Cultural Adaptability and Adopted Ancestry?


Rules Discussion


If you take Adopted Ancestry and later take Cultural Adaptability, do you gain Adopted Ancestry a second time? Does it still work if you take them in the reverse order?

The general rule is that you can not "select" the same feat multiple times (unless it says you can). However, if you select Cultural Adaptability, you are not selecting Adopted Ancestry (but you are gaining it).


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Twilight2k wrote:

If you take Adopted Ancestry and later take Cultural Adaptability, do you gain Adopted Ancestry a second time? Does it still work if you take them in the reverse order?

The general rule is that you can not "select" the same feat multiple times (unless it says you can). However, if you select Cultural Adaptability, you are not selecting Adopted Ancestry (but you are gaining it).

IMO, you get a dead feat. Now what you could do is retrain that initial Adopted Ancestry into something else.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber

Oh no, I hate everything about this, lol. My brain is already hurting, but here we go:

I figure we have two basic cases: Either your starting ancestry is Halfling or it's not.

Case 1: You started out as a halfling.

What happens:

You pick up Adopted Ancestry, choosing some other ancestry. Then later you pick up Cultural Adaptability. I think at this point you just pick up a free 1st level ancestry feat from that chosen second ancestry, and that's it?

Or.....oh....oh no....so I know you can't normally pick the same feat twice, but what about cases like this where you're not really selecting Adopted Ancestry again, but instead the feat you chose is what's giving you Adopted Ancestry? Does that mean you actually could choose a third ancestry to start getting feats from? I kind of hope not, lol.

Case 2: You start out as any other ancestry besides Halfling, then choose Halfling as your second ancestry for Adopted Ancestry.

What happens:

You pick up Cultural Adaptability. You pick Halfling again, and get a free 1st level ancestry feat from them. Otherwise nothing happens.

But now Cultural Adaptability makes Adopted Ancestry redundant, so you think it's worth retraining Adopted Ancestry to something else.

EXCEPT, Adopted Ancestry is the only reason you were able to choose Cultural Adaptability in the first place, so things get very Grandfather Paradox in here, lol.

Yep. Yep, my head hurts, lol.


Links for convenience:
Adopted Ancestry
Cultural Adaptability

Well... As far as I can tell VestOfHolding is sort of correct.

Adopted Ancestry states that you have to select an ancestry (presumably another than the one you are, or the feat doesn't have any effect).

Now, is it the same feat if you selected another ancestry?

If you start out as Halfling and select Adopted Ancestry (Dwarf) for example and then later on gain Cultural Adaptability, you could probably select Adopted Ancestry (Elf) and a 1st level Elf feat.

If you start out Human (for example) and selected Adopted Ancestry (Halfling) then you can later on gain Cultural Adaptability and again select Adopted Ancestry (Gnome) and a 1st level Gnome feat.


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The language of both of those feats use ancestry in the singular, so there is definitely not a loophole through which to have access to more than one ancestry outside your normal to choose feats from.

A character that takes both of these feats, though, runs into the situation that unlike with skill proficiency there is no clause allowing you to select a different option if you've ended up with a duplicate somehow - so the "you gain Adopted Ancestry" part of Cultural Adaptability just doesn't function if you already have it, and if you were trying to go the other way around you can't because you've already got the feat you're trying to take since it does not include a "you can take this feat multiple times for different options" clause of feats like Additional Lore or Automatic Knowledge and the like.

You would still get the ancestry feat... but really you'd be better of skipping Cultural Adaptability and spending that ancestry feat on the ancestry feat you want directly since then it would not be limited to those of 1st-level.

A definite case of "this is technically possible, but there is no reason to ever actually do it."


thenobledrake wrote:
The language of both of those feats use ancestry in the singular, so there is definitely not a loophole through which to have access to more than one ancestry outside your normal to choose feats from.

I don't follow your logic. Of course both feats use ancestry singular as they grant access to one other ancestry - there is nothing saying that they don't EACH grant access to one other ancestry.

Primarily this is a question around an unspecified hole in the rules. You are not selecting Adopted Ancestry twice so you are not forbidden that way (you gain it twice but not select it twice). There is no rule that says you can't gain a feat twice (as long as you don't select it twice).

Personally, I think it is clearly allowed by the rules. However, as evidenced by this thread and a Discord discussion, there is a whole range of interpretations. For a home game, it's simple - just ask the GM. For PFS though, it would be good if there was not table variation.


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The point is you don't gain it twice, selected or not.
You have overlapping abilities leading to the same feat. Since it's a feat you already have, you gain nothing new. That's it.

I can see the argument going the other way, but that doesn't mesh with not being able to select a feat twice. Bypassing that by saying that your PC didn't "select" it, is an obvious loophole in terminology, not evidence.

Another red flag is that you can take them in one order, but it's forbidden the other way (and not due to prereqs). A sure sign of shenanigans.


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Twilight2k wrote:
I don't follow your logic. Of course both feats use ancestry singular as they grant access to one other ancestry - there is nothing saying that they don't EACH grant access to one other ancestry.

Yes there is - the part where the feat doesn't have the "you can take this again but choose a different option" clause.

So if you have Adopted Ancestry and then take Cultural Adaptability you do not have a way to have a second option for the Adopted Ancestry feat you've been given by Cultural Adaptability.

Or if you have Cultural Adaptability and go to take Adopted Ancestry you can't because you already have that feat and can only take the same feat more than once if it specifically says you can, which again Adopted Ancestry does not.

This "I didn't select it, I gained it" thing doesn't work. If you select Cultural Adaptability, you have selected whatever that results in you getting - you don't get to say "nuh uh" and have the rules believe you.


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I am with Grayson and noble here, the rules are quite clear. You gain the benefit as written.

I do think the "reading feats" section (not each individual feat) should spell this out clearly though (future printings)

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