Ancestry backgrounds and archetypes?

[Driftbourne]

One concern some SF1e players had was ancestries not having access to as much at 1st level in SF2e an easy way around that is to use Ancestry Paragon but that's not allowed in organized play. With the playtest over, here are a few ideas to help boost ancestries that could be added in later books. These ideas are also good for players interested in playing more on their ancestry.

1. Ancestry 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.

2. Ancestry Archetypes, could be similar to Ancestry Paragon but have the cost of taking an Archetype to balance it out in organized play. Ancestry Archetype could be a generic Archetype allowing any ancestry to get more ancestry feats as they level up and or there could be specific ancestry or even heritage Archetypes that add new options to an ancestry.

[Justnobodyfqwl]

I'm a little confused at what problem you're trying to find a solution for.

I'm assuming you mean the fact that SF1E ancestries had a lot more level 1 features, right? But that was true for PF1E to PF2E too. I definitely agree that it's more interesting to have your ancestry give you more. But, I don't see them making Ancestry Paragon an optional rule, then making a bunch of things that are Starfinder Society Legal Ancestral Paragon.

Or are you talking more about the fact that SF1E had very DIFFERENT ancestries, with abilities that were more wide-sweeping and strange than Pathfinder? I think that's an issue that can't be fixed with just MORE feats. I think that comes down entirely to a design ethos of the system.

So far, I think that Starfinder 2e has benefited from years of design experience with the system. I've noticed that the average feat these days tends to be a lot more interesting and powerful. Comparing some hyper-niche Core Rulebook ancestries to Tian Xia having the single best ancestry ever made (God bless you, Tanuki).

I think that Starfinder 2e has proved that it is willing to make more radical things than PF2E (like an ancestry with 5 feet of movement but a level 1 fly speed), but is still keeping things pretty reserved compared to SF1E (Only ONE core ancestry can fly at level 1, and basically has to give up their land speed for it). Hopefully, this will mean that they commit to giving ancestries more consistently impactful and interesting abilities.

[Driftbourne]

I give up

[moosher12]

There is precedent for monstrous ancestry archetypes in PF2E. That'd be the best approach I think.

Background would likely be too weak to satisfy, because the thing that the desired ancestry features are competing for is a skill feat. And I've seen enough Starfinder races at this point to know a lot of the stuff you'd want in one are more powerful than a skill-feat tradeoff. You'd likely need to sacrifice the skill and lore trainings, and potentially one of the attribute boosts to keep a similar power scale.

[Dragonchess Player]

Also, because SF2 is 90+% compatible with PF2 (the only major differences being the Computers and Piloting skills, as well as the non-magic armor and weapon scaling/upgrades) you should be able to use "SF2" ancestries in a PF2 game and vice versa. For example, PF2 ratfolk and SF2 ysoki are literally the same ancestry with the SF2 version just having some space fantasy aligned options; for a nuar (SF1 Alien Archive) in SF2, use the minotaur from PF2 Howl of the Wild; for a kobold in SF2, use the kobold (and possibly the dragonblood versatile heritage) in PF2 Player's Core 2.

Outside of organized play, this will greatly expand on the ancestry options available for both games.

[Driftbourne]

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

I'm a little confused at what problem you're trying to find a solution for.

Ancestry Paragon isn't allowed in organized play, which is the only way I get to play the game. Ancestry Paragon also didn't make it to the remaster books, not sure it matters if it was remastered or not but it feels even less likely to ever be allowed in organized play.

Ancestry Paragon wrote:

Sometimes, though, a character is the embodiment of their ancestry to the point that it’s of equal importance to their class.

That doesn't describe some of my characters that describe all of my characters in SF1e, SF2e, and PF2e. I don't care about editions I like them all, I don't care about Ancestry Paragon specifically it's just the only way to get more ancestry feats to be exact it gives you 5 extra ancestry feats for free (no trade-off with taking other feats.)

An Ancestry Background would take up your background slot so has a cost, it would only give you one more ancestry feat and the ability boost would be aligned with your ancestry as well as the 2 skills aligned with your ancestry. Unlike Ancestry Paragon an Ancestry background is balanced to fit into organized play.

An Ancestry Archetype, similar to a class archetype, would give you 4 extra ancestry feats at the cost of losing class feats, again making it balanced for organized play unlike Ancestry Paragon, also backgrounds and archetypes are not variant rules again fit into organized play.

I'd even go for making Ancestry Paragon full class, but just an Ancestry Background or a general feat that lets you take extra Ancestry feats would do for me.

The Ancestry Background and Atrtchtype I'm talking about are both generic that could be used with any ancestry and you just allow ancestry feats that already exist, but in addition to that other more specific Ancestry Backgrounds and Atrtchtypes could be used for some ancestry to expand them even more. I'd also like to point out this doesn't have to be physical abilities this could be used to explore the cultural sides of ancestries too.