I think that they need to exist, but I think at this point it needs to official be changed. Racial Weapon feats should be automatic for the race for free. It would not hurt the mechanics and take out the requirement stock. The exception to this is if you take adopted ancestry, your weapon feat changes to that of the "adopted" heritage. You can still take the original weapons group, as you qualify, you just no longer get it free, as adopted changed what you get for free.
With the two new classes from "Imposable Playtest" They have class weapon feats for the two classes. This should be automatic for the class not a feat tax. These New feats are a waste, and should be part of the class, not a feat tax for the class they are part of. They could also be available for other classes , as a flavor for the build, or a replacement for they original feat list for the class. That last part may need more work.
Functionally though the racial/class feat tax is not something that should be kept in the game. This is a rule that gets house ruled away, at least for the racial weapon feats, in all games I have been in, by every gm I have played with.
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This is a rule that gets house ruled away, at least for the racial weapon feats, in all games I have been in, by every gm I have played with.
Awesome. Continue doing that.
I'm not sure why you are so adamant that everyone else in the world has to play the same way that you do though. That just seems strangely demanding for no reason.
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An issue with "everybody gets their ancestry's Weapon Familiarity for free" is the ancestries that don't have one would be at a comparative disadvatage- like there's no such thing as "Leshy Weapon Familiarity" or "Anadi Weapon Familiarity" or "Sprite Weapon Familiarity."
Using the Ancestry Paragon variant is a better solution, IMO.
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An issue with "everybody gets their ancestry's Weapon Familiarity for free" is the ancestries that don't have one would be at a comparative disadvatage...You also want to avoid "must take" ancestry/class combos, which giving each ancestry unique free proficiency to an uncommon martial weapon could create. The feat cost serves to balance the value of the access to a special weapon against the 'opportunity cost' of getting some other benefit.
It's not so much the uncommon martial weapons, but being able to treat advanced weapons as martial weapons for proficiency purposes. Perfect examples: a kobold rogue or thaumaturge with a flying talon; or an orc barbarian or ranger with a butchering axe. Giving full proficiency in one or more advanced weapons "for free" to characters from 1st level is better than what the fighter gets.
Or are humans getting Unconventional Weaponry the same way that other ancestries get their "racial" weapons?
An issue with "everybody gets their ancestry's Weapon Familiarity for free" is the ancestries that don't have one would be at a comparative disadvatage- like there's no such thing as "Leshy Weapon Familiarity" or "Anadi Weapon Familiarity" or "Sprite Weapon Familiarity."
Using the Ancestry Paragon variant is a better solution, IMO.
Then again, how hard can it be for Paizo to add those in upcoming books, alongside new ancestral weapons?
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This is a rule that gets house ruled away, at least for the racial weapon feats, in all games I have been in, by every gm I have played with.
Likewise, I have never played with a GM that did this and I'd never do it.
Those feats give both advanced weapons and critical specialization, thats quite powerful for classes that can't normally access those things readily and just handing that out to the given ancestries makes those dramatically stronger than the ones that don't have such feats.
There's absolutely no way this should be the baseline. Aside from that, it's kind of silly to just say "every Gnome is proficient in Flickmaces because reasons" even if you have a character that never uses a weapon in their entire life (which isn't that uncommon for spellcasters).
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For people who want to play more to their ancestry but don't have access to Ancestry Paragon, what about having ancestral backgrounds, this could give a character trained in two ancestry-related skills and one extra ancestry feat, and tie their background more to their ancestry in some way.
Another idea is ancestry archetypes similar to Ancestry Paragon, this would be another way to make focusing on your ancestry playable in organized play.
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Giving full proficiency in one or more advanced weapons "for free" to characters from 1st level is better than what the fighter gets.
This is missing a necessary addendum though that what the fighter gets wrt advanced weapons kind of sucks.
Most of them aren't really any good anyways.
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On a game-by-game basis, if your players are dissatisfied with the amount of stuff they get to define their character, it's generally correct and painless to just give them more stuff.
The number of feats of each type you get is mostly to avoid overwhelming inexperienced players with too many choices, but since each feat generally represents "a new thing you can do" more than "you are better at a specific thing" you have to really massively increase the number of feats players get before you have to adjust the difficulty to keep the party challenged.
Let me ask you guys this:
Back in P1E, has "Automatic Racial Weapon Proficiency" broken games and rules? Like, did anyone complain how giving full proficiency with swords and bows to elves, or hammers and axes to dwarves, made the characters too powerful or something?
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I don't think it's gonna break your game to allow it, but I also don't think it's something that NEEDS to change for everyone.
Personally the thing I'd like to see changed is giving access to uncommon ancestry weapons to characters of that ancestry automatically. Currently it's hinted that the GM could allow that, but that's not definite enough for PFS.
Like, most elves that would really care about using a curve blade are already proficient in it (post-remaster rogues, in particular). They don't actually need the feat. But if you want one in PFS you have to pay the tax to gain access.
Racial Weapon feats should be automatic for the race for free.
They are one of the few impactful Ancestry feats. If you remove them, you're very close to remove Ancestry feats entirely.
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Racial Weapon feats should be automatic for the race for free.They are one of the few impactful Ancestry feats. If you remove them, you're very close to remove Ancestry feats entirely.
All my characters who can speak with animals, have a familiar, are great at sneaking, gain a multiclass dedication, turn into bottles and roll around combat etc etc etc disagree with you.
There are a LOT of ancestry feats that fall into at least one of useful, character defining flavour, build defining.
There are also, admittedly, lots that fall into the category of "kinda cool flavour, very rarely of any actual use"
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Racial Weapon feats should be automatic for the race for free.They are one of the few impactful Ancestry feats. If you remove them, you're very close to remove Ancestry feats entirely.All my characters who can speak with animals, have a familiar, are great at sneaking, gain a multiclass dedication, turn into bottles and roll around combat etc etc etc disagree with you.
There are a LOT of ancestry feats that fall into at least one of useful, character defining flavour, build defining.
There are also, admittedly, lots that fall into the category of "kinda cool flavour, very rarely of any actual use"
Yeah, there are a ton of really cool, flavorful, and effective ancestry feats. I've actually never taken a racial weapon feat because the competition is so tough.
I would open my arms wide for a BUNCH more ancestry feat options for every ancestry though.
Let me ask you guys this: Back in P1E, has "Automatic Racial Weapon Proficiency" broken games and rules?This is just so extravagant on several levels: you ask in a PF2 topic for comparison with PF1, and it seems even with some variant rule. There shouldn't be many people who know. Of those almost nobody would care.
Also, yes, it's bad. For PF2 at least. Already was written above why by Tridus and Easl.
Actually, I was asking that question, because I feel like it broke the game back in P1E, which is why they removed it in P2E.
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I've actually never taken a racial weapon feat because the competition is so tough.
Back in the day (before lots of other options came along) just about every paladin I saw in PFS (including mine) had been raised by gnomes so that they could use the perfect paladin weapon, the gnome flick mace.
And Tengus with some falcatas are also pretty popular.
But yeah, ancestral weapons are pretty much niche items. They can be incredibly useful on a few builds, pretty useful on a larger but still fairly small set of builds, and pretty much of no value most of the time.
I find they only get selected for one of three reasons.
1) You PC has only simple weapons, so they take it to treat some martial ancestry weapons as simple.
2) to treat an advanced weapon as martial.
3) Just for funsies.
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Even when I have a big hate boner for advanced weapons since I feel their design is, to say the least, vestigial and 99% worthless most of the time, I think ancestry weapon feats are perfect as they are. Besides Unconventional Weaponry, I don't think I took an ancestry weapon feat more than two or three times (and probably even less than that). However, I see their place and when they would be useful they can enable a certain build a few levels earlier than normal. That's IMO the perfect sweet spot for ancestry feat, not useful for every build but really nice on others.
If anything, I think the Weapon Training general feat should gie you full scaling with your weapon proficiencies rather than the pseudo-casting scaling it has. It is really weird that a feat that is martial-flavored is better for casters than for the martials that could probably want to poach an advanced weapon. Most of them suck anyways and if you really want one of the few that doesn't there's other (and easier) ways to do it.
I think the main problem with racial weapons is that there are too few weapons that are actually worth it
If I play a spellcaster, I am going to rely mostly on my magic (I know not everybody does that, but I know that there ought to be some people agreeing)
If I am a martial I most likely got proficiency anyway (with alchemist being the one exception to the rule - ancestral weapon training is great for all alchemists except maybe the bomber)
If I want advanced weapons then the feats are not going to help me in most cases anyway (thats why at some point I homebrewed a bunch of weapons for most ancestries, many were advanced - but I ran out of steam in the process)
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I think that they need to exist, but I think at this point it needs to official be changed. Racial Weapon feats should be automatic for the race for free. It would not hurt the mechanics and take out the requirement stock. The exception to this is if you take adopted ancestry, your weapon feat changes to that of the "adopted" heritage. You can still take the original weapons group, as you qualify, you just no longer get it free, as adopted changed what you get for free.
With the two new classes from "Imposable Playtest" They have class weapon feats for the two classes. This should be automatic for the class not a feat tax. These New feats are a waste, and should be part of the class, not a feat tax for the class they are part of. They could also be available for other classes , as a flavor for the build, or a replacement for they original feat list for the class. That last part may need more work.
Functionally though the racial/class feat tax is not something that should be kept in the game. This is a rule that gets house ruled away, at least for the racial weapon feats, in all games I have been in, by every gm I have played with.
I don't think they should be automatic. There is no reason for it. Every elf shouldn't learn how to use a bow or elven curve blade. I'm glad they turned into optional feats.
Why is a farmer elf wasting his time learning the longsword? Why does every type of elf do this? Even in Tolkien's world this wasn't the case. Elves trained to martial activities learned weapons, not every elf.
I never liked proficiencies by race or ancestry. I didn't mind physiological differences like darkvision or some difference in stats that made sense like elf dex or dwarf con. But I don't see any reason elf wizards all learn bows and swords any more than a human wizard.
I'm glad proficiencies have to be taken now.
There are some advanced weapons that are nice to get with martial proficiency through an ancestry feat. The Orc Butchering Axe or Barricade Buster, and the Dwarven Dorn-Degar or Waraxe are weapons I've considered building a character around. I mean, the Gnome Flickmace was *the* weapon for a while.
I think racial weapons are fine as is, I only have two quibbles with them:
1. I wouldn't mind a little more guidance on how access is expected to be run, right now it feels a little coy on what circumstances players are expected to need or not need the feat for uncommon weapons, which is probably intentional-- it doesn't want to actually stop you if you'd be in a place you can logically just buy one or pick it up, but does want to speed bump players into reflecting on having one.
2. Advanced Weapon Training, that level 6 fighter feat, should have the trait for every, or at least a bunch of, Martial Classes. It compares very well with Reactive Strike variants at level 6 (for some Advanced Weapons anyway) but its weird that only fighters even have the option to pay a feat to get them.
I think racial weapons are fine as is, I only have two quibbles with them:
1. I wouldn't mind a little more guidance on how access is expected to be run, right now it feels a little coy on what circumstances players are expected to need or not need the feat for uncommon weapons, which is probably intentional-- it doesn't want to actually stop you if you'd be in a place you can logically just buy one or pick it up, but does want to speed bump players into reflecting on having one.
The challenge there is that rarity is doing multiple different things at once, and access is hard to be consistent about because of that.
1. Sometimes it's there so that a GM has cover if they don't want a thing in their game. Firearms scream this. Players have no RAW way around this in a home game except "the GM says you can", so this one is empowering GMs.
2. Sometimes it's there because the thing is just unusual or infrequent in Golarian and it's reflecting that. This is more common with archetypes (Starlit Sentinel is rare because literally 12 of them exist in Golarian) and backgrounds than with base weapons, but Beast Guns fit here. Again, players generally have no way around this except "the GM says you can", so this one is also empowering GMs.
3. Ancestry weapons fall into a different spot because in theory they're uncommon because they're supposed to be hard to find outside a given ancestry, but the game RAW gives players multiple easy ways to get access to them like general or ancestry feats. So this one isn't nearly as much in the GMs hands because actually having these not available requires banning or ignoring the common feats that give access. (This is also true of Cleric Domain Spells, where uncommon doesn't mean the same thing as it does elsewhere in the book and really just means "you need to be able to take the Cleric feat that lets you take this".)
And when you think about it, how much sense does it really make? If Flickmaces are great weapons (and they are), it wouldn't take very long before weapon merchants notice that Paladins really like the things and start selling them outside every Temple of Iomedae. It doesn't make a ton of sense for them to actually remain a Gnome secret, especially when it's so easy for someone else to suddenly stumble upon that secret. Especially in a big city, like would the weapons of ancestries common in Tien Xia really not be available in the markets of Goka? It's a great city that draws visitors from far and wide, which tends to mean a very wide variety of goods would be available. The idea that you can't find those things unless you have a level 1 feat is kind of nonsensical, and if you accept that then the feat isn't needed for access at all anymore (but its other benefits still apply).
It's hard for them to write guidance on how to run access when access means all these different things at the same time.
I think racial weapons are fine as is, I only have two quibbles with them:
1. I wouldn't mind a little more guidance on how access is expected to be run, right now it feels a little coy on what circumstances players are expected to need or not need the feat for uncommon weapons, which is probably intentional-- it doesn't want to actually stop you if you'd be in a place you can logically just buy one or pick it up, but does want to speed bump players into reflecting on having one.
The challenge there is that rarity is doing multiple different things at once, and access is hard to be consistent about because of that.
1. Sometimes it's there so that a GM has cover if they don't want a thing in their game. Firearms scream this. Players have no RAW way around this in a home game except "the GM says you can", so this one is empowering GMs.
2. Sometimes it's there because the thing is just unusual or infrequent in Golarian and it's reflecting that. This is more common with archetypes (Starlit Sentinel is rare because literally 12 of them exist in Golarian) and backgrounds than with base weapons, but Beast Guns fit here. Again, players generally have no way around this except "the GM says you can", so this one is also empowering GMs.
3. Ancestry weapons fall into a different spot because in theory they're uncommon because they're supposed to be hard to find outside a given ancestry, but the game RAW gives players multiple easy ways to get access to them like general or ancestry feats. So this one isn't nearly as much in the GMs hands because actually having these not available requires banning or ignoring the common feats that give access. (This is also true of Cleric Domain Spells, where uncommon doesn't mean the same thing as it does elsewhere in the book and really just means "you need to be able to take the Cleric feat that lets you take this".)
And when you think about it, how much sense does it really make? If Flickmaces are great weapons (and they are), it...
It sort of makes sense in the sense that all of these have a similar gate-- your GM lets you have one, or the system explicitly says you can have one. So normally how access here would work is that GM permission is required for things like Starlit Sentinel or Guns either way, but not strictly required for uncommon ancestry weapons because of the feat which lets you circumvent the idea you would need permission. So its mostly fine that they're the way they are for different purposes because the lack of an access feat means the GM is just choosing if it's present or not, it doesn't matter why its marked that way because its always for a flavor reason-- whether Starlit Sentinels even exist or are just unusual, or whether guns exist but are too uncommon to show up, the distinction is immaterial, because either way the GM is just deciding if that thing will appear in that game.
But in the case of the ancestry feat, you're choosing if the feat is necessary, and then in a position where, when play starts, the physical object just exists in the world, so conceivably if your party is traveling around, they can maybe just go find one-- not a huge problem if they're chilling in a human backwater with no gnomes or major trading hubs anywhere... but awfully weird if they buddy-buddy the elves and still can't grab an elven curve blade, but if you can get one so easily it leaves the GM questioning the need for the feat.
For me this isn't, per se, an issue, because I was happy to eventually open it up for our pirate game and declare them common, since the whole point of the area of the setting is that it's basically the center of trade in the world, and the feat still has a point for builds trying to make martial weapons simple or advanced weapons martial, so like, whatever cool. I'm happy with my decision and have no regrets.
But then I'm left questioning the identical uncommon tag on focus spells, because what the hell would it even mean to make a focus spell common-- maybe nothing? you usually get them from specific features and feats, so maybe it was predicated off the idea that they were being marked as something you would need a [b]thing[/i] to get in the same way some uncommon options are.
This is fairly darn small potatoes overall, the advanced weapon training thing is a more earnest concern.