Can we actually make Ancestry distinct from race?

[OverworkedDM]

Currently we have the situation where :
It looks like a duck
It quacks like a duck
It's a duck.

They act like races, they look like races...

Now I am up for a more diverse character creation system however this currently is just a re-painted existing system.

One thing that would help me as GM is if you split learned behaviour (call it culture maybe?) from genetics. Make it two buckets you get to pick your feats from, culture and race. This combination would then be your ancestry.

It would let me create diverse towns etc quite fast.

Take the classic Wood-elves
Here one could make wood basically the culture of militant tree-huggers often ascribed to that style of elf.

Then it becomes:
Goldwoods is a town in a forest populated by wood-elves and wood-halflings. Quick and dirty and I have a theme and if the PC's decide to go postal ill know both races will be good with bows and climbing trees.

It also will solve the issue of "adopted" you want to be a dwarf brought up in Goldwoods - easy just be a wood-dwarf and write your adopted parents down.
It also solves the issue of you're a loner elf abandoned at birth who can use an elven curved-blade... for reasons of genetic memory maybe?

[Dragonborn3]

Except those who picked something besides "ancestry but worse" at 1st level.

Ancestry shouldn't be your race anyway. Ancestry is where people are from. Are you a Dwarf shouldn't be the same as were your parents from Mengkare?

[RazarTuk]

OverworkedDM wrote:

Goldwoods is a town in a forest populated by wood-elves and wood-halflings. Quick and dirty and I have a theme and if the PC's decide to go postal ill know both races will be good with bows and climbing trees.

It also will solve the issue of "adopted" you want to be a dwarf brought up in Goldwoods - easy just be a wood-dwarf and write your adopted parents down.
It also solves the issue of you're a loner elf abandoned at birth who can use an elven curved-blade... for reasons of genetic memory maybe?

I actually touched on this in my thread about Uncommon and Exotic weapons. link

It doesn't actually make sense to give proficiencies for your background, adopted or not, because the Weapon Proficiency feat just gives you all martial weapons. And it also doesn't make sense to give anyone from Goldwoods access to rare Goldwoodian weapons, because it would sort of imply a black market for them. If a weapon's common in Goldwoods, it should be common in Goldwoods.

OverworkedDM wrote:

They act like races, they look like races...

Now I am up for a more diverse character creation system however this currently is just a re-painted existing system.

One thing that would help me as GM is if you split learned behaviour (call it culture maybe?) from genetics. Make it two buckets you get to pick your feats from, culture and race. This combination would then be your ancestry.

Apart from my issue with weapons, I support this. My main issue with calling them ancestries is that "halfing ancestry" sounds more like aasimar having celestial ancestry, as opposed to half-celestials literally being half celestial. So calling the genetic portion "race" would go back to making it clear that elves are a distinct (sub)species from humans. (Discussions about the genetic implications of half-elves notwithstanding)

By splitting up ancestry feats, you can even have things like a dwarf aasimar raised by wood elves. Some of your feats would be from a normal dwarven list, representing your genetics. Some of them would be from an aasimar list, representing the strong celestial influence on you. And some of them would be from an elven cultural list, representing your upbringing.

[breithauptclan]

My understanding is that there are already 'genetics' type feats. They are the 'Heritage' feats that can only be taken at level 1.

The rest are 'culture' type feats that can be taken by any character that has access to them either by being of that race or through adopted ancestry.

So what is being asked for here? Renaming of 'Heritage'?

[Azih]

I am certain that in upcoming splat books there will be a ton of 'cultural feats' that will be flavored for one region or the other and
you will be able to take them instead of the Tolkien race inspried generic ancestry feats in the core book.