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I am curious to know what versatile heritages folks are seeing the most and in what useful combinations with class and archetypes.
I have seen some creative use of Aaisimar's with Oracles and Champions but I thought I would have seen more Dhamphir and Duskwalkers.
I did see an awesome Sprite married duo of rangers at Paizocon.
I usually see more Tieflings on character builds when they use a versatile heritage.
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I’d be stunned if Tiefling wasn’t the runaway #1 option, for flavor reasons alone. People really, really love Tieflings, on top of them having been a core option in D&D for two editions now.
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Almost certainly, tieflings take the #1 spot for having that flavor and cultural presence in Pathfinder-adjacent RPGs going back decades.
Aasimar are probably a semi-distant second as a near-direct counterpart, though less aesthetically appealing probably.
Then, things get murky, though I imagine that dhampir are very popualr as people love their vampires and it's also the closest we have to playable undead (until Book of the Dead, anyway).
Geniekin might also be attractive to people, particularly those coming over from D&D and looking for genasi alternatives, and there's plenty of fun ways to mix them up with various ancestries.
And then? Gee man, I don't know. I think beastkin, while being very young, might attract quite a lot of people, since it fulfills the "I'm a werewolf!" fantasy (and many others!) in a player character-appropriate fashion.
Then again, I'm currently in a party with a hobgoblin aasimar champion (a lawful evil one at that!) and a duskwalker catfolk cleric, and we used to have a tiefling investigator only very early on, so maybe I'm wrong on all of this.
So far I've seen one tiefling and I've played a dhampir kobold.
But also, my campaigns mostly began pre-Advanced Player's Guide.
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Ganzi will always be my favorite, but I suspect that they are near the bottom of the barrel, along-side Aphorites.
In my experience, Aasimar and Tieflings are easily the most common and are universally used with a variety of classes. The fun new toys they got from the Ancestry Guide make this even more apparent.
Dhampirs come next. Currently one of two ways you can get negative healing, so that's a huge draw. Not surprising but I see it on a bunch of divine casters.
I still haven't played with a Duskwalker but I'm anxious to see one in action.
I've mainly seen attention on the genie based ones because the heritage gives them energy resistances rather than just senses.
Probably Tieflings at the top, merely because of the years and years of love they're been given since first introduced. At the bottom, I'd probably say Duskwaler and Aphorite. Partly because they just seem weird in terms of ascetic, and the other being not great options feat wise. They don't have BAD feats, but compared to the rest? They're sorta mid, whereas Tieflings have pretty good feat options, another reason they're probably at the top. For power gamers, it's probably the geniekin though, those feats are mad good, fluff aside, and the fluff is good too!
Not enough characters have been made for actual play in my group yet, especially since our original campaign started way prior to the APG, a character did become a duskwalker when they came back from the dead though, so that's something. I'm playing a changeling wizard myself right now-- but in the longer term I wouldn't be shocked to see tieflings and aasimar take it.
Whats surprising to me is that it can be hard to think of takes on these that aren't human, I think its half because I'm so used to thinking of them as base and my worldbuilding still tilts that way, and because I keep looking at them and trying to build one instead of using them as options on another character so I keep thinking of them as the VH first and then trying to imagine a version for different ancestries. It can also be hard because I like the actual heritages for most of the ancestries so much.
I wouldn't trade the option of applying them to any other ancestry for the world though, its too interesting, I probably just need to build more actual characters.
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What we need is an ancestry that serves as a framework for a versatile heritage and supports it but doesn't do much else. In PF2, for example, a human undine is a HUMAN undine, while in PF1 that character would be a human UNDINE. Maybe that character should take the Fleshwarp ancestry and play down the ancestry in favor of the versatile heritage?
I don't think that's really necessary, Human fulfills that role well enough since it's still a pretty 'neutral' option in terms of stats.
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What we need is an ancestry that serves as a framework for a versatile heritage and supports it but doesn't do much else. In PF2, for example, a human undine is a HUMAN undine, while in PF1 that character would be a human UNDINE. Maybe that character should take the Fleshwarp ancestry and play down the ancestry in favor of the versatile heritage?
I feel like PF2 achieves the difference between HUMAN undine and human UNDINE via the number of ancestry feats you invest either way. If you REALLY wanna be an undine and not much else, taking Undine feats all the time would do that.
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Yea going all in on versatile heritage feats pretty much means your base race is just for setting your general shape. It works out pretty well. On the flip side you could be an efreet orc and take all orc feats but choose the efreet heritage just because you wanted your particular orc to be slightly on fire.
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That's one thing I really like about versatile heritages and ancestry feats. You can sort of tune how heavily your character plays into their ancestry or their heritage and it creates a nice gradient in a way that you could never really do when they were treated as separate races.
That's one thing I really like about versatile heritages and ancestry feats. You can sort of tune how heavily your character plays into their ancestry or their heritage and it creates a nice gradient in a way that you could never really do when they were treated as separate races.
Yeah, I have a plan for a Elf Dhampir Champion, his first level ancestry feat is gonna be a dhampir feat, but the rest are probably going to be elf unless the story takes me that way. And there's also a Halfling Tiefling Infernal Sorcerer who's probably going all in on the tiefling feats, having that depth of x/5 feats going one way or the other makes room for a lot of flavor. Especially if you fluff it as taking the VH feats make you look more and more alien (some of them actually do that too!)
Yeah, whereas whatever ancestry my Mistsoul Undine Magus ends up being, the Undine part is probably going to end up way more important... unless in the process of building him, the base ancestry stuff ends up tantalizing me enough to give it a greater role.
Duskwalkers have been the most seen for me. The ability to get Ghost-Touched ranged weapon and unarmed attacks along with darkvision is a winner. ;)
I personally have seen more Dhampirs than anything else, but I've also got two Dhampir characters myself. It could be it's just my vampire sense tingling.
From what I've seen, dhampirs and tieflings seem the most popular. Aasimar a close second, with elementals like geniekin third.
Changelings have been the most common in my group, interestingly enough, with tieflings second and one aasimar and dhampir each. My group just generally enjoys hags so I think the idea of being related to one is fun for them.
Similar but different question: are versatile heritage taking over classic ones in your games?
(In other words, is there more characters with versatile heritage than classic heritage?)
My game has had no less than three versatile heritage PCs since the mid playtest. I had a player who almost always plays a tiefling or an aasimar, so I mocked up a heritage modelled on half-elf for his aasimar. Also since it was carrion crown I intentionally offered changeling as an option to players on the same basis and got one. Later a new player joined who immediately wanted to play tiefling. These three (all human base) are joined by a dwarf, tengu, and a human, so seems about half-likelihood so far in my game, but they're the only game in 2e I've played yet with a single versatile heritage PC, albeit all other games have been with new players
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Similar but different question: are versatile heritage taking over classic ones in your games?
(In other words, is there more characters with versatile heritage than classic heritage?)
Maybe a little, current game has a 3-2 split in favor of them, but that could be chance and people playing with new toys, since the previous campaign had begun prior to the APG. The big test for us will be our nautical west marches in the fall, since more people will be involved and making more characters.
In my games so far, I've seen two versatile heritages out of a pool of about 20 characters, not counting half-elves or half-orcs.
Of the 22 characters I've had in my Extinction Curse campaign, 7 of them have had versatile heritages.
12 of those 22 had uncommon ancestries.
Of the 22 characters I've had in my Extinction Curse campaign, 7 of them have had versatile heritages.
12 of those 22 had uncommon ancestries.
How many where uncommon ancestries with versatile heritages? ;)
How many where uncommon ancestries with versatile heritages? ;)Of the 22 characters I've had in my Extinction Curse campaign, 7 of them have had versatile heritages.
12 of those 22 had uncommon ancestries.
I don't think any were.
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do you run a particularly deadly canpaign with frequent rerolls? 22 players seems high for a campaign.Of the 22 characters I've had in my Extinction Curse campaign, 7 of them have had versatile heritages.
12 of those 22 had uncommon ancestries.
Haven't lost a single character yet. It's the players who usually decide it's not for them. PbP and VTT games (even good ones) are pretty notorious for high player turnover rates. :(
I guess you could say the 22 players are technically from approximately 4 online campaigns, since there were times where I was simply forced to hit the reset button and start all over.
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do you run a particularly deadly canpaign with frequent rerolls? 22 players seems high for a campaign.Of the 22 characters I've had in my Extinction Curse campaign, 7 of them have had versatile heritages.
12 of those 22 had uncommon ancestries.
House rules. No two players can play the same heritage.
If your character dies, your species dies.
It's called Extinction Curse for a reason...