Do you enforce regional / race / flavor requirements for feats?

[DRD1812]

My go-to example for this sort of mechanic is the ever-popular Wayang Spellhunter. If you've ever piloted a magus, youj're probably familiar.

Archives of Nethys wrote:

Wayang Spellhunter

Source Dragon Empires Primer pg. 14
Category Region
Requirement(s) Minata
You grew up on one of the wayang-populated islands of Minata, and your use of magic while hunting has been a boon to you. Select a spell of 3rd level or below. When you use this spell with a metamagic feat, it uses up a spell slot one level lower than it normally would.

Is it game breaking to ignore that region prerequisite and let players take this kind of ability willy-nilly? Or is the restriction a necessary part of game balance? What if you're playing in a non-Golarion setting?

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)

[Rysky]

Depends on the ability in question.

[MrCharisma]

Race: Yes.

Region: Depends if we're playing in Golarion.

Flavour: It varies. Less Enforce than Encourage, but it depends on the feat in question.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Pretty much what SexyMan does. I don't play in Golarion but you can easily adapt one region/culture to something similar in another setting. If a player can give a good backstory reason why they should have X I'm pretty flexible. I'm fine with giving some racial feats or spells to non-members if they have a good reason - abilities that are based on culture and training rather than physiology. Captain Carrot of Discworld would have access to a lot of dwarven feats, for instance.

[VoodistMonk]

Most of the time, yes. It is good to work within set parameters, and it mitigates the murderhobo shenanigans. For your original example of Wayang Spellhunter... the only character I have ever played that used that trait also had a level of Insprired Blade Swasbuckler, and I worked Zo Piaobo into my background. If I can make it work, I imagine most others could, too.

However, there are things available to werefolk and werefolk kin and those that associate with werefolk... and I just don't give a $#!+... my cousin's grandpa's best friend's daughter's niece knew a person that knew some werefolk... good enough for me. There is just no way to argue against it, and I am not going to entrench for such a petty BS battle. That is a hill I am not willing to die on.

For most other things, though, it matters. It should matter. I would hate for the roleplaying part of this roleplaying game to get in the way of your murderhobo'ing...

[Kurald Galain]

I mostly object to conflicting region/race/flavor requirements. Like, I'm fine with your character being from Tian-Xia, but your char isn't both from Tian-Xia and Taldor. You can worship Desna or Irori but you're not simultaneously a follower of Desna AND Irori. Stuff like that.

I'm sure you can "explain" any of that with sufficient handwaving, but it gets a no from me.

[Sysryke]

We always play homebrew, so region or campaign requirements pretty much go out the window. Flavor needs to make some sense, but just as we allow re-skinning if it doesn't alter mechanics, same for flavor reqs. Race is only enforced if it's unique to the race's biology or specific magic, but a feat requiring a tail for a Kobold is probably fine for a Ratfolk for instance.

[Derklord]

For me the most important aspect is motivation.

If someone wants a more exotic regional option, a racial option on another race, or an option from an unlikely religion (e.g. Lessons of Chaldira on a non-halfling), I'd ask "why do you want this option", and "does it really have to be this option?" If someone wants to take Aboleth's Lung on a non-Gilman, I'd want to hear why is has to be that spells and not Air Bubble or Water Breathing, which work for underwater exploration, too. Similarly, I'd ask "why Wayang Spellhunter and not Magical Lineage?", and if the answer is "to get both", I'd shut it down hard.*

I do something similar for homebrew setting, too - I want an explanation why some flavor-tied thing makes sense for the character. I'm currently GMing a group of vikings in medieval Scotland, and even though the Shoanti Spirit-singer trait is originally tied to the equivalent of either african tribes or native americans, I think it makes perfect sense on a viking Skald with Spirit Totem and Possessed Hand (the spirit in the hand is flavored as the same that fuels the trait).

That the flavor fits the character is actually more important to me than the intended cultural/racial tie. For example I think Mudball works perfectly on a Ratfolk, Golarion or otherwise. Of course, "you're familiar with mud" or "you have a connection to your ancestors" are more universally applicable concepts than "you grew up on a specific small island on the edge of the word populated by weird shadow kobolds".

*) Let's be honest, the issue with Wayang Spellhunter is not that people take it while ignoring the regional limitation, but that people take it to stack it with Magical Lineage. I call that cheating, because it's trying to get an advantage that the player knows they aren't supposed to have. "[Traits are] intended to give player characters a slight edge, not a secret backdoor way to focus all of a character’s traits on one type of bonus and thus gain an unseemly advantage." (APG pg. 327) How often do you see someone take Wayang Spellhunter without also taking Magical Lineage? I never have.

[Kurald Galain]

Derklord wrote:

*) Let's be honest, the issue with Wayang Spellhunter is not that people take it while ignoring the regional limitation,

In my opinion Wayang Spellhunter and Magical Lineage should both be banned for balance reasons, regardless of regional/race/flavor concerns, as they are way more powerful than pretty much every other trait. I have a very short banlist for home games, and these two are right on the top.

In that case, the answer to the OP becomes that you don't need regional/race/flavor reasons to ban cheese.

[rorek55]

Kurald Galain wrote:

Derklord wrote:

*) Let's be honest, the issue with Wayang Spellhunter is not that people take it while ignoring the regional limitation,

In my opinion Wayang Spellhunter and Magical Lineage should both be banned for balance reasons, regardless of regional/race/flavor concerns, as they are way more powerful than pretty much every other trait. I have a very short banlist for home games, and these two are right on the top.

In that case, the answer to the OP becomes that you don't need regional/race/flavor reasons to ban cheese.

I'm curious to what else you ban.

[Sysryke]

Derklord wrote:

For me the most important aspect is motivation.

...

For example I think Mudball works perfectly on a Ratfolk, Golarion or otherwise. Of course, "you're familiar with mud" or "you have a connection to your ancestors" are more universally applicable concepts than "you grew up on a specific small island on the edge of the word populated by weird shadow kobolds".

Funnily enough, Mudball was/is one of the signature spells of my current character. A Ratfolk alchemist/sorcerer based on a theme of "clean" and "dirty" spells. He's a traveling merchant prince, so I gave him some background in having traded with some of the more civilized goblin tribes near his homeland. Goblin is one of his bonus languages too.

[VoodistMonk]

rorek55 wrote:

Kurald Galain wrote:

Derklord wrote:

*) Let's be honest, the issue with Wayang Spellhunter is not that people take it while ignoring the regional limitation,

In my opinion Wayang Spellhunter and Magical Lineage should both be banned for balance reasons, regardless of regional/race/flavor concerns, as they are way more powerful than pretty much every other trait. I have a very short banlist for home games, and these two are right on the top.

In that case, the answer to the OP becomes that you don't need regional/race/flavor reasons to ban cheese.

I'm curious to what else you ban.

Ban the player, not the game. You can ban every trait and feat and archetype and class you want, but a murderhobo is still going to murderhobo.

If you have the authority to ban traits from being used at your table, you can just tell the person being an @$$hole to leave.

Hey you, with the Wizard hat, your murderhobo BS is messing with program... making it not fun for everyone but you... including me, and I'm the GM... so, kindly, GTFOH. Nothing is forcing you to play with people that insist on being like that.

You can smell cheese a mile away, and it's usually pretty easy to identify who smells the worst during session zero. Just invite that person to leave. Everyone else is open to use whatever they wsnt because they aren't murderhobo clowns.

Nothing is banned, except the clowns, themselves.

[Scavion]

Regional: No because most of the time it's mind-bogglingly stupid. Like actually offensively stupid.

Race: It depends on whether it REQUIRES a racial feature to use. You can't use magical tail if you're not a Kitsune, but a Non-dwarf can grab Orc Hewer

Flavor: No.

[rorek55]

VoodistMonk wrote:

rorek55 wrote:

Kurald Galain wrote:

Derklord wrote:

*) Let's be honest, the issue with Wayang Spellhunter is not that people take it while ignoring the regional limitation,

In my opinion Wayang Spellhunter and Magical Lineage should both be banned for balance reasons, regardless of regional/race/flavor concerns, as they are way more powerful than pretty much every other trait. I have a very short banlist for home games, and these two are right on the top.

In that case, the answer to the OP becomes that you don't need regional/race/flavor reasons to ban cheese.

I'm curious to what else you ban.

Ban the player, not the game. You can ban every trait and feat and archetype and class you want, but a murderhobo is still going to murderhobo.

If you have the authority to ban traits from being used at your table, you can just tell the person being an @$$hole to leave.

Hey you, with the Wizard hat, your murderhobo BS is messing with program... making it not fun for everyone but you... including me, and I'm the GM... so, kindly, GTFOH. Nothing is forcing you to play with people that insist on being like that.

You can smell cheese a mile away, and it's usually pretty easy to identify who smells the worst during session zero. Just invite that person to leave. Everyone else is open to use whatever they wsnt because they aren't murderhobo clowns.

Nothing is banned, except the clowns, themselves.

True, but I would hope expectations are discussed before hand. I've played in 5 in person groups, each one had varying degrees of acceptance. What was considered "the normal" at one group, was the ultimate cheese at another.

[Kurald Galain]

VoodistMonk wrote:

Ban the player, not the game. You can ban every trait and feat and archetype and class you want, but a murderhobo is still going to murderhobo.

I find there's a distinction between a$@%*!# players (who you should ban anyway) and heavy-duty min-maxers (who you can deal with by banning some of the worst options).

[DeathlessOne]

So longer as the player in question doesn't create a Schrodinger's "Cat" or un-resolvable narrative paradox with their choices, I let them do whatever they think they can get away with. I have the system mastery I need to handle each and every choice they make, and the narrative power to squish the figuratively large egos these 'characters' might have. The most dangerous phrase you can hear at my table is "Interesting choice...".

If they do try to pull some paradoxical shenanigans... I am either going to let them do it and screw with them the entire game, or warn them that I am going to screw with them the entire game. I haven't actually had any takers when I offer the choice.

A side note: This gets solved real quick when you explain that this game isn't purely about mechanics. Don't treat it like a math problem. Everything is important. From your day to day choices, to why you are getting that extra +1 bonus.

[Coidzor]

Some things have pretty compelling reasons for why they're tied to X, Y, or Z.

Like feats that modify a creature's tail. Only makes sense that you'd need to have a tail in the first place to be able to modify it.

Other things... not so much, the devs clearly just pulled a name out of a hat to assign it to a region or culture. These things are much more easily re-flavored and re-fluffed

[VoodistMonk]

Adopted: Tusked. Lol.

[Mightypion]

As a player, I really like to know how much the GM expects me to optimize, ideally in advance.
I aim for the golden rule, and do not inflict upon the GM what I do not wish to be inflicted upon me if I were to GM.

Like, give me a "cheese rating" for the game and I can work with that. High optimized games can be fun, especially with a beer or two, and especially for GMs who are normally hesitant to kill characters, but who can overcome this limitations because this group of hyper optimized murder hoboes clearly deserves nothing better.

For me, this is kind of session 0 stuff.

[Mightypion]

Kurald Galain wrote:

I find there's a distinction between a~$&+%+ players (who you should ban anyway) and heavy-duty min-maxers (who you can deal with by banning some of the worst options).

Full agree. Like, my default is 7-8 on a scale of 0-10 of optimization.

If you tell me, as the GM, that a 4-6 would be prefereable, I can totally do that. If you tell me that you want to do a no holds barred "adverserial dungeon crawl" and that I better bring my worst cheese or you feel insulted, sure!

I do like to min max because it partly is a puzzle. I actually like it if the GM bans obviously too good options (foe biter, mythic vital strike, wild arcana for mythic games for example), because this increases my freedom to pick something fun instead (which is why I also like Automatic bonus progression, imagine being able to pick unusual items for belts and capes without gimping your char). A lot of min maxing happens because players dont want to be the "weakest link", that is understandable.

[PossibleCabbage]

Your character has to be from somewhere, have some kind of parents, and have some set of experiences that shaped them before they became an adventurer. If you aren't treating the things from the stuff you took for mechanical reasons as prompts that tell you about who your character is, I don't even know what you're doing.

Like one of the most extreme examples from PF1 was Voices of Solid Things. If you want to be able to pick locks by talking at them, you take that feat. It tells you that you spent some time with the Witchmarket, if you're not excited about telling the story of how your character ended up in the Witchmarket and thereby learned to talk tumblers open, why are you taking the feat?

But maybe your character's story of how they ran away from home in Irrisen and joined the Witchmarket and ended up in Tian Xia before catching a boat back to Andoran is a bit much, which is why it's good to run these sorts of things past the GM.

[strayshift]

In a word: Yes. Because otherwise... just otherwise...

[strayshift]

Mightypion wrote:

As a player, I really like to know how much the GM expects me to optimize, ideally in advance.

I aim for the golden rule, and do not inflict upon the GM what I do not wish to be inflicted upon me if I were to GM.

Like, give me a "cheese rating" for the game and I can work with that. High optimized games can be fun, especially with a beer or two, and especially for GMs who are normally hesitant to kill characters, but who can overcome this limitations because this group of hyper optimized murder hoboes clearly deserves nothing better.

For me, this is kind of session 0 stuff.

I'd add to this, your pcs are heroes, they can do stuff others can't (optimisation) for reasons others cannot (I am descended from a god, etc) but the session IS consensual and negotiated. That said, I'll kill stupid pcs at the drop of a dice roll and reward great role-playing with an untyped bonus.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I run only homebrewed stuff, or campaigns set in non-Golarion settings that I heavily homebrew in like my Lost Lands campaigns. I have never disallowed any Paizo material from any of their books.

I rant all the time at how mechanically inclined my players are, how much they optimize. For some reason though, they rarely optimize Traits. Never once have I had a player use the Magical Lineage/Wayang Spellhunter combo.

However, when players DO select a regional Trait, or a racial spell, or whatever, I either ask for a reason why they have that thing and then use it as a narrative hook (like the time I had a group of prejudiced citizens hike their prices after a c-rogue/wizard lobbed the Mudball spell and then a rival NPC reminded everyone that's a goblin spell) or we re-skin the trait/feat/spell/whatever to make it more personal for the character.

[Mightypion]

I like playing moderatly high CHA, pick irrepressible all the time and dump wis (I also have the roleplay for it down to a T). More fun if you have a clear weakness, but this combo is less "get dommed, TPK" then if you straight dump wis without having CHA instead of Wis vs Charm and compulsion.

[Mark Hoover 330]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Your character has to be from somewhere, have some kind of parents, and have some set of experiences that shaped them before they became an adventurer. If you aren't treating the things from the stuff you took for mechanical reasons as prompts that tell you about who your character is, I don't even know what you're doing.

Like one of the most extreme examples from PF1 was Voices of Solid Things. If you want to be able to pick locks by talking at them, you take that feat. It tells you that you spent some time with the Witchmarket, if you're not excited about telling the story of how your character ended up in the Witchmarket and thereby learned to talk tumblers open, why are you taking the feat?

But maybe your character's story of how they ran away from home in Irrisen and joined the Witchmarket and ended up in Tian Xia before catching a boat back to Andoran is a bit much, which is why it's good to run these sorts of things past the GM.

Here's how it goes in at least 2 of my own campaigns. This is anecdotal; YRMV.

Spoiler:

Player takes the feat for mechanical reasons; I want to open locks by talking to them. I add the Witchmarket to my homebrew world and work with the player on how their character came to have this feat. I ask them tons of questions, we write up some stuff, case closed.

In session, this player encounters a locked door. They announce they're rolling a Disable Device, roll it, and announce the number. I ask them a leading question like "what does that look like?" Player gives me a blanks stare and reiterates that they use Disable Device to open the lock.

Later on the PCs encounter a hag. She seems to recognize the PC. 30 seconds into her opening dialogue, the players all interrupt with "can we roll initiative now?" I demand they let me finish and the hag notes that the PC hasn't been seen around the Witchmarket since they escaped, and now its time to return. Combat ensues; the player running this PC makes no more mention of it in character or out of game.

The plot point is ignored until I ambush the characters a second time. If they survive, the players all collectively take the hint that agents of the Witchmarket are after the PC. This is followed by a flurry of skill checks to research every known strength and weakness of the remaining foes they might face. None of the PCs ever has a dialogue with the player as to WHY his character was in the Witchmarket or how they escaped in the first place.

The plot point ends with a SEAL Team 6 style campaign of assaults on any and all agents of the Witchmarket until all of them are slain; treasure is taken and sold unless it matches the build of the characters. This is the last we will explore the Witchmarket in game unless I as the GM force a resurgence of it.

TL/DR; the short answer is yes, my players absolutely take Traits, Feats and other such boons for mechanical reasons only. Oh sure, unique build choices will be justified at the time or be added to their backstory if chosen in character creation, but the actual ROLEPLAY of those choices and their setting impact is just not explored.

You can lead a player to the water of justifying their build choices; you can't make them roleplay drinking it.

[Claxon]

Well, I generally restrict access to books in the first place. Generally speaking anything in the hardcover line is permitted, but splat books are generally on a "requires permission" list.

So if players have something really interested in they can ask for it. But by setting up the expectation that some stuff is not allowed in the first place, I don't have to worry about players coming to me with obvious mix max choice that I will strike down (like Sacred Geometry or Wayang spell hunter).

[Mightypion]

I think it really depends on the table.

Like, I dont know what the witchmarket is, but I definitly would have roleplayed that differently. In a number of parties, there would have been narrative conflict because a) someone is not big on going murder hobo on it or b) someone wants to rule the witchmarket rather then destory it.

I am fairly optimized, but thats because I want my characters to work mechanically, and be seen as competent. I find it more fun to roleplay from that.

Trait choices: Typically its something that allows trap finding (if nobody has it), add something important as class skill, some save bonus, a drawback and something campaign relevant.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Sysryke wrote:

We always play homebrew, so region or campaign requirements pretty much go out the window. Flavor needs to make some sense, but just as we allow re-skinning if it doesn't alter mechanics, same for flavor reqs. Race is only enforced if it's unique to the race's biology or specific magic, but a feat requiring a tail for a Kobold is probably fine for a Ratfolk for instance.

This is pretty much exactly as we do it, too.

[DRD1812]

VoodistMonk wrote:

Adopted: Tusked. Lol.

I've always wanted to run a fighter/sorcerer gestalt build I call “Kitsune-Kitsune.” It involves beating your opponents to death with all nine of your very-fluffy tails. Because Kitsune-Kitsune was raised by a tribe of kobolds, she gets the tail terror feat. And through a liberal application of magical tail, she gets a lot of natural attacks along with a lot of spell-like abilities. Is it legal? Probably not. Fight me. :P

[Scarletrose]

depends on how tied to that race/region/flavor the feat is.

Is it something that has a vague thematic affinity but is generally a skill that anyone can pick up? sure.
Is it highly thematic and esoteric knowledge that should only exist in a specific regional secret society? then probably not.

Granted that I am willing to homebrew some equivalents in some cases, like a sect of Arcadian Necromantic Druids with an Aztec flavor that had access to the Shade of the Uskwood feat despite being nowhere near the Uskwood, but that is a setting and homebrewed exception, not an "every character could be picking up this feat"