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While doing a variety of homebrew ancestry content for my future games, I had an idea of trying to make a way for a character to gain multiple Versatile Heritages at once. This was partially inspired by hearing how some players wanted to do concepts like "Tiefling Half-Elf," which weren't possible with the current system. As such, I thought to try making a (hopefully) balanced way to accomplish this as a new Human Heritage, to play along with the theme of humans mixing with anything/everything.
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Multiracial Heritage
Your family line contains many heritages beyond humans, though your connection to each of them is weaker due to your mixed bloodline. Choose two versatile heritages. You do not gain a 1st level ancestry feat, and instead gain the initial benefits of both heritages. While you can select ancestry feats from these heritages, you count as being 4 levels lower when you do so and cannot select lineage feats. For example, at 5th level you could select a 5th level human ancestry feat or a 1st level ancestry feat from either of your versatile heritages.
Special: If you would gain multiple 1st level ancestry feats, such as from the Ancestry Paragon Variant Rule, then you lower your number of starting 1st level ancestry feats by one.
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Does this seem like it'd be balanced? Too much? I welcome any comments, suggestions, and/or criticism.
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While more choice doesn't necessarily equal more power, I generally try to be cautious when homebrewing abilities that would add significantly more choice due to the potential ability to cherry pick the "best" feats from each category to create an unexpected combination and/or step on other characters toes. I also don't want to make it so that picking this heritage is just a straight upgrade from selecting a single versatile heritage for humans - so there is more of a trade-off in wanting to take it.
Adopted Ancestry is a good comparison to bring up. Under current rules, a 1st-level human could take a versatile heritage, then use General Training to take Adopted Ancestry. For the cost of their heritage + 1st level ancestry feat; they get 1 versatile heritage benefit, full access to their versatile heritage feats, and limited access to another ancestry's feats.
Without the level restriction: My homebrew would have the same cost, but give 2 versatile heritage benefits with full access to both their feats. Which seems... a bit better. As such, I'm trying to figure out what restriction(s) may be most appropriate to bring it more in line with how existing options work - and make sure it isn't a default pick for any humans who want a versatile heritage.
While level restriction might not be the best solution, I would at least want to limit Lineages, since they don't fit as well with the theme. Other 1st level only feats are a good point though, especially since I'm planning to offer this as an option while using Ancestry Paragon.
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Charon, I agree with your concern with granting too much versatility for free, in that it could end up feeling like a mandatory choice for some people.
If you are considering only using this as Ancestry Paragon game, you might consider making the choice to adopt a second Heritage being something you can purchase via using 2 1st level Ancestry feats. (Since if you grant an extra one at 1st via the Ancestral Paragon rules, if they are willing to give up 2 1st level racial feats, I suspect it wouldn't always become a no-brainer power move to get a second heritage, but might be more of an concept enabling option, with a notable but doable cost.
I'd also thought about going over heritages and make some 'half-heritage feats that would be 1st level ancestry feats, which would grant something like about 1/2 of the heritages' ability. They would be feats that could be only taken at 1st level. Then a second feat would basically 'enable' the rest of the heritage's abilities. This might allow someone to split full-expression of a heritage, such as a versatile heritage. Such a setup might allow, with paragon optional rules, someone to have one full heritage, starting/partial of another heritage, and a 1st level ancestry feat required to be taken at 1st level with the first heritage.
Yes, without Ancestry Paragon optional rule, this seems really expensive, and yes it is designed to avoid getting a second heritage being a likely power move. (or would at least have a notable cost at choosing)
In general heritages grant at least a feats worth of abilities, plus in cases of Versatile Heritages, access to one or more sets of new ancestry feats list, and potentially other items like vision or movement. So it seems reasonable in order to get full access to have it potentially cost 2 entry choices.
Something else to keep in mind, obviously the standard way of considering heritages from a balance standpoint means that they presume someone will only ever have one. That means there could be balance interactions between two heritages that when combined produces a synergized ability that is notably stronger when combined. So you might need to keep in mind the ability to prohibit combinations that seem abusive or non-sensical. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but keep in mind, I thought the idea of a Dhampir Leshy sounds absolutely cool as a Leshy spirit coming from a graveyard under a powerful negative energy influence, so I'd probably be pretty lenient on choices if they had a cool story to them, and didn't have an obvious overboard power issue.
Hmm... While I initially designed this as a heritage - turning it into an ancestry feat chain might make more sense rather than having the heritage limit ancestry feats. For example something like this?
Multiracial (Feat 1)
Traits: Human
Prerequisites: Any Versatile Heritage, Can't have a lineage feat.
Your family line contains of multiple heritages beyond humans, though your connection to your additional heritages is weaker due to your mixed bloodline. Choose an additional versatile heritage. You gain the initial benefits of that heritage, but you don't gain access to any of their ancestry feats.
Special: You can select this feat only at 1st level, and you can't retrain into or out of this feat.
Multiracial Aspect (Feat 1)
Traits: Human
Prerequisites: Multiracial
You have gained some features from your additional heritage. You gain a 1st-level ancestry feat from the versatile heritage gained from Multiracial. You cannot select from lineage feats. You can choose from 1st level ancestry feats from that versatile heritage whenever you gain an ancestry feat.
Multiracial Paragon (Feat 5)
Traits: Human
Prerequisites: Multiracial Aspect
You are more in touch with your multiracial background. When selecting ancestry feats, you can select ancestry feats from the versatile heritage granted from Multiracial which are equal to your level or lower.
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Reasoning: Since the initial heritage benefit is generally equal to a feat, that is all that is gained from the initial feat. Ancestry Paragon allows for two 1st-level feats, so a character could still take a 1st-level only feat from their first Versatile Heritage. The next feat forces you to take a 1st-level ancestry feat, to make it so you have to invest a bit into the versatile heritage and make it slightly harder to just cherry pick a higher level feat for power reasons. Finally, the third feat acts as an unrestricted Adopted Ancestry with the additional cost being 5th level and needing two feats prior to it. If you wanted to make it a bit more restrictive - you could make Multiracial Aspect a 5th level feat to delay investment into the 2nd versatile heritage.
I think it would be a good idea to compare the changes in this homebrew to the Feats and Features Variant Rules in the Gamemastery Guide. They pretty much tell you how the game balance is affected by their official rules, so it should help gauge what it means for multiple versatile heritages [sic].
Plus, the official rules state that the half-heritages are only exclusive to humans in the Lost Omens campaign setting. Your own home game can have half-heritages of any kind and in any combination. So there is some precedent in the game of a somewhat similar fashion.
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Personally, in my homebrew system I have what is basically a versatile ancestry that lets you choose a wide variety of options. Basically my ancestries have heritages similar PF2e and racial traits similar to PF1e.
You can select 1 of 3 options depending on how you want to express your character's mixed heredity:
1) Select a total of 4 racial traits chosen from up to four different ancestries, but no less than two.
2) Select 1 heritage from any ancestry (this is your dominant ancestry), and then select a total of 2 racial traits chosen from one or two other ancestries.
OR
3) Select 2 heritages from two different ancestries.
You thus gain the traits from all of your chosen ancestries.
It can a bit much for new players, but my system is not geared towards new players anyway. And I think I should point out that I don't have any half-ancestry specific abilities. You just get some stuff from each of your ancestries.
I'm wondering if in the case of a tiefling half-elf or half-orc if it doesn't make more sense to make a base ancestry. You'd gain the benefits of the half-heritage as the normal benefits of your ancestry.
Considering I'm thinking of homebrewing/expanding the half-ancestries in a way that makes them able to apply to more than just humans, making them a base ancestry doesn't really appeal to me.
Is gaining access to the feats of humans, elves, half-elves, and tieflings really all that unbalanced? You have more options but you still have the same number of choices to make.
Part of the problem can be seen with how there is a recent thread titled, "Is there anything an elf can do that a half-elf doesn't do better?" While I want to homebrew something that is thematic and fun, I do not want it to invalidate other options (or appear to) by doing everything the same or better. If you have 4 pools of options to choose from while the human tiefling only gets 2 of those pools of options to choose from, then that is a problem if everything else is the same.