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<sour grapes>Most players can't play humans believably, much less aliens that don't actually exist.</sour grapes>
:-)
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<sour grapes>Most players can't play humans believably, much less aliens that don't actually exist.</sour grapes>
:-)
Just because we are bad at it doesn't mean it isn't fun.
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That's true! You can also always do a deer beastkin. Beastkin are an awesome "miscellaneous furry" option. Great for more lowkey "cat ear + tail" catgirls, too.
Even if we can sort of do it now. I do think a full on Faun/Satyr ancestry would have tons of potential.
Just because we are bad at it doesn't mean it isn't fun.<sour grapes>Most players can't play humans believably, much less aliens that don't actually exist.</sour grapes>
:-)
True. :-)
A minotaur-like ancestry with deer head / antlers.Would it look like Highmountain Tauren from World of Warcraft?
We do have the Nuars from Starfinder. In fact, pretty sure Paizo could make SF aliens "backward compatible". We got Lasunthas, Triaxians (Rhyphorans), Androids and Kasathas, all from other planets, so they could add more.
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I'd love to see the 'beginnings' of the Nuars in PF2. We haven't seen Nuar and his Minotaur efforts accomplish much of anything yet.
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A hypothetical Golden Road book is looking scarce for Ancestries, with only Maftets, Shabti, and maaaybe Wyvarans being obvious pulls, so I wouldn't object to some kind of scarab-folk. Khepri is such a fun god.
I was looking into it and apparently there's a pretty decent presence of bugbears in Katapesh and Qadira so maybe we could have them in a Golden Road book too, although they'd definitely have to alter the lore. Bugbears are my favorite of the goblinoid ancestries, so I'd love to have an opportunity to play one in Pathfinder.
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Something with an agile unarmed ranged attack... just so we can finally start putting together those silly, silly ranged swashbuckler builds.
Yes, I know. 1d4 damage, there's no way we'd get it before level 9, range increment of 20 at most, and it would require multiple feats.
Still.
Maybe some more fey options?
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Going to chime in as another one wanting Lashunta.
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Be amused for take on the Apallie as an ancestry. The notion of a small slime invested with a impression from a spellcaster or psychic that tries to integrate into society.
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Be amused for take on the Apallie as an ancestry. The notion of a small slime invested with a impression from a spellcaster or psychic that tries to integrate into society.
Well then, Roll For Combat has the product just for you! Battlezoo Ancestries Year of Monsters has the Slime Ancestry, as well as Doppleganger (with more to come).
I'm actually working on a slime ancestry, too! Ah, spring...
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I was very tired last night and don't know what joke I was building to there. It's winter. There's snow outside.
Anyways, I'd love to see some ancestries translated into corruptions. Like, I honestly don't think you can do proper justice to a lot of concepts--werewolves, for example--without a system like that. The problem with PF2 is that it's balanced so tightly that new archetypes don't really allow for lots of penalties and drawbacks. We need something like oracle curses.
I was very tired last night and don't know what joke I was building to there. It's winter. There's snow outside.
Anyways, I'd love to see some ancestries translated into corruptions. Like, I honestly don't think you can do proper justice to a lot of concepts--werewolves, for example--without a system like that. The problem with PF2 is that it's balanced so tightly that new archetypes don't really allow for lots of penalties and drawbacks. We need something like oracle curses.
Corruptions and ascencions could be merged:
- Dhampir into vampire- Aasimar into celestial
- Tiefling into fiend
- Beastkin into lycanthrope
- Geniekin into actual genie
and so on ;)
Have a starting feat that awakened the ancestry's true nature, with both benefits and drawbacks. It must be balanced, but also optional ^_^
That sounds cool.
A thought I just had was that corruptions could also be built as sort of mega-archetypes (in addition to the drawbacks mentioned) where they include new ancestry feats (supplanting your natural heritage with the corruption) but also corruption-specific skill and class feats too.
Mechanically this could address the idea that ancestry feats alone aren't powerful or numerous enough to fully encapsulate the ramifications of corruptions... and in a meta-narrative sense you can kind of see the corruption slowly 'taking over' all your feat slots as it progresses.
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Half-Dwarves would be great
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I was very tired last night and don't know what joke I was building to there. It's winter. There's snow outside.
Anyways, I'd love to see some ancestries translated into corruptions. Like, I honestly don't think you can do proper justice to a lot of concepts--werewolves, for example--without a system like that. The problem with PF2 is that it's balanced so tightly that new archetypes don't really allow for lots of penalties and drawbacks. We need something like oracle curses.
Man....I feel like I am the only one who liked corruptions. Glad to see I am not alone. I'd love to see those return in some form
Corruptions could make you LOSE your character entirely if it advanced too much. It was good for a narrative perspective, but gameplay-wise, pretty sure no one wanted to push their curse until their characters are no more.
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Duergar, drow, and svirfneblin. Also, lashunta and kasatha would be cool, but less of a priority for me than the cavern ancestries.
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Interesting, most people seem to estimate four-armed ancestries easier to balance in 2e since you don't automatically double the number of attacks you can make per round by adding extra hands. You only have the (respectable, but still lesser) benefit of being able to have up to 2 extra items on hand at all times. If you put a shield and a 2h weapon together that's probably the single best combination you have, but you still need to spend actions to use that shield.
It would be a straight damage buff for shield users and other builds that intentionally trade off 2h damage for a different benefit, so it would need to be squared away, perhaps with some special limitation on how many hands it takes to wield a 2h weapon, or possibly a coordination issue where you can use all four arms in combat, but the mental effort of coordinating all of them at once costs an action (for more extreme) or some other attack penalty to use more than 2 at a time.
multiarm would be a pretty big deal for high-level bomber alchemists, just from an action efficiency standpoint. Not sure about alchemists in general, but I suspect that it would help a fair bit in a number of ways.
Also pretty important for those people who want to do things with both hands (like two-handed weapons) and also have a hand free for doing stuff like athletics checks and battle medicine. Oh - and there are at least a few builds who can start running out of hands for grappling-related reasons.
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Interesting, most people seem to estimate four-armed ancestries easier to balance in 2e since you don't automatically double the number of attacks you can make per round by adding extra hands. You only have the (respectable, but still lesser) benefit of being able to have up to 2 extra items on hand at all times. If you put a shield and a 2h weapon together that's probably the single best combination you have, but you still need to spend actions to use that shield.
It would be a straight damage buff for shield users and other builds that intentionally trade off 2h damage for a different benefit, so it would need to be squared away, perhaps with some special limitation on how many hands it takes to wield a 2h weapon, or possibly a coordination issue where you can use all four arms in combat, but the mental effort of coordinating all of them at once costs an action (for more extreme) or some other attack penalty to use more than 2 at a time.
Multi-armed would allow so many shenanigans, most of which I wouldn't be able to think of myself. However a few are:
In most of these cases you are getting greater action economy and/or versatility while also giving a way to break certain balance points baked into handedness with or without feats.
I don't think that is a good idea either. I'd love me some Skittermanders, but anything with multiple grasping appendages just fundamentally breaks the game's balance. You don't even have to go as far as also having a shield in another hand. Just having no downsides to always carrying a two-handed weapon is more than enough. I really don't see a way how you can balance that in a way that is both enjoyable and within the game's assumptions.
Your suggestions for example, Sibelius, wouldn't work very well. Using multiple arms costing an action would make some things (borderline) unplayable (e.g. reload weapons, being slowed and three-action activities), be generally unfun and in some cases not matter enough to be a balancing point (e.g. bows). I guess I'd also be hard to word with regards to Release actions and picking up stuff later on. The second variant, some form of attack penalty, would be in a similar boat. Either it is so crippling that it defeats the point - meaning you wouldn't ever fill up more than two hands - or it wouldn't matter because you are not using attacks all the time, but wands, staves, consumables or so on.
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I could see it as a "you can't focus on using both sets of arms at once for much of anything without special feats" situation. Treat the second pair of arms like a pair of wings. Maybe all you get early on is better balance, access to Quick Draw or Combat Climber, a limited-use "switch grips as a free action" feat, that sort of thing.
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I could see it as a "you can't focus on using both sets of arms at once for much of anything without special feats" situation. Treat the second pair of arms like a pair of wings. Maybe all you get early on is better balance, access to Quick Draw or Combat Climber, a limited-use "switch grips as a free action" feat, that sort of thing.
That's what I'd expect, similar to tail-related feats we have already seen. My guess as to why this hasn't even been tried - beyond these ancestries being rather niche - is that this usually clashes pretty hard with their lore. Them having a additional, fully functional set of arms and somehow not having learned to use that advantage is a massive stretch after all.
I think a feat allowing you to designate each round (as a free action) which pair of arms can take actions, allowing the secondary pair to carry--but not draw--items, might work. It is pretty huge for the action economy, though, since it allows you to attack with your weapon/shield one round and then grapple/use an item the next. Definitely Level 9, bare minimum. Maybe Level 13.
A weaker version could allow you to designate a permanent "dominant pair", and the other pair could hold items provided you spend an action to change grips, but couldn't be used for any actions except passing items to the main hands or taking items from the main hands. Still might be too good, though, and like you said, it's not super skittermandery.
Yeah... every time someone has tried to produce a "balanced" version of a four-armed race/ancestry/whatever it's just felt disappointing... and I honestly can't see a way to make one in PF2 that both would fit into the power budget reasonably well and would be in any way satisfying as a thing with four arms.
Part of that is that the arm economy really has "you have two arms" baked into it *hard*. Like, I don't think there's even a buff spell that breaks that. If they had an alchemical multiarm elixir or a maintain-via-concentration spell or a one-fight-per-day magical item or something that would at least be a place to start, but as far as I'm aware, they don't even have that. So it's not just that it would be overpowered. It's actually pretty high-wackiness as far as PF2 is concerned, and PF2 doesn't allow for a particularly high wackiness budget.
The other part is that... well, level 1 is a thing. For ancestry effects, at level 1, you basically have your ancestry, your heritage, and a single level 1 feat... and as a general rule, there's no real way to get more via flaws. Fitting anything even remotely satisfying for this into that kind of budget just seems like a fool's game.
Like... you could *maybe* get something flaw-like by borrowing from the Giant Bar's idea that when you use the power, you get clumsy? Maybe? Even that doesn't make a lot of sense if these are your natural arms, your people evolved with them, and you've had them all your life, though.
But... I suppose I could imagine a "third arm" heritage for fleshwarped or something, where you can invest repeatedly in it and eventually wind up with a fully functional third arm. I feel like they'd want to introduce such things slowly, though - not just bust out of the gate with a "this ancestry just has four arms" situation.
I think the balance point wouldn't be found directly in finding four-arm abilities, but rather in spells and abilities that change your action economy. That's why I'm kind of balancing my above idea around when the character gets haste, since being able to hold additional items is effectively "you can sheathe an item as a free action that lacks the Interact trait, and also you have a better version of Quick Draw", provided you previously prepared by having all 2-4 items out.
Also, the clumsy condition isn't that nonsensical. We're less graceful when we have to use both our arms for different tasks, after all. No reason skittermanders would be better at using four.
I honestly don't think it's any more immersion-breaking than the "you have wings but can't fly" of wild shape. We've always made compromises for balance and overall play enjoyment in PF2.
Heck, we could just say "skittermanders' individual limbs aren't super strong or dextrous, since they go more for quantity than quality, so they need all six to be moving in harmony to accomplish what two normally could (like, four to wield the greatsword, two to help balance)". Like, they have four fingers. Then we give them more balanced and unique benefits to show how having six arms still helps them overall.
Part of that is that the arm economy really has "you have two arms" baked into it *hard*. Like, I don't think there's even a buff spell that breaks that. If they had an alchemical multiarm elixir or a maintain-via-concentration spell or a one-fight-per-day magical item or something that would at least be a place to start, but as far as I'm aware, they don't even have that.
I hear there's some sort of third arm elixir in the Treasure Vault. ;)
I hear there's some sort of third arm elixir in the Treasure Vault. ;)
Well, maybe this is the first step or so in that direction. Once it gets somewhere that I can actually see it, I'll take a look and see how far it goes.
This gets tricky for me. PF2E is "set" in a particular "setting" which I feel is already too crowded with intelligent creatures. I start to wonder "do these people have enough population to maintain viable genetic diversity?" - Most players don't think of those things, but that's something that's always rattling around in my head when I look at fictional settings.
I'd personally rather NOT have any new ancestries unless they're in "non-Golarian" books.
If they did some non-Golarian ancestry books I'd be looking at theming them. A pack of things that would all work together plopped into a world around them. Fae, dragons, furries, automatons, undersea, elf-variants, etc. All of these have some entries in golarian, and their fandom - so pick one and expand it for use in homemade settings.
For me personally I'm not interested. It's a down-sell for me when a new book has another ancestry in it. I'd much rather a book that deep dives existing ancestries. But I suspect themed packs would appeal a lot to others.
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I admit, I've wondered myself sometimes, looking at a village that has a population of 10 elves, how those 6-10 elves got there and how much longer they might feasibly be there unless an elf traveller visits the village or a few generations of half-elves roll down the line. Worse for enclaves of dwarves or gnomes who don't have the half-human option.
On the other hand, we've only really explored fantasy Europe and the northern part of fantasy Africa with the sapient species currently published. There's more than enough room for the rest of the world to have their own assortments of sapient humanoid societies. I don't think the answer is to say that fantasy central Asia must have elves, dwarves, and catfolk as its only options just because those already exist in the Inner Sea and we've reached the limit for new creatures on the planet. It's not like a species needs a whole planet, or even continent to maintain a viable population.
Of course, do give me expansions on what existing ancestries do in the world and how they live their lives. There are plenty that could use more feat padding to help more diverse characters from their group.
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Centaurs.
Tian Xia is getting TWO books in 2023 and 2024, and Samsarans, Wayangs and Tanukis will be added as ancestries.
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Tian Xia is getting TWO books in 2023 and 2024, and Samsarans, Wayangs and Tanukis will be added as ancestries.
*Earperk* Did you say Tanuki? I'm sold.
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They have a blog post up ;)
but no sign on how Tanukis can use their big... sacks as natural weapons XD
Tian Xia is getting TWO books in 2023 and 2024, and Samsarans, Wayangs and Tanukis will be added as ancestries.
They’ve said it’ll add a total of six Ancestries, so there’s three still unaccounted for.
Tian Xia is getting TWO books in 2023 and 2024, and Samsarans, Wayangs and Tanukis will be added as ancestries.They’ve said it’ll add a total of six Ancestries, so there’s three still unaccounted for.
Onis, kamis and... an aquatic race, maybe?
Onis could lead to half-giants (please, please, pretty please), kamis can be used for Tsukumogamis for all kinds (I mean, someone made MIMICS an ancestry, so :P) and we could use more water-dwelling people ^_^
I doubt we will get oni and kami, they were designed as an "outsider" group like the demon, angel or rakshasa. A group of being that have enought personality and power to make whole campaign centered on them, as well as being summonable by spells like plannar allies or plannar bindings. Having them as playable but not those other group would be weird, and I don't think we'll see playable devil, demon or angel any time soon.
If I'm basing my guess on the cover of the announced "character guide", we're gonna have a kappa ancestry, some kind of yokai thing (peraps in line with the poppet and leshy as a "small, magical, highly customisable and possibly non humanoid ancestry"), but no idea for what's the last one. We see a creature that look a bit like a fire yai (so an oni), but it's also far too small (and too chill) to be one.
oni tiefling feats would be pretty great tho.
I doubt we will get oni and kami, they were designed as an "outsider" group like the demon, angel or rakshasa. A group of being that have enought personality and power to make whole campaign centered on them, as well as being summonable by spells like plannar allies or plannar bindings. Having them as playable but not those other group would be weird, and I don't think we'll see playable devil, demon or angel any time soon.
If I'm basing my guess on the cover of the announced "character guide", we're gonna have a kappa ancestry, some kind of yokai thing (peraps in line with the poppet and leshy as a "small, magical, highly customisable and possibly non humanoid ancestry"), but no idea for what's the last one. We see a creature that look a bit like a fire yai (so an oni), but it's also far too small (and too chill) to be one.
I wouldn't expect to see the oni make it in as an ancestry, but we have do have playable fey and aeons so a kami ancestry doesn't sound impossible to me.
oni tiefling feats would be pretty great tho.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
I would a little disappointed, because I'd LOVE to see a half-giant versatile heritage, which is what Onis are using. They are giants possessed by fiends.
Kamis are Oriental forest spirits, like Leshies, so they could work as a heritage for them. Ghorans and other nature-based ancestries could be related to kamis as well.
Tsukumogamis would be so interesting :D Given that myriad of items that can be used, they could take cues from Starfinder's Entu Symbiote. The Entu is an intelligent fungus alien which can attach itself to an animal and turn it into an advanced human-like civilisation.
They have a blog post up ;)
but no sign on how Tanukis can use their big... sacks as natural weapons XD
Nor any alternate abilities for female Tanukis. Or maybe they have unusually sized natural weapons that can be dual wielded? Not sure since I have never seen a picture of a female Tanuki.