Wait, aren't Ancestry Feats, Hitpoints, Speed.etc Bio-Essentialist too? Doesn't it all have to go? (LONG!)

[Temperans]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like the "low strength character with high athletics" is like Beowulf when he fights the dragon after ruling as king for 50 years, he was still the man who swam shoulder to shoulder with Breca in the open sea in full armor, he's just an old man now.

I see it more like its an old Wuxia master vs a random strong person. Of course the wuxia master is going to win.

Now put the old wuxia master vs an equally experience but young wuxia master young wuxia master will of course win.

[aobst128]

Malk_Content wrote:

Okay fine all high level characters are wild in almost every aspect of capability. Therefore an 8 str character is as narratively strong as an 18 and ability scores do not and never had any contribution to flavour. Also my all mighty spellcaster is a lvl 20 fighter with trick magic items and a wand because he can cast fireball better than the first level wizard.

Now, I didn't say any of that. I'm just saying that it's not inconceivable to imagine an 8 strength character as something other than a weakling. Stats can and do contribute to concepts of course but I'm just making a point that those concepts are allowed a little nuance based on how the rest of the character is built.

[aobst128]

That's what I like about the thaumaturge. You can have 8 int but still be extremely knowledgeable and competent on many subjects.

[Squiggit]

Martialmasters wrote:

If they were trying to deal with bioessentialism, why not remove these classes stat array and replace EVERYONE'S with the new ruling?

It feels really bizarre to me to complain about your customization being restricted, and then complain that they didn't restrict your options even further.

[Oceanshieldwolf]

I think the OP is being earnest. And I support anyone who at the very least wants to have a discussion about precedents and associated futures. Do I think it is as important as say…rising sea levels? No. Is it important for people to understand and discuss cultural shifts. Probably. Is this the forum to do it? Why not, sure.

It’s a thought piece, not troll-bait. Some people won’t care, fair enough. But really, I don’t see edge, or bait or waffle. Seems pretty clearly laid out, thoughtfully presented, self deprecating and insightful.

To me it’s more a socio-cultural statement on how language is used for one purpose (“let’s not have bio-essentialism ruining our game”), but then isn’t actually adhered to (“but if we take it to an illogical/logical conclusion we won’t have much of a game humans might recognise”). And how communities react to the initial statement, react to their own reactions, and react to posts like these. These chips taste great. More!

[SuperBidi]

Ravingdork wrote:

If a person can't tell the difference between an orc or drow and real world ethnic minorities

A lot of people can tell the similarities between orcs and real world ethnic minorities, and that's the issue.

Social sciences evolve, and behaviors that were ok a couple decades ago are now no more and may become unacceptable in the future. We have a more advanced and complex reading of our society than we ever had, that's progress.

We must not consider that we can keep acting like we always have without slowly becoming jerks. That's life, we have to constantly adapt. And it's also true for our morality. If we keep on evolving, we'll become better persons.

[Malk_Content]

I think that progress has been made by Paizo on presenting most ancestries as having multiple cultures and ethnicities. It's hard to say "hey x are obviously y" when there are rainbow dwarves who commune with cloud dragons.

As for orks, the cultural use for that as a pejorative is definitely not some marginalised group.

[Gortle]

SuperBidi wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

If a person can't tell the difference between an orc or drow and real world ethnic minorities

A lot of people can tell the similarities between orcs and real world ethnic minorities, and that's the issue.

I am sorry but it is always possible to see similarities between any society A and another B, fictional or real. I mean I agree we should not be encouraging certain negative stereotypes, so yes there are some things we should clean up. But removing everything that could possibly be missinterpreted is an impossible and undesirable result.

How utopian do you want your fantasy to be? What parts of your fantasy game are going to be like a real medieval world, or is it going to be modern world with a medieval flavour. I guess the default world has to be pretty tame. But when I GM I tend to diverge a lot. I think it undermines peoples understanding of how we really got to where we are as a society, if we constantly gloss over the reality of real world historical issues in our games.

SuperBidi wrote:

Social sciences evolve, and behaviors that were ok a couple decades ago are now no more and may become unacceptable in the future. We have a more advanced and complex reading of our society than we ever had, that's progress.

The word Social and Science together is very dubious these days. Mostly it is not Science but Politics. There is a lot of throwing together a loaded questionaire to a small population with a voluntary response then writing a paper on it. Social Science really needs to clean up its act.

SuperBidi wrote:

We must not consider that we can keep acting like we always have without slowly becoming jerks. That's life, we have to constantly adapt. And it's also true for our morality. If we keep on evolving, we'll become better persons.

I don't believe my morality has significantly changed, perhaps my understanding of it has deepened. The basic principles of freedom, individual choice, and living at peace with everyone is the same. We are as a society much more tolerant of certain behaviours and much less of others, than in the past. So in that sense I have also changed. Just don't expect my morality to be the same as yours - it is not.

[SuperBidi]

Sorry Gortle, but I can only disagree deeply with your post.

Gortle wrote:

But removing everything that could possibly be missinterpreted is an impossible and undesirable result.

That's a strawman. By similarities, I don't speak of small details but about societies that are similar on enough levels to consider one an analogy of the other (a prejudicial analogy, of course).

Gortle wrote:

Social Science really needs to clean up its act.

Progress is not linear. In the last century in my country women got the right to vote, homosexuality became legal and death penalty has been removed. There can be hickups, overall the direction is fine.

Gortle wrote:

I don't believe my morality has significantly changed

My post was not meant to open a philosophical question as to what can be considered an evolution of morality or just a better application of it or whatever. There's an evolution of morality regarding question like racism, sexism, child abuse, sexual orientation and so on. If you don't follow the evolution, your behavior becomes slowly more and more problematic (well, one can say that it was already problematic, just now it's better understood and it's more visible).

[Animakuro]

First, I want to thank everyone who’s engaged with the discussion in good faith. I know it can be easy to not do so when the opening responses are dismissal and to be entirely fair, the arguments I presented aren’t perfect, but I digress.

I think it was a mistake to go into so many questions and hypotheticals without actually clarifying what my stance on this is.
From a gameplay standpoint, I do think there being mechanical difference between Ancestries is good design. If you offer players choice, the decision should actually mean something.

I do think every Ancestry/Class combination should be viable – but I think there should be some that are better than others and generally, the optimal ones should be the iconic ones. Halfling Rogue, Dwarf Fighter, Orc Barbarian, Elf Wizard and so on. I think the gap between Viable and Optimal shouldn’t be too great; the chasm between such characters in 3.5/PF1 act as a good example – but I think the distinction should exist.

But there’s two problems with this:

1. As I’ve mentioned before, the line between Viable and Optimal is largely subjective. Now that Orcs can boost Intelligence from their Ancestry, many people think that’s enough to make Orc Wizards viable. Others feel the gulf of options involving Heritage and Ancestry feats between them and other Ancestries means they still clearly fall behind – the extra survivability with their initial HP and some Ancestry Feats does benefit them, but the sheer number of options other Ancestries get tailored to spellcasters still leaves them lacking in comparison.

2. Everything above I believe is fine – good design, even – from a gameplay standpoint. From an ethical standpoint, I’m not sure. You can believe two conflicting things at once, and what I think makes for a better roleplaying game and what I think makes for better worldbuilding/narrative/representation don’t entirely align. I LIKE Ancestry feats, some minor Ancestry mechanical differences and so on. That doesn’t stop me questioning if these things are reinforcing the same bio-essentialist undertones preset Ability Boosts do, even if more subtly.

And onto what I believe, as I was criticized for bringing my own demographics and political beliefs into this. I’m one of those people that believes all art/media is inherently political and shaped by the beliefs/biases of the author.

This is why I think it’s important to be completely transparent what my own values and biases are when making my argument. There was some confusion as how most of this relates to leftist beliefs and how Marxist I am – I thought it would be apparent that my social beliefs were what I thought was relevant here, not my economic ones. My mistake. I apologize that the way I presented this was confusing – but not for the fact I believe it relevant to the discussion.

I don’t think the fact that Halflings, Dwarves, Orcs and other fantasy races are fictional completely shields them from any criticism in their design, especially when several are consistently categorized as an allegory of certain real world ethnic groups. This IS muddied by the fact it isn’t consistent across creators and not all Ancestries take real world ethnic groups as their inspiration. Pathfinder Gnomes draw more inspiration from Depression, ADHD and other mental illnesses, in my opinion. The fact that Golarian has Ethnicity as a distinct element of one’s being from their Ancestry is good and does work in their favour against the “Fantasy Race=Real World Ethnicity” argument, but it does not absolve them of all criticism.

As has been pointed out, I definitely made a grave mistake between equating all physiological differences between different Ancestries to harmful bio-essentialist beliefs. I think most people don’t have an issue with “Gnolls having sharper teeth” than Elves or Dragonborn/Kobolds being able to breath elemental forces. It’s when we assign them absolutist values and qualities that restrict who they are and what they can be. All Gnolls being savage brutes and all Dragonborn being honourbound and noble is an issue.

I don’t think Ancestral differences being magical in nature completely avoids the issue – throughout history, there were beliefs certain ethnicities were presupposed to supernatural/evil powers and that was used as justification to wrong them.

From the nature of the initial post, I can see how easy it is to imagine that I believe in some kind of “THE SKY IS FALLING, RPGS ARE RUINED” or “EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH THIS IS BIGOTED” hyperbole where I really don’t. I believe these discussions are important and will continue to have impact in the TTRPG industry for a number of years, but my motivation for posting was simply that I find the topic interesting and worthy of debate.

I made the initial post so long in an attempt to cover every single facet and argument I had, when due to the nature of the discussion that is simply impossible. My post was very long, and thus it has many flaws in the ways the arguments are presented and holes in some my arguments. (No doubt this post will do the same)

For all I’ll say this, I will still defend myself in believing that the core of the argument I was making stands true.

I think one of the best responses was pointing that nothing is forcing Paizo to be completely internally consistent with their logic on this issue or follow it to its extreme conclusion. I was certainly a bit absolutist in the way I presented my arguments and it does have elements of a “Slippery Slope” argument and bring up some False Equivalences.

But I believe where people are deciding to draw the line on this is mostly a matter of convenience. People are *mostly* accepting the change to Ability Boosts because they like the new option. More customizability, Yay!

We don’t like Bio-essentialism in our games AND we like more character flexibility, win-win.

Even people who don’t agree with the reasoning behind the change can get behind it, because they like it what it does to the game.

People also like Ancestry HP, Heritages, Speed, Languages and especially Ancestry Feats. So when the idea of that they’re also bio-essentialist in nature comes up, it’s dismissed much more easily because we like those things and don’t want them to go. This also applies to D&D5E and the race/species features it offers, barely anyone is talking about those.

As soon as we start to question if the things we like could have ethical issues, a lot less people are interested in talking about what that means and if they have to go. I absolutely don’t think the conclusion to that argument needs to be “Yes, they need to go” but the fact that many (Not all) are refusing to have the discussion at all speaks volumes.

[Mokmurian the Great]

Ravingdork wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I mean, the basic framing of "these people are all stupid because of what kind of people they are" is troubling because it reflects actual harmful ideas that have propagated in the real world to hurt actual people...

It's not wrong or immoral to say that your typical dog is not as intelligent as an avaerage human. When you start talking about other species (which other ancestries are, if not even farther divorced on the scientific classification spectrum) then you absolutely can have distinct physical and mental differences between people and/or monsters.

And since it's all fantasy anyways, it's not going to hurt anyone unless they are already having trouble telling the difference between fantasy and reality (at which point there are FAR bigger issues that need to be addressed).

If a person can't tell the difference between an orc or drow and real world ethnic minorities, then they've already gone so far gone off the deep end as to make rational discussion impractical if not completely impossible.

What's next? Are we going to stop saying that alghollthu have alien mindsets because it makes them sound inhuman, or might offend real world fish?

Valid point. In both real life and PF2E, there is no meaningful genetic difference between races of one species, hence why there are no rules to distinguish between races (the Core Rulebook makes it clear on page 33 that heritage is independent of race/ethnicity). However, while there is no genetic difference between a Mwangi human and an Erutaki human, there will be at least some degree of genetic difference between humans and, for instance, strix or vishkanya (unless you're taking the stance that humans have poisonous blood or can fly).

I think a lot of this boils down to ambiguous wording. TSR and WOTC both used "race" to distinguish between humans, elves, dwarves, etc, so when Paizo introduced "ancestry" for the same concept, people associated "ancestry" with "race," when in fact "race" was the wrong term in the first place. PF2E has no rules regarding race. "Ancestry" is more accurately translated as "species."

[BigNorseWolf]

SuperBidi wrote:

That's a strawman. By similarities, I don't speak of small details but about societies that are similar on enough levels to consider one an analogy of the other (a prejudicial analogy, of course).

I've seen sincere arguments that amounted to that. People denied they amounted to that, but had no mechanism to keep their argument from dropping out that result.

The sheer number and distance of jumps you need to make from "Culture drops out of a petrie dish" in a fictional game somehow equates to real life harm can very easily be seen as allowing nearly anything if you're skeptical of the rationale behind those jumps.

[aobst128]

I think the important thing is that regardless of specific cultural parallels, ancestries still code as people so you can always draw that line to the real world.

[Malk_Content]

aobst128 wrote:

I think the important thing is that regardless of specific cultural parallels, ancestries still code as people so you can always draw that line to the real world.

I really don't think you can in PF2 as.it is presented. Someone brought up how it was obvious who Lizardfolk were mea t to be representing, but they never clarified who and I was able to bring out half a dozen possibilities without even opening a book to look further.

Like I think if Orcs were called Burshen in PF2 (or whatever made up word want) people wouldn't really be able to say "oh well they are coded to this group." Because they are presented as a diverse group drawing on several separate geographical tropes. The fact people.are upset about Orcs is baggage from older settings and very little to do with their modern pf2e depictions.

[aobst128]

Malk_Content wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

I think the important thing is that regardless of specific cultural parallels, ancestries still code as people so you can always draw that line to the real world.

I really don't think you can in PF2 as.it is presented. Someone brought up how it was obvious who Lizardfolk were mea t to be representing, but they never clarified who and I was able to bring out half a dozen possibilities without even opening a book to look further.

Like I think if Orcs were called Burshen in PF2 (or whatever made up word want) people wouldn't really be able to say "oh well they are coded to this group." Because they are presented as a diverse group drawing on several separate geographical tropes. The fact people.are upset about Orcs is baggage from older settings and very little to do with their modern pf2e depictions.

Right. That's why I said regardless of that. There doesn't need to be specific examples for a general idea of why Paizo would want this change. As long as you can recognize ancestries as people, it's not a bad idea to have similar moral standards in how they're represented.

[Malk_Content]

The problem then is at this point we either just trash pretty much any flavour from the ancestries or we cut from the past by rebranding them. If orcs, drow etc are always going to be problematic due to what some people 10 years ago wrote then they might as well just be cut.

Paizo isn't representing (pre errata) any ethnic group unethically as far as I can tell. And nobody seems willing to point out exact issues to be resolved. So instead of tightening up or offering a broader look at some problematic ancestries, we instead strip all of them of ability flaws (at least it seems going forward) in an effort to fight some repeatedly not well defined issue. Which is all why we get threads like this asking "well what else needs to change?" Because if you don't specify the problem clearly, you'll never know if the answer is correct.

[WWHsmackdown]

I, for one, am more excited to make a a kobold dragon barbarian than I ever was before. That's as much as I can contribute this conversation. My pool of ancestry options for given classes increasing = net positive game change.

[aobst128]

Malk_Content wrote:

The problem then is at this point we either just trash pretty much any flavour from the ancestries or we cut from the past by rebranding them. If orcs, drow etc are always going to be problematic due to what some people 10 years ago wrote then they might as well just be cut.

Paizo isn't representing (pre errata) any ethnic group unethically as far as I can tell. And nobody seems willing to point out exact issues to be resolved. So instead of tightening up or offering a broader look at some problematic ancestries, we instead strip all of them of ability flaws (at least it seems going forward) in an effort to fight some repeatedly not well defined issue. Which is all why we get threads like this asking "well what else needs to change?" Because if you don't specify the problem clearly, you'll never know if the answer is correct.

I think you're right in that Paizo has done a good job in how they've done ancestries. The relevant efforts are all the lore and details they offer to flesh out different ancestries. This recent change is not huge and just reinforces an attitude they already had. I probably wouldn't ask for anything else. At least nothing I can think of right now.

[WWHsmackdown]

Actually, I can add more. I'm running newbies through outlaws of alkenstar on foundry vtt. One made a catfolk cloistered cleric, another tried to make a leshy intelligence psychic (I convinced him to change to charisma), and after his psychic died that same player made a grippli frog instinct barbarian. In all instances I had to jump in and customize their stat arrays bc they were floundering learning the system and telling someone "you picked the wrong ancestry for this class" was not what I wanted to do in the slightest. I also didn't want their introduction after the beginner box to be floundering at landing spells or strikes bc they made the character they wanted to. In each instance, I made custom attributes that basically amounted to the errata change weeks before it dropped. Allowing the ancestry/class combo in your head to function with full efficacy so you can't make "wrong" decisions in char-gen is AOK in my book and only serves to make on-boarding and player enjoyment run smoother. It was the right call as far as I'm concerned looking at the change from the DM's seat

[Martialmasters]

Squiggit wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

If they were trying to deal with bioessentialism, why not remove these classes stat array and replace EVERYONE'S with the new ruling?

It feels really bizarre to me to complain about your customization being restricted, and then complain that they didn't restrict your options even further.

My post was in of itself criticizing the use is the term bioessentialism. And showing any it was a poor reason for a change because it's getting applied incredibly narrowly.

Also saw someone mentioned how something like movement speed not mattering for bioessentialism because it doesn't inhibit what class to play.

Maybe not, but I've seen plenty of dwarves die simply because they were slow in games.

I'm hard pressed to believe paizo used this term soley to deal with ease of class access. That seems more like other players showing where they care and where they don't

[Gortle]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

I, for one, am more excited to make a a kobold dragon barbarian than I ever was before. That's as much as I can contribute this conversation. My pool of ancestry options for given classes increasing = net positive game change.

I'm glad you have discovered it. Such an option was always viable. The bad think about the existing variable flaws rule was that it was complex and often misunderstood. If they had given that as a reason for replacing it I would have had to concede the point as fair.

[Gortle]

SuperBidi wrote:

Sorry Gortle, but I can only disagree deeply with your post.

Really. I don't see anything in your response as a real objection. If it was aimed at me it was misaimed.

Look there are always extremes that take things too far, I get really tired of having to fend off attacks aimed at the extremes which are really nothing to do with my position. That is pure politics, which I'm not interested in playing.

I'm not denying that there has been good progress. Just that not everything people claim as progress is good, and that some of the logic out there is quite frankly false. There are reasonable positions in the middle.

Anyway that is getting way off topic.

[Gortle]

Mokmurian the Great wrote:

I think a lot of this boils down to ambiguous wording. TSR and WOTC both used "race" to distinguish between humans, elves, dwarves, etc, so when Paizo introduced "ancestry" for the same concept, people associated "ancestry" with "race," when in fact "race" was the wrong term in the first place. PF2E has no rules regarding race. "Ancestry" is more accurately translated as "species."

In some sense yes. But in this game a lot of these species can interbreed, so maybe race is appropriate.

[Malk_Content]

Eh many separate species in the real can interbreed, that isn't necessarily a defining factor.

[Malk_Content]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

snip for length

I think those are all good points. Nothing about that is incompatible with the idea of amcestries with flaws. The new rule alone works to make such combinations work. No need to combine that with the halting of ancestries with ++,-,free.

[roquepo]

As I see it, this is more of a "we don't want our system to be part of a possible issue" kind of thing. They are not addressing it directly, they just want to not be a part of it (same thing Paizo did with the slavery thing some time ago).

As another user pointed out in another thread (can't remember who, sorry), there where 2 issues with the previous system. The first was mostly a mechanical one, and that is that certain classes just don't work with certain ancestries. A Dwarf Thaumarurge has to sacrifice a lot just to reach a playable status, and then you are left with a flawed character. Flawed characters are cool, but not everyone wants to play one, sometimes people just want to feel strong playing pretend and that that feeling was sometimes not compatible with playing the class and ancestry you wanted sucked.

The second issue comes with how voluntary flaws or ancestries with flaws, optimizing and stats in general work. Most of the time, characters used them for the boost and not for the flaws. That ends with flawed characters played by players that most likely don't care much about that flawed nature and just want a power gain. Due to how stats work, STR, INT and CHA will be chosen most of the time as the dump stat of choice. In most cases this ends up fine, but overall this causes an overabundance of "weak", "grumpy/awkward" and "dumb" characters that eventually will be played by someone that will represent these flaws in such a way that may hurt other players due to parallels that you can trace between some of the game ancestries and some IRL ethnities, minorities or demographics. The thing that these changes accomplish is that the game is no longer making these situations more common.

TL,DR: The change is a solution to a mechanical issue the system had that also tries to be less of an incentive for hurtful roleplay.

[Gortle]

Animakuro wrote:

I don’t think the fact that Halflings, Dwarves, Orcs and other fantasy races are fictional completely shields them from any criticism in their design, especially when several are consistently categorized as an allegory of certain real world ethnic groups.

The only people I've found who are at all concerned about the potential allegory are political activists. Not everday people. That was never the point of Tolkien writings.

Animakuro wrote:

This IS muddied by the fact it isn’t consistent across creators and not all Ancestries take real world ethnic groups as their inspiration. Pathfinder Gnomes draw more inspiration from Depression, ADHD and other mental illnesses, in my opinion. The fact that Golarian has Ethnicity as a distinct element of one’s being from their Ancestry is good and does work in their favour against the “Fantasy Race=Real World Ethnicity” argument, but it does not absolve them of all criticism.

Isn't consistent? Try almost not mentioned at all. For most of the last twenty years at least.

I have never heard of your take on Gnomes but yes I can see a few pointers as to how you arrived at that. Does it make it true? Should we not play Gnomes because of it? I don't think that is a reasonable response. Yet I certainly would stop using them locally if it was going to affect a player.

[Ravingdork]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Actually, I can add more. I'm running newbies through outlaws of alkenstar on foundry vtt. One made a catfolk cloistered cleric, another tried to make a leshy intelligence psychic (I convinced him to change to charisma), and after his psychic died that same player made a grippli frog instinct barbarian. In all instances I had to jump in and customize their stat arrays bc they were floundering learning the system and telling someone "you picked the wrong ancestry for this class" was not what I wanted to do in the slightest. I also didn't want their introduction after the beginner box to be floundering at landing spells or strikes bc they made the character they wanted to. In each instance, I made custom attributes that basically amounted to the errata change weeks before it dropped. Allowing the ancestry/class combo in your head to function with full efficacy so you can't make "wrong" decisions in char-gen is AOK in my book and only serves to make on-boarding and player enjoyment run smoother. It was the right call as far as I'm concerned looking at the change from the DM's seat

Sounds to me like you were micromanaging the new player unnecessarily.

You don't really need to do anything beyond "make sure you have at least a 16 in your primary attribute" and the game pretty much takes care of everything else.

I've been in dozens of games, and I've never seen anyone make a failing character unless that was their goal.

I think people read the optimization notes on these boards and get into the mindset that if they don't optimize, they're dead (or worse, dead weight). In actual play, under a half dozen GMs, that just hasn't been my experience. This leads me to believe that it isn't as bad or as stringent as people make it out to be online.

[Martialmasters]

16 in your primary is fine yeah. I prefer putting 18 in mine when I can. But I've but seen a trend of 16 starting stats resulting in character deaths or even frustration

[Mokmurian the Great]

Animakuro wrote:

Back to Adopted Ancestry, let's not forget in most cases you have to wait to Level 3 to take your first General feat and take this feat. What does this say about these characters? You can't just do something associated with your adopted ancestry, you have to put in a huge amount and be exceptional - a 3rd level character - to do so?

I think a solution to this already exists. The Deep Backgrounds subsystem can be found in the Gamemastery Guide on page 186 (or HERE for those using Archives of Nethys) and already incorporates this into its design. Rather than getting the skill feat normally associated with the premade backgrounds, you can select Adopted Ancestry as your background feat (Table 4-6, row 9) and select Dwarven Weapon Familiarity or what have you as your first-level ancestry feat.

[aobst128]

16s are fine for martials I think. Since item bonuses help keep you regular and flanking is easy. inventor and thaumaturge work fine with them. Spellcasters on the other hand, are in much more need of an as high as possible modifier.

[Mokmurian the Great]

Ravingdork wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Actually, I can add more. I'm running newbies through outlaws of alkenstar on foundry vtt. One made a catfolk cloistered cleric, another tried to make a leshy intelligence psychic (I convinced him to change to charisma), and after his psychic died that same player made a grippli frog instinct barbarian. In all instances I had to jump in and customize their stat arrays bc they were floundering learning the system and telling someone "you picked the wrong ancestry for this class" was not what I wanted to do in the slightest. I also didn't want their introduction after the beginner box to be floundering at landing spells or strikes bc they made the character they wanted to. In each instance, I made custom attributes that basically amounted to the errata change weeks before it dropped. Allowing the ancestry/class combo in your head to function with full efficacy so you can't make "wrong" decisions in char-gen is AOK in my book and only serves to make on-boarding and player enjoyment run smoother. It was the right call as far as I'm concerned looking at the change from the DM's seat

Sounds to me like you were micromanaging the new player unnecessarily.

You don't really need to do anything beyond "make sure you have at least a 16 in your primary attribute" and the game pretty much takes care of everything else.

I've been in dozens of games, and I've never seen anyone make a failing character unless that was their goal.

I think people read the optimization notes on these boards and get into the mindset that if they don't optimize, they're dead (or worse, dead weight). In actual play, under a half dozen GMs, that just hasn't been my experience. This leads me to believe that it isn't as bad or as stringent as people make it out to be online.

I actually feel that the rules change for ancestry stat boosts does serve a valuable purpose. As a GM (admittedly, a not very experienced one) who enjoys PF2E for its roleplaying options, I'm not a huge fan of min-maxers, but I feel that by making this optional rules change, Paizo makes it easier to optimize a build with a variety of character concepts. It might just be unwarranted optimism, but I believe this change might encourage munchkins to explore more unconventional character concepts rather than picking a generic character build, which could lead to a greater involvement in the character and an increased appreciation for the roleplaying aspects of PF2E that are too often ignored.

[Temperans]

Being able to interbreed just tells you two species are closely related. Also the fact two species can interbreed with a third does not mean that they can interbreed with each other. For example if Plant A <-> Plant B <-> Plant C <-> Plant D, it does not mean Plant A <-> Plant D.

This is where a lot of the issue happens. People are treating it as if all ancestries are the same species, when they are clearly not. A pixie is not an android its not a skeleton its not a ghoran its not an astomoi. But people complaining about hoe the game has "bioessentialism" are trying to say your ancestry doesn't matter. But ancestry does matter and we shouldn't be saying that it doesn't because someone things some fantasy species has a similar culture to an IRL culture (there are only so many types of cultures).

[Martialmasters]

aobst128 wrote:

16s are fine for martials I think. Since item bonuses help keep you regular and flanking is easy. inventor and thaumaturge work fine with them. Spellcasters on the other hand, are in much more need of an as high as possible modifier.

Still have seen an issue here either

[Baron Ulfhamr]

Malk_Content wrote:

The problem then is at this point we either just trash pretty much any flavour from the ancestries or we cut from the past by rebranding them. If orcs, drow etc are always going to be problematic due to what some people 10 years ago wrote then they might as well just be cut.

Strong disagreement. Orcs and drow were written as enemies, their species influenced by evil outsiders and/or cultivated specifically for nefarious purpose. You're special exceptional character (Drizzt) was a breakout requiring story explanation. Rebranding feels a cheap fix to imagined parallels to real world humans that these fictional species are not.

A lot of the "wrong ancestry" argument comes from optimizers- a halfling barbarian who exceeds an orc barbarian given the cultural and genetic tendencies for each species is exceptional, legendary even. Why cheapen that?

[Squiggit]

Nothing's cheapened.

[Temperans]

It is cheapened if it went from "requiring specific training and surpasing your species limitation" to "oh any anyone can do it, its not really special".

[PossibleCabbage]

Malk_Content wrote:

The problem then is at this point we either just trash pretty much any flavour from the ancestries or we cut from the past by rebranding them. If orcs, drow etc are always going to be problematic due to what some people 10 years ago wrote then they might as well just be cut.

Well, I mean on one hand it would be fine if in a hypothetical Pathfinder 3e there was absolutely no effect from your ancestry except for "what kinds of Ancestry Feats or Feat-Equivalents there are available to you." Then we can make things like "Dwarves see in the dark, Elves are fast" an opt in thing (possibly as packages.)

I think the thing about "traditional enemies" in elfgames, is that as soon as you start making those things available as PCs, you have to start thinking of them as people. Once you start thinking of them as people, you have to start seeing things from their perspective at least a little. Like it's fine to give Orcs a culture that's ultimately about strength and dominance, but when you start thinking about that from the perspective of a person who is from that culture you realize that they would phrase these things differently as they're thinking about the unpredictable nature of life and the need to make the most of it. Orcs can be a fearsome antagonist, but they should also be a people who have art and music and sports and culture and most Orcs are worried about things more relevant to their immediate lives than "conquest."

The whole "this race of people are just innately evil" was always irksome less because it's offensive and more because it's lazy.

[Baron Ulfhamr]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

The whole "this race of people are just innately evil" was always irksome less because it's offensive and more because it's lazy.

I think some of this comes from original authors of books, games, etc. created heroes and villains- and told the story from the side of the heroes without much detail given to the other. This is fine for video game minions but becomes problematic when history is treated this way. Fans are now asking for deep explanations of motivating forces for every monster in the book, partially because they want to play them (as I do often), but innate evil is another separate rabbit hole. How about genetic tendency toward aggression, cultural practice of demon worship and/or cannibalism? These are tendencies, but not inviolate rules, but they set a default for monstrous races that I really don't see an issue with.

[FormerFiend]

Quote:

The only people I've found who are at all concerned about the potential allegory are political activists. Not everday people. That was never the point of Tolkien writings.

Yes, most people aren't consciously aware of harmful subtext in the media they consume & only really take it on a surface level. Doesn't change that the harmful subtext is there.

[aobst128]

I don't know. I'd wager that not many people actually want to just get rid of orcs. They're too iconic of the genre. I don't think this recent ability score change is evidence of a slippery slope Paizo is now bound to.

[PossibleCabbage]

I think the issue ultimately is that evil individuals are automatic, evil groups are easy (no GM has ever had trouble conjuring forth bandits or cultists), and evil cultures are fine. Where we want to draw the line is "evil species" particularly when that species is made up of individuals we can identify with as people.

So I never really understood why a beer and pretzels sort of "good guys beat up bad guys" game really needed to come down on "Orcs are evil because they're Orcs" when "we fight the bandits because they're engaging in banditry" or "we fight the invading army because they are invading our homes" or "we fight the cultists because they're trying to sacrifice innocents to bring about the end of the world" are rarely inaccessible.

[PossibleCabbage]

But how hard is it to establish context for "everything in this area is probably fine to murk"? Like "we're in the castle of the Necromancer" or "we're in the Cult's underground hideout" or "we're approaching the bandit fortress" pretty clearly signals that everybody you're liable to fight is an antagonist.