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I'm loving the Pathfinder Playtest rulebook so far! However, I felt compelled to come to the official forums and share my opinions regarding the "Human: Ethnicities" subsection on page 35 in the "Ancestries and Backgrounds" chapter. As a player and a Game Master, this subsection feels really jarring for the following reasons:
1. The Human section is the only ancestry in the rulebook that has a dedicated Ethnicities subsection. However, based on my understanding of the game's lore, just about every ancestry on Golarian has a vast collection of ethnic groups.
2. Most of the descriptions for the human ethnicities speak of continents and regions of Golarian. But without a visual or mental map of these locations, this information is lost on the reader at best and confusing at worst.
3. The subsection's introductory paragraph doesn't communicate that the ethnic descriptions to follow are common but not universal attributes of their respective ethnic groups. As a reader, it's too easy to assume that, for example, all Varisians favor a nomadic life and therefore my Varisian Fighter should have the Nomad background.
4. There are major human ethnic groups missing from this subsection. One such group are the Chelish, which are pretty much everywhere in Avistan and northern Garund thanks to the Empire of Cheliax.
5. By including this subsection in such an early chapter of the rulebook, all players who create a human are asked to at least consider, if not choose, their character's ethnicity during character creation. At least to me, this tactic seems counterintuitive to the stated goal of this new edition: "to make the game easier to learn and simpler to play, while maintaining the depth of character and adventure options that has always defined Pathfinder."
Don't get me wrong, I love that human ethnicities are part of the rulebook. I just feel that they are out of place on page 35. To solve the above issues, here are some techniques that I hope are considered:
- Add a chapter to the rulebook that details the setting of Golarian. Throughout the rulebook, point readers to this later chapter if they are interested in learning more about the game's setting and its inhabitants.
- In this chapter, include a map of the entire planet and, within separate sections, maps of Golarian's continents and/or regions too.
- Move the "Human: Ethnicities" subsection from page 35 into an appropriate regional section of this new chapter.
- Add in key, missing human ethnicities to their appropriate regional section.
- Add in missing ethnicities for other ancestries to an appropriate regional section as well.
Personally, I would also love to see this chapter include the various factions and organizations—and their motivations—outlined at a high-level on a per continent/region basis. The "Setting" chapter in the Starfinder rulebook is a good place to find inspiration, though I don't think blindly copying that structure is the right approach for Pathfinder.
Anyway, I hope this feedback finds it way to the Pathfinder designers. I'm looking at you, Mark. Keep up the great work!
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Don't get me wrong, I love that human ethnicities are part of the rulebook. I just feel that they are out of place on page 35. To solve the above issues, here are some techniques that I hope are considered:- Add a chapter to the rulebook that details the setting of Golarian. Throughout the rulebook, point readers to this later chapter if they are interested in learning more about the game's setting and its inhabitants.
- In this chapter, include a map of the entire planet and, within separate sections, maps of Golarian's continents and/or regions too.
- Move the "Human: Ethnicities" subsection from page 35 into an appropriate regional section of this new chapter.
- Add in key, missing human ethnicities to their appropriate regional section.
- Add in missing ethnicities for other ancestries to an appropriate regional section as well.
Personally, I would also love to see this chapter include the various factions and organizations—and their motivations—outlined at a high-level on a per continent/region basis. The "Setting" chapter in the Starfinder rulebook is a good place to find inspiration, though I don't think blindly copying that structure is the right approach for Pathfinder.
This would be amazing! As it stands, The information given about the different Human ethnicities tells me next to nothing. Like okay, My character can be from this area - that I don't really know where it is - and as a result can probably speak this language and has this type of colouring. That...doesn't actually give me multiple ethnicities. The page on them barely even gives me enough to tell me I want to go read the three pages I SHOULD have on each culture.
Also, the way it's currently set up Humans are the only ancestry I would believe actually have a culture in Golarion if I was a new player. I get that they don't want to give me 50 pages on culture in the rulebook, but uh...can we do SOMETHING about the single hat races? I can deal with a very brief overview of the largest cultures with a promise of more in depth discussion to come, but as it stands I have to write multiple entire cultures for each race.
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4. There are major human ethnic groups missing from this subsection. One such group are the Chelish, which are pretty much everywhere in Avistan and northern Garund thanks to the Empire of Cheliax.
Chelish are honestly Taldanes, forging a narrative about cultural superiority.
The one I'm bothered by the most is actually Tian, which up-front tells you that it's being used in a very negative 'all Asians are alike' sense, but then refuses to tell you what the actual ethnicities really are. And then reinforces it by assigning all of them to a single language.
Chief Technical Officer
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We definitely want feedback on whether people think there's not enough setting info, or too much, or just enough. Setting aside a chapter (like we did in the Starfinder Core Rulebook) is possible, but adding a LOT more would be difficult, as we can't let this become a 600-page book.
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4. There are major human ethnic groups missing from this subsection. One such group are the Chelish, which are pretty much everywhere in Avistan and northern Garund thanks to the Empire of Cheliax.
This is a correction we're looking to make that is in many ways long overdue to the world.
Ethnically, Chelaxians are identical to Taldans and really always have been; they've been traditionally treated as their own ethnicity mostly due to the fact that their government is diabolic, which is a weird reason to do that. Especially since that didn't hold true for the nation pre-Age of Lost Omens. (Note that they don't even have their own ethnic language.) So with the new edition, we're adjusting that to include them under the umbrella of the Taldan ethnicity.
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Core books are meant to be resources for DMs to use to have in their own worlds and not just Golarian campaign setting, and I think people need to remember that (which is the issue I have with Gray Maiden faction as the test PrC amongst other things about it).
Paizo has said they want 2e to be Golarion-Infused/Dusted, and late in 1e they started having golarion-dedicated books in their Roleplaying Gameline so they've decided to reduce support for "making your own worls".
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Like the OP, I found the ethnicities section jarring.
In part, it’s because a lot of these descriptions didn’t seem to have much to do with being human. For example, presumably a halfling who grew up in the relevant Varisian societies would be just as nomadically inclined as the humans who grew up there.
And in part it was because it was weird to see the descriptions of physical diversity accompanying the different ethnicities appear in only the human section. I.e., having the descriptions of physical diversity appear in only the Human ethnicities section conveys the (unintentional I’m sure) feeling that only humans are physically diverse in these ways. If you’re making a halfling, the feeling is, you can lapse back into visually imagining them as stereotypical Tolkien-esque halfling (typically Caucasian features — white skin, narrow nose, eyes with no epicanthic fold, etc).
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
Golarion, not Golarian
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I really like most things about the switch to Ancestry, but I feel like the inclusion of ancestral heritage should include heritage feats tied to the different ethnicities and that it should reach out beyond just humans. Humans have always had the privilege of being something more than just a race (which is why I like Ancestry), but no one else ever felt as well supported. Even just including 2 heritages for each ancestry and having those tied to something that feels like a heritage (Ethnicity) would go a long way to making the Ancestry system feel more well supported.
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By including this subsection in such an early chapter of the rulebook, all players who create a human are asked to at least consider, if not choose, their character's ethnicity during character creation. At least to me, this tactic seems counterintuitive to the stated goal of this new edition: "to make the game easier to learn and simpler to play, while maintaining the depth of character and adventure options that has always defined Pathfinder."
Agree 100%!
My understanding of the renaming of races to ancestries and the overall character creation process was that it should mirror the start of the alphabet like so:
Ancestries
Background
Class
Details
Equipment
To me, ethnicities would fall more naturally into Details. It would also help because I'm certain that in a world with many races that there are ethnic groups comprised of people of different species, etc. It would also fit well with the half-human concepts of children that are raised in a society that isn't the same as one of their parents, or for orphans/adopted children.
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I really like most things about the switch to Ancestry, but I feel like the inclusion of ancestral heritage should include heritage feats tied to the different ethnicities and that it should reach out beyond just humans. Humans have always had the privilege of being something more than just a race (which is why I like Ancestry), but no one else ever felt as well supported. Even just including 2 heritages for each ancestry and having those tied to something that feels like a heritage (Ethnicity) would go a long way to making the Ancestry system feel more well supported.
To expand on this real quick. The background section needs to be better defined. Backgrounds fit with ethnicities, especially since this can bridge between races. Backgrounds based on regions instead of job type would also be more interesting and may even offer broader options.
For example, your background could also allow you to take feats from a unique list in place of racial heritage feats as you level since you identify with your region more than with your race.
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I'm new to this whole thing (I just found out about the playtest, and I've never played Pathfinder before, though I have looked into it), and I had a very similar reaction when looking through the book.
I was skimming through the ancestries, then hit this human ethnicity section and I thought, "Only humans have ethnicities? That can't be right."
I'd definitely get behind that being moved to another section that has a map and covers all of the races. I wouldn't even need it to go into heavy detail (especially if page limit is a concern), but any sort of overview that explains more than just humans would go a long way for me.
Perhaps it could be in the Backgrounds section and use that as an excuse to recommend certain Backgrounds as part of the ethnicity descriptions.
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I never played in Golarion before so this playtest was my first introduction to the setting really. I saw the human ethnicities as an unapproachable wall of text, I found the one that is associated with osirion for the doomsday dawn campaign and after that I just ignored it.
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1. The Human section is the only ancestry in the rulebook that has a dedicated Ethnicities subsection. However, based on my understanding of the game's lore, just about every ancestry on Golarian has a vast collection of ethnic groups.
Really? Because my understanding of the game's lore says that this is very representative of the setting's "diversity" of ethnic groups. Elves come in "regular" and "forlorn" (which is a difference in upbringing, not an ethnicity), and Gnomes come in "regular" and "bleached" (which can affect any given Gnome if they don't live right, and so isn't an ethnicity). What variety was ever shown in Dwarves, Halflings, or Goblins?
Granted, the variety of ethnicities for Humans translates as a variety of ethnicities for Half-Elves and Half-Orcs, but I always took that as implied, anyway. Trouble is, Golarion was conceived way back when they wanted to avoid the "Star Wars Mos Eisley Cantina". So they made the Inner Sea Region humanocentric on purpose, and unfortunately, having a dozen ethnicities for Humans and "all Dwarves/Halflings/etc are the same" is what a humanocentric setting looks like.
And their options for fixing this are either "rewrite the setting from scratch" (completely unfeasible) or "expand the map by adding additional Dwarf/Elf/Gnome/Halfling nations, possibly in Casmaron, Sarusan, southern Garund, or Arcadia" (which I'd already asked about and which, even after ten years, they don't seem interested in doing).
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The ethnicities section should not be in there I think.
For one thing it implies that other races don't have regional ethnicites which I think is a mistake. There's a lot of design space in describing High Helm Dwarves or Garundi Elves or whatever
For another this is just a bit too much Golarion inside baseball and not useful for either people already well versed in it and I would imagine it's off putting for people who want to home brew.
It's awkward and the page count can be used for better things I say!
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The ethnicities section should not be in there I think.
For one thing it implies that other races don't have regional ethnicites which I think is a mistake. There's a lot of design space in describing High Helm Dwarves or Garundi Elves or whatever
For another this is just a bit too much Golarion inside baseball and not useful for either people already well versed in it and I would imagine it's off putting for people who want to home brew.
It's awkward and the page count can be used for better things I say!
Yeah, that's what I was getting at. It isn't an implication so much as a confirmed fact. Dwarves come from the Five Kings Mountains and no where else. Elves come from Kyonin and no where else. Not a whole lot of room for other ethnicities with your geographic origins so limited.
Edit: bolding mine and why did it shrink the text?
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Elves come in "regular" and "forlorn"
Elves come in Aquatic, Ekujae, Forlorn, Jininese, Spiresworn and Snowcaster. In pathfinder classic they each have unique alternate racial traits they can take.
Gnomes come in "regular" and "bleached"
Bleachlings, First World and Segada, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
What variety was ever shown in Dwarves, Halflings, or Goblins?
Desert Dwarves, Mwangi Dwarves, Ouat Caste Dwarves, Pahmet Dwarves, Paraheen Dwarves, Sky Citadel Dwarves, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
Segadan and Song’o Halflings, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
Goblins... I don't really care.
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Elves come in "regular" and "forlorn"Elves come in Aquatic, Ekujae, Forlorn, Jininese, Spiresworn and Snowcaster. In pathfinder classic they each have unique alternate racial traits they can take.
Gnomes come in "regular" and "bleached"Bleachlings, First World and Segada, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
What variety was ever shown in Dwarves, Halflings, or Goblins?Desert Dwarves, Mwangi Dwarves, Ouat Caste Dwarves, Pahmet Dwarves, Paraheen Dwarves, Sky Citadel Dwarves, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
Segadan and Song’o Halflings, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
Goblins... I don't really care.
^
Elves come in "regular" and "forlorn"Elves come in Aquatic, Ekujae, Forlorn, Jininese, Spiresworn and Snowcaster. In pathfinder classic they each have unique alternate racial traits they can take.
Gnomes come in "regular" and "bleached"Bleachlings, First World and Segada, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
What variety was ever shown in Dwarves, Halflings, or Goblins?Desert Dwarves, Mwangi Dwarves, Ouat Caste Dwarves, Pahmet Dwarves, Paraheen Dwarves, Sky Citadel Dwarves, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
Segadan and Song’o Halflings, each with their own unique alternate racial traits that can be picked.
Goblins... I don't really care.
Ah, I stand corrected (though I stand by my initial impressions as, in following Golarion lore, I wasn't aware of any of those, save the Elves from Tian Xia). Where were all of those introduced, the "XXX of Golarion" supplements? Certainly not the Inner Sea World Guide.
Regardless, if those were supposed to be apparent and as apparent as the human ethnicities, then they need to be introduced with the human ethnicities.
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Tectorman: One of my fave PF1 characters is a Gear Gnome so... the Alternate Racial Traits system did a LOT of good work in PF1 for allowing unique members of a race even outside of humans! I'm with graystone on this.
Now in PF2 all they have to do is give us more darn Ancestry Feats and my hope is we will be able to mix and match Ancestral and Regional and Cultural feats to our hearts content as more and more splat books come out.
Why yes my Human WAS raised in a Gnomish Village in The River Kingdoms so I'll take this and this and this from all these different places thank you!
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Where were all of those introduced, the "XXX of Golarion" supplements? Certainly not the Inner Sea World Guide.Since the ISWG only covers the Inner Sea region, no. They've been mentioned throughout all the other supplements, the x of Golarion, the various Country, and moreso now in the Heroes of the Fringe books.
Regardless, if those were supposed to be apparent and as apparent as the human ethnicities, then they need to be introduced with the human ethnicities.
I don't disagree with this.
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Personally, I don't mind the ethnicity section in the Core Rulebook.
But if humanity is getting ethnic groups, I think that the book is obligated to make sure that all races from here on out have them as well. As Heroes from the Fringe pointed out, all of the races of Pathfinder have distinct ethnic groups, not just humans.
It feels jarring when you imply that humanity is the only ancestry with ethnicities; for all others, an elf is an elf is an elf.
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Where were all of those introduced, the "XXX of Golarion" supplements?
As Rysky noted, they've been sprinkled throughout various books over the years. For instance, there is a section of AP 124 that goes into Spiresworn elves including a nifty alternate trait for them that combined with rapid reload allows free action reload of a heavy crossbow.
PS: Heroes of the Fringe collected most of them together for easier identification but it doesn't delve too deep into individual subcultures.
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Yeah, we gotta go whole hog on this for every race or it's a wash. I even get weird looks when I say "my elf is from Kyonin, he left because of the racism against his half elf son" gods forbid if I mention Castavorel. And that's just elves, my Ouat monk requires a brief lecture too usually, and that's no shenanigans on my part people just tend to assume racial monocultures if you don't tell them upfront - a complete world map and the ethnicities would be great, I'd be happy with just the inner sea getting done well in the core book.
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The only mechanical reason for ethnicities in the book is what extra language the Humans can speak. My advice is to remove that section, and allow ALL characters to add a regional language, even if their race isn't traditionally from that region.
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We definitely want feedback on whether people think there's not enough setting info, or too much, or just enough. Setting aside a chapter (like we did in the Starfinder Core Rulebook) is possible, but adding a LOT more would be difficult, as we can't let this become a 600-page book.
Personally, I *love* detailed cultural info for my characters - but much of that can wait until there's books for the appropriate regions, ethnicities and/or political entities. In the meantime, it would be good to have 4 lines or so for each ethnicity - and please add ethnicities for non-human races, too, where they are widely-enough represented in the world. For instance, the Snow Elves are not common enough to warrant a section, but at least mentioning Kyonin and the Five Kings Mountains would be good.
Having said that, I would personally remove the Tian from the core book entirely. Reducing a third of the world to a oneliner about generic fantasy Asians is a massive disservice, and also opens the door uncomfortably for (accidental) racism. For the Vudrani, a mention that a kaleidoscope of subcultures exists elsewhere in the world will suffice, I suspect, since they *do* form a presence in the Inner Sea region to a much greater extend than the Tian.
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We definitely want feedback on whether people think there's not enough setting info, or too much, or just enough. Setting aside a chapter (like we did in the Starfinder Core Rulebook) is possible, but adding a LOT more would be difficult, as we can't let this become a 600-page book.
For ethnicities, I feel you have to commit either 0% or 100%, no in-between. And that would mean it should not have any place in the Core book, because there would be too much to fit in.
If your campaign is predominantly European-inspired, don't include more foreign ethnicities unless you are willing to commit to making them diverse and colourful as the main ones.
If you are going to add ethnicities to one race, commit to developing ethnicities for other playable races. Elves, dwarves, even goblins and orcs are people too, capable of different cultures and traditions. It'll only make your setting feel richer and realistic and less cartoony.
In any case, I feel that ethnicities are unnecessary in the Core rulebook. I don't think they add much to the rules, so the page would be better off being used for more crunch.
I skipped it. I looked to see if it interacted with the rarity mechanic, saw that it didn't and took a pass.
I'd recommend a regional adaptations section instead. Leave the deeper culture stuff out of the core instructions and treat regional adaptations as a sort of secondary racial characteristic. Pick a few regions or lifestyles, give some racial feats a regional descriptor and add that same regional descriptor to certain less common items and spells that are suited to specific regions. You'd also add the names of ethnic groups under the regional selection based on each races options and available additional languages.
This would bridge the gap left between backgrounds and race selection somewhat and leave a flexible system for future changes. You lose some of the cultural fluff, but cultures change over time and I think it's best to leave soft things like that out of the core.
So during the ancestry(?) and backgrounds section you'd add region. Your region would open up a few uncommon options, a language, and maybe a feat tied to the that region that could either be a race specific regional feat or a general, skill, class regional feat.
More fun? Less fun?
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My group had a big issue with the ethnicity section during our session zero because it was just a whole mess of unintelligible nouns that only makes sense if you already know the setting and none of us haved played Golarion before now.
If the section is only understandable to people who already know everything it is going to say, then there isn't much reason to have it.
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I really think the core rule book should have a small section describing the default Golarion setting as an overview describing the regions and some of the threats. Even there human ethnicity is an odd thing to include though.
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The only mechanical reason for ethnicities in the book is what extra language the Humans can speak. My advice is to remove that section, and allow ALL characters to add a regional language, even if their race isn't traditionally from that region.
I like this. Makes perfect sense, and is easy to implement. There really is no reason to split up the language section in the book.
Also why shouldn't elves, dwarves, halflings and goblins pick up on the regional dialect? Unless the Inner Sea region consists only of heavily segregated communities, where different species are prohibited from intermingling by law. Sure there will be places like that, but that can hardly be the norm.
Besides it's only the language section. If there were mechanical differences to ethnicity, they'd be handled like ancestries. Which is bound to happen for the more fantastical races as soon the Inner Sea Guide MKII and the Race Guide comes around.
I could see future regional supplements changing the default languages for a given region. For example, I could see a supplement for Sargava saying something like, "Characters from Sargava gain access to the Polyglot language rather than any ethnic language regardless of their ancestry or ethnicity."
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I could see future regional supplements changing the default languages for a given region. For example, I could see a supplement for Sargava saying something like, "Characters from Sargava gain access to the Polyglot language rather than any ethnic language regardless of their ancestry or ethnicity."
Polyglots is the "Common" langauge for Mwangi. They still have regional languages as well.
Polyglots is the "Common" langauge for Mwangi. They still have regional languages as well.I could see future regional supplements changing the default languages for a given region. For example, I could see a supplement for Sargava saying something like, "Characters from Sargava gain access to the Polyglot language rather than any ethnic language regardless of their ancestry or ethnicity."
But Polyglot is the only Mwangi language specifically called out in any Golarion material, so that is what I went with.
But the details do not undermine the overall structure. In the location I cited, pretty much everyone regardless of ethnicity should speak Taldan/Common and at least one of the local languages, whatever they may be.
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We definitely want feedback on whether people think there's not enough setting info, or too much, or just enough. Setting aside a chapter (like we did in the Starfinder Core Rulebook) is possible, but adding a LOT more would be difficult, as we can't let this become a 600-page book.
Understood. And I also feel like that's a subject better covered in separate book just based on interest level. Folks who are looking to play in their own homebrew setting may not benefit as much from learning the differences between Taldane and Garundi culture.
I feel like it's enough just to introduce the idea that humans have ethnicities--that it's just part of what makes humans different. Maybe the ethnicity allows a regional language, a single ethnic weapon proficiency (like the starknife for Varisians) and a lore. That way they don't have a humongous mechanical impact but impart a lot of flavor--and you don't have to try and nail down what things each ethnicity gets, you can just let players work it out with GMs during character creation.
All you need write is that humans have ethnicities from living in a certain part of the world. From them they get a language, training in a specific weapon type and a lore. Players get to pick one of each with GM approval.
Done.
I think it would be interesting to have ancestral abilities linked to regions. It doesn't have to be big, maybe a lore skill proficiency (if they every make a solid list of categories for the skill, anyway) or something like that.
Oh hey, speaking of applying it to all ancestries... I wonder if the new Heritages rule means we will get artwork for each heritage for each race? Please yes? :D
There is no shortage of art to recycle for each heritage, whether as actual art for the book or as inspiration for the artists of the new book.