Proficiencies do usually come from ancestry feats rather than heritages.Warrior Android gets you "trained in all simple and martial weapons". Trained in built in 1 armor seems to track with this IMO.
The problem is that there already exist heritages people take *solely* to gain armor proficiency in medium armor. Like all the playtest geokineticists who were Versatile Humans.
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Huh, that is a weird and kinda poor heritage. But it is in line with that. I think the major thing about armor proficiency being rarer is that is scales a lot slower than weapon proficiencies so it has more value earlier on. Especially if you give an expert at 13th feat since that's right on time for many classes while weapon or spell progressions at 13th are quite delayed.Proficiencies do usually come from ancestry feats rather than heritages.Warrior Android gets you "trained in all simple and martial weapons". Trained in built in 1 armor seems to track with this IMO.
If you are a mastermind Rogue or a Summoner or any of the full casters and want to use the Marshall archetype it is a godsend. Especially for a Wizard who would need two general feats or another archetype to do the equivalent.
Yep it doesn't scale past level 11, but that is not always the point and just not relevant in a lot of games.
The problem with the Warrior Android is less that this is an unreasonable thing to do with a heritage and more about how it's the Heritage you would never want to take on a Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Champion, etc. and only would on classes that aren't really warriors (like it's cool to cast weapon storm when you have a d12 weapon).
The Cataphract Fleshwarp sort of fixes the problem by giving you something else if the "Armor Proficiency" feat would do nothing for you.
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The problem is that there already exist heritages people take *solely* to gain armor proficiency in medium armor. Like all the playtest geokineticists who were Versatile Humans.Proficiencies do usually come from ancestry feats rather than heritages.Warrior Android gets you "trained in all simple and martial weapons". Trained in built in 1 armor seems to track with this IMO.
It's not entirely out of pattern for Paizo to make 'pick an option' slightly weaker than fixed options, though. It wouldn't be the end of the world if Titan was slightly better than a general feat at the one thing titan does.
There is also the factor that this is the only Medium "armor" to exist with the Comfort trait, so having a trait unique to this "armor" adds something that simply taking a proficiency feat doesn't.It has too, you can't take it off.
The funny thing is that this could have totally been viable by having it explained that the character can "grow" the scales in the amount of time it takes to don medium armor, and "shed" the scales in the amount of time it takes to remove medium armor, both of which not requiring help to do so.
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Mechanically, that's great. Narratively, that's lame and silly.
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Mechanically, that's great.
Not even that, trading Comfort for making it removable would be a strict downgrade and basically make the heritage completely worthless.
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Mechanically, that's great. Narratively, that's lame and silly.
Not sure how that is. The only lame part about it is that the character basically has control over their scales growing and shedding when, in reality, they don't. It just happens. We're already talking about an entire Heritage whose innate scales are far more durable than most Nagaji that they are the equivalent of a Breastplate in terms of protection. Having scales that slow you down, make doing Dexterity and Strength-based checks more difficult, and prevent you from wearing other forms of armor due to the sheer bulk of their mass, is already far into lame and silly territory that implementing mechanics to make it less doesn't really accomplish that. I mean, this thread is explaining away about how lame and silly the current implementation is, and all I pointed out is that Comfort has a power budget that Paizo found valuable enough to put into the statblock that simply wearing a Breastplate doesn't accomplish.
If anything, all my proposal does is prove that Paizo values the Comfort trait to the point of making it part of a Heritage "armor" that has all these extraneous requirements to truly benefit from it, and that it is relatively easy to have implemented mechanics for these characters to grow and shed these extremely thick scales to make it so that a character either does or does not have to benefit from these added scales, merely that Paizo didn't think it was relevant to add them due to implementing the Comfort trait and going "Eh, it's good enough."
I will note that the Titan Nagaji's scaled do not slow them down or make checks more difficult *if* they have at least 16 strength. Probably "this child will be a strong one" is part of the goal in raising a child" "to be a warrior or a bodyguard" and giving them a "specialized diet" to develop "bulging muscles".
Like you're already getting a strength boost from being Nagaji, so this isn't a great ancestry if you're completely disinterested in being strong.
Remember that the Strength number on an armor is the strength needed to "no longer take the armor’s check penalty" and to "decrease the Speed penalty by 5 feet." Like a Dwarf with 18 Strength and Unburdened Iron can do gymnastics in full plate.
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While that's true, the complaint is if such a character doesn't have training in Medium armor, that they can't use this Heritage. The biggest issue I would see with this is a Strength-based Monk, Swashbuckler, or Rogue character, for example. If I wanted to take this Heritage to be some cool "unarmored" character that has the durability to be a frontliner, this Heritage simply doesn't work for that. I'd be forced to be a Barbarian, or a Ranger, or a Thaumaturge. Heck, even Alchemist is better than those other classes for this Heritage, and that's just bad form by comparison.
Titan Nagaji Monks don't function (because you can't activate common Style feats and can't benefit from a lot of features/proficiencies), Titan Nagaji Fighters don't function (because you can't wear Full Plate, which is outright better than this in every way), and so on. It's not just bad because better character tropes don't function with it, it's bad because other frontline fighter options don't work due to its wonky mechanics. You're literally forced to be Medium Armor, even if you don't want to be, and that's not fun.
It would have made more sense if the Heritage was listed as Unarmored, and counted as Medium Armor for Property Runes and Specialization, with any other armor being worn suppressing any Runes/Specialization made available with the scales. And honestly, even if somebody wanted to wear "stronger" Armor over this stuff, all this Heritage would do is make it to where being unarmored wasn't as much of a debuff, since the bonuses don't stack, and the penalties are already being ignored anyway.
"This heritage doesn't work well with some other choices" is basically the same thing as why Dwarf tieflings are less attractive than non-Dwarf tieflings (because Dwarves already have Darkvision and picking the versatile heritage doesn't upgrade it.)
I do want to figure out what the Str>Dex Druid is like though.
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Grab a one handed martial weapon from an ancestry feat and you're good to go with shield block and medium armor.
Unfortunately, Nagaji don't appear to have a "get proficiency in some weapons" feat, which seems like either an oversight or a "cut for space thing."
Like if you traveled to the past and were rewriting the CRB with knowledge of the next several years of Pathfinder, one of the first things you'd do is change "[foo] lore" and "[foo] weapon familiarity/[critical]/expertise" generic feats can be taken for any ancestry and simply make a list of 2 skills and a lore and several weapons part of the ancestry block since they keep reprinting those four feats.
... You're literally forced to be Medium Armor...
It is a selectable choice. You are literally NOT forced into anything by it.
Grab a one handed martial weapon from an ancestry feat and you're good to go with shield block and medium armor.Unfortunately, Nagaji don't appear to have a "get proficiency in some weapons" feat, which seems like either an oversight or a "cut for space thing."
Like if you traveled to the past and were rewriting the CRB with knowledge of the next several years of Pathfinder, one of the first things you'd do is change "[foo] lore" and "[foo] weapon familiarity/[critical]/expertise" generic feats can be taken for any ancestry and simply make a list of 2 skills and a lore and several weapons part of the ancestry block since they keep reprinting those four feats.
Nagaji have good natural weaponry by default.
It is not a concern if you wanted to do such a change. However Paizo make the right call. Extra weapon feats are just not appropriate in this case.
Like if you wanted to be a monk nagaji, you give up nothing by choosing to be a hooded nagaji (your spit is unarmed- you can flurry with it), a sacred nagaji (you can flurry with your tail, but you probably won't, but the bonus against trip/grapple is good), a venomous nagaji (nobody ever regretted having resistance), or a whipfang nagaji (your reach fangs won't work with style strikes, but it's not nothing.)
If you just want to describe your monk nagaji as "swole AF" that's a thing you can just do without choosing a specific heritage.
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Yeah. I think the heritage is more restrictive than it needs to be and not the most impressive thing, but it's hard to really treat "I picked an option to give me free medium armor and now I'm upset about needing to use it" as a serious complaint.
I've played with GMs that did a flat roll for night time ambushes every night.
Even if comfort happens to not come up in some games, it's a pretty good trait when it does.
Greater ready armor still takes 3 actions and is a level 11 item. If you're sleeping that's at least 2.6 turns spent getting ready because you need to stand up and draw a weapon.
Armored rest is a level 10 archetype feat. Armor assist is also a thing even if it's a thing we like to ignore.
And since it's not removable you're also covered for bathhouse scenarios.
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Luckily Full Plate comes with padded armor that keeps the plate's runes, so you'll at least have something on for those night ambushes.
I agree on an effectiveness basis, but to my mind this is one of the worst features of the game in terms of imagery.
It is just wrong and a terrible way to handle this situation.