Why don't tengu get straight permanent flight upgrade?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


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They have the same upgrade path as tiefling/aasimar with once per day flight at 9 but no permanent flight at 17.

Instead they need to transform into something else to get permanent flight and the lvl 9 skyborn tengu feat doesn't have an upgrade.

Kind of bummed since a friend picked a tengu that wants to learn to fly but I'm just gonna make a custom feat for that so it's fine but it's weird to me it isn't there already.

Sovereign Court

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In PF1 Tengu didn't get flight except to turn into a bird, while aasimars did.


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The reasons likely involve a mix of Japanese legends and PF1.

OG Tengu (the ones from Japanese legends) are nature spirits and certainly not "bird people". Being able to turn into a bird was one of their spirit abilities.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

You can also take the aasimar heritage to get access to those, or rule that the adopted ancestry would let you get stuff from aasimar, if you wanted to do it by RAW.


This is probably a result of taking the Japanese folk lore of Tengu (not bird people, but can turn into a bird) and blending it with bits of the D&D IP Kenku (bird people who explicitly cannot fly for lore reasons) to create a fill-in for the Kenku that couldn't be included in the Golarion setting for legal reasons (and plus, Tengu are better than Kenku because the other parts of Kenku lore make them unplayable unless you ignore it) - so being able to fly is lore-wise not expected to be done with the wing/arms.


Kenku could fly in old D&D. As the edition wheel turned they lost the ability.


I see the transformation at Level 17 is a Tengu a becoming a japanese Tengu. They even mention oni in the feats description.

They really should make it a feat tree for skyborn tengu then. Because they do have real wings if they want and can fly if they want so transforming into an actual tengu to fly is just weird


Tengu don't have wings, they are humanoid, so they really wasn't the flying type

https://2e.aonprd.com/Images/Monsters/Tengu_TenguSneak.png


They literally don't have wings. So a Tengu gaining flight would be like a human getting a prehensile monkey tail- it's not like impossible in a world with magic, but it's not a standard option.


Skyborn Tengu can have wings.

Quote:
Your bones may be especially light, you may be a rare tengu with wings, or your connection to the spirits of wind and sky might be stronger than most, slowing your descent through the air. You take no damage from falling, regardless of the distance you fall.

Which is why they get the lvl 9 once per day flight aasimar and tieflings get. They just don't get the lvl 17 upgrade

Quote:
To be a tengu is to be unburdened by the concerns of the world below. You grow a pair of magical wings or expand your existing ones. For 5 minutes, you gain a fly Speed equal to your land Speed or 20 feet, whichever is greater.

Only skyborn tengu have access to this feat however.


Maybe they had it (permanent flight upgrade) and cut it to make room on the page for other feats? Pretty sure that kind of thing happens sometimes. Personally I'd've cut One-Toed Hop instead.


It's quite probable the Paizo team wanted to let prospect GMs enjoy making dungeons with bottomless pits as actually functional hazards, that's what I'm always in suspect of. Likewise as a player, how many times I wished while playing Zelda games to have some permanent flight outside of using GameShark...

Organized Play Developer

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Just to chime in with some things:

Pathfinder tengu have not been illustrated with wings to my knowledge, but some do indeed have them. As with most situations where there is both an in-game mechanic and an in-world culture, winged tengu do not necessarily have the mechanic 「skyborn heritage」 and tengu characters with skyborn heritage do not necessarily have wings (like the iconic, Korakai).

Kenku were not a point of reference in writing the tengu ancestry in APG, so any overlap is probably due to their shared origins in folklore.

The lack of feats now doesn't necessarily mean those are hard limits or that they can't exist later--flight and some related themes are all pretty big touchpoints in the source folklore so I think they'd be apt places for future expansion.


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And we do have Ancestry Guide dropping next year.

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