| The-Magic-Sword |
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I'm actually really in love with some of the feat options for Halflings and Gnomes, especially the luck-oriented party support features of the former and the focus point restoration on the latter (it seems very strong on say, a Devil Sorcerer with Hellfire, or on a ki blast centric monk build.)
| Ruzza |
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I feel strange saying this, but I really like the human ancestry right now. Ancestry feats that tie a lot of flavor into the character are really exciting to get, like a fire-breathing Tian, flying Shory, or magically imbued Thassilonian.
Humans in PF1 were really an all around great race, but I felt like it was a bland option if I ever picked it. Now the human has a stronger cultural identity that's also fun to interact with.
| Tender Tendrils |
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For me it is Hobgoblins. I feel like they took a very generic and bland goblinoid and made it a lot more interesting. Both visually and mechanically (and lore wise) they feel less like discount uruk-hai now, and have started to become more nuanced to break them out of being a culture of the hat.
Honourable mentions go to leshies for being so unique, goblins for having really fun options, and kobolds for a brilliant visual redesign.
I imagine the Anadi will supplant them all when they are eventually playable however - they have a very rich and interesting culture and are visually very unique.
| RicoTheBold |
I'm a big fan of mechanics reinforcing flavor. Flavor's fine by itself, but the mechanics really make it feel more real to me.
So my answers will be weighted toward the mechanics, but that's how I process the flavor.
I think gnomes have a lot of really cool things going for them. Being able to get a familiar with any class is cool, talking to animals is cool. Like any given game they might not matter that much, but they really redefine a character's role in the world when they come up. Flickmaces have a cool niche, too.
My current party has gone pretty heavy into elves for Age of Ashes, for whatever reason, with 3 players as elves, one as a half elf, and the last as a goblin. I think a lot was the extra speed as much as the concepts.
Humans get some extra flexibility, and I really like their ability to glom onto other ancestry abilities. I like half elves, especially for access to being faster (or Ancient Elf now, I guess), but am bummed that there aren't enough things for half-orcs to really feel like a compelling option.
Goblins have a few fun things. I know some people find them polarizing, but I think they're just fine in core.
After that, halflings kind of feel like they don't have anything super great - the sling staff could be a really neat thing to build around, but right now it probably doesn't work with most of the things you'd want it to. The luck stuff is kind of neat, and in the playtest I had a player double down on it with one of the cleric domains for luck so they were just rerolling stuff and helping others reroll and it was a lot of fun.
Dwarves exist. I'm not inspired much by the flavor or the mechanics. Elemental heart dwarves sound maybe kind of cool. Otherwise I'm probably not looking at them unless I'm trying to come up with a wacky tower shield build concept.
For the uncommon ancestries, I think the Leshy and the Lizardfolk are pretty neat, with leshies close up with gnomes as my possible top favorites. Maybe I've been brainwashed from too much time watching Linda on Arcane Mark, though. Hobgoblins are okay - probably below goblins and close to halflings, but ahead of dwarves. I think some of their abilities are a little too niche, but that's fine for NPCs.
I'm looking forward to seeing the expansion of options in the APG - I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed just reading through the ancestry options in the Lost Omens Character guide. I hope less of the APG stuff is tagged as Uncommon, though. It doesn't matter in my games (since I'm permanent GM) but I'd be bummed as a player if a specific feat for a concept was gated away because a GM thought everything marked Uncommon was problematic and should be restricted.
| Rhatha |
Lizardfolk for sure, though I tend to like a lot of the nonstandard races. While there could be a bit more fleshing out in future books, the different heritages felt very differently themed in their case, and I want to know more. This is true for a lot of heritages, but they stand out to me for whatever reason, and I really like some of the feat options.
| Squiggit |
Lizardfolk is the only option right now where I felt like the ancestry choice was something I could heavily play into while building my character.
That's not to say that other ancestries don't have good options or that Lizardfolk even have the best options, but I was able to turn natural attacks and the frilled heritage's special action into centerpieces of certain builds, while for most other ancestries I'd characterize the feats and options as merely just nice addons.
Humans come close, though, if only because the ability to pile on feats as a human is one of the best ways to manage this game's proficiency system.