I have been creating a special Half Elf Variant race that allows you to choose between Human or Orkish lineage, to mix with your Elven blood.

The best way to do this would be as a fresh custom race, named the way you want, with the features on an option.

The trouble is more allowing them to choose additional races.

If you can choose between human and orc, then why not make to species, one for the elf-human and one for the elf-orc?

Quote from Altarathechosenone >>

The trouble is more allowing them to choose additional races.

 

 Why are they choosing additional races if it's half elf and half one other thing among 2 options?

Tis simply how I wish to bind it together. The simple answer is that I do this for aesthetic and ineractibility reasons.

You are allowed to choose subspecies. For example, when choosing elf you can choose Wood Elf, High Elf, or Drow for additional features. You could make a Half-Elf that allows you to choose human or orc in that way.

Will you guide me in your ways?

1. Create a race.
2. I think there's a box that ask if it will have subraces. Click that.
3. Then when you Save Changes, the option will pop up to create subraces that your character chooses.

Does this work for you?

There are two ways you can go about this in the homebrewer. Either:

(a) use Create Species to make a homebrew Half-Elf species/race, replacing the core Half-Elf. Choose which features all Half-Elves get and build them into your version. You can then use Create Species Option to create your lineages as though they were sub-species/sub-races, giving each option a handful of features suitable to the other species/race that is part of the character's ancestry.

(b) use Create Variant for each lineage you want to make. With this approach you select a base species/race the variant modifies, in this case Half-Elf. The Half-Elf base species/race will represent any Elf/Human, but the player can select one of your variants to replace the Human part of that combination with another species/race, eg. Orc, Dwarf, of whatever. You achieve this by swapping out features for new ones: when you create each feature a lineage grants, you can dictate that the feature type is "replacement" and select which of the core Half-Elf features it will replace.

You can probably use method (a) if your version of Half-Elves has a core set of features that all of them will definitely get, you can probably use method. You may want to use method (b) if you intend to use the official Half-Elf species/race (to avoid making an unnecessary copy), or if you want the freedom to have each lineage you create to replace different base features from each other.