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Hi everyone,
There's one point of PF2 that puzzles me greatly despite the fact that I like the concept: (non-versatile) heritages.
What are they? What do they represent?
Let's take a few examples to show you how much I'm puzzled.
Human Heritages: "Skilled Heritage", "Versatile Heritage".
Skilled, versatile... that's qualities. I could see some cultural stuff behind, like in some human cultures versatility could be favored.
Lizardfolks Heritages: "Your toes are adapted for gripping and climbing.", "Your thick scales help you retain water and combat the sun's glare.", "You can change your skin color to blend in with your surroundings".
Now it speaks of genetic.
Elf Heritages: "Arctic Elf", "Cavern Elf", "Desert Elf".
Now, it speaks of where my character lives... If my elf is born in the desert but quickly moved to the north pole, is he a Desert or an Arctic Elf? Are elves living in the north and the south pole sharing some common traits or should there also be an "Antarctic Elf" heritage?
Overall, I'm a bit sad about current state of heritages. When I create a character, my heritage is something I absolutely don't care about, most of the time I just take the best one mechanically (so many Cavern Elves, Kyonin should be relocated underground). Outside Versatile Heritages, I can't take any Heritage that really represent something during my character creation (what's a Versatile Human after all?).
I really love Heritages, their concept, but I think somethings amiss. I'd love to see added into the game versatile regional heritage. So if I play a human or elf from Cheliax or Osirion I can take this regional heritage to represent the cultural background of my character. I would find that crazy funny and logical for my cheliaxian Fighter to have a few devil-related Ancestry feats and for my Osirion Rogue to have desert-related Ancestry feats. Dhampirs have access to Vampire Lore, but I think anyone from Ustalav should have access to it, too.
Anyway, that's just an idea, but I wanted to speak about Heritages.
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... Backgrounds cover the cultural background of your character.
I disagree. Background speaks about your character life before becoming an adventurer or about your life beside adventuring. Barrister or Bounty Hunter are jobs, Cursed is an event that happened to you, it says nothing about your culture and even Noble or Royalty speak about your family culture, not the society you live in.
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I think there's a little bit of awkwardness in that traits that are intended to reflect biology and traits that are intended to reflect heritage are as intermingled as they are. This is true both of heritages and ancestry feats.
That said, I like that they tend to be more generic. I wouldn't really want to feel nudged to take "Cheliax Heritage" or "Andoran Heritage" or "Kyonin heritage" ... the vague ones can be adjusted more or less to fit other ideas and that's good for me.
I agree some more options based on what you have been doing or where you have been would be cool.
I think there's a little bit of awkwardness in that traits that are intended to reflect biology and traits that are intended to reflect heritage are as intermingled as they are. This is true both of heritages and ancestry feats.
For Ancestry feats, I think it's quite logical as most humans live in human societies, most orcs in orc societies and so on.
There are a few Human Ancestry feats that are related to your society but I think they are problematic in the way they are done. For example, Gloomseer asks for Nidalese Ethnicity (and not Nidalese nationality) and says "Gloom holds few terrors for you, and the pall of darkness over Nidal has made you comfortable in dim light. You gain low-light vision.". So, first, it has nothing to do with your ethinicity, and it has nothing to do with being human. It's really sad that a Nidalese Elf can't take it at all.That said, I like that they tend to be more generic. I wouldn't really want to feel nudged to take "Cheliax Heritage" or "Andoran Heritage" or "Kyonin heritage" ... the vague ones can be adjusted more or less to fit other ideas and that's good for me.
I understand your feeling. They shouldn't be Heritages taken by all Chelaxians or Andorans. Maybe calling them in such a way that they represent your character not only being from Cheliax/Andoran but being an embodiment of chelaxian/andoran culture.
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Culture seems to be mechanically mostly handled by a combination of background and ancestry feats together with the options that your home region may open up.
Yeah, heritage is a grab bag. For some races its genetic, for some its basically a background/culture (eg, Anvil Dwarf), and for humans its basically just a mechanical benefit with no attached flavour at all.
I'm not sure that its a problem though. Between background, heritage, ancestral feats and home region you can generally come up with the character background that you want. Even for humans, my Minkai character is likely to be noticeably different flavour wise than my Varisian character and very possibly mechanically different too (katana wielder vs longsword, for example).
It relies on the player making appropriate choices for the character they envision. But that seems to me a better alternative than providing any kind of pre-canned choices since the pre-canned choices will ALWAYS leave out options that the player wants and take considerable space to boot.
But that seems to me a better alternative than providing any kind of pre-canned choices since the pre-canned choices will ALWAYS leave out options that the player wants and take considerable space to boot.
An elegant solution would be to make these Heritages Uncommon. After all, if katanas are Uncommon then Minkaians should be Uncommon. The need for GM approval would remove entirely the pre-canned choice.
Even for humans, my Minkai character is likely to be noticeably different flavour wise than my Varisian character and very possibly mechanically different too (katana wielder vs longsword, for example).
If there was no katana in the game, I'm pretty sure there would be less samurais.
For example, I can technically say that my character is a vampire, but I'm pretty sure noone will buy it. When the Vampire Heritage will be released, I will suddenly be able to play a vampire. Mechanical elements have a strong impact on the characters you can play.Among all my PFS characters, all those who have elements from their culture impacting their character sheet have a home region. Among the others, most don't have a home region.
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Back in the playtest when they were first experimenting with ancestry feats, there weren't heritages yet. And it turned out there were some things that they wanted to be stuff you really could only take at level 1, because it was stuff that you were either born with, or that would take so long to develop that it could have only really have happened during your whole upbringing. Stuff you can't really pick up a few levels later, or retrain. That's what became heritages.
So yeah, it's a bit diffuse by design.
Yeah, heritages are either genetic or so deeply cultural that it represents the result of a majority of your upbringing.
I think they made it very generic so you had flexibility in developing ideas of culture and identity as that can come from a variety of sources in a character's life.
There's so much material that already exists for flavoring an ancestry, you can pretty much pick and choose what you want to use or make it up.
My group is pretty traditional, so we default to traditional fantasy tropes. I imagine some folks want to turn some tropes on their head and do their own thing. So they watered down ancestries so both groups could do what they feel like.
I generally don't worry about it too much. My players come up with a suitable background from a given area and I work it into the adventure as needed.
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They're definitely mixed I've noticed, with some representing culture, some representing genetics, and some even representing other things, like Age. But then again, fantasy gaming frequently goes with a less specific notion of "peoples" which is how I interpret them, where tending to be polyglots (nomad halfling), seeing well in the dark (twilight halfling) can be interpreted as the same 'thing' and no one bats an eye. You could almost consider them archetypes (as the plain english word, not the game mechanic) for different expressions of what each ancestry can be, that seems to be how they were designed.
In my group's game world its pretty much just layers of 'blessings' my very present gods have given to the communities that follow them, for their environment, or for some major historical or cultural reason, or to make them more like the god, which is also like ancestry, its just nice to have the granularity of having not just elf, but elves specifically suited for the desert, or to sense the presence of magic.
From there I just write each one into whatever I want it to be in the context of my setting, so like, the Elf environmental heritages come from their traditional practice of Witchcraft and how that magically altered them, but then the Seer Elf manifested when they developed Wizardry out of a need not to depend on spirits, and it became a social class marker in this area they were found, because they were considered well suited for Wizardry, which became important to my heian-court inspired Elf culture, although its a little different elsewhere in the world.
Meanwhile, I think Whisper Elves were ending up in Godsgrave because that horrific dark forest is essentially a lifelong battle royale situation where the patter of footsteps might be your only means of not dying instantly, so their gods blessed them with an unusually keen sense of hearing.
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For me the mechanical Heritage is simply an option to reflect a variance within an Ancestry, be that biological or cultural. I don't think the names or even distinct groups of such necessarily exist within the setting. Versatile heritages definitely do, and some of the biological ones probably are recognized as such but not always. Like you can be a halfling that lives as a nomad and not have the nomadic halfling heritage.
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I've been struggling with the way ancestries are put together as well. I don't really get what the heritage is either. I like the versatility, and the choosing certain options as you level up, but there are some things that are difficult to make. I remember sun elves and moon elves and the like from Forgotten Realms. They were all elves, but had some different abilities, and even starting stats. It is difficult to create something similar in PF2. I almost want to see a third feat option in addition to heritage and ancestry feats to reflect the biology a little bit more. It could be called legacy or lineage or something. It could include its own ability boost and biological aspect of the ancestry. In order to create a certain type of elf (lets say drow) you would select a suite of feats (this lineage feat, this heritage feat, this first level feat) to create the drow. Just an idea I've been kicking around for my home brew world.
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I think of Heritages as basically a bonus, first-level-only Ancestry feat.
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I wouldn't mind seeing some more flexible ability boosts with heritages. That would be nice.