Ancestry feats, heritages, general feats clean-up

[master_marshmallow]

I've noticed it's weird making characters, because of the every 4 levels thing. I'm not sure it's better for the game to have so many separate pools of mechanics to combine and increase the cognitive load of the ancestry mechanics.

We've also talked about heritages and how they work, and it seems everyone should get a free one, which I hope opens the door to get new subraces included as expansions on base ancestries like drow, aquatic elves, bleachling gnomes, duergar, planetouched races (which could be universal heritage feats) and the like.

I think the heritages should be cleaned up, and exist as their own list of feats, separated and tagged from the ancestry feats. They also should have something of a power increase, so you get to pick which kind of dwarf/elf/whatever you are and it means something early. I'd love to see it also include the options for different stat arrays (WIS based aquatic elves, INT based Bleachling gnomes etc). Each ancestry should also have the opportunity to forgo the heritage feat and be able to take a second ancestry feat in its place (for ancestries like humans).

Then, I think Ancestry feats all should receive the [General] tag, and you should just get a general feat every odd level. This makes the process simpler, and expands the list and customization of the characters without really needing to change much. Ancestral Paragon can then be deleted. Perhaps include the option to grab a class feat instead?

Streamlining general feats and ancestry feats together seems like it could fix most of the issues that people seem to be having with them, and having the options to take a second one at first level also opens up character options early, so you can be an elf wizard who can mix and match weapons and still benefit from critical effects at first/third level, if desired. One could also play the standard human build that gets a feat and extra skills trained at first level, makign it feel more like updating the old PF1 into the new PF2.

From there, cleaning up the ancestry feats and including more general feats that have generic uses seems like the best play. I don't hate the feats that simply improve your regular features like resonance/bulk, but maybe Alertness should simply improve your Perception by one step? I like feats like these, but I do think you need more options to improve your proficiency with things like Weapon Proficiency or Alertness to improve your actual numbers.

Most of these could be quick fixes that don't require a lot of re-writing, and it would match the opening up of options that we got with the death of signature skills (a welcome addition).

Keep making strides in the right direction Paizo, this is good stuff.

[PossibleCabbage]

So one of the things I liked about Ancestry feats when the idea was first announced was that there were all these race feats in PF1 that were interesting, but hardly ever taken because they compete with more important stuff. So letting people take these without the opportunity cost of "I could be taking Iron Will" was appealing.

So I don't know if throwing ancestry feats in with general feats is a thing I like, since especially now people are just going to stop taking ancestry feats as soon as they get the 2 or 3 they want.

[master_marshmallow]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

So one of the things I liked about Ancestry feats when the idea was first announced was that there were all these race feats in PF1 that were interesting, but hardly ever taken because they compete with more important stuff. So letting people take these without the opportunity cost of "I could be taking Iron Will" was appealing.

So I don't know if throwing ancestry feats in with general feats is a thing I like, since especially now people are just going to stop taking ancestry feats as soon as they get the 2 or 3 they want.

Seems more liek a problem with the ancestry feats not being up to snuff to compete for those feat slots, something which doesn't seem to apply in PF2 considering the actual size of the general feat list.

I really like the idea that each race has something like an upgraded version of Weapon Proficiency that you would opt to take instead of weapon proficiency because of your ancestry choice.

[Ascalaphus]

I like the idea of a cleaner split in ancestry feats:

Level 1: ancestry heritage feats. Things that you have to be born with (darkvision, looking at you) or that don't make sense to learn in the middle of your career (weapon familiarity). Can only be taken at level 1, and you get 2-3 out of about 5 possible heritage feats per race.

Later on: ancestry development feats. Feats that take some of our generic racial abilities and build on them. Some of them can require a specific heritage feat. All of these feats should be carefully designed so that it makes sense that you learn them later on, and that you really would need a particular racial base ability or heritage feat to be able to do that thing.

Example: Weapon Familiarity (Gnome) would be a heritage feat, and Weapon Innovator (Gnome) would be a development feat.

[master_marshmallow]

I don't want crit specialization gated by feats, I want it gated by proficiency.

[Tzakkesh]

Ascalaphus wrote:

don't make sense to learn in the middle of your career (weapon familiarity). Can only be taken at level 1

I really don't understand in the slightest why learning weapons most commonly associated with your people or becoming better as using them ought to be something that can only happen at level 1.

Becoming proficient or skilled at using new weapons seems exactly in line with what I would expect from leveling up.

I mean, sure, it might not be an ability that would pop out of no where in the middle of a dungeon, but so long as there are breaks between the adventures and you could head back to some place your race is common, spending some time getting some training doesn't seem out-of-the-ordinary.

Besides-- it is hardly the only ability that one can suddenly learn out of no where that feels like some sort of training period out to be involved in its development. How do spellcasters instantly have new spells they didn't have before, for example.

[David knott 242]

I think I would like ancestry feats better if ancestry feats higher than 5th level existed. As it is, it seems that they are trying to stretch out granting things that PCs used to be born with over their entire adventuring careers. By the time a character reaches the level where he is getting his final ancestry feat, he no longer really cares about it because he is only getting something that he already turned down in favor of something else at least three times before.

[Thedukk]

My biggest issue with ancestry feats over the life of the character is.. you're probably with a mixed-bag of random races while you adventure, but your Dwarf picks up ancestral hatred or rock runner while you're doing that? Really hard to feel like that's an organic thing that happens.

The power level thing is also an issue, since you're not looking at Forlorn the same way at 17 as you are at 1. Perhaps they should have level-dependent bonuses? Even if it's as slow as +1/5 levels, looking at a +3 is MUCH better than a +1, if you want people to care about their higher-level choices.

[Igor Horvat]

More or less every ancestry feat in playtest MUST be in the ancestry by default.

Then you can give out bonus ancestry feat to IMPROVE or build on al ready existing ancestry mechanics/features.

[Lightning Raven]

Igor Horvat wrote:

More or less every ancestry feat in playtest MUST be in the ancestry by default.

Then you can give out bonus ancestry feat to IMPROVE or build on al ready existing ancestry mechanics/features.

Not all ancestry feats. But the Heritage Feats and those that are physical. All cultural feats should be optional, because this way you can have members of the ancestry with different upbringing and it's easier to have "adopted ancestries", because you'll still be of X ancestry and have its features but will be able to represent mechanically that your character grew up in another culture.

[Crayon]

While I've been rather vocal in my dislike for Ancestry Feats in the past, it was mostly based on my finding the concept silly and not representing a good cost/benefit in terms of design space, but now that it's been brought up, I think it's poor from a thematic standpoint too.

PCs are travelling the world, discovering and interacting with all manner of peoples and cultures. If anything, high-level adventurers should be LESS elf-y, dwarf-y, etc than beginning characters...

[Shaheer-El-Khatib]

I would prefer something like "pick 3 Ancestries Feats at level 1" and make it so that these feats auto scale like cantrip does.

A general feat could be something like :
Cultural Integration
(The character should have stay in a specific culture for Y years)
You pick one non-biological Ancestry feats from any Ancestry.