Thematic issue: Geniekin Kinetesist

[Laclale♪]

When making Kinetesist who has Geniekin Versatile Heritages, should gate only for ancestry's element.

Why:
> Scholars have pushed to use the more accurate descriptor of “elemental scion,” but the term has yet to permeate the common lexicon.

[keftiu]

I think this is needlessly restrictive. Being an Ifrit with water powers is fun.

[aobst128]

“I see now that the circumstances of one's birth is irrelevent, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”

-Mewtwo

[Laclale♪]

...Oh...

Then, how about "Additional feat for Geniekin", or "Kinetesist can get Geniekin feat like Adopted Ancestry general feat can"?

[QuidEst]

I think this is just the sort of thing you can ask the GM for, rather than something that should be baked in. If Sorcerer doesn't expand or restrict your ancestry feat options, then Kineticist isn't going to.

[Lanathar]

On the contrary, as mentioned above I fully expect many people to deliberately create "opposite" characters because it is fun and also generally what people do

And 2E has largely removed minor restrictions like this. It doesn't seem worth the line of text it would require

[Nitro~Nina]

Playing against type can be fun on its own and it's good not to place barriers against that, but such a restriction would also remove some very thematic choices from the game. For instance, in PF1 a character I very nearly got the chance to play was a seemingly by-the-book Oread Geokineticist who saw their elemental origin as the manifestation of the dry lethality of the desert, the plan being that they would later discover that they had an Oasis within them that granted them the life-bringing powers of Hydrokinesis and the Phytokinesis.

Doing that in PF2 would require a bit of retraining, of course, but I like that the concept is still possible. I may even start them out as a Water/Wood Oread, and have that confusion be central to the character from the get-go.

I do like the idea of a sort of spiritual adoption element of becoming a Kineticist, so you can play into your element with both class and ancestry feats, but I'm not sure how likely that is.

[Laclale♪]

Is that same goes through Elemental sorcerer?

[keftiu]

Laclale♪ wrote:

Is that same goes through Elemental sorcerer?

Unless you see one explicitly written, there's no real restrictions on characters like that in PF2. An Ifrit can be a Water Druid or a Hag Sorcerer or anything else they want.

[PossibleCabbage]

It's worthwhile to let people make characters that are 100% compatible with the themes of their ancestry/heritage, and it's also worthwhile to let people make characters that run diametrically opposed to the themes of their ancestry heritage. Trust that people will create and play the characters they want to play.

But an Ifrit who gets water powers isn't really weirder than a Tiefling who becomes a Champion of Desna.

[Laclale♪]

(Same goes to Archetype... or maybe not or just only for.)