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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Player Core / Chapter 2: Ancestries & Backgrounds

Versatile Heritages

Source Player Core pg. 74 2.0
The peoples of Golarion are many, and they have a long history of intermingling or dabbling with forces capable of altering the very fabric of a mortal body or soul. The children born to such parents might have traits from each of their parents or physiological manifestations of the forces their ancestors were influenced by, manifesting as a specific heritage.

The most common of these by far are the aiuvarin and dromaar versatile heritages, usually born to a human parent on one side and either an elf or orc parent on the other. Other individuals are born under far stranger circumstances, such as having a parent who was affected by monstrous, undead, or extraplanar energies. As these circumstances aren't unique to a single ancestry, these heritages—called versatile heritages—are likewise shared by many ancestries.

Golarion is home to a variety of versatile heritages. Some are born to unusual creatures or arise through specific mundane or supernatural circumstances. Many, however, result from an infusion of extraplanar energy, whether through direct parentage, more distant ancestors, or simply direct exposure to the quintessence of that plane. These individuals are known as planar scions.

Because the circumstances that give rise to versatile heritages aren't limited to a single ancestry, a versatile heritage can be chosen by a character of nearly any ancestry. Some versatile heritages are more common among some ancestries than others, and some might list additional restrictions specific to that heritage. Your GM may place other restrictions on which ancestries can use a given versatile heritage based on the story and setting.

Unlimited Possibilities!

Source Player Core pg. 74 2.0
Though a character can have only one heritage and one lineage feat, the possible permutations of a character’s background and family tree are virtually unlimited. An aiuvarin character might still have a changeling parent whose nature is visible in the coloration of their eyes even if they don’t have access to changeling ancestry feats, and a pitborn dwarf might very well have an ancestor with fey influences on their bloodline, reflected with a fey muse or patron gained through their class alongside their ancestral fiendishness.

Playing a Versatile Heritage

Source Player Core pg. 74 2.0
To play a character with a versatile heritage, first select your ancestry, just like you would for any character. You gain Hit Points, size, Speed, attribute boosts and attribute flaws, languages, traits, and other abilities from that ancestry. Then, instead of choosing a heritage from those normally available to that ancestry, apply your chosen versatile heritage. You gain all the features from your versatile heritage, some of which might modify or replace statistics, abilities, or traits from your ancestry.

Since a versatile heritage is a heritage, you can have only one, and you can't have any other heritage in addition to your versatile heritage.

Sometimes a versatile heritage might give you an ability that conflicts with an ability from your ancestry. In these cases, you choose which of the conflicting abilities your character has.

When selecting ancestry feats, you can choose from those available to your ancestry as well as those specific to your versatile heritage.

Lineage Feats

Source Player Core pg. 75 2.0
Some ancestry feats within a versatile heritage have the lineage trait. These feats specify a physiological lineage your character has—such as the type of hag that birthed a changeling character, or the type of extraplanar entity that influenced a nephilim’s birth. You can have only one lineage feat; you can select such a feat only at 1st level, and you can’t retrain into or out of this feat.

In This Book

Source Player Core pg. 75 2.0
This book includes the rules for three kinds of versatile heritages

Changeling

Source Player Core pg. 75 2.0
Children of the malevolent, magical creatures known as hags, changelings share some of their mothers' abilities, such as sharp claws and occult magic. Many changelings experience or dread the psychic summons of their hag mothers, known as the Call, urging them to seek out their mothers so they might be transformed into hags themselves.

Changeling lineages affect the appearance of one of the changeling's eyes, and are as follows: brine may for the child of a sea hag, callow may for a sweet hag, dream may for a cuckoo hag, and slag may for an iron hag.

Planar Scions: Nephilim

Source Player Core pg. 75 2.0
Life is present everywhere across the planes of the Multiverse, and the intermingling of mortals from the Universe with extraplanar energy is no rare thing. Whether their origins are from a direct physical relationship between a mortal and an extraplanar being or from some other infusion of extraplanar energy, mortals who carry the power of another plane are known as planar scions. There are numerous types of planar scions, just as there are countless types of beings across the planes whose power might be shared with a mortal. This book focuses on nephilim, planar scions from planes strongly associated with concepts of good, evil, order, or dissolution, and presents lineages associated with fiendish and celestial beings.

Nephilim are planar scions—mortals influenced by planes beyond the Universe—whose bodies or spirits have been influenced by energies from an outer plane, often one strongly associated with mortal religions or philosophies, like Elysium or the Outer Rifts. Some nephilim are even born with seemingly contradictory influences, displaying traits of both celestials and fiends.

The angelkin, lawbringers, and musetouched lineages each represent different aspects of the celestial planes, while the grimspawn, hellspawn, and pitborn lineages represent beings with fiendish bloodlines or influences.

Mixed Ancestry Heritages

Source Player Core pg. 75 2.0
Golarion has numerous metropolises where people from a wide variety of ancestries intermingle. Moreover, adventurers of all backgrounds and ancestries often find themselves thrust together and discover that from adversity can come common ground, and even love. As a result, the world is full of people whose bloodline can be traced to at least two different ancestries. The most common examples of this are aiuvarins and dromaars, who have elf and orc ancestors respectively. While all known dromaars and aiuvarins in the Inner Sea share human as the other part of their origin, it's possible that other combinations could exist.

This section also describes how to create a custom mixed ancestry heritage when creating your own world.