Looking at the half elves they seem a bit lacking compared to elves, an elf gets more benefits than the half elf and still gets to select a level 1 ancestry feat. This is explained as being because of the extra feat choices (ignoring they can't use that at level 1) and more build flexibility with the human ability scores (but that isn't a benefit for an individual character, it's just for increasing build diversity). The human seems to get no extra qualities at all (other than an additional language), but they do get access to natural ambition, which trades an ancestry feat for a class feat.
It seems that natural ambition is regarded as worth 2 ancestry feats, that makes the elf, half elf, and human roughly equivalent by level 5:
An elf at level 5 has racial qualities and 2 ancestry feats
A human at level 5 has 3 (natural ambition=2) ancestry feats
A half elf/orc at level five has some racial qualities and 2 ancestry feats (natural ambition=2)
All balanced
I don't like the idea of this, it might be fine balance wise but I feel like it would be better if racial feats were not so underpowered compared to class feats and if humans got some other benefit to compensate.
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Uh...no. A Human, after all, can have it as their 1 Ancestry Feat.
What's being held up as equivalent to an Ancestry Feat is the bonuses given by Half Elf (and Half Orc) and extra flexibility in future Ancestry Feats (which you can apparently grab with General Feats if you want).
Uh...no. A Human, after all, can have it as their 1 Ancestry Feat.
What's being held up as equivalent to an Ancestry Feat is the bonuses given by Half Elf (and Half Orc) and extra flexibility in future Ancestry Feats (which you can apparently grab with General Feats if you want).
And a human doesn't have extra speed or low light vision or elvish, which judging by the half elf feat are all worth half a feat.
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And a human doesn't have extra speed or low light vision or elvish, which judging by the half elf feat are all worth half a feat.
Humans get the same number of languages as Elves, one of them just isn't Elvish, so that's a wash. That means the Elf advantages are Low Light Vision and Increased Speed. They also have the disadvantage of low HP.
The folks at Paizo seem to think that low HP and increased speed more or less cancel each other out (or vice versa for a Dwarf, I suppose), something I'm not convinced of as of yet, which means that Elves remain ahead one advantage (the low light vision).
The assumption, therefore, seems to be that Human Ancestry modifiers (and possibly comparing one set of Ancestry Feats to the other) are enough better than the Elf ones to make up for the lack of low light vision. I'm not entirely convinced, but that seems to be the logic.