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Goblins being the new core race is fine, they are a long-standing staple, but I prefer them in SF (with those cool space-helmets) as a major player. I think for PF2/Golarion, they could have included a more interesting race, fresh, something new for a core race, not necessarily new to the game/world. Maybe a quadruped?
I've only heard one qualification I've ever believed for what should be 'Core':
To be core, something should be relatively recognizable to most people who've never played D&D or Pathfinder.
That fits all current Ancestries and Classes, including Goblins, pretty well (okay, Cleric is a little weird name-wise, but it's pretty much just a priest and easy enough to explain). Adding new Ancestries that don't fit it is something I'm gonna go on the record as disagreeing with.
Now, as non-core options, I'm totally on board, but core being recognizable to everyone seems a good policy to stick with.
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I agree, I am not advocating for Aboleths to be a core race or anything, something easily recognisable, that fits.
Well I for one am horrified at the lack of respect given to our Aboleth overlords.
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I would still prefer if we get lots of ancestry features at 1st level and any feat tied to ancestry should be some kind of upgrade of default features.
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I would still prefer if we get lots of ancestry features at 1st level and any feat tied to ancestry should be some kind of upgrade of default features.
So kind of like your using the race builder rules from PF1 but with limited choices?
dragonborn
Fus'Roh nah, I'm pretty sure that's copyrighted. (The D&D or Skyrim version)
He was just missing some sort of threat.
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I really hope Drow a core heritage.
(I will be ignoring all naysayers on this.)
I would very much be up for seeing Drow, Bleachling, and maybe Duergar as options.
I do really hope they stick to the cultural stuff being optional though. I'm really not a fan of it being baked in if that ever happens.
I really hope Drow a core heritage.
(I will be ignoring all naysayers on this.)
I would very much be up for seeing Drow, Bleachling, and maybe Duergar as options.
I do really hope they stick to the cultural stuff being optional though. I'm really not a fan of it being baked in if that ever happens.
Just as long as you can choose not to take those options i'll be fine.
I think the last I heard they were worried that the half orc and half elf options were to good but info seems to change often in one of these.
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Other interesting stuff. Mark confirmed that they don't want feats to he relevant balancing the Ancestries' chassis cores against each other. They are aware eventually every ancestry will get awesome feats printed, and don't want to limit the design space. With "that feat is TOO good for dwarves."
The other thing is they don't want balance points to be too based on delayed gratification, which Mark cited as a problem with the halfies. Half eves were recognized as great at third level, but not especially before then.
This wasn't specified, but on a related note I hope Ancient Blood becomes an ancestry feat and not a heritage. It hurts the most before level 3, which is also where you will probably encounter the least magic.
Also, I'm not entirely clear if the half elf and half orc heritages will grant everything they did as a feat, but if they do I think we will be getting a lot of first level ancestry stuff while still letting you expand on those options later. It might be a good middle ground between not overloading first level with too many alternative choices and getting Ancestries feeling more complete out the box.
Other interesting stuff. Mark confirmed that they don't want feats to he relevant balancing the Ancestries' chassis cores against each other. They are aware eventually every ancestry will get awesome feats printed, and don't want to limit the design space. With "that feat is TOO good for dwarves."
The other thing is they don't want balance points to be too based on delayed gratification, which Mark cited as a problem with the halfies. Half eves were recognized as great at third level, but not especially before then.
This wasn't specified, but on a related note I hope Ancient Blood becomes an ancestry feat and not a heritage. It hurts the most before level 3, which is also where you will probably encounter the least magic.
Also, I'm not entirely clear if the half elf and half orc heritages will grant everything they did as a feat, but if they do I think we will be getting a lot of first level ancestry stuff while still letting you expand on those options later. It might be a good middle ground between not overloading first level with too many alternative choices and getting Ancestries feeling more complete out the box.
Thanks for the information in general.
I do hope that the halfies don't grant their skill proficiency, but I'm fine with the other bits of them.
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You know, it's a bit strange they didn't go for Orc as the ancestry to include rather than Goblin. Everyone knows what an orc is, and the race list is lacking a non-heritage big strong bruiser race, while it has gnomes and halflings filling the little guy role.
I don't know... Warcraft and Lord of the Rings and even Bright have puy orcs in the public view more than goblins, it seems.
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Need more Kobolds.
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I agree, I am not advocating for Aboleths to be a core race or anything
I, for one, welcome our so old they're new again Aboleth overlords.
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I really hope Drow a core heritage.
(I will be ignoring all naysayers on this.)
I've spent the last hours (ever since watching the stream, in truth) researching on how to summon a devil and make a pact with them for this to happen. :P
*just joking of course*
Seriously though, I will be extremely disappointed if Fell Gnomes and Goblins are in but Drows are left out because...reasons?
I'm getting the nagging feeling that elven heritages will end up being a bland variation of City Elf, Wood Elf, Arctic Elf and Desert Elf and now Monday can't come fast enough. :o
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I agree, I am not advocating for Aboleths to be a core race or anythingI, for one, welcome our so old they're new again Aboleth overlords.
Hail be, all hail.
Excellent news!
Ancentries were, in my opinion, the worst executed part of the initial release - actually, it is since their first preview that I have been saying that they seemed like a waste of an excellent idea.
The fact that higer-level, stronger ancestry feats were missing, was another thing I had criticized.
Now we can have actual sub-ancestries, and with heritage+feat level one will be more customizable and feel less bare.
My hopes are high!
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I would still prefer if we get lots of ancestry features at 1st level and any feat tied to ancestry should be some kind of upgrade of default features.
Having run the game for complete newbies before, I'm glad the ancestries are slimmed down. The players got really frustrated with all of the miscellaneous abilities they needed to write down before they got going, the vast majority of which never came up.
Speed, HP, size, and attribute bonuses/penalties are frequently relevant. An AC bonus against specific enemies, the ability to talk to burrowing animals, and proficiency in specific weapons are all just wastes of character creation time unless the player actively wants them.
I'm totally in favor of giving one or two decisions at level 1 that let players choose something that THEY find compelling rather than loading people up with several lines of extra, irrelevant text to copy down before they can start playing the game.
The problem with 1E was that it started with locked in, predefined race traits, and then grafted on a system of alternate traits. This made things complex for new players to follow and put a tremendous strain on system balance.
2E is in a great position to fix this by building the system from the ground up so that all you have to do is select the racial features you want from a list. Call them heritages, feats, traits, whatever, they are all the same thing. Selecting two to four things from a list is not harder than selecting one. Having more than one to choose actually lowers the stakes a bit, so new player don't have to worry about wasting their one and only choice on something they end up never using.
It eases balancing pressure as well. Let's be honest, if you only get one to choose, and they aren't all garbage, you're going to see a lot of people taking the optimal choice, a few people taking the next best thing, and everything else was largely a waste of paper. If you have four choices, everyone will take the optimal thing, and maybe the next best one, but there will still be room for the sub-optimal but flavorful things and the situational ones if you want them.
I wonder if one of the human ancestries will be Azlanti? There is already precedence for Azlanti to be a bit different stats wise than regular humans, so it would be an obvious choice as one of the four human heritages. Hopefully they are putting off Aasimar and Tiefling to later books, not because I hate them, but because they really need a lot more specific feat support than I think they will have room for.
Also really hope there is some sort of ancestry feat that grants you two heritages. It would be great if you could be a snowcaster half-elf for instance.
The vast majority of existing non-heritage ancestry feats aren't physical features. Even the heritage feats are mostly things you can already get from leveling up in specific classes, like improved perception or access to magic, so it's not especially weird to do it from the Ancestries.
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You know, it's a bit strange they didn't go for Orc as the ancestry to include rather than Goblin. Everyone knows what an orc is, and the race list is lacking a non-heritage big strong bruiser race, while it has gnomes and halflings filling the little guy role.
I don't know... Warcraft and Lord of the Rings and even Bright have puy orcs in the public view more than goblins, it seems.
It feels like Paizo in particular has done a lot of public relations work on the image of goblins though so for Pathfinder in particular, Goblins make more sense than Orcs.
I mean, Golarion's Orcs aren't really different enough from "standard fantasy orcs" in order to be a mascot or a showcase. Now I'm totally on board with doing this, but they haven't really.
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One thing that I don’t see mentioned here that was part of the stream is that ethnicities (Osirion, Varisian, etc) will not be part of the Heritages. You pick whatever heritage you want, your feat, and can still be from wherever you want to be. Ethnicity and heritage do not compete with each other.
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Seems like they should just remove ethnicity from the PF2 CRB. If they don't want to give it a mechanical bonus, its not worth the page count. Better save that for a setting book.
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One thing that I don’t see mentioned here that was part of the stream is that ethnicities (Osirion, Varisian, etc) will not be part of the Heritages. You pick whatever heritage you want, your feat, and can still be from wherever you want to be. Ethnicity and heritage do not compete with each other.
So in PF1 a lot of "I am from a certain place" was encoded in traits, like "I bear the elaborate tattoos of my people". Are we no longer going to have a mechanical impact from Shoanti or Varisian tattoos, or where are we going to put that stuff?
I guess those could be ancestry feats where if you take it at level 5 in a campaign not set in Varisia, you can just justify it via "I met some people."
One thing that I don’t see mentioned here that was part of the stream is that ethnicities (Osirion, Varisian, etc) will not be part of the Heritages. You pick whatever heritage you want, your feat, and can still be from wherever you want to be. Ethnicity and heritage do not compete with each other.So in PF1 a lot of "I am from a certain place" was encoded in traits, like "I bear the elaborate tattoos of my people". Are we no longer going to have a mechanical impact from Shoanti or Varisian tattoos, or where are we going to put that stuff?
I guess those could be ancestry feats where if you take it at level 5 in a campaign not set in Varisia, you can just justify it via "I met some people."
I do not know the answer to this question. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that out of the gate there will be no mechanics for ethnicity but I could see that added in the future.
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I'll be incredibly disappointed if they move away from half-race heritages. I thought this was a very innovative method of character customization, that offered far too many benefits going forward (plane-touched races, half-xxx templates, etc).
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You know, it's a bit strange they didn't go for Orc as the ancestry to include rather than Goblin. Everyone knows what an orc is, and the race list is lacking a non-heritage big strong bruiser race, while it has gnomes and halflings filling the little guy role.
I don't know... Warcraft and Lord of the Rings and even Bright have puy orcs in the public view more than goblins, it seems.
I believe they've stated that they considered it but decided Goblins were more tied to their brand identity and iconic of Golarion and so went with them instead.
They were gonna have a 'monstrous' Ancestry either way, though.
I'll be incredibly disappointed if they move away from half-race heritages. I thought this was a very innovative method of character customization, that offered far too many benefits going forward (plane-touched races, half-xxx templates, etc).
I don't see why they would. Having them as Feats was problematic for a host of reasons. Having them as Heritages seems to be fine with most people (including me).
I think for PF2/Golarion, they could have included a more interesting race, fresh, something new for a core race, not necessarily new to the game/world. Maybe a quadruped?I've never quite understood why PF and D&D seem resistant to the idea of the Centaur. They don't have to be silly, nor do they have to be overpowered. First of all, you don't even have to make them so big that other PCs can ride them, (maybe halflings, goblins, and gnomes, but not medium guys).
I see them as like Game of Thrones Dothraki with the horse-part built-in. Main features would probably still be an enhanced carrying capacity, movement rate, and something that makes using spears awesome for once.
Some of it is probably to keep the game feeling like a standard fantasy adventure rather than a monster menagerie. There were other problems, like size being really important, and differences in the amount of limbs someone has, but those are mostly unimportant in PF2.
I've never quite understood why PF and D&D seem resistant to the idea of the Centaur. They don't have to be silly, nor do they have to be overpowered. First of all, you don't even have to make them so big that other PCs can ride them, (maybe halflings, goblins, and gnomes, but not medium guys).
I think that the biggest issue is that most of the places the PCs are going to visit in the course of a standard adventure are sized and shaped for roughly human-sized bipeds. So having someone who can't really traverse a spiral staircase, or fit inside a tailor's shop, or climb a rope, is going to be a big limitation on "adventure design."
Honestly, in terms of "Monstrous Humanoids that will not cause problems" in Pathfinder the sweet spot is Cecaelias, since they are reasonably fast on land and they can fit anywhere a human can. Plus the lore is that they are gregarious, curious, and don't mind being gawked at, so we avoid the "rare and insular people who are bad at stairs" problem.
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bad at stairs
Horrifically off-topic, but I still have this horrible temptation to one of these days just stat up a golem based off of a dalek.
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I kind of hope there's another ancestry survey later because this set of changes addresses pretty much everything in my previous survey ;)
I definitely like the change and I think rebalancing the core of ancestries, adding more heritages, and adding more feats on top of that is a great set of changes.
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Just to clarify a bit...
Every ancestry has 4 heritages to choose from in this implementation of the rules. Half-elf and Half-orc are two of the human ones.
how would this work going forward for the other half-races? it'd be a shame to see them all tied to humans despite how fitting they may be (such as an oread-dwarf or an aasimar elf)