I should preface this with the note that I have not played Pathfinder before. For a while I was considering jumping into the game (I usually play a lot of 5e and DCC), and when this play test came out, I thought it was a good time to get in on the ground floor of a new edition. That being said, you have been warned, my thoughts are from a non-pathfinder player, getting into a new system.
Now, let's get to the thoughts:
Firstly with ancestries. I like them overall. The selection of ancestries present is pretty standard outside of goblin for a core book, which is fine, you have to start with a good foundation. Although, I do like Goblin and I honestly think it will be the most fun to create ridiculously convoluted Goblin characters.
I think taking half-elves and half-orcs and placing as sorta, sub-ancestries under Human is a smart move. I've never been a huge fan of half-races in RPGs, primarily because it isn't ever really explained all that well how two different species can sexually reproduce. Still, they are pretty popular, so short of them not being in fantasy gaming, I like placing them under the umbrella of human.
I like how stripped down the ancestries are. Compared to other RPGs, there are very few ancestry features here, which would probably be a problem, if it weren't for ancestry feats. Ancestry feats are a way to have two Dwarves or two Elves that are totally not the same, not just in terms of their class and skill features, but in terms of their cultural and ancestral background. Perhaps one dwarf was raised in the mines of an ancient city state, and another was a blacksmith in a human village. 5e handles this concept with sub-races, but personally I prefer the ancestry feats, especially as more content is released, the old races will continue to be fun and exciting to play as they were when the game was first released.
I think the speed balance is good. Compared to 5e for example, in which you either have 25ft of movement (if you are short) or 30ft of movement (if you are tall), or compared to DCC where you have 20ft of movement (if you are short) or 30ft of movement (if you are tall), I like that they are allowing themselves to have just a little more variety here. For example, giving goblins a speed on par with humans makes sense, because they have shorter legs, but are probably a lot more flexible, and are definitely a lot lighter and leaner.
Getting a hit point bonus from your race is interesting. I think it may lead to some pretty tanky first level characters. For example, a barbarian dwarf with 18 con at 1st level will have 26 hp, which is pretty amazing. This could be a problem, but I suppose it is mainly an issue of just scaling up the amount or intensity of level 1 combat from what it would traditionally be, which can definitely be a good thing.
As a final note about ancestries, a minor note at that, I like the idea of calling them ancestries a lot. I've always thought the term race was a bit archaic when talking about what are basically different species, but of course referring to them as species gives the fantasy RPG too much of a modern or futuristic feel to it. Ancestry is a perfect solution to this problem for me, although a minor problem it was.
I don't have as much to say on Backgrounds, because obviously they aren't as influential in the game as ancestries are.
From what I understand Backgrounds weren't in Pathfinder 1e (correct me if I'm wrong), and I think they are a nice addition. I enjoy that they aren't as cumbersome to read through as the 5e Backgrounds are, which include a bunch of extra crap that players don't really need, and most don't want. These backgrounds are simple, to the point, establish a core building block of your character's backstory, and give you a little more mechanical customization at 1st level, giving you a skill up, a lore skill up, a skill feat, and a stat boost.
I also think the selection of Backgrounds is plenty, a really good variety to start with. I think it is cool that there are some very boring backgrounds, like laborer or farmhand. Old School RPGs have a very strong basis in the idea of beginning as literal peasants and rising through the ranks, and I like when the rules allow for that to be played to the fullest extent possible, should players wish it.
I will continue to post occasionally on the playtest as I go through it. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through.
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Thanks for your feedback and thoughts! Think you might be able to wrangle your usual 5e/DCC group to give Doomsday Dawn a shot?
Ancestry feats should be cultural and every feat featured in the book under "Heritage" should be part of the ancestry/race again. Reserve these big feats (Heritage) for variations within the ancestry, like it happens with Half-ancestries.
The current system makes you buy back everything over levels and gates a lot of physical traits that should be part of every being of a certain ancestry because they're feats you can only choose one.
If all ancestries weren't created equally, then now it's the time to make it your own. Change what it must in them, if some characteristics are hard to balance, change them. But more important than change the stronger ancestries, you guys at Paizo need to give us a good reason to be excited to pick every ancestry.
Now is the time to create new characteristics for the races. Hell, goblins are basically being rewritten to fit in as reasonable adventures, why not give/change characteristics inherent to gnomes, halflings and the other barely used races. Also, don't forget to find other ways to enhance the versatility quality of humans, having the possibility of picking extra feats will cause the same issue that PF1e has with humans, with more content and good feats, they will inevitably rise above all others because of this extra power. As much as I'm loving playing with my human bard, Natural Ambition is just light-years ahead of any ancestry feat.
Lightning Raven wrote: Ancestry feats should be cultural and every feat featured in the book under "Heritage" should be part of the ancestry/race again. Giving every Dwarf "Ancient's Blood" would make the entire ancestry borderline unplayable outside of specialized builds.
Mark Seifter wrote: Thanks for your feedback and thoughts! Think you might be able to wrangle your usual 5e/DCC group to give Doomsday Dawn a shot? Oh yeah, I am currently attempting to wrangle the players together for that, I definitely want to do more than just passively comment on the systems without testing them out.
PossibleCabbage wrote: Lightning Raven wrote: Ancestry feats should be cultural and every feat featured in the book under "Heritage" should be part of the ancestry/race again. Giving every Dwarf "Ancient's Blood" would make the entire ancestry borderline unplayable outside of specialized builds. I see what you are saying here, but personally I think that not all physical traits are necessarily present in all members of a species. A species or ancestry may have a likelihood of having a certain trait, or a proclivity towards it, but not all physical traits are universal. For example a certain ancestry may be inclined to be tall, but you will still have many members of that ancestry who are shorter than members of other 'shorter' ancestries. Evolution allows for a lot of small variations, and so I think it is personally reasonable not to hand all the physical traits out as base features.
Now, I could see a problem with some players/GMs in regards to how it is that someone gains physical traits, like Hardy for example, but age has a way of changing our bodies in strange ways, and this is probably even more true for fantasy races that live for hundreds of years like Dwarves and Elves. So it makes sense to me narratively.
Also, while we are on the subject of Ancient's Blood, I love that it has a big drawback/cost. It reminds me of Traits from Fallout, Fallout 2, and New Vegas. I like choosing features that give you new abilities at the cost of other ones. I know there are a couple others like it in the books, but I would love to see the devs put more trade-off feats in the final game.
Oh, don't get me wrong... I love traits that have an upside and a downside, I just feel like they should be opt-in at a level separate from "picking one's ancestry, background, or class".
Frankly I wish more ancestries got a heritage feat like ancient's blood, I just don't think packaging it with the ancestry is a good idea.
MarshallP wrote: PossibleCabbage wrote: Lightning Raven wrote: Ancestry feats should be cultural and every feat featured in the book under "Heritage" should be part of the ancestry/race again. Giving every Dwarf "Ancient's Blood" would make the entire ancestry borderline unplayable outside of specialized builds. I see what you are saying here, but personally I think that not all physical traits are necessarily present in all members of a species. A species or ancestry may have a likelihood of having a certain trait, or a proclivity towards it, but not all physical traits are universal. For example a certain ancestry may be inclined to be tall, but you will still have many members of that ancestry who are shorter than members of other 'shorter' ancestries. Evolution allows for a lot of small variations, and so I think it is personally reasonable not to hand all the physical traits out as base features.
Now, I could see a problem with some players/GMs in regards to how it is that someone gains physical traits, like Hardy for example, but age has a way of changing our bodies in strange ways, and this is probably even more true for fantasy races that live for hundreds of years like Dwarves and Elves. So it makes sense to me narratively.
Also, while we are on the subject of Ancient's Blood, I love that it has a big drawback/cost. It reminds me of Traits from Fallout, Fallout 2, and New Vegas. I like choosing features that give you new abilities at the cost of other ones. I know there are a couple others like it in the books, but I would love to see the devs put more trade-off feats in the final game. Of course some characteristics will appear in some members and not in others... But that doesn't mean that some of us will have major features different from one another without very good reasons for doing so, I would argue that the variations that humans have between each other would not be enough to warrant a "feat", which is why humanity doesn't actually have races, like Dogs and other animals, we're all the same, which some variations not enough to spawn huge changes.
So I'll repeat, roll back the old ancestries, give some thought on their characteristics again. But don't strip them down. That's the wrong way of going about it. Look again at the strongest and weakest. Make them all interesting, this is a new edition of the game after all, that's the perfect point of making these races GOLARION/Pathfinder races. Nothing is preventing Paizo from actually spicing up the ancestries in order to use their actual history, evolution in order to balance them. Ditch the bonkers abilities they had before if they prove too much, like the huge dwarf package that's such an outlier.
PossibleCabbage wrote: Oh, don't get me wrong... I love traits that have an upside and a downside, I just feel like they should be opt-in at a level separate from "picking one's ancestry, background, or class".
Frankly I wish more ancestries got a heritage feat like ancient's blood, I just don't think packaging it with the ancestry is a good idea.
I agree, you should always make trade-off stuff optional, like the Anti-Mage stuff for Barbarians.
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Lightning Raven wrote: Ancestry feats should be cultural and every feat featured in the book under "Heritage" should be part of the ancestry/race again. Reserve these big feats (Heritage) for variations within the ancestry, like it happens with Half-ancestries. Sure, but I'm also opposed to the Weapon Familiarity feats as written. Items being common or uncommon should strictly be determined at the setting level. For example, nodachis would be common in Tian Xia, but uncommon in Avistan, while greatswords would be the opposite. There shouldn't be a secret elven black market in the Five Kings Mountains where elves with Weapon Familiarity, and only elves with Weapon Familiarity, can treat curve blades as common weapons.
RazarTuk wrote: Lightning Raven wrote: Ancestry feats should be cultural and every feat featured in the book under "Heritage" should be part of the ancestry/race again. Reserve these big feats (Heritage) for variations within the ancestry, like it happens with Half-ancestries. Sure, but I'm also opposed to the Weapon Familiarity feats as written. Items being common or uncommon should strictly be determined at the setting level. For example, nodachis would be common in Tian Xia, but uncommon in Avistan, while greatswords would be the opposite. There shouldn't be a secret elven black market in the Five Kings Mountains where elves with Weapon Familiarity, and only elves with Weapon Familiarity, can treat curve blades as common weapons. Yeah. I agree. But there's a very simple, but actually flavorful idea. You are an elf and you not only learned to use your ancestor's weapons, but as a rite of passage you learned to make your own. Dwarves as well. Seems reasonable to give access to crafting the weapon along with the proficiency.
Recent threads in Ancestries & Backgrounds
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