ELF ANCESTRY GUIDE - PATHFINDER 2E

howdy my name is nonat and welcome to my deep dive into the elf ancestry for pathfinder 2nd edition you guys really enjoyed the dwarf video these stats do not lie so you guys keep showing me numbers like that and you will get this content pumping out once a week i currently plan to do one of these every week and a class deep dive every single week on top of that tuesdays are the live play premiere and then two other videos in that week will sort of be wild cards depending on whatever i'm feeling like making and then i take weekends off so i can get started on the following week's videos and not fall behind and also not drive myself crazy i just wanted to say thank you all for all the support you've shown so far and let's go ahead and jump in to checking out elves so elves are surprisingly frail in pathfinder 2e having only six base hit points either the lowest or tied for the lowest of any ancestry i think goblins also only have six however they have a lot of ways to make up for this their movement speed is some of the highest in the game at base so while they're fragile again with an ability flying constitution they have a lot going for them in the finesse and intelligence departments all elves also start with low light vision and with that let's jump into the heritages first off we have the arctic elf which like the forged dwarf of the last video just gives you resistance equal to half your level against cold damage this time and environmental cold effects are one step less severe cavern elf is simple you get dark vision not bad sear elf is honestly really cool you're just sort of inherently good at finding and detecting magic you can just cast detect magic as a cantrip at will which is amazing because it still gets heightened to half your level so you get the upcast heightened versions of it for free even if you're not a spellcaster on top of that you get a plus one bonus to identify magic and decipher magical writing whisper elf just gives you super powerful ears and you can use the seek action to sense undetected creatures in a 60 foot cone instead of the normal 30 foot cone you also get a plus two bonus to locate them if they make any kind of sound within 30 feet away woodland elves are unsurprisingly really good in the woods they can move at half their speed when climbing foliage like trees and full speed on a critical success on top of that if they take the quick climb skill feat they move their full movement speed on a normal success they also don't need full cover while in the forest to take cover they can always take cover if they are on forest terrain even if there's no obstacle in front of them to take cover behind in the lost omen's character guide which i am not forgetting about this time we have the ancient elf or as i call it overpowered the ancient elf straight up just gives you a dedication from any multi-class archetype it's important to note it specifically states multi-class so you can't select anything from the apg like the beast master or anything like that it has to be one of the 16 classes but other than that yeah you just get the dedication which just gets you ahead of everybody else desert elf is the opposite of arctic health you gain half your level of resistance to fire damage and environmental heat effects are a little less extreme i don't really know why this one exists i've never heard of desert elves but if you have let me know in the comments there's probably something in the guide because one thing i'm not going over in these videos because they're already long enough is that there is a ton of lore and different like tribes of elves and it goes into all of them so if you really want to look at all of this get the lost omens character guide for yourself because there is a ton of cool information in here moving on to the meat and potatoes of the ancestry feats first one is ancestral longevity i love this prerequisite in that you need to be at least 100 years old and it's kind of a cool feat during daily preparations you can become trained in any skill and you can change that every single day if one day you think i should be good at athletics today when i'm usually not you can do that they also do point out though that since the boost is temporary it does not count as a prerequisite for a skill feat or anything like that should you level up while it's in place elven lore gives you trained in arcana and nature it also grants the elven lore skill so you effectively get three trained skill proficiencies from this one feat pretty good similar to dwarf weapon familiarity there is elven weapon familiarity which is specifically for long bows composite longbows long swords rapiers short bows and composite short bows you also gain access to all uncommon elf weapons forlorn is for the edgelord dark everything is pain elf in your party watching your friends age and die fills you with moroseness that protects you against harmful emotions you gain a plus one circumstance bonus to saving throws against emotion effects you also critically success automatically if you get a normal success nimble elf also known as the one everyone takes because it gives you 5 foot movement speed bonus starting the game with 35 foot movement speed is nuts paizo put this on a monk good lord otherworldly magic you get an arcane cantrip and it scales with your level the spell attack roll or saving throw will be based off of your charisma modifier for this spell on page 447 of the core rule book it does state that any ability that gives you magic that doesn't outright say what the dc uses it is always charisma unwavering mean is honestly kind of underrated i never hear anyone talking about this one but if you're ever affected by a mental effect that lasts two rounds or more you reduce the rounds it affects you by one so if you're affected by something that lasts two rounds it only affects you for one round additionally any saving throw against effects that would cause you to fall of sleep are treated as one better so if you fail against a sleep spell you actually succeed it does specify it only protects against sleep not unconsciousness level 1 ancestry feats in the lost omens character guide we have elemental wrath this one's kinda cool and isn't super unlike otherworldly magic in that you gain a cantrip that heightens automatically and uses your charisma modifier but it's always the acid splash can trip the thing that's interesting is when you take this feat at first level you decide if it deals acid cold electric or fire damage so the spell always functions like acid splash but it deals the damage you selected when you took the feet kind of cool getting a customized spell like that elven verve is honestly fantastic you gain a plus one circumstance bonus to save against immobilized paralyzed or slow effects and if you would ever be immobilized paralyzed or slowed for two or more rounds you reduce the duration by one this in my opinion is just better than unwavering mean immobilized slowed and paralyzed are just more common than sleep effects share thoughts is interesting in that it doesn't have access these are prerequisites and that only those ethnicity of elves can take this and normally i'd say you know gm has final rule over access but rules is written you have to be one of those elven ethnicities to take this feat i personally don't really dig that especially with the limitation on the feet itself you can cast mind link as an innate occult spell once per day but you can only target other elves and half elves i feel like that would just be cool for any elf i don't know why they locked that behind specific types of elves i suppose it's just for lore purposes and again as a gm you can change any of the rules in this book you know rules is written you have to be one of those elf ethnicities that i'm not going to try to pronounce mualijai ilvarani voronoi wildborn magic which this one is just access so the gm can give it to you if you want it is the same as otherworldly magic but you get a primal cantrip instead of an arcane cantrip i think i'd like this just for something like an elven barbarian because it would make a little bit more sense woodcraft is kind of insane as long as you are in a forested area if you roll a critical fail on a survival check to sense direction subsist or cover your tracks you fail instead if you roll a success you automatically crit succeed so this doesn't save from normal failures but it prevents critical failures and guarantees a critical success if you don't get a normal failure like screw your ranger this is just all you need moving on to the apg with ancestral linguistics another one that you need to be at least 100 years old to take and instead of taking a daily preparation for a skill proficiency like the first feat we discussed this one allows you to use your daily preparations to prepare any common language and speak it for that day this one's kinda weird but i like it i'm just gonna speak dwarf today yeah that sounds like a good idea it's really useful honestly if you find yourself in like a dwarven city for any reason just prepare dwarf that's really good elven aloofness is pretty great because it plays on the elves superiority complex and it basically says you know elves are better than non-elves so if they ever fail to coerce you using intimidation they critically fail and if they fail to demoralize you you're immune for one day instead of 10 minutes purely mechanical i don't like this feat it's very rare that an npc will take the coerce action on a player because that strips away some role play if the gm says actually they critically succeeded their coerce feet you have to do what they say the demoralized thing is nice but again rarely will you be in an encounter with someone who tries to demoralize you and then 10 minutes later will try to demoralize you again the only time this will really come into play is if you are encountering the same target multiple times in that same day and they try to demoralize you multiple times so overall mechanically not a great feat flavor-wise i love it and the final level one ancestry feat there was a lot for elves uh know your own if you ever critically fail a check to recall knowledge about anything elven you get a normal failure instead i think this wouldn't have been super overpowered if it just bumped your success up one stage success is a crit a failsa success i don't think that would have been too overly powerful but i guess they just wanted to be careful it's fine if you really want to know a lot about elves take this feat level 5 ancestry feats and this one's a long one this is all the same feat ageless patience you can voluntarily spend twice as much time as normal on a perception check or skill check to gain plus two on that check you also don't treat a nat one as a nat one normally in pathfinder 2e if you roll in that one you have to treat your degree of success as one less than it actually was if you use agel's patients that is not the case so if you nat one but it's still a regular failure it's not a critical failure elven weapon elegance you get the crit specialization effect with elven weapons and anything in the elf weapon familiarity defiance unto death is kind of rad again it's access so you need gm permission but if you would start your turn confused controlled or fleeing due to a failed will save you get another will save against the same dc now if you succeed it doesn't get rid of the effect but you become paralyzed that turn instead of acting against your own will so rather than being confused and attacking a random target you just stand still going no no no no i like that a lot okay can we talk about elves just getting general feats as ancestry feats elven instincts you gain a plus two circumstance bonus to perception checks made as initiative roles that's just improved initiative they got fleet at first level why do they get improved initiative here god that's really good for stealth if you're an expert in stealth and you're in a jungle environment near something that you can take cover behind for one action you can simultaneously take cover and hide all in the same action so effectively in two seconds you can just vanish wild born adept if you took the wild born magic feed at first level you gain dancing lights disrupt undead and tanglefoot as primal at will spells if you selected any of those three as your cantrip from wildborn magic you can also get a whole new cantrip ancestral suspicions pretty good it's better at higher levels when these effects are more common but you get a plus two circumstance bonus to saving throws against any controlling effect like dominate you also get that bonus to sense motive perception checks to see if the person is under such a control in addition to that if you get a normal success against these effects you crit succeed instead martial experience is actually kinda cool especially if you're like a spell caster even if you aren't trained with a weapon you still treat your level as your proficiency bonus on top of that when you hit 11th level you become trained in all weapons and this still this doesn't say anything about advanced weapons so you become trained in all advanced weapons as well not too shabby if you're a class that doesn't usually get proficiency anywhere otherworldly acumen is an upgrade of otherworldly magic or wildborn magic you gain a second level spell from that tradition you got from the first level feat and you can cast that spell once per day additionally if you just spend one day of downtime you can swap that second level spell out for anything else you want from your tradition at second level now one thing that i'm interested in i want you guys in the comments to let me know could you potentially learn a heightened level one spell with this for your second level spell let's say you had otherworldly magic could you take burning hands at second level as your second level spell from the arcane tradition personally i think that makes sense i think that would still count as a second level spell but i'm curious what you guys think let me know in the comments and uh while you're down there writing that uh that comment that whole response yo look at that that's a good looking comment you know while you're down there you know you're scrolling back up to the video on your way back yo hit that like button you know it's right there you're passing by it additionally the big red subscribe button it's shiny man it's right you know you're looking at it i see you looking at it man come on no need to be embarrassed hit that subscribe button smack the like button let's get back to elves tree climber you gain a climb speed of 10 feet wasn't there a first level ancestry feat that just did this better oh that was the heritage oh that was the that was the woodland elf heritage i guess this is okay but at ninth level you know what that's actually not bad what i didn't consider is that if you have a climb speed you don't need to make a climb check even woodland elves do need to make a climb athletics check if you have a climb speed you can just move that distance without rolling okay that's it's better than i thought that's actually not too bad i just realized i went over 9th level feats screw it let's do them backwards 9th level on the lost omens brightness seeker once per day you can spend 10 minutes studying your surroundings to effectively cast augury as an innate divine spell for those of you who aren't aware when you cast the augury spell you basically ask the gm what would happen if we took this course of action like if we go into the tomb what's it look like and the gm can respond in four ways wheel woe wheel and woe and nothing wheel means something good happens whoa means something bad is coming wheel and woe means both are down there and nothing means nothing really matters if you go down there or not if the result of augury was anything except nothing you gain the following reaction for the next 30 minutes if you attempt an attack roll skill check or saving throw while on the course of action you used for augury and you have not rolled yet you can gain plus one status bonus to the triggering check or if the result of augury was woe and you pursued it anyway that bonus is a plus two that's a complicated way of explaining it that's a lot to go through for a plus two but it's kinda cool if you wanna be that that seer elf who can see the future if you want to be shulk from xenoblade sense thoughts you need to have share thoughts which was that feat with a bunch of prerequisite uh elf ethnicities uh but if you take this at ninth level you can cast mind reading as an innate spell once per day that's really powerful knife level feats in the core rulebook we have elf step for one action you step five feet twice now it's important to note that this is not taking the step action twice it specifically says five feet twice so even if you have some feet or ability that extends the reach of your step action it does not affect elf step expert longevity just makes ancestral longevity better on top of being able to become trained in one skill that day you can bump any skill you're already trained in up to expert for that day so you get two free skill increases every single day and on top of this at the end of that day you can retrain any one skill increase this means you can remove one level of proficiency from any skill on your character however you must apply it either to the skill you were trained in that day with ancestral longevity or the skill you are expert in with expert longevity let me explain let's say you are trained in arcana and not trained in athletics well if we have the expert longevity feat we can become trained in athletics thanks to ancestral longevity and then bump up to expert in arcana because of expert longevity at the end of the day if we really want to we can remove one skill proficiency from anywhere on our character let's say we're trained in nature we can erase that we're no longer trained in nature and we can now permanently become trained in athletics or permanently become expert in arcana we effectively took the proficiency out of nature and we can stick it on either of the ones we increased that day and you can do this every single day that's really really cool god elves have really complicated ancestry feats for dwarves it was just like you're really good at crafting also you don't like people oh no and universal longevity is an upgrade of expert longevity once per day you reflect on your life experience and change the skills you selected okay simple as that that one just makes you even more flexible if in the middle of the day you need thievery you can be like oh okay hold on okay now i'm good at fever it's okay yeah that's cool i like that there's an entire level up build for an elf who's just like i know a lot of stuff i just can't remember all of it all the time if you give me a few minutes i'll remember it but they'll forget something else and finally elven weapon expertise which is the same as dwarf weapon expertise if your proficiency in a weapon ever goes up of any weapon your proficiency also goes up with everything from elven weapon familiarity wandering heart which is only for any elf that is from an environmental heritage arctic cavern desert woodland anything like that if you spend one full week in any environment your heritage changes to that environment this is really cool so yes if you are a cavern elf and you spend one week in the arctic you lose your dark vision and you gain cold resistance that's kind of cool i dig that i don't know if i'd ever take it but that's really neat we have two more feats to talk about avenge ally once every 10 minutes if you are next to a dying ally for one action you can make an attack roll basically with true strike you attack twice and use the higher result that's pretty good again especially for a level 13 feat this is really niche and it relies on you being next to a dead ally on the upside it's not a reaction like one of the dwarf feats was this means if you have a dying ally you can run up next to them with your bow drawn and be like i'll help you in a minute i need to make this super accurate attack it is weird that you have to be adjacent to the dying ally i feel like within 30 feet would have been fine but that's pretty cool i like that and finally level 17 in the apg's magic rider if you are ever the target of a teleportation spell that can target more than one person it can affect an additional person effectively if someone can teleport a group of people you don't count against their maximum on top of this if you're the target of a spell you and all other targets will never be more than a mile off target that's really good because i believe typically the farther you try to teleport someone the bigger the margin of error gets so if you have an elf with this ancestry feat and y'all are getting teleported across galarian you're still gonna land right where you should and that ladies and gentlemen is elves in pathfinder 2e i want to shout out again thank you guys for pointing out the lost omens character guide i totally forgot that but we got back on track with this video i really hope you guys enjoy the ancestry deep dives i know i have a ton of fun making them i know you guys have been enjoying the class deep dives and the ancestry deep dives so i really want to keep pumping those out if only there wasn't a limit on how many heritages and classes there were in the game but there are enough to keep us going for at least two or three months so you can look forward to this kind of content for a while to come i want to give a huge shout out to all my new patrons because you guys have been killing it over there you guys are amazing the support does not go unnoticed in the description there are links to our discord where we hang out talk about nerdy stuff we are closing in on 200 members on the discord so i highly recommend you uh come join on up and talk to some really cool people it's a ton of fun on top of that there's also links to my twitter and patreon if you want to support me honestly a great way you can support me right now is to follow me on twitter i know not everyone here uses twitter but twitter is honestly a really big place that potential sponsors do look so even if we're closing in on 3 000 subscribers here on youtube when they look at twitter and see 430 followers that are more apt to go about that you're less than a thousand followers on twitter you can't sit with us so if you guys can follow me on twitter it would be a huge help in pushing the channel forward to the next step but thank you all so very much for watching i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day i'm gonna go wipe all this sweat off because it is super hot until next time no nat ones

Channel: Nonat1s

Views: 15,973

Keywords: Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, Pathfinder Second Edition, Advanced Player's Guide, Pathfinder 2e APG, Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Level 1, Pathfinder 2e new features, Pathfinder 2e New Ancestries, Gamemastery Guide, Pathfinder 2e Resolve Points, Pathfinder Core Rulebook, Pathfinder 2e Ancestry Guide, Pathfinder Elf, 2e Elf Heritage, 2e Elf, Pathfinder 2e Elf Heritages, Pathfinder 2e Elf Feats, Pathfinder 2e Elf, Pathfinder 2e Elves, Lost Omens Character Guide

Id: 4m0UtXQTUpY

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020