We have 5 days left on the campaign, and we're continuing through the twelve ancestries with some author notes and then information on how and if they'll be expanded. For today's update, all three of the amorphous and shapeshifting ancestries rated next on the poll, so they're going to be hanging out together.
Slimes had an even higher ranking in our initial survey when we decided the Year of Monsters originally, partially because we asked people to rank the ancestries and dungeons received a lot of last place or near last place ranks that cancelled out their higher-than-usual number of first place ranks, while nearly everyone had at least a good opinion of slime. Due to this result, slime was the very first ancestry we released in the Year of Monsters. As a type of ooze with a magical nucleus that evolves unique abilities (such as sapience in the case of a slime character), slimes are extremely adaptable, and they've continued to have a solid fan base (I guess ironically given they aren't solid?); the art of the Tiny-sized purple mini slime witch has become popular enough that one of the major Pathfinder 2e discord servers asked us for permission to use it as an emoji there. Thanks to you, slimes are receiving a slimeheart versatile heritage, allowing other ancestries to become infused with slime, perfect for your partial-slime characters!
Mimics have some exceptional cover art in Year of Monsters, which helped inspire their prominence on the special edition cover and the mimic dice guardian. To spread them out a bit from the slime and doppelganger club, mimics came out in May for Year of Monsters. With the ability to mimic objects and denatured adhesive allowing them to have a reasonable movement speed (as opposed to the creature mimic with its notoriously slow speed), mimics come with the tools you need to fulfill that fantasy. One of my players is using the mimic ancestry plus some Pathfinder feats that allow you to retroactively purchase obscure items whenever you need them to play a vending machine. Before you ask, somehow it wasn't based on that anime about the vending machine, and the player had never heard of it. Mimic is all set where it's standing and isn't receiving additional content in Classic Creatures.
Lastly, today's group (since they just squeaked under the other two ancestries in our poll by 1%) are doppelgangers. They came out in February for Year of Monsters due to their overall popularity. The ability to disguise as another person without tools or penalties based on the differences in appearance is extremely useful in social situations and intrigue adventures, and this drives the ancestry's popularity. Doppelganger has a plethora of feats to improve your shapeshifting and gain more special abilities in your alternate forms, plus different social groups of doppelgangers (including those who seek a name for the ancestry that isn't defined by being a double for someone else). Due to a stretch goal from the Year of Monsters campaign, doppelgangers are adding in the doppelborn versatile heritage, for those who are members of another ancestry but have doppelganger ancestor or have gained a bit of their morphic ability in some other way.
Tomorrow's update are our renegades and mavericks: demons and oni!
~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design
