I think at this point we could use ancestries that would envelop MORE ancestries.
For instance, I'd like to get a Thriae (beefolk) ancestry, and it would become another ancestry with both male and female counterparts. Thriaes were always female in P1E, seducing, breeding... and slowly eating their male mates ^^; The thing is that bees (and similar insects) have actual males, so Thriae males would be suitable... although good luck to Paizo to retcon their absences :P
The OTHER thing is that while you can have bees, wasps, hornets and yellowjackets, why not BLOW it up to other insects? There could be a "Thriae" beetle, dragonfly, scorpion, mantis, etc, with the term "Thriae" being reserves for the bee heritage.
Fun fact: WotC had beefolks in D&D 3.5E. They called them "abeil", which is the French word for "bee". In response, the French version translated to "Bie" (pronounced "bee") ;)
My girlfriend and I are actually working on a "Melisae" ancestry, which would basically be an ancestry of Thriae who turned their backs on their Queens after prophecy failed. We went with them being almost entirely AFAB (beyond the odd quirk of birth), but "non-unary" melisae are increasingly common as they move away from old traditions, so there are a ton of melisae men nowadays. A lot of melisae hives are also moving away from the old ways of handling the whole, reproduction thing. We decided on a yellowjacket/bumblebee/honeybee/paper wasp set of heritages!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Actually, I do also like the idea that melisae are dimorphic and always have been, they just haven't had any concept of a male gender or other gender identities until recently. I kind of like that better.
There comes a point where, for me at least, the proliferation of ancestries in Golarion fails the "willing suspension of disbelief" test. Not sure I'm there yet, but close. :-)
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think you're on the wrong thread, then. :P
For what its worth, a fair few science fiction works, movie and films, have played around with the concept of non-evil parasite species.The Hidden had a good guy parasitic alien pursuing a thrill killer one, Stargate had a group of Goa'uld who chose symbiosis over taking over their host, and there was a Outer Limits reboot episode featuring alien refugees that needed human corpses to exist.
So you CAN DO IT, but probably only within certain parameters. Personally, I tend to think that a naturally parasitic species would have an alien enough mind that they would be more blue-orange morality than black and white morality. Of course, Pathfinder's alignment system doesn't do the greatest with that.
Actually, I do also like the idea that melisae are dimorphic and always have been, they just haven't had any concept of a male gender or other gender identities until recently. I kind of like that better.
In my non RPG creative writing I have played around with something similar. If you were a species with a Eusocial caste system like a bee or a ant, gender concepts would be pretty trivial. I think you would see queen, soldier, and workers all having there own unique pronouns and would have a place in culture similar to how we treat sex-based gender.
For what its worth, a fair few science fiction works, movie and films, have played around with the concept of non-evil parasite species.The Hidden had a good guy parasitic alien pursuing a thrill killer one, Stargate had a group of Goa'uld who chose symbiosis over taking over their host, and there was a Outer Limits reboot episode featuring alien refugees that needed human corpses to exist.
In Starfinder, there's the Entu Colony and Symbiote, which parasited local animals into advanced civilizations... although their alignments can vary.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pretty sure we discussed it somewhere in this thread in a different context, but Kalashtar from Eberron are the result of a symbiotic relationship between host and possessing spirit. Not quite the fungal parasite angle, but something to draw inspiration from.
I'm imagining a kingdom where the parasites have come to live with humanity in mutual harmony; only infesting those who have committed grave crimes against the kingdom. Parasites are taught all their lives that it is morally depraved to infest a non-evil or unwilling host.
But then the heroes come along and uncover the terrible and inconvenient truth: there are not enough criminals to support the parasite species in the long term.
A select few parasites have also secretly taken over the Kingdom's nobility and are using moralistic propaganda to keep both parasites and non-parasites perpetually under their control. They consider themselves above the very laws they set, secretly infesting whoever they wish.
The heroes must find a way to remove the corrupt dictators and free the kingdom from corruption while also avoiding bringing about the doom of an entire ancestry.
And
Edit: Cool. My idea got the 1,000th post. lol.
Hmm. Sounds like rich people in societies infected with capitalism.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There comes a point where, for me at least, the proliferation of ancestries in Golarion fails the "willing suspension of disbelief" test. Not sure I'm there yet, but close. :-)
Did we get there in PF1? Since I still want my doofy octopus centaurs and ambulatory voids back.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pretty sure we discussed it somewhere in this thread in a different context, but Kalashtar from Eberron are the result of a symbiotic relationship between host and possessing spirit. Not quite the fungal parasite angle, but something to draw inspiration from.
They're a little weirder than that - they're the result of a handful of willing symbiotic relationships, thousands of years ago, between willing human monks and outcast spirits... who have since proliferated into a true-breeding Ancestry where each of the original spirits is preserved as fragments across the whole bloodline descended from those hosts.
Kalashtar are so cool, and also idiosyncratic enough that emulating them in anything else quickly becomes tricky.
Speaking of symbiotic relationships, there are Ilvir's Twins, the Polan, a large semi-intelligent humanoid about six feet tall, and the Tekek, a small crab-like creature with a well protected brain case. Together they form the Ivashu known as the Polan-Tekek. I have seen reports recently of a Tekek in a symbiotic relationship with a human, though I don't think I would put much faith in them.
--- Arthan McLhyr, Shenava of the Mysteries of the Artifice of Jmorvi
There comes a point where, for me at least, the proliferation of ancestries in Golarion fails the "willing suspension of disbelief" test. Not sure I'm there yet, but close. :-)
Just to know, is the presence of "sentient but unplayable" race make you feel the same? I think that for every playable ancestry, there's at least 4 troll/giant/lamia/"monster" race that are fully sentient, and lore wise equivalent to ancestries like the gnolls and whatnot, but just not player options.
I completely understand that "suspension of disbelief" problem, I try not to think about it so much myself, as the coexistence of hundreds of different sentient species in one planet is a bit hard to wrap my head around. I'm just curious about wether the huge number of these sentient monster race alsostretch your suspension of disbelief, or if they get a "pass", consciously or not.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There comes a point where, for me at least, the proliferation of ancestries in Golarion fails the "willing suspension of disbelief" test. Not sure I'm there yet, but close. :-)I completely understand that "suspension of disbelief" problem, I try not to think about it so much myself, as the coexistence of hundreds of different sentient species in one planet is a bit hard to wrap my head around. I'm just curious about wether the huge number of these sentient monster race alsostretch your suspension of disbelief, or if they get a "pass", consciously or not.
Clearly these races shouldn't get on with each other well. I mean look at how well humans get on well with other humans, and we are all the same ancestry. Even if the societies are pretty cooperative, every so often you will get a bad group in charge and terrible wars will happen. Politically it is just too conventient to blame someone outside your own group. Be that racial, or political, or whatever. It is ubiquitous even today both the left and the right do it daily.
So just applying survival of the fittest principle, only the best should survive. If you want to have a lot of races then you need to have lots of niches in your world, so every ancestry can have their spot where they are the best.
Or perhaps the real problem is the system is just not at equilibrium. Because new races are being created by the gods, or entering from portals from other worlds.
Or we could just set aside these basic laws of how our universe works.
Of course if the gods or other immortal beings really are controlling things behind the scenes, perhaps according to some agreement, then an unstable mix of races can survive if they want it to.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
They're not called races anymore. Anyways, this is another "not touching that". Ethnic cleansing is not some sort of sociopolitical inevitability. Neanderthals weren't wiped out, they intermingled into our species. No reason to think species as different as dwarves and kobolds couldn't have both stuck around, especially if they had different niches or regions.
It's also a little silly to apply ideas of evolution to a fantasy world where some species were legit just created by the gods or came from other planets.
| 16 people marked this as a favorite. |
So just applying survival of the fittest principle, only the best should survive. If you want to have a lot of races then you need to have lots of niches in your world, so every ancestry can have their spot where they are the best.
As a biologist, I have to say, this is a very poor understanding of what "survival of the fittest" mean. If "only the best" survive, then there should be only one living specie on earth, "the fittest" one, as all other have died. Even talking bout ecological niches, multiple creature filling the same ones don't end up systematically eliminating each other. A single biome can fit multiple species of bird feeding on the same insects, and even more species of insect feeding of the same plants. If "survival of the fittest" was an all powerfull rule, then biodiversity would always go down, for the unfit could only disapear. But in a stable enought environment, biodiversity actually tend to go up as more and more species can appear and coexist.
Sorry for the rant, it just always tick me off when someone use "survival of the fittest" that way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It’s called an eco system
Not an eco race to the top of the hill and pull the ladder up behind you stem.
So just applying survival of the fittest principle, only the best should survive. If you want to have a lot of races then you need to have lots of niches in your world, so every ancestry can have their spot where they are the best.As a biologist, I have to say, this is a very poor understanding of what "survival of the fittest" mean. If "only the best" survive, then there should be only one living speciea on earth, "the fittest" one, as all other have died.
And how many species of intelligent humamoids are there on earth? Selection pressure varies a lot. I'm talking in very vague terms here about a general principle.
Even talking bout ecological niches, multiple creature filling the same ones don't end up systematically eliminating each other. A single biome can fit multiple species of bird feeding on the same insects, and even more species of insect feeding of the same plants.
Because they do it all slightly differently. I mean there are, or rather were, 500+ species of Chilids in the one african lake. They find ways to avoid the competetition by moving into slightly different niches. Even though much of it is just colour based sexual selection. The term niche is almost infinitely divisible, because species are part of the envronment
If "survival of the fittest" was an all powerfull rule, then biodiversity would always go down, for the unfit could only disapear. But in a stable enought environment, biodiversity actually tend to go up as more and more species can appear and coexist.
Up to a point as long as they can find enough ways to differentiate themselves. But it is also inherently unstable. and as we know enviroments are inherently unstable. It is just a matter of what time frames you choose to look at.
I never said survival of the fittest was absolute. That is your strawman.
Sorry for the rant, it just always tick me off when someone use "survival of the fittest" that way.
Whereas I find it odd that people have so little respect for others and the limitations of expression in a few lines of text that they go off. I mean really. At least try to see what the other person is saying rather than pick apart an edge that isn't expressed in your prefered way.
Anyway in the particular case of intelligent humanoids one of our key features is we use our minds to adapt to different niches. The human niche is huge, and is taking over a large number of other niches and is destroying other niches. Competition defines us and all of biology. Our technology even at an ancient level was enough that we don't have any surviving cousins.
Very happy to stand by my original statements.
It’s called an eco system
Not an eco race to the top of the hill and pull the ladder up behind you stem.
Have you seen what humans are doing?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think the important thing about "there's lots of different people" is that just like the combat rules are in no way a complete or accurate model of physics, there doesn't really need to be a complete accounting about demographics, ecology, evolution etc. to justify "hey, in this place here there are moth people and you can play one now." All the rules of science on earth don't really work when you add "oh, there's magic and the gods are real and do stuff" into the mix.
Like the exact number of Automatons that survive is basically just "the number you need for your stories" which could be like 2. The weirdest ancestries all have origins that are not totally based on biology.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Did not realize there was not an option for some ancestries. I would enjoy a book on Fey expanding Primal spellcasting options, potentially a new class or dedication, and basically being like the 4e book about the Feywild and introduce Satyr and Centaur as ancestries, possibly Minotaur, potentially expanded heritages/feats for Sprite and such. You know, things which are Fey like Gnomes, Elves, Sprites, more ancestry feats and support, same for class options, and introduce new fey elements.
Then I'd of course also love the aforementioned Darklands book and all that entails. New class options whether it be new classes or feats for existing classes or subclasses to existing classes or whatever, new ancestries, support for existing ancestries and so on. The works as it were. Drow, Duergar, deep gnomes, maybe if we ever got a half-giant heritage a Formian could be part of that in some capacity. Possibly Azer (not really sure what they are, they look like dwarves on fire), you know all that stuff.
It’s called an eco system
Not an eco race to the top of the hill and pull the ladder up behind you stem.
Have you seen what humans are doing?
We’ve had like millions of years and nothing we were competing with was an intelligent humanoid, with wings, or magic, or literal aliens.
Pretty sure Golarion humans haven’t had that long and are still represented in the setting as by far the most wide spread race.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There comes a point where, for me at least, the proliferation of ancestries in Golarion fails the "willing suspension of disbelief" test. Not sure I'm there yet, but close. :-)Just to know, is the presence of "sentient but unplayable" race make you feel the same?
Yes, because most of the non-human sophonts are sufficiently different from humans that I would expect it to be darn near impossible to play such a creature as anything other than "human wearing a different suit".
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I cannot help but feel that getting into arguments about evolutionary implications and implied genocide is wandering a bit far afield from the primary topic here. Perhaps the discussion about whether or not Golarion has too many ancestries could be given its own thread?
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Half-elf and half-orc as their own respective ancestries
Okay. Why? What do you gain by having them as ancestries rather than heritages?
I cannot help but feel that getting into arguments about evolutionary implications and implied genocide is wandering a bit far afield from the primary topic here. Perhaps the discussion about whether or not Golarion has too many ancestries could be given its own thread?
Indeed.
A RPG game setting inherently has different constraints and structure than a literature fictional setting. For a game to succeed and continue to be supported, you need to be provide a lot of options to satisfy folks interests, while also making sure the setting is approachable to a wide cross-section of potential consumers and roughly reflects the actual game mechanics.
From a realism or storytelling perspective, I could probably come up with a variety of issues I have with the setting IF it wasn't an RPG. As an RPG setting though? Most of these things don't bother me.
i mean there are no evolutionary implications because this is an explicitly creationist setting? like the answer to most questions about why something is the way it is in the setting is because "some god wanted that way", or occasionally "some wizard messed everything up and now monsters"
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, worrying about realism about the ecosystem is weird in a setting that's designed to mimic 14th century Romania in one part of the map, and 18th century France in another, and 9th century Scandinavia in a third, and 17th Century Caribbean if you follow the coast south.
It's more unrealistic for "sentient automata" to coexist with "stone tools" separated by a few hundred miles than it is for small populations of whatever species to exist in specific locales.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Firebrands apparently has yet another friendly Maftet NPC in it. Here’s hoping all of them are building to a playable Ancestry soon!
I'd like more lineage feats for the aasimar, damphir, the law/chaos bros whos names I can't remember, and a few more "half-basic ancestry" heritages, just so we can have more chimeric not-pure-X characters running around
I think that many of the creatures that exist in the various Bestiaries seem like they are designed to lay the groundwork for later player ancestries - for instance, of the five ancestries introduced in the recent Impossible Lands book, four (ghoran, nagaji, vanara, vishkanya) had existed as low-level NPCs since the Bestiary 3. I highly suspect that the upcoming round of Tian Xia books will bring at least the non-implemented Tian Xia ancestries from 1E - the samsaran and the wayang, most prominently - and will likely include the kovintus in some capacity relating to the elemental focus that will underlie the 2023-2024 books. Moving away from the upcoming year, other NPC ancestries from the Bestiaries that seem likely to be implemented are the stheno, gathlain, and wyrwood, though not likely in the Tian Xia books.
I highly suspect that the upcoming round of Tian Xia books will bring at least the non-implemented Tian Xia ancestries from 1E - the samsaran and the wayang, most prominently
Both of these were confirmed in the initial announcement.
I really hope to see Locathah in the upcoming tianxian book!
It really does feel like they've intentionally been built to, especially with the Stolen Fate Player's Guide cautioning against aquatic Ancestries broadly rather than just Azarketi. Xidao is one of the bits of Tian Xia I'm most sneaky-excited about, and the Locathah are a big part of that.
Ooo I loved the Samsaran lore.
The shabti was also a very cool class in my opinion
Yes whoops.
A fleshed out drow race and possibly a draconian/dragonborn type race. Granted I dont agree with every race on every world but these are fairly common trope races. And yes I use race because each of these ancestries is a race and/or different species and there is nothing inherently wrong with that word in this context.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Okay?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Draconian" and "Dragonborn" are trademarked...
Wyvarans are still missing, but I see a issue: Venomtail Kobolds are essentially "Wyvern-blooded". At this point, just add a Kobold feat that grants them a Medium size.
I would love wyvaren
It would fill that “Dragonborn” gap that was missing for those moving from dnd5e to PF2e
Plus I could hop on WoW and use my dracthyr character to represent a Wyvaren character in tokens and all that lol
I would love wyvaren
It would fill that “Dragonborn” gap that was missing for those moving from dnd5e to PF2e
Plus I could hop on WoW and use my dracthyr character to represent a Wyvaren character in tokens and all that lol
No joke, the Kobolds are filling that Dragonborn niche. They can fly, use claws and spit out breath weapons, amon other abilities. The issue is that... they still have this "cannon-fodder" image ^^;
Technically, you can have any Kobold look like a miniature bipedal True Dragon, and even back in late 3.5, they even established that due to their multitude of scale colors, they can be of any alignment, matching a True Dragon's close to that color. You can have a Gold-scaled Kobold that is LG, NG or LN most of the time; it's just that their parent Deity was LE.
Make them Medium due to some Giant blood and we're good to go ^_^
I've been asking for a Giant ancestry OR Versatile Heritage for a while now.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I’d asked Luis Loza about Wyvaran in an AMA last year, as they’ve been conspicuously absent from 2e so far, and his response was that they need a new home in the setting. I think they’re a lot of fun, and agree that Kobolds deserve to be PF2’s answer to Dragonborn, so a winged and/or Medium option would be lovely.