Clarification needed: Weapon Familiarity in Race Builder vs Everywhere Else

[ValagharWonk]

Hi!

Has anyone officially come out and explained why racial weapon familiarity in every source but the Race Builder merely converts exotic race-named weapons to martial — but somehow the Race Builder trait (at a mere 1 RP) can grant full proficiency with all race-named weapons?

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advancedRaceGuide/raceBuilder.html

“Weapon Familiarity (1 RP): Prerequisites: None; Benefit: Choose up to two weapons, or one weapon and a racial weapon group. When choosing a racial weapon group, you must choose a group that includes the same name as one of your subtypes. Members of this race are proficient with those weapons. For the purposes of weapon familiarity, all bows are considered one weapon. Special: This trait can be taken up to two times. The second time it is taken, the race becomes proficient with another two weapons or one weapon and a racial weapon group.“

I know there’s a sense that RPs are super imperfect, so there’s that. But it seems, even knowing that, that the Race Builder entry is written in error. For purposes of customizing a race, should I assume that it’s in fact mistaken and should work like the typical exotic-martial conversion dynamic that’s present everywhere else?

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

ValagharWonk wrote:

Hi!

Has anyone officially come out and explained why racial weapon familiarity in every source but the Race Builder merely converts exotic race-named weapons to martial — but somehow the Race Builder trait (at a mere 1 RP) can grant full proficiency with all race-named weapons?

No, and they won't, because officially coming out to explain incongruities among the books isn't something they do. Either it was for simplicity (because the rest of the paragraph actually grants proficiency in things) or it was a mistake.

ValagharWonk wrote:

For purposes of customizing a race, should I assume that it’s in fact mistaken and should work like the typical exotic-martial conversion dynamic that’s present everywhere else?

Sounds good to me!

[merpius]

For a decently RAI take on the trait in Race Builder, a GM could decide that it grants proficiency to the appropriate weapons if they are not exotic weapons, and treats them as martial weapons if they are exotic. This would match up well with what it does for Elves.

As for them explaining themselves; I think Fuzzy-Wuzzy is right, and would further add that with v2 coming, they are unlikely to clarify anything in v1 at all, much less the stuff they were disinclined to clarify before.