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If a PC takes one of the ancestral weapon feats (i.e. Elven Weapon Familiarity, Unconventional Weaponry, etc), purchases the weapons the feat grants them Access to, and then later spends Downtime to Retrain that feat, do they get to keep the weapons they already purchased?
The rules for Retraining are silent on the matter.
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If a PC takes one of the ancestral weapon feats (i.e. Elven Weapon Familiarity, Unconventional Weaponry, etc), purchases the weapons the feat grants them Access to, and then later spends Downtime to Retrain that feat, do they get to keep the weapons they already purchased?
The rules for Retraining are silent on the matter.
Yes, but as you mentioned they lose proficiency so what's the point?
They wouldn't be able to purchase more since they lost access, but they keep anything they have.
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Well the feat doesn't just give access and training, it lets you treat those weapons as a different class. So an Elf Wizard with the feat can use a Curve Blade just fine, but as soon as they retrain they can't. Yea an Elf Fighter could do this to get a Curve Blade without the feat, but that's not that powerful tbh. Without Elegance and Expertise, you would need to specifically specialize in Swords to get the full benefit of the weapon, and then it's only a d8 Forceful two handed weapon, which is easy enough to get in a Glaive(Reach!) or Falchion(d10!).
The best use of those feats is to get the scaling proficiency in your racial weapons while also specializing in something else.
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That's why I mentioned I was aware the Proficiency aspect of the feat goes away.
This question concerns just the Access (and retention) aspect.
I wanted to ask and be sure, for two reasons:
1) my definition of "too good to be true" has proven multiple times in the past to be different than others. I view exchanging 7 days of Downtime for a feat to be incredibly useful.
2) my understanding of Retraining has similarly encountered mixed responses before, which I won't delve into in this thread, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing an obscure rule somewhere.
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Well the feat has nothing to do with gaining the item. You still have to purchase it normally, you just gain access. If access is ever taken away, you don't automatically lose anything you bought. If you were in Alkenstar where guns are Common, and bought a pistol, it doesn't disappear when you go to Absalom where they only heard about them.
I mean, it's not really spending a week to gain a feat, but rather to gain access to spend gold to buy a weapon that's still going to be balanced around it's category (simple, martial, advanced).
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If a PC takes one of the ancestral weapon feats (i.e. Elven Weapon Familiarity, Unconventional Weaponry, etc), purchases the weapons the feat grants them Access to, and then later spends Downtime to Retrain that feat, do they get to keep the weapons they already purchased?
The rules for Retraining are silent on the matter.
In PFS I think if you lose your access condition to a thing, you have to sell the thing back.
But in a home campaign, where for example the elf fighter took the feat to get access to an uncommon martial weapon (elven curve blade)? Undefined.
However, consider the following. Your dwarf/duskwalker investigator with edgelord archetype happens to be adventuring in elven lands and after doing pretty well on some quests gets the opportunity to buy a golf bag full of curve blades. Because that's kinda how uncommon weapons work: you can earn access due to RP stuff during the campaign. Afterwards he goes on a long beach holiday elsewhere. He still has those curve blades.
My own inclination is to say that while you have the feat, you have access to those weapons, even when nowhere near elven lands. When you train out of the feat, you no longer have access so you can't buy any new ones, but the ones you already have, there's nothing saying they go away.
As a general rules design, I don't really like these feats. I think they're trying to do a bit too much at the same time. One task they do is expanding which weapons you can proficiently use. (Elves just don't seem to have any cool advanced weapons right now, but it's somewhat helpful for a rogue who wants a curve blade.) The other thing, granting access, has somewhat taken main stage in PFS because getting access in other ways is not always so easy. But I think it wasn't really intended to be the main selling point of the feat. Rather, the point was that "we just gave you proficiency in these weapons, would be a shame if you couldn't get hold of them".
When the rarity rules were first put into place, the idea was that each region or ethnicity or ancestry might have some specific local uncommon weapons. Like Taldans being into falcatas, Minkaians and perhaps Shokurans and Jinin elves being into katanas, Kyonin elves being into curve blades, Varisians into starknives and bladed scarves, and so on. That's also the sort of thinking that the human feat Unconventional Weaponry is built on: "me, being an Ulfen, have gotten to know some Varisians and learned about their bladed scarves". If you'd just played a Varisian, you would have had access to bladed scarves without having to take any feat at all. Well at least as long as you can connect with markets in your homeland / at character creation.
But we got only a really piecemeal mapping of such weapon to ethnicity mappings, like how in PFS characters from Numeria have access to Polytools.
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TL;DR - if you train out of the feat, IMO you should keep the weapon. And quite probably you should have never been bullied into taking the feat only to be able to purchase the weapon.
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This is for PFS, but since it's a general rules question, I posted it here, rather than over there. Because obviously, yeah, outside of Organized Play, I'd just work this out with my GM.
I couldn't find anything in the PFS Guide regarding special Society rules for this specific question. For Home Region and Secondary Initiation, you specifically do have to relinquish any items you gained.
My next step is to ask over there whether Retraining ancestral weapon feats *should* have the same rules for relinquishment.
I think this goes back to the meta of PF2/RPGs: mechanics vs. narrative.
If the narrative takes priority then yes, you keep the item because your PC gained the item during the course of the story. There's no retconning or weird warping to make the item disappear.
If mechanics take priority then no, you lose the item because your PC hasn't invested the "power budget" to keep access to it. This situation will alter the narrative to see the item disappear. As Ascalaphus wrote, you may have to sell it back in PFS (which I suppose is better than it poofing away).
I think most home games prioritize narrative (though I can imagine a few where the power budget's rigorous or tight for a reason), but yeah, PFS with its rules-strict, episodic nature might need your PC to be valid at every instantiation w/o having to refer to past iterations. You might (should) be able to get a GM to sign a chronicle sheet when you buy the sword that you do have access. Still might not appease some GMs, but that seems official enough for me (and for the GMs in our region, Nefreet).
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If mechanics take priority then no, you lose the item because your PC hasn't invested the "power budget" to keep access to it.
Don't really agree. The mechanics tell us that access and rarity are fundamentally fluid to begin with and also often specifically not an issue of power budget.
As mentioned above, it's akin to suggesting that guns should evaporate when you leave Alkenstar and they become uncommon or rare.
My next step is to ask over there whether Retraining ancestral weapon feats *should* have the same rules for relinquishment.
In a home game - even one following a published adventure: no, you shouldn't have to relinquish a weapon that you actually have just because you retrain something and lose access to it.
If you are only interested in access to the weapon, I am with Ascalaphus on this - you should quest for it, not take a feat and then retrain out of it. Though mechanically that may be what you do, with the quest being the off-screen time needed for retraining in and back out of the access-granting feat. Makes a good GM ruling on how much downtime and cost is needed to go questing for access to the weapon that you are wanting.
If instead you have a character that needs both the access to the weapon and the proficiency to use it, then retraining out of the feat would mean that you have a weapon that you can't use very well.
So in either case, for a home game there is no need to stop having a weapon that you are holding just because you lose access to buy a new one.
If mechanics take priority then no, you lose the item because your PC hasn't invested the "power budget" to keep access to it.Don't really agree. The mechanics tell us that access and rarity are fundamentally fluid to begin with and also often specifically not an issue of power budget.
As mentioned above, it's akin to suggesting that guns should evaporate when you leave Alkenstar and they become uncommon or rare.
IMO, the common/uncommon issue is fluid because the default in PF2 is to prioritize narrative over strict mechanics (by which I mean legalism more than any numbers advantage) and because Paizo wanted (wisely) to separate commonality from power. And like I said, I expect most games to lean this way (and would be surprised to find one which differed on this, thankfully), where keeping the sword/gun/etc. would be a non-issue (just don't lose it!). Thank you Mona & Jacobs that there are abundant rules to the effect that RAW is no longer king.
The last line you give is a narrative argument for why the gun should continue to exist; so we're in sync there. It SHOULD. It'd be silly, a bit metagamey to lose the item due to character changes. Yet the comment's a strawman since nobody's saying that guns should evaporate, rather that PFS might make PCs sell back items they no longer have access to because PFS is a metagamey campaign that stresses conformity. Note that's us trying to interpret PFS, as I think everybody here agrees in a normal campaign this wouldn't be an issue.
So I'm suggesting that one can use PFS methods by getting a chronicle sheet to bypass any issues. Have a GM sign that you acquired the sword when you had access to such swords. This wouldn't work if PFS has an explicit rule against this. Except Nefreet, our regional rules guru, should have found such a rule, so using a chronicle should work.
GM: "It doesn't seem like you have access to that sword."
Nefreet: "Here's the chronicle where I acquired it. Signed."
GM: "Oh, okay."
I've had to sign off on odd items in scenarios that players wanted yet weren't on the chronicle sheet.
Also the Hero System RPGs are somewhat metagamey this way; if Iron Man reallocated his points away from having ubercool armor, he'd lose that armor. That might take narrative shuffling, depleted batteries, forgotten passcodes, etc, but it'd happen. And on the flip side he'll always get his armor back too (eventually). Most RPGs of course are looser since most RPGs consider gear separate from a PC's identity.
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For PFS purposes I think it should probably require you to relinquish/sell the item.
Otherwise it allows the following cheese.
Make a Human Fighter.
Take Unconventional Weaponry (Katana) [a thing the IIRC is explicitly allowed in PFS]
Buy a Katana
Play Pregens and assign the XP/Chronicals/etc to this character.
Once you rack up the necessary Downtime, retrain Unconventional Weaponry to for example Natural Ambition.Start playing your character with a weapon that you couldn't normally have.
In a home game where access is gain-able by just asking the GM, then yeah it doesn't matter.
In PFS where access is highly controlled and uncommon items often require boons or chronicles, then this is exploiting a loophole to gain an advantage that other players have to spend time and resources to get.
Is that cheese though?
Say if one's PC comes from Minkai, I think this would be a good way to represent it. They had access when the began the campaign then lost it when they traveled outside Tian. But they still retain the one they carried with them.Not only is it costing downtime, a chronicle signed by a GM would cover any issues re: having said item.
(Unless perhaps one is arguing that Retraining is by default cheesy.)
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For PFS purposes I think it should probably require you to relinquish/sell the item.
Otherwise it allows the following cheese.
Make a Human Fighter.
Take Unconventional Weaponry (Katana) [a thing the IIRC is explicitly allowed in PFS]
Buy a Katana
Play Pregens and assign the XP/Chronicals/etc to this character.
Once you rack up the necessary Downtime, retrain Unconventional Weaponry to for example Natural Ambition.Start playing your character with a weapon that you couldn't normally have.
In a home game where access is gain-able by just asking the GM, then yeah it doesn't matter.
In PFS where access is highly controlled and uncommon items often require boons or chronicles, then this is exploiting a loophole to gain an advantage that other players have to spend time and resources to get.Is that cheese though?
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Not only is it costing downtime, a chronicle signed by a GM would cover any issues re: having said item.
(Unless perhaps one is arguing that Retraining is by default cheesy.)
Agreed. It seems like a lot of the arguments against being allowed to do this are based around the idea that spending downtime to gain access to something is inherently a thing that shouldn't be allowed, and then just pointing out that if you're allowed to do it, then... you're allowed to do it and that's bad, apparently. It's only cheese if you come into it viewing the interaction as cheese from the get-go.
I'd also like to comment on the line that it's "exploiting a loophole to gain an advantage that other players have to spend time and resources to get."
Let's ignore the part about it being a loophole, because again, that's begging the question assuming that this is an unintended and cheesy interaction, which is the thing we're trying to determine, and thus should not be assumed. But beyond that we then get to the following questions:
1. Is the character gaining an advantage?
2. Are they doing so in a way that's unfair.
For #1 the answer is clearly at least somewhat yes, because they can access something they otherwise wouldn't be able to. But also, in PF2 uncommon items aren't inherently better than common ones. Sure, having access to them gives you more options, and more options means that you might get something better for your specific build, but you're not going to come across anything game breaking.
For #2 I would argue, as Castilliano does, that they're not gaming the system to avoid paying a cost. Downtime to train into and out of something is a cost in and of itself.
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There isn't a mechanism in PFS to say "I'd like to spend X downtime days to go to Tian Xia, where Katana are Common and not Uncommon, and purchase one". If there were, absolutely fine.
This actually does exist.
You can purchase new "Home Region" boons, losing all benefits and selling back any gear you once had access to from the previous Home Region.
So yeah, someone from the Saga Lands could purchase the Tian Xia Home Region Boon, lose access to things that required Saga Lands, and now gain access to things like Katanas.
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And that's why my next question will be posted over in the Society Forum.
Society has two different clauses about returning gear you no longer have Access to, in addition to a special clause about Retraining, which makes me worry that a future ruling might similarly restrict ancestral weapons you no longer have Access to.
I've had too many of these sorts of changes impact my characters in the past that I'd rather be proactive in asking whether it might happen here.