Fantasy AGE 2e Ancestries Review

Ancestries are new in Fantasy AGE second edition and they are a modern implementation of races. There is one new ancestry to the line up and the rest are package from first edition and other Fantasy AGE books. They are overall very similar but with a few tweaks.

Attribute Bonus

In first edition each ancestry had a guaranteed ability score improvement. Dwarf had +1 Constitution, Elf had +1 Dexterity etc. This has been moved in second edition and put in the benefits table with an additional constraint for choosing benefits instead of rolling.

Focus Bonus

All ancestries receive a choice of one of two focuses.

Movement or Speed Bonus

This was not changed in second edition.

Speed 8

  • Dwarf
  • Gnome
  • Halfling

Speed 10

  • Draak
  • Goblin 
  • Human
  • Orc
  • Wildfolk

Speed 12

  • Elf

Special Ancestry Qualities

There is one special quality per ancestry. Most are Dark Sight.

Ancestries with Dark Sight

  • Draak, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goblin, Orc
  • Wildfolk (sometimes)

Ancestries with out Dark Sight

  • Halfing - Has the "Intrepid" ability to reduce penalty to Frightened condition
  • Human - Has the ability to add an additional ability score to any of the lowest scores
  • Wildfolk - Additional "species" perk.

Benefits Table

The player is allowed to roll or choose from the benefits table. If choosing the player is limited to either one ability improvement or two focus improvements. As mentioned above, an ability score improvement has been moved here increasing the total number of ability improvement to four in a benefits table. This is implemented in all ancestries and they take up the 2, 7/8, 11, and 12 dice roll positions. There are nine total benefit possibilities which leave 5 for non-abilities. Here are the patterns for the various slots with exceptions noted.

  • 2 - Ability
  • 3-4 - Focus
    • Draak "Armored" skill
    • Halfling
      • 3 "Steady" skill
      • 4 Focus
  • 5 - Focus
    • Dwarf "Stout" skill
    • Gnome "Animal Speech" skill
    • Goblin "Swift Speed" skill
    • Orc "Tough" skill
  • 6 - Focus
    • Draak "Magical Resistance" skill
    • Dwarf "Axes" weapon group
    • Elf "Bows" weapon group
    • Wildfolk "Strong Features" species benefit
  • 7-8 - Ability
  • 9 - Focus
    • Draak "Flame Breath" stunt
    • Goblin "Light Blades" weapon group
    • Orc "Bludgeons" weapon group
  • 10 - Focus
    • Elf "Keen Instincts" stunt
  • 11 - Ability
  • 12 - Ability
    • Human "Adaptable Focus" skill
       

Wildfolk

The ancestry might be the most interesting to play because of it's species option. I personally think that Wildfolk "Natural Weapons" makes an extremely good Brawling build. I think this ancestry shows how special ancestral qualities should be explored. I have issues with Dark Sight for the other races, but as a list it's not as offensive. So perhaps each ancestry needs a bit of diversity with those special qualities independent of the ability and focus improvements. I opened my Dragon AGE pdf and thought it's backgrounds looked really nice and simple to understand. I think it was that it combined ancestry and social background into a tighter story as well as fewer bells and whistles.

I'll probably have more to say when I get a handle on talents and actions.

House Rules for Ancestry

Here are some changes I would recommend that would remove some extra complexity in the character creation process.

  • Continue to remove the impact of ability score on ancestries and have a benefits table of just the ancestry focuses. There is about six focuses per ancestry to choose from and thus the benefit table could be a single 1d6 roll if rolling to pick.
  • Streamline the benefits table with only 7 entries that also makes the constraint of 1 ability or 2 focuses when choosing statistically supported. Each ability has a 16.67% which mean there is 1/3 chance to get an ability and 2/3 chance to get a focus is half as rare so you get two.
    • 2,3,4 - Ability1
    • 5 - Focus1
    • 6 - Focus2
    • 7 - Focus3
    • 8 - Focus4
    • 9 - Focus5
    • 10,11,12 - Ability2
  • Speed is 10 for all ancestry and continue making ancestries less mechanical
  • Remove Weapon groups. More on this in another blog post but really they only serve in combination with a class to get a weapon focus for free. Replace with a focus.
  • Move the "skills" out of the benefits table and make one of a choose-able special quality. This is actually pretty easy given there are two focuses in the ancestry that can be swapped with the skills.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fantasty AGE 2nd Edition - What's different?

The second edition of Fantasy AGE is now available! I got the pdf as I was a play tester and I was granted access to a preview pdf two weeks before release. I have high expectations with this edition as a chance to revisit old mechanics and add improvements from the other books. In this post I will go through at a very high level pointing out what is new or different to the first edition in each of the book's chapters. https://greenroninstore.com/collections/frontpage/products/fantasy-age-core-rulebook-pdf I hope you enjoy this review and let me know if you have any thoughts on Fantasy AGE subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/FantasyAGE Chapter 0 - Introduction Very similar in topics Summary of change from first to second edition Removed mention of Titansgrave (RIP) Chapter 1 - Character Creation Determining Abilities - a few differences in what is recommended 2nd edition recommends starting with 13 advancements and allocating them as you wish to your ability scores as fits your char...
Read more

Equivalent Dice for AGE

Image
  The test roll for the "Adventure Game Engine" is 3d6. I was experimenting with some math and realized the TN 10,11,12 probability chance lines up perfectly with 1d8 die with TN 3,4,5. Therefore you could realistically switch from 3d6 to 1d8+6 without changes to any system numbers. Yes you lose the opportunity to roll doubles but for this thought experiment we are OK with that. There are few main advantages for 1d8+6 over 3d6. The first is a single die which is easier to do math with and does not have a curved probability distribution (it's a straight line). The second is that it maintains a compact rolling range which won't feel as swingy as d20 does. The plus six makes a firm foundation such that the average of the roll is only 50% of the base. Compared to d20 where a modifier of plus 1 is only 9% of the overall roll value. A plus one here is more like a +7 which is 60% of the roll value. So much less of the overall roll value is random. The third advantage is that...
Read more

Fantasy AGE 2e Classes Overview

Second Edition Changes Classes received probably the most of the changes in second edition. The high level changes are: Envoy class Defense advancements Level 6, 11, 16 you get +1 defense Focus advancements At level 11 every focus the character has is automatically upgraded from +2 to +3 At level 11 you are allowed to spend another focus advancement to improve the bonus to +4 Specialization advancements A level 1 you get a specialization advancement In first edition this was at level 4 You ignore ability and focus requirements, but not class requirements when choosing  Additional advancements are recieved at odd levels This is a total of 10 advancements in 2e 1e only had 6 total advancements at level 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16 Common Class Advancements There is a new layout for classes which groups advancements into patterns (like even an...
Read more