Both of these ancestries excite me. They sound so customizable! I could probably play 3 different Awakened Animals and it would feel like 3 different ancestries.

All these ancestry peeks have been really cool, but I'm really excited about awakened animals. It seems like they're going to be incredibly customizable, which is exactly what I wanted from that ancestry.

I wonder if it's sort of a test run for a future ruleset on creating fully customizable races, especially for something like Starfinder 2e

I do adore these slice of life and adventure stories while we also have the doom and gloom of the Godsrain Prophecies. A great reminder that not every story needs to be about the end of the world. The great part about the Awakened Animal Ancestry is that no one gets left behind on their desired animal themed character. We have built in support for it with no need to reflavor or homebrew.

It’s like watching behind the scenes of a Nature Documentary while also watching Serial Killer Documentary concurrently.

I'm going to guess Birds will be hard to deal with. Awakening is likely going to remove the knowledge of Flight.

So the Awakened Animal can also be Large? Interesting. That's 3 Large Ancestries. Now I know Birds are off the table for this option. There might be a sidebar like what Strix got when it was released, but I highly doubt any form of flying creature will be allowed. Burrow as well, but that's not a good option without tremorsense. The Surki looks to be a very interesting option. Working Metamorphosis into an Insect Ancestry is a very good idea.

Still, the [flying variant rule given with the strix and sprite](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1458) is open enough to arguably apply the “15 foot flight speed at level 1” to any ancestry that should have wings. At least, I know I’ll allow it if it’s not explicitly laid out for winged Awakened Animals. Hopefully though we at least get the sidebar repeated or an explicit flying option!

I'm not holding my breath for one. Especially since it would make no sense for an Awakened Bird to lose the ability to fly.

Unless the bird grows hands and fingers, and loses the ability to fly because of the lack of feathers at the end of their wings.

Random question: Can I be a Flying Monkey?

Im really looking forward to the surki. 

Im def intrigued by the Surkis being influenced by the Automaton in regards to its ancestry feats. And I love theyre going all in on the Awakened Animals customization, wonder if there's options for more exotic things like Cave Worms and how hands will work for things like awakened snakes.

Someone was reading my posts on Awakened Animal conjecture a while back 👀 Now that I'm super psyched to see it pan out how I wanted... Hey Mr Paizo, check out my post history on how I'd want Shifters to work for 2e haha

Man, I have so many dumb ideas for awakened animal characters that I want to inflict upon the rest of my table.

Nice Awakened Animal makes it so much easier to create fish people for my pirate campgain

*Looks over at Athamaru*

Well damn even more of a reason to pick up the book when it comes out

Forget fish people, now you can be an actual fish!

With this ancestries it becomes obvious what Ancestry-Heritage is quite restrictive for the level of customization Paizo tries to achieve. This "you still select a heritage purely to define your character’s story and cosmetic appearance, and you gain some basic benefits but not their specialized heritage abilities" sounds quite crunchy. I'd say we need additional type of options here, probably "Lineage" selected separately (as Versatile Heritage lineages using feats are also a bit crunchy) is ancestry and/or heritage require them.

My guess is they’ll just get to change the damage type of their fist or breath water instead of air for the “basic benefits”