Questions regarding Aasimar / Tieflings heritage and sizes in SFS


Starfinder Society

Dark Archive 4/5

Hi all. I was browsing the races that one can play, for I have way to much ACP and should do something with it. It was during this browsing I noticed something with the Aasimar and Tiefling entries:

Planar Scions wrote:
Because of their innate curiosity, humans are more likely to dally with outsiders, and as a consequence, a significant percentage of planar scions living in the Pact Worlds are descended from humans. However, because humans are far less populous than in pre-Gap eras, planar scions descended from other humanoid races are now far more numerous.

So apparently Aasimars and Tieflings aren't "human-bound" anymore in SFS, and can be Vesk-based Tieflings, Halfling-based Aasimars, and so on according to the rules. But since I remember these were more a less also the rules in PF1, PFS1 ruled that all the Aasimars and Tieflings had to be human-hybrids (and thus not Aasimar Elves).

1). Is this in SFS still the case, or could Aasimars and Tieflings also be descended from other humanoid races in organized play?

Then there is also another thing that piqued my interest:

also Planar Scions wrote:
Size and Type: Planar scions are often Medium, and all are outsiders with the native subtype.

So apparently they can also be small or large, and I assume that is in case of Aasimar-Gnomes (which would be small) or Tiefling-Shobhad (which would be large).

2). But can a Tiefling-Orc also be small? Although I hope that this to be the case (for I find small-sized Tieflings based on medium sized creatures hilarious), it might not be allowed because it works both ways (making something bigger than it is supposed to be). Or is there a predetermined size for all Planar Scions in SFS or on the boon itself? I haven't downloaded the boon for its text, because I want to be sure that I want to use it as well before spending the points.

Second Seekers (Jadnura) 1/5 5/55/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

I don't think there's any official rules or clarification on this as far as Org Play goes, so it's up to interpretation and Table Variation™ - but it's definitely strongly implied that you can make planar scions coming from non-human species. (I know there's at least one canonical ifrit from shirren parentage in the Dawn of Flames AP, so non-human scions definitely do exist.) It would be cool if the planar scions had some ability to choose a trait from their parent species (like xenometric androids, or borai) so that, like, a kasatha scion could have four arms and so on, but, what can you do.

I am less sure on the size question, though; the "often Medium" verbiage for tieflings and aasimars is absent in the other planar scion entries (ifrits, kayals, oreads, sulis, sylphs, and undines) which are all Medium, regardless of their 'parent' species. It's probably safest to just play a Medium sized one in Org Play; or, if you really want this to be a hill to die on, if you try the Small size, it may be prudent to be prepared for GMs to say "lol no" and come prepared with a Medium-sized version as well?

5/5 5/55/55/5

Size has a mechanical effect I wouldn't change that on the basis of a "many" in a species description.

Dark Archive 4/5

Thanks, both of you. My main interest was being of "non-human" heritage, so that is great. I mainly asked the size question as a bonus, for I indeed realized there would be mechanical differences when it comes to size. Also being allowed to be small would have been an extra, but no dealbreaker at all.

I will continue browsing and theorycrafting for my next character with this information in mind. Thanks for the help!

5/5 *** Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht

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I don't know of any official ruling, but Paizo has a tendency to write phrases such as "often," to indicate you can homebrew other variants. See also the Ring of Eloquence and the Staff of the Master. Anyway, I believe that unless Paizo actually publishes stats, those things are off limits.

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