SO I've been on a quest to make a dwarfier dwarf than PF2eR has dwarfed.
During that quest, I noticed that Ancient-Blooded *seems* kinda weak.
I *think* I came up with a good alternative that puts it on par with Strong-Blooded, but I don't have nearly as much experience playing the game as I'd like. So if I could get some feedback on this, I'd really appreciate it.
The main thing I noticed about the original version is that it causes some competition for your reaction which may dissuade it's use.
Secondly, it seems like it's extremely limited in usefulness that far exceeds the norm.
Lastly, the bonus itself doesn't scale in any way which seems like it only declines in usefulness as you level up.
Like I said, I haven't played the game enough to feel fully confident in my assessment, so correct me if I'm wrong about anything.
Anyway this is my Alternative version:
- ANCIENT-BLOODED DWARF ------------------------------------------------
Dwarven heroes of old could shrug off their enemies' magic, and some of that resistance manifests in you.
Your blood is particularly resistant to one of the magical traditions. Choose one of the following: Arcane, Divine, Occult, or Primal. This choice cannot be changed.
You gain a +1 circumstance bonus on saving throws against magical effects that either have your blood's tradition trait or the Magical trait.
You gain the Call on Ancient Blood action.
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[Call on Ancient Blood - 1 Action ]
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[Concentrate]
Your ancestors' innate resistance to magic surges momentarily, before quickly ebbing down.
Until the start of your next turn, if you roll a success on a saving throw against a magical effect that your circumstance bonus would apply to, you get a critical success instead.
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That's it.
Let me know if this seems good or bad.
Thanks!
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Although I can understand where you're coming from, OP, I do think some of the assumptions made here aren't necessarily accurate, and the proposal I think may actually be a nerf. I'll explain myself as best I can:
Thus, if the feeling is that the original reaction is too weak, I'd personally be more inclined to just increase the circumstance bonus. In all cases, I'd recommend putting the vanilla reaction to more use first to get a better feel of it. I don't think it's the strongest reaction around by any means, but it can be quite useful.
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This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.
Thanks!
I'll use this for a revision, but first I want to share my thought process on using the success upgrade mechanic.
At first I was thinking of making Call on Ancient Blood upgrade critical-failure-to-failure. But then I realized that having it trigger on a crit fail meant it would trigger far less often.
Then I considered having it just upgrade across the board crit-fail-to-fail-to-success-to-crit-success, but that seemed OP. And I couldn't find any abilities that do that at level 1. Would that be too much?
Then looking at Death Warden Dwarf I settled on success-to-crit-success.
But if I'm turning it back to a reaction, it sounds like having it provide success-to-crit-success AND crit-fail-to-failure would be fine?
And as for the bonus, I went back to the original 2e play test, and noticed that it used to be a +2 bonus, before they ultimately removed resonance and busted the bonus down to +1. If the old bonus sounds fine, then I'm down for it.
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OK so this is my revision:
- ANCIENT-BLOODED DWARF ------------------------------------------------
Dwarven heroes of old could shrug off their enemies' magic, and some of that resistance manifests in you.
Your blood is particularly resistant to one of the magical traditions. Choose one of the following: Arcane, Divine, Occult, or Primal. This choice cannot be changed.
You gain a +2 circumstance bonus on saving throws against magical effects that either have your blood's tradition trait or the Magical trait.
You gain the Call on Ancient Blood reaction.
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[Call on Ancient Blood - Reaction ]
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[Concentrate]
Trigger You attempt a saving throw against a magical effect with the Magical trait or your blood's tradition trait;
Effect Your ancestors' innate resistance to magic surges momentarily, before quickly ebbing down.
Until the start of your next turn, if you roll a success on the triggering save or other saves against magical effects with the triggering traits If you roll a success on a saving throw against an effect that has the, you get a critical success instead. And if you roll a critical failure on these rolls, you get a failure instead.
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How that?
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I like the new effect, as it would help avoid critical failures and would apply to multiple saves. If you want to buff the reaction further, one thing you could do is change the trigger to after you roll the save and get one of the results you could affect: that way, you'd never waste your reaction on an effect that wouldn't change the result of your save, and the reaction would become much more efficient as a result. This could also allow you to change every degree of success with a +1 or a +2, so if the trigger was "you would fail a saving throw and a +2 circumstance bonus would improve your degree of success," getting that +2 circumstance bonus on that reaction would be guaranteed to help you significantly.
I like the new effect, as it would help avoid critical failures and would apply to multiple saves. If you want to buff the reaction further, one thing you could do is change the trigger to after you roll the save and get one of the results you could affect: that way, you'd never waste your reaction on an effect that wouldn't change the result of your save, and the reaction would become much more efficient as a result. This could also allow you to change every degree of success with a +1 or a +2, so if the trigger was "you would fail a saving throw and a +2 circumstance bonus would improve your degree of success," getting that +2 circumstance bonus on that reaction would be guaranteed to help you significantly.
That feels really strong for a level 1 at will reaction available to any dwarf. Amped Guidance does this but it costs a focus point and is only available to psychics (and multiclass psychics.) Well, it also applies to more rolls and to your allies, but I think the point remains.
For comparison, call on ancient blood is already better than other comparable cost options like orc superstition because Call applies for the rest of the turn, not just the one save. I wouldn't actually change the basic reaction/heritage. Instead I would create follow up fears like orcs have with Pervasive Superstition.
There are significantly better homebrew buffs than making one of their stronger heritages even better. Buff a bad heritage like rock dwarf, or figure out a way to keep Death Warden relevant when Juggernaut features starts coming online. Give them 25 foot speed like everyone else, or make unburdened iron a basic feature again. Or generally look at their feats to make them something other than worse orcs before level 9.
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That feels really strong for a level 1 at will reaction available to any dwarf. Amped Guidance does this but it costs a focus point and is only available to psychics (and multiclass psychics.) Well, it also applies to more rolls and to your allies, but I think the point remains.
To be clear, I think the original heritage is fine; the purpose of this thread is to work with LordVanya to find ways to buff the heritage in a manner he would find enjoyable at his table, as per his stated intent. Really, just shifting the trigger to after the result is determined would be both a significant buff and a major quality of life improvement, as it would guarantee that the reaction would always be effective when it triggers.
Because the buff would be specific to that one table, I don't think it's all that important if the buff makes the ability stronger than it normally ought to be unless it becomes a game-warping outlier. We're not balancing the heritage for the whole playerbase, we're just working to make it feel better for someone who has given criticism of a mechanic and wants to work to change it. I also don't consider it particularly helpful to dismiss OP's endeavor out of personal disagreement, so if you don't think the Ancient-Blooded Dwarf heritage needs a buff and aren't willing to work with the OP to develop one, that's fine, this thread just isn't for you.
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I like the new effect, as it would help avoid critical failures and would apply to multiple saves. If you want to buff the reaction further, one thing you could do is change the trigger to after you roll the save and get one of the results you could affect: that way, you'd never waste your reaction on an effect that wouldn't change the result of your save, and the reaction would become much more efficient as a result. This could also allow you to change every degree of success with a +1 or a +2, so if the trigger was "you would fail a saving throw and a +2 circumstance bonus would improve your degree of success," getting that +2 circumstance bonus on that reaction would be guaranteed to help you significantly.
Glad you like the revised version.
I don't think I want to buff it any further as it feels more complete to me. And I'm relying on feedback to get a better sense of what is too much for a heritage.
That being said, I was considering just having Call on Ancient Blood improve all results just for the sake of simplicity. But I didn't want it to potentially outshine Death Warden which has a similar effect.
Additionally, the altered trigger above feels like it's too far outside the concept of having an innate resistance to magic.
Either way, tanks for taking the time to respond further. :D
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I like the new effect, as it would help avoid critical failures and would apply to multiple saves. If you want to buff the reaction further, one thing you could do is change the trigger to after you roll the save and get one of the results you could affect: that way, you'd never waste your reaction on an effect that wouldn't change the result of your save, and the reaction would become much more efficient as a result. This could also allow you to change every degree of success with a +1 or a +2, so if the trigger was "you would fail a saving throw and a +2 circumstance bonus would improve your degree of success," getting that +2 circumstance bonus on that reaction would be guaranteed to help you significantly.That feels really strong for a level 1 at will reaction available to any dwarf. Amped Guidance does this but it costs a focus point and is only available to psychics (and multiclass psychics.) Well, it also applies to more rolls and to your allies, but I think the point remains.
For comparison, call on ancient blood is already better than other comparable cost options like orc superstition because Call applies for the rest of the turn, not just the one save. I wouldn't actually change the basic reaction/heritage. Instead I would create follow up fears like orcs have with Pervasive Superstition.
There are significantly better homebrew buffs than making one of their stronger heritages even better. Buff a bad heritage like rock dwarf, or figure out a way to keep Death Warden relevant when Juggernaut features starts coming online. Give them 25 foot speed like everyone else, or make unburdened iron a basic feature again. Or generally look at their feats to make them something other than worse orcs before level 9.
Thank you for the feedback.
I have some questions, but before that, I would like to give some more context.Some of my players never liked how drastically different a 2e Dwarf feels in comparison to the 1e version.
Part of my quest includes creating a new heritage that, to be blunt, feels more like a 1e Dwarf. It'll be a single heritage that has smaller benefits, but a larger variety of them. One of the things this heritage will include is a +1 circumstance bonus to saving throws against magical effects and poisons.
Doing this is fine in relation to the Strong-Blooded Dwarf heritage since it does a lot more with poison interactions. In contrast, this basically outclasses the Ancient-Blooded Dwarf heritage instantly.
And looking around the internet, I found a lot of people opining that Ancient-Blooded Dwarf is one of the worst heritage choices. So I figured it would be fine to try and bring it up to par with Strong-Blooded in some way.
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Now as for the points you brought up...
After looking up Amped Guidance, I feel confident in saying that it is far more powerful than Ancient-Blooded. But, I also don't want to have a Heritage step on the toes of a class feature, so thanks for bringing that up.
I think it's fine that Ancient-Blooded Dwarf be stronger than Orc Superstition and it's related feats. Thematically having an innate magic resistances based on generations of magic resistance sounds to me like it should be more powerful than learned superstition.
Also, I recently read this blog post by Rob Lundeen:
https://www.runamokgames.com/design-diary/the-pathfinder-ancestry-checklist
This provided some good insight on how the PF2e ancestries are put together and how each ancestry is only balanced within itself, not in comparison to other ancestries. So having Ancient-Blooded be stronger than Orc Superstition is fine.
Can you elaborate on your opinions about how strong each Dwarf Heritage is? I'm curious to know how you grade them because they seem to be mostly opposed to how others see them.
Part of my quest includes creating a new heritage that, to be blunt, feels more like a 1e Dwarf. It'll be a single heritage that has smaller benefits, but a larger variety of them. One of the things this heritage will include is a +1 circumstance bonus to saving throws against magical effects and poisons.
Have you considered just using the Ancestry Paragon rules? That is the simplest way to add more racial features.
I think it's fine that Ancient-Blooded Dwarf be stronger than Orc Superstition and it's related feats. Thematically having an innate magic resistances based on generations of magic resistance sounds to me like it should be more powerful than learned superstition.
Thematics aren't the only consideration for house rules though. At least, if you care about balance.
Also, I recently read this blog post by Rob Lundeen:
https://www.runamokgames.com/design-diary/the-pathfinder-ancestry-checklist
This was written in 2020 and PF2 design philosophies have changed in many ways since then. I would not take this as gospel.
This provided some good insight on how the PF2e ancestries are put together and how each ancestry is only balanced within itself, not in comparison to other ancestries.
1.Case in point, this was written before Versatile Heritages were a thing, which made ancestries a lot more interchangeable. (Dwarves got shafted here because most VHs provide low light or dark vision, so they are wasted on dwarves. It sucks because dwarves could really use the patch to their feat lists.)
2.That isn't what he said. He said heritages don't need to be balanced against the heritages of other ancestries. He also says ancestries as a hole should be balanced against each other. You can actually make a case to buff dwarf heritages BECAUSE they base ancestry is on the weak side: they get the same vision and hit points as orcs but a slower speed with nothing to make up for it.
Can you elaborate on your opinions about how strong each Dwarf Heritage is? I'm curious to know how you grade them because they seem to be mostly opposed to how others see them.
Sure, why not.
1. Strong-Blooded Dwarf - Probably the best. Poison is common and its resistance is rare, and the ongoing save buff stacks with Juggernaut mechanics.
2. Death Warden - Would be better if it stacked with Juggernaut-- as is it is only good long term on classes with weaker fort saves.
3. Ancient Blooded - Unless you have a competing, every round reaction, or already get this circumstance bonus from elsewhere, this is quite good. Magic saves are going to be the plurality or majority of saves you make.
4. Forge Dwarf - Fire damage will almost certainly come up eventually, so this is fine.
5. Oathkeeper and Anvil - Tied because they are so niche, but they exist for people that want them. You usually want your face to use both Diplomacy and Deception, and Specialty Crafting is usually a wasted feat.
6. Elemental Heart - Thematically awesome, mechanically terrible. Too weak, too infrequent, too hard an AoE to use.
7. Rock Dwarf - I hate bonuses that come up so rarely you'll probably forget you have the bonus when it finally pops up.
Part of my quest includes creating a new heritage that, to be blunt, feels more like a 1e Dwarf. It'll be a single heritage that has smaller benefits, but a larger variety of them. One of the things this heritage will include is a +1 circumstance bonus to saving throws against magical effects and poisons.Have you considered just using the Ancestry Paragon rules? That is the simplest way to add more racial features.
I have.
I actually use a modified version of it.Instead of forcing my players to get a limited number of ancestry feats, at 3rd, 7thm, 11th, 15th, and 19th levels they can select an ancestry feat instead of a general feat.
However, these variants don't really fulfill my goal.
It's not just having more racial features, it providing an option that feels more like 1e at level 1.
I think it's fine that Ancient-Blooded Dwarf be stronger than Orc Superstition and it's related feats. Thematically having an innate magic resistances based on generations of magic resistance sounds to me like it should be more powerful than learned superstition.Thematics aren't the only consideration for house rules though. At least, if you care about balance.
Of course.
That's why I'm asking for deeper insight and making comparisons to other similar mechanics in the game.This was written in 2020 and PF2 design philosophies have changed in many ways since then. I would not take this as gospel.Also, I recently read this blog post by Rob Lundeen:
https://www.runamokgames.com/design-diary/the-pathfinder-ancestry-checklist
I don't, but it is very useful to see how things change over time instead of only looking at how things stand now.
This provided some good insight on how the PF2e ancestries are put together and how each ancestry is only balanced within itself, not in comparison to other ancestries.1.Case in point, this was written before Versatile Heritages were a thing, which made ancestries a lot more interchangeable. (Dwarves got shafted here because most VHs provide low light or dark vision, so they are wasted on dwarves. It sucks because dwarves could really use the patch to their feat lists.)
Counterpoint, it was only written 4 months prior to the release of the APG where Versatile Heritages were first published. I seriously doubt that Ron Lundeen wouldn't have been aware of Versatile Heritages prior to publication.
2.That isn't what he said. He said heritages don't need to be balanced against the heritages of other ancestries. He also says ancestries as a hole should be balanced against each other. You can actually make a case to buff dwarf heritages BECAUSE they base ancestry is on the weak side: they get the same vision and hit points as orcs but a slower speed with nothing to make up for it.
I did get that detail wrong when I responded, yes, but I did understand it the correct way.
I see your point about Dwarf vs Orc as a whole.
I'm going to have to research Orcs a bit more.
Can you elaborate on your opinions about how strong each Dwarf Heritage is? I'm curious to know how you grade them because they seem to be mostly opposed to how others see them.Sure, why not.
1. Strong-Blooded Dwarf - Probably the best. Poison is common and its resistance is rare, and the ongoing save buff stacks with Juggernaut mechanics.
2. Death Warden - Would be better if it stacked with Juggernaut-- as is it is only good long term on classes with weaker fort saves.
3. Ancient Blooded - Unless you have a competing, every round reaction, or already get this circumstance bonus from elsewhere, this is quite good. Magic saves are going to be the plurality or majority of saves you make.
4. Forge Dwarf - Fire damage will almost certainly come up eventually, so this is fine.
5. Oathkeeper and Anvil - Tied because they are so niche, but they exist for people that want them. You usually want your face to use both Diplomacy and Deception, and Specialty Crafting is usually a wasted feat.
6. Elemental Heart - Thematically awesome, mechanically terrible. Too weak, too infrequent, too hard an AoE to use.
7. Rock Dwarf - I hate bonuses that come up so rarely you'll probably forget you have the bonus when it finally pops up.
1. Absolutely agree. I take it as the gold standard for what a Dwarf Heritage should be.
2. They partially overlap, but they partially do stack, too.
Death Warden applied to any save as long as it has the void trait or comes from an undead.
Juggernaut applies to all Fortitude saves.
There's definitely a Venn diagram there.
You can look at this as Death Warden being diminished by Juggernaut.
But it's just as valid to say Juggernaut is diminished by Death Warden.
Seems fine to me as is.
How would stacking them work, even?
3. I can see where it is on par with other reactions that give a momentary bonus vs magical effects.
Outside the context of what my goal is, the only thing it has over Orc Superstition and Elfbane Hobgoblin is that the bonus lasts until the end of the current turn. And I find that difference to minuscule due to being highly circumstantial.
I question how often an enemy caster is going to target a single opponent with multiple spells that require a saving throw. Most spells take two actions, so most often you'll get targeted by two spells. If the caster notices that you have a bonus to spell saves they likely will switch to damaging spells. If the opponent makes their save, then they will also likely switch to a damaging spell or switch to a different target.
So I see it like this:
Orc Superstition < Call on Ancient Blood < Resist Elf Magic
Orc's get the baseline effect, and require additional feats to get them.
Ancient-Blooded Dwarves have a slightly better effect, and cannot improve it.
And Hobgoblins get a solidly better effect, that I'm pretty sure doesn't get any upgrades.
Then in the context of wanting to give my players a 1e style heritage option, it kind of behooves me to make sure that Ancient-Blooded remains a solid alternative.
Let's my new 1e heritage Paragon Dwarf.
It will give you:
+1 circumstance bonus on saves against magical effects.
+1 circumstance bonus on saves against poison effects.
+1 circumstance bonus on FORT & RFLX saves against Shove & Trip.
Basically it covers 3 aspects of the 1e Dwarf that you cannot make happen in 2e at level 1. But if I leave like this, then the other option is just straight up outclassed. And rather than limit the bonus against magical effects, I decided I'd be better to off bring Ancient-Blooded up to par with Strong-Blooded.
I am still open to further discussion and suggestions, of course.
4. I think so, too.
5. Mostly agree. I wouldn't necessarily call Specialty Crafting a wasted feat, but there are lots of ways to get it for free. And Anvil thinks it's so nice, that it gives it to you twice.
6. 100% agreed. This is far weaker than a cantrip, and you can use those at will. I don't see where this is on par with the other dwarf heritages.
7. I get where you're coming from, but on the other hand, is it really a problem with the heritage or the lack of support for forced movement mechanics in the game? It may be easier to just use more of these types of effects more often.
That gives me a good amount of stuff to think over.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Please don't hesitate to continue the discussion.