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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

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

Ancestries | Half-Human Heritages | Versatile Heritages

Versatile Heritages

Source Advanced Player's Guide pg. 28 2.0
The peoples of Golarion are many, and they have a long history of intermingling. The inevitable offspring of these mixed unions share physiological features with both their parents, manifesting as a specific heritage. The most common of these by far are the half-elf and half-orc human ancestries. Some individuals, however, are born under far stranger circumstances, such as a monstrous, undead, or extraplanar parent, a powerful curse, or an incursion of extraplanar energies. As these circumstances aren't unique to a single ancestry, these heritages—called versatile heritages—are likewise shared by many ancestries.

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Uncommon Versatile Heritages

PFS StandardAasimar

Born with the power of benevolent celestial entities, aasimars are thought to be supremely blessed with strength of will, extraordinary beauty, and innate magical gifts. But many aasimars find that these perceived talents—whether they actually have them or not—set them apart from their friends and family, fostering loneliness in themselves and jealousy in others.

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PFS StandardAphorite

Once perfectly identical beings who bridged the gap between Axis's perfect order and mortals' unrestricted existence, aphorites are now lit more by the spark of free will than the beacon of cosmic law.

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PFS StandardChangeling

Tales of children stolen away and replaced by monsters exist across countless cultures— but the true monsters are the hag mothers of these strange children. After the hag seduces, uses, and disposes of their father, the changeling child is usually abandoned in their father’s community to be raised among them. Such a child faces no end of challenges, often beginning life as an orphaned outsider.

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PFS StandardDhampir

Many call vampires the children of the night, but it is dhampirs who can truly claim that title. These mortal offspring of vampires walk the line between life and undeath not just physiologically, but also in their social standing, temperament, and worldview.

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PFS StandardDuskwalker

The first duskwalkers manifested as the result of a bargain between two powerful psychopomps, the immortal guardians and guides of souls after death. One believed that certain souls who helped preserve the cycle of life and death but had their own lives cut short deserved reincarnation, while the other felt this would too greatly violate that same cycle. In the end, the duskwalkers rose from a concession between the two that allowed such rebirths to occur but limited their frequency—only a finite number of duskwalkers ever exist at any one point in time.

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PFS StandardGanzi

Children of chaos, ganzis are born of the roiling effervescence of the untamable Maelstrom, the primal sea of all creation. Their blood crackles with the promise of change and the raw power of creation unshackled.

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PFS StandardIfrit

Ifrits descend from creatures such as efreet, salamanders, and magma dragons. Their spark of ancestral flame gives them a reputation for being passionate, if not capricious.

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PFS StandardOread

The Plane of Earth's influence runs through an oread's family, most often from a shaitan or crystal dragon ancestor. Oreads tend to be stoic, steadfast, and dependable, but they contain depths not seen on the surface.

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PFS StandardSuli

Sulis are geniekin who embody a mixture of elements, most commonly air, earth, fire, and water. They are typically the descendants of jann, genies of all four elements that wander the Material Plane instead of making a home on the Elemental Planes.

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PFS StandardSylph

Sylphs are an intense and lively people, flighty and tempestuous. These planar scions have kinship to beings of elemental air such as djinni, invisible stalkers, and cloud dragons.

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PFS StandardTiefling

When the influence of a demon, devil, or other fiend infiltrates the bloodline of a mortal family, tieflings are the inevitable result. Tieflings carry the sinister mark of the fiendish planes upon their flesh, and their specific abilities and physical qualities vary according to their heritage. Hellspawn are those who descend from devils, grimspawn hail from daemonic influences, and pitborn bear the influence of demons, though these are only the three most common among a wide variety of tiefling lineages.

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PFS StandardUndine

These dynamic, fluid mortals trace their ancestry to creatures from the Plane of Water, such as marids, water mephits, and brine dragons.

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Rare Versatile Heritages

PFS StandardBeastkin

Beastkin have extraordinary abilities derived from the animal world, allowing them to partially or fully transform into animals, granting them deadly fangs, refined senses, and other such traits. A beastkin treads the line between nature and society, living with a foot in each.

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PFS StandardReflection

Stories of malevolent duplicates are commonly told around campfires to frighten companions. In these tales, the duplicate forms after a botched ritual or exposure to a mysterious artifact, and is bent on replacing the creature they've replicated. Most believe such stories to be only that, but such reflection duplicates are real. While some wish to replace their progenitors, others merely want to forge a new life for themselves where no one knows of their origins.

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