Is there a typo in the "Vanth Weapon Familiarity" feat?

[BastionofthePants]

I noticed that every ancestry feat that grants weapon familiarity allows them to treat advanced weapons as martial and martial as simple, for the purposes of calculating proficiency. All of them except the Duskwalker's Vanth Weapon Familiarity.

Unlike every other ancestral weapon feat in the game, Vanth Weapon Familiarity only makes you trained in its weapons, and requires a lvl 13 ancestry feat to raise that to Expert.

Was there a reason for nerfing the feat, or was it just a typo? Any chance of an errata?

[Xethik]

The formula is usually treat weapons with the ancestral tag as one proficiency group lower, and become trained in specific weapons. Since there is no Duskwalker ancestry trait, they only get the specific weapons listed.

Taking the dwarf weapon familiarity as an example, you become trained in the battle axe, pick, and warhammer and then separately treat weapons with the dwarf trait (which the battle axe, pick, and warhammer are not) as one proficiency group lower.

[Blave]

The proficiency "upgrade" only affects weapons with with ancestry's trait. It might simply mean that there are no Duskwalker weapons and that paizo has no intention of ever adding some.

EDIT: The Gnoll Weapon Familiarity also lacks this sentence.

[Blave]

Xethik wrote:

Since there is no Duskwalker ancestry trait, they only get the specific weapons listed.

To be fair, there's other ancestries with that line in their weapon familiarity feat despite the fact that no weapon currently exist with that trait. Like Hobgoblins.

[Xethik]

Blave wrote:

Xethik wrote:

Since there is no Duskwalker ancestry trait, they only get the specific weapons listed.

To be fair, there's other ancestries with that line in their weapon familiarity feat despite the fact that no weapon currently exist with that trait. Like Hobgoblins.

Yeah, that is fair. Even the geniekin versatile heritage gets a trait for them, but I think it is a "flag" that they don't see much likelihood of adding them in the future. And if they did, I think it would be few enough that they could call it out on the weapon itself.

[BastionofthePants]

With regards to the "there are no Duskwalker weapons," two things occur to me:

1) The feat makes it pretty clear that the "culture" whose weapons they learn to wield is the Vanths, whom the Duskwalker in question would have lived/trained with in the Boneyard prior to being reborn.

2) The lack of an additional group of weapons will, at most, further nerf the feat. This is probably offset by the fact that it already gives you a pretty good range of weapons (bows, scythes, staves) but doesn't actually address why Duskwalkers (and gnolls, apparently) get an objectively inferior version of heritage weaponry. I guess I'm curious about whether it was deliberate or just two different writers with different opinions about what is "fair." Or maybe even a writer who was referring to an outdated design document from earlier in the development cycle.