So, in addition to several other reasons* why I dislike how the playtest handled half-elves and half-orcs, a major concern of mine is how Paizo will handle adding more heritage feats after the CRB.
I'm assuming, at least, that they will add more heritage feats. There may not be specific plans for it yet, but it would surprise me if over the entire course of PF2, they were content to not add more.
Right now, having four options for heritage feats if you want to be a gnome, one if you want to be a half-elf, and two if you want to be a human feels somewhat weird, and it feels uncomfortably less customizable to me to play a half-elf or half-orc. But that's only going to get worse, say, once we have nine options for heritage feats for gnomes, five for regular humans, and one for half-elves. Which is kinda lame, especially since heritage feats are imo an amazing way to handle stuff the different aasimar/tiefling/changeling/dhampir/etc variants. And not a great way to make an impression on new players when that's half the way they can customize their character by ancestry for the first quarter of the game.
Unless Paizo's plan is to just expand them anyway. Which also feels awkward to me, imagining a list of human heritage feats needing different individual feats allowing you to be something like five different kinds of half-orc, five different kinds of half-elf, four different kinds of dhampir, etc. And then six kinds of aasimar, six kinds of tiefling, eight kinds of changeling... it sounds like it would be much tidier to give the PF1 races their own ancestry and their own list of feats.
I guess it's Paizo's game and if this is how they want to handle it... but if it's something feedback is wanted on, personally I question whether anyone who actually plays those races is in favor of it.
*(having to use half a feat on knowing a potentially native language originally, post-update not necessarily being able to access it at all without a non-ancestry feat, the "free" heritage feat imo increasing how mechanically inferior a choice it is to Versatile Heritage or Skilled Heritage, and it just plain not feeling as fun to play a human with the Half-Orc heritage feat)
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FWIR there was talk of possible just opening up those half-XXXX ancestry options to ALL races wherever appropriate.
So for example you have your Gnome right, but instead your heritage can have Changeling,aasimar etc and the mechanics of the abilities all just WORK in a drag and drop style.
I doubt we will be looking at these type of ancestries as "Human Sub-types" as much as we will as looking at them as general purpose Ancestries that can be accessed via the Human (Or other with GM approval I'm guessing).
I'd MUCH rather see a PC being able to elect into specific Ancestry Feats and options of their choice by DEFAULT in PF2 over the way it was handled in PF1 where each Race got their own predefined, unchanging list that then have to be cannibalized with "replacement" abilities in supplements over time. This is MUCH simpler to simply give a new Silo that the player can fill rather than hand them a puzzle they are allowed to swap out certain pieces for.
/2c
The idea (the mechanics and possible design space thereof) of Ancestry feats I can really get behind.
Its the implementation and utter lack of anything exciting that disappoints me.
FWIR there was talk of possible just opening up those half-XXXX ancestry options to ALL races wherever appropriate.
So for example you have your Gnome right, but instead your heritage can have Changeling,aasimar etc and the mechanics of the abilities all just WORK in a drag and drop style.
I doubt we will be looking at these type of ancestries as "Human Sub-types" as much as we will as looking at them as general purpose Ancestries that can be accessed via the Human (Or other with GM approval I'm guessing).
I'd MUCH rather see a PC being able to elect into specific Ancestry Feats and options of their choice by DEFAULT in PF2 over the way it was handled in PF1 where each Race got their own predefined, unchanging list that then have to be cannibalized with "replacement" abilities in supplements over time. This is MUCH simpler to simply give a new Silo that the player can fill rather than hand them a puzzle they are allowed to swap out certain pieces for.
/2c
I like the idea of simply choosing abilities instead of getting a certain set and being maybe allowed to swap them out, often with a great deal of finagling to get a good combination.
But I think there's better ways to do that than slowly gaining abilities every five levels that have already been established in setting lore as basic capabilities of that race. (most annoying one to me being half-orcs losing darkvision until 5)
And I feel like the ancestries survey failed on giving people a good way to voice opinions on this. Neither "I like that these features aren't mandatory, but I think spending a feat for them is too high a cost" and "I prefer all [dwarves/elves/etc] gain these features" is a good way to communicate wanting more than one or two basic ancestry abilities to be easily possible to start with or gain early on, but still having customization too.
(Personally, I'd like a similar amount of abilities gained at level 1 as in PF1, but with it built in to the core rules that you can choose them from X options, ideally in a more streamlined way than "you can swap out A for B or C, you can swap out Z for X or Y, you can swap out A and Z for N", and keep ancestry feats for scaling abilities or higher-level abilities like the stuff from PF1 racial feats.)
Half orcs are pretty neutered but half elves are not in any way. they get to cherrypick feats from human and elf and honestly those are probably the 2 best overall ancestry feat lists. In my groups DD run we tried out every ancestry at least once including the half breeds and the 2 most commonly played by a fair margin were human and half elf.