I should probably preface this with that I haven’t actually had a chance to play the game yet. I’m just looking at the materials and trying to learn for now. Not to mention, it doesn’t really impact my character-designing decisions too much, but the more I think about it the more odd it is.
It being a background instead of a heritage notwithstanding, the only reason I could think of for it not making you undead(or at least having the option) was balance concerns regarding an undead player character. I mean, obviously, right? But…then I remember you can just literally play as a skeleton.
So…what’s up with that? Am I the weird one here?
If I had to guess (and that’s all this is), there is probably a core rules setting that stops backgrounds from changing ancestry characteristics
But then why not, as briefly mentioned in the post, just make it a heritage instead? It would make more sense in general anyway. As I was looking I also saw at LEAST two other “back-from-the-dead” backgrounds, so there wouldn’t even really be anything lost.