Uncommon Ancestries and Heritages

Each new ancestry in this book is uncommon. Though uncommon elements of the game are usually acquired during play, you choose your ancestry and heritage at the beginning of the game. This means you should talk to your group and GM about which uncommon ancestries and heritages make sense for the story. In the piratical Shackles, tengus are a regular sight. But they're even more common in the eastern continent of Tian Xia, where halflings and dwarves are uncommon! Even if your chosen ancestry isn't particularly common in the area where the story takes place, most times you can work with your GM and the other players to find a great way to incorporate that character into the narrative. For these options, the uncommon trait just means you should take that extra step to talk about it first. In a Pathfinder Adventure Path, the accompanying player's guide might include information about additional uncommon options that make sense for that story and its region and grant you automatic access to play them during those adventures.

Rare and Unique Backgrounds

Some backgrounds have enough story weight that you need to work with the rest of your group to determine if they're right for a particular story, like being heir to a throne.

Many Ancestries

Though a character can have only one heritage, it doesn't mean characters with lineages tracing back to multiple ancestries or heritages don't exist. It's certainly possible for a dhampir to be born to a half-elf mother, or for a duskwalker to appear in a community of death warden dwarves. In these cases, the influence of the versatile heritage overshadows the other heritage—the dhampir heritage overshadows the half-elf heritage, and the duskwalker abilities replace those of the death warden dwarf heritage. So while, superficially, a character might bear a resemblance to both heritages, mechanically, they only gain the benefits of the versatile heritage.

Supernatural Origins

The circumstances that give rise to individuals with versatile heritages vary widely, from direct biological descendance to clandestine rituals, planar incursions, or unique mystical phenomena. It's up to you to decide the details of your character's heritage and how they came into being. The sections in this book provide some broad suggestions that you can use as a jumping-off point, but these aren't restrictions. Hags, for example, typically give birth to mammalian offspring, but they are devious creatures and might just as easily change form to that of a kobold long enough to hatch a changeling kobold child—or perhaps your changeling character arose as a result of a hag's occult meddling rather than direct lineage. It's your story to tell!