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So, following an untimely character death, my Human Champion Wymond Dwerryhouse has been brought back via the reincarnate ritual as a Dwarf. I've obviously got quite a bit of revising to do with the change in ancestry, and I want to make sure I'm not missing anything. To wit I believe I need to:
Remove 2 feats, specifically Natural Skill and one General Feat and replace it with 1 Dwarf ancestral feat.
Select a dwarf heritage.
Remove training from two skills as I no longer have Natural Skill as a feat.
And then shuffle around my stats to match the dwarf advances and penalties?
I'm not sure if I'm missing anything there, especially since Wymond is effectively my first 2e character so I was already worried I'd made mistakes on his sheet since he was originally converted over from 1e Pathfinder.
Thank you in advance for your advice.
I would recommend rebuilding the character from L1 using the previous Human character as guidance. Follow the build plan as well as is reasonable. But your character just went through a huge traumatic experience. There are bound to be some changes.
For anything that doesn't make sense to the new character or that you just want to change because it fits the new character better, have some downtime in-story where your character is going through some physical therapy or such and learning to use this new body to its fullest.
If you are mid-dungeon when the Reincarnation was done, then you might even play the rest of the dungeon with some missing feats. It could represent your character having some problems with re-entry into the mortal realm.
And that's it. All of your class feats, ability boosts other than from ancestry, general feats, skills, etc all remain the same.
Well, other than feats that you no longer qualify for. For example skill feats that require a certain level of proficiency - which the character may no longer have because of losing the Human feat Natural Skill.
Yes, following the RAW text of Reincarnate literally can cause a character that no longer qualifies for several of the feats and other choices that they have made.
The level 4 Catfolk Ranger with Sorcerer dedication that gets reincarnated as a Dwarf would be one such example. The highest CHA that the Catfolk character would reasonably have would be 16. Changing to Dwarf ancestry would mean that with the other skill boosts being the same (Reincarnate does not say to change anything except the ancestry boosts) then the CHA score that the Dwarf character has is 12 - which is not enough to qualify for the Sorcerer dedication.
Also, yes - the Reincarnate ritual does not remove any of the class feats that you have. But you no longer qualify to use them. RAW you would need to take time retraining those feats into feat choices that you do qualify for.
And finally, yes - if the Catfolk character has a base class of Sorcerer and gets reincarnated as a Dwarf at level 4, then they are stuck with a CHA at 14 at best.
Does anyone actually play with the rules like that though?
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I apologize but now I'm a little confused...I was wondering if I'd need to rebuild from scratch since as a former human I'd technically no longer qualify for Natural Skill and thus have to rewrite my trained skills too, but all dwarves start with a clan dagger for free and I strongly doubt a dagger would have just appeared with Wymond upon reincarnation, especially since it's a representation of a dwarf's clan heritage, and given his human origins Wymond is effectively a clan of one.
I think metaphysics play a role here, depending on how one interprets reincarnation. If it were merely a body transfer, then I agree that most of the build should remain intact unless physiological differences made it impossible.
Except I think Pathfinder's Reincarnation spell entails more than that though less than what Earth religions mean by it (which would be a complete makeover sans memories). PF2's involves one's mental stats too, so it's not just a body swap. There's an "essence" (whatever that means) that's been transformed so your PC's "self" is both itself and yet a new self. So yes, you may lose skills (or gain some). Heck, you've perhaps lost or gained personality or insight too.
I understand some games avoid having long-term setbacks, so sure, "fudge the dice" if that's the table's norm. But as for RAW & RAI, one really might have to accept major changes depending on the Ancestry the Reincarnation gamble gives you. Odds are the PC has the Ancestry which suits it, so Reincarnation seems pretty risky IMO.
And yeah, it could lead to some build conundrums. To answer those, I'd lean toward retraining, though if a player wanted to keep the feats unused until they could get the stats they needed, I'd (likely) allow that because technically at that level the new Dwarf had been able to take those feats (when a non-Dwarf). You aren't actually building a Dwarf from its foundation. The PC has a much more intriguing path than that, and I think is the better for it, even if it leads down paths unintended.
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See the guidance offered on Extreme Retraining that even mentions Reincarnation specifically as an example of when this is potentially appropriate.
If someone ends up in a situation where the loss of Ancestry destroys the level by level validity of their build such as ANY Ancient Elf, a Natual Ambition Human, or a number of other scenarios where the logic is broken my advice would be to offer the "extreme retraining" and effectively let them retrain everything that was impacted one level at a time for free as part of the ritual and healing/orientation period thereafter.
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Which skills should I abandon as I no longer have Natural Skill? I'd kind of been depending on having a variety of skills, like Nature and Survival because he worships Erastil and so would want to be able to hunt, and Society and Religion because he's faithful and true son of the River Kingdoms. The other skills like Medicine, Diplomacy and Athletics on the other hand, are essential adventuring skills.
Paizo have screwed up Reincarnate
I mean it is totally clear that some of your attributes and feats were based on the biology of your previous body. But some of your ancestry feats and heritages like Ancient Elf or Anvil Dwarf are clearly a product of your lived life experience.
They have gone the step of relabelling these categories to heritage and ancestry, but they haven't cleanly spearated biological and social/experience feats. I mean you are a Human in the body of a Dwarf.
There are some other attributes that could have changed at this point but the rules are totally silent.
So you are stuck and a clean rebuild is probably the only way forward. But you should be taking Adopted Ancestry to pick up some thing from your old life.
As the GM in question, I resolved it by saying that he could rebuild his ancestry feats (and those that depended upon them, such as those derived from Natural Ambition in any way he chooses. If AP Zousha wants his character to have Dwarven Lore, he's welcome to it. The Reincarnate ritual will infuse that knowledge into his brain.
Honestly, GM's who hew too closely to the rules are either inexperienced or looking for trouble. I just want my players to have fun!
Yes its much better if your GM is reasonable and flexible. But real people have a wide range of personalities and to some this seems like cheating or not following the rules. These types of person are more attracted to games like PF2 which has more rules.
Not everyone has this sort of mental flexibility or sees it as a good thing.