The Goblin - Pathfinder 2's Newest Ancestry!

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Today's Pathfinder 2nd Edition update is all about the Goblin! Paizo introduces the first (and the newest) of the game's Ancestries. As always, this information will be added to the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Compiled Info Page!

• Goblins! Last night Paizo revealed the first of the Ancestries - the Goblin!
  • Boosts to Dexterity and Charisma plus one other ability score of your choice
  • Flaw to Wisdom
  • 6 hit points
  • Speed 25'
  • Common and Goblin starting language
  • Darvision (see in the dark as though it were daylight)
  • Sample Ancestry feats --
    • Burn It -- bonus damage on fire spells or alchemical items, and increases persistent fire damage by 1 points.
    • Junk Tinkerer -- craft ordinary, poor quality items out of junk.
    • Razor Teeth -- 1d6 piercing damage.
    • Very Sneaky -- move additional 5' when taking the sneak action (normally half speed) and possibly render target flat-footed.
• Jason Bulmahn on including Goblins -- "Concerning goblins and how they fit in Golarion: Times change and so do people's opinions. Goblins as PCs have been a part of our world since the first "We Be Goblins" adventure. Many of the comments here echo those from back during the launch of 3.0 when Half-Orcs returned to the game as a player choice. There was a lot of conflict at first, but the tone of them shifted over time. We always knew this would be a bit controversial and that there were some who would loudly proclaim "not at my table" and I get that. It's your table and your game after all. We are moving forward, trying to allow players to explore these characters, their culture, and their viewpoint. We are hoping to give you plenty of reasons, both mechanically and story-driven, to allow goblins in your game."
• Mark Seifter on that flexible ability boost -- "It's one of ways you get to really customize your ancestry to fit your character concept, melding the story and life of your character to the mechanics. Plus you can play the class you want without worrying about as much of an uphill battle with ability scores if you don't match the bonuses from the race with the class you had it mind. Incidentally, it provides a really nice design space to much more easily create and handle subraces that have different ability modifiers... "
• Mark Seifter confirms that repairing an item is a untrained use but building is trained only.
• Seifter on failed saves vs. dominate -- "the wording is subtly different now. Anyway, because it implies what you've said here, I wouldn't say "if you critically fail your save against dominate, you are completely under the spellcaster's control". There is still some possibility to resist a particularly abhorrent new order on a critical failure, but you're going to have to fulfill that first command no matter what."
• Community News --
  • Frank "Mottokrosh" Reding has put up the results of his survey regarding the future of his Pathfinder character sheet app.

 

[Arakasius]

My view on all this is that they seem to have done the thing to allow each race to have a plus physical/mental stat. If that wasn't a constraint I could see con/dex with a penalty to wis or something else.

But given the descriptions they're given there really isn't a lot to point to them being good at wisdom. All we really have is they're survivors and they have some kinship with certain beasts. But on the other side you have the tinkering with magic items, the love of singing, love of fire, dislike of writing and all that. That to me points a lot more to charisma. The problem I have with some arguments here is they're not doing a good job of showing why a goblin should have a +wisdom compared to other creatures with neutral wisdom.

But despite all this I wouldn't mind charisma not being their mental bonus stat, and there is one very good game reason for that. All 3 small creatures in PF2 have charisma as their mental stat. Now I'd prefer halfings to get wisdom, gnomes intelligence and goblins charisma but I can understand for halflings/gnomes they would want to keep the same stats from PF1. But if they're not willing to make changes to that I'd not mind to have goblins not have charisma as a bonus, even if it makes the most sense. Which maybe leads back to con/dex, or maybe int/dex or wis/dex. Just for varities sake.