Fleshwarp - why not a Versatile Heritage?

[keftiu]

Full disclosure: Fleshwarps are probably my #2 Ancestry in the game currently, so /please/ know that I’m not complaining… but this has bugged me since LOAG released - why are they a full Ancestry and not a VH? Becoming fleshwarped is something that happens to you, generally, and this is even gestured at with the Heritage options. One is presumably a Human Fleshwarp or a Dwarf Fleshwarp, likely witj a good amount of difference between them.

Any thoughts? Am I just being greedy in wanting everyone to share in the mutant love?

[Rysky]

Hehe

I figure it was either a) you are so far changed you can't really keep any of the ancestry stuff from your previous iteration (if you had one) or b) to keep the various options open, since one is you being created rather than merely mutated there might not be a base to go off of. Also c) this lets you put versatile heritages on top of Fleshwarp (like Planar Scions).

In Strength of Thousands I'm playing a Fleshwarped Sylph who is cobbled together from Serpentfolk and Cloud Dragon parts. If Fleshwarped was a VH I probably wouldn't have been able to make that character since there's not really an adequate base to build off of there since we don't have playable Serpentfolk (yet).

[Malk_Content]

Yeah there is always a trade off with this design around what gets you the most versatility. Looking back I think it would be appropriate to produce a mutant VH that gave access to flashcard ancestry feats, like half Elf and half orc do.

[pixierose]

i think the argument can be made for both and I think one day seeing a mutant versatile heritage could be key for flexibility and given some other people what they want

1 benefit in this regard is that you can always pick up adopted ancestry for your original ancestry but you can't nessecarilly do that if you let's say want to be tiefling fleshwarp to roleplau someone who has been mutated by the waters of lamashtu and want both Demonic and fleshwarpy stuff.

Fleshwarp being an ancestry also let's them include the Frankenstein esque monster options of the constructed heritage which also allows for some really fun character concepts

I get why people want a heritage option and I would love to see that one day as well. But I think whatever they pick they would have been in a pickle.

[cavernshark]

keftiu wrote:

Full disclosure: Fleshwarps are probably my #2 Ancestry in the game currently, so /please/ know that I’m not complaining… but this has bugged me since LOAG released - why are they a full Ancestry and not a VH? Becoming fleshwarped is something that happens to you, generally, and this is even gestured at with the Heritage options. One is presumably a Human Fleshwarp or a Dwarf Fleshwarp, likely witj a good amount of difference between them.

Any thoughts? Am I just being greedy in wanting everyone to share in the mutant love?

I hear you, because I was a little surprised at first too, but I do feel like this is the better way. If you're a full fleshwarp, you're probably more aberration than your base race. You can still note that you look like a fleshwarped dwarf, but you're truly something different at that point. I also like that you can layer on the pieces from the versatile heritages. I loved the Valais Durant character in PF1 PFS (a fleshwarped amalgam of several demon parts).

If you want to be a halfling who's undergone some fleshwarping, but not be a fleshwarp, then there's room for that with by letting a player grab a fleshwarp feat. Alternately, let a fleshwarp take 'Half-Orc/Elf" heritages, and extend that to other races. You could use the Adaptive Anadi heritage as a template: automatically giving the fleshwarp the adopted ancestry feat for their old race so they can pick some feats from their base form.

[The Raven Black]

Indeed. None of the Bestiary fleshwarps (Driders ...) keep their original ancestry's trait. They are all Aberrations and that's it.

[WWHsmackdown]

Yeah I would of preferred it as a vh if only bc the art examples in the book kept base ancestries somewhat recognizable (understandable so the PC examples don't look tooooo off-putting) but that creates a little cognitive dissonance with accepting them as a fully divergent ancestry. That's just me though. They still get the job done concept wise, just no pilfering choice ancestry feats onto your flesh warp. Also no small fleshwarps.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

keftiu wrote:

Full disclosure: Fleshwarps are probably my #2 Ancestry in the game currently, so /please/ know that I’m not complaining… but this has bugged me since LOAG released - why are they a full Ancestry and not a VH? Becoming fleshwarped is something that happens to you, generally, and this is even gestured at with the Heritage options. One is presumably a Human Fleshwarp or a Dwarf Fleshwarp, likely witj a good amount of difference between them.

Any thoughts? Am I just being greedy in wanting everyone to share in the mutant love?

I mean, you most definitely can treat them as a Versatile Heritage, similar to what other ancestries are capable of doing with Half-Elf and Half-Orc, even though it's not RAW to do so. Granted, Half-Elf/Half-Orc are already Heritage choices anyway, but it's certainly easy to permit in the rules for Fleshwarps to be considered a Heritage choice instead (where you simply get Low-Light Vision and access to Fleshwarp ancestry feats).

I actually would have preferred that for one of my characters I wanted to make anyway, since the Constitution boost, while neat, isn't exactly very conducive to making the build function properly. It's really the only reason I didn't want to make it.

[Amaya/Polaris]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Also no small fleshwarps.

They actually just changed this in errata, fleshwarps can be small now.

[WWHsmackdown]

Alfa/Polaris wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Also no small fleshwarps.

They actually just changed this in errata, fleshwarps can be small now.

I remember reading that now and I completely brain farted. My bad. That is good.

[Perpdepog]

I'm surprised nobody has pointed out that if Mutant becomes a VH then we will be able to play Mutant Fleshwarps.

[Malk_Content]

Perpdepog wrote:

I'm surprised nobody has pointed out that if Mutant becomes a VH then we will be able to play Mutant Fleshwarps.

True, but if all it gives you is access to fleshwarps feats you are kinda picking nothing as your heritage.

[Charon Onozuka]

Agreed. The theming behind Fleshwarps really makes them sound like something that fits a Versatile Heritage rather than an ancestry. First thing I did was homebrew them into a Versatile Heritage while adding more body horror style feats. (Anadi Fleshwarp = Ultimate Nightmare)

Alfa/Polaris wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Also no small fleshwarps.

They actually just changed this in errata, fleshwarps can be small now.

When did they do this? I primarily use Nethys, which currently only shows Medium size.

[graystone]

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Agreed. The theming behind Fleshwarps really makes them sound like something that fits a Versatile Heritage rather than an ancestry. First thing I did was homebrew them into a Versatile Heritage while adding more body horror style feats. (Anadi Fleshwarp = Ultimate Nightmare)

Alfa/Polaris wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Also no small fleshwarps.

They actually just changed this in errata, fleshwarps can be small now.

When did they do this? I primarily use Nethys, which currently only shows Medium size.

Check the FAQ in this website for "Lost Omens Ancestry Guide Clarifications and Errata".

FAQ

[PossibleCabbage]

I feel like the point of having a Fleshwarp be an ancestry and not a versatile heritage is that you've been warped to the point where other Dwarves (for example) will no longer view you as a Dwarf.

Heritages are inherently the sort of thing where you have not been othered by your own people. Rock dwarves, Death dwarves, Ancient-blood dwarves, etc. are just different kinds of Dwarves but a cyborg dwarf is someone who's more likely to be considered aberrant in a noteworthy way.

[The Raven Black]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like the point of having a Fleshwarp be an ancestry and not a versatile heritage is that you've been warped to the point where other Dwarves (for example) will no longer view you as a Dwarf.

Heritages are inherently the sort of thing where you have not been othered by your own people. Rock dwarves, Death dwarves, Ancient-blood dwarves, etc. are just different kinds of Dwarves but a cyborg dwarf is someone who's more likely to be considered aberrant in a noteworthy way.

Not only that. Unless taking the Adopted Ancestry feat, you cannot get any Dwarf ancestry feat. Even physical ones. You are very deeply not a Dwarf anymore.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

Not even a humanoid anymore. As per the Raven earlier, all fleshwarps including driders and the catchall fleshwarp ancestry are aberrations. Alien creatures which defy biology as it is known.

This seemingly goes deeper than just being tampered with--there are several creatures which have had their forms or nature manipulated which still qualify as their same creature type. Ulat-kini retain the humanoid trait, owlbears are still animals. There are almost certainly stranger examples of warping in the beasts which nevertheless don't go far enough afield to become actual aberrations.

[The-Magic-Sword]

Probably because they had the idea of heritages as being different kind of mutations when they came up with it, would be my guess. Judging by the artwork for it, the mutations are pretty damn extreme. Probably to the point that it would be fair for to say it overtakes the ancestral biology completely.

One other neat thing about Fleshwarps being an ancestry, is that since each of the heritages is an explanation for how you got to be the way you are, you can actually slot most of the versatile heritages in and have them function the same way. Extreme mutations sparked by demonic blood, or when you became Dhampir, or from when you died and came back as a Duskwalker.

[pixierose]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Probably because they had the idea of heritages as being different kind of mutations when they came up with it, would be my guess. Judging by the artwork for it, the mutations are pretty damn extreme. Probably to the point that it would be fair for to say it overtakes the ancestral biology completely.

One other neat thing about Fleshwarps being an ancestry, is that since each of the heritages is an explanation for how you got to be the way you are, you can actually slot most of the versatile heritages in and have them function the same way. Extreme mutations sparked by demonic blood, or when you became Dhampir, or from when you died and came back as a Duskwalker.

a changeling fleshwarp could be a normal changeling that could be mutated via a hag transformation ritual gone horribly wrong in some manner. ( or depending on the motivations of the hag mother horribly right)

[Perpdepog]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Probably because they had the idea of heritages as being different kind of mutations when they came up with it, would be my guess. Judging by the artwork for it, the mutations are pretty damn extreme. Probably to the point that it would be fair for to say it overtakes the ancestral biology completely.

One other neat thing about Fleshwarps being an ancestry, is that since each of the heritages is an explanation for how you got to be the way you are, you can actually slot most of the versatile heritages in and have them function the same way. Extreme mutations sparked by demonic blood, or when you became Dhampir, or from when you died and came back as a Duskwalker.

One of my future characters is going to be an Aasimar Fleshwarp created when someone tried to graft angelic limbs onto someone, for example.

[lemeres]

Conversely, I was a bit sad when tiefling and aasimar became versatile heritages. They seemed so defining physically and culturally that I could see them as ancestries themselves.

This is particularly jarring, since the entire heritage system seems like it mostly stems from the heritage system used by tieflings and such. Which drove the tieflings' heritages down into a race feat instead, and further pushed any progression that might have had into level 13+ (ie- something you will rarely see).

[Tender Tendrils]

Eh, I like tieflings/aasimars/etc being versatile heritages - it means I can have an ifrit leshy or a tiefling dwarf or aasimar elf which I think is great.

edit: and it was really silly anyway that for some bizarre reason humans where the only ancestry capable of being changed by devil pacts or by being descended from a genie or whatever.

[Perpdepog]

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Eh, I like tieflings/aasimars/etc being versatile heritages - it means I can have an ifrit leshy or a tiefling dwarf or aasimar elf which I think is great.

edit: and it was really silly anyway that for some bizarre reason humans where the only ancestry capable of being changed by devil pacts or by being descended from a genie or whatever.

Weren't there rules for being descended from other ancestries? I vaguely remember some very soft rules being somewhere, but they weren't really enforced.

[Silver Crow]

Perpdepog wrote:

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Eh, I like tieflings/aasimars/etc being versatile heritages - it means I can have an ifrit leshy or a tiefling dwarf or aasimar elf which I think is great.

edit: and it was really silly anyway that for some bizarre reason humans where the only ancestry capable of being changed by devil pacts or by being descended from a genie or whatever.

Weren't there rules for being descended from other ancestries? I vaguely remember some very soft rules being somewhere, but they weren't really enforced.

"By default, half-elves and half-orcs descend from humans, but your GM might allow you to be the offspring of an elf, orc, or different ancestry. In these cases, the GM will let you select the half-elf or half-orc heritage as the heritage for this other ancestry. The most likely other parent of a half-elf are gnomes and halflings, and the most likely parents of a half-orc are goblins, halflings, and dwarves."

Nethys page

I think this is what you're referring to?

As to prior point, recall having that experience trying to make a Tengu Aasimar in 1E, which was more "Human but aesthetically Tengu" compared to 2E where picking ancestry feats gets closer to the idea.

And funnily enough one of my others is a Fleshwarp Tiefling, brought about when the attempts to use it on her, ended up making the latent fiendish traits to assert themselves.

Honestly the character building options are just neat to tinker around with for concepts, even if not able to put to use for time being.

Apologies to ramble, any event.

[Perpdepog]

Ah, sorry for not being clearer. I was talking about how Aasimars and Tieflings were all assumed to be scions of human parents in 1E, so their extraplanar lineage was sort of generified. I think there was a rule somewhere about getting to make them small or medium for the purposes of other ancestries but that might have just been a common houserule.

Funnily enough they behaved then the way Fleshwarps behave now.

[Squiggit]

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Eh, I like tieflings/aasimars/etc being versatile heritages - it means I can have an ifrit leshy or a tiefling dwarf or aasimar elf which I think is great.

edit: and it was really silly anyway that for some bizarre reason humans where the only ancestry capable of being changed by devil pacts or by being descended from a genie or whatever.

My favorite thing about planar scions as heritages is it lets me really tweak how significant a character's planar ancestry is to the, both physically and culturally.

Like in art we've seen tieflings range the gamut from "a human with an odd feature" to "honestly just looks like a devil" and I sort of like that versatile heritages let me play around with that by letting me choose how heavily I lean into either the base ancestry or the heritage as I progress.

... if I had one complaint about the state of affairs, it's that versatile heritages feel maybe too appealing on non-core races, fleshwarps included, just because they tend to have very few feats to pick from, but that's a little off topic.

[Temperans]

Perpdepog wrote:

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Eh, I like tieflings/aasimars/etc being versatile heritages - it means I can have an ifrit leshy or a tiefling dwarf or aasimar elf which I think is great.

edit: and it was really silly anyway that for some bizarre reason humans where the only ancestry capable of being changed by devil pacts or by being descended from a genie or whatever.

Weren't there rules for being descended from other ancestries? I vaguely remember some very soft rules being somewhere, but they weren't really enforced.

Aonprd 1e, non-human aasimar wrote:

Not all aasimars are descended from humans. Aasimars can be born of any intelligent race, though human aasimars are the most common. Aasimars of other races usually exemplify the ideals of beauty and skill as seen by their base race. For example, halfling aasimars are small, beautifully proportioned, and display exceptional grace. Half-orc aasimars are slightly larger and stronger than ordinary orcs, with tough skin and metallic claws and tusks—they are likely to be neutral rather than evil, but still display aggression and incredible combat prowess. Less common humanoids, such as lizardfolk, catfolk, tengus, and others, can also produce aasimars, though given these races’ exotic appearance, members of the more common races may have trouble telling such aasimars apart from their kin.

Races in PF1 all function like Fleshwarps in PF2. You had features of another race, but you didn't count as that race. (Exception being half-elf/orc those two were special)

Which is why I find it surprising that fleshwarps are their own race and not an acquired heritage. You are not born a fleshwarp, and most of them are sterile (not driders).

[Tonya Woldridge]

Removed a series of posts/quotes discussing a staffer's commentary on an unrelated topic to the thread's topic. It appeared to be an attempt to derail the conversation.