling could easily decide that 40 years or so of being king was plenty and it was time to move on.
I think the reason that the celestial gene skips generations is due to Aasimar being 1/4 Celestial at best. Two "first generation" Aasimar or descendants of half celestials would have a 1/4 chance of having an Aasimar and these odds get lower the more diluted the celestial blood is. The king could certainly keep trying for an aasimar though I'm pretty sure my odds are low as the Queen is a scion of humanity, her blood is particularly diluted and I haven't decided on my heritage as it wasn't part of my back story.
I could retcon my heritage to give me a 1/4s chance but I think a more realistic option would be 1/8s. The resources I've seen say that there are no Aasimar communities because Aasimar(Aasimars?) are rare and few ever see another Aasimar. This would suggest that Aasimar might be able to form communities if there were enough of them and their progeny may be Aasimar as well.
As for starting ages, I used d20pfsrd's stat block because that's my go to site. I sometimes cross reference the data with Archives of Nethys but Archives doesn't seem to have starting ages for Aasimar. Neither does my beastiary. I cherry picked the ages of both my characters for RP purposes. My main character, the king, is 91 and that's to explain why he's a witch doctor. The Queen is 26 because that's the youngest self-taught warriors are and I want her parents to still be around, pressuring her to marry since she is old by human standards.
A link to the slightly older page would be nice, especially if James Jacobs says its the legitimate one.
I have considered abdication but again, I don't think the party will survive the campaign, maybe the characters will but the highest level my group has ever achieved was 7th and were 6th right now. I know this can be the game where we can go all the way but I want to explore my options that aren't just "c'est la vie."
The last errata to Advanced Race Guide changed assimar age numbers, the info on the PRD contains these updated numbers.
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Here's a link to the age charts.
James, on the topic of Dhampirs:
The advanced race guide states that Dhampirs are not adults until they are 110(!) years old. This implies that dhampir children (which are born to humans according to the book) are raised as orphans by several generations of families until they are adults? Presuming that they are not taken in by other long-lived races.
It also shows that dhampirs in a trained class (such as wizard) tend to be in study anywhere between 10 to 60 years.
Was this an intended design choice for the race, or was this an accident much as the aasimar age ranges were? I can understand dhampir having an extended maximum age, but taking over 100 years to reach maturity for a race born in human civilizations seems highly unusual.
What are your thoughts on this?
My thoughts are that I'll need to have dhampir age categories errataed in the same way we errataed the aasimar and tiefling ages. Advanced Race Guide really went too far in expanding lifespans for lots of races without thinking about the impact of those rules on established characters in Golarion canon. I personally think that long-lived races should be an exception, mostly limited to elves and gnomes and a few others, because there's a lot of story-based implications that we haven't yet adequately explored or explained about how such a long-lived humanoid intelligent race impacts societies.
I just looked over all the race ages with a critical eye in that book, and fortunately... the accident seems to be limited to dhampir, aasimar, and tieflings. The elemental races are long-lived, but we haven't used those characters all that much in other products, and so I'm fine with having them be long lived since it doesn't contradict any established storylines.
It actually comes up quite often in Ask James Jacobs everything.
I don't agree with your odds for getting an aasimar baby, but you should do what you feel is right. I'm oversimplifying mendelian inheritance here but if you'd treat being an Aasimar as a single gene and both parents would be heterozygote the trait would be dominant and you'd end up with a 75% chance of the child being aasimar. Now it's much more complicated than that with a lot more genes that may or may not be dominant, and the fact that you probably won't inherit 25% of the genes of a grandparent and I realize that the comment in my previous post was b%####+! now. Sorry for that.
That's what you get when you mix fantasy with genetics. So please don't.
Here's a link to the age charts.
It actually comes up quite often in Ask James Jacobs everything.
I don't agree with your odds...
Thanks, there are so many erratas I sometimes wonder why I even have print versions of some of these books. I thought I had the ARG but it must've been a friends since I can't find it.
The new aasimar ages are hardly longer lived than humans. They reach adulthood later but hit middle age, old and venerable at the same times. I much prefer the d20pfsrd's chart but I see Jacob's reasoning. I'll run this by my GM since my character would venerable if he were 91 using the new rules. I gotta save the old age effects chart before d20pfsrd catches on and I know they watch the forums.
I still think long lived ruling is worth the thought experiment, like an elf king, and I am still interested in the Aasimar ruling class concept.
There was an obvious error in the errata updating the ages of aasimars, tieflings, and dhampirs. They correctly reduced the base ages from 60 to 20 but incorrectly left the dice rolls unchanged.