#pc ancestries

[friendfolio]

Friend Folio: Android

Are Androids people? It's weird how it's felt like we've had about a century of work fictional musings on that question before [PREACHY LLM GUN-POINTED-AT-MY-PRINTER ASIDE].

Yeah, it's uh... it's gotten difficult to talk about sapient robots in the past few years. I'm hoping that, if you're reading from the future, everything that's happened over the past few years feels like a distant nightmare. But if you're a DM with players keen on having a deep CR-style game or vice versa, the question might inevitably come up. Anyways, glad y'all had your butlerian jihad.

The biggest question for your pre-modern setting is how androids came to be. Unlike wyrwoods or WotC's warforged, the android is pretty explicitly based in biotech. It's the end result of creating a robot so human-like that it takes on a mortal soul. Even its base special ability, Nanite Surge, bases itself in presently-emerging robotics.

But hey! Answering questions is what you're here for, and if not, androids are fucking cool! Paraphrasing Patch here, but their special abilities are well suited for climactic scenes and even the ever-loved android reveal moment. So, if you're looking to electrify your setting...

Gutted, bisected, locked in a freezer, beheaded; a demon lord's champion just won't stay dead, returning to harass the Electric Leviathan's most persistent enemies time and time again. As it turns, soul transplants are a lot easier when you can cook up another body in a vat -- especially if your serve the metaphysical embodiment of misused technology.

Gahiji Asghar has the coordinates to the Mother Egg implanted in his mind -- he just doesn't care enough to pay her a visit. It's only after a bout of (unbearable) peace that he begins to considers a trip to see what his siblings have gotten up to.

Graverobbing: it's a living! A band of "research assistants" have been tasked with procuring the bodies of slain heroes for a local university. "Blue-Joint" Antran Monada's corpse is particularly valuable, as it has yet to rot. It's a mystery that only deepens when, upon dissection, their patron discovers just how much Antran's body differs from his fellow legends. If they can find a live specimen of Homo android for Dr. Legazpi -- preferably before his tenure review -- his assistants might never have to work another day in their life.

(Bestiary 5, pg. 19)

[friendfolio]

Friend Folio: Aasimar

The Aasimar are the mirror reflection of Tieflings, distant descendants of celestial minglings (or potentially other such influences). Aasimars are as varied as the forces of metaphysical good, and indeed, you've got quite a few sub-ancestries to choose from, depending on how you'd like to format your character. All Aasimar have an inclination towards good, but they don't have to be -- perhaps yours fell in with the wrong crowd.

I know it's a quirk of how the Bestiary is arranged, but I always found it quaint that a PC race was the first entry in the first bestiary. If you're reading the bestiary in order, it's an interesting lesson that some monsters need to be hand-statted before you can ship them out.

But can you really call the Aasimar a "monster"? By the time Pathfinder came out, the Tiefling had already been normalized as a Handbook Player Character race. 3.5 (the system Pathfinder was based on) had already given them equal billing in their bestiary.

Perhaps it's a particular quirk in their design: while Tieflings have the standard +2 +2 -2 of most Handbook ancestries, the Aasimar ditch the -2s but keep both bonuses. If you're looking to rollplay over roleplaying, it's a superior option when available. However, the Race Point system introduced in the Advanced Race Guide means you're two points over what you would be if you'd gone Tiefling.

One thing I've wondered about: surely, the Celestials have mingled, interfered, and blessed more than just humanity. Does that mean there should be Small or Large Aasimar?

With that out of the way:

When the Paxren family nursed a stranded Hound Archon back to health, its patron took notice, and cured Adeva Paxren of her infertility. Gabriel Paxren, Adeva's Lawbringer Aasimar firstborn, was groomed into the priesthood in honor of this kindness; aspiring towards a career in the arts, however, young Gabriel beseeches a band of adventurers for another way to pay his Celestial "debt".

A voice claiming to be a drifting Aasimar swashbuckler's divine father offers her a new purpose: reconsecration of a cathedral once lost to a band of asura. Adventurers might start to pick up on irregularities in the process, materials and rituals more diabolical than empyrean, but the laywoman drifter knows little of these intricacies.

Angelkin ranger Emwain was taught by Bengtang's White Inquisition that, born of the Heavens, he could do no wrong - especially not against the recently-outlawed Bengtang Communist Party. No persecution, slaughter, or atrocity could be worse than a repeat of the Revolution of '89. It's why he's willing to ignore the increasing violence of his Planetar Visions, or the way animals have begun to instinctively avoid his very presence.

(Image taken from Bestiary 1, pg. 7)