Christopher#2411504
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Humans currently have no "Popular Edicts" or "Popular Anathema". This does make sense for the Ancestry level, because humans are the least homogenous Ancestry.
But it does not make sense on all levels. Why would the different cultures not have popular Edicts, Anathemas - and possibly even variant Ancestry Boosts?
I think with the Hellfire Crisis we can clearly see that Cheliax and Andorran have some rather incompatible sets of Popular Edicts and Anathemas. And it isn't all down to Cheliax worshipping Asmodeus. There should be some "don't accept that nations left the Empire" Anathema on the Cheliax side. And some "support more nations breaking away from Cheliax" Edict on the Andorran side.
This could even go one further and actually include variant Ancestry Boosts and Flaws.
Humans are currently the poster child of the 2 free boosts. When describing the "Alternate Ancesty Boosts" rule, I usually say "you can choose to ignore the listed boost and flaws, to have two free boosts like Humans instead".
But we also have the Mightyfall Kobold, Full Moon Sarangay (and the entirety of the Lashunta in Starfinder, which have two Heritages with different Attribute Boosts). If there is precedent for Heritages to vary in such fundamental things, why could human cultures not? Humans aleady have many region accessed Ancestry Feats, so this stuff definitely matters.
Christopher#2411504
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Christopher#2411504 wrote:There should be some "don't accept that nations left the Empire" Anathema on the Cheliax side. And some "support more nations breaking away from Cheliax" Edict on the Andorran side....These are matters of policy, not culture.
Andoran is a democracy. The popular Edicts and Anathema become policy.
Cheliax is a autocracy. The internal policies involve propaganda, which informs the popular edicts and anthemas.
So I am not sure I see the differences in either case.
| vyshan |
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Christopher#2411504 wrote:There should be some "don't accept that nations left the Empire" Anathema on the Cheliax side. And some "support more nations breaking away from Cheliax" Edict on the Andorran side....These are matters of policy, not culture.
One could say the same thing about the non-human ethnicities and their popular edicts and anathamas too!
| Castilliano |
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I think exploring different boosts and flaws for human ethnicities dives into dangerous territory, especially w/ penalties. Most of Golarion's cultures are analogous with real world people groups so that's too big a bullet to dodge IMO. No company wants to say "people X (who look a lot like people Y on Earth) have this innate flaw, but hey, at least they're better at stat Z, right?"
Heck, the bioessentialism issue had been tumultuous enough which is why "two free boosts to any stat" became available for all Ancestries (as well I think as wanting players access to all kinds of odd PCs, perhaps encouraged by anime's breadth).
One could argue, yes, but IMO it's too much in the realm of emotion & lived experience for players, onlookers, & customers to remain detached. At best you might be able to say "culture X values stat Y most of all", but even that lends itself more to which Backgrounds & Classes would be most prevalent more than an innate, culture-wide quality/penalty.
| QuidEst |
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Mightyfall kobolds, full moon sarangay, and lashunta don't represent differences between cultures. Mightyfall kobolds are the result of kobold physiology (notable in how it picks up the ambient energy around magical creatures) being exposed to kaiju. Full moon sarangays are the result of being raised for a particular role in a manner shared across their different cultures. Lashunta evolved with significant dimorphism.
It's not really appropriate for differences in cultures, particularly when it comes to humans.
As for the edicts and anathema, eh... most ancestries don't have that anyway, so I don't see a lot of value in spending the space for every country to do that just so humans have something to fall back on.
| Dragonchess Player |
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As mentioned, imposing mechanical differentiation based on nationality/ethnicity gets into very contentious territory really fast.
As a second point, you can already use the Skilled or Versatile heritages to represent a human character's nationality/ethnicity: a skilled human from Cheliax that is automatically trained in Devil Lore (which increases to expert at 5th level), a versatile human (base class with proficiency in only simple weapons) from Molthune or Nirmathas taking Weapon Proficiency to use a dancer's spear (or possibly just taking Unconventional Weaponry with their ancestry feat), etc. Or take an appropriate versatile heritage (nephilim in Celiax aren't treated well, but are somewhat widespread).
| keftiu |
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Takes about four seconds of thinking to see why this is a bad idea: many of Pathfinder's human ethnicities map onto real ones, making this a very short slippery slope to all kinds of racist mechanical assumptions. Which cultures get a Charisma bonus? Who has an Int penalty?
There's just no reason to open that can of worms.
Christopher#2411504
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As for the edicts and anathema, eh... most ancestries don't have that anyway, so I don't see a lot of value in spending the space for every country to do that just so humans have something to fall back on.
This argument makes no sense.
Literally every remastered ancestry in PF2 and SF2 has popular Edicts and Anathemas. Even the ones they added in SF2 Adventure paths. This is the default going forward.And it is 2-4 lines worth of content. So claiming it is "too much content" makes no sense.
| Sibelius Eos Owm |
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Absolutely agree that it would be cool for different human cultures/ethnic groups/nations to have a list of common anathema and edicts. Wouldn't necessarily have to be every single country/kingdom in the inner sea has its own, could be like "descendents of taldor" and like "the Sarkoris diaspora" and like "nomadic varisians" vs ustalav's settled varisians.
On the flipside, hard no from me for assigning physical and mental stats based on culture or ethnicity, even if they're only suggestions. Even leaving aside the implications, I'm sure the Brevic peasant shares more in common with a Taldan peasant than with a Brevic merchant or warrior, regardless of shared cultural values.
| vyshan |
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Absolutely agree that it would be cool for different human cultures/ethnic groups/nations to have a list of common anathema and edicts. Wouldn't necessarily have to be every single country/kingdom in the inner sea has its own, could be like "descendents of taldor" and like "the Sarkoris diaspora" and like "nomadic varisians" vs ustalav's settled varisians.
On the flipside, hard no from me for assigning physical and mental stats based on culture or ethnicity, even if they're only suggestions. Even leaving aside the implications, I'm sure the Brevic peasant shares more in common with a Taldan peasant than with a Brevic merchant or warrior, regardless of shared cultural values.
Yea. I think having like common values, and ethics for different cultures is cool and that can be reflected in ethics. Like for the river kingdoms you could have an edict and anathama based on the six river freedoms, while common andoran edicts could be inspired by the Common Rule guiding philosophy.
but attributes? no. that shouldn't be done.
| QuidEst |
QuidEst wrote:As for the edicts and anathema, eh... most ancestries don't have that anyway, so I don't see a lot of value in spending the space for every country to do that just so humans have something to fall back on.This argument makes no sense.
Literally every remastered ancestry in PF2 and SF2 has popular Edicts and Anathemas. Even the ones they added in SF2 Adventure paths. This is the default going forward.
And it is 2-4 lines worth of content. So claiming it is "too much content" makes no sense.
Ah, well, what you're missing is that I missed that section in PC2 when I went back to check and thought only the first player core had it. So yes, you're absolutely right that all the new/remastered non-humans have it.
Unless I'm misunderstanding it, though, it's "Humans are missing 2-4 lines, so add 2-4 lines to every country". That still doesn't feel like a good tradeoff? Or region, I guess, but I don't see Nex, Geb, and Jalmeray all sharing edicts and anathemas.