I just came to realize that Stryx don't have any 17th-level ancestry feats. Doesn't that* make them inferior to other ancestry choices?
Are there other ancestries with few to no feats at certain levels? If so, why haven't those gaps been filed to bring them more in line with traditional ancestries?
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If you go through them all, something like half of the ancestries only have 0 or 1 17th level ancestry feat.
0 17th level feats: Gnoll, Grippli, Anadi, Android, Fleshwarp, Shisk, Shoony, Strix
1 17th level feat: Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Human, Orc, Azarketi, Fetchling, Kitsune, Ratfolk, Vanara, Conrasu, Ghoran, Goloma, Sprite
Most ancestries have the number of new feats taper off significantly past 5th level feats. (An exception seems to be Tengu, who surprisingly have a ton of 17th level feats) Which makes sense, you can take a 1st level ancestry feat 5 times on a character, while you can only take a 17th feat once. Skill feats are pretty similarly paced.
Paizo doesn't consider Ancestry feats to be a signifant factor in character power. The old Gamemastery Guide variant rules indicate that doubling the number of ancestry feats or eliminating them all but entirely is unlikely to impact game balance in the original dev's view. If page space is running low, 17th level ancestry feats are almost certainly the first thing to get cut.
If you go through them all, something like half of the ancestries only have 0 or 1 17th level ancestry feat.
*headsplode*
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If you are really Jonesing for 17th level ancestry feats (and the available 13th level ones don't work for that character), then check if taking a versatile heritage can fill the gap.
For a strix, the nephilim heritage or even better sylph (for Swift at 1st and Storm Form at 17th) can be thematic.
Orc is in a similar boat if you aren't going the Orc Ferocity route.
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1 17th level feat: ... Sprite
Sprites don't have any 17th-level feats. Hero's Wings was errata'd down to level 9.
I just came to realize that Stryx don't have any 17th-level ancestry feats. Doesn't that* make them inferior to other ancestry choices?
Strix are a strong choice due to their early flight (and no fall damage). This opens up using versatile heritages for other things than just getting permanent flight (via Nephilim or such).
I find funny how there's some people that can't play with Ancestry Paragon.
I, however, most of the time don't even know what to do with my ancestry feats.
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Yeah ancestry feats are probably one of my biggest gripe with the system. It's a reoccurring issue (at least as far as I'm concerned), that many ancestries have levels where there's either nothing, or functionally nothing, if you don't meet a certain prereq. I'm very much hoping for an "Ancestry Guide 2" (probably with a better name) that addresses this.
I understand there's probably logistical restrictions like time or page counts, but at least personally, I'd rather see less ancestries that are more fleshed out.
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I wouldn't be in favor of giving all ancestries access to Natural Ambition, but I certainly would be in favor of allowing all ancestries to take General Training and Advanced General Training. You'll be switching an ancestry feat for a general feat (which are considered to be weaker) and if you are playing an ancestry that doesn't have anything you want you'll at least have the option to take a general feat or skill feat.
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I mean, Adopted Ancestry doesn't give you a feat to choose when you take it, which means that at the very least you'll have to wait to 7th level to actually take Natural Ambition or whatever you want from a human, and by that point, a 1st-level class feat isn't that fantastic honestly.
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I mean, Adopted Ancestry doesn't give you a feat to choose when you take it, which means that at the very least you'll have to wait to 7th level to actually take Natural Ambition or whatever you want from a human, and by that point, a 1st-level class feat isn't that fantastic honestly.
5th level actually. And I swear any non-Human Kineticist PC of mine will definitely be Adopted by Humans.
For feat-starved classes, it is worth considering too.
And if you're using Ancestry Paragon, 3rd.The General Feat I take at 3rd is Adopted Ancestry. How do you grab Ancestry Paragon at that level too ?
You can get Adopted Ancestry with options like Adaptive Anadi or Deep Backgrounds.
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3rd is Adopted Ancestry. How do you grab Ancestry Paragon at that level too ?Ancestry Paragon is the Optional Rule where you get 2 Ancestry feats at Level 1, and 1 additional ancestry feat at Level 3, and every 2nd level after.
So in a game that runs it, you can spend your general feat on Adopted Ancestry, and your Level 3 Ancestry Feat on your new ancestry's feats.
I see. I mixed that with the Ancestral Paragon general feat.
If you go through them all, something like half of the ancestries only have 0 or 1 17th level ancestry feat.
But it it OK as you say just take lower level feats.
There is Cultural Adaptability and Adopted Ancestry feat to sample other ancestries.
The 5th level Fey Influence feat opens any ancestry up to stack of Fey feats.
Then there are all the Versatile Heritages you can branch into, that opens up whole new feat tries.
There is a lot there. But I still would like to see a few more feats for exisiting ancestries.
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The thing is, not all characters want that. If you are like me and don't want to play as "strawberry leshy that is in reality a dhampir but also tiefling somehow" you are usually limited to whatever you ancestry gives you. This is why I think generic ancestry feats that all ancestries can take wouldn't really hurt, specially if those can cover very generic options that could otherwise save page space (almost every ancestry has a "You gain low-light vision, or if you already have it, darkvision" that could instead become a generic ancestry feat for everybody to take. Sadly the remaster already happened so this isn't going to happen, but it would have worked wonderfully I think.
The thing is, not all characters want that. If you are like me and don't want to play as "strawberry leshy that is in reality a dhampir but also tiefling somehow" you are usually limited to whatever you ancestry gives you. This is why I think generic ancestry feats that all ancestries can take wouldn't really hurt, specially if those can cover very generic options that could otherwise save page space (almost every ancestry has a "You gain low-light vision, or if you already have it, darkvision" that could instead become a generic ancestry feat for everybody to take. Sadly the remaster already happened so this isn't going to happen, but it would have worked wonderfully I think.
I find myself in that category too. Sometimes ancestries are shoehorned into 1 or 2 good paths. Sometimes that is OK. More often I want something different. The only current answer is to branch into a common ancestry like human via Adopted Ancestry and think of it as a developing familiarisation with the culture. But that doesn't always make sense from a character concept point of view.
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The Elf Atavism feat is another one that could be a generalized option available to all versatile heritages, allowing you to have a normal heritage from your base ancestry as a 1st-level ancestry (lineage?) feat. That way those feat-starved ancestries don't have to lose their heritage options when taking a versatile heritage for feat-starvation reasons.
In case you missed it All Ancestries is an Archive of Nethys invention. I'll have to update my Ancestry Guide as there are a dozen new feats in Pathfinder #199: To Bloom Below the Web
Paizo clearly wants Ancestries to mechanically be a non-significant part of your character so you can play whatever Ancestry with whatever class/build. In my opinion, they should be scrapped with skill feats and replaced with something much simpler. If the only goal of an ancestry is to give roleplay opportunities and a specific appearance to your character then there's no need to have associated feats and such.
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This is why I think generic ancestry feats that all ancestries can take wouldn't really hurt, specially if those can cover very generic options that could otherwise save page space (almost every ancestry has a "You gain low-light vision, or if you already have it, darkvision" that could instead become a generic ancestry feat for everybody to take. Sadly the remaster already happened so this isn't going to happen, but it would have worked wonderfully I think.
It sounds to me like what you are describing are (non-skill) General feats.
Paizo clearly wants Ancestries to mechanically be a non-significant part of your character so you can play whatever Ancestry with whatever class/build. In my opinion, they should be scrapped with skill feats and replaced with something much simpler. If the only goal of an ancestry is to give roleplay opportunities and a specific appearance to your character then there's no need to have associated feats and such.
I agree a simplification of feats that consolidates ancestry feats and general feats into a single "pool" would be a nice change for a variant rule or even PF3e. I also think having 4 categories of feats can be a little intimidating for new players since it can lead to someone to think they'll have to sift through lists and lists of feats to make a choice, when in fact class feats are the only feats that can lead you to a "bad choice" (and not even that, but class feats are the ones that truly have an impact in your build). I wouldn't miss skill feats either. I feel their whole implementation is flawed.
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Paizo clearly wants Ancestries to mechanically be a non-significant part of your character so you can play whatever Ancestry with whatever class/build.
That is significantly overstating things. Your ancestry can have a quite significant impact on your character.
Broadly speaking, I think Paizo wants the vast majority of classes to be at least playable with the vast majority of ancestries, but they do NOT want the ancestry to have no effect and they do NOT want all character types to be anywhere close to optimal with all ancestries. And some ancestry/class combinations are so bad as to border on the unplayable (eg, a non pixie sprite intending to go into melee a lot).
For example, if you want to play a rogue thief there are some significant mechanical effects (basically improvements) in picking a 1/2 ling as opposed to a gnoll. Or perhaps having darkvision is very important to you so you limit yourself to the ancestries with darkvision.
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I think the thing they should have done is make sets of Ancestry Feats that apply to every ancestry. We can see this already in how basically every ancestry has a "lore" feat and several "weapons" feats. You could have just made those general ancestry feats and put a "lore" and "ancestral weapons" in the same column as "Hit Points", "Size", "Attribute Boosts/Flaw", etc.
That would open up page space to print more higher level feats for new ancestries since there would be no need to print like "Centaur Lore" or "Merfolk Weapon Familiarity" since there's already a general "Ancestry Lore" or "Ancestry Weapon Familiarity" feat.
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I think the thing they should have done is make sets of Ancestry Feats that apply to every ancestry. We can see this already in how basically every ancestry has a "lore" feat and several "weapons" feats. You could have just made those general ancestry feats and put a "lore" and "ancestral weapons" in the same column as "Hit Points", "Size", "Attribute Boosts/Flaw", etc.
That would open up page space to print more higher level feats for new ancestries since there would be no need to print like "Centaur Lore" or "Merfolk Weapon Familiarity" since there's already a general "Ancestry Lore" or "Ancestry Weapon Familiarity" feat.
By the same token, they could have avoided repeating the Skill increases, the ability boosts, the General, Ancestry and Skill feats gain in every class.
They did not.
I think the thing they should have done is make sets of Ancestry Feats that apply to every ancestry. We can see this already in how basically every ancestry has a "lore" feat and several "weapons" feats. You could have just made those general ancestry feats and put a "lore" and "ancestral weapons" in the same column as "Hit Points", "Size", "Attribute Boosts/Flaw", etc.
That would open up page space to print more higher level feats for new ancestries since there would be no need to print like "Centaur Lore" or "Merfolk Weapon Familiarity" since there's already a general "Ancestry Lore" or "Ancestry Weapon Familiarity" feat.
By the same token, they could have avoided repeating the Skill increases, the ability boosts, the General, Ancestry and Skill feats gain in every class.
They did not.
I feel this argument is reductive. Those aren't in the same realm of all the "You gain low-light vision" or "You become trained in X lore" feats that all ancestries have, those exist to avoid people having to cross reference other parts of the book to know what they gain at each level, which was a thing that was somewhat common in D&D 3.5 and D&D 4e. What PossibleCabbage suggest is something really easy to implement, and if implemented would increase page space so much that I'm surprised a company like Paizo that likes its lore very much didn't thought about it to have more free space to add lore bits.
Putting things you don't get without feats in the ancestry stat block of all the things you get doesn't seam new player friendly to me.
Literally nobody is saying that (though I don't think people would become crazy if ancestries granted you a lore and proficiencies with a few weapons honestly). It's literally something so simple like having a very short text box somewhere in the ancestry that says something like "Cultural Weapons: X" and if you take the "Ancestry Weapon Familiarity" you become proficient with them.
Putting things you don't get without feats in the ancestry stat block of all the things you get doesn't seam new player friendly to me.
Ancestry sidebar also lists the languages you have access to not necessarily the ones you speak. Like your Kashrishi PC likely does not speak Aquan, Celestial, Draconic, Sylvan, and Terran but those options are available to them and those words appear in the ancestry sidebar.
Additionally, just signposting "these are the traditional weapons of your people" and "these are the skills your people emphasize" can inform RPing choices that have nothing to do with feats. Like an Azarketi Fighter can use any weapon they want, but might want to use a Gill Hook or a Trident because those are the weapons of their people (or might want to specifically avoid those weapons for the same reason.)
You could have just made those general ancestry feats and put a "lore" and "ancestral weapons" in the same column as "Hit Points", "Size", "Attribute Boosts/Flaw", etc.
This is literally what was said. With no additions.
There's a huge difference between suggestions of languages next to the spot it says what and how many languages you get and having to make a side bar or new section that very specifically tells you options you could get access to with feats.
I'm just pointing out that you would have to make such a new section that would reference feats and rules else where in the book. I'm fairly sure we can all agree that hasn't been one of Paizo's strengths. Thus might be difficult for new players and a reason it wasn't done in the first place.