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The Adopted Ancestry feat, as written, seems to stymie rather than support many adopted-PC stories.
Because it is a general feat that does nothing other than give you access to ancestry feats of your adopted culture, the earliest any PC can take it is 3rd level (or 1st level if Human using the General Training human ancestry feat)—and then the earliest a character can actually take an ability or feature from their adopted ancestry is 5th level. That doesn't make much sense to me: if a character is raised by Dwarves and trained in Dwarven weapons, shouldn't she be able to use those weapons from level 1?
The feat is also just pretty disappointing in general: a feat that lets you take another feat two levels later. It might only really make sense if you retrain into it at the same time as taking an ancestry feat from the adopted ancestry, but should the feat really require that kind of tinkering to get its basic flavor?
This connects to what looks like a general problem with ancestries that folks were worrying about from the previews: that the selection of benefits is so limited at 1st level that pretty basic concepts like weapon training can't come online till your character is quite far along.
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Agreed. Adopted Ancestry should (if it needs to exist at all) actually be a background. It's the only way it can function as intended.
Mechanically what it more accurately reflects is adopting a culture in adulthood and choosing to mimic them. They may find that flattering (or not), but it doesn't address how the character successfully convinced them to teach their secrets to an outsider.
It's more the 'elf-friend' trope that infested fantasy fiction for quite a while.
Yeah it's definitely disappointing that you can't really use it to reflect being adopted and raised by a different culture.
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I agree. It needs some tweaking. It is also a feat that literally has no benefit by itself. With the half-elf and half-orc hertiage feats, you at least gain two benefits from your parent race. It would stand to reason that taking this feat would at least give you one non-biological heritage feat. (The Adopted Trait from 1e gave you a free trait from your adopted race.) A human raised by halflings could have some of their luck rubbed off on her. A dwarf raised by gnomes might have picked up an animal friend that has followed him into his adulthood. Picking these abilities up at 5th level seems empty and you have to spend an additional general feat to gain access to an ability that is mostly for flavor and story.
Bottom line, this feat should be a Heritage Feat that any race can take in addition to giving you access to the heritage feats, it should give you the language of your adopted race (the obvious one) and maybe also trained in one related skill, kind of like how Half-Elf and Half-Orc Heritage Feats are set up. Otherwise, I think they should just give you a free Heritage feat from your adopted race right off the bat. Otherwise, what is the point?
My personal opinion is take it out entirely. Not counting the half-orc/half-elf situation, this shouldn't be an option. Once you pick your race/ancestry/heritage/whatever there should be consequences. Instead, make each race/ancestry/heritage/whatever unique enough in their own form to avoid fishing into other abilities/feats/powers/whatever_it_is_called.
+1 on Adopted Ancestry needing to be a background