Having Half-elves as official races alongside the other twenty elves is stupid. Having just two official "half" races when there are over fifty races is stupid. Making an official race for every combination of races would be stupid. Removing the codified "half" races is a great move.
68 RACES 54 AL LEGAL 8 Elfs with 37 Darkvision 32 AL Legal. Like Drow Half Orc and Half elf are iconic. Just like saving throws and alignment. Looks like trying to erase things.
Reading through these threads and I've come to the conclusion that there is no possible way for there to be a solution which makes everyone happy. The reason being that every person has lived a different experience. A 'half-elf' may feel validating to one person, as it represents who they are as a person and the experiences they've had. While the same 'half-elf' may be insulting to another person, as they liken it to calling them 'half a person'.
And then there is the whole thing where people can't even agree on if the DnD playables are actually races or species. Some people view them as races, and then it becomes extremely logical why saying 'race x is innately less intelligent but stronger' than race y'. It's the exact type of racist language which has been used to justify the persecution of irl races. But then other people view them as species. And saying 'a rhino is stronger but worse at swimming than a shark' is just common sense.
And if they are species, that leads to a huge amount of confusion amongst most people about how they can interbreed. As to a lot of people, the only hybrid they will ever have been taught about is the sterile mule.
1) Bicultural still exists. One does not need to be a distinct race to be bicultrual. That was actually my point in questioning why one needs to be a separate distinct race for the character to so self identify.
2) To me, taking offence to this is taking offence to acknowledging you and other bicultural players, indeed, all bicultural people as fellow humans. I do not understand what you find offensive about that. Can you please explain?
1. Many of us don't identify with either parent's race. But as something else. As third culture. This is a thing. It's not not a thing just because you're ignorant of it. This is why the half-elf as a playable race has resonated with many of us for years.
Options for creating characters descended from more than one species are not being removed from Dungeons & Dragons. Proposed adjustments to character origins have been open to the community since August 2022 and will be revised further: http://spr.ly/6019OyEdH
If anyone wishes to engage in this discussion, it would behove them to apply some critical analysis of where you're getting your information from and what agenda that source may have, lest you be misled.
Still seeing a lot of people spreading misinformation, which is a direct violation of our rules against trolling. If this continues, the thread will be locked.
It has been stated quite explicitly that although one will still be able to play a half-elf using the revised rules one must pick the race of either parent during character creation. That half-elf will therefore no longer be its own thing.
That is not misinformation.
Stop dismissing the concerns of those who are of mixed parentage and find this grotesque.
It has been stated quite explicitly that although one will still be able to play a half-elf using the revised rules one must pick the race of either parent during character creation. That half-elf will therefore no longer be its own thing.
That is not misinformation.
Stop dismissing the concerns of those who are of mixed parentage and find this grotesque.
Yep this. Sure some DM's might let you go back and use the 2014 PHB species. Others may not. I don't even know if they will still be allowed in adventure league.
But so far, with the information given from the One DnD playtest, Half-Elf and Half-Orc are no longer mechanically supported. This might change in the final 2024 PHB, but we've not got that info yet.
Using the playtest rules as they currently sit, if you want to play a half elf or half orc, you just have to pick a human or an orc/elf and pretend they're a mixed species.
It has been stated quite explicitly that although one will still be able to play a half-elf using the revised rules one must pick the race of either parent during character creation. That half-elf will therefore no longer be its own thing.
That is not misinformation.
Stop dismissing the concerns of those who are of mixed parentage and find this grotesque.
The half-elf and half-orc options will still be playable from the 2014 Player's Handbook and Basic Rules via the fact the changes to D&D will be backwards compatible. The options are not being removed. They are just not being included as distinct, stand-alone options in the upcoming products.
1) Again, that is conflating race and culture. The character can be of a separate distinct culture no matter what their race. That can be anything from personal traditions, to family traditions, to a local culture, to a regional culture (not necessarily and likely not conforming to national borders) to world wide.
That is all still possible.
2) Interesting that you mention Drow. There are half elves of various Elvish subraces but not all, and NONE of different human. Nor are there half Elf / half orc, even though both elves and orcs can have children by humans. But if you mean race description concerns over orcs or drow generally, you will have to explain how any of that ties in with any of this. You were talking about this from the context of being the child of bicultural parents and taking offence on that basis. How is considering you a fellow human, note, human, rather than some sort of 'half breed' offensive to you? And again, that is different from someone considering themselves as, say, a Mexican American, celebrating ties to both cultures.
1. In the revised rules the player will have to pick the species of one of the character's parents during character creation to determine a number of things. How many people have to post in this thread how that is awfully insensitive towards mixed-race people who have to put up with racists expecting them to identify one way or the other before you stop dismissing us?
2. Half-elf as its own distinct race is more in line with how those of us who are mixed-race and see ourselves as both or as neither. What Wizards are proposing is that we have to elevate one over the other.
It has been stated quite explicitly that although one will still be able to play a half-elf using the revised rules one must pick the race of either parent during character creation.
That's not quite right. You still pick parentage from different peoples, you are just limited to the inherent feature of one and then you can use your Feat, Language, Background, etc to continue to represent other facets of your character. So no, you don't just pick one parent for your origin, its just the feature. The rest of your origin is just as inherent to your character and can help to represent mixed heritage and culture.
That half-elf will therefore no longer be its own thing.
No longer it's own, singled out, mechanically distinct thing. But certainly still a diegetic reality in various settings. Along with the infinite diversity of other mixed parentage characters now supported by the system.
That is not misinformation.
Stop dismissing the concerns of those who are of mixed parentage and find this grotesque.
And those feelings are valid. I'm not dismissing the feelings that you or anyone else feel.
I would like to point out that the mechanically distinct existence of Half Elves and Half Orcs was precisely the thing that was making me and many people I talked to uncomfortable, however. The fact that those two, and only those two, were singled out for special treatment felt othering. The treatment in the playtest makes many of us feel more comfortable because it makes mixed parentage less of a gamified and mechanical super power and more of a lore detail. It treats multi racial characters like people first and rather than some sort of physically different entire other species.
So that leaves us maybe in a sticky spot. The existence of a mechanically distinct separate race of half elves or half orcs was precisely what made some of us uncomfortable, but the opening up of the system to support all mixed parentage characters rather than specifically making half elves and half orcs some sort of exceptional difference is what is making you feel uncomfortable?
It has been stated quite explicitly that although one will still be able to play a half-elf using the revised rules one must pick the race of either parent during character creation.
That's not quite right. You still pick parentage from different peoples, you are just limited to the inherent feature of one and then you can use your Feat, Language, Background, etc to continue to represent other facets of your character. So no, you don't just pick one parent for your origin, its just the feature. The rest of your origin is just as inherent to your character and can help to represent mixed heritage and culture.
That half-elf will therefore no longer be its own thing.
No longer it's own, singled out, mechanically distinct thing. But certainly still a diegetic reality in various settings. Along with the infinite diversity of other mixed parentage characters now supported by the system.
That is not misinformation.
Stop dismissing the concerns of those who are of mixed parentage and find this grotesque.
And those feelings are valid. I'm not dismissing the feelings that you or anyone else feel.
I would like to point out that the mechanically distinct existence of Half Elves and Half Orcs was precisely the thing that was making me and many people I talked to uncomfortable, however. The fact that those two, and only those two, were singled out for special treatment felt othering. The treatment in the playtest makes many of us feel more comfortable because it makes mixed parentage less of a gamified and mechanical super power and more of a lore detail. It treats multi racial characters like people first and rather than some sort of physically different entire other species.
So that leaves us maybe in a sticky spot. The existence of a mechanically distinct separate race of half elves or half orcs was precisely what made some of us uncomfortable, but the opening up of the system to support all mixed parentage characters rather than specifically making half elves and half orcs some sort of exceptional difference is what is making you feel uncomfortable?
That is a an oversimplification of what I am saying makes me feel uncomfortable.
What I find grotesque is the idea that a half-elf cannot be something distinct but the player must choose the race of one of the parents.
As that mirrors the experience of many of us who are mixed.
Being told to pick. As if we can't be both. Or neither.
Have you ever read TheOmni-Americans by Albert Murray?
It has been stated quite explicitly that although one will still be able to play a half-elf using the revised rules one must pick the race of either parent during character creation.
That's not quite right. You still pick parentage from different peoples, you are just limited to the inherent feature of one and then you can use your Feat, Language, Background, etc to continue to represent other facets of your character. So no, you don't just pick one parent for your origin, its just the feature. The rest of your origin is just as inherent to your character and can help to represent mixed heritage and culture.
That half-elf will therefore no longer be its own thing.
No longer it's own, singled out, mechanically distinct thing. But certainly still a diegetic reality in various settings. Along with the infinite diversity of other mixed parentage characters now supported by the system.
That is not misinformation.
Stop dismissing the concerns of those who are of mixed parentage and find this grotesque.
And those feelings are valid. I'm not dismissing the feelings that you or anyone else feel.
I would like to point out that the mechanically distinct existence of Half Elves and Half Orcs was precisely the thing that was making me and many people I talked to uncomfortable, however. The fact that those two, and only those two, were singled out for special treatment felt othering. The treatment in the playtest makes many of us feel more comfortable because it makes mixed parentage less of a gamified and mechanical super power and more of a lore detail. It treats multi racial characters like people first and rather than some sort of physically different entire other species.
So that leaves us maybe in a sticky spot. The existence of a mechanically distinct separate race of half elves or half orcs was precisely what made some of us uncomfortable, but the opening up of the system to support all mixed parentage characters rather than specifically making half elves and half orcs some sort of exceptional difference is what is making you feel uncomfortable?
That is a an oversimplification of what I am saying makes me feel uncomfortable.
I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, it wasn't my intent. I do want to make sure you feel like your point is not being dismissed.
I was always drawn to the half elf lore as well, the idea of someone caught between two cultures really resonated with me.
At the same time it still made me vaguely uncomfortable for reasons that it took me a long time to even understand. Other people I've talked to also expressed discomfort that half elves and half orcs were mechanically distinct races at all. Because that kind of language mirrored hurtful language that had been directed at them. They would rather be seen as human and as people just like other people rather a wholly distinct other. Which does not take away from their, and my, desire to be seen as part of a third culture formed from influences from many cultures. Does that make sense?
What I find grotesque is the idea that a half-elf cannot be something distinct but the player must choose the race of one of the parents.
I hear you and see your point. If the only exposure to this new origins playtest was the recent articles, I might feel that way, too. But what I think they leave out is that you don't actually have to choose just one of your parents. You can represent mixed parentage using multiple aspects of your character's origin from the Background to the Language to the Feat.
Have you ever read TheOmni-Americans by Albert Murray?
I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, it wasn't my intent. I do want to make sure you feel like your point is not being dismissed.
I was always drawn to the half elf lore as well, the idea of someone caught between two cultures really resonated with me.
At the same time it still made me vaguely uncomfortable for reasons that it took me a long time to even understand. Other people I've talked to also expressed discomfort that half elves and half orcs were mechanically distinct races at all. Because that kind of language mirrored hurtful language that had been directed at them. They would rather be seen as human and as people just like other people rather a wholly distinct other. Which does not take away from their, and my, desire to be seen as part of a third culture formed from influences from many cultures. Does that make sense?
What I find grotesque is the idea that a half-elf cannot be something distinct but the player must choose the race of one of the parents.
I hear you and see your point. If the only exposure to this new origins playtest was the recent articles, I might feel that way, too. But what I think they leave out is that you don't actually have to choose just one of your parents. You can represent mixed parentage using multiple aspects of your character's origin from the Background to the Language to the Feat.
Have you ever read TheOmni-Americans by Albert Murray?
If not, give it a go.
I have not, but it will now go on my list.
My game group—already ethnically diverse and based in a foreign country where many of us are married to locals and have children who are mixed—are all reeling at just how racist this decision is.
I perfectly understand your point about people wanting to be seen as human.
Who doesn't?
We all deserve to be afforded human dignity.
Forcing a mixed-raced player who wants to play a half-elf to pick the species of just one parent isn't it.
I perfectly understand your point about people wanting to be seen as human.
Who doesn't?
We all deserve to be afforded human dignity.
Thank you for understanding this. I hope I have been as understanding to your point.
Forcing a mixed-raced player who wants to play a half-elf to pick the species of just one parent isn't it.
Ok again I see that and yes it would be galling, but do you maybe see my point that this is not what is happening? That the Character Origins playtest included ways to represent mixed heritage more holistically with things like Background, Language, Feats, etc? Have you .. read the Character Origins playtest?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I perfectly understand your point about people wanting to be seen as human.
Who doesn't?
We all deserve to be afforded human dignity.
Thank you for understanding this. I hope I have been as understanding to your point.
Forcing a mixed-raced player who wants to play a half-elf to pick the species of just one parent isn't it.
Ok again I see that and yes it would be galling, but do you maybe see my point that this is not what is happening? That the Character Origins playtest included ways to represent mixed heritage more holistically with things like Background, Language, Feats, etc? Have you .. read the Character Origins playtest?
As someone else pointed out in this very thread:
"It’s not more inclusive to erase the unique experiences of mixed-race people and instead treat them as just one of whatever one of their parents is. If the revised rules actually allow for mixed-race characters to be expressed in a more diverse way, that’s fantastic, and they’ve said they’re still revising, so I’m hopeful that they will. But the rules for mixed-race characters in the current Character Origins UA are more disrespectful than the currently published half-elves and half-orcs."
You can repeat that point about Background and Language a million times.
A player wanting to play a half-elf using the revised rules is still forced to choose the species of a single parent to determine some features.
Stop saying "this is not what is happening" because it is.
I perfectly understand your point about people wanting to be seen as human.
Who doesn't?
We all deserve to be afforded human dignity.
Forcing a mixed-raced player who wants to play a half-elf to pick the species of just one parent isn't it.
Question.
What if a mixed-race player wants to play a half-something else? What if they don't like half-elves or half-orcs, given that half-elves are described in very hostile and negative ways in this edition and half-orcs are the actual children of actual ****? What are their options?
As it stands, the half-person stat blocks allow two and only two combinations of peoples - human and elf, and human and orc. Any other combination is invalid and not allowed. Gnome/halfling? Nope, not allowed. Elf/orc, the uniya of Critical Role fame? Nope, not allowed. The "my family reunions are wild" pairing of tiefling/genasi? Nope, not allowed. Anything/dwarf? Nope, not allowed. The mixed child of mixed parents, with more than two lineages? Absolutely not allowed.
Almost every conceivable combination of peoples, lineages, and heritages in R5e? Not allowed.
Is this not a problem?
I understand that the "People of Mixed Heritage" sidebar in the Origins document is insufficient. A lot of people have said so. The answer is not to retain the one single specific mommy-may-I half-person stat block that allows one and only one combination of peoples. The answer is for Wizards to create guidelines on how to homebrew a character's species to reflect mixed parentage in a way that fits the character's game, because it is impossible for Wizards to programmatically create a Build-A-Bear point buy system in One D&D that's both future-proof and acceptable to grognards. They would have to scrap the entire way species works in D&D and rebuild it from the ground up to make systematic mingling of bloodlines possible. Unfortunately this will always be the case, as even if they provided guidance on how to mingle the abilities of all the species in the new PHB, that advice stops being sufficient the moment a new book releases with new species in it. Every time a new species come out, Wizards would have to publish official rules for how to combine it with all the 100+ species that came before, and that would get untenable essentially instantly. They can't do that, so the solution has to live in homebrew. It just has to, there's no other practical solution.
Does this mean Adventurer's League is hostile to mixed-species characters? Yes. Adventurer's League is hostile to stories in general, players in particular, and absolutely sucks at being good D&D, so frankly I don't consider that a huge loss. Sorry to fans of AL, sorta, but this is the sort of thing you sacrifice in order to get Dial-A-DM.
What if a mixed-race player wants to play a half-something else? What if they don't like half-elves or half-orcs, given that half-elves are described in very hostile and negative ways in this edition and half-orcs are the actual children of actual ****? What are their options?
As it stands, the half-person stat blocks allow two and only two combinations of peoples - human and elf, and human and orc. Any other combination is invalid and not allowed. Gnome/halfling? Nope, not allowed. Elf/orc, the uniya of Critical Role fame? Nope, not allowed. The "my family reunions are wild" pairing of tiefling/genasi? Nope, not allowed. Anything/dwarf? Nope, not allowed. The mixed child of mixed parents, with more than two lineages? Absolutely not allowed.
Almost every conceivable combination of peoples, lineages, and heritages in R5e? Not allowed.
Is this not a problem?
I understand that the "People of Mixed Heritage" sidebar in the Origins document is insufficient. A lot of people have said so. The answer is not to retain the one single specific mommy-may-I half-person stat block that allows one and only one combination of peoples. The answer is for Wizards to create guidelines on how to homebrew a character's species to reflect mixed parentage in a way that fits their game, because it is impossible for Wizards to programmatically create a Build-A-Bear point buy system in One D&D that's both future-proof and acceptable to grognards. They would have to scrap the entire way species works in D&D and rebuild it from the ground up to make systematic mingling of bloodlines possible. Unfortunately this will always be the case, as even if they provided guidance on how to mingle the abilities of all the species in the new PHB, that advice stops being sufficient the moment a new book releases with new species in it. Every time a new species come out, Wizards would have to publish official rules for how to combine it with all the 100+ species that came before, and that would get untenable essentially instantly. They can't do that, so the solution has to live in homebrew. It just has to, there's no other practical solution.
Does this mean Adventurer's League is hostile to mixed-species characters? Yes. Adventurer's League is hostile to stories in general and absolutely sucks at being good D&D, so frankly I don't consider that a huge loss. Sorry to fans of AL, sorta, but this is the sort of thing you sacrifice in order to get Dial-A-DM.
Then the design team should come up with a way for players to select features from both parent species.
To allow for any combination.
The solution to your predicament shouldn't be to invalidate the real-world experiences of racism of many of us who are of mixed parentage by forcing us to choose a race when we want to play a half-elf or half-anything which is what racists often expect us to do.
This decision is one of the most grotesque examples of blatant racism in the name of "sensitivity" I have seen in this hobby and beyond.
Then the design team should come up with a way for players to select features from both parent species.
To allow for any combination.
The solution to your predicament shouldn't be to invalidate the real-world experiences of racism of many of us who are of mixed parentage by forcing us to choose a race when we want to play a half-elf or half-anything which is what racists often expect us to do.
This decision is one of the most grotesque examples of blatant racism in the name of "sensitivity" I have seen in this hobby and beyond.
Try to come up with rules that allow for the mixing of any two (or more!) species in the PHB and beyond in a way that consistently and systematically leads to at least roughly balanced character blocks.
Now give those rules to ten million players, who will use them on every species ever created in D&D for the last thirty years and which will be created in the next ten and who have a vested interest in exploiting your rules against their intent to create munchkin nonsense and DM headaches.
You're not allowed to explain or change the rules at all once you give them to the players. You can't correct any mistakes you didn't know you made, you can't explain anything that ends up being more confusing than you thought it was. The rules have to be usable exactly as written for both the content you've already made and the content you'll potentially make for the rest of the edition and beyond.
Your rules must be 100% wholly acceptable to every single one of those ten million players as well, or they will go online and scream about how horrible you are and tell everyone they can not to buy your product because it's awful and racist and disgusting and/or it's A Betrayal Of The Very Soul of D&D(TM). They will raise a giant stink and it'll be your job to manage that stink even if it is for all practical purposes groundless.
There's a reason I say the solution to this issue has to be homebrew. What you're asking for is a point builder system in which every species trait in D&D is assigned a point value that fairly weighs it against every other species trait, and players are allowed to build their lineage from [X] points' worth of features. That is a system that works very well in other games, but it's anathema to The Soul of D&D(TM) and will provoke instant and widespread nerdrage if Wizards even sniffs at it. Given that they cannot do that, and given that Wizards fundamentally cannot make house rules, the only real answer is for them to offer real, actual suggestions in the Species section of the new book for how a player and a DM might work together to homebrew a combination of species traits that fits both the player's vision and desires and the DM's game and world. There's no other way they can pull this off even remotely fairly.
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Do you think it's "stupid" for a bicultural person to take offense to being told he or she must choose the race of his or her father or mother?
Must pick one?
That is the lived experience of many of us with mixed parentage.
Stop dismissing our concerns as "stupid."
It is grotesque.
68 RACES 54 AL LEGAL 8 Elfs with 37 Darkvision 32 AL Legal. Like Drow Half Orc and Half elf are iconic. Just like saving throws and alignment. Looks like trying to erase things.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
Reading through these threads and I've come to the conclusion that there is no possible way for there to be a solution which makes everyone happy. The reason being that every person has lived a different experience. A 'half-elf' may feel validating to one person, as it represents who they are as a person and the experiences they've had. While the same 'half-elf' may be insulting to another person, as they liken it to calling them 'half a person'.
And then there is the whole thing where people can't even agree on if the DnD playables are actually races or species. Some people view them as races, and then it becomes extremely logical why saying 'race x is innately less intelligent but stronger' than race y'. It's the exact type of racist language which has been used to justify the persecution of irl races. But then other people view them as species. And saying 'a rhino is stronger but worse at swimming than a shark' is just common sense.
And if they are species, that leads to a huge amount of confusion amongst most people about how they can interbreed. As to a lot of people, the only hybrid they will ever have been taught about is the sterile mule.
1. Many of us don't identify with either parent's race. But as something else. As third culture. This is a thing. It's not not a thing just because you're ignorant of it. This is why the half-elf as a playable race has resonated with many of us for years.
2. Orcs? Drow? Short memory?
Still seeing a lot of people spreading misinformation, which is a direct violation of our rules against trolling. If this continues, the thread will be locked.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
It has been stated quite explicitly that although one will still be able to play a half-elf using the revised rules one must pick the race of either parent during character creation. That half-elf will therefore no longer be its own thing.
That is not misinformation.
Stop dismissing the concerns of those who are of mixed parentage and find this grotesque.
Yep this. Sure some DM's might let you go back and use the 2014 PHB species. Others may not. I don't even know if they will still be allowed in adventure league.
But so far, with the information given from the One DnD playtest, Half-Elf and Half-Orc are no longer mechanically supported. This might change in the final 2024 PHB, but we've not got that info yet.
Using the playtest rules as they currently sit, if you want to play a half elf or half orc, you just have to pick a human or an orc/elf and pretend they're a mixed species.
The half-elf and half-orc options will still be playable from the 2014 Player's Handbook and Basic Rules via the fact the changes to D&D will be backwards compatible. The options are not being removed. They are just not being included as distinct, stand-alone options in the upcoming products.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Will the 2014 PHB still be allowed in adventure league content?
1. In the revised rules the player will have to pick the species of one of the character's parents during character creation to determine a number of things. How many people have to post in this thread how that is awfully insensitive towards mixed-race people who have to put up with racists expecting them to identify one way or the other before you stop dismissing us?
2. Half-elf as its own distinct race is more in line with how those of us who are mixed-race and see ourselves as both or as neither. What Wizards are proposing is that we have to elevate one over the other.
That is grotesque.
I'm perfectly aware that half-elf will still be available in the current books and here on D&D BEYOND.
I don't see anyone saying that isn't the case.
That doesn't excuse the insensitivity of the decision or of those who just keep dismissing those of us who find it grotesque.
That's not quite right. You still pick parentage from different peoples, you are just limited to the inherent feature of one and then you can use your Feat, Language, Background, etc to continue to represent other facets of your character. So no, you don't just pick one parent for your origin, its just the feature. The rest of your origin is just as inherent to your character and can help to represent mixed heritage and culture.
No longer it's own, singled out, mechanically distinct thing. But certainly still a diegetic reality in various settings. Along with the infinite diversity of other mixed parentage characters now supported by the system.
And those feelings are valid. I'm not dismissing the feelings that you or anyone else feel.
I would like to point out that the mechanically distinct existence of Half Elves and Half Orcs was precisely the thing that was making me and many people I talked to uncomfortable, however. The fact that those two, and only those two, were singled out for special treatment felt othering. The treatment in the playtest makes many of us feel more comfortable because it makes mixed parentage less of a gamified and mechanical super power and more of a lore detail. It treats multi racial characters like people first and rather than some sort of physically different entire other species.
So that leaves us maybe in a sticky spot. The existence of a mechanically distinct separate race of half elves or half orcs was precisely what made some of us uncomfortable, but the opening up of the system to support all mixed parentage characters rather than specifically making half elves and half orcs some sort of exceptional difference is what is making you feel uncomfortable?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
That is a an oversimplification of what I am saying makes me feel uncomfortable.
What I find grotesque is the idea that a half-elf cannot be something distinct but the player must choose the race of one of the parents.
As that mirrors the experience of many of us who are mixed.
Being told to pick. As if we can't be both. Or neither.
Have you ever read TheOmni-Americans by Albert Murray?
If not, give it a go.
I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, it wasn't my intent. I do want to make sure you feel like your point is not being dismissed.
I was always drawn to the half elf lore as well, the idea of someone caught between two cultures really resonated with me.
At the same time it still made me vaguely uncomfortable for reasons that it took me a long time to even understand. Other people I've talked to also expressed discomfort that half elves and half orcs were mechanically distinct races at all. Because that kind of language mirrored hurtful language that had been directed at them. They would rather be seen as human and as people just like other people rather a wholly distinct other. Which does not take away from their, and my, desire to be seen as part of a third culture formed from influences from many cultures. Does that make sense?
I hear you and see your point. If the only exposure to this new origins playtest was the recent articles, I might feel that way, too. But what I think they leave out is that you don't actually have to choose just one of your parents. You can represent mixed parentage using multiple aspects of your character's origin from the Background to the Language to the Feat.
I have not, but it will now go on my list.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
My game group—already ethnically diverse and based in a foreign country where many of us are married to locals and have children who are mixed—are all reeling at just how racist this decision is.
I perfectly understand your point about people wanting to be seen as human.
Who doesn't?
We all deserve to be afforded human dignity.
Forcing a mixed-raced player who wants to play a half-elf to pick the species of just one parent isn't it.
Thank you for understanding this. I hope I have been as understanding to your point.
Ok again I see that and yes it would be galling, but do you maybe see my point that this is not what is happening? That the Character Origins playtest included ways to represent mixed heritage more holistically with things like Background, Language, Feats, etc? Have you .. read the Character Origins playtest?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
As someone else pointed out in this very thread:
"It’s not more inclusive to erase the unique experiences of mixed-race people and instead treat them as just one of whatever one of their parents is. If the revised rules actually allow for mixed-race characters to be expressed in a more diverse way, that’s fantastic, and they’ve said they’re still revising, so I’m hopeful that they will. But the rules for mixed-race characters in the current Character Origins UA are more disrespectful than the currently published half-elves and half-orcs."
You can repeat that point about Background and Language a million times.
A player wanting to play a half-elf using the revised rules is still forced to choose the species of a single parent to determine some features.
Stop saying "this is not what is happening" because it is.
What you are posting is just misinformation.
Question.
What if a mixed-race player wants to play a half-something else? What if they don't like half-elves or half-orcs, given that half-elves are described in very hostile and negative ways in this edition and half-orcs are the actual children of actual ****? What are their options?
As it stands, the half-person stat blocks allow two and only two combinations of peoples - human and elf, and human and orc. Any other combination is invalid and not allowed. Gnome/halfling? Nope, not allowed. Elf/orc, the uniya of Critical Role fame? Nope, not allowed. The "my family reunions are wild" pairing of tiefling/genasi? Nope, not allowed. Anything/dwarf? Nope, not allowed. The mixed child of mixed parents, with more than two lineages? Absolutely not allowed.
Almost every conceivable combination of peoples, lineages, and heritages in R5e? Not allowed.
Is this not a problem?
I understand that the "People of Mixed Heritage" sidebar in the Origins document is insufficient. A lot of people have said so. The answer is not to retain the one single specific mommy-may-I half-person stat block that allows one and only one combination of peoples. The answer is for Wizards to create guidelines on how to homebrew a character's species to reflect mixed parentage in a way that fits the character's game, because it is impossible for Wizards to programmatically create a Build-A-Bear point buy system in One D&D that's both future-proof and acceptable to grognards. They would have to scrap the entire way species works in D&D and rebuild it from the ground up to make systematic mingling of bloodlines possible. Unfortunately this will always be the case, as even if they provided guidance on how to mingle the abilities of all the species in the new PHB, that advice stops being sufficient the moment a new book releases with new species in it. Every time a new species come out, Wizards would have to publish official rules for how to combine it with all the 100+ species that came before, and that would get untenable essentially instantly. They can't do that, so the solution has to live in homebrew. It just has to, there's no other practical solution.
Does this mean Adventurer's League is hostile to mixed-species characters? Yes. Adventurer's League is hostile to stories in general, players in particular, and absolutely sucks at being good D&D, so frankly I don't consider that a huge loss. Sorry to fans of AL, sorta, but this is the sort of thing you sacrifice in order to get Dial-A-DM.
Please do not contact or message me.
Then the design team should come up with a way for players to select features from both parent species.
To allow for any combination.
The solution to your predicament shouldn't be to invalidate the real-world experiences of racism of many of us who are of mixed parentage by forcing us to choose a race when we want to play a half-elf or half-anything which is what racists often expect us to do.
This decision is one of the most grotesque examples of blatant racism in the name of "sensitivity" I have seen in this hobby and beyond.
Try to come up with rules that allow for the mixing of any two (or more!) species in the PHB and beyond in a way that consistently and systematically leads to at least roughly balanced character blocks.
Now give those rules to ten million players, who will use them on every species ever created in D&D for the last thirty years and which will be created in the next ten and who have a vested interest in exploiting your rules against their intent to create munchkin nonsense and DM headaches.
You're not allowed to explain or change the rules at all once you give them to the players. You can't correct any mistakes you didn't know you made, you can't explain anything that ends up being more confusing than you thought it was. The rules have to be usable exactly as written for both the content you've already made and the content you'll potentially make for the rest of the edition and beyond.
Your rules must be 100% wholly acceptable to every single one of those ten million players as well, or they will go online and scream about how horrible you are and tell everyone they can not to buy your product because it's awful and racist and disgusting and/or it's A Betrayal Of The Very Soul of D&D(TM). They will raise a giant stink and it'll be your job to manage that stink even if it is for all practical purposes groundless.
There's a reason I say the solution to this issue has to be homebrew. What you're asking for is a point builder system in which every species trait in D&D is assigned a point value that fairly weighs it against every other species trait, and players are allowed to build their lineage from [X] points' worth of features. That is a system that works very well in other games, but it's anathema to The Soul of D&D(TM) and will provoke instant and widespread nerdrage if Wizards even sniffs at it. Given that they cannot do that, and given that Wizards fundamentally cannot make house rules, the only real answer is for them to offer real, actual suggestions in the Species section of the new book for how a player and a DM might work together to homebrew a combination of species traits that fits both the player's vision and desires and the DM's game and world. There's no other way they can pull this off even remotely fairly.
Please do not contact or message me.