Planar Heritage & Fiendish Heritage

[Milkshaketeer]

A level 1 Human takes Planar Heritage to be part tiefling and uses the bonus feat for Fiendish Heritage.

What happens to her ability scores? Does she have to keep the +2 to any ability score human's get because she doesn't have "a tiefling’s usual racial ability modifiers" to swap, can she swap the +2 for any of the tiefling modifiers, or does she keep her +2 to any ability score on top of one of the modifiers presented in the chart? If she can have both modifiers, can she have the +2 racial adjustment to an ability score modified by the tiefling adjustments?

What about the "Variant Tiefling Abilities" mechanic? Does she gain no benefit because she doesn't have a darkness spell-like ability to swap out, per this sentence,:

Fiendish Heritage wrote:

The abilities presented here replace a tiefling’s darkness spell-like ability, with a caster level equals to its class level.

or does she not have to have the spell-like ability as this sentence would insinuate?:

Fiendish Heritage wrote:

In addition, you may roll on Table: Variant Tiefling Abilities three times and choose the most favorable ability.

This thread had similar concerns, but the Racial Heritage feat didn't work with tieflings. Planar Heritage clearly does, so what about now?

[vhok]

You are a human that counts as also a triefling. That’s all you get. You can take tiefling feats if you now meet the other requirements and pick up a race trait. Spells and abilities target you as a tiefling. You get nothing from the tiefling race racial traits( this is different from the race traits) I know they have almost the same name but it is not the same thing

[Milkshaketeer]

I know simply counting as a tiefling would not grant the tiefling's racial traits, but this question is about the Fiendish Heritage feat being applied to a human that lacks those racial traits.

I would think that if the tiefling's racial traits were prerequisites to the feat, they'd be listed as prerequisites for the feat, but I can't blame SKR for being unable to foresee the unclear interactions between two feats made nine years apart or being a little messy at the very start of Pathfinder.

Seeing that this interaction can happen, how would you rules gurus go about this? I think the most sane GM would say that the darkness spell-like ability and normal racial modifiers of tieflings are prerequisites for the feat that were thrown in the text instead of listed as a prerequisite, preventing this awkward interaction, but I really hope that isn't the case just for the knowledge that a there is a normal-looking human in somebody's table that never goes hungry in a desert.

[David knott 242]

The issue is that you do qualify for the Fiendish Heritage feat, but a closer look at that feat reveals that it does nothing for a human, as it lets you exchange the usual tiefling ability score modifiers for the ability score modifiers of a variant tiefling heritage and give up your darkness SLA for a special ability selected from three rolls on a table listing alternate special abilities.

Since a human has neither tiefling ability score adjustments nor a darkness SLA, he can make neither of the allowed trades, and thus the Fiendish Heritage feat is useless to him.

[Reksew_Trebla]

David knott 242 wrote:

The issue is that you do qualify for the Fiendish Heritage feat, but a closer look at that feat reveals that it does nothing for a human, as it lets you exchange the usual tiefling ability score modifiers for the ability score modifiers of a variant tiefling heritage and give up your darkness SLA for a special ability selected from three rolls on a table listing alternate special abilities.

Since a human has neither tiefling ability score adjustments nor a darkness SLA, he can make neither of the allowed trades, and thus the Fiendish Heritage feat is useless to him.

+1

[Temperans]

(Btw PFSRD states the feat it self is only useful for the reroll 3 times for alt Tiefling abilities. Apparently, Blood of Fiends removed the feat pre-req so it works like aasimars.)

[David knott 242]

Temperans wrote:

(Btw PFSRD states the feat it self is only useful for the reroll 3 times for alt Tiefling abilities. Apparently, Blood of Fiends removed the feat pre-req so it works like aasimars.)

It is too bad that there is no way to officially "deprecate" a feat, as it is in fact no longer needed by tiefling characters at all. The only possible use for it would be for a human with the Planar Heritage (Tiefling) feat, but allowing that to work would just be too messy.

[Temperans]

I know this is the rules forum, but the best possible scenario I see is letting non-tiefling roll once to get one of the abilities. With that, its effectively a feat for a 1/day ability, or some other relatively minor benefit.

(Big hands or extra stat might be too good thou).