Aasimar, and my take on heritage


Ancestries & Backgrounds


3 people marked this as a favorite.

I currently find the heritage options to be, well, not very flavorful generally speaking. I would really like to see something big picture, like Aasimar, Teifling, Ifrit, Drow, Duergar, etc. With an Ancestral Paragon option for an extra feat from your base ancestry if you want to keep closer to the base line.

With that in mind, I decided to write up aasimar, as a base heritage feat that can be taken by any ancestry, and a series of ancestry feats available to assimar of any ancestry.

This is obviously a first draft, and may not balanced, but I wanted to get my ideas out there.

Universal Ancestry Feats

Aasimar – Feat - 1 (Heritage)
Holy power courses through your veins, a distant and faint flickering light for now, but burgeoning with potential. For now you gain the Light cantrip as a divine spell you can cast at will, except rather than touching an item the glow emanates from your body. This spell is heighten to a level equal to half your level, rounded up.

Dazzling Brilliance – Feat 5 (Aasimar)
You gain the Dazzling Brilliance reaction.
[Reaction] Trigger You are attacked in melee while the Light cantrip gained from the aasimar heritage feat is active.
You may immediately end the Light spell to force the triggering creature to make a Fortitude save.
Critical Success The target is unaffected and bolstered against further uses of this reaction
Success The target is unaffected
Failure The target is dazzled until the end of it's turn
Critical Failure The target is blinded until the end of it's turn

Exalted Resistance – Feat 5 (Aasimar)
Your skin takes on a metallic sheen as your celestial heritage protects you from certain elements. You gain resistance 5 to acid, cold, and electricity.

Angelic Wings – Feat 9 (Aasimar)
You gain access to the Angel Wings power, which costs 2 Spell Points to cast, and you increase your Spell Points by 2. If you do not have spell points you gain a pool of Spell points with a maximum of 2 points.

Improved Exalted Resistance – Feat 9 (Aasimar)
Prerequisite Exalted Resistance
Your heavenly heart helps to protect you from more insidious aliments. Whenever you succeed at a saving throw versus paralysis, petrification, or poison you critically succeed instead. Whenever you critically fail such a saving throw, you fail instead.

Blinding Brilliance – Feat 13 (Aasimar)
Prerequisite Dazzling Brilliance
Your light shines so much brighter, increasing the effectiveness of your Dazzling Brilliance reaction with new saving throw effects.
Critical Success The target is unaffected
Success The target is dazzled until the end of it's turn
Failure The target is blinded until the end of it's turn
Critical Failure The target is blinded for 1d4 rounds

Consecrated Strike – Feat 13 (Aasimar)
You gain the Consecrated Strike reaction
[Reaction] Trigger You succeed or critically succeed at an attack roll against an evil creature, or an evil creature fails or critically fails a saving throw against on of your damaging spells or powers.
You cause an additional 1d6 good damage against the target or targets and regain hit points equal to the level of the highest level creature affected.

Superior Exalted Resistance – Feat 17 (Aasimar)
Prerequisite Improved Exalted Resistance
Your skin becomes fully metallic, improving your acid, cold, and electricity resistance to 10, and granting you resistance 5 to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.

Radiant Blast – Feat 17 (Aasimar)
You gain access to the Radiant Blast power, which costs 2 Spell Points to cast, and you increase your Spell Points by 2. If you do not have spell points you gain a pool of Spell points with a maximum of 2 points.

Angelic Wings – Power 5
Casting Somatic Casting, Verbal Casting
Duration 1 minute
Feathered wings sprout from your back, giving you a fly speed of 60 feet. When the duration would end, if you have Spell Points, you can spend 1 Spell Point to increase the duration by 1 minute. When it ends, you float to the ground, with the effect of feather fall.
Heightened (7th) The duration increases to 10 minutes. Spell points increase the duration by 5 minutes.

Radiant Blast – Power 9
Casting Somatic Casting, Verbal Casting
Area 40 foot aura
Holy light explodes outward from your body is an explosive wave, blinding and damaging your enemies. Each enemy in the area takes 6d10 good damage and may be blinded. You may choose any number of targets within the area to exclude from the effects of this power.
Critical Success No damage and no blindness
Success Half damage and dazzled 1d10 rounds
Failure Full damage and blinded 1 minute
Critical Failure Double damage and permanently blinded


I sorta agree.

I pushed for the current change to Ancestry, and I'm glad to see it. I do think more heritage options like this would benefit the game, but not necessarily in core.

However, I do like the idea of looking at stuff like the Drow noble (and the feat chain to create it in PF1) to give us a baseline for what power scale the ancestry feats could be giving.

The racial feat chains from PF1 could easily be incorporated here, with base humans getting less options, but more versatility in getting generic options more often.

Look at concepts like the racial combat styles available to dwarves and elves, or even the chain of aasimar feats you have here.

That's where Ancestry feats should end up.

Good stuff, +1.


master_marshmallow wrote:

I sorta agree.

I pushed for the current change to Ancestry, and I'm glad to see it. I do think more heritage options like this would benefit the game, but not necessarily in core.

However, I do like the idea of looking at stuff like the Drow noble (and the feat chain to create it in PF1) to give us a baseline for what power scale the ancestry feats could be giving.

The racial feat chains from PF1 could easily be incorporated here, with base humans getting less options, but more versatility in getting generic options more often.

Look at concepts like the racial combat styles available to dwarves and elves, or even the chain of aasimar feats you have here.

That's where Ancestry feats should end up.

Good stuff, +1.

I've certainly thought the same, been thinking of doing Drow as another example. Additionally with something like Drow, half-human, etc adding a bit where you may use your first level ancestry feat to take another heritage with different traits. Ie. You couldn't take both Drow and Aquatic elf heritages, but you could take Drow and half-human, or Drow and Tiefling.


Seems good, though I am a fan of the half - race stuff being the human niche for racial variants.

Makes sense to me because humans seem to be the only race that can cross breed, unlike other races. Though some people don't like that and want half elf/ dwarf characters and the like.

Racial plane touched races were the weirdest thing in PF1 because they existed, but only changed your size and age maturity and nothing else. That's something that definitely could be looked at.


As I posted before, I like most of what you have.

I'm of the opinion that there should be at least some support for universal half-heritages.
Aasimar are actually called out as coming from any race in PF1.
There just isn't any mechanical benefit.


LordVanya wrote:

As I posted before, I like most of what you have.

I'm of the opinion that there should be at least some support for universal half-heritages.
Aasimar are actually called out as coming from any race in PF1.
There just isn't any mechanical benefit.

Exactly. I personally a 'half-human' heritage option that can be applied to any non-human medium sized humanoid would work out well.

With an option to still be like, a half-elf aasimar.

Like....

Half-Human (Heritage)
Prerequisite Medium sized humanoid, non-human
You may reassign one of your racial ability boosts to another ability score of your choice that is not already boosted or flawed. Additionally you a bonus language known, and may choose human ancestry feats.
SpecialYou may use your first level ancestry feat to choose a second heritage.


Yeah, I can see that working out.
I'd like to have it as an option.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

This is pretty cool. Radiant blast isn't very damaging though.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Yeah I think all plane touched should be easily available for all races. I mean they can already have access to corresponding sorcerer bloodlines and templates :p

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Playtest / Player Rules / Ancestries & Backgrounds / Aasimar, and my take on heritage All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Ancestries & Backgrounds