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The Pallidium RPGs introduced me to the idea of R.C.Cs (or racial character class) and for the first time in a long time I have been thinking about how easily an idea like that would fit over the framework of PF2 to allow players to play ancestries that really don't make great or balanced characters work out. There is a good chance that someone is already doing this out here, which is why I made this post in the homebrew, if it is already happening then please point me to it.
Take the long discussed dragon character. At first I thought, that seems like an impossible thing to do, but in the context of folding proficiencies and ancestry and background into one category (basically giving up your ancestry and background options for being able to start play as a hatchling dragon, I think it could work out fairly well.
The only real trick I think would be making a way for the character to have to use runes to boost their attacks and defenses to keep the character from being able to bypass having to spend wealth on things other characters do.
So the dragon ancestral class, which starts you off as a hatchling could grant ability boosts like +4 to STR, +4 to CHA, +2 to CON, but then you only get your 4 free boosts on top of that. Your skills would be very limited as well, since a low level character is going to be inherently young and inexperienced, but would include the extra skill and lore from background, as well as a skill feat, and then the proficiencies could be dolled out like any other class. As long as you give the ACC class feats that they can use to advance their ancestral abilities or spend on dedications, I think you'd maintain a pretty decent balance, as long as whatever creature you are making the ACC for would be able to start at medium size or smaller and that you factor a fair bit of class balance towards any place where the character gets a size boost.
You'd even have the option of picking up MC dedications to apply class abilities to your character as they level up, and if it was balanced right, in a game with dual class options you could have an ACC and regular class.
If Paizo doesn't latch onto this idea themselves, then it seems like ripe territory for 3rd party development, not just for dragons, but for a lot of ancestries that just require more than a feat and a heritage ability at level 1. Minotaurs, gorgons, various outsiders, etc.
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The only real trick I think would be making a way for the character to have to use runes to boost their attacks and defenses to keep the character from being able to bypass having to spend wealth on things other characters do.
For dragons, you can stipulate that they eat runestones to gain their runes' powers. If they try to exceed their level limits they risk vomiting up all their swallowed (and now digested) runestones.
For minotaurs and most other things "eat the runestone" doesn't work so well, but for dragons I like it.
The only real trick I think would be making a way for the character to have to use runes to boost their attacks and defenses to keep the character from being able to bypass having to spend wealth on things other characters do.For dragons, you can stipulate that they eat runestones to gain their runes' powers. If they try to exceed their level limits they risk vomiting up all their swallowed (and now digested) runestones.
For minotaurs and most other things "eat the runestone" doesn't work so well, but for dragons I like it.
I really dig that idea conceptually. In practice though, I think the runes would have to be applied to each of their natural attacks separately or else their natural attacks would have to be balanced around not having much wiggle room in the kind of traits they can get. Swallowing a +1 striking rune to get a bonus damage die to all of your natural attacks is pretty powerful if you can do more than D4 piercing damage with your claws or if you have a feat to add in a tail attack.
I really dig that idea conceptually. In practice though, I think the runes would have to be applied to each of their natural attacks separately or else their natural attacks would have to be balanced around not having much wiggle room in the kind of traits they can get. Swallowing a +1 striking rune to get a bonus damage die to all of your natural attacks is pretty powerful if you can do more than D4 piercing damage with your claws or if you have a feat to add in a tail attack.The only real trick I think would be making a way for the character to have to use runes to boost their attacks and defenses to keep the character from being able to bypass having to spend wealth on things other characters do.For dragons, you can stipulate that they eat runestones to gain their runes' powers. If they try to exceed their level limits they risk vomiting up all their swallowed (and now digested) runestones.
For minotaurs and most other things "eat the runestone" doesn't work so well, but for dragons I like it.
Isn't that the exact effect they'd get from handwraps? Those apply their runes to every unarmed attack you have.
Yeah, I guess so (I hadn't read the handwrap description in a while and didn't think they could apply property runes to attacks, but was clearly wrong). It might mean needing to keep special natural weapon attacks in check a bit, but it should generally be fine.
Whether they eat them or inscribe them or implant them could all be flavor choices for the character.
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If you haven't already, you might want to take a look at D&D3.0's Savage Species book, which attempted to do something along these lines (Monstera as classes): Overall, they weren't particularly successful at doing this, but probably still worth a look.
The major issue* I see with combining 'ancestry' and 'class' is that you'll pretty much need to provide 20 levels of features: Probably not a huge issue for dragons, but minotaurs and other 'less epic' creatures might be more problematic.
*Other than balance, of course: You'll probably have crazy balance issues...
I think the balance issues for something like a dragon is to start off as a very young hatchling and not even give limited flight until an 7th level, and then as something like a focus power, reserving unlimited flight for even higher levels to keep balanced with other class abilities. You probably fold in a lot of dragon disciple abilities as well.
And you might not really have to build up all the class feats for less epic creatures. If you set the proficiencies and rate of growth right, you can just set it up where the class basically has to pick up an archetype or MC dedication if they plan on playing to level 20.
Although I think some high level minotaur feats to be able to do powerful magical stuff like cast the maze spell as an innate ability would be pretty cool.
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If you're looking for something like the old BECMI method where the demi-humans and monstrous humanoids were unique classes (i.e. Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Orc, Goblin, etc), I'd probably take an exisiting class that's closest to the archetypical member of the Ancestry (so Dwarf would be based on the Fighter with some changes to up the dwarven flavour, Elf would be a sort of in-between of Magus and Ranger probably keeping the Magus' HP and equipment proficiencies while taking Ranger's greater skill focus and nature focus and getting to choose between Arcane or Primal for their casting tradition, Halfling would be closest to a Rogue, etc). Though that raises the question of what to do with the Lost Omens original Ancestries such as Anadi (Bard maybe), Android (Investigator?) Automaton (...), Goloma, etc.